Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Five years earlier

He catches Arthur’s eye across the room, watching while Leon gives him a push forwards, drink sloshing out onto Merlin’s shoes as he closes the distance.

He’s rosy cheeked, with a light sheen of sweat. He’s gorgeous.

Merlin wants to kiss him.

Two years earlier

“Colours.” Merlin pets at Arthur’s hair. The colours are so good , though. “Gold, and blue, and your lips are so pink.”

“I can’t understand you, you’re bleeding,” Arthur says, amused, and Merlin swats a hand away from his mouth. “Let me see, the dentist said - ”

“Where did you get your… feet mittens?” Merlin demands, closing his eyes and pushing his head into Arthur’s chest like a cat. He’s tired, and Arthur smells so nice. He always does, ever since ages ago in uni.

“My socks?” Arthur asks.

“No,” Merlin whines, as the telly switches to the ad about ducks. “This one always makes me cry,” he sniffs.

“Alright,” Arthur laughs, “settle down, come on.”

Two months earlier

“I understand,” Merlin says, “of course I do. We’ve all been there - don’t worry about it right now, just try and keep your head up, alright?” He offers an awkward kind of smile. He knows it is; he can feel it.

He wishes Mordred wasn’t doing this, but it isn’t his fault his mum is ill. It’s good he wants to take care of her. Merlin will make it work, he always does.

“Thanks, Merlin,” Mordred says, head down and embarrassed. “It won’t happen again, I promise. Strictly one time only,” he laughs.

Two days earlier

It is not one time only.

Today

It is not the worst day Merlin has ever had, but it is in the top five. Possibly three.

There would be absolutely no making rent this month.

Of all the impossible hurdles that face Merlin lately, this is perhaps the most impossible of all. His bookshop job with Gaius is great in the sense that he hardly ever has to talk to anyone and there is plenty of time to catch up on his freelance work, but not so great in the sense of earning potential.

Or direction in life.

But the more immediate concern remains the rent.

The past two months had eaten up his meagre savings - he should have tossed Mordred out the first time he couldn’t pay his half. Unfortunately Merlin had not been so heartless as that; a pushover, always. All for nothing now, as Mordred is gone regardless.

Along with the ancient television, the battered collection of board games, the pile of dusty dvds that had been left here from the last renter (who had been eighty, with bad taste), all of Merlin’s clean laundry (fresh in a basket from that morning’s trip to the launderette), and the entire couch.

The laundry had been on the couch, so possibly it was just a victim of circumstance. Who stole laundry?

Well, most of that wasn’t a huge loss - nor will Mordred himself be missed, if you got right down to it. The clothes though, that one cut deep. Public nudity was frowned on, and it was a cold start to spring. At least with the telly the screen had been more broken than not - and the couch had hurt to sit on if you so much as looked at it for too long. Clear across the room, one was not safe from the aura of discomfort. It had that rough and dated floral fabric that had always led him to think it had been older than him, and maybe his mother, too. The things it must have seen.

Even so, walking into their dingy little flat to an empty living room and no word - not even a note - had been… a feeling.

He’s not sure what the feeling had been , but there had sure been a lot of it.

What was it called when one felt a dead even split of relief, horror, and resignation?

On the bright side, it would be less for him to carry back home to Ealdor when he crawled home in utter shame and defeat, unable to hack it in London on his own. Silver linings.

How many bad roommates could a person have in one streak?

First ‘What’s a smoke detector’ Edwin, then ‘What’s yours is mine’ Julius, then ‘Call me Cen’ Creepy Cenred, and now Mordred.

Arthur would come up with a suitably derogatory nickname, Merlin was certain. He’d just have to tell Arthur first, is all. Which is not a conversation he is particularly eager to have.

The vaguely brownish carpet was probably not a healthy environment for him, or indeed anyone. Yet there was no couch at all anymore, not even a terrible one; so on the carpet he lay, among the crisp dust and the dents in the fibres that were pressed flat over the years. Where he belongs, he thinks dramatically. The water stain on the ceiling stares at him accusingly. He closes his eyes and exhales through his nose for a count of ten, and then inhales and does it twice more for good measure. He swears he read somewhere that this is supposed to calm you down, but it isn’t working very well.

Mostly he can just smell the smell . The old-flat smell; stale and poorly ventilated.

On his stomach his phone vibrates, but he can’t stand to look just yet. He somehow doubts it’s a suddenly guilty Mordred sending him all the missing rent in one go. This day does not strike him as quite that lucky.

What a mess.

A rotten sort of hopelessness takes root up the back of his throat like vines.

What a terrible fucking day. Even though it’s been years since Will died, Merlin misses him so urgently that his nose stings as he holds back tears. It should have been him and Will in a terrible flat together, struggling to make ends meet. Not Merlin and a series of increasingly awful strangers leaving him in the dirt.

All the exciting dreams and grand plans they had made as children, spinning out into nothing. There was so much they were going to do . Instead, Merlin had stumbled straight out the gate, and hadn’t stopped tripping over his own feet ever since.

His phone buzzes again, and he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes so hard he sees dizzying spots.

“What?” he asks the empty flat, but the only thing he hears back is the neighbour watching Love Island while they clatter about in their kitchen. Again. The bare light bulb hanging above him flickers. Maybe he’ll get murdered and none of this will be a problem anymore. He presumes ghosts have their own, different, problems; but he’s open to considering it.

As if summoned, a knock raps at the door.

“What fresh hell?” he begs of the water stain, but it doesn’t reply either.

He creeps up to the door on tiptoes - you could hear everything in this building. Through the peephole, he saw it was only a fidgeting Arthur, uncomfortable and out of place as always in Merlin’s shitty, run-down flat.

“If you’re here to murder me, it’s too late, I’m already dead,” Merlin says, thudding his head on the door.

“Mer- lin,” comes Arthur’s exasperated voice, “let me in, I have takeaway. Didn’t you get my texts?”

Merlin thuds his head against the door again, but still unlatches the door chain and the lock, standing aside and bracing himself. Arthur is immaculate as always, of course, in a pressed suit that somehow still looks fresh even after a day Merlin knows for a fact started at five in the morning with a run. All sharp, precise angles, broad shoulders, and trim waist. It's remarkable, really. The slightest hint of subtle cologne follows him in, the same as always.

Merlin relaxes at the familiarity despite himself, surrendering to the Pavlovian response. 

“Where’s your couch gone?” Arthur asks, setting the takeaway on the little bar counter and refusing to take off his shoes, as usual. He would never dare sully his socks with the floor, not here. “And your television?”

“I don’t know,” Merlin says, digging into the cupboards to hopefully still find a pair of mismatched plates, refusing to meet Arthur’s eyes. Ah, success! At least Mordred hadn’t cleaned out everything. He probably just didn’t even know they had plates to steal; it’s not like he had ever cooked. The empty spot where the instant pot had lived speaks otherwise, but Merlin is excellent at denial.

Also, his mother had given him that as a housewarming present. Mordred really is the worst.

“Again?” Arthur scoffs as he unloads the unmarked bag. “Another Julius? You have the worst luck of anyone I know. How do you do it?”

“Oh, you know, hard work and persistence,” Merlin snorts, watching as a plethora of little brown boxes and bamboo utensils spread across the flecked laminate counter. They smell divine, and he shudders to think of the cost when he’s set to be out on his huge ears at the end of the month.

They’ve done this song and dance countless times before; if he asks where they are from, Arthur will refuse to tell, knowing Merlin will look up the menu to go into palpitations over the prices. Arthur will insist that good food is worth it, and if he’s paying, he can get them what he likes. Merlin will fail to choke down an overly snippy reply, and Arthur will list all of the ethically sourced local ingredients and charities the restaurant supports, just to rub his face in it.

The place with the rooftop garden and the beehives had been inspired, and shut Merlin up for an entire month. It’s bloody expensive to be a good person.

Today, though, he just leans against the counter, his stomach rumbling. Breakfast was ages ago and he’s had to skip lunch again; and as much as he likes oatmeal it’s been days since he had something else. He’s sick of it. And with no instant pot now he won’t even have that, so he might as well eat something good before he leaves London.

At the thought, his appetite abandons him.

Arthur pushes a plate full of something that smells amazing into his hands.

“What? No fussing over dinner? You love fussing, it’s your favourite thing to do,” Arthur says, casting his eyes judgmentally over the nearly empty living room. “And you hated that couch, I can’t imagine you’re too stricken over the loss.”

“Mordred is gone,” Merlin admits, picking at a bit of pomegranate that glistens and gleams in the light like a ruby. Out of place, here.

“Good,” Arthur brightens up. “I hated him almost as much as the couch. More, maybe. He was always taking advantage of you.”

“No,” Merlin says, “it’s not good!”

“He was always taking advantage,” Arthur insists, poking his fork at Merlin in a jab. “You were forever complaining he stole your groceries, and he hasn’t paid rent, and he never cleaned!”

“He smoked in his room,” Merlin complains, happy for a receptive audience - and no one likes complaining as much as Arthur. “He never did laundry. He stole my laundry, did I tell you that? Who steals a man’s laundry? I ask you!” He gestures so grandly that he drops his fork. “The sketchiest people came over. Remember Kara? With the ‘oh my god, is that a real knife’-knife?

“It was a real knife.” Arthur’s nostrils flare.

“I know it was! And he took the longest showers. I never had enough hot water, and you know how cold I get.” Arguably the largest crime of all. Merlin froze all winter.

“So cold.” Arthur scowls as he nods, and they are united in their shared hatred.

“But still not good.” Merlin reclaims his train of thought. “I can’t… I mean, I can’t afford this place on my own. And they don’t really make places much cheaper than this.” He finally shoves a bite of food in his mouth. It’s delicious. “What is this?”

“Don’t change the subject. What do you mean?” Arthur sets his plate down on the ugly counter, a dreadfully serious expression falling over his face. A siren starts wailing outside.

“I’ll have to move home, that’s what I mean.” Merlin stabs his stupid delicious salad. There’s purple sprouted broccoli in it, and he sniffles. They have broccoli in Ealdor, but he’ll miss London. His friends. He’ll miss Arthur.

“No, that’s - ”

“I can’t magic up more money, Arthur!” Merlin wipes the back of his hand under his nose. Arthur shoves an actual handkerchief at him, and he takes it. “You’re eighty,” he says, grateful at least no tears fall. “Who carries a handkerchief?”

“You’ll find another roommate,” Arthur says, crossing his arms.

“I don’t think it’s going to matter,” Merlin says, folding the handkerchief into a tiny square and unfolding it again as he squirms. “I’m already behind, and the rent’s going up, not down. Gaius is going to retire to the coast like a heroine in a Victorian novel in a few weeks anyway, so I won’t have a job on top of everything else. And - ”

“You’ll get more freelance work and move in with Gwaine, then,” Arthur says, staring determinedly into his plate as though it keeps the answer to this secret hidden somehow. Merlin winces. He doesn’t want to think about freelance right now, its own headache.

“And Elena? And their horse of a dog?”

“You love Ivan,” Arthur argues, his hands white-knuckled.

“I do, but they don’t have any space, even if I did feel comfortable asking! They’re getting married in three months.”

“Lance and Gwen - ”

“Absolutely not, you know they’re applying to foster, I’m not going to take that room - ”

“Then move in with me,” Arthur grits out, finally snapping his head up to look at Merlin again. His throat bobs.

“Into the guilt-house?” Merlin laughs wetly. Arthur’s gorgeous detached home is a pristine monument to Uther’s guilt - but it is a very beautiful one. The fallout of his long-ago affair had all but shattered their family, but at least the house Arthur had been given afterwards is lovely.

“We lived together before and we both survived, didn’t we?” Arthur doesn’t take the bait.

“Barely,” Merlin answers, picturing their uni days. The first taste of living with anyone other than his mother or sleepovers with Will. It all made for strange, dreamlike memories, for all that it has only been a few years past.

He feels like a very old twenty five most times. He shouldn’t be this age and so tired.

Even in the thick of it, Merlin was never quite clear if he loved or hated living with Arthur. It still isn't, now. The most draw-able person Merlin had ever seen, colourful and funny with bouts of reckless kindness - but also the most spoiled prat who had ever lived. Compared to his recent luck with roommates, Arthur was a walk in the park, though. Who cares if he’s posh? At least he smells good and doesn’t steal couches.

That Merlin knows of, anyway.

Regardless, he is not sure it’s the best idea. The entire first year of uni Arthur had been saved in Merlin’s phone as ‘Posh Spice’. Mature? Culturally relevant? Perhaps not. Is he currently saved in Merlin’s phone as ‘The Cooler Posh Spice’?

Perhaps yes.

“It’s not like I pay rent, and it’s far too big for one person anyway.” Arthur begins poking at his salad again, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Yeah, what do you even do with five bedrooms? Rotate where you sleep? Or is it where you store your… I don’t know, actually. Fabergé eggs?”

“Of course,” Arthur says, mimicking Uther’s accent with a haughty sniff before his mouth cracks into an honest smile. “Be honest with me though, is that the only rich-person thing you could think of?”

“Big cartoon diamonds,” Merlin continues, amused, counting things off on his fingers. “Fur coats. Gold bars? That’s one bedroom for each and the last one for you, I reckon?”

“You could have a studio,” Arthur says, not quite ready to let things go with a joke so easily this time. “I have my bedroom, then one’s my office - ”

“Arthur - ” Merlin bites his lip as Arthur presses on.

“And if you took a room there’s still two more - a studio and I could still keep a guest bedroom for if Morgana ever comes home from her around the world revenge holiday. Or if your mum wants to visit, you don’t have to sleep on the couch.”

“That’s impossible, as I don’t have a couch,” Merlin says, gesturing to the empty space. The carpet is noticeably whiter where the couch had lived, which strikes him as a bad sign in general for the whole flat. He opens his mouth and closes it again, speechless to answer in any real way.

He doesn’t want to leave London, is the thing - it was hardly a glamorous life, but it was his . The art galleries alone made him sigh; in love, in awe. The markets. Even if Merlin couldn’t buy anything, he loved to go people-watch and sketch. The fashion kept a row of moleskines stuffed over-full on his rickety bookshelf.

Ealdor didn’t have a single museum. Old man Simmons’s house was the closest anything came, untouched since ‘the war’. It was never clear which war, but Merlin had always assumed the Norman Conquest. Simmons would just as soon shoot someone before letting them in to have a look at anything, though. A handful of restaurants against a backdrop of old, abandoned factories. So no, Merlin doesn’t want to go back.

Arthur’s offer is generous.

Too generous. He would let Merlin take advantage of him if he moved in. Would encourage it - Arthur liked it when Merlin presumed. Always taking pity on his least successful friend; feeding him and trying to make his life just a little bit easier.

And as much as Merlin dug his heels in about the fancy takeaways he always ate them in the end. He wore the perfect jumper that Arthur got him that had the tags cut out before Merlin could even try it on or refuse it. Wore the boots that he suspected were handmade by elves, as they had no maker's marks at all. And oh no , the perfect jumper must be stolen as well - he’ll miss that jumper like a limb. Shit.

Suffice it to say that Merlin was not very good at saying no to Arthur.

He was very, very bad at saying no to Arthur, in fact.

“I don’t want to be a Sophia, or a Mordred,” Merlin says, feeling selfish for even considering it, swallowing roughly and picking at a loose thread on the cuff of his sleeve. Of course the shirt with a hole in it wasn’t in the stolen laundry. The last thing he ever wore as he put off going to the launderette until he absolutely couldn’t put it off any longer.

“That’s impossible,” Arthur says, matter-of-fact, “as you don’t smoke.”

“You know what I mean.” Merlin rolls his eyes. “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“The room is sitting there empty with or without you in it,” Arthur says in that placid way he gets when he’s not going to budge. If he was being rowdy, Merlin could still win the argument; as it stood now, though, he might as well start packing. “I have a washing machine and a dryer, and no clothes thieves,” he lists like a particularly dry estate agent. “Bathtub. Three, actually. I literally cannot use them all. I just can't run that fast. Garden. Just the one of those, though.”

Merlin takes a deep breath again and counts to ten, but it doesn’t work any better than the last time.

The first time he set eyes on Arthur both of them had been lost in the student halls, neither one of them having a clue what they were in for.

Merlin knew, now.

Arthur had been such a condescending shit of a housemate. Merlin had probably been just as bad, rigidly deciding to hate Arthur for life as soon as he saw the monogrammed towel hung up on the railing.

Had Arthur relaxed even once that entire year? Oh, how he had loathed having someone else sharing his space. Merlin could count on one hand the times he had even seen Arthur in pyjamas. And how they fought, butting heads over every little thing.

Arthur was inflexible, and everything had to be just so. Privately, Merlin speculated it was a holdover from his rigid upbringing and army of housekeepers, but he didn’t dare say it.

Had Arthur had a butler growing up? It would explain a lot.

His mother, though? While she had tried her best, she was a free spirit at heart - his name was Merlin, for god’s sake - and he had grown up half-feral and covered in paint.

