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moogingFINALLY, this thing is finished.
Title: I Don't Believe It
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: PG - possibly a PG13, but only for language.
Word Count: ~3600
Disclaimer: Merlin belongs to the BBC and not me, Sin City belongs to people other than me, and I am most definitely not making any money from this.
Summary: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
reel_merlin challenge, with the film prompt of Sin City. This is kind of one part Sin City, one part Merlin and one part actual madness. It involves Arthur being foolish with an arrow, Merlin telling a series of ridiculous lies and Camelot getting into trouble.
A/N: There is actually no possible way I could have got this finished at all, and definitely not before the deadline, had it not been for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rionaleonhart being an amazing beta, and person, and in short I probably owe her at least one of my vital organs. The title is also lovingly taken from something else that does not belong to me (One Foot in the Grave), and not without a hefty dose of irony. This is not even remotely what I thought I would end up writing when I signed up for this thing, but it is at least better than I thought it would be! Er, hurray?
“What,” says Merlin, and then kind of chokes and has to start again. “What the actual hell, Arthur?”
Arthur stares at him. “You do remember that I could have you killed for that, right?”
“Does that even matter right now?” Merlin asks, incredulous. “You just murdered someone. Just because something is moving in a forest doesn’t make it okay to hunt! Do you even look before you aim that thing?”
“You let me know when your hunting skills kick in,” Arthur retorts. “He was moving fast, anyone could have - “
“It doesn’t matter,” Merlin says, painfully aware that the pitch in his voice could probably shatter glass. “Have you lost your mind? How could you mistake a man for game?”
Arthur folds his arms, defensive for the first time. “Merlin,” he says.
“No,” Merlin says, yanking open the collar of the dead man lying sprawled at their feet. “You don’t get to play the Prince card when you’ve just killed one of Bayard’s men.” Arthur actually has the decency to look a bit shame-faced now, which Merlin considers to be something of an under-reaction considering how Uther is going to take this news. “You know what this means for the kingdom. You know we were barely at peace before this.”
“Er,” says Arthur.
“Yes, ‘er’,” says Merlin. “You realise you’re going to have to tell your father? And quickly?”
Arthur seems to re-group. He shifts his weight into a more aggressive stance, frowning. “Merlin, as my manservant, I order you to – Merlin? What are you doing?”
Merlin has cleverly foreseen Arthur making this decision. Feigning a stumble, he staggers back into a perfectly harmless, if slightly prickly, shrub and lets out a cry of pain. “Ouch!” he bellows, milking the moment for all he can. “Oh no! No! Not the – er – Bush of Rashitude!”
“The what?” asks Arthur, knitting his eyebrows together in the way he does when he thinks he’s missing something but he shouldn’t really show it. “Merlin, get out of the foliage.”
“Ouch, my entire being,” wails Merlin, wringing his hands. Then he decides that this might be a bridge too far, and settles for limping pathetically back into the forest clearing, looking up through his eyelashes like he used to do with his mother when she was about to tell him off for falling out of a tree and not breaking a bone. Ah, the childhood of a secret warlock. He affects a wince when he puts his left foot down.
“Are you alright?” Arthur looks genuinely concerned – it is well hidden, but it is there – and Merlin would be starting to feel a bit guilty did he not know that the alternative to lying through his teeth would be telling Uther that there was a war coming with Mercia because his son was an arrow-happy prick. Perhaps he would use slightly different words to convey this message; then again, perhaps not.
“I’ll be fine,” he says, and holds up a hand as Arthur starts to step towards him. “No!” he says, arranging his face into what he hopes is a suitably horrified expression. “Don’t come near me! That shrub – it’s poisonous. I’m highly contagious now.”
Arthur’s face is doing that suspicious thing it does whenever he thinks Merlin is trying to do something – well, something like this. “You only fell into a plant, Merlin,” he says. “You can’t be ill already.”
Merlin tries to fight the urge to fling his hand across his forehead and slump to the ground. This, he knows, would be too much. “Gaius has warned me of this plant,” he says, weakly.
Arthur starts to look slightly more convinced. “Gaius knows of this?”
“Yes,” Merlin lies, hastily. “There’s no way I could approach the king now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I could infect him, and then there would be nobody to command the knights in the inevitable war that is coming since you killed that guy.”
Arthur takes a few steps back. “So it’s really that infectious?”
“Yes,” repeats Merlin. “But don’t worry, I won’t be contagious for an hour or two. At least long enough to get us back to Camelot.” In a rush of heat up his neck, Merlin realises that this completely contradicts what he’s just said, but, hopefully, Arthur will be too worried about not immediately catching this fictional disease to notice any errors on Merlin's part. He tenses up, anxiously.
“Alright,” says Arthur, eying him warily, and Merlin exhales. “We’d better hurry then.” When Merlin feels himself relax, Arthur adds, “But I will need to speak to Gaius.”
