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The choice was the thing, Merlin supposed, when he took the time to think about it. After the first few skipped meals, it was easy to do it again, and it became a sort of anchor in the middle of the currents that threatened to pull him under.
However simple a goal it sounded, protecting Arthur only seemed to get more and more complicated as the years went on. There were a thousand decisions to be made at every turn, each one threatening to throw them off the path completely. It felt like he could do nothing right, sometimes, like every choice he made was the wrong one, like all he left in his wake was a trail of collateral damage.
He tried to stick to the black and white of it, the letter of the law no one had ever written down but might as well have been etched into his bones. Arthur came first. And his choices shrank and shrank, whittling down until it was Arthur or this, Arthur or that, Arthur or the right thing. And he chose him every time, because what else could he do?
In some ways it was an easy decision. Merlin wasn’t entirely objective. Not that destiny wanted him to be, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t written on some ancient tablet that Emrys was supposed to spend quite so much time just looking at the Once and Future King. It was irrelevant, really. Not worth thinking about. It was just another thing he couldn’t have, and the reasons piled up with even a second’s thought – he was a man, he was a servant, he was a sorcerer. Besides, Arthur and Gwen had whatever they had going on, and Arthur was… Arthur, while with every passing day Merlin felt like he was changing into someone else. Someone everyone would be better off keeping at a distance.
The damage seemed to spread out from him like ripples on a pond, and it felt like a gift, like a blessed reprieve to find something that affected only him. The hunger was the one choice he could make that hurt no one, endangered no one, nudged no prophecies with clumsy elbows.
Besides, having a secret was nothing new. The revelation was having one that didn’t matter.
It didn’t start out as punishment. For a while, it was almost a luxury. Not doing something was a lot easier than adding anything into an already busy schedule, and the pockets of time it gave back were a relief. After long days of putting out fires and keeping secrets that hung over his head like swords, he could lie in bed in the dark and revel in the emptiness, the one thing he had done right. The one thing no one on earth knew.
Everyone thought they knew him. Camelot saw him as a bumbling, devoted servant and the magical community as Emrys, magic incarnate. To one, he was something more than human. To the laws of the other, he was less, and in the space between lay the hunger, settling something in him he hadn’t realised was restless.
The mistakes used to be nothing more than that. The weight of them would settle on him like dust, and he would move on, vowing to do better next time. The change crept in unseen, and eventually, he felt like he deserved the hunger. Like it was what was owed.
It wasn’t that he didn’t feel it anymore, or that it was always easy. It was better that way.
The magic wasn’t his, not really. This was, and sometimes it made him feel more powerful than gold in his eyes and the earth in his veins ever had.
It was like this: There, in his hands, was all he wanted. Not in his life, or this year, or even that day. But for a brief moment, as the steam rose in curls from the plate and the meat glistened in candlelight, it was all he could imagine ever wanting.
And he refused it. He set down the tray with hands that had been shaking an hour before, and he breathed in the scent of fresh bread and turned his back, and it was so sharp and clear and victorious he wondered how he’d ever done without it.
He learned where the limits were – the knife edge where clarity tipped over into dizziness and headaches, where discipline became distraction. It wasn’t that he minded the effects, particularly, but it ran the risk of being noticed.
He’d almost passed out in front of Arthur, once, before the system was fine-tuned. He’d been washing the floor by hand, and tried to stand up too fast and almost crumpled right there and then. The world had rushed in his ears as the edges of his vision crept inward, and he’d frozen in position in fear of falling.
Arthur hadn’t noticed the first stumble, but he’d caught the uncharacteristic pause, the still-life of Merlin with a hand braced on the floor for balance, taking deep breaths to push the black spots back. Reflexively, he’d lobbed some sort of insult about daydreaming across the room, but the lack of response had sent him towards concern much quicker than Merlin would’ve liked.
Luckily, the world had righted itself in his senses fast enough to allow for a snide comment and a quick escape, but he’d learned his lesson. Arthur’s stupid, worried face played in his mind when he let it go too long, sometimes.
Eventually he had it all down to an art, and this one impossibly light secret made everything else easier to carry. The emptiness didn’t float him away. It grounded him, made him better. He knew exactly where the line was, and how to walk it like a tightrope.
Even eating became part of it, if he did it right. Whenever it seemed like anyone was building towards a vaguely serious conversation, he made sure to eat in front of them with such enthusiasm that they left the meal convinced they were wrong. He knew them all too well, by now. Especially Arthur.