Arthur is his best and dearest friend - but Arthur has standards.

By Merlin’s level of standards, board game nights at Arthur’s were ludicrously formal affairs. Mostly this just means that people use plates. Gwen tends to wear her nicer dresses, too, though, so he thinks it’s not just him feeling the pressure.

Broke, single-parent kids solidarity.

Regardless of whatever lab grew him, they were very different creatures who had somehow latched on to each other anyway - and not let go - but they were such better friends when they didn’t live together. Merlin couldn’t bear it if things went sour.

He… can’t lose another best friend. The grief from earlier settles back around him like a well-worn coat, snug around his chest and familiar to slip into.

He just can’t.

If he goes back to Ealdor, they’ll never see each other at all, though. An icy dread weaves in between the threads of his stupid grief metaphor coat, stitched tight and oppressive. He can picture it all too easily. Their relationship devolving and deteriorating into the occasional text or call; until one year they just forget each other’s birthdays and feel too awkward to reconnect until someone sends out a wedding invitation or has a baby.

No. Just… no. Arthur has to stay.

“You have to promise me something,” Merlin says, waiting for Arthur to meet his eyes before continuing. He already looks triumphant, but Merlin is deadly serious. “You can’t be like in university.” Arthur makes an insulted sort of noise, and Merlin realises how that came out. “Shit,” he says, and to his relief Arthur just snorts, well used to Merlin sticking his foot in his mouth, “that’s not what I meant. I meant that you never relaxed - literally never!”

“I relaxed!” Arthur swears, sitting there in his buttoned up suit, and vest, and fancy, shiny shoes. Shoulders stiff and set high, jaw squared. If Merlin had any money to bet, he’d wager that on the other side of the counter Arthur’s legs were planted and braced like it was a court date. Or a brawl.

“Did you? Or did you get up extra, extra early so that I never saw you in your embarrassing pyjamas?” Merlin cocks an eyebrow. They both know the truth.

“They weren’t embarrassing,” Arthur denies, but the flush on the tips of his ears betrays him.

“They were embroidered,” Merlin coos, never able to hold onto a bad mood very well around Arthur, “with precious little ‘AP’s.”

“So they wouldn’t get confused with anyone else’s pyjamas!”

“Oh, yes, with all the other university students who had full sets of scarlet silk jammies. It would have been confusing, otherwise. I’m only surprised you didn’t have a velvet dressing gown and a pipe.”

“I have things now,” Arthur says, as Merlin throws his head back to laugh. “Shut up, I didn’t buy those pyjamas! I mean I have age-appropriate things. Jumpers, and t-shirts and joggers - things . I shopped for myself. Well, Lynette did,” he petulantly insists, as grown ups do. Lynette, Merlin knows, is Arthur’s personal shopper, because he is the sort of man to have one. “Not silk - ”

“Jimmy jammies,” Merlin supplies helpfully.

“I relax,” Arthur says through his clenched teeth, and Merlin has never heard another human being sound so tense in all his life. “Is that all sorted then? I just have to promise to relax? Fine, I will then.”

“You never did when we lived together before, so don’t act like it’s so easy.” Merlin vividly recalls the shouting match when Merlin had not adhered to proper lights out time. Well, the first one - it was certainly not the last one.

“I don’t see an issue,” Arthur says, shoving an overly large, messy bite into his mouth as though to make a point, raising his eyebrows in challenge.

“You promise that I won’t change how you live, or unwind, or whatever. I don’t actually think you sleep standing up in a suit, so you can’t act like you do every morning. Especially not Sundays.”

“Who’s to say I don’t sleep in my suits?” Arthur says, still chewing and swallowing properly before speaking. If he ever spoke impolitely with a mouth full of food Merlin would know he had been replaced, though, so that’s fine. He doesn’t want Arthur to change. He only wants Arthur to be himself, and not a tense, miserable person-shaped mass of silk pyjamas. “Who’s to say I sleep at all?”

“We have to stay friends. Or I’m out,” Merlin says, blustering through the complicated tangle of emotions that knot in his chest. “You can’t let me make your life worse.”

“That’s impossible,” Arthur says, tilting his chin up in victory, “as you’ve only ever made my life better.”

“Shut up,” Merlin says smartly, blushing as he takes another bite. Even when Arthur is nice it feels mean. “Eat your dinner. You’ll need your energy to help me pack all of my earthly belongings. I only have a week to sort this all out before someone takes my organs for rent money.”

“Pack what?” Arthur says, but his smile is smug and pleased. “You don’t own anything.”

“My sketchbooks,” Merlin says.

“And?”

“My… sketchbooks,” Merlin says again, because that’s pretty much the entire list at this point. “And art supplies, assuming I still have those. I cannot believe he stole my clothes. What kind of monster - ”

“He’s deranged, clearly,” Arthur sets in, smirking. “All of your clothes are hideous.”

“That is really not the issue,” Merlin fails to stifle his laugh though, and the smirk grows into a real grin. Sparkling blue eyes make Merlin’s chest pull tight. They’ll be fine - they’ve got to be.

The flickering light above them goes out in a shocking burst, because of course it does.

After Merlin screeches and finally stops hyperventilating, they finish eating using Arthur’s phone as a flashlight - Merlin’s is broken, because why wouldn't it be - while the Love Island neighbour bangs on the wall.

It’s not the best day Merlin’s ever had, but it’s also not the worst.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t have a ladder, so he stands on the counter while Gwaine spots him to change the light bulb.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering,” Gwaine says, squeezing Merlin’s calves in a way that is both friendly and teasing, as well as completely inappropriate for a man with a fiance. Yet somehow still charming on top of all of that.

Merlin would love to know how he does it. Maybe Gwaine could teach a class.

“I’m already going to be charged through the nose for all the missing furniture, I just know it. Mordred should be on the hook for it, but how do you want to bet that works out? At least I can do a light bulb,” Merlin says, letting Gwaine help him down from his perch like a courtly maiden getting off of a horse, flourishing bow and everything.

“‘Furnished’, what a joke. This place is a dump, I’m glad you’re finally leaving,” Gwaine says, lifting their joined hands to brush a chaste kiss over Merlin’s knuckles.

“It isn’t that bad,” Merlin halfheartedly defends, as Gwaine darts away from his retaliatory swats. It really is.

“It really is,” Gwaine laughs, shoving his elbow into Merlin’s side. “You know you could come get married to Elena and me, too, right? There’s always room for one more,” he winks.

“Somehow I wonder if Elena would be as happy about that as you,” Merlin says, rolling his eyes.

“You’re an angel, she’d learn! Ivan would love it, too, which has to count for something. All his favourite people in one place.”

“I’m also not sure it’s entirely legal to be married to more than one person,” Merlin says, “although I bet Elena appreciates coming in second behind Ivan in your considerations.”

“Well I come in, what - seventh? Ninth? In hers.” Gwaine’s eyes go distant as he tries to count, “I can’t remember how many horses are in the stables right now, but something like that.” He’s beaming like the happiest man in the world as he says it though, and Merlin can’t entertain the notion that he’s sincere for even an instant.

He has rarely met two people so suited for each other - but he also knows Gwen and Lance, so it’s not never. Someday he’d like to be half so lucky.

“Mhm,” Merlin hums sceptically. As he turns to grab another box, Gwaine grabs his wrist out of the air, stopping him in his tracks.

“It’s only - ” Gwaine starts, eyes serious. “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

“What?” Merlin blinks.

“Moving in with Arthur, you’re sure?” Gwaine gives his wrist a gentle squeeze, but this time there is nothing teasing in it.

“Do you think I shouldn’t?” Merlin wets his lips as Gwaine gathers his thoughts.

“I think you should be careful, is all. I mean - ” Gwaine makes a gesture with his free hand that means absolutely nothing. He groans at Merlin’s uncomprehending silence and smacks it into his own face instead. “Nevermind,” he says, sighing.

“Is he getting serious with Vivian?” Merlin asks, nervous he’ll be putting a standstill on Arthur’s life.

Gwaine squints at him as though he is being very deliberately obtuse.

“Why aren’t you dating anyone, anyway?” he asks, and Merlin’s face goes red as a cranberry; he can feel the throbbing heat of it. He tugs his wrist free with a yank, refusing to look at Gwaine. He has…complicated feelings on dating.

In that he hates it.

Well, perhaps his feelings are not all that complicated.

Why couldn’t he just jump straight into the Lance and Gwen or Gwaine and Elena stage of a relationship? Skip dates one to thirty-something and slide right into cosy snuggles on the couch and knowing each other’s dinner order and pants sizes sorts of feelings. Instead of trying to explain to yet another person that Merlin doesn’t really want to get groped behind the Tesco on the first date please and thank you.

“Because! So shut it.” Merlin hits him with a tea towel, the nearest thing in reach.

“Oh, well if that’s why.” Gwaine dodges another hit from the tea towel. “I’m not trying to be a shit, I promise, I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were doing. You’re both adults. You’re both also already codependent weirdos - ”

“You are,” Merlin retorts, which is a very schoolyard reply, but it’s also true. They’d all been around Gwaine when Elena took an extended trip out of the city. There had been tears. So many tears. “That’s very, very rich coming from you.”

“Ah,” Gwaine grins at him, “but I have the impenetrable social shield of being engaged to explain myself, whereas you and Arthur are - for some reason - not even dating. Why is that, again?”

“None of your business, is why,” Merlin says, snatching up a box to fold and pretending to be too busy for this conversation. It’s not the first time he’s been asked, after all.

There are a million reasons. Hardly any time for it, anyway. Dating. Sex. He's either working, or trying to get more work, or going to work, which takes half the morning on its own, or volunteering at the shelter, or trying to eke out a rare hour for a museum, or spending time with Arthur. Which he also can’t say, because Gwaine will take that as a point in his favour.

Even if Arthur felt that way - which he doesn’t. He dates glossy, beautiful women with tastes to match, who are as different as day and night compared to Merlin.

He’s too tired for any of it. Exhausted, all the time.

It’s like he’s treading water, scarcely keeping his head up, and instead of a life vest people just want to throw him a boyfriend, as though that will do any good.

He can feel himself getting worked up, folding and twisting the box until it is a mangled mess of cardboard.

And even if they did date, what then?

Arthur is gorgeous, of course he is, but he’s also like…a wolf, or something, when what Merlin needs in life is more like a greyhound. Specifically one of the retired kind, that sleeps all day and wears silly sweaters and little booties in the snow.

And then what about when Arthur inevitably got tired of waiting for Merlin’s slow to kindle sex drive? It existed, but in vanishing quantities the more stressed he got, which was not likely to change any time soon; about to be out of a job on top of everything else. Finding a new one was going to be hell.

Suffice it to say, desire was now the last person to show up to the party, long after the bar was emptied and everyone else had already gone home. And there Arthur is. A man who could have everything he ever wanted with a curl of his fingers. Merlin knows what would happen. Simmering resentment is what, and then months of pretending that everything was fine.

Then they break up, and -

Merlin isn’t even sure they’ll survive living together again.

A million reasons.

“Alright,” Gwaine agrees, hands raised in surrender as the box rips in two. “I just wanted it on record, that’s all. I’ll let it go!”

Merlin aggressively tears a piece of tape off the roll, and it immediately sticks to his fingers in a tight tangle. “Great,” he says, flapping his hands in increasing intensity to get it off.

Gwaine clucks at him before Merlin can shake his hand clear off of his arm, taking the tape off with a quick, stinging pull.

“I’m going to go pack up some books,” Merlin says with false cheer.

“I’m sorry!” Gwaine’s voice chases him out of the living room and into his bedroom. God the walls really are thin as paper, here. It is a dump. As nervous as he is he’s also a little guiltily giddy to leave.

Goodbye, water stains on the ceiling. Goodbye, ugly, rough, tacky carpet and cracked bathroom tiles. Goodbye loud Love Island neighbour.

He’s only just sat down on the floor, legs crossed and an empty box popped open at his side, when he hears the knock at the door. Gwaine enthusiastically greeting Arthur and Leon makes him feel like he should come back out and at least say hello. They’re here to help him after their own long days of work, and giving up their Friday evenings on top of it. Yet he doesn’t feel quite ready to face them, still finding his footing.

Instead, he grabs a sketchbook, thumbing through it idly to kill time before tucking it into a corner of the box, and then another.

He remembers some of these - the sketch of the woman with the sparkling earrings at the Wallace, the billowing chequered overcoat from a windy day along the Thames. Another page shows Arthur and another after that, so Merlin flips it shut and chucks it into the box. He doesn’t open the next one.

The door creaks, and the man himself comes in.

“Here you are,” Arthur says with a smile hello, nudging the cardboard to the side with his foot and crouching, unwilling to touch the floor here any more than usual. He takes another sketchbook without so much as asking, cracking it open and grinning when Merlin tries to snatch it back, too slow. “Oh, I like this one,” Arthur says, turning so they can both see the pencil study of a Millais.

“Oh, you like Millais?” Merlin laughs as Arthur rolls his eyes. “Revolutionary. You and just a few other people, I think, no one else.”

“Hah, funny. I mean, yes,” Arthur flips to another page, his own carefully studied face staring back up at him, “but I like your hand at it. Always have.” He continues without further comment, but Merlin feels as though a light has been shone straight through him, leaving a delineation of his insides against the wall in naked silhouette.

He’s still off-kilter from Gwaine. He has a million valid reasons why he can’t date Arthur, but exactly none of them are that he isn’t handsome.

It’s slow going to empty the shelf while they keep looking through each book, but it doesn’t stop them, elbows brushing as they tilt to show off pages to one another.

“Not that one,” Merlin says when Arthur picks up one with a dented corner. From when he had hurled it at a wall - not a proud or happy moment. He puts his hand over Arthur’s before he can look, but his tone must give away that he’s sincere, because it’s released without a word.

“Do the clothes fit alright?” Arthur asks, as he begins actually packing.

“Yeah, thanks,” Merlin says, even though it’s plain to anyone with eyes that they are a bit too oversized to be a clean fit.

A bike courier had brought a leather duffle bag of Arthur’s things to Merlin’s flat first thing in the morning. It had felt a bit like a high end drug deal in a film. Well, other than the fact that he had last night’s leftovers hanging half out of his mouth; but he’s also absurdly grateful Arthur thought of it. The only other things he has that survived Mordred’s shopping spree are what he had in his wardrobe instead of the laundry basket. Namely, a couple of pairs of pants and socks, and a lone t-shirt he found under his bed from the animal shelter fundraiser that was a dusty, wrinkled mess reading ‘Paws Up’ across the back.

On the chest, it had two adorable pink paw pads raised up, in what Merlin assumes was an accident, and not supposed to read as very deformed nipples. But it looked like what it looked like, and he was feverishly glad he didn’t have to wear it.

A folded note on Arthur’s personalised letterhead had merely read ‘Until Lynette can sort you some things of your own.’.

Which was alarming, if you asked Merlin; but no one ever does.

At least now there was hard evidence that Arthur was not lying when he said he owned casual clothes, as Merlin was currently wearing them.

“It’s probably a good thing you sent them,” Merlin says, “as I think they frown on public nudity on the tube. Gaius would have had a heart attack if I showed up to work like that, too.”

“It’s also probably not very sanitary.” Arthur frowns, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t know how often they clean, but however much it is, it is clearly not enough. And I include both the tube and Gauis’s shop in that, by the way.”

“Hey, I clean there!”

“I know,” Arthur laments, which is bullshit. Merlin does a great job cleaning, it’s just that there is some dirt that is character building dirt and part of the shop. It’s atmospheric dirt.

“Anyway, it's too cold to walk around bollock-naked,” Merlin says, undeterred, “really, just a poor idea all around. So, you know. Thanks.”

Then, feeling emotional and too well looked after with no outlet, he pushes Arthur over so he’s sprawled on the much-hated carpet, squawking in outrage about how disgusting it is. Merlin shouldn’t be surprised when the dusty Paws Up t-shirt hits him in the face in vengeance, but somehow he still is.

Sputtering and coughing, he laughs while he throws it back, lunging forwards and digging his fingers into Arthur’s side until he yelps.

“Oh, are we wrestling instead of packing?” Gwaine asks gleefully from where he and Leon stand in the doorway. He makes a show of starting to peel his shirt off. Well, Gwaine is gleeful, Leon is calmly judgmental. “I’ll join you!”

“Maybe we can take a few boxes over tonight,” Leon says, grabbing Gwaine’s elbow before he can get too far with it, “and come back for the rest over the next couple of days. If you aren’t bringing any furniture - ”

“He’s not,” Arthur says from the floor, with the tone of a man who would set all of the remaining furniture here on fire before allowing it in his home, or possibly even postcode.

“Then I don’t think we need to organise a truck. Maybe a car?”

“I can get a car,” Gwaine offers with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“You want to sound mysterious, but you’d just borrow Elena’s van.” Merlin sticks his tongue out.