“What?” squeaks Merlin, and then he says, “I mean, yes, of course.”
“You understand I have to discover how serious the risk of infection is,” Arthur says, and Merlin honestly cannot tell whether he is being serious or not. “I can’t have you running around felling the populace.”
Merlin bites back the urge to say, no, that’s obviously your job, isn’t it. Instead, he says, “You’d better tell Uther about this man first. Er,” – this at a sideways glance from Arthur – “who knows when Bayard will choose to attack? Camelot may be in danger every moment that Uther is unaware.”
“You may be right,” says Arthur, still scrutinising Merlin. “But a little more respect wouldn’t hurt.”
Merlin fakes a rattling cough and tries to look ill. Arthur relents, “Fine,” and they mount their horses and set off.
Riding at speed has never been one of Merlin’s strong points.
When they get back to Camelot, Merlin takes a minute to feel supremely smug that he will not be spending a day in the stocks for bringing Uther news that his city will shortly be under siege (this is greatly enhanced by the sight of Arthur taking a breath and squaring his shoulders before heading in the direction of the hall, when he thinks Merlin can’t see him), and then he takes to his heels once Arthur is out of sight and pelts to find Gaius, to inform him that he is now dying after being poisoned by the Bush of Rashitude.
“The Bush of what?” Gaius asks.
“Er,” says Merlin, looking down at his hands and suddenly feeling quite ridiculous, “the Bush of Rashitude?”
“Right,” says Gaius. “And this manifests itself how, precisely?”
“Well I don’t know, do I?” yelps Merlin. “I made it up!”
Gaius looks suspiciously like he’s trying not to laugh. He is not particularly skilled at concealing his amusement whenever Merlin has finagled his way into a sticky situation, although maybe he is but chooses to show it regardless. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Lie!” Merlin says. “Tell Arthur it’s real, or I will probably end up in either the dungeons or the stocks, and someone needs to be around to help him out in the next few days, considering there’s going to be a war.”
“Alright, alright,” says Gaius, patting the side of Merlin’s shoulders distractedly. “Leave it to me.”
This is very good timing; just as Gaius has said this, Arthur bursts into the room.
“Ah, Prince Arthur,” says Gaius, nodding at him respectfully. “How can we help you?”
“Is he really ill?” Arthur asks, indicating Merlin.
“Yes, sire,” Gaius tells him, as Merlin tries to breathe out in relief without being too obvious or collapsing. “The, er, Bush of Rashitude has well-known poisonous effects. The symptoms haven’t quite manifested themselves yet in this case, which is quite fortunate – there is a cure, but it can only be implemented before the sufferer becomes unwell.”
“There is?” asks Arthur, at the same time as Merlin goes, “There is?” and Arthur gives him an odd look. “I mean,” says Merlin, hastily, “there is!”
“Yes,” Gaius continues. “He needs to immediately come into contact with natural remedies, containing health-restoring nutrients, at a high velocity.” Arthur wrinkles his forehead; Gaius adds, “Sire, I think he would be instantly cured if he could be placed in the stocks.”
“Really?” Arthur says.
Gaius says, looking serious, “Really.”
Merlin may never forgive him for this.
What is particularly galling is that almost as soon as he is fastened into the stocks – this being the next day; Merlin at least managed to insist that sleeping would be crucial to his recovery, or hadn’t Gaius been made aware of that development of the disease theory? – the city bell starts tolling, and all the knights of Camelot rush past him in full battle armour.
“Arthur,” calls Merlin, as Arthur runs past, face set and intent, “what’s happening?”
“This is it,” he shouts back. There is a moment where he falters, and Merlin’s heart does a sort of flip in his chest, and then he says, running briefly to Merlin’s side, ”It’s too soon; Camelot’s not ready.”
“Oh,” says Merlin, feeling completely inadequate, and watches Arthur sprint out of the city gates.
By dusk, Merlin is sore, and filthy, and his back hurts from spending so long hunched over, and the knights of Camelot still haven’t returned. Gaius comes to let him out of the stocks with a grim expression on his face, and Merlin says, “Just, don’t, alright,” and Gaius doesn’t say a word.
Merlin sits on the castle steps, and waits.
It is much, much later by the time the men return. None of them so much as glance at Merlin, which he is used to, but what he is not ready for is the way none of them glance at anything but the ground in front of their feet, like they’re beaten, like they’ve lost. He runs up to Arthur as soon as he is within sight, and whispers, tentatively, “Is that it? Is it all over?”
“For tonight,” says Arthur, like even speaking is an effort, and Merlin presses his lips together as tightly as he can, and follows Arthur into the castle.
The next morning, Merlin stands and watches as the knights all stream back out of the city gates. Arthur stops for a minute, standing next to Merlin in silence, until Merlin can’t help it; he sneezes, and Arthur turns to look at him, and says, “I never asked, are you alright now?”
“Yes,” says Merlin, and feels hideously guilty. “How are you holding up?”