Until, as he might have learned to expect by now, Arthur utterly failed to follow the script.
Merlin dumped the breakfast tray on the table with a clatter and walked off, absorbed in the runes Gaius was having him learn.
“Merlin.”
The word registered without much of a splash as he tried to remember which one of the stupid symbols meant life, but the tone set off some kind of internal alarm that warned him it had probably been repeated several times. He stopped and turned.
“What?”
Arthur narrowed his eyes and pushed out the chair beside him with his foot. “Come here.”
“Now? I have to—”
“Do as I say? Why, yes, you do. Sit down.”
Merlin made no effort to conceal his sigh, and crossed the room to sit, ungracefully. Arthur frowned at him some more.
“What?” Merlin repeated irritably. “Is there something wrong with the breakfast you didn’t have to prepare, cook or fetch? Would you like it cut up and fed to you, as well?”
“It’s all there,” Arthur said, sounding more put out by this than the prospect of an un-nibbled meal really warranted.
He did repress his sigh this time. “What are you talking about? Pretend you’re talking to yourself, really spell it out for me,” he suggested. He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms rather than giving in to any number of nervous tics his body was itching for. Arthur could be annoyingly observant, when it suited him.
“Eat,” Arthur said simply, watching him closely.
He made a show of reaching for an apple and taking a bite. “Can I go now?” he said, mouth full.
Arthur just frowned some more. “Why don’t you eat anymore?” he said curiously.
Merlin stopped chewing for a moment, thrown. “What on earth are you talking about? I eat,” he said, swallowing and taking another loud, obnoxious bite. The apple was crisp and sweet.
“You never take food from my plate anymore.”
“So? Gaius does feed me, you know, and I get plenty from the kitchens on the way up, believe me.”
Arthur sat back and tilted his head, and Merlin felt oddly like some poor sod who’d just squared up to him on the training ground. “Not according to the kitchens.”
“Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “Gwaine’s been making a nuisance of himself since he realised the kitchens were full of food and women all day. Says Mary’s only letting him away with it since he’s eating your share anyway.”
“Credit me with a little more subtlety than Gwaine,” Merlin said tightly. Arthur snorted at that and he squeezed the apple rather than throw it at his stupid blond head. “Well, so? Gaius feeds me. The same damned thing every day, granted, but he does.”
His heart sank as Arthur’s mouth tightened minutely. “Funny, he says you’re never there at dinner anymore either.”
“My tyrant of a boss keeps me too busy.”
“Not that busy.”
Merlin took another, smaller bite and drummed his fingers on the table. “What’s brought this on? Since when does royalty concern itself with what servants eat? Is it affecting my work?”
“Merlin—”
“Because if not, I really don’t see how this is any of your business, sire.” Arthur opened his mouth but Merlin stood up, swiping a biscuit as he did. “I eat. But mostly, I work, and Gaius will be wondering why I’m not working right now, so…?”
Arthur pursed his lips and clearly contemplated forcing the matter, but jerked his head irritably. Merlin was gone before he’d even finished.
Walking up the hill to meet Kilgharrah was starting to feel like the story in one of Gaius’s books about the man pushing a boulder up a hill over and over. Not for the first time, Merlin thought he should really learn to transport himself magically.
Which, he allowed, might be a bit beyond him at the minute. He’d been walking too close to the edge, he knew that, and it was starting to show in his magic. Like everything, it was a fine line. When he judged it right, he was better than ever – fast, focused, powerful. When he let it go too far, things… wobbled. Only yesterday, Lancelot had sent him a concerned look when a simple light had flickered in his palm before stabilising.
He stopped in the clearing, panting like he’d just climbed the highest tower, and fought every instinct he had just to lie down. He took a deep breath and called.
He woke up flat on his back in the grass, the back of his head damp with dew. It was testament to everything wrong with his life that the sight of Kilgharrah peering down at him didn’t even make him flinch.
“Evening,” he mumbled, hauling himself upright with a wince. Kilgharrah peered some more. “Something on my face?”
“Are you ill, young warlock?”
“What? No.”
“Then perhaps you can explain why simply summoning me rendered you unconscious.”
Merlin ignored this, and paused a moment while the purpose of his visit came back to him. “I need your help.”
