Post by Arctura on Jul 27, 2014 18:03:15 GMT
Uh, I needed a break from my serious and extremely long fic, As the World Comes to an End. This is still continuing my Merlin FF streak, but it's a crossover with HP. But again, this is not serious at all; in fact, it's very silly to the point of crack (but well-written crack).
Hogwarts AU. Post-canon HP. Merlin, Arthur, Morgana, Gwen, Lancelot are just normal students struggling with matters of love, grades, and Headmaster Uther's wrath.
Oh, and the Triwizard Tournament. No biggie.
Pairings are Merthur, Gwen/Lancelot, and Morgana/her fabulous sadism. There are also ridiculous amounts of swearing and sass, parentheses abuse, references to sexual situations (and one ambiguous and sad attempt at a Merthur love scene, since I can't write smut), and reckless drunkenness.
Enjoy! (It's still a WIP)
Merlin abruptly wakes up in History of Magic.
Many people can stealthily remove their slumbering head from their carefully propped fist and appear totally engaged, solemn, thoughtful, and as if they have never fallen asleep in class, ever.
Merlin is not one of those people. He checks the corner of his mouth for drool, first and foremost, and realizes the reason he woke up in the first place is that Gwen has been hissing, "Merlin. Merlinnnnn. MERLINNNNNN” for most likely longer than he wants to know. She points at him.
"What?" Merlin mouths at her. Gwen points again. He hears a sigh, and from his left, Morgana passes him a compact. Merlin has missed at least twenty minutes of lecture and this is compounded by the fact that Arthur seems to have written "I am a fucking wanker" across his forehead.
He takes a moment to wonder how his life came to this pass, and he can pretty much nail it down to when he turned eleven years old and came downstairs to find Gaius having tea with his mother.
"You're a wizard, Merlin," Gaius had said.
Merlin thinks he was pretty much buggered from that point on, because all he had thought in that instant between "Well, that explains a lot," and his mother hugging him, was "I am going to get made fun of so much at wizard school."
And he had not been wrong about that feeling, because within twenty seconds of arriving at Hogwarts, he had met Arthur Pendragon and it had all been downhill from there.
***
Merlin was still scrubbing at his forehead, nearly an hour later when they left Professor Binns muttering to himself about the Gnomish Uprising of 1281. Arthur grins unapologetically as Gwen flutters about, trying to help Merlin.
"Serves you right. Falling asleep in class, bringing shame upon your house," Arthur argues, as Morgana rolls her eyes. "I mean, honestly, when was the last time anyone ever heard of a Ravenclaw falling asleep in class?" He pauses. "Well, actually, yes, last Tuesday, but that was also you."
Morgana elbows Arthur viciously. Merlin figures, fuck it, he'll spell it off, and is patting his pockets for his wand, which is never where he remembers putting it last.
"But that's no reason to write on his face," Morgana counters, reaching into her designer purse and pulling out some kind of cloth that is doubtlessly designed to make you look as flawless as Morgana always does. (Incidentally, it also probably costs more than the gross national product of Switzerland, and hopefully, it removes ink.) Gwen rubs at his forehead, and a relieved smile breaks over her face that most likely marks the end of his face signaling to all and sundry that he is a fucking wanker.
"There, that's better," she says cheerfully. Arthur looks at his pocket watch (Christ, pocket watch, who was the wanker, really) and makes a noise that sounds like Merlin's mother.
"And now we're all going to be late for class, well done, Merlin," Arthur say, grabbing him by the head and dragging them off toward the staircase that will probably drop them on to another staircase mid-staircase movement, then outside to Care of Magical Creatures, and while Merlin can appreciate that Arthur has lived in this castle all his life, and thus is extremely good at time-saving shortcuts, he wishes they weren't so brutally efficient.