“I’d be a lot better if we could win this battle already,” says Arthur, with a rueful sort of laugh, and Merlin snorts along with him.
“Maybe you should start fighting naked,” he says, trying to make Arthur smile. “That’d at least give you the element of surprise.” To his amazement, Arthur stares at him, apparently genuinely considering this. “I was kidding,” says Merlin, quickly, and Arthur says, “Oh, yes, I know.”
Arthur lopes off after the other knights, and Merlin thinks, shit, don’t actually strip, you idiot.
Gaius tries to make him be helpful that day, but all Merlin can seem to do is stand at the gates, staring at a battlefield where anything could be happening. At one point there is a roar, but from which side and for what reason, Merlin has absolutely no idea, and if using magic would help in any way in this situation, he would have cast every spell he could think of trying to make this better. As it is, he’s too far away to be sure of anything working, and getting closer would mean he would damn sure be caught, and so he stands there, ignoring Gaius, and not being able to do anything useful at all. It is irritating, and it is difficult, and it is also slightly pointless, but what the hell.
Today, when the knights troop back into Camelot, they all look decidedly more cheerful. Of course, this could be because they are all half naked, what, what the hell, thinks Merlin, and he practically pounces on Arthur as soon as he sees him.
“What the hell, Arthur,” he hisses, because, seriously, what.
“It worked, Merlin,” says Arthur, looking the most jubilant Merlin has ever seen him, and as Merlin is a bit busy going, “What? What?” some more, Arthur rolls his eyes and says, “The element of surprise worked in our favour.”
“Oh,” says Merlin, which is not exactly a response but is definitely a step up from his recent verbal utterances. “Oh, well, er – good, then.”
“It was your idea,” says Arthur, in a rare moment of not nicking off with all the glory – what happened on that battlefield – and Merlin says, “Well, er, it was nothing.”
“You’re too modest,” says Arthur, and he’s – he’s sort of glowing, which is bizarre, and then he kisses Merlin, which is one part totally unexpected and several more parts of what the hell and also why is this the only thing I can say today before Merlin kind of splutters, and jumps back a bit, pressing his fingertips to his lips.
Arthur says, as though nothing abnormal at all has just occurred, “Remember to clean my boots, won’t you, Merlin,” and saunters off inside. He stops at the top of the stairs leading to the main castle doors, turns around and says, “I think we’ll have them beaten tomorrow.”
“Right,” says Merlin. “That’s good,” and he nods, and Arthur nods back, smiling like Merlin’s the one acting strangely, and disappears indoors. Merlin makes a sound like a cat that’s been sat on by a walking potato, and tries to stay calm.
At dawn, Merlin finds himself back in the stocks. “How is this fair?” he wails – justly wails, he thinks – and is cut off in mid sentence by a cabbage breaking apart on his nose. “What did I do now?”
“Nothing,” says Arthur, sounding smug. “That’s the point.”
“What?” says Merlin, again; at this point, he decides it might be best if he tries just not saying anything for a while.
Arthur opens his mouth to presumably explain whatever insane and fabricated reason he has come up with for making Merlin endure another day of having rotting greenery chucked at his face when Uther strides across the courtyard and motions him aside.
Normally, Merlin doesn’t hold with using magic for invading people’s privacy, especially this close to the king, and doing so now, over a matter of military planning, would probably be close to suicidal, and a bad idea, and – oh, who is he kidding, was he ever not going to do this? He mutters something under his breath as quietly as he can, fervently praying that this works – getting turned into a fish might give the whole I-am-secretly-using-magic-in-your-castle game away, which is probably not advisable – and also that he isn’t caught, because although the stocks are not the most pleasant of places, they are infinitely preferable to the gallows.
Thankfully, it works.
“We’re going to have to use it,” Uther is saying, and Arthur is saying, “Father, you can’t be serious.”
“I would never joke about this matter,” says Uther.
Arthur says, “No, I know, Father. I’m sorry.”
Uther inclines his head in the way that makes Merlin want to run screaming for the hills; Arthur has seemingly developed a tolerance to it. “It is time,” he says. “Fetch me … Deadly Little Morgana.”
Arthur gulps. “Yes, Father,” he says, and hurries away.
Merlin pretends to be completely absorbed in examining his shoes. What has Morgana got to do with anything? What’s she going to do, swoosh the enemy to death with her big floaty sleeves? Hah. Double hah. Uther must just be trying to wind Arthur up, despite the fact that Uther would seem more likely to throttle a kitten than engage in any kind of humorous activity.
These thoughts are immediately stopped when something flashes past Merlin fast enough that it actually burns his skin a little bit; when he has blinked and coughed so that he can see again, he realises that, oh, okay, that was Morgana. Pinioned in the stocks, he can only turn his head the smallest amount, but he does see Morgana cartwheeling and backflipping through the gates. What Merlin finds oddest about this whole situation is not that Morgana has apparently got the powers of a really well-dressed ninja but that Uther allowed her to do something more constructive than sewing for long enough for her to earn them. Then again, when Merlin thinks about it, judging by the tone in Uther’s voice when he talked about her, Merlin thinks he might not have had much of a choice.