“So it seems,” Kilgharrah rumbled.
After listening to a few final cryptic warnings, he staggered to his feet with some reluctance. He looked in the direction of Camelot and sighed. His legs felt like jelly.
“Will that be all?” Kilgharrah asked, utterly failing to hide his boredom. Merlin honestly considered asking for a lift. He didn’t mind being dropped a few feet. He nodded instead, and the dragon inclined his head and took off. “Take care, young warlock.”
Merlin made a face and turned to face home. “Take care,” he muttered as he started to trudge back. “What is he, my mother?”
It wasn’t like he spent all his time thinking about it. It became routine, faded into the background like everything that wasn’t Arthur. His clothes got looser, and Gaius frowned at him the way he did patients sometimes, and Gwen got that concerned, pitying look in her big brown eyes, but he ignored it and stole Arthur’s breakfast and it never came up.
The only cut-off point was the one at which it started to affect his magic. Magic was never like everything else; he could never quite bring himself to deny it. He couldn’t even make himself reserve it for the important things. On his worst days, he still let it out in silly little tricks; glowing butterflies and patterns in the fire and that stupid, stupid smoke horse. So much of it was spent on danger and fighting and hiding that he almost felt he owed it that much.
What he allowed himself was still a lonely thing. Sometimes he wanted to share it with someone so badly it ached, and not out of vanity or pride. He didn’t even think of it as his, really, it just was, and he longed to grow flowers for Gwen or make Gwaine laugh, or smooth the lines of worry that were settling on Arthur’s face as the years crept on.
But he kept his secrets, big and small, and Arthur found out about them all at once, because of course he did.
There was no defence, no other explanation. He was caught in the act, eyes ablaze, and when he scrambled to his feet he only had a moment to absorb Arthur’s face before the darkness crept in and he dropped like a stone.
Typical, really.
He half expected to wake up in the dungeons. Maybe even on a pyre. Arthur’s expression as he stood over him in his chambers didn’t rate much higher, mind.
“…Happened?” he mumbled. The details slammed into his brain as the last syllable left his lips. He winced.
Arthur’s face was like stone. “You passed out,” he said flatly. “Because you don’t fucking eat.”
Merlin stared. That was not where he’d expected this to start. Arthur apparently agreed, and his mouth did something that meant a less well-bred man might have flushed. He seemed to shake himself and remember the more pressing matter.
“Are you a sorcerer?”
He hesitated, but he was so tired, and there was no point. Not now. “Warlock,” he said finally.
“Do you practise magic?” Arthur said impatiently.
Merlin didn’t know why he was getting so agitated about it. They both knew the answer to that. If he said no, what were they going to do? Pretend it never happened? Was it a way out? A test? Would he ever trust him again either way?
“Merlin. Answer me. Do you practise magic?” There was a faintly desperate edge to his voice now.
Merlin’s mouth answered before his head had even decided what to say. “I’m pretty good, actually, don’t really need to…practise,” he trailed off, in mild disbelief that he’d really just said that. Arthur looked like he felt the same. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I was born with it.”
Arthur was silent. Merlin couldn’t help but watch his hands, looking for a hint or a sign or a twitch towards his sword. He knew all his tells, by now.
“Is this the part where you tell me it’s good?” Arthur said. “That all you do with it is save kittens and grow flowers?”
Merlin couldn’t help it. He laughed. Even to his own ears, it was an ugly thing. It felt like a long time since he’d done anything with the magic other than damage.
“No,” he said. “My loyalty is to you, as it always has been. But magic is neither good nor bad, and I won’t try to tell you it is.”
Arthur nodded, face blank. “And the food?”
He let his head fall back against the wall. “Gods, Arthur, what is it with you and the food?”
“Look at you,” Arthur snapped, the cold veneer cracking. “If I didn’t know any better I’d almost think the magic—” He broke off. “There's nothing left of you. You’re fading away in front of me, and I don’t understand why, and now all I have are more questions, and why can’t you ever be simple?”
“You call me simple all the time.”
“Shut up, Merlin.” He visibly gathered himself. “Why did you never tell me?”
The obvious answers flitted across Merlin’s mind, but the simple truth rose like bile in his throat and he was too tired to do anything but let it come. “I didn’t want to lose you.”