“I’d mysteriously borrow Elena’s van,” Gwaine corrects, hefting the box of books experimentally. “Why would you fill this all with books?” he asks, setting it back down and taking half out and shoving a pillow on top. “Have none of you ever packed before? Arthur I understand, he’s never done anything for himself in his life, but you, Merlin? I’m disappointed.”

“I’m an artist and therefore do not have to think,” Merlin defends himself. “Also, Arthur packed most of it.”

“Traitor,” Arthur complains, dragging himself upright and flinging the shirt back one more time. “I’ll just order a car, I’m not going to lug this around for an hour with the Friday drinks after work crowd.”

“Quitter,” Merlin says.

“Sensible,” Arthur corrects, staring down at his sleek phone that doesn’t have any dings or scratches at all. The tiny sword sticker Merlin had stuck on the back a month ago is curling up on one edge, glaringly out of place. “Be honest, do you really want to take the tube and then a bus to mine with moving boxes?”

Merlin does not, and he knows when to shut up about it. Even Gwaine mimes zipping his mouth closed.

The sum of all of his earthly belongings seems piddly to see collected in the living room; only a couple of trips will take care of it all. He’s never considered himself particularly materialistic, but the fact that it is so reduced because so much had been taken from him is galling. He’d given Mordred plenty freely, it felt… violating to see all that remained stacked up in a short heap of boxes.

All that is left after his life got picked clean. Twice.

At once he is desperate to leave, the already cramped walls feeling tighter than ever, a band cinching around his lungs, oppressive.

“Let’s go,” he says, and something in his voice must give him away, because Arthur casts a worried glance at him. Leon and Gwaine don’t seem to notice, at least. Small mercies. He shakes his head, mouthing ‘later', and Arthur tilts his chin up. The concern doesn’t leave his face, but he doesn’t push for a change, either.

“The car’s outside, grab a box and go,” Arthur shoos them, swinging the duffle bag over his shoulder and herding them like they won’t manage to find the exit on their own.

The trip is mercifully shorter this way, with the tightness around Merlin’s chest loosening more and more the further behind he leaves the flat. He breathes out, feeling like a bruise, and lets his head rest on the window, watching London speed by in streaks of colour. The radio is on low, muffled and muzzy as he drifts. That, with Leon and Arthur chatting quietly, is nearly enough to send him to sleep.

He comes back to reality only when they stop in front of Arthur’s unfairly gorgeous house. Much coveted wisteria curls over the front door, although it’s too early to be in bloom this time of year. In a couple of months it will look like something out of a painting or a postcard,and he’ll be left to awkwardly hover outside as another tourist takes a photo. It happens a lot.

He can’t even blame them.

At least once a week he has been here, ever since Uther bought the place. A balm for a wound too old to heal over, and he’s still not used to it. This time is different though. How could it not be?

It’s not Tuesday board game night.

It’s ‘Merlin failed at life and is moving in’ night.

The boxes pile to the side in the gleaming entryway, and he loiters until Arthur flicks his ear with a far too knowing look.

“Come on, I’ll get tea going. You want pizza? Isn’t that what people do when their mates help them move?”

“Yes,” Gwaine says firmly, “it absolutely is.”

“I could eat,” Leon chimes in, and that seems to settle it.

Arthur already has the kettle going when Merlin trails into the kitchen in his wake, Gwaine and Leon settling in and putting on a rugby game. They don’t seem to realise how different everything is today, that the world is not the same. How surreal.

“You alright?” Arthur asks, a bare murmur over the quiet rumble of the kettle. It shines a pretty, pristine copper colour, free of fingerprints and water spots.

“Yeah,” Merlin says by rote, even though he’s very much not.

“You’ll tell me later?” Arthur asks, waiting for a nod. Not buying it for a second. “Chamomile? Honey?”

“I’ll get it,” Merlin finds the wherewithal to shake off some of his mood, setting out the mugs and falling into an easy routine. It helps. He hears the tap running.

“Drink this.” Arthur sets a glass of water on the marble counter and crosses his arms. So stern. “You didn’t eat lunch, did you?”

“I was finishing up that rough to send off for approval,” Merlin admits, “but I had a big breakfast.”

“At what? Seven? And it’s past eight now? No wonder you don’t feel well,” Arthur chides him. “You need a minder.”

They both know that’s not why, but it also probably isn’t helping anything to be hungry on top of everything else. Arthur’s not wrong. Some artisan brand of rosemary crackers that Merlin is too poor to recognize come out of the cupboard and into a bowl instead of just out of the packet.

“Fancy,” Merlin says.

“The bag is compostable,” Arthur says condescendingly, and Merlin sticks his tongue out and takes them over to the coffee table, smacking Gwaine’s hand when he tries to swipe one before relenting.

Later, when he’s hydrated and full of tea and snacks, warm and sleepy, he has to admit he feels much better for it. Sometimes Arthur doesn’t have the worst ideas.

“Bye, Em,” Gwaine’s amused tone of voice seems very far away, so Merlin can’t be bothered by it. He raises a hand to halfheartedly wave goodbye. It’s barely past nine but it’s hard to keep his eyes open. Arthur’s couch is so nice.

The pillow cradles his head, and the throw blanket is clearly some sort of magic. It’s probably organically hand-harvested off of those ludicrously soft bunnies while only under the light of a blue moon or something absurd, but can fault neither the methods or their results.

“Bunnies,” he says to Arthur’s shape, as he comes over to loom. He’s backlit with a halo of light, and Merlin stares at the colours of him, enraptured. It feels like a memory, tickling the edges of his mind.

“What?” Arthur’s amused voice curls around the word.

“Oh, hum,” Merlin blinks the sleep sparkles from his eyes. Right. He should probably go home; Arthur is too polite to kick him out, but he’s not actually moved in yet. “Sorry, let me get my shoes.”

“Why?” Arthur flops down on the couch in the opposite corner, sliding his feet under the blanket, deliberately casual.

“So I can get out of your hair?”

“Do you want to go back?” The silence tells its own story, Merlin supposes, but he should. He’s not Arthur’s problem just yet. He must have been quiet for too long, though, because Arthur only huffs at him. “Stay, don’t be stupid. Half your stuff is here already, what does it matter if you stay now or in a few days?”

“Don’t know,” Merlin says, thumbing the soft edge of the blanket, “everything feels… weird.”

“Yeah?” Arthur pokes him with a toe.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s just stuff.” His stuff.

“It’s not just stuff,” Arthur says, poking him again, harder. “Be mad! It was your home, and - ”

“It wasn’t even nice stuff, except for my perfect jumper,” Merlin starts.

“Oh, shit, he stole the vicuña?” Arthur’s eyes go wide.

“Is that what it was? What does that mean?” Merlin reaches for his phone. “How do you spell that? What did you call it?”

“Nothing,” Arthur swears, biting down a laugh and snaking a hand out to steal the phone off of the coffee table before Merlin can, but looking a little guilty for it. “But it’s not petty theft, let’s put it that way. Mordred will be in trooouble,” he sing-songs, delighted.

“If he’s ever caught.” Merlin narrows his eyes, reluctantly amused.

“Anyway,” Arthur continues, “it’s not just stuff. It’s violating - you were supposed to be safe - ”

“Yeah,” Merlin says, feeling validated and more awake to have someone other than himself put it into words, “exactly!” He doesn’t need permission to be mad, but sometimes he needs permission to be mad.

“And after Julius, too - ”

“Yeah,” Merlin says, more loudly. Twice now he’s all but had to start over because of people taking. It’s awful.

“It’s awful, is what it is,” Arthur says decisively, clearly reading his mind. “You don’t deserve that; you were far too good to that freeloader to begin with, and this is what he does?”

“It’s,” Merlin fumbles for words, “it’s not nice,” he arrives at, and then marvels at his own idiocy. It’s a lot worse than not nice, but if he says it out loud he feels like he might scream. He could maybe do with a good scream.

“It is not nice,” Arthur agrees, biting his lip in his struggle not to laugh. “Some people might even call it downright impolite.”

“Unmannerly,” Merlin nods, wiggling a foot forwards until he finds Arthur under the blanket.

“Mean,” Arthur swears, and loops his hand around Merlin’s ankle to give it a squeeze.

It sends him into a fit of teary, snotty titters. It’s a small relief, though, one of many. He’s warm, and it’s quiet here other than the low noise of the telly. No sirens sounding or anyone coming in at three in the morning with their scary knife-wielding girlfriends. It’s safe here, because Arthur’s got his back.

“Let me take care of getting the rest of your stuff, okay?” Arthur lets go of his ankle, and it stings in absence of that warm touch. Arthur waves off his protests before he can really get started. “I know you think you have to do everything yourself, but just let me, alright? Leave your keys on the counter and don’t worry about it for a weekend.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Merlin waffles, torn. It sounds… great, honestly. He’d love to never go back, but it’s his flat. It’s his problem, his responsibility. Fleetingly, Gwaine’s words from earlier come back to him, and the guilt doubles.

“Is your landlord in your phone?” Arthur ignores him, unlocking Merlin’s phone and nosing through it. Hesitating for a moment before swiping something to the side. “This?” He faces the screen out, the name reading ‘Landlord, Idiot’, and Merlin just looks at the ceiling, blowing out a lungful of air.

Impossible to force himself to say no or yes.

“So it is.” Arthur’s phone lights up with the text he’s sent to himself, and Merlin can’t quite bring himself to object, other than a feeble kick, which is soundly ignored.

“It’s fine,” Arthur keeps talking. “I’ll bring my big man lawyer briefcase.” He pauses as Merlin chokes on a laugh, and says, “and I’ll take care of all of it so you don’t have to go back. I mean it.”

“You’re an environmental lawyer.” Merlin bites the inside of his cheek. “A baby environmental lawyer.” At twenty five, Arthur has only had so much time to save the world, but he was poised and ready to do it - or that’s certainly how it seems to Merlin, at least. His fledgling career is already growing by leaps and bounds, and Merlin sends him a soppy smile, completely unable to help himself.

“You think ‘Landlord comma Idiot’ will know that?” Arthur winks.

He’s entirely too pleased with himself, of course. Maybe he deserves it, though.

It’s not until Merlin is tucked snugly in an unfamiliar bed feeling very content with the world that he sees the unread text from Morgana, simply reading: ‘Call me!’

Chapter Text

He sleeps, dreaming of uni. Arthur, and their friends. Like the other day, it feels like a memory he can’t quite reach. He also feels like he could stay under the covers another year and it would never be enough.

Waking up at seven to get ready to go to the shelter feels like pulling himself out of quicksand, so strong is the siren call of the bed. The last time he’d been this groggy he’d had his wisdom teeth out. Maybe Arthur will tease him less this time.

At least it’s not earlier. There are better transport links here, of course. Better everything, it seems.

Still, damn you, memory foam.

The shower is hot. The pressure is akin to standing in a waterfall, or getting lovingly beaten to death by an aggressive Swedish masseuse. Merlin might weep in joy, just a little. His toiletries are all still back at his place - his old place - so instead of regular people shampoo, he now smells like how he feels when he stands in front of a Klimpt. Kind of run through with gold and out of his head.

Or maybe it’s just tea-tree, or sandalwood or something, but the point is that it is wonderful. His skin is luminous. Dewy, like an ad for face wash where the model is already wearing makeup.

Arthur is nearly out the door in his running kit when Merlin finally manages to make it into the kitchen, refilling his water bottle at the tap.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Arthur jibes, as Merlin stumbles face first into a wall, blinking.

“Late start?” Merlin asks, rubbing his eyes. It’s seven thirty, Arthur should be done and back by now, bathing in the blood of his enemies or whatever he does for fun on Saturday mornings, not getting ready to leave.

“Wanted to make sure you remembered the code,” Arthur explains, “and I was afraid you’d just not eat breakfast out of a mistaken sense of ‘whose groceries are whose’, which I know you care deeply about.”

“I do care deeply about that,” Merlin yawns. “Mordred was terrible.”

“Yes, yes,” Arthur says, “I am very familiar. When you faint at the shelter and get dragged for a mile behind a herd of dogs, that will still seem like a noble idea, I’m sure.”

“Pack of dogs, not a herd.” Merlin slides into one of the bar stools and traces a soft blue vein through the marble of the counter, sleepy and cosy. A somewhat orange looking smoothie appears like magic in his eye-line.

“One day only, and then I promise I’ll never do anything nice ever again,” Arthur says, wiggling and pretending to take it back when it’s not accepted with enough promptness. “Unless you don’t want it?”

Merlin curls himself around the smoothie protectively as he takes a sip. It’s his now. It’s good, too; it barely tastes healthy at all. “Mm, mango. I’ll make breakfast tomorrow. Sunday. You still like the coconut bread, don’t you? Cinnamon, yes or no?”

“I love the coconut bread,” Arthur says with only slightly exaggerated gravitas. It’s true, though. The bread is Arthur’s soulmate. “And yes, cinnamon, of course cinnamon. This is strictly a crumble topping household. Learn that fast, or you’re out on the streets.”

“You better run for another hour, then,” Merlin says, sipping delicately as Arthur gasps in mock-fury.

“Oh, one more thing.” Arthur raises his phone. “Smile!” Merlin blinks, and only manages to look confused as what is certain to be an unflattering photo is taken of him. “You look like a startled stoat,” Arthur grins, pleased.

“That - wait? What’s that for?”

“Nothing to worry about; just for Lynette to know your colouring,” he says, as though that isn’t deeply concerning.

“Wait a minute - ”

“I have to go if I’m going to finish my run sometime today,” Arthur barges ahead, as though Merlin hasn’t spoken at all.

Finally, he notices that his keys that he had left are missing, and a new set is sitting where they had been. A simple loop of understated leather about the width of his thumbnail. The key to the back, the fob for the front. Merlin does already know the code for the electronic lock, even if he’s never been brave enough to use it.

Sitting in Arthur’s kitchen, dressed in Arthur’s clothes, smelling of Arthur’s soap, something churns over in his gut. It’s not… unpleasant. It’s actually far from it. The happiest he’s been in ages, which he is not willing to examine too closely, but he hesitates to pick up the keys, feeling as though it’s a turning point somehow. It has been a very nice morning. They’re just keys. They look…heavy, with a long shadow.

“Did you not sleep?” Arthur asks, hovering at the hallway, nearly ready to depart.

“I slept too well,” Merlin snorts. “I can feel the bed in the other room, calling out to me. ‘Merlin,’ it’s whispering, ‘don’t leave me, come back.’. I can hear it, even now. Our love is true.”

“Oh, well, that’s normal,” Arthur chuckles even though it wasn’t funny, and Merlin wonders if this isn’t all just as strange for him. As though the world has slightly tilted on its axis. Not enough to send everything crashing to the ground, just enough that you felt as though you might trip up, up, up at any moment and float away.

He picks up the keys. They’re just keys, he reminds himself, not heavy at all.

“I’m at the shelter ‘til three,” he says, “will I see you later?”

“I’ll be here,” Arthur says from the entryway, and Merlin trails after him, watching his running shoes go on. “See you?” He stretches in place, looking as awkward as Arthur ever does, which is still not very. Another tally goes on the ‘Merlin is making this weird’ chart.

“Yeah,” Merlin manages to say, swallowing down a bit of smoothie that seems to catch in his throat.

After the door is shut, he slaps himself on both cheeks with one ice cold hand.

“Get it together,” he says. The empty room here does not answer any more than his terrible flat had, but it is a lot nicer to look at, and warmer. There might be something to say for keeping things tidy, and having heating - who knew? Arthur, probably, but Merlin can’t tell him that.

The animals will get his head on straight, they always do.

It is very hard to fear the existentialist dread of knowing the self when you are holding a cat.

Even the bus seems nicer, but he thinks that’s just his imagination since, well…everything seems a little nicer today. Good sleep will do that, he supposes. Maybe.

‘Call me!’ Morgana’s text sits unanswered. He will, just… later. She’s a friend, or friendly, at least; but she’s never given him the impression that she likes him all that much. They’d gotten along much better before third year, although if he’d done something to change that, he doesn’t remember. Either way, he doesn’t want to get yelled at on the bus for moving in with her brother to mooch.

It’s all fine, he tells himself. He will make dinner and breakfast. He’ll be the best roommate that has ever lived, quiet as a mouse, and no one will have any reason to complain. He catches a subtle waft of that golden smell clinging to him, and feels guilty anew.

It wars unsuccessfully with his good mood. It was really nice, is the thing, to sleep the whole night through and then see Arthur in the morning, instead of just texting on their commutes to work like usual. Which reminds him.

‘Where are you now?’ Merlin sends to Arthur, watching until the expected reply pops up.

‘Park’, it reads, with an attached photo of the green path, light streaming brightly through the spring leaves and illuminating it like shining stepping stones. It makes him grin, and he takes care to get an extra cute photo of the cafe that does the waffles as the bus passes by.

It’s been twelve hours, and they haven’t fought over towels even once. A solid start that makes him feel like his list of reasons is a million minus one, which in turn makes him feel insane.

It’s possible he’s in trouble.