Arthur runs after her, sword unsheathed, and Uther paces out magisterially after them both. Merlin is left, hunched uncomfortably in the stocks, and just has to wait. Patience is not his strong point, but he can’t really do anything about this either; he doesn’t trust himself to be able to hide the signs of magic powerful enough to let him see what’s going on at the battlefield. So he gets settled in for a long day of getting sun-burned and having many splendidly mushy tomatoes thrown at various parts of his anatomy, and idly cursing how difficult it is going to be to get the stains out of these clothes so that Arthur doesn’t moan at him for ‘letting the standards of decency down around the Prince’. Personally, Merlin thinks that as long as the Prince himself doesn’t a) smell, or b) look completely odious, the palace is probably doing a good job of maintaining some standards of decency, but no, Arthur would appear to disagree.
The air is chill on Merlin’s attractively red skin by the time the knights march back into the courtyard, flags held high and proud, exultations on each man’s lips.
“We won, then,” says Merlin, to no-one in particular.
“You’re damn right we did,” says a voice from behind him, and Merlin doesn’t even need his full range of motion, doesn’t need to turn around, to know that it is Arthur.
“So it was worth me getting poisoned by a shrub of, er, poison, then?”
“Merlin, my getting up in the morning is worth you getting poisoned,” says Arthur, walking around to the front of the stocks, but he’s grinning.
“Good to know,” says Merlin. “So, how did you do it? I hear Bayard doesn’t exactly play fair.”
“He doesn’t,” says Arthur. He smirks. “But then again, neither did we.”
Merlin looks quizzical, or as quizzical as he can, seeing as he currently can’t lift up his head.
“We first got the advantage when we all took our shirts off,” Arthur explained. “They weren’t expecting that.” Merlin suppresses the urge to say well, duh. Arthur continues, “We were able to really make some headway after that. But it was really Morgana who won the fight for us.” He shakes his head in admiration. “She has no equal.”
“Have you told her that?” blurts Merlin, before he can stop himself.
“Yes,” says Arthur, unexpectedly. “I thought it the least I could do, considering I’m – Camelot is – still standing because of her.”
“Oh,” says Merlin.
“Yes, ‘oh’,” says Arthur. “I’m really not as pompous as you think I am, Merlin.”
“Speaking as someone who has been left in the stocks all day for no good reason,” Merlin says, slightly short of breath, the wooden beam pressing on his throat whenever he speaks, “I beg to differ.”
“I had a reason,” says Arthur. Merlin kind of chokes in response to this; Arthur says, “I did.”
“Go on, then,” Merlin manages. “What was it?”
“I kissed you,” Arthur says.
“I noticed!” says Merlin, as indignantly as a man bent over can sound. “I was there, you know.”
Arthur does this thing with his face where he looks amused and slightly hesitant at the same time. “I thought you might want some time to think about that,” he says. He works the stocks open; Merlin straightens up with a groan, trying to wring out the muscles in his arms and uncurl the tension at the back of his neck.
“Ow,” he says, and then, “So you put me in the stocks?”
“I admit part of that was just for the entertainment,” Arthur tells him, not looking even remotely ashamed.
“You weren’t even here!” Merlin protests. “How can you be entertained when you were fighting?”
“I could imagine it,” Arthur shrugs. “Anyway, Merlin, you are rather missing the point.”
“Oh, am I?” grumbles Merlin, churlishly, attempting to stop his spine having something of a spasm. “Please, do tell – mmph –“
Arthur shoves him up against the stone wall of the castle, and kisses him again, pressing his battle-sweaty body into Merlin’s stock-weary one, rough hands up at Merlin’s face, clutching at him like he doesn’t want to let him go. Merlin makes a sort of mewl, which is ridiculously embarrassing, and also very undignified, but then, he has just come from a mild form of torture, so he supposes he can live with this. He gets his hands up to grab at Arthur’s waist, and tugs him in closer, and Arthur breaks off for a moment, putting his face against the side of Merlin’s sunburnt neck.
“This is the point,” Arthur breathes, and Merlin says, “Yeah, I get that now.”
For a week that started with Arthur being indiscriminate with a bow, and Merlin being indiscriminate with the truth, everything seems to have turned out rather well, if Merlin doesn’t count the part where he ended up in the stocks, twice, and the whole of Camelot was put in danger, and the part where there was a small war just outside the city.
Alright, maybe it wasn’t the most successful of weeks; it turned out well though, and after all, isn’t that really the point? You don’t find many stories that gloss over the happy ending, and this, Merlin decides, is not going to be the exception.
So. Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a city where men killed and lied and fornicated, and they all lived happily ever after, sin or no sin.