Arthur was clearly taken aback to receive such an honest answer right off the bat. He looked strangely young, and lost. His eyes flickered down. “I wouldn’t have—”
“No one knows that, not until they're in it,” Merlin said heavily. “What if you’d found out differently? What if you’d seen me hurt someone? Kill them? I have, you know.” Arthur twitched at that, and a crackle of satisfaction ran through him. “You don’t know what you would’ve done, then. And if I’d told you? Just sat you down and told you? Would you have believed me? Would you have heard me out? Or would you have believed what you’ve been taught, the one thing surer to Uther than the rising of the sun?”
Arthur was pale and grim, but he wasn’t finished.
“Would you have called the guards? Run me through yourself? Exiled me? Made it look like an accident? Would you have told my mother?”
The scenarios he’d played in his mind for years clawed at his throat on the way out, every moment of fear and uncertainty ripping its way into the space between them. Arthur looked like he’d been slapped at the last question. He looked away.
Merlin’s breath was coming faster, and he forced himself to slow down. “You don’t know. You can’t know. And neither did I.”
Arthur swallowed. “You’ve never hurt me with it,” he said softly. “All this time, I thought I was the one who—but you could’ve—and you never—why?”
“Don’t ask me that,” Merlin said quietly.
“I’m asking.”
“Because I care about you, you great stupid dolt. I believe in the king you’re going to become, and it’s my destiny to help you there.”
“Destiny?” To Merlin’s practiced ear, he sounded almost disappointed.
“And choice,” he said. “My destiny and my choice, Arthur. Every time. Every day. You’re the choice I make.”
He let it sit in the air, the truth of him, and waited as Arthur looked briefly stricken, then leaned back against the wall and dragged his hands down over his face. He took a deep breath. “I have questions.”
Merlin forced down the lump in his throat and nodded.
Some things were easier, after that. He didn’t have to worry about Arthur finding out anymore, which was nice. It was a lot easier to hide the magic from people he didn’t spend all his time with. It didn’t mean being around Arthur was entirely relaxing, though.
He didn’t ask for every detail, or at least not yet. Merlin wasn’t sure if he was hurt or relieved about that. Arthur himself didn’t seem to be sure what he thought. Even Merlin couldn’t always read the look on his face when he caught him watching.
Other times, he asked awkwardly to see it. In those ice-thin early days Merlin was at a loss for what to show him – did he want to know if he was dangerous? Useful in battle? Utterly incompetent? But he let his instincts decide and that wild, unnecessary beauty unspooled from under his skin where it lay, forming crests out of sparks and flowers from nothing. The childlike wonder on Arthur’s magic-lit face left imprints in his mind, like looking into the sun. It hurt in the same strange way.
Arthur watched him more in general now, though, whether it was to catch more magic or as though if he didn’t he would miss something. Or maybe he simply didn’t trust him; Merlin hadn’t figured that out yet, either.
The scrutiny was sort of unsettling. Years of hiding in the shadows weren’t so easily undone. Besides, now he knew Arthur had definitely noticed the food thing, he was uncomfortably aware of himself on a physical level - how his clothes lay on him, whether he looked as much like a walking corpse as he felt, some mornings.
At least the magic had directed Arthur’s attention away from that part.
Briefly. Very, very briefly.
He blinked as Arthur slammed a tray down in front of him. He looked up and almost flinched from the force of the glare.
“What now?”
“Eat.”
“This again?”
“This again, since apparently you can’t be trusted to take care of yourself.”
“Can’t take care of anyone,” Merlin muttered bitterly, staring at the book. He rubbed his eyes, gritty from lack of sleep and too much candlelit reading. He still couldn’t figure out what was wrong, where the sickness was coming from or how to stop it.
Arthur made a strange noise. “Is that what this is about?” he said. “Punishment?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Merlin said, reaching for a handful of whatever was on the tray, which naturally turned out to be porridge. He stared at his hand in despair, looked around for a napkin, and licked it off with a grimace. Arthur was still looking at him. “My god, has the future king got nothing better to do?” he snapped. He only felt a little bad at the way Arthur’s face fell. He was stretched thin, too, appealing uselessly to his father for more aid and typically frustrated by a problem he couldn’t fight head-on.
“Merlin, you do know this isn’t your fault?”
“What, you being annoying? Well aware, sire, now if you could just—”
“It’s not your fault,” Arthur repeated.
Merlin closed the book less than gently. “Isn’t it?”