“Don’t we seem cheerful this morning,” Freya greets him as she lets him in. There is already a short line forming up, always busy on a Saturday. Families with children and couples, all looking to adopt a new family member, and Merlin beams at her.

“It’s a nice day, so what?” he says, dropping his bag under the counter and throwing the volunteer lanyard over his head. Freya is giving him an incredulous stare. “What?”

“Nothing! I’m glad you’re happy,” she says diplomatically. Her hand is on the door, but she taps her fingers for a beat, watching him before she shakes out her dark hair. “Alright! Get ready.”

“I was born ready,” he boasts, which only makes her eyebrows twitch.

Merlin was not born ready, for anything probably, but he always tries his best. It’s a crush every Saturday, too, so it’s nothing new. And the work is good; a clean, rewarding feeling every time someone makes a happy match.

A lurcher goes home with a young couple, bounding around their feet in unadulterated joy. The new kittens are already all called for; kittens always are, but Basil, their fat, sleepy man, goes home with an older lady as a lap warmer. It’s the perfect life for him.

“Basil,” Merlin says to Freya, a hand over his heart, filled with emotion.

“You should go take your lunch,” Freya tells him, as though he’s lost his mind.

“It hasn’t even been an hour,” Merlin protests, taking out his battered phone to look, and oh -

“It’s almost two, come on,” Freya nudges him towards the back. “You should go see Aithusa, she’d love the company.”

“Are you still thinking of training her?”

“I am!” Freya looks to the door, a shy smile curling around the corner of her mouth. “She’s got the temperament for therapy, I think. Enough to give it a try. If it turns out she doesn't, the extra training will still only help her find a home, too.”

“You don’t have to justify it to me,” Merlin holds up his hands, “I think it’s a brilliant idea! You do good work.”

“Oh, get out of here,” Freya swings her clipboard at him, shooing him away and into the back before he can notice her blush. Too late; he knows she’s pleased.

It is good work, though, and she should never doubt it.

Truth be told he’s a little envious of her passion. Art as a career isn’t exactly what he thought it would be. It’s not that he doesn’t like it, it’s just… not what he thought.

Also he doesn’t like it.

That’s all there is to it. Nothing kills the love of beauty so quickly as being paid to work on something you’d rather set on fire. It’s a far cry from what he thought it would be when he was twelve and he and Will planned out their big superhero smash hit comic.

Oh, it had been terrible. He still has the sketches of the wizard.

What had they been thinking?

Freya though, she helps people.

“Aithusa!” he cries out, as she wiggles in excitement, plastering herself as close as she can without touching. “Good girl,” he praises when she doesn’t jump, “such a good girl! Yes, yes, so good!” When he finally kneels and taps his lap in invitation he gets a chin full of very enthusiastic kisses as she climbs all over him.

Ah, heaven.

There are few places he would rather be. The afternoon is a glorious one, and even the prospect of draining his bank account further with a grocery shop can’t bring him down.

The shredded coconut goes in the basket, and he keeps walking. At least he can afford some things other than more oats, now that he’s not paying overpriced rent. It seems the very least he can do.

He throws in some strawberries, because Arthur likes them, puts them back, and puts them back in. Insane.

The short walk back to Arthur’s house - where he will stay, which still blows his mind - clears his head a little. It’s a brisk, chilly day, but the sun is warm on his skin when it finds him.

Before he knows it, he’s in front of Arthur’s door, the navy blue dark against the pale stonework. He raises his hand to knock, and lowers it before he does, staring at the smooth grains of wood under the paint. He really does need to get a grip. It’s just a door, just keys.

Well, a fancy fob for the fancy lock, but emotional keys. Locks. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, he thinks, but he doesn’t know what it is.

He lets himself in.

“I’m back,” Merlin calls down the hallway and toeing off his shoes, not sure what he’s expecting. For Arthur to come bounding out like Aithusa would?

“Hey,” Arthur shouts back from the living room, “how was the shelter?”

“Amazing, I got to play with Aithusa, and Basil found a person.”

“Oh, fat cat,” Arthur says, looking up from his laptop and beaming so wide his funny sharp canines show.

“Such a lazy little man,” Merlin sighs, ignoring Arthur’s muttered ‘not that little.’. “I’ll really miss him. Freya is going to try and train Aithusa for her therapy visits, see if she’s suitable. She’s just a puppy really, but she’s very sweet already.” Merlin sighs again, but louder. “It’s so good, what Freya does.”

“It is,” Arthur agrees, his smile going a little softer. “Go on, though, ask me what I did now - me, me, me,” he urges.

“No, I don’t think so.” Merlin pretends to inspect his purchases, the stitching of the reusable bag, his nails, the boring hotel-art paintings on the walls. Anything other than asking.

“Come on,” Arthur scoffs, shutting his laptop and crossing his arms, biceps pulling at the sleeves of his shirt in a very artistically compelling way. “I also had a productive day.”

“Fine, I guess I have some time, if you must.”

“You’re hilarious.” Arthur rolls his eyes. “I guess you don’t want to hear about how it went at your old place then?”

Merlin would be more worried about it if Arthur wasn’t currently smiling like the grinch. “Why, what happened?”

“I mean, unfortunately nothing that dramatic, but I wore a suit,” Arthur waves at his torso, which is indeed in one of his lux looking button downs and a vest, “and I brought my fancy lawyer bag and looked very serious. We had a loud chat in the spectacularly thin-walled hall about some persisting quality of life issues and what you did or did not owe him and what he did or did not owe you. And what his current occupants might want to know about their rights. Love Island Neighbor just came out and watched like it was a football match, so that was fun.”

“I don’t think he watches much football,” Merlin bites his lip, reluctantly amused. He’d feel bad about it if only Landlord, Idiot didn’t have it coming. “Or anything else, really. One track mind, that fellow.”

“Fine then, like it was Love Island, and I was the - I don’t actually know what that show is about.” Arthur says, distracted.

“Oh, I’ve never seen it either, I just guess from what I half-overhear,” Merlin admits.

“What’s your guess, then?” Arthur asks.

“First of all, it is clearly a dating show, yet also maybe not,” Merlin says, which clarifies nothing, but he really doesn’t know, “and a lot of yelling? Interspersed with whispering, which is almost worse, because you only sort of hear it if it’s through a wall. I think voting. Teams? Survival?”

“Fascinating,” Arthur says, dry as a desert. “Or wait, when you say survival do you mean they get hunted for sport? Because that actually would be fascinating. I would absolutely watch that show.”

“I wish it were that exciting too, I’m the one who had to hear it all the time.” Merlin settles the bag onto the counter and starts setting up to bake, Arthur trailing after him. He’ll be disappointed when it takes hours to cool before he can have any. “So, then what happened?”

“I don’t think Landlord comma Idiot really knew what to do with me,” Arthur admits, “so it’s not that thrilling of a story, but we can pretend punches were thrown if it helps?”

“Maybe,” Merlin considers. “Did you still win? Was blood drawn?”

“Only Landlord blood; I definitely won. Anyway, it’s all settled now, which is the important takeaway here. No early breaking lease penalties or whatever, and you don’t owe anything.”

“That seems…impossible, actually. I’m not sure that’s how any of that works.” Merlin narrows his eyes at Arthur, who is too professional to give anything away.

“Well you don’t owe anything, that’s true! And there was no breaking the lease penalty, I got him to drop that. That’s winning,” Arthur says. “The furniture was cheap, but - ”

“You paid it?” Merlin isn’t whining, he swears. It might sound that way, but he’s not.

“It was nothing.” Arthur gears up for a fight, and Merlin doesn’t want to. He really, really doesn’t want to fight. He's wrung out like he's been running a marathon, fighting for every inch and meagre step forward; just never with Arthur, and he doesn’t want to start now.

He breathes in deeply through his nose. Maybe it will work this time.

“I really did get him to drop most of it, there was only some that was truly, genuinely valid,” Arthur promises, sensing a weakness. Blood in the water. “It was a win.”

“You do love winning,” Merlin agrees, trying to let it go and just savour knowing that someone cared enough about him to go so far instead of having a crisis about the money. Framed like that, it wasn’t as awful. Fierce, forever generous Arthur, always on Merlin’s side. “He just wanted you to go away, didn’t he?” His reluctant smile is so big it hurts his cheeks.

With the freelance project he’s working on and no rent hanging over his head, things don’t seem so imminently dire. Even when Gaius finally closes up shop it’s no longer the end of the world.

If his hands are shaking they’ll stop when they have something to do.

They always have.

“Maybe,” Arthur nods, settling in at one of the bar stools, elbows on the counter. His hair is a little slicked back and styled, like when he really puts in the effort, and Merlin is charmed all over again. He wants to reach out and fluff it until it gets messy.

“Where’s your loaf pan?” he asks, poking through the cupboards so he doesn’t have to look at Arthur’s smug, radiant face any longer.

“I don’t know,” Arthur says, completely without shame.

“You do have one, don’t you?”

“I don’t know that either,” Arthur admits, blinking innocently at Merlin, still absolutely thrilled with himself, lopsided smirk and all.

“Thanks,” Merlin says, realising he hadn’t said it. Grateful and overwhelmed. “Thank you. For going, and doing all that for me. You’re… really incredible.” He grins, unable to help it, and Arthur just turns a little pink. The light coming through the shell of his ear is a burnt ochre, it’s so dark. “Is there really something so wrong with it there, though?”

“I mean, I left a card from someone I know who actually handles stuff like tenants rights, I don’t really know. Maybe something will come of it or maybe not, but as soon as the card came out, it was very smooth sailing.”

“You blustered your way through it?” Merlin laughs. No wonder Arthur is so pleased. “With a business card? Hey, unrelated question; have you seen American Psycho? No reason, or anything, I’m just asking.”

“If I were going to murder you, it would have been years ago,” Arthur shoots back, not even pretending to be reassuring. “I will change though, since I promised.”

“What?” Merlin blinks, looking up from his search. A cake pan might have to do. It’s basically cake anyhow, it’s probably fine. You can’t really toast cake though. Or can you? And Arthur adamantly prefers it toasted, Merlin knows, because he has been lectured about it approximately eight hundred times.

“To relax. I am going to, you know. It’s on the official schedule. Print outs and everything. Colour coded and notarized,” Arthur reminds him.

“You don’t have to.” Merlin drops the cake tin. It clangs as it rolls, and he fumbles to catch it before it can escape entirely.

“I don’t actually sit around in my house like this waiting for Monday morning to come. I’m only teasing you,” Arthur huffs, gesturing at his vest, but he’s fond. Merlin thinks. “Board games? Film? Can queue up American Psycho, maybe get some ideas for later? Think about it,” he calls over his shoulder as he leaves.

Now it’s just Merlin and the world’s fanciest kitchen. The oven preheating, the marble countertops gleaming.

“Right,” he says, to himself. This has to be the best coconut bread anyone has ever made, he thinks, swallowing around the sting in his throat. What had he ever done to deserve Arthur?

Delight and guilt do a tango through his rib cage.

Coconut bread, he reminds himself.

He hasn’t managed to get up off of the floor when Arthur comes back, though, his hands still shaking in his lap. Arthur is in a fluffy camel coloured cardigan Merlin has never seen, and a t-shirt with a neck deep enough that he can spy sparse, golden chest hairs peeking out. His hair is still styled, but softer, somehow.

Not quite a sleepy greyhound in a silly sweater, but also something other than a wolf.

“Floor, huh?” Arthur comes over to sit with him, not close enough to touch, but Merlin imagines he can feel the heat of him anyway. He leans into Arthur’s side, just to check. He’s warm. The highs have been really high today. He’s happy, and he won’t be forced back to Ealdor or homeless, which has only started to hit him like a brick to the face. In slow motion.

A delightful slow motion brick, but still.

“Did I overstep?” Arthur asks, carefully neutral.

“No,” Merlin says, alarmed. The last thing he wants is Arthur feeling like he’s done something wrong. “It’s just a lot…a lot. A roller coaster of, god, what? Two days? Three days? Nothing feels real.”

“Okay,” Arthur says, patient at Merlin’s side. “You can take your time, it’ll all still be real tomorrow.”

“And the day after?” Merlin tips his head onto Arthur’s shoulder, feeling it move as he exhales.

“And the day after that,” he says, his hand finding Merlin’s wrist and giving it a reassuring squeeze. He holds on for precisely an appropriate supportive-best-mate length of time before starting to draw away, but Merlin grabs his hand and clutches on tighter.

“Thanks,” Merlin says again, eyes stinging, so he closes them. Firmly enough that he sees stars, bursts of bright red behind his eyelids. He’s probably hurting Arthur’s hand. “For everything.”

“You don’t have to thank me for anything,” Arthur protests. “After all this time? I’m the one who should be thanking you.”

“No,” Merlin says. For what?

“Or,” Arthur interrupts, leaning in and whispering like he’s sharing a secret. He’s joking, but Merlin feels the tension in him, under the shield of humour. “Hear me out. We could just…stop counting? You don’t owe me for anything, and I don’t owe you for anything.”

“Fresh slate?” Merlin asks, daring to look over, a flicker of something stirring in his chest at the sight of Arthur looking back. All the times Merlin has thought him inflexible now seem like foolish, short-sighted judgmental nonsense. Arthur is steady. Maybe they have grown up. This close, Merlin can see all the different flecks and streaks of blue that make up his eyes. A million minus two. More.

“That implies keeping count after starting over.” Arthur quirks his mouth to the side. “When that’s not really what I mean. What I mean is that when we go out next time, just let me treat and stop adding it all up to some invisible tally in your head. I’m not keeping score,” he says, simple as anything.

“I - ” Merlin swallows. Fights down the instinctive protest. “I was going to make the coconut bread,” he says.

“I can eat that and also other things,” Arthur dares a smile, always happy to win. “Some of us eat every day, three times, even.”

“That explains it,” Merlin pinches his side, even though there’s nothing to pinch.

Arthur reels him in with their joined hands, scrubbing his other through Merlin’s hair in a rough tussle.

“It’s actually very self serving, you see,” Arthur explains, releasing Merlin only after he has suffered enough and all his hair stands on end. “There’s a new brunch place I want to try, and I don’t want to show up like some Billy no-mates, so you’ll have to do. And also I guess now we need to buy a loaf tin or whatever, because I can’t - ”

A gust of a laugh escapes Merlin, vindicated. “I thought so,” he interrupts, a little breathless, “if it’s not toasted why even bother?”

“I’m glad we understand each other,” Arthur says, heaving himself up off of the kitchen floor.

“Is this heated?” Merlin notices, patting the tiles.

“It is,” Arthur nods, his socked toes wiggling. He reaches a hand down to help Merlin up. “Nice, right?”

Merlin feels the gentle warmth of it rising up from the soles of his feet and up, realising it’s one of the few times this winter he hasn’t felt the chill in every last one of his bony toes.

“Yeah,” he says, “it really is.” They stand there like ninnies, smiling mindlessly at one another. “It’s killing you that all the pans are on the floor, isn’t it?” he asks.

“God, yes,” Arthur hisses, and they put them away.

Chapter Text

Vivian never comes around; it’s like Arthur’s barely got a girlfriend at all.

It does make Merlin feel guilty, as though despite his promise Arthur is treating his own home as a place he cannot be himself, or have guests over. He also puts his feet up on the coffee table, though, and does his old man crosswords while Merlin backseat tries to beat him to the answers. Small, domestic things that Merlin is only just learning about Arthur. Yet he fears that he has given the impression he doesn’t like her, and now they are being kept separate, in little distant pens, like they do at the shelter with the unsociable animals.

He doesn’t like her, of course, but he’s never meant to give that impression.

Maybe Arthur doesn’t like her.

Things continue to go well, otherwise, which keeps surprising him. He then thinks that is a very unflattering thing to think, and resolves to stop being so surprised. He’s sure one day it will work.

Thankfully, the only real fight so far had been when Merlin accidentally put a box of muesli that had maybe a few flakes and a dried cherry at the bottom back into the cupboard. Which, honestly? Fair.

He had been very sleepy, though. That’s his excuse, and he maintains it.

And that time he almost fell asleep in the bath - but he had been very sleepy! It seems to him that now that he is somewhere where he can actually catch up on sleep, he is catching up on years at once. Like a bear, hibernating. The constant dark circles under his eyes are almost entirely gone.

He hadn’t known his face could look like this.

From the outside looking back, he can now acknowledge that possibly, maybe, there is a chance that his previous living situation was not very healthy or sustainable. Sleeping each night all the way through has melted and reshaped him into a different man entirely, enlightened.

Or at least not so tired that he ever puts his shoes on the wrong way. Which had only happened once.

He blames his newfound good humour for why he is enduring this mockery.

“I don’t think so,” Arthur says, sorting through the absurd amount of clothing, creating indistinguishable piles as he goes. Merlin has no idea what metric he is using, or what pile is ‘good’, or ‘bad’.

He is merely a helpless bystander.