The end.
*
Title: I Don't Believe It
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: PG - possibly a PG13, but only for language.
Word Count: ~3600
Disclaimer: Merlin belongs to the BBC and not me, Sin City belongs to people other than me, and I am most definitely not making any money from this.
Summary: Written for the
reel_merlin challenge, with the film prompt of Sin City. This is kind of one part Sin City, one part Merlin and one part actual madness. It involves Arthur being foolish with an arrow, Merlin telling a series of ridiculous lies and Camelot getting into trouble.A/N: There is actually no possible way I could have got this finished at all, and definitely not before the deadline, had it not been for
rionaleonhart being an amazing beta, and person, and in short I probably owe her at least one of my vital organs. The title is also lovingly taken from something else that does not belong to me (One Foot in the Grave), and not without a hefty dose of irony. This is not even remotely what I thought I would end up writing when I signed up for this thing, but it is at least better than I thought it would be! Er, hurray?“What,” says Merlin, and then kind of chokes and has to start again. “What the actual hell, Arthur?”
Arthur stares at him. “You do remember that I could have you killed for that, right?”
“Does that even matter right now?” Merlin asks, incredulous. “You just murdered someone. Just because something is moving in a forest doesn’t make it okay to hunt! Do you even look before you aim that thing?”
“You let me know when your hunting skills kick in,” Arthur retorts. “He was moving fast, anyone could have - “
“It doesn’t matter,” Merlin says, painfully aware that the pitch in his voice could probably shatter glass. “Have you lost your mind? How could you mistake a man for game?”
Arthur folds his arms, defensive for the first time. “Merlin,” he says.
“No,” Merlin says, yanking open the collar of the dead man lying sprawled at their feet. “You don’t get to play the Prince card when you’ve just killed one of Bayard’s men.” Arthur actually has the decency to look a bit shame-faced now, which Merlin considers to be something of an under-reaction considering how Uther is going to take this news. “You know what this means for the kingdom. You know we were barely at peace before this.”
“Er,” says Arthur.
“Yes, ‘er’,” says Merlin. “You realise you’re going to have to tell your father? And quickly?”
Arthur seems to re-group. He shifts his weight into a more aggressive stance, frowning. “Merlin, as my manservant, I order you to – Merlin? What are you doing?”
Merlin has cleverly foreseen Arthur making this decision. Feigning a stumble, he staggers back into a perfectly harmless, if slightly prickly, shrub and lets out a cry of pain. “Ouch!” he bellows, milking the moment for all he can. “Oh no! No! Not the – er – Bush of Rashitude!”
“The what?” asks Arthur, knitting his eyebrows together in the way he does when he thinks he’s missing something but he shouldn’t really show it. “Merlin, get out of the foliage.”
“Ouch, my entire being,” wails Merlin, wringing his hands. Then he decides that this might be a bridge too far, and settles for limping pathetically back into the forest clearing, looking up through his eyelashes like he used to do with his mother when she was about to tell him off for falling out of a tree and not breaking a bone. Ah, the childhood of a secret warlock. He affects a wince when he puts his left foot down.
“Are you alright?” Arthur looks genuinely concerned – it is well hidden, but it is there – and Merlin would be starting to feel a bit guilty did he not know that the alternative to lying through his teeth would be telling Uther that there was a war coming with Mercia because his son was an arrow-happy prick. Perhaps he would use slightly different words to convey this message; then again, perhaps not.
“I’ll be fine,” he says, and holds up a hand as Arthur starts to step towards him. “No!” he says, arranging his face into what he hopes is a suitably horrified expression. “Don’t come near me! That shrub – it’s poisonous. I’m highly contagious now.”
Arthur’s face is doing that suspicious thing it does whenever he thinks Merlin is trying to do something – well, something like this. “You only fell into a plant, Merlin,” he says. “You can’t be ill already.”
Merlin tries to fight the urge to fling his hand across his forehead and slump to the ground. This, he knows, would be too much. “Gaius has warned me of this plant,” he says, weakly.
Arthur starts to look slightly more convinced. “Gaius knows of this?”
“Yes,” Merlin lies, hastily. “There’s no way I could approach the king now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I could infect him, and then there would be nobody to command the knights in the inevitable war that is coming since you killed that guy.”
Arthur takes a few steps back. “So it’s really that infectious?”
“Yes,” repeats Merlin. “But don’t worry, I won’t be contagious for an hour or two. At least long enough to get us back to Camelot.” In a rush of heat up his neck, Merlin realises that this completely contradicts what he’s just said, but, hopefully, Arthur will be too worried about not immediately catching this fictional disease to notice any errors on Merlin's part. He tenses up, anxiously.
“Alright,” says Arthur, eying him warily, and Merlin exhales. “We’d better hurry then.” When Merlin feels himself relax, Arthur adds, “But I will need to speak to Gaius.”
“What?” squeaks Merlin, and then he says, “I mean, yes, of course.”