Gwen and Morgana leisurely disappear around the corner, Gwen making that face she does when she knows Morgana is going to get them out of trouble by raising an eyebrow or choking someone with her mind. (They're going to Divination anyway and Morgana has such a spiteful hate-on with the professor anyway, so it never seems to matter than they're late, in addition to Morgana's willful insubordination.) Well, actually, probably just by virtue of the fact that she is the Headmaster's ward, which Merlin thinks is totally unfair, because the only reason he is ever late anywhere is Arthur, and the day Arthur Pendragon uses the fact that he is the Headmaster's son to get Merlin out of trouble, Merlin is sending him straight to Gaius.
And because thinking of him summons him, Headmaster Pendragon is directly in front of them. Merlin tries to catalogue escape routes, but there's nothing but retreat, and beyond the fact that Arthur might literally not know what that word means, Merlin's pretty sure that even if he did turn around, Headmaster Pendragon would still be in front of him.
He may be nearly 17 years old now, but for all that, Merlin can still remember being about 4 and a half feet tall and 6 stone, and being thoroughly chastised for the whole troll thing, and realizing that, for a wizard, Headmaster Pendragon didn't seem to like magic much - if by "magic", Merlin meant "Merlin", and he did. And in the past six years, multiple instances of saving Arthur's life and stopping terrible calamities from affecting the entire Wizarding World aside, it does not seem that Merlin has done much to endear himself to Uther.
"Father," Arthur says warily, but not without respect. He still has his arm around Merlin's head. Merlin would be upset about this if Uther didn't already think he was an imbecile. For a long moment, Uther just stares at them.
"I need a word with Mister Emrys, Arthur." Headmaster Pendragon finally says. Merlin is (understandably) confused, but there is no saying no to Uther, so Arthur slowly lets go of Merlin's head and Merlin straightens up, which actually makes him taller than both Arthur and Uther, and he remembers why he normally slouches.
"Ah, yes, Headmaster," Merlin manages as Arthur continues to stare at his father.
"Arthur, lessons," Uther reminds him, and it's not rude, but the dismissal is clear. Arthur frowns slightly, but nods and heads out of the castle. Merlin finds himself alone with Uther, which he generally tries to avoid, primarily out of self-preservation and also a bit because Uther looks at him like a bit of horsehit on a nice rug.
"Sir?" he asks. Uther sighs and walks off, and makes a gesture which he can only assume is a motion for Merlin to follow.
"I believe you are aware of the fact that my son is the selected champion of this school in the Triwizard Tournament," Uther says slowly, as if Merlin cannot possibly understand him. And to be frank, Merlin kind of doesn't, because who doesn't know that Arthur is the Champion? Arthur personally wrote it in flaming letters across the sky and drank until he was sick in celebration of it. (In retrospect, Merlin is just glad Arthur did not write it in flaming letters across his face.) When he had bested all comers while fighting a fucking dragon, Arthur had thrown a party the likes of which will probably never been seen again at Hogwarts, or least not with such impressive property destruction.
Merlin takes a second to wonder how Muggles at boarding school survive illegal debauchery when they can’t spell the evidence (and the hangover) away the next day. At this point, Merlin comes to realize Uther has been waiting while Merlin has been staring at him, and perhaps this is why most people are confused as to why he is in Ravenclaw.
"Ah, yes, sir," Merlin finally remembers to say. Uther frowns more deeply.
"Has Arthur deciphered the clue from the First Task?" he asks. Merlin thinks that maybe Arthur would stop being such a little princess with a daddy complex if Uther would, you know, ask him these questions, rather than Merlin, but better mortals than he have tried and failed to fix Uther and Arthur, and he knows this, because Morgana has tried.
“Ah, yes, sir." Merlin says again, and upon Uther's stink-eye, supposes more explanation is in order. "The lake, mermaids, yes." Uther looks slightly relieved, but whether it's because Merlin has managed a sentence that is not "ah, yes, sir" or because Arthur has figured out the riddle, he is unsure. Regardless, he definitely does not tell Uther that it involved the Prefects' Bath and Lancelot, because he's not even sure if that was legal. That, and having to say the words "Arthur", "Bath" and "Lancelot" in the same sentence, to Uther, might propel him into a stroke.
"Does he have any anticipation of what they will take?" Uther asks. Merlin frowns, because, actually, Arthur had sealed up his broomstick in a waterproof bag some days ago.