Arthur shrugged. “Based on the other stories you’ve told me, it’s probably my father’s, somehow.”
“And who’s supposed to be able to stop it? Whose only job is the magical defence of Camelot and who still can’t even pronounce the spell he can’t find?”
“Merlin.”
“People are going to die if I don’t figure this out. I’ve been responsible for enough death.”
Arthur pursed his lips. “So it is punishment.”
Merlin tucked the book under his arm and stood in one movement, thankful his body didn’t let him sway, this time. “I’m not a puzzle for you to figure out, Arthur.”
He wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t see it might have been a bit of a problem. But it came and went, and much more consistent than the problem was his own stubbornness, so the next time Arthur presented him with a meal and demanded he eat it, he froze the entire plate solid in temper.
The ice crackled, spreading out onto the wood of the table.
Arthur threw up his hands. “What is wrong with you?”
“How long have you got?” Merlin snarled. He didn’t get up and stomp out, because he was not, contrary to what Arthur seemed to think, a recalcitrant toddler.
He took a deep breath that wasn’t as calming as he would’ve liked. He was hungry, and not even intentionally. He might even have been pleased to see the food if Arthur hadn’t opened his fat mouth.
Deciding to behave like the adult he was, he clicked his fingers and steam rose from the plate again as if nothing had happened. He speared a piece of chicken on his fork. “You’re seeing a problem where there is none, sire.”
Arthur glared.
Arthur didn’t think he was ready. That much was obvious, to Merlin if not anyone else. No one had expected Uther to be handing over so much responsibility so soon. He’d always seemed more the type to go out in battle, or in the middle of shouting at someone. Not this quiet retreat, all his years seeming to fall on him at once like a sudden, heavy snow.
It was weighing on Arthur, and therefore it was weighing on Merlin, who wished he was slightly less attuned to Arthur’s every mood. At least Arthur managed to let himself relax at night, when it was just the two of them in his chambers. Merlin’s brain was apparently under the impression that this was a waste of valuable stress time, and eventually his constant fidgeting ran up against the end of Arthur’s patience.
A few glasses of wine in, Arthur was watching him sort through papers for a third time when he spoke.
“Won’t it be easier? Everything,” he added, when he remembered Merlin wasn’t a mind-reader. “Isn’t it what this great bloody prophecy is about, me being king?”
Merlin unclenched his fingers from the parchment and pulled his sleeve down absently. His hands were always the first to show it, when he hadn’t been eating.
It was possible he’d been a little light on the details of the prophecy. Part of him wanted to spare Arthur the weight of the whole uniting Albion and bringing back magic thing, and part of him honestly believed it might jinx it to say it. He’d mention it later. Preferably when it was done, if that ever happened and he didn’t fuck it up, somehow.
Arthur looked down at his glass and continued, tiredness-softened words filling the space Merlin had left. “I don’t know, I just thought maybe you’d be able to—relax a little, is all.”
Merlin squinted at him. “Relax?”
“You know what I mean, you’re all…” Arthur flapped a hand in his direction, which he took to mean ‘more highly strung than a practice bow’.
“Yes, because being king is such a safe job, there’ll be nothing at all for me to do. They all die peacefully in their sleep at ninety. Honestly, it’s a miracle—”
“If you’ve quite finished digging my grave, Merlin,” Arthur said drily, but there was a trace of fondness in his voice.
Merlin watched the firelight dance along the line of his jaw. All traces of his usually regal posture were gone by now, and he sat low and loose, shirt open halfway down his chest. Merlin was torn between admiration and sheer annoyance that he dared be so well-lit and languid while he felt like an anxious bag of twigs.
“Well. A servant’s work is never done, is it?”
“You won’t be a servant forever,” Arthur said absently, then froze, embarrassed.
Merlin just stared. “…Right.”
Most days he still felt like it was pure, blind luck that he’d stumbled into a world where so much had gone right.
Uther was little more than a memory, now. Camelot had welcomed back magic with surprisingly few catastrophes. Children teased each other with it in the street, pastries were made with it in the bakeries, and no one batted an eye. The magical threats hadn’t disappeared entirely, but they’d decreased in number and shifted in nature enough that Merlin was getting more sleep than he’d had in years.
There was talk of alliances between the kingdoms, tentative whispers of a union under Arthur’s steady hand. A lasting peace of a kind that would’ve been unthinkable even a decade before. The future, for the first time, didn’t feel like an axe waiting to fall.