“You understand I have to discover how serious the risk of infection is,” Arthur says, and Merlin honestly cannot tell whether he is being serious or not. “I can’t have you running around felling the populace.”
Merlin bites back the urge to say, no, that’s obviously your job, isn’t it. Instead, he says, “You’d better tell Uther about this man first. Er,” – this at a sideways glance from Arthur – “who knows when Bayard will choose to attack? Camelot may be in danger every moment that Uther is unaware.”
“You may be right,” says Arthur, still scrutinising Merlin. “But a little more respect wouldn’t hurt.”
Merlin fakes a rattling cough and tries to look ill. Arthur relents, “Fine,” and they mount their horses and set off.
Riding at speed has never been one of Merlin’s strong points.
When they get back to Camelot, Merlin takes a minute to feel supremely smug that he will not be spending a day in the stocks for bringing Uther news that his city will shortly be under siege (this is greatly enhanced by the sight of Arthur taking a breath and squaring his shoulders before heading in the direction of the hall, when he thinks Merlin can’t see him), and then he takes to his heels once Arthur is out of sight and pelts to find Gaius, to inform him that he is now dying after being poisoned by the Bush of Rashitude.
“The Bush of what?” Gaius asks.
“Er,” says Merlin, looking down at his hands and suddenly feeling quite ridiculous, “the Bush of Rashitude?”
“Right,” says Gaius. “And this manifests itself how, precisely?”
“Well I don’t know, do I?” yelps Merlin. “I made it up!”
Gaius looks suspiciously like he’s trying not to laugh. He is not particularly skilled at concealing his amusement whenever Merlin has finagled his way into a sticky situation, although maybe he is but chooses to show it regardless. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Lie!” Merlin says. “Tell Arthur it’s real, or I will probably end up in either the dungeons or the stocks, and someone needs to be around to help him out in the next few days, considering there’s going to be a war.”
“Alright, alright,” says Gaius, patting the side of Merlin’s shoulders distractedly. “Leave it to me.”
This is very good timing; just as Gaius has said this, Arthur bursts into the room.
“Ah, Prince Arthur,” says Gaius, nodding at him respectfully. “How can we help you?”
“Is he really ill?” Arthur asks, indicating Merlin.
“Yes, sire,” Gaius tells him, as Merlin tries to breathe out in relief without being too obvious or collapsing. “The, er, Bush of Rashitude has well-known poisonous effects. The symptoms haven’t quite manifested themselves yet in this case, which is quite fortunate – there is a cure, but it can only be implemented before the sufferer becomes unwell.”
“There is?” asks Arthur, at the same time as Merlin goes, “There is?” and Arthur gives him an odd look. “I mean,” says Merlin, hastily, “there is!”
“Yes,” Gaius continues. “He needs to immediately come into contact with natural remedies, containing health-restoring nutrients, at a high velocity.” Arthur wrinkles his forehead; Gaius adds, “Sire, I think he would be instantly cured if he could be placed in the stocks.”
“Really?” Arthur says.
Gaius says, looking serious, “Really.”
Merlin may never forgive him for this.
What is particularly galling is that almost as soon as he is fastened into the stocks – this being the next day; Merlin at least managed to insist that sleeping would be crucial to his recovery, or hadn’t Gaius been made aware of that development of the disease theory? – the city bell starts tolling, and all the knights of Camelot rush past him in full battle armour.
“Arthur,” calls Merlin, as Arthur runs past, face set and intent, “what’s happening?”
“This is it,” he shouts back. There is a moment where he falters, and Merlin’s heart does a sort of flip in his chest, and then he says, running briefly to Merlin’s side, ”It’s too soon; Camelot’s not ready.”
“Oh,” says Merlin, feeling completely inadequate, and watches Arthur sprint out of the city gates.
By dusk, Merlin is sore, and filthy, and his back hurts from spending so long hunched over, and the knights of Camelot still haven’t returned. Gaius comes to let him out of the stocks with a grim expression on his face, and Merlin says, “Just, don’t, alright,” and Gaius doesn’t say a word.
Merlin sits on the castle steps, and waits.
It is much, much later by the time the men return. None of them so much as glance at Merlin, which he is used to, but what he is not ready for is the way none of them glance at anything but the ground in front of their feet, like they’re beaten, like they’ve lost. He runs up to Arthur as soon as he is within sight, and whispers, tentatively, “Is that it? Is it all over?”
“For tonight,” says Arthur, like even speaking is an effort, and Merlin presses his lips together as tightly as he can, and follows Arthur into the castle.
The next morning, Merlin stands and watches as the knights all stream back out of the city gates. Arthur stops for a minute, standing next to Merlin in silence, until Merlin can’t help it; he sneezes, and Arthur turns to look at him, and says, “I never asked, are you alright now?”
“Yes,” says Merlin, and feels hideously guilty. “How are you holding up?”