"Er, perhaps some, sir, but who knows?" Merlin says, not sure if he should tell Arthur's father that Arthur probably loved his broomstick most in the world. Uther's frown was reaching truly epic proportions that Merlin had not seen since they'd killed a basilisk in the girls' loo in second year.
"Well," Uther prevaricates.
Merlin is alarmed. In all the years of bizarre and terrible announcements - "there's a unicorn plague on the school", "there's a chimera egg poison plague on the school", "there's a dragon under the school", "one of the teachers is an evil douche in the school"- Merlin has never seen Uther hesitate before.
"Your name has come out of the Goblet of Fire," Uther finally says. Merlin stares at him.
"As a- a hostage," Uther continues, and at least he looks as wretchedly unhappy to be saying this as Merlin is to be hearing it.
Merlin stares at Uther.
To clarify, he says, "I have to put you in the lake.”
Merlin still refuses to accept what Uther is saying, because this sounds like a hideous joke, but the Headmaster is not funny; that is a rule at Hogwarts and Merlin is certain this is a joke, but again, the Headmaster is not allowed to be funny.
"What?" Merlin finally comes up with. Uther looks away uncomfortably.
"It appears that you," horsehit on the rug look. "Are what my son would miss the most."
Merlin is so fucked.
***
Merlin spends a beautiful, fleeting moment thinking about robbing Gringotts and running off to the French Riviera with a million Galleons or something, because he is going to die anyway, and he might as well have some fun first. Then he realizes that Morgana would have to plan the heist and Gwen would never run off with him to live a life of glamour and crime, so it'd be pretty crap.
Instead, he just says, "Oh," and wonders if he should wear an extra scarf. He can't be certain, but he thinks the lake is pretty cold in February.
"Yes," says Uther, and for the first time, ever, they are on the same page, which probably just says, "Well, fuck."
"Should I-" Merlin tries and makes a motion that he hopes means "scarf", but Uther just shakes his head.
"This will not hurt, and you will not be in danger," Uther says, and then the next thing he knows he's gasping for air, and the lake is not "pretty cold" - it's INSANELY FUCKING FREEZING, and Arthur has him by the head. Again.
"Quit squirming!" Arthur shouts at him. Merlin rolls his eyes so hard he thinks he might have sprained something, but that's probably just the insanely fucking freezing water causing him to cramp all over.
"I can swim, you daft prat," Merlin bites back, but Arthur just shifts his grip to drag Merlin by the torso, instead. "What in Christ's name just happened?" He can feel how irritated Arthur is, but it's sort of warm and sort of nice.
"Hell, like I know, Morgana made me eat bedamned weeds and I had to pull your skinny arse out of a lake, and you owe me, because those mermaids are evil," Arthur says, with an excess of feeling, and thank God, because Merlin can see the bizarre dock/tower/bleacher hybrid that someone put in the middle of the bastard lake. "And I will be telling my father, because this lake is filthy and I am going to contract a disease, I am sure of it!"
Merlin is about to say that he sounds like a ruddy Malfoy, but it’s too late. They make it on to the platform and Gaius looks vexed that they've been given hypothermia for everlasting glory and 1,000 bloody galleons, and Merlin is inclined to agree with him, but he covers them in blankets and casts a Warming Charm so strong he can actually feel his toes again. Merlin can see a sodden Gwen being cosseted by Morgana, who is doing an excellent impression of someone's mother, and Merlin thinks Lancelot is actually apologizing to both Morgana and Gwen, while ice crystals are forming in his distractingly attractive hair, even though the Goblet clearly had not dared to put Morgana herself in the lake.
"By the way, I was trying to rescue Gwen, and Lancelot nearly beat me with a piece of driftwood," Arthur remarks quietly in Merlin's ear.
"Well, you were trying to steal his hostage, he wouldn't have been able to complete the task-" Merlin breaks off at the vicious and sardonic raise of Arthur's eyebrow. "Oh. Well." Merlin tilts his head to the side, thinking about it. Lancelot takes off one of his many blankets and adds it to Gwen's pile.