“What do you think of this?” Arthur asks, holding an admittedly beautiful shirt up to him, the colour of a dark sea with an interesting cut to it. He would draw this, if he saw it on the street - which is his only metric. Merlin touches it, squishing the fabric, and it’s so soft. He can’t accept it, of course, he’ll just have to tell Arthur he doesn’t like it.

“So, that one is a keep,” Arthur says firmly, setting it to the side.

“Hang on,” Merlin protests, “I didn’t say that.”

“Your face said it,” is the clever rebuttal. “Try on the shoes,” he demands. Merlin will not be trying on these shoes, or any shoes. Lynette can go to hell, he decides. “If you don’t try them on I’ll just buy all of them and hope for the best,” Arthur says.

“Oh, so you want to fight?” Merlin blinks. “I thought we’d been doing pretty well so far, but if you want - ”

“You can’t have one pair of shoes. They aren’t even waterproof. You walk. You wear them to the shelter - ”

“You bought me those shoes for my birthday, they are fantastic!”

“I know they are,” Arthur says, “but you still need more than one pair. I literally know that a dog has peed on you before, you are the one who told me. Or what if you want to go for a run?”

“I’m neither you nor insane, so that won’t be an issue,” Merlin waves this away. The other thing is, unfortunately, sometimes a part of volunteering with animals.

“Or it’s raining, which as you might remember, does happen some of the time in London in the spring. Just wear wet shoes all day while you walk dogs? Or sit in Gaius’s poorly heated shop? Look - ” Arthur shushes him as he tries to interrupt, “these ones have footbeds that use foam from algal blooms.”

This silences him immediately, as Arthur knew it would.

“Fine,” Merlin says, reluctant about how un-reluctant he feels. That is so interesting though! And nice! They fit, of course, because of course they do. While he is admiring the shoes, another flurry of items fall into the ‘keep’ pile. “I don’t need that,” Merlin says, as Arthur hefts a bag.

“I have a bag,” he defends himself as he is pinned in place with a glower.

“You have had the same bag since uni, and it was old then. It has an actual hole in it, and a sharpie drawing of Gwaine, drunk.”

“Yes, it’s amazing, what’s your point?”

Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m not saying get rid of it, but there might be a time where you want to have a - ”

“Big man lawyer briefcase?” Merlin offers.

“Listen, it’s awkward to bring up, but Gaius’s shop is closing, right? If you want to focus more on freelance, now is a good time,” Arthur says, very thoughtfully and helpfully, and Merlin feels his stomach drop like an elevator wire that has been cut. “That might, on occasion, mean going places.”

“I don’t think it does,” Merlin says, pretending to be very occupied looking at a sweater. It’s kind of a rich plum colour with an interesting looking neckline. Neat.

“Well,” Arthur hesitates, watching him, “you’d know your industry better than I would.” But he puts the bag in ‘keep’, anyway, so Merlin doesn’t think he believes it.

“No,” Merlin says firmly, as Arthur reaches for what looks like actual jewellery boxes. Cufflinks? Watch? Either way, the answer is the same. He should have said no an hour ago, but he let himself get tricked.

‘Come see,’ Arthur had said.

Alright, so it didn’t exactly take much to trick him. At least Arthur can tell Merlin is serious now, because his hand keeps moving like he wasn’t ever going to pick them up to begin with. Such a thing had never occurred to him. What jewellery box?

“I think that’s enough, don’t you?” Merlin begs. “You know you really don’t have to - ”

“I want to,” Arthur insists, again.

“Is this fun for you?” Merlin asks, baffled. Arthur just looks away, ears red and not answering. He is so rarely embarrassed, it’s a little charming. “Oh, is it like a barbie dress up thing? Is this how rich people have fun?”

Arthur reaches once more for whatever is in the jewellery box, a dark look on his face.

“I’ll stop!” Merlin throws the plum sweater at him, and he catches it, only to drop it forcefully into the keep pile. “I said I’d stop!” It’s still not a whine, even if it sounds very much like one.

“Do you really hate it?” Arthur asks, making a scrunched up face. “I can never tell. Or do you just hate that you don’t hate it? It’s all sustainable, I can’t abolish capitalism but I do try and buy as ethically - ”

“I’m not trying to be an ass,” Merlin says. “I just - I don’t know?”

“You just don’t know how to cope with not being the one taking care of people,” Arthur claims, looking down his stupid, beautiful, roman nose.

“That’s not true,” Merlin rolls his eyes. “I do not! I can barely take care of myself.” Now that is true.

“Oh?” Arthur challenges him. “You volunteer, rain or shine - ”

“Lots of people volunteer,” Merlin cuts him off, and swears he can hear teeth grinding from across the room.

“You have, diligently, for many causes, for years. Through school, while working. You helped Lancelot get his visa, you helped Gwen so much after her father died and Elyan was out of the country. The mural you did in their spare room? It’s beautiful and it will make their inevitable twelve adopted children very happy.”

Merlin closes his eyes, embarrassed. That had been nothing; basically the only thing he could do. And the midnight mural parties had been fun.

“Gwaine, when he was homeless, and Elena, when she was ill. Percy went back to study sports medicine because you convinced him he could and helped him study. For months. Literally months, when you basically work three jobs.

You take care of everyone you meet, you absolute donkey,” Arthur says, but in a fond way. Merlin thinks. “I don’t know that you’ve met a person you don’t want to help. Even when they walk all over you, like fucking Mordred.” He fairly spits the name, and Merlin wonders if that’s the nickname that will stick.

Fucking Mordred.

“So forgive me," Arthur rants, "if I want to make sure you have somewhere safe to go, and decent clothes and - ”

“Arthur,” Merlin squirms, torn clean between feeling utterly cherished and utterly mortified.

“And me, too. When my father was so furious about my changing to environmental law, you were the one who held my hand through it, you know. And with Morgana - the only reason any of us have a relationship to salvage at all is thanks to you. So.”

“You would have been alright,” Merlin says, quietly. Arthur is undefeatable. Nothing could ever keep him down and out.

“I would have been drunk with the corporate lads Friday clear to Monday, married to Sophia and hating myself every day. I don’t know if that qualifies as alright. Merlin,” Arthur swallows, eyes intent and shining. “Just…let me take care of you.”

There is nothing he can think of to say; a warm, wriggling mess of embarrassed, glorious feelings are welling up in his chest. Sparking like a fire. He hadn’t thought much of that mattered, in the grand scheme of things. That it was…not forgotten, precisely. His friends were all wonderful people, and he never felt unappreciated, not in the least.

Any of them would do the same for him. So, not forgotten, no.

But he hadn’t thought Arthur remembered it all, and with such a lens of kindness. The Merlin he is speaking of seems like a stranger to him.

“Don’t lie,” Merlin sniffs, trying to make a joke out of it. “I know that’s not really why - you can’t fool me any longer.”

Arthur sits up straight, blue eyes going wide. His ears betray him like always, going a rich, angry red.

“Merlin,” he says, swallowing, “I’d never - ”

“It’s the barbie dress up thing you like, you don’t have to hide it from me.” Merlin bites down on a very undignified giggle. “I won’t tell.”

Arthur lets out a shaky sounding laugh, running a hand through his hair and exhaling a gust of air.

“You caught me,” he says, breathless. “That’s it. My secret is out.”

“I knew it,” Merlin says, closing his eyes and tipping his head back, completely overwrought. Maybe Arthur has a point - he’s not sure what to do with such open care and sweetness directed towards him. How can anyone handle it?

It’s too much.

“Want to watch a movie?” he asks. This can’t be thought about any longer, or he’ll lose his mind.

“Movie, yes, movie sounds good,” Arthur agrees instantly, standing and speed-walking out of the room like fire licked at his heels.

Merlin is not the only one who has had their fill of emotions, it seems. Troubling things, feelings. Arthur is even more wonderful than Merlin knew, and his heart beats in a quick double time.

He curls the amazing throw around himself again after he drops onto the couch, kicking until he manages to force his feet under Arthur’s thigh. Settling in while he flicks through menus, looking for something to put on - a process that will take longer than the movie, so Merlin shuts his eyes, trying to settle.

Emotions really are exhausting. The last dregs of stress melt away. He’ll find it all between the couch cushions later, maybe, and think ‘oh, that’s where that went.’; but for now he is free. Light as air.

“What about this one? It’s supposed to be good,” he hears.

“Sure,” Merlin agrees without looking; he’s certain it’s fine. It’s hard to care much, entirely too cosy to be bothered by earthly concerns. Happy memories of uni and the times afterward crowd in his head, fresh from their conversation. They’d all been so young, and so much was changing. It was hard to imagine Gwaine and Elena would be married so soon, that Lance and Gwen would foster. A whole person.

He skims between awake and asleep.

One blink and then another; the next he is somewhere else entirely, hazy memories mixing up with his dreams. Gwaine laughing, the party spilling out into the hallway. Gwen has her arm linked through his as they chat, he catches Arthur’s eye from across the room. Leon pushes him forwards, and his drink sloshes onto Merlin’s shoes. The student halls, the portion of him that is awake recalls.

He remembers this night. He dreams about it frequently.

Will.

Something rouses him from his doze, or maybe just Arthur’s weight leaving his feet, which are tingling and fuzzy like static. Whatever movie that was chosen plays on, clearly not in the first act any longer, a dramatic fight scene with music to match pulling on the edges of his thoughts until he’s more awake.

“Oh,” he says, sleep-rough, “there’s a dog - ”

“I already checked the website, the dog lives,” Arthur shouts from the hall.

“Thank you!” Merlin shouts back, and puts his head down on the pillow to watch, heavy-eyed. Arthur comes back bearing glasses of water for both of them, feet going onto the coffee table, and it’s both the most ordinary and surreal sort of feeling, like all of the world is still dreaming along with him.

“Go back to sleep if you want,” Arthur says, and that seems like a wonderful idea, so Merlin does.

Next time he wakes he has not dreamed at all. The room is dark, a purplish hue cast over everything from the splash page on the telly, the movie long since ended, credits and all.

Arthur’s head is tilted back, mouth open as he sleeps, tiny little not-quite snoring noises escaping him. The shadow line of his neck is a cornflower blue in the light, and Merlin has an urge to go fetch his watercolours to try and seek the exact shade; but if he moves the fragile, spider-silk moment will evaporate like it never was. He stares until his eyes are dry, taking in an ephemeral painting that will never hang in any museum.

Arthur’s work laptop lays open on the coffee table next to the two empty glasses, screen dark and asleep along with his phone. It’s only just turned half seven. Still so early.

On the table, the phone lights up and vibrates, Vivian’s pretty face on the screen, dragging reality back with a harsh landing.

“What time is it?” Arthur rolls the cricks out of his neck as he blinks awake.

“Half seven,” Merlin says, coming back to himself with a sharp shock. “Your phone,” he says.

“Ugh,” Arthur says, rubbing a hand over his eyes, which is a mark in the ‘Arthur doesn’t actually like Vivian’ box. “I’ll text her back,” he defends himself, even though Merlin isn’t judging him. He still hasn’t got in touch with Morgana, after all.

She is probably at this very moment detained in an airport for trying to fly back to London with a bag full of murder supplies, each one with his name etched in them.

His stomach growls, and then Arthur is judging him.

“Have you not eaten since breakfast again?” He frowns as he waves his hand. “Do we need a system? A little bell that goes off?”

“Shush,” Merlin says, smiling as Arthur’s phone goes dark. “I had a granola bar thing, I just spent most of lunch trying to work.”

“That so?” Arthur hedges, clearly itching to know yet unwilling to ask. Merlin is not really sure what to say about it all, even if he did. Ugh. Art. Work.

Merlin would give anything to have the sleepy contentment come back, instead of these strange nerves, so he panics and does the first thing he can think of - something he never, ever does.

He invites himself out, with both of them in the full knowledge that Arthur will insist on paying, and that Merlin can’t say shit about it anymore.

“I’m too tired to want to cook now. How about we go out and eat instead? We can go to the little plates place by the park and people watch.”

A glittering lure.

“Oh?” Arthur raises an eyebrow. Well, no one ever accused Merlin of being a particularly subtle person, or a mastermind of manipulation. “Is that what you want to do?”

“I’ll order a fancy overpriced mocktail and I won’t even complain about it,” Merlin agrees, a solemn oath.

“Two,” is demanded in return. As Merlin purses his lips, fuming, Arthur silently holds up two fingers like bunny ears. Two, he mouths, eyes bright and mischievous.

“I’m not ordering two, that’s insane,” Merlin complains immediately, as Arthur’s face splits into a grin that crinkles his eyes, delighted.

“I was going to tip double if you order two,” Arthur laughs, “but if you want some poor, beleaguered server to go home hungry - ”

“Oh come on,” Merlin covers his face with one of the pillows. It’s not like servers in London aren’t paid, they probably make much better money than Merlin. “I’ll order two if you actually leave the house without getting changed back into Fancy Arthur.”

A challenge. A compromise, which Arthur will hate.

Another new, soft cardigan has made an appearance today, this one a lush burgundy. If Merlin had never seen the cardigan before moving in, then that means it is strictly House Clothing. More than that, it means it is House Clothing for when there are absolutely no guests at all, not even him. It’s basically like asking Arthur to go out nude.

He watches as Arthur’s jaw clenches, considering. “Two mocktails, and you have to call them by their full names, no matter how idiotic. And three tapas, minimum - no! Four. And dessert.”

“You’ll have to carry me home in a food coma if I do that,” Merlin protests. “Three!”

“Four, share dessert, final offer,” Arthur says.

“Is this how you debate in a courtroom? Is this what it’s like? It’s not working,” Merlin bluffs.

“You want a watch? Because this is how you get a watch.” Arthur stares him down, all at once a different person. Someone with sharp blue eyes and a set, square jaw. Serious again, just in a cardigan.

Against his will, Merlin almost says he does want a watch, even though he doesn’t; his phone might be half broken, but it still has a clock. Heartbeat jack-rabbiting, pinned in place. Maybe this is what he’s like in court? Does Arthur actually go to court, or is that just what Merlin has picked up from telly?

“I’ll get my coat,” Merlin says, voice high and nervous.

“That’s what I thought.”

At least he is gracious in victory. Merlin will take what he can get, at this point.

“Not that coat,” Arthur says. “The new one.” Alright, not that gracious. “If you want to sit outdoors and people watch, wear the new one. Your old one is so worn out it’s see through.”

“They have heat lamps,” Merlin says, even as he lets Arthur bully him into the new coat. It is splendid, of course.

Arthur flings a scarf at his head, which is just his way of caring, so on it goes. Laces done up, coats on, they leave - for some reason it shocks him it’s night time. When he had fallen asleep it was bright.

“I honestly can’t remember the last time I took a nap,” he thinks aloud, cold enough that his breath fogs. “It doesn’t feel like it should be dark yet.”

“Strangely, though, the sun does not move according to your sleep schedule. For which we should all be grateful.” Arthur leads them towards the park, the path well lit and crowded.

It is the same day still, he remembers, feeling incredibly slow. So much has happened inside his head that it seems longer. Time, all stretched out and cloying like sticky molasses.

They do have to wait for a table, but only shortly; and it’s not a chore to be idle, not tonight. It’s cold, true, but it’s beautiful, and he’s bundled up so well he barely feels it. Fairy lights are strung up, softly illuminating the street. It’s maybe a little cheesy, but Merlin doesn’t care, he likes them as much now as when he was a child.

They get led to a table, outdoors and under a heater; perfect for people watching. Thankfully Arthur doesn’t get too smug about it.

“Remember that illustration thing I’ve been doing? The portrait?” Merlin starts, as Arthur pulls both of their chairs out, because he was raised by a Victorian governess. “So, it’s for a big family reunion thing, like, people from all over who can’t always get together in one place, so they want an illustration done. Commemorate it, and include people who can’t make it. Cute, right?”

“Very cute,” Arthur agrees, biting his lip in anticipation. He knows Merlin’s freelance stories are almost never cute.

Merlin waits until they are left with the menus before continuing. “So, the person commissioning it asked me what would happen if her great-grandpa died before it was finished and they had the reunion.”

Arthur lets out a wheezy laugh, ducking his head down.

“Wait, as in, if he dies he doesn’t get to be in it any more?”

“Yeah! He’s one hundred and three, she’s saying ‘it could be any day now,’ and I’m trying to be respectful, but what do you say? Oh, if grandpa kicks the bucket before the reunion I’ll erase him? Just stick a potted plant in that empty spot instead, no one will mind. Are you looking for a discount? What do you want from me?”

“My grandpa died, I’d like ten percent off?” Arthur says with a serious expression. “Like in a John Lewis, buying a kettle.” He can’t keep his composure, grinning. “Or do you remember the couple that wanted a portrait from you but wouldn’t send you photos or social media? Because you might steal their identities?”

“Oh, I forgot about that!” Merlin admits, wincing, “Since it never went anywhere. For obvious reasons. Or that person who tried to pay me with a bird when I said I loved animals.”

“Wasn’t it one of those parrots that lives for ages, too?”

“It was,” Merlin muses, thinking about what his life would be like if he had a parrot. A lot more annoying, probably. “Would you have still let me come live with you if I had a parrot?”