“I’d be a lot better if we could win this battle already,” says Arthur, with a rueful sort of laugh, and Merlin snorts along with him.
“Maybe you should start fighting naked,” he says, trying to make Arthur smile. “That’d at least give you the element of surprise.” To his amazement, Arthur stares at him, apparently genuinely considering this. “I was kidding,” says Merlin, quickly, and Arthur says, “Oh, yes, I know.”
Arthur lopes off after the other knights, and Merlin thinks, shit, don’t actually strip, you idiot.
Gaius tries to make him be helpful that day, but all Merlin can seem to do is stand at the gates, staring at a battlefield where anything could be happening. At one point there is a roar, but from which side and for what reason, Merlin has absolutely no idea, and if using magic would help in any way in this situation, he would have cast every spell he could think of trying to make this better. As it is, he’s too far away to be sure of anything working, and getting closer would mean he would damn sure be caught, and so he stands there, ignoring Gaius, and not being able to do anything useful at all. It is irritating, and it is difficult, and it is also slightly pointless, but what the hell.
Today, when the knights troop back into Camelot, they all look decidedly more cheerful. Of course, this could be because they are all half naked, what, what the hell, thinks Merlin, and he practically pounces on Arthur as soon as he sees him.
“What the hell, Arthur,” he hisses, because, seriously, what.
“It worked, Merlin,” says Arthur, looking the most jubilant Merlin has ever seen him, and as Merlin is a bit busy going, “What? What?” some more, Arthur rolls his eyes and says, “The element of surprise worked in our favour.”
“Oh,” says Merlin, which is not exactly a response but is definitely a step up from his recent verbal utterances. “Oh, well, er – good, then.”
“It was your idea,” says Arthur, in a rare moment of not nicking off with all the glory – what happened on that battlefield – and Merlin says, “Well, er, it was nothing.”
“You’re too modest,” says Arthur, and he’s – he’s sort of glowing, which is bizarre, and then he kisses Merlin, which is one part totally unexpected and several more parts of what the hell and also why is this the only thing I can say today before Merlin kind of splutters, and jumps back a bit, pressing his fingertips to his lips.
Arthur says, as though nothing abnormal at all has just occurred, “Remember to clean my boots, won’t you, Merlin,” and saunters off inside. He stops at the top of the stairs leading to the main castle doors, turns around and says, “I think we’ll have them beaten tomorrow.”
“Right,” says Merlin. “That’s good,” and he nods, and Arthur nods back, smiling like Merlin’s the one acting strangely, and disappears indoors. Merlin makes a sound like a cat that’s been sat on by a walking potato, and tries to stay calm.
At dawn, Merlin finds himself back in the stocks. “How is this fair?” he wails – justly wails, he thinks – and is cut off in mid sentence by a cabbage breaking apart on his nose. “What did I do now?”
“Nothing,” says Arthur, sounding smug. “That’s the point.”
“What?” says Merlin, again; at this point, he decides it might be best if he tries just not saying anything for a while.
Arthur opens his mouth to presumably explain whatever insane and fabricated reason he has come up with for making Merlin endure another day of having rotting greenery chucked at his face when Uther strides across the courtyard and motions him aside.
Normally, Merlin doesn’t hold with using magic for invading people’s privacy, especially this close to the king, and doing so now, over a matter of military planning, would probably be close to suicidal, and a bad idea, and – oh, who is he kidding, was he ever not going to do this? He mutters something under his breath as quietly as he can, fervently praying that this works – getting turned into a fish might give the whole I-am-secretly-using-magic-in-your-castle game away, which is probably not advisable – and also that he isn’t caught, because although the stocks are not the most pleasant of places, they are infinitely preferable to the gallows.
Thankfully, it works.
“We’re going to have to use it,” Uther is saying, and Arthur is saying, “Father, you can’t be serious.”
“I would never joke about this matter,” says Uther.
Arthur says, “No, I know, Father. I’m sorry.”
Uther inclines his head in the way that makes Merlin want to run screaming for the hills; Arthur has seemingly developed a tolerance to it. “It is time,” he says. “Fetch me … Deadly Little Morgana.”
Arthur gulps. “Yes, Father,” he says, and hurries away.
Merlin pretends to be completely absorbed in examining his shoes. What has Morgana got to do with anything? What’s she going to do, swoosh the enemy to death with her big floaty sleeves? Hah. Double hah. Uther must just be trying to wind Arthur up, despite the fact that Uther would seem more likely to throttle a kitten than engage in any kind of humorous activity.
These thoughts are immediately stopped when something flashes past Merlin fast enough that it actually burns his skin a little bit; when he has blinked and coughed so that he can see again, he realises that, oh, okay, that was Morgana. Pinioned in the stocks, he can only turn his head the smallest amount, but he does see Morgana cartwheeling and backflipping through the gates. What Merlin finds oddest about this whole situation is not that Morgana has apparently got the powers of a really well-dressed ninja but that Uther allowed her to do something more constructive than sewing for long enough for her to earn them. Then again, when Merlin thinks about it, judging by the tone in Uther’s voice when he talked about her, Merlin thinks he might not have had much of a choice.
