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Merlin did not want to get up.
Throughout the night, as he lay there cocooned in the woolen blanket Hunith had sent all the way from Ealdor, he thought about how nice and toasty he felt and what a shame it would be when he was forced to untangle himself from it to go do his chores in the frosty air of Camelot on the cusp of winter.
He really didn’t want to.
Half-lucid, he comforted himself with the fact that while he was going to have to get up and freeze to death convincing Arthur’s horse to leave his comfy stall so Merlin could muck it without getting his head kicked in, it was still dark outside - as far as he could tell with his eyes shut - and Arthur himself wouldn’t be up for hours after the sun first peeked through Merlin’s window.
Merlin scowled to himself.
Maybe, just maybe, while he was on his way down the stables, he would stop by Arthur’s room and accidentally drop a few buckets or pans while he was there.
It would serve the prat right.
While he had been snoring away last night, Merlin had been trekking through the woods near the castle trying to find a rogue sorceress who had been dropping Arthur random threat letters that Merlin had been intercepting and dealing with before Arthur could even lay eyes on them. Tonight was the first night Merlin had even kind of slept that week, and even then, it wasn’t very well. Somewhere around the small of his back, a dull ache had started up some time during the night and was spreading outward to his shoulder blades and down his legs. He tried repositioning, but his limbs also felt like rocks were tied to them, and he didn’t want to accidentally drop Hunith’s blanket on the floor and have to go after it.
The floor was freezing.
Merlin wasn’t going to risk it.
But perhaps if he got up and lay on it, the slow burning would be soothed and go away, and he could catch a few more hours of sleep without thinking. Because the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was more than just his back, arms, and legs - his head was hurting, too, as though a headache were just ramping up or coming to an end.
Merlin really did not want to get up.
Would it be so bad if he called in sick?
Plenty of the other castle staff did it when they were feeling under the weather. And he himself hadn’t done it at all - if one discounted all of the times that he had been poisoned, stabbed, and generally cursed by magic users and/or life in general , not to mention the other times when Merlin had been slaving away for Arthur behind the scenes.
Surely, just taking one day off, one day for himself wouldn’t do any harm. Arthur would simply ask George to do whatever Merlin normally did for him (which wasn’t a lot if anyone went by what Arthur claimed). Arthur would get the treatment he thought he deserved, and Merlin would get a full night’s worth of sleep for one in his life.
Just one day off.
Of course, that one day off would be the one day that a sorcerer would decide that it was on his or her morning agenda to bring an end to the Pendragon line and mass destruction upon Camelot, and nobody else but Merlin would be around to both stop it and stop Arthur.
No, he couldn’t take the day completely off.
A few more hours of lying in bed wouldn’t hurt, though, he reasoned, as the shade in the room began to lighten in the paleness of early morning. Outside, a lone dog was barking, muffled by the distance.
Soon, the courthouse would be clattering with the metal of horse’s hooves against the pavement and a dozen castle staff scurrying about to obey their lord’s command.
At the idea, he grimaced. When he tried to wiggle it, his left foot felt as though he’d stepped on a rusty iron nail. He mildly remembered tripping over a minor tree root the previous evening in his haste to finish the task, but he hadn’t thought it had been that bad of an injury. He didn’t know how he was going to keep up with Arthur if he decided it was the perfect day to play whack-a-mole with the knights (and Merlin) in the training yard. He’d take one swing at Merlin, and Merlin would fold like a corn doll in the middle of the dry season.
When he got up, he would ask Gauis to give him something for it.
He cracked an eye open. To his right, the sun blared through the window, and he glared right back at it before giving up and squeezing his eyes shut in hopes of blocking it and his full-body headache out.
It was later than he had thought, but early.
Too early.
He didn’t know how he was going to get up. Although it seemed like too monumental of an effort, he would have to shove the pain aside and make himself. For Arthur.
He forced his eyes open again and turned his head away from the offensive window until his gaze slid to a stop on the spot next to his bed.
Huh. There was a chair there.
And Arthur was sitting in it, his elbow braced against the arm - it looked like it had been dragged from the prince’s own chambers - and his cheek mashed against his fist as he, too, slumbered.
Merlin didn’t understand.