“Absolutely not,” Arthur says firmly, face set and stoic as he flips through the menu. “Never in a million years. Now. Let’s see what the most embarrassing mocktail is. Cuddles on the beach - ”

“Instead of sex on the beach, I get it,” Merlin makes a face.

“Fresh as a daisy lavender lemonade!”

“Yes, thank you,” Merlin kicks him under the table, but gently; he wants to be able to come back here.

“Grow a pear - okay, that’s a little funny,” Arthur admits, hooking his ankle around Merlin’s and holding it snugly in place.

In return, he hides his face behind his menu, and pretends they don’t know each other, but he doesn’t pretend very hard.

Chapter Text

The day Gauis finally closes shop, weeks later, Merlin still doesn’t have another job lined up.

This is not the problem, however.

The problem is that he hadn’t looked very hard. After Arthur had suggested - in that way that was not really a suggestion - that it might be a good time to focus on building his freelance up, and Merlin had hidden a wince and gamely agreed. Unwilling to admit how much of a failure it felt that he doesn’t really like it all that much; and what a complaint to have, as well.

‘It’s not that fun’ is hardly a life-ruining amount of unhappiness, and he feels petty, and small for thinking it.

Alright, it’s not only that it’s ‘not that fun’, it’s also not rewarding. Mentally, emotionally, creatively. Any of it. He doesn’t want to sound like the overwrought artist, but it’s not fulfilling. In his soul.

And now a week into his full time ‘freelance career’, he is alone in Arthur’s massive, empty house, while Arthur is off saving the world at work and doing actual, real good, and he is staring at a blank page of paper and futilely praying that inspiration comes from somewhere.

That he can sell.

Maybe he can take more hours at the shelter.

His phone rings, and he lunges for it in grateful hope that possibly there is anything else that he needs to do. Maybe it’s a scam caller he can talk to for an hour and waste some of their time. Maybe it’s Morgana calling to yell at him. He doesn’t even look; he really doesn’t care.

“Hello,” he says, breathless.

“Merlin?” Gwen’s sweet voice comes through.

“Gwen!” He should have known - Gwen is the only friend he has who still calls people out of the blue. No one has ever been able to properly explain why, but it’s very hard to say no to Gwen when she insists she just likes to hear your voice. “How are you at…three? Ish. On a Thursday? What’s up?”

He’d just seen her for Tuesday night board games, and all had been well.

“Is this for a Catan rematch? Because it won’t do you any good.”

Her laugh is like music, “No! Although I’ll have you next time, just wait. I was just nearby, and I’m off from the hospital for the afternoon and I thought if you weren’t too busy we could go for a walk and get a coffee!”

Merlin fist pumps alone by himself in an empty room.

“Gwen, angel, I would love to go for a walk,” he says.

“I won’t be distracting you? I don’t want to interrupt the creative process or anything - ”

“I am already putting on my shoes,” he lies. His algal bloom shoes are in the front hall, which takes approximately an hour to get to since the house is so ludicrously sized; but Gwen doesn’t have to know that.

“Good, because I’m outside,” she says, and Merlin steps double time, thunking down the stairs with reckless abandon.

When the door is flung open Gwen is indeed there, with two coffees, phone wedged between her shoulder and one dimpled cheek.

“Hi!” she cheers.

“Hi!” he cheers back - oh, how he loves Gwen. “What about ‘not interrupting the creative process?” he asks, ending their call and accepting the coffee she thrusts at him with thanks. “What were you going to do with that if I was out, or busy?”

“Drink two coffees and regret it later, I suppose,” she says, “or find someone who likes a coffee as white as you do. It’s half oatmilk, I promise, just how you like it.”

“Black coffee is disgusting,” he says, shutting the door, opening it, grabbing his coat, and shutting it again, spinning in place to put it on while holding a cup. Gwen takes it from him with a patient smile. Her coffee is a sugar bomb of caramel, he knows, so she’s got no legs to stand on.

“So, I got a call this morning,” she starts, as they amble. “We have an appointment for the assessment - it’s next Monday.”

“Oh, Gwen, that’s wonderful,” he says, linking his arm with hers. “You’ll pass, of course, you know you will.”

“I do know we will,” she gives him a smile, her eyes wide and glistening. “It’s just so nerve-wracking anyway. I don’t know how I’ll sleep until then. And Monday is so soon!”

“Everything is perfect,” he tries to soothe her. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I do know that intellectually,” she agrees, “but try and tell my heart that. I feel like it hasn’t settled down since I got the call. I’m so excited. And also, it’s terrifying! A whole entire human being!”

It's a coincidence that a school has been let out recently, and the streets seem to be flooded with children, but her eyes are soft and happy as she watches the families go past.

“You’re ready,” Merlin says, “both you and Lance, you’ll be amazing. Any kid, any age - anyone would be lucky to have you.”

“Do you really mean that?” She pushes her head into his shoulder, squeezing his arm.

“Of course I do.” He smashes his cheek into her curly hair in his eagerness to hug back, but he thinks she gets the idea.

“Distract me,” she requests as they turn to walk around the pond loop of the park. A flock of ducks ignores them boldly. “I have been thinking about nothing else all day! What about you? How are you, how is art? Good? Good art?”

“Good art,” he nods, “absolutely, yes, that is what we call it.”

“I knew it,” she says, and they continue in comfortable silence for a while. The breeze is still cool, but it’s finally starting to get a bit warmer. The spring has been a beautiful one so far, and every bit of green seems to be dripping with flowers.

“That well huh?” she finally asks, but not without sympathy.

“I’ll get over it,” he says - he will, he has to. All the time and money that has gone into it already, all the melodrama of moving away from Ealdor to pursue it. He has to make it work. “Artist block, you know? It happens sometimes.”

“Well, if there’s ever anything I can do you’ll say, right?”

“I will,” he promises, not meaning it at all. He might have admitted to himself that Arthur had a point about accepting help, but that didn’t mean he was going to actually do anything about it.

“I kind of miss the midnight mural parties,” she says, a wistful look on her pretty face. “It was like being back in uni, when it didn’t matter how late you stayed up. Even if you had an early class, going to bed at two was fine because you were twenty and indestructible. Now if I don’t go to sleep by eleven I’m dead useless the next day.”

“Yeah, you’re ancient,” Merlin agrees, as she laughs. He kind of misses the midnight mural parties, too. Those had come so easily, the room lending itself well to love. Carefully picked out furniture, with space to grow.

“Twenty seven,” she chides him, “two years older than you - is this how you speak to your elders?”

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Merlin frowns, patting her hand. “Shall I fetch you your butterscotch sweets and walker? Is it dinner time yet? It’s almost four after all - ”

He cuts off as she jabs him in the side, rolling her eyes. It is a much more enjoyable afternoon than being left with his own thoughts, however, no matter how sharp her elbows are.

“How’s living with Arthur, then? Still good?”

“Still good,” Merlin says, and if he can’t keep the wonder out of his voice, it’s just Gwen. “I’m a little surprised at both of us,” he admits. “I thought there would be bloodshed at least once by now, but I guess we’re both on our best behaviour.”

“Well,” she sounds out, “it has been years, after all, you’ve both mellowed out some, haven’t you? Neither of you are teenagers anymore; it would be weirder if you hadn’t!”

“I…guess it’s crazy to think everything would stay the same, isn’t it?” Merlin has felt so stuck in place for so long that it seems the world changed around him, sometimes, leaving him behind. But perhaps he’s changed along with it, at least a little - it’s hard to know, when you live with yourself every day.

“People change,” she shrugs, “it’s the natural state. If we never changed I would still be straightening my hair and doing my eyeliner like a raccoon.”

“Oh my god, Gwen, did you have a goth phase?!” Merlin whirls on her, fascinated. “Please, tell me you did, tell me there are photos? Even if you didn’t, don’t tell me, I want to believe.”

“No! Of course not. Morgana, though,” she raises her eyebrows, trailing off and letting him imagine it. “I shopped at Tammy Girl, and had glitter everything,” she leans in to confess. “Crop tops - ”

“Which are back, I think,” Merlin says, “I see them everywhere.”

“Blue eyeshadow and butterfly clips,” Gwen counters. “Cargo pants. Skirts over cargo pants.”

“Maybe not that one,” he concedes.

They enjoy their wander, and he admires the way her hair tosses around in the wind, the way her eyes never stop sparkling, happy to her core with good news. An increasingly rare bit of inspiration hits him, feeling like he could create something beautiful for her, just a small reflection of her joy.

Yellow, like her favourite blouse, like spring daffodils.

Which is why he is so taken aback by her betrayal.

“Can I see your phone?” she asks when they loop back, standing in front of the door; and because Merlin is a blind, trusting fool, he just gives it to her. He doesn’t blink twice until she hands it back, the screen lit up with Morgana’s sharp eyed face.

“Gwen, Gwen, Gwen - ” he says, trying to hand her the phone back.

“Merlin,” she says, sweetly, but he knows the truth now - it’s a lie, like getting a candy you think will be strawberry but really it’s spicy and gross. “Honestly, it’s not so bad - ”

“Merlin,” says the phone, and he panics, hanging up. Gwen stares at him, and he panics more.

“I don’t know!” he howls. “You tricked me!”

“She just wants to talk - ”

“I bet that’s what she told you,” Merlin agrees. The phone starts vibrating in his hands, and Gwen darts back like it’s a football match to avoid him foisting it off on her.

“Just talk to her, really, it’s been weeks and weeks. She’s your friend, and worried about you both! How do you think I feel, a double agent?”

“I think you probably had fun and felt like a proper spy,” Merlin says, as the phone grows dark again. Only for a moment, as it lights up immediately after. “James Bond. Did you ever even shop at Tammy Girl, or was that part of your cover?”

“Alright, maybe, but you have to talk to her eventually,” Gwen laughs at him. “It’s just Morgana.”

“Do I, though?” Merlin pleads. She only gives him a soft look, one that says ‘please be mature and speak to our mutual friend, who you have been ignoring out of shame.’. It’s a very expressive look.

He hits the green button.

“Hello, Morgana,” he says, and Gwen nods encouragingly at him.

“Did you hang up on me?” she asks, bemused. “Twice?”

“I panicked,” he admits, “Gwen was sneaky.”

“Well she wouldn’t have had to be if you answered any of my calls or texts, now would she?” Morgana asks nicely, and he swallows. “Of course I had to take other measures. It’s almost as if you don’t like me, Merlin. A girl might start to get hurt feelings.”

“I like you!” Merlin sends a wide-eyed look to Gwen. ‘Help’, he mouths to her, and she merely waves, walking backwards away. Coward. “You don’t like me,” he says.

“I like you fine,” she lies, “I just don’t like how you toy with Arthur.”

“Do what? I do not,” he protests, letting himself back inside - he doesn’t want to have this conversation outside under the wisteria and get photographed having a breakdown by a tourist. He doesn’t toy with Arthur; he doesn’t even know what she’s talking about.

“Put me on video, I want to see you,” Morgana commands, and there’s really no point in resisting.

“Oh, Merlin,” Morgana says when she connects. Merlin isn’t too proud to admit that he tears up a little. Her hair is loose and unstyled, still wavy and just a little bit frizzy from the sea air. There is a pinch of sunburn on the bridge of her nose and her cheeks - she looks healthy. Relaxed and bright-eyed like she hadn’t been for ages in London. “You look good. Happy.”

“So do you,” he says. He’s always liked Morgana just fine, after all. “I’m glad.”

“I can’t believe I had to hear about this Arthur situation from Gwen, and that she heard it from Leon, and that he heard it from Gwaine,” she starts in, her soft expression melting seamlessly into a scowl. “What are you thinking?”

“We’re both grown-ups,” Merlin says, “and everything is fine! Good, even. Great.” It is - at least to him. He loves living with Arthur, it now instead feels bizarre that he had been so worried about it.

Maybe Arthur disagrees? Maybe he’s sick of having Merlin in his hair, or that he would rather have Vivian over. After everything he’d said the other day Merlin hadn’t thought so, but maybe he talked to Morgana? A familiar bubble of anxiety swells in his throat.

“You can’t keep doing this hot and cold thing you do with him,” Morgana huffs at him.

“I…don’t?” Merlin blinks, genuinely not sure what she means. “Wait. What are you even talking about?

“What - are you kidding?” She narrows her bright eyes at him. It feels like they might be having two different conversations. “You and your half-dating bullshit, are you fucking with me right now?”

“We’re not half-dating,” Merlin boggles at her.

“Oh my god,” she says, incredulous. “Are you serious?” She is untroubled by his glare. “Are you blind? Or just thick?”

“Or you’re confused, possibly?” he offers, as a compromise. Maybe she had sunstroke. People got sunstroke. Not in London, probably, but she wasn’t in London, and she was so pale. “We’re best mates, not whatever - ”

“Oh, yes, of course, best mates always act like old married people,” she mocks him.

“We do not!”

“How many times have restaurants asked you if you were celebrating anything special? Or had an old lady tell you how cute you two were?” She smiles meanly.

More than once. But that doesn’t mean anything.

“Alright. Let’s see. Do you or do you not have all of his passwords? Or can you just thumbprint in on everything? You think Vivian has those? Are all his codes your birthday? Tell me.”

Both, but he won’t tell her that, not now. Arthur has his too, so it’s fine! Even in his head he realises how that sounds, and she’s smirking like she suspects anyway.

And they aren’t his birthday, thank you very much. Only one of them. Everyone knows one doesn't count.

They stare at each other, neither quite willing to bend.

“I’m willing to consider that you’re just an idiot,” she says generously. “But how can you not know how he feels about you?”

A high pitched ringing sound starts up in his ears.

“I’m pretty sure he’s got a shrine to you in the basement of the house,” she says.

“He does not,” Merlin snaps, in no mood for this argument to gain legs, “and you don’t even think so either.”

“Fine, maybe just a poster with your face on it, or a diary that says ‘Mr. and Mr. Pendragon-Emrys’,” Morgana says as she blinks innocently, “oh, and maybe one of those heart-shaped beds - ”

“That’s not true,” he denies. “That’s not funny.”

She subsides, looking at him seriously.

“It’s not funny,” she agrees, before sighing, rubbing her fingertips against her forehead like she does when she gets a migraine. “Listen. I’m not supposed to say anything, no one is. And I wouldn’t, not normally - but this? This situation? This is too much.”

“You’re wrong,” he says, not sure what game she’s playing at. They might not be as close as when they were younger, but he’s never known her to be malicious.

“Do you…I mean,” she sighs, pursing her lips. “Do you even remember?”

“Remember what?” How is he supposed to know if he remembered it if he doesn’t even know what she’s talking about?

“Third year,” she says, gentle. The year Will died. He becomes less and less amused. “I’m sorry,” she sighs. “I know it was an extremely painful time for you.”

“It was,” he agrees. Morgana wouldn’t bring it up without good reason though. “Why? What don’t I remember?”

“The night your friend - ”

“Will,” he says.

“Will,” she nods, trailing off.

“Just tell me,” he insists. He misses Will, of course he does - he’ll never not. He can stand to hear his name without weeping, though, too. It’s been years.

“There was a party. Over at the student halls, do you remember that much?” He nods. “You and Arthur. Well,” she waves a hand, as nervous as she ever gets. “I don’t know any of the details, but something happened. And then obviously that fell to the wayside. Of course it did, you were grieving.”

“I…don’t remember,” he confesses. He knows he’d been properly drunk. He was a lightweight. But one thing he will always remember with perfect clarity will be the call from his mother at nine the following morning. Some moments grab on to you so tightly they change your shape, leaving fingerprints behind forever.

He’d been out that night before, and so had Will, back in Ealdor. Mirrors of each other in different places. He had been safe and sound in the student halls when Will had been walking home, along the side of the old road - he hadn’t wanted to drive.

It hadn’t even been called in until the morning, when someone found him on their way to work and discovered what happened. A drunk driver who fled the scene.

Merlin still doesn’t drink, even the smell of it makes him ill.

“Well,” Morgana says cautiously, “of course Arthur understood you weren’t interested in a relationship, not then, so,” she shakes her head. “Nothing ever happened, and you never brought it up, so neither did he. But then the wisdom teeth thing, though, so he thought maybe you still - ”

“What wisdom teeth thing?” he asks, still caught up in the first bit. “Arthur said I didn’t do anything weird other than cry at that ad with the ducks.”

“Then Arthur lied. He asked you out after that, you have to remember that much,” she insists.

“He did not! He…asked me why I didn’t have a boyfriend to pick me up after dentist appointments.” Merlin tries to remember the exact wording. No. Is the air getting thinner? Arthur had just been annoyed at having yet another Merlin chore.

That…did not match up with what Arthur had said the other day, though, about taking care of him, now did it?

“Oh, so you’re just both idiots,” she says, dumbfounded, “wonderful.”

When he just stands there staring at nothing for long enough she coughs to get his attention.