Arthur runs after her, sword unsheathed, and Uther paces out magisterially after them both. Merlin is left, hunched uncomfortably in the stocks, and just has to wait. Patience is not his strong point, but he can’t really do anything about this either; he doesn’t trust himself to be able to hide the signs of magic powerful enough to let him see what’s going on at the battlefield. So he gets settled in for a long day of getting sun-burned and having many splendidly mushy tomatoes thrown at various parts of his anatomy, and idly cursing how difficult it is going to be to get the stains out of these clothes so that Arthur doesn’t moan at him for ‘letting the standards of decency down around the Prince’. Personally, Merlin thinks that as long as the Prince himself doesn’t a) smell, or b) look completely odious, the palace is probably doing a good job of maintaining some standards of decency, but no, Arthur would appear to disagree.
The air is chill on Merlin’s attractively red skin by the time the knights march back into the courtyard, flags held high and proud, exultations on each man’s lips.
“We won, then,” says Merlin, to no-one in particular.
“You’re damn right we did,” says a voice from behind him, and Merlin doesn’t even need his full range of motion, doesn’t need to turn around, to know that it is Arthur.
“So it was worth me getting poisoned by a shrub of, er, poison, then?”
“Merlin, my getting up in the morning is worth you getting poisoned,” says Arthur, walking around to the front of the stocks, but he’s grinning.
“Good to know,” says Merlin. “So, how did you do it? I hear Bayard doesn’t exactly play fair.”
“He doesn’t,” says Arthur. He smirks. “But then again, neither did we.”
Merlin looks quizzical, or as quizzical as he can, seeing as he currently can’t lift up his head.
“We first got the advantage when we all took our shirts off,” Arthur explained. “They weren’t expecting that.” Merlin suppresses the urge to say well, duh. Arthur continues, “We were able to really make some headway after that. But it was really Morgana who won the fight for us.” He shakes his head in admiration. “She has no equal.”
“Have you told her that?” blurts Merlin, before he can stop himself.
“Yes,” says Arthur, unexpectedly. “I thought it the least I could do, considering I’m – Camelot is – still standing because of her.”
“Oh,” says Merlin.
“Yes, ‘oh’,” says Arthur. “I’m really not as pompous as you think I am, Merlin.”
“Speaking as someone who has been left in the stocks all day for no good reason,” Merlin says, slightly short of breath, the wooden beam pressing on his throat whenever he speaks, “I beg to differ.”
“I had a reason,” says Arthur. Merlin kind of chokes in response to this; Arthur says, “I did.”
“Go on, then,” Merlin manages. “What was it?”
“I kissed you,” Arthur says.
“I noticed!” says Merlin, as indignantly as a man bent over can sound. “I was there, you know.”
Arthur does this thing with his face where he looks amused and slightly hesitant at the same time. “I thought you might want some time to think about that,” he says. He works the stocks open; Merlin straightens up with a groan, trying to wring out the muscles in his arms and uncurl the tension at the back of his neck.
“Ow,” he says, and then, “So you put me in the stocks?”
“I admit part of that was just for the entertainment,” Arthur tells him, not looking even remotely ashamed.
“You weren’t even here!” Merlin protests. “How can you be entertained when you were fighting?”
“I could imagine it,” Arthur shrugs. “Anyway, Merlin, you are rather missing the point.”
“Oh, am I?” grumbles Merlin, churlishly, attempting to stop his spine having something of a spasm. “Please, do tell – mmph –“
Arthur shoves him up against the stone wall of the castle, and kisses him again, pressing his battle-sweaty body into Merlin’s stock-weary one, rough hands up at Merlin’s face, clutching at him like he doesn’t want to let him go. Merlin makes a sort of mewl, which is ridiculously embarrassing, and also very undignified, but then, he has just come from a mild form of torture, so he supposes he can live with this. He gets his hands up to grab at Arthur’s waist, and tugs him in closer, and Arthur breaks off for a moment, putting his face against the side of Merlin’s sunburnt neck.
“This is the point,” Arthur breathes, and Merlin says, “Yeah, I get that now.”
For a week that started with Arthur being indiscriminate with a bow, and Merlin being indiscriminate with the truth, everything seems to have turned out rather well, if Merlin doesn’t count the part where he ended up in the stocks, twice, and the whole of Camelot was put in danger, and the part where there was a small war just outside the city.
Alright, maybe it wasn’t the most successful of weeks; it turned out well though, and after all, isn’t that really the point? You don’t find many stories that gloss over the happy ending, and this, Merlin decides, is not going to be the exception.
So. Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a city where men killed and lied and fornicated, and they all lived happily ever after, sin or no sin.
The end.
*