The paths not taken still haunted him, some nights. It was like he could see it, a huge, sprawling network of roots, every decision branching off into a thousand others, every place where it might have all fallen apart. Every time he almost lost Arthur, almost let one of a dozen spinning plates drop. He heard them shatter in his dreams, and woke gasping in a room lit by magic.
Not everyone knew about him, even now. At least not everything he’d done for them, over the years. It still made his heart race to think about, but he couldn’t argue against it much longer.
There was just no reason anymore – for the lies, the secrecy, the life lived in the dark that had been his for so many years. Sometimes, it felt like there was no reason for him anymore, in this new Camelot that seemed to bear none of the scars he did. But he stayed, for the same reason he always had. Denying himself Arthur had never come quite as naturally as everything else.
Sometimes Merlin was so fiercely, brilliantly proud of him it felt like it would burst from his chest and set something on fire. The years and Uther’s absence had made him his own man, and he wore his experience easily. Merlin had more of him than he’d ever dared to dream of, back then, and they treated each other as true equals. Sometimes he looked at Merlin like he understood him, and for all he’d faced it terrified him.
He was different, too. For all his prickliness when Arthur had asked, once, he supposed he had relaxed with time. He’d let himself fill out a little, realising with the wisdom of age that he’d probably looked a bit sickly most of the time, before. He got less worried looks, this way. But the old habits had proved harder to let go of than he’d expected, and he’d never gotten away from them entirely.
The distrust was hard to shake, too, but he tried, and Arthur was always there to remind him. He must have changed more than he realised, since he’d finally agreed to let Arthur name him Court Sorcerer, a position that had sat conspicuously empty ever since repeal. Geoffrey had been gently prodding him about it for years, wittering on about it being tradition and a good diplomatic sign, but Arthur had always waved it off, insisting it could wait. Until Merlin was ready.
He was up late, the night before, looking up laws and precedents and generally stewing in the stress of everyone knowing. He heard the door open and knew without turning around that it was Arthur. He didn’t look up from the paragraph he was fighting his way through, but he could feel his eyes on him.
Arthur’s footsteps came closer, and he cursed internally as his stomach rumbled. He’d gotten much better about the eating and sleeping, really. Usually. He risked a glance up at Arthur, whose forehead crinkled on cue as he sat down across the table from him.
“Make yourself at home.”
“My castle.”
Merlin grunted and kept reading until the torturous paragraph ended. He closed the book and looked up, squinting. “Need something?”
“Just checking in.”
“I said I’d be there, didn’t I?”
“Only after years of threatening to run away and live in a cave,” Arthur said drily. “Have you eaten?”
“Oh, don’t start.”
“Have you?”
“No,” Merlin admitted with a half smile. “But I just didn’t realise the time, really.”
Arthur nodded, but there was a hint of sadness in his eyes that was unusual to see, these days. He scratched at the table with his nails. Merlin watched him closely. “Alright, what is it?”
Arthur licked his lips and looked up like he was steeling himself for something. “Are you happy here?” he said abruptly. “In Camelot?”
“What?” Merlin said, genuinely taken aback. “Of course I am, what are you talking about?”
Arthur was silent, thinking. “Things are different now,” he said finally. Merlin waited. Clearly, whatever this was had been bothering him. “I don’t know, Merlin. All the—I know about your magic. It’s back in Camelot, I’m king, we made peace with the druids. Magical attacks are down, we have a chance at real unity with the other kingdoms, there hasn’t been a serious war in years.”
“I know all this, Arthur, why are you telling me?”
“Because you don’t have to live like you did before, and I just don’t—Is there something else I can do, or something you—”
“Arthur, Arthur,” Merlin said, alarmed. “What’s brought this on?”
“I was giving you space, and time to figure it out, and I thought maybe now we’ve achieved everything you were working for, all those years, alone—” His voice wavered.
“It’s not like it was,” Merlin interrupted gently. Arthur’s face betrayed a hint of surprise. Merlin never engaged in these kinds of conversations, not really. “It’s not. I know that. It’s just—Old habits, I suppose.”
He smiled at Arthur, and as their eyes met he knew they were thinking the same thing. How mad it still seemed, some days, that they had known each other long enough to know each other’s old habits the way they did.