What was he doing there?
Had he come all the way to the physician’s chambers to drag Merlin out of bed and then decided to…wait? Take a nap?
Merlin started laughing.
Or rather, he tried to. It felt like taking a mace to the shoulder all over again. It stung, stung, stung unless Merlin was gasping for air and tears were in the corner of his eyes.
It hurt.
He couldn’t figure out what was wrong with himself, but his body wasn’t responding to what his mind wanted him to as though the thick mud he’d fallen into after tripping over the tree root was still sticking to his limbs.
Arthur, he said, but what actually came out was something like a rough, unintelligible mutter from a swamp monster
It did the trick, though.
Arthur shot up as though Merlin had dumped a bucket of ice cold water over his head. His gaze snapped wildly around the room before settling on Merlin.
“Merlin,” he breathed, reaching forward as though he were going to grip Merlin by the shoulders but hesitating before actually making contact. He settled for letting his hand drop on the pillow next to Merlin’s head.
Merlin would have thought that this was some kind of grand joke or a lead up to being ordered to clean out the stables if not for Arthur’s rough hair (a telltale sign that he had been spending less time looking in a mirror than as per usual), the uncertainty in his voice, and the relieved-yet-still-frightened look in his eye.
What was going on?
“What?”
It was the only word Merlin could seem to get out, and it wasn’t very intelligible at that.
“Do you know where you are?”
Merlin looked around the room again. Although his clothes and a few dirtied socks had been picked off the floor by some benevolent helper, nothing else had changed. Was this some sort of a trick question? Suddenly, he felt very tired, as though he had been hiking for hours rather than lying there for minutes after a rather long slumber. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “M’room.”
He didn’t understand why Arthur looked close to crying (for Arthur), but he did understand that something was or had been wrong. “‘M’all right,” he slurred, his mouth thick as though a thick wad of cotton had been shoved into it, closing his eyes for a second to block out the light once more.
“Right,” Arthur echoed in a tone of voice Merlin could not tell if it was for his sake or Merlin’s. “Just go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up again.”
Merlin tried to ask Arthur if he’d gotten knocked on the head - actually telling Merlin to stay in bed - but he found that he didn’t have the energy to.
…
Merlin did not want to get up.
Although he felt as though he could sleep for hours more, his head would no longer let him stay unconscious. In the other room, Gaius clanked dishes around, and a chair scraped across the floor.
He must be quite late.
Arthur was going to have his hide. It wouldn’t matter that he’d been trapeizing through the woods the previous night to help the ungrateful prat, not, what really mattered was whether or not Arthur had his sausages nice and toasty instead of cold.
Well, it was best to get it over with before he could talk himself out of it.
Gathering his blanket about himself as best as he could, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. As his head caught up with the rest of him, he blinked.
It was going to be a long day.
But no, he was not going to call in sick.
With a soft creeeeak, the wooden door to his room swung open, allowing a shaft of brighter light to stab into the room.
He blinked.
“What are you doing?”
He was still blinking when Arthur fumbled with the teacup he was carrying and ended up dropping it to the side to help Merlin do nothing.
“Got to get your breakfast,” Merlin muttered, scowling and trying to bat Arthur’s hands, which were being more of a hindrance than a help, away from his face.
Although come to think of it, if Arthur had taken enough initiative to get his own tea, he could’ve certainly gotten his own breakfast by now.
The cross answer seemed to bring relief instead of irritation. “Well, you shouldn’t be up,” Arthur said, giving up on mother henning and going straight to the brute force as he forced Merlin to lie back down.
Merlin thought about complaining.
Considered it.
Almost said the words.
But he didn’t when Arthur turned around to retrieve the half-spilt mug of tea and handed it to Merlin. “Here. Have this.”
As Merlin drained the mug of bitterness, the burst of energy - if it could even be called that - which had prompted his waking drained away, leaving him empty once more.
Arthur, who had been watching him like a hawk, took the cup from him and set it to the side again. Merlin stared at him through half-lidded eyes that eventually closed before he realized.
“It’ll be okay,” was the last thing he heard Arthur say, almost as though he were reassuring himself, before Merlin drifted off again.
And for a moment, it was.