“I thought you knew. I really did,” she sighs. Morgana never tends to be unsure, but she is now. “You don’t…date, much. You aren’t pining away for him secretly are you? Because that would solve it with a tidy bow.”

“He can’t have feelings for me, though, that’s mad,” Merlin says, ignoring her. Fully committed to his disbelief. Arthur is special. He’s going to save the world and Merlin is going to draw pictures of people’s cats and get stiffed on payment and probably die in the winter like the little match girl.

“Since uni?” he blurts out.

Like he’s picking at a scab; it’s going to bleed everywhere but he can’t seem to leave it alone. Urgently, he needs to know. Desperately. Arthur didn’t even like him for half of uni, Morgana has to be wrong.

“I’m not hearing an answer.” She quirks an eyebrow up.

“I…try not to,” he admits, wetting his bottom lip. His ever-shrinking list of reasons. “Arthur is my,” he waves a vague hand, “person. He’s my person.” Merlin falters. Arthur is his favourite person. He’s the best. He’s just… the best. There aren’t any others like him.

“Okay,” Morgana nods, as though this is normal.

“I do love him,” he says, and she nods again, head bobbing in what he assumes is supposed to be a supportive way. “Of course I do. He’s just - different. Then I am, and what we want. He’s very shiny,” Merlin says, which makes no sense.

“Shiny, alright,” Morgana encourages.

“I’m not,” he offers, which is true, but not helpful. Big cartoon diamonds, fur coats. Gold bars. Is there anything less like Merlin? He’s a blotch of spilled watercolours, at best, or maybe a tube of oil paint that someone stepped on. Splat.

“Race car,” Merlin holds up one hand, indicating Arthur. “Bicycle,” he points to his own chest. “It wouldn’t work.”

“You don’t know that,” she says, but he ploughs on.

“Also he is dating Vivian.” It occurs to him that this should matter. He only dates women like Vivian. If he likes Merlin at all, he is the anomaly in the pattern.

“Psh,” Morgana dismisses. “They don't even like each other, they just go to events to be blonde together and not talk instead of finding new dates. I’ll come back to London and dump her for Arthur myself if that helps. It will both free up the space and also be a fun activity.”

He barely hears her.

“Maybe you should sit down,” she gently suggests.

“That might be a good idea,” he sits down flat in the entrance hall. He’s still got his algal bloom shoes on. Several long heartbeats of silence pass. “You aren’t…messing with me?”

“No,” she says. “I thought that maybe you had been thinking he wasn’t that serious all this time, or something. Not that you didn’t know at all. Fuck. To be fair to myself, I never thought anyone could be that thick. He’s crazy about you.”

“Hah,” he says flatly, but he is reluctantly amused despite himself. He is that thick. His head is swimming. He is an idiot. She has to be wrong.

None of it makes sense.

He should feel sick with worry after being told bombshell news, he assumes, instead of vaguely the same, just a little dizzier. He is merely a can of fizzy drink someone shook in the shape of a man.

But the truth is that the scary bit isn’t the idea of Arthur loving him. Arthur isn’t scary.

The scary bit is the idea of having, then losing.

Merlin can’t summon up a single number on his list of reasons why it’s a terrible idea, he’s just overwhelmed by the scope of it - it’s too massive to get his head around. Things like this didn’t happen to Merlin.

Good things - things like Arthur.

Except they did, didn’t they? Arthur was always good. A brat, but good. To everyone, all the time - but especially to Merlin. He pinches himself, to make sure he’s awake.

“Gwen said you had a goth phase,” he says, fumbling for anything else to think about.

“Gwen is playing both sides,” Morgana accuses, “betraying us both.” She doesn’t push him.

“I’m sure you were very cute,” Merlin says, closing his eyes. His phone is on the floor, pointed at the ceiling - he’s not sure when he put it down.

“Of course I was,” she claims, and puts on a luxurious looking pair of sunglasses, turning the phone so he can see the beach stretch out right outside her door. “Want to go for a walk?”

“Show me the ocean,” he says, leaning back against the wall and dragging in a deep breath. He can almost smell the salt.

Chapter Text

Morgana walks him down the beach until he’s calmed down enough to pick himself up off of the floor.

They bid a heartfelt goodbye, and at the minimum now he knows why she was sour with him sometimes - maybe their relationship will be steadier now.

Nothing makes much sense, but he wishes it did.

He seizes the motivation and goes back up to his room and digs out his old sketchbooks; the call of nostalgia too strong to ignore. If he’s fallen out of step with the rest of the world, he’s still uniquely lucky - he’s got records. A ladder back in, a timeline and time machine all in one. Drawings and sketches, little pocket paintings that warp the paper.

Still snug in their cardboard box, just pushed into a walk-in closet, he finds them. Trying to guess by age, he starts searching - this one, he thinks. With the soft edges of paper and the graphite smear on the outside.

The stiff binding creaks when he opens it. Some of these they’d looked through recently, but not this one. Bought fresh for the train into London, unable to resist the excitement - Will had given him a downright decent set of pencils for the journey as a goodbye present. An expensive gift for a broke seventeen year old.

Merlin had stopped using them, after, afraid of losing them; but he still has the flat tin where they’re stored, halfway worn down. For years there’s been a little loose nub of graphite that rattles when he picks them up.

Even though it was a blur of time, he will always remember Will at the station, seeing him off. The train car had been ancient - not in the fun, steam train way, but in the dated and ugly sort of way. Hideous patterns on the fabric seats and all, doing a poor job of disguising the years of wear and spills. It had been so exciting it hardly mattered. Sunlight had filtered in through the water spots on the grotty window and everything had glowed a hazy yellow.

The first page shows a drawing of the man who had been sleeping a few seats down the aisle, his head crooked to the side. Merlin can see the faults in it, but it's a better skill than he expected out of a younger him. Wrinkles and the curve of his glasses falling down his nose are drawn with care. He flips it to see a quick sketch of London by train, more an impression of buildings, going by too fast to actually get anything down.

He can remember the feeling of it, though, when he looks; like he’s still there. The train rocking and squeaking beneath his feet.

His throat feels tacky. His hands slow. His skin is layers and layers of paint loaded down with too much linseed oil, unfinished and drying - easy to ruin. But when he touches the paper he leaves it clean.

The first drawing of Arthur knocks him like a blow to the chest; he looks like such a kid. Merlin had drawn him with a little crown and devil horns, making a grumpy face. Gwen, a little bit older than them, with flowers in her hair, Morgana, nose in the air.

Another page shows Morgana again, on a throne with a hairless cat looking deadly and evil, and he snaps a photo to send it to her later. She’ll be thrilled.

Lance playing rugby, and then Gwaine; barely a gesture of him, but Merlin would know the shape of his laugh anywhere.

The sketchbook ends, and he picks up another, and another. The closet is its own world, with no sun moving to tell the time, just the steady light that never flickers. On either side of him hang clothes, supplied by Arthur and Lynette, who he has still never seen.

It’s safe here, like how it was playing hide and seek with Will when he was little, hiding behind one of his mother’s long dresses. Nose tickling, he can almost smell the lavender.

He picks up the dented one - third year, when Will died. He hasn’t looked at it much since. His thumb caresses the notch on the corner, throat stuck fast.

The first sketch is nothing, though, just a tree, then a stray cat. Until suddenly it’s all drawings of Will. Of Merlin’s desperate work trying to commit him to memory. Laughing, crying, sleeping - at his father’s grave, standing next to Hunith, growing taller than her. Lists, as well, favourite foods, and songs, laid out to survive time. All of Merlin’s impressions of him since boyhood in a collection.

Eventually they look less and less like him, lines getting darker, angry and sloppy.

Merlin had forgotten how angry he had been.

The pages in the sketchbook get rougher, more brutal. Heavy with paint instead of pencils, as he sought something that couldn’t be put into words at all. It barely closes without the elastic of the moleskine holding it down, pages curling like they’d been dropped in the bath.

It had helped him process, he thinks. It’s not that he feels nothing, looking at it now, but the raw misery is tempered by time. It ensconces so many feelings that not all of them can be bad. Happy ones are still crisply outlined on so many of the pages, clearer than the sad ones.

He’ll never not miss Will, but remembering him has changed, too.

He sets it to the side, holding another for a while before being ready to look. From the outside, years later, he can see himself struggling - the looseness of his earlier work is gone. Duller.

Pages that are hard to look at, not even because they are ugly, but because he can see himself trying to get that ease back, and failing.

More drawings of his friends, strangers. Fashion and studies of paintings, slowly balancing out again as he moves on. Arthur. His face isn’t even in it, just the line of his back as he sits, elbows on his knees, head down, after his big blow up fight with Uther.

Merlin knows him, though.

It’s another book and a half before graduation, and he would be blind and a fool to not see the pattern. Arthur, Arthur, Arthur. Grinning, happier than he had been, shedding bits of his old skin - life on an upswing.

It’s impossible not to wonder where they’d be, if Merlin remembered whatever it was that had almost happened. Part of him still says they would have been too different. Different worlds, different goals, and no feasible way to compromise them. Gwen was right as well though; they’d all changed. Merlin at eighteen was different to nineteen, to twenty, to now, and so was Arthur.

Would they have grown the same way?

Would either of them still have mellowed out, to the point where compromise no longer feels like the dirty word it did when he was younger? Or would they have fed each other’s worst impulses?

There had been plenty of that, after all.

He can never know, but in the here and now he craves the way Arthur used to touch his back, or throw an arm over him so easily instead of always sitting on the other end of the couch. The careful curation of distance, so slow Merlin hadn’t even noticed it happen.

Change is healthy. He - he should.

He doesn’t know what he should do.

“Merlin?” He hears Arthur shout into the house. Merlin’s heart throbs like an open wound. It’s late, then, if work is done.

“Here,” he calls out, not getting up. It’ll be like a game of marco polo, and the thought makes a smile come to him, despite every other swirling emotion. One of the very few things in life he is sure of is that he is always happy to see Arthur.

“Marco,” Arthur shouts, and Merlin laughs, hitching and bemused, back in the present. They do share a brain - just the one - between the two of them.

“Polo!”

“God, this house really is too big,” Arthur says, finally sticking his head into the closet after a frankly embarrassing showing of competitive spirit. It’s probably for the best that there aren’t any neighbours with thin walls here. His blue eyes catch Merlin on the floor with a pile of his sketchbooks, a cautious look settling on his face. “Alright?”

“Yeah,” Merlin says, honestly. A mad impulse to tell Arthur to break up with Vivian, just to see if he would do it, comes to him like he’s possessed. “I am. Just…nostalgia,” he says, instead, smiling. “Really, it was kind of nice to look at these, and to remember. Want to see?”

Arthur hovers at the door, and Merlin follows his next insane impulse, and offers the Will sketchbook. It’s alright if it’s Arthur - all of it’s alright. Merlin wants him to know, and wants to know everything about him in return.

“Thought I wasn’t supposed to look at this one,” Arthur says, taking it, but not opening it, coming to sit with him among the mess of books and tidy lines of fancy clothes. Meeting in the middle.

“Things change,” Merlin says, trying to sound wise and philosophical, ignoring Arthur’s sceptical ‘mhm,’ as he turns through the pages.

“This is…Will?” Arthur asks, leaving space for Merlin to answer in his own time.

“Will, yes,” he says eventually. “As I remembered him at least - I was afraid of losing him, I think, after he died. In my head, I mean. Losing him twice.”

“Did drawing him help?”

Merlin watches him page through the book again, less freshly wounded to see them again having just looked. “It did. There are things that are hard to say - sometimes art is easier.”

“To express wordless ideas?” Arthur asks, but it’s not really a question, so Merlin doesn’t answer him.

After he finishes looking at each little corner and nook, Arthur shuts it, his thumb finding that same notch that Merlin had, and something in him flips over. He wants to hold Arthur’s hand.

“Can I ask you something?” Arthur bites his lower lip, staring at the sketchbook. “Insensitive?”

“Of course,” Merlin says, swallowing. Wondering.

“You don’t seem…very happy with art. As work, I mean. Freelance,” Arthur says carefully. “I thought maybe it was the fact that it was overwhelming as a second job. But…it hasn’t seemed better. I don’t know if it’s the clients, or the work itself, but, that’s how it seems.”

Merlin is not sure what he expected, but it was not that. Is he so obvious? He gapes a bit, clicking his mouth shut. Caught out, but not with the secret he had thought.

“I bring it up because I wondered if you had considered doing something like what Freya does with the dogs? Art therapy?” Arthur ducks his head, looking up at Merlin as though he’s waiting for a lashing.

“No,” he admits, “but, uhm, that’s. Observant. Of you.” He knows he’s not subtle, but this seems a bridge too far.

“You could think about it,” Arthur says. “If you wanted to go back to school - ”

“I can’t,” Merlin says, instinctively, but…it sounds good. He had never thought of that, somehow - just that stopping would be quitting, after everything, and that he can’t. Sunken costs.

“You could,” Arthur says, a mind reader once again. “Percy went back, you already know you can.” When Merlin is silent he pushes, like always. Then again, sometimes Merlin needs a push. “I’m going to keep being an ass for a second,” Arthur cautions him.

“Alright,” Merlin says, waiting for it.

“You have…had it hard. For years, honestly - Will,” he taps the book, softly, “and then when uni ended and you seemed alright you had absolutely the most shit luck with everything. You’d get a new roommate and there would be a fire. Or robbed. You’d save a little and then need your wisdom teeth out, or Gaius would fall, and you’d take more on in the shop, or Freya needed help so you’d take less freelance. Fucking Mordred.”

“Gee,” Merlin snorts, “you are being a bit of an ass.”

Fucking Mordred, though.

“Oh, I’m not even there yet,” Arthur tilts his chin up, forging bravely ahead. “I think it’s made you afraid. Of losing what you’ve got left, and so you don’t take chances that you would have leapt at, before. You wouldn’t have just dug your heels in and committed yourself to suffering, or to hating your job forever. You don’t actually chase what you want anymore.”

It has the ring of truth to it, but Merlin thinks he would rather be stabbed, with an actual knife, wielded by actual knife-wielding Kara than admit it.

“You don’t have to say anything.” Arthur tentatively reaches out and almost touches him, pulling back before he actually does. “You can take a chance though, because I’ll be here behind you to catch you either way. I don’t think you believe me, but I mean it. I really, really mean it, Merlin.”

Arthur is not a crybaby, not like he is, so the wet sheen of tears in unwavering blue eyes sets him off like nothing else.

“I think it might make you happy. So, just…keep it in mind.” Arthur holds the Will sketchbook back for him to take, clasped gently in his strong hands, like it's something fragile. “I know how much you love helping people.”

Merlin can feel his lower lip quivering like it does before he cries - really cries, the ugly sobbing, face-wrenching sort of way, and he tries to stop. “Sorry,” he says, unable to help it.

“Don’t be,” Arthur rebuts, “you’ve just been saving it up for a long time, that’s all.”

Merlin sneaks his way in under Arthur’s arm and presses his nose into the warm, heady smell that always lightly clings to him. A discovery and not an announcement, or something appropriately posh like that. At least this time when he cries it is not a fruitless or frustrating feeling. It’s painful, but more like he’s breathing clean air for the first time in a long while, or the sting of antiseptic on a fresh cut.

Merlin does want to be happy, not just getting by.

Motivation, inspiration; infinite when he was younger had grown sparse. Too tired - but he’d been given shelter. Hibernated, and recovered. Thanks to Arthur.

He wants.

“Will you tell me what happened at the party? And when I got my wisdom teeth out?” He’ll throw Morgana under this particular bus if he has to.

Arthur doesn’t quite jerk back, but this close it is impossible to miss the tension that finds him, no matter how lightly he tries to play it off.

“Why do you ask?” he says, in what seems like an obvious way to buy time. It doesn’t sit right with Merlin that Arthur is nervous about it. That by protecting himself from feeling vulnerable he might be hurting the one person he wants to hurt least.

“Because I want to know,” he fumbles, trying to explain himself. “I missed something, something important, and I don’t know what it was.” Sometimes he thinks he dreams about it. Just a rush of colours and feelings. “And if it’s you I always want to know.”

Arthur exhales, but doesn’t pull away, hiding his face.

“You kissed me,” he says eventually, like he's reading off notecards. “You were drunk, and we were going to meet up the next day - you never showed, and I was upset.” He shifts back to look at him. “I learned what happened, obviously, but only after I had complained to Morgana. Was she the one that told you?”

“Maybe,” he says, and the corner of Arthur’s mouth turns up.

“So, yes,” he says, and Merlin scrunches up his nose. He didn’t say it. “You never said anything, after. At first I thought you just needed time, then that you regretted it, but eventually I wondered if you just didn’t remember - you never held your drinks very well, and then the morning after was a - ”

“Tumultuous one,” Merlin diplomatically offers. “That’s true.” His heart aches for Arthur, years too late to do much good. “I didn’t remember, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologise - ”

“What about the wisdom teeth though? You said I cried about the ducks and slept the rest away. What did I do?” This is one Merlin has no recollection of at all, not even a blur. He went into the dentist's office and then woke up a day later on Arthur’s couch.