Merlin still drifted to the sidelines in fights, but Arthur knew to look for him there, now. He still stayed up all night working on a problem, and cleaned like Gaius was going to tell him off for the state of his room.
Arthur still walked into the throne room like it wasn’t his, sometimes. Like he was ready to defer to his father, to kneel to a ghost. Merlin tried to distract him before they got there, when he saw it coming, saw him slip into his young, uncertain skin. He still twisted the ring on his forefinger, and smiled the way he had that first day in the market, and he was still funny and spoilt and wildly, bravely noble.
“I know,” he said. “But you’re not alone anymore, Merlin.”
It shouldn’t have surprised him anymore when Arthur was annoyingly perceptive. He was right, in a way. Merlin did know he wasn’t alone. But it had never been about that, not fully. He didn’t know how to explain it. He never had.
He’d never had the words for how the ache felt right, how the scales of the things that kept him up at night seemed to creak towards balance when there was nothing but air in him. How it made him feel strong and sure, even as his hands shook and his eyes dulled. How it was his, just his, even if nothing else was.
“I know that,” he said. “I do, I promise, I just—maybe I forget, sometimes, is all.”
It wasn’t quite what he meant, but it was what he could say. What Arthur could understand.
Arthur reached across the table and took his hand like it was nothing at all, like it was something he did every day. There was no hesitation, no uncertainty. Whatever Arthur did, he did with his whole heart, always.
The calluses from his sword were the same as they always had been, but Merlin was suddenly, oddly emotional at the ease of the gesture after years of friendly claps on the back and hair ruffling. They had grown so much.
“Perhaps you should let me remind you,” he said quietly.
Merlin forced his hand to stay still. “I know.”
“You don’t,” Arthur said, with a small, crooked smile.
Merlin squashed the flutter in his chest. He knew what they were. What he could have. It was enough. It had to be.
Arthur took a breath and tightened his grip slightly. “I am yours,” he said, like it was easy, like water rolling down a hill, like it changed nothing. “In any way you will have me, and I will not lose you. I will not let you be alone.”
“Don’t,” Merlin croaked. There was a grim familiarity to it, this reflexive refusal of the thing he wanted most. He forced himself to breathe, and cleared his throat. “Arthur, things are fine the way they are, I—”
“Are they?” Arthur said. “All these years, I’ve let this go.” He shook his head slightly at Merlin’s raised eyebrows. “I have, Merlin, I’ve watched you punish yourself and run on your last reserves, and you still won’t talk about it, and—”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Merlin insisted. “You said it yourself. Everything is good. We’re at peace, you’re making me a bloody Court Sorcerer—”
“My Court Sorcerer,” Arthur cut in, squeezing his hand. “And you deserve it, and more, and it is a fault on my part that you have neither received nor believed it before.” Merlin looked away, face heating. “You deserve this,” he repeated, “And I cannot understand why you won’t let yourself have it.”
“I already agreed.”
“Not just that, Merlin, any of it. You act like every day it doesn’t all fall apart is just—Luck, but it’s you, you’re the reason—”
“Don’t make me out to be some kind of hero, I’ve done more than the people Uther burned combined.”
“What is it you can’t get past?” Arthur said insistently, refusing to drop his gaze. “Is it Nimueh? Morgana? The lies you’ve told me? The people you’ve hurt to save my life?”
Merlin yanked his hand away like it was on fire. The way his magic was thrumming under his skin, it felt like it might soon be. His heart pounded. “I never told you about—”
“I know you didn’t, and I couldn’t fathom what might be so unforgivable you would have to atone all these years, so I asked Gaius, and you know what? I don’t care, Merlin. About any of it. Whatever you think you need forgiving for, I forgive you.”
“That’s not what I want, Arthur, it’s not—”
“Then what do you want?” Arthur said desperately, and Merlin let his iron grip on his control slip.
He leaned forward, grabbed Arthur by the collar, and kissed him.
Everything went quiet: Arthur, the noise in Merlin’s head, the crackle of the fire behind him. Everything fell away for a few seconds, until Merlin let go and slumped back into the chair, part of him horrified he had done it and the rest busily committing the feel of Arthur’s lips to memory.
Sound filtered back in. His pulse beat loud in his ears.
“Huh,” Arthur said.