Then it clicks. "I see." Arthur swats him on the head.
"And now you have to find a new date to the Yule Ball," he mocks, but the effect is ruined by his bright red cheeks and nose, because he looks sort of like an evil Santa, jolly and full of malicious mirth. Merlin would normally have no response, because, damn, that's actually true, but he slowly realizes that he probably has the upper hand forever.
"Well, I'm surprised you haven't asked me," Merlin says sweetly, batting his lashes at Arthur, who looks entirely baffled. Merlin savors this. Savors this moment, because he'll probably never find its like again.
"You know, in case someone 'takes what you'll sorely miss,' Arthur."
The following expression on Arthur's face is maybe the single greatest moment of his whole life.
***
It is clear, after a second or two, that Arthur really has not thought about the implications of Merlin waiting for him under the lake, because as much as being the Champion is making Arthur act like a huge berk in every way, he already thinks of himself as the Hogwarts Champion. It is his home, moreso than the rest of them, even, and Arthur loves it with a dedication that most people save for religion or sport.
So when faced with retrieving people, objects, anything for the glory of Hogwarts itself, himself second, Arthur has not thought about the fact that the entire school, his father included, is now certain they are shagging.
***
Arthur looks at him in horror. "I like women!" he blurts out. Merlin resists the urge to leap back into the lake.
"As do I," Merlin replies dryly, because seeing Arthur wibbling and defensive, for once, is a beautiful reversal of fortunes and Merlin wishes to sun in it like a lizard. Of course, preying at the edge of all this delicious mockery is the remaining fact that Uther is probably going to try to murder him in his sleep for making his son a homosexual or something and no woman will ever sleep with him now, because they all think he's a raging poofter. Merlin watches Arthur fidget and preen like an offended bird.
"Well, as long as we're both stra-" Arthur breaks off, closes his eyes as if in pain, and continues. "As long as we are both clear about that." He glances around them, looking a little nettled, but much his normal self again. "And I'm sure that this whole thing will blow over shortly, I mean, it's not like there's really any reason at all to suspect anything, or think anything in the first place. Honestly, Merlin, where you come up with these things, I'll never know. Ridiculous, the whole, yes."
"Really," he asserts, "This is already yesterday's news."
***
It is yesterday's news. And today's. And tomorrow's, and every day after that, and Arthur is starting to look a little mad about the eyes.
Merlin has tried to tell him that people are not really in the middle of saying "Arthur Pendragon is queer" whenever he walks into rooms, but Arthur will have none of it, and besides, Merlin actually sort of thinks Morgana is paying them or doing something equally compelling (probably blackmail), because they sort of are.
"Seriously, he's starting to look like he expects the gay police or something to strike in the dead of night," Merlin hisses at her under the second third floor stairwell. Morgana looks extremely smug.
"Merlin, I'm not forcing anyone to say anything," Morgana says, which Merlin does and does not believe. He believes wholly that Morgana never has to force anybody to do something for her, but he does totally believe that she's at least partially behind half the rumors about Arthur, Lancelot, and Merlin in the broom shed. (Lancelot is devoid of most suspicion, because while he is fiendishly attractive and his hair is extremely well-styled, he has also taken to making out with Gwen in the corridors, so, yes.)
"Well, you could at least stop sending creepy little Slytherins to assault him in the corridors everywhere," Merlin ends up saying plaintively when he realizes nothing can stop her from publicly defaming Arthur's character. Morgana does not exactly grin, but there is something a little too exuberant about her ladylike smile.
Merlin throws up his hands despairingly. "No, seriously, because people keep telling me that Arthur's stepping out on me with fourteen year olds, fourteen, which is ridiculous, because really, I'm not his wife or anything!" he says, incensed to the point where he wants to wring her pretty little neck.
She senses this, but ignores it and gives him a look that says, "No, no, you really are." This is, to an extent, true. Merlin helps Arthur get ready for Quidditch matches (to the extreme irritation of his team on Ravenclaw/Gryffindor matches), chases strange women off of him (Sophia, say no more), and has spent more hours in detention than most students spend in Hogwart because of him. So maybe he is Arthur's wife. Touché.