“Hm,” Arthur makes a face - a trying not to laugh face, not a trying not to cry face, though. Merlin knows which he prefers. “You were very friendly, and complimentary. About my colours, in particular, and my feet-mittens.”

“Socks? What do you mean friendly, why did you say it like that?”

“No, you were quite specific,” Arthur insists. “At volume. Feet-mittens. And you were affectionate, that’s all.”

“Do you mean I was handsy?” Merlin closes his eyes, ignoring the embarrassed heat rising up the back of his neck.

“Maybe,” Arthur laughs. “I wouldn’t have let you do anything, you just seemed very interested in petting me. Also you were drooling blood half the night, so it wasn’t that - ”

“Oh my god,” Merlin drops his head back down onto Arthur’s shoulder, feeling the heat flood through his face. His cheeks are on fire.

“But then I tried to ask you out and you - ”

“You did not,” Merlin swears. “This one I know I remember! You said something about how I didn’t have a boyfriend to come pick me up. I thought I was just really annoying or something and you didn’t want to deal with me next time!”

“I am pretty sure I suavely offered to be the boyfriend,” Arthur says, but he’s no longer nervous, so Merlin can’t even manage low-grade irritation. Even though Merlin is right.

“I don’t think that’s what happened,” he says.

“You were drugged,” Arthur dismisses, as though the matter is closed. “So,” he says, faux casual, “why do you ask?”

“Come to a museum with me on Saturday?” Merlin asks, shutting his eyes tight. It’s not what he had meant to say. “It’s been a while since I’ve been to one, and I miss it.”

“‘Course,” Arthur agrees instantly, sniffing in that manly ‘I’ve never cried in my life’ sort of way. “We’ll make a day of it.”

“That sounds nice,” Merlin says, barely a sigh, “really nice. I’ll bring a book, and draw people, and you can pretend to be interested in the paintings until lunch.”

“That seems ambitious,” Arthur hems and haws. “I bet I make it until about half ten.”

“We can go to one of the ones with armour and swords in the afternoon,” Merlin meets him in the middle. Compromise. “You can play pretend knight with all the other children, and I can draw all the mothers chasing after and trying to get them not to touch the glass.”

Arthur snorts, a deeply unflattering noise, and Merlin grins.

Merlin wants to kiss him. Hold hands in the museum on Saturday, and all the days after. It is intolerable that he can’t.

For once he chases the change and lets himself act, instead of staying stalled in place. Summons his courage and tries again.

“And before we go you should break up with Vivian,” Merlin says, his voice sounding very far away to his own ears. Tear stained and snotty in a closet demanding that Arthur break up with his girlfriend is probably the least romantic way to do it, but it’s what Merlin’s got.

Arthur blinks, going very still, until he sits back, shocked and silent.

“If, I mean - ” Merlin realises after several heartbeats pass that he never did really confirm what Morgana had said. That Arthur still felt any sort of way, that is - he’d wanted it to be true. He hadn’t even known he wanted it to be true, but he had, and now-

“Should I?” Arthur asks, watching Merlin with sharp eyes. Throat bobbing as he swallows. They sit there, like fools, staring at one another.

Merlin feels caught in a vice. A trap of his own making, unsure how to move forward.

“That’s awfully presumptuous of you,” Arthur says, and something fervent in Merlin stirs awake.

“You like it when I presume,” he gets out, heart hammering. Arthur does, he reminds himself. When Merlin treats this house as theirs, when he wears the absurdly soft and overpriced things Arthur has given him, when he lets himself get treated, and treated well. It’s not just the things - it’s naps, and letting himself eat three meals a day, and when he comes back smiling from the shelter, happy and fulfilled.

Arthur looks up if the dog lives at the end of the movie.

He doesn't drink around Merlin, because he knows. Each and every old bruise.

Arthur wants to take care of him, and Merlin wants to let him - then take care of him right back.

Draw him doodles on sticky-notes and stuff them in his pockets or his stupid fancy lawyer bag to find later, and bake him all his favourites, and never, ever let a towel touch the floor.

It is simple, and obvious - and Morgana had been right, he really is thick.

“Yes, alright,” Arthur says, the tips of his ears red. He gets his phone out, and Merlin almost tells him he hadn’t meant now, but he snaps his mouth shut. A quick message is typed out, and turned to face Merlin.

“You don’t have to show me, I believe you!” He loses all cool, and Arthur just laughs, the tension broken.

“It’s so you don’t think you’ve broken up a happy and healthy couple with a bright future and eight very blonde children,” Arthur claims, pushing the phone at him again.

With a reluctant hand, and yes, feeling very much like a homewrecker, Merlin takes it. Vivian has already replied. Skimming their text chain it seems to just be dates and times, and a level of required dress.

Saturday, black tie, 7pm

Friday, casual, 9pm

I want to break up

And Vivian’s reply, a single thumbs up.

“So, you know,” Arthur says, amused, “later, when you’re lying in bed, feeling guilty, like I know you will? Don’t.”

“I…never understood why you dated the worst women,” Merlin finally has the courage to venture. He’d always wondered. “When you could do so much better.”

“I once went on a date with another bloke,” Arthur offers, taking his phone back. “Dark hair, liked art - antiques, though, not paintings. Weird about brass.” Merlin nods, feeling very twisty and turned about learning this new information. “Thought I had a type. Gwaine called him off-brand Merlin and then it felt creepy, so I never called him back. Like I was trying to replace you. I kind of default to your opposite, instead, I think.”

Merlin bites at his lip, not sure how much to push his luck. Already he felt like he was taking more than he could get away with, but he wants to know. Heart beating like he was robbing a bank, or running down the street with a bag of diamonds, hoping no one caught on.

“After so long? Even now?” Merlin asks, terrible and cruel.

“Never stopped,” Arthur nods, holding his gaze. Never a coward. “Does that bother you?”

“Only if it bothers you how little it bothers me,” Merlin admits, not sure he’s making sense. There’s something intoxicating to know how Arthur never wavers once he’s made up his mind. Safe. Immovable. Steady.

“Well,” Arthur says, throat bobbing, “that’s that, then.”

“I feel like I should have done this not in a closet, I don’t really know what to do now,” Merlin confesses. “There’s nowhere to go.”

Arthur laughs, a booming sound in the small space. Well, huge for a closet, especially in London, but not for two grown men. On impulse Merlin goes in for another hug, feeling strange as he treads new waters.

Then he gets to settle his head down, and Arthur has his arms around him; the wonderful cologne, the heat of his body, all pressed together like two puzzle pieces.

It’s not weird at all, it’s just like going home.

“Ah, that’s the good stuff,” he only half-jokes as he inhales deeply, all his breath leaving him like a deflating balloon. “I still love this cologne.”

“You said that when you were drunk, actually, back then. After so long; even now?” Arthur laughs as he asks, overdramatic and teasing, his chest moving beneath Merlin’s cheek, hands warm and firm spanning Merlin’s back.

“Never stopped,” he says - the only possible answer.

Chapter Text

Two days later

It is much the same, and not, to be something with Arthur.

He wakes up, hearing the door shut as Arthur goes for his run, racing the sunrise - usually Merlin sleeps straight through it, but he’d been on the cusp of waking and dreaming all night.

Saturday. Date. Date, date, date.

For maybe the first time he understands why Arthur likes to get up and chase the sun as he does, though - Merlin feels like he could sprint a marathon, or lift a car off of a baby or something. Tides and rushes of adrenaline course through him. A lightning storm.

He’ll never get back to sleep, not now.

He can grab a shower though, and pick out an outfit for the museum, and make Arthur his coffee and say hello at the door, and maybe give him a welcome home kiss. And, and, and. So many things in a row to look forward to.

He flings himself out of bed, ready for the day to come.

The shower is just as wonderful as ever. Picking out what he thinks of as the most drawable clothes is as close as he ever comes to fashion, himself, but he tries his best. The mysterious Lynette had supplied him with too much, but it continues to be very hard to say no to Arthur when he smiles. Merlin can’t realistically see that changing any time soon.

The fancy coffee machine is only touched by Arthur, and if he is missing, Merlin is permitted since he had that stint as a barista. He hadn’t been very good, but he wouldn’t break it.

Gwaine is not allowed to touch the fancy coffee machine under any circumstances. Not anymore.

And so, fresh as a daisy, dressed to impress, Merlin greets Arthur in the kitchen with a coffee. His startled and genuine delight is worth it, and Merlin resigns himself to becoming an early riser. Well, some days. Compromise.

“Good morning,” he says, overcome at the sight of an Arthur fresh from his run, practically glowing. He’s sweaty and red-cheeked, and Merlin leans in to press a kiss right on top of that flush, because he can.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Arthur says, shooting for teasing and missing by a mile. The grin does not leave Merlin’s face for an hour - he probably looks deranged, but he can’t seem to help it.

And so the day rolls on. Perfectly ordinary, perfectly extraordinary.

They hold hands in the car ride to the Tate Britain, Merlin doesn’t blink when Arthur donates an absurd amount at entry; although to be fair Merlin wouldn’t have even if they weren’t doing…whatever they were doing. Arts funding is important.

He doesn’t even have to drag Arthur around, as much as they joke about it. He trails loyally after Merlin as he marvels at some of his favourites, quietly explaining why he loves each one to an attentive audience of one.

He wonders if Arthur is on his best behaviour, or if he’s just in as happy a mood as Merlin is.

For while he has learned that his initial stupid metaphor wasn’t quite right - as Arthur truly is neither a wolf nor a sleepy greyhound - over the course of living with him Merlin has finally discovered what he is.

Which is namely one of those screaming huskies in a bathtub that Merlin has seen videos of online. Who needs constant attention, and everything just so, but is also very cute, so he gets away with it.

“You aren’t bored?” Merlin leans in to whisper, as they stand in front of that very same Millais that he had sketched years ago. It’s Saturday, so the din of noise is louder, but it’s still a museum.

“No,” Arthur says, pressing a kiss to his temple that has him feeling sky high. “Will you draw it again?”

“Maybe,” Merlin considers. The study had been a good one, and he kind of likes it how it is. There’s a rare open seat on the bench, though; more precious than gold on a Saturday, so that decides him. “Let’s sit. I’ll either draw it or some people.”

Weekends at art museums are always prime pickings for it, after all. It makes him feel a bit like a spider sitting fat in their web, waiting for prey. Yet it works. Tourists and trendy Londoners abound, characters with busy lives of their own, ripe for the picking.

On another seat across the room he spies a younger girl doing the same as him - maybe just starting uni herself, if he takes a guess. She’s surrounded by five or six other kids all trying to fit on a bench that should fit only half of them. A kinship wells in him, and he starts a gesture of her, leaning over her own sketchbook. The terrible posture is part and parcel, he assumes, as he’s certainly never seen anything different. Arthur rubs a hand down his back, and Merlin smiles to himself, bent in half over his own drawing.

The next time he looks up she’s looking back.

They both stare, deer in headlights before Merlin gives her a tiny wave with his pencil. A tentative wave is returned, and he gets back to work.

Arthur’s broad hand doesn’t move, a warm brand. Her friends take shape around her, some phones out, some animated and grinning. A boy staring up at a Waterhouse across the room in wonder.

Eventually, when he looks up, she is gone, and he blinks. A tourist catches his attention, wearing their backback at the front like a baby, so it doesn’t swing into anything. His next victim.

“Oh, that’s really good!” A voice comes from behind him, and he turns, wide-eyed.

“Sorry,” she blurts. “I wasn’t going to interrupt, I was going to be sneaky! I just wanted to see.”

Arthur laughs, covering his mouth too late and getting a mild warning glare from the uniformed fellow by the door.

“It’s just really, really good,” she gushes.

“Oh, thank you,” Merlin says, elbowing Arthur until he’s gotten himself under control. “Can I ask - were you drawing us, too? Can I see?”

“It’s not very good,” she hesitates, “not like yours or anything!”

“I’d really like to see it,” he says, going ahead and flipping his so she can see it properly. He really would love to see it, actually. This is the cutest thing that has ever happened to him.

With an all too relatable slowness she fumbles her book open, finally turning it so they can see.

The thing is, Merlin has a lot more years of practice than she has. It’s not quite as professional - but it’s sweet, and there is skill there, and practice. Effort. In pen, on the page. In slightly wobbly ink they sit side by side, pressed close. Light and dark heads bent together, Arthur’s arm spanning the distance as Merlin leans in. They look like they are in love.

“I love it,” he says, biting his lip and trying not to be a total crazy person about it, “I really love it. I know this is rude, but would you consider a trade?”

“A trade?” She asks, looking at her own work with a sceptical tilt of her head. He notices at this distance that she is wearing butterfly clips, and he resolves to tell Gwen immediately. “For mine? I just really liked your outfit, it’s not very good.”

“Wonderful,” Arthur says, “thank you.”

“Don’t mind him,” Merlin explains, rolling his eyes, “he’s just going to be smug forever now is all. So,” he carefully tears the drawing of her and her friends out, “if you want it, it’s yours, you don’t have to trade, but I was serious, I’d really like that one.”

“If you’re sure,” she finally says, and they swap. A wave is tossed over her shoulder as she trots back to her friends, showing off Merlin’s little drawing like a prize.

He tries not to flush at the appreciative ‘ oooh’s that come up from that corner of the gallery, but it’s impossible not to feel a little pleased. He looks down at his own prize.

“She really liked your outfit, Merlin,” Arthur whispers against his ear, breath warm and shiver inducing.

“Smugness is not as cute a look on you as you think,” Merlin whispers back, still tracing the lines of his new piece of art. “This is my new favourite thing,” he says.

“Aw,” Arthur teases him, but he’s looking at it with misty eyes as well, and is a liar besides. Merlin closes it carefully flat in his sketchbook. He’ll frame it, he thinks. Talk Arthur into replacing some of the hotel art. Not like that will be a hard sell. “Little baby artists are drawing you now, how does it feel?”

Merlin wants to make a joke, but his face has to give it away already.

“Alright, it feels good, you prat, are you happy?” The tables are turned, Arthur’s smile gives him away just as easily. A man thrilled. There will be no living with him. “Don’t even answer,” Merlin says, getting up. There are a lot of other rooms to get through before lunch.

Even if they speed walk past all the paintings of baby Jesus, which is a lot of them.

“I’m happy,” Arthur says, linking his hand with Merlin’s again.

Two months later

“Morgana!” Merlin gasps as she lunges at him, catching her and swishing her into a circle, her long dress flaring around his shins.

“Merlin!” She grins at him.

“I’m so happy to see you,” he says, as she leans in to press a red-lipped kiss to his cheek. He reels her in for a longer hug - it’s been too much time, and he is too grateful to let her go so easily.

Gwaine and Elena’s wedding suits them perfectly; held at her father’s stables, lights strung up everywhere, music filling the air. Lance is dancing, little Sefa standing on his feet. Informal like the very best party in the world. Ivan, with his bowtie, was perhaps the fanciest in attendance. 

“Arthur,” Morgana smirks at him, “you look well. Domestic life suits you.”

“Thank you,” he lets her brush a kiss on his cheek as well, a smear of red left behind. “And how is your life of indolence treating you?”

“Most excellently,” she cheers, “I highly recommend it. Get Uther to pay, it’s more fun that way. Perhaps a holiday is in line after this? Somewhere sunny?”

“If we’re still alive after babysitting Ivan while Gwaine and Elena go on their honeymoon then maybe,” Arthur says, “You’ve always wanted to see the northern lights though, haven’t you?” He turns and asks Merlin. “So maybe not somewhere sunny.”

“Don’t endure all winter and spring here just to go somewhere snowy,” Morgana scolds him. “Come with me,” she orders Merlin, “we’ll have a dance, we can catch up. Art therapy, hm? When do your classes start?”

He doesn’t dare say no to her, merely tossing a longing look back at Arthur, who remains safely by the tables, no dancing required.

“Just a second,” Merlin requests. He gestures to Arthur, pointing to his cheek. ‘Red,’ he mouths at him.

“A little lipstick won’t kill him,” Morgana smiles, but Merlin shakes his head.

As Arthur reaches into his pocket to get his old-man handkerchief out he finds the note Merlin put in there earlier, the drawing. His face goes all soft and soppy, before looking up and scowling at Morgana, who won’t let Arthur cut in for anything.

“Aw,” she says, smiling sweetly, “disgusting.”

“Yeah,” Merlin admits, “but you’ve no one but yourself to blame.”

Two years later

There is a jewellery box in his art bag, and he has no idea how long it has been there.

Arthur is carefully pretending to be very busy looking at the Sargent that they have parked in front of, a rare bit of open bench space in the Tate for a Saturday. Merlin takes it out, hefting the weight of it.

It’s definitely not a watch.

Five years later

“Slow down, Cavall!” Merlin pants, “I’m not as fit as either of you, have mercy.”

“Should have taken up running earlier,” Arthur mocks him as he darts ahead, his grin more blinding than the morning sun. "Come on, chase me!"