“Oh, fuck,” he breathed. “Arthur, sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
Arthur held up a hand, and for possibly the first time in their relationship, Merlin obediently shut up and waited. His utter terror faded somewhat as, with all his years of Arthur Pendragon expertise, he felt rather than saw the levels of smugness in the room rise.
Arthur wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb, and his lips quirked up in a manner entirely unbefitting a man who had just been pounced on by his best friend. He leaned back in the chair and settled in. Prick.
“So, just to clarify, Merlin, what, precisely, did you think I was trying to say a minute ago?” he said. “When I said I was yours, in any way you would have me?”
Merlin’s brain stuttered to a halt. He suspected his mouth was hanging open. Surely he didn’t mean—
Arthur started ticking off on his fingers. “Asking what I can do to make you happy. Telling you I’m yours. Kissing you back,” he said, with particular emphasis. “I can go back further than the last five minutes if I must, but if you were a woman we’d be married by now.”
“Married?” Merlin squawked faintly.
Arthur leaned forward and took his hands again. He met no resistance. “I want this,” he said. “But more than that I want you to let yourself be happy, for once.” He rubbed a thumb over Merlin’s knuckle and horrifically, Merlin felt his throat tighten at the gesture. “You know, there’s a feast tomorrow. For you, even if you won’t let anyone say it.”
Merlin muttered something about organising most of it, focusing on his hands so he wouldn’t have to show off the colour of his face.
“Will you be there, beside me?”
It was bizarre, how part of him still wanted to say no. To watch everyone eat at the feast, or not eat for days after. To hold Arthur safely at a distance, and take the meagre heat from the fire of him rather than throw himself into it.
He looked up. Arthur’s hair was tousled, and the lines on his face and shadows under his eyes were fast becoming permanent. More than a crown, they were the true marks of a king. His eyes searched Merlin’s, painfully sincere in way his younger self would scarcely have believed.
The things he’d done rose in him like a wave, and he found himself wanting to list them all, to drag everything even Gaius didn’t know out into the light and show Arthur all the ways he could never deserve this.
He thought about how young he’d been, the year he came to Camelot. Innocent, naïve, maybe. But less afraid, in some ways. Braver, quicker to tell the truth. Sometimes it felt like the lies and the darkness took up space inside him, like there was no room left for him. He wasn’t just Merlin anymore, he was a sorcerer, a liar, a murderer. Camelot’s defense and vengeance. Emrys. Kingmaker. Destiny’s pawn and magic incarnate.
But Arthur, in his way, knew the weight of that. And Arthur was here with him, at this table, not a king at all. Maybe they were both still the boys they had been, somewhere underneath it all.
Arthur looked nervous, but certain. He’d never been a coward, after all, not like Merlin, who would have waited for the rest of his life and let himself think it a virtue to hold something so precious at arm’s length.
It all seemed so absurd, suddenly, and for the first time in a long time he found himself wanting to say yes not for Arthur, but for himself.
And so he said it, and Arthur’s face broke into a broad smile. The corners of his eyes crinkled and he stood, walking around the table to Merlin, where he leaned down and kissed him again.
Merlin stood with him, pulled helplessly upward. Hunger lit in him like a flame in a forge, hot and sudden – not the slow, subtle creep of emptiness he’d made a home of all these years, but a flare of all-consuming, magnetic want.
His heart rose to meet it, as everything he’d ever felt for Arthur flowed through him like light. He’d never imagined such fullness could exist, could drown out the hunger so easily.
He couldn’t remember why he had ever denied himself this; this more natural than breathing, than eating, than magic.
There were still days he wanted to echo in emptiness, to pull it all taut and feel for the sharp edges. But as Camelot flourished, they grew fewer and farther between, and the instinct for denial seemed more and more jarring against the peace and prosperity he could see everywhere.
The work was never done, he’d been right about that, but the future didn’t seem quite so much like an avalanche on a precipice anymore, either.
Magic leapt from his fingertips like it could barely be contained, like it would never end, like abundance and freedom was all there had ever been. Arthur was rarely more than a touch away, and he overflowed with life, older and wiser and more himself than ever before.
The first time Merlin didn’t even notice he’d finished his meal, no panic trickled in. He realised he hadn’t thought about it in days, and that no second thought had stood between him and Arthur in much, much longer than that.
Contentment was an altogether different beast from the sharp satisfaction he had survived so many years on.
He caught Arthur’s hand under the table and sent a pulse of magic through his fingers. Arthur just smiled.