He buries his face in his hands. Morgana gently pats him on the shoulder.
"Buck up," she says, spritely and twisted, but sincere, "If it'll make you feel better, the best part is that I think it's all true.”
***
Merlin manages to pry Gwen off of Lancelot for about five minutes, because he needs to talk to the one person in the castle who will not be a total asshole to him.
"Oh, Merlin," she says, which is code for all kinds of things, but usually "you're a moron".
"And look, I'm not his wife" - kind of - “but I am getting worried about him, he does seem as if he hasn't slept well in days," Merlin argues, because he figured out where Gwen's soft spots are roughly five minutes after meeting her. She didn't have a mother and made up for it by mothering anything particularly lost, helpless, or hideous - usually Merlin.
Gwen was the type of person who took home and actually loved boot-faced cats. And true to type, Gwen does soften a little bit. Merlin thinks he's finally got it through to someone that this is a bit more serious, at least to Arthur, than they've all been thinking. But instead, Gwen smiles like she learned it from Morgana and says, "You're a little bit sweet on him, aren't you?"
Merlin thinks about throwing himself out the window. "I am NOT a homosexual!"
***
Two days later and an erotic dream where instead of finishing the task, Arthur had kept Merlin as his consort in his undersea kingdom beneath the lake, Merlin revises his earlier statement.
"Okay, maybe I am a little bit of a homosexual," he admitted, under the usual stairwell. Morgana looks gratified to be right but slightly exasperated.
"You dragged us here for that? Merlin, we already knew that." she said, primly setting down on an old crate. Gwen smiles gently at Merlin.
"It's true," she says.
"Why am I here?" Lancelot asks. Gwen opens her mouth to say something, but squeaks suddenly, and Merlin turns around, and there is Arthur, looking a cross, but a little pink around the edges. Merlin spares a moment to thank whatever deities exist that at least it wasn't Uther.
"I'll, I'm-" Arthur tries, and then just walks off. Merlin sighs, because now Arthur's hurt because he thinks they're keeping secrets, and they sort of are, but not because they don't care for him, but because they do care for him, and this line of thinking is probably why Morgana thinks he's Arthur's wife.
"Christ," Merlin mutters, but goes after Arthur anyway and tries to ignore Morgana telling Gwen she owes her a twenty Galleons.
***
Predictably, Merlin finds Arthur on the ramparts of the Astronomy tower, looking out over the grounds. And for all that Arthur's the one sulking on top of a Gothic castle, Merlin thinks he still manages to look like a displaced statuary, a warrior angel, rather than a gargoyle, and Merlin might have to revise further, because that was insanely gay.
"So, you're a bit of a homosexual?" Arthur says, and well, no one's ever accused Arthur of being indirect. Merlin figures he's been screwed since day one anyway, so he might as well be honest.
"Seems to be, yeah," he says bluntly, settling down next to Arthur, who still looked pink and cross and made Merlin sort of want to shove his tongue down his throat. It was with some small measure of chagrin that he realized this was not actually a new feeling. "You?"
"Oh." Arthur fidgets and bit and answers, "Like I said, I like women," and Merlin thinks acerbically, "At least Morgana was wrong, for once", but then Arthur sort of sidles a little closer and adds, "But I, well, you."
Merlin has been called slow a number of times, most of them by Arthur, but he thinks he gets it, and for all he'd thought he had figured Arthur out a long time ago, Arthur still keeps surprising him. He's sort of crap at a lot of things, but he must be pretty good with Arthur, because the whole castle thought they were shagging, after all.
"I would- I would miss you, you know," Arthur says quietly. "I'm glad it was you."
Merlin smiles and kisses Arthur.
"You know, if a magical cup asked me who I liked best, I'd probably say Gwen," Merlin says and Arthur scowls and shoves at him. Merlin catches his hands, and he knows he must look deranged, but he's so happy he can't stop the grin splitting his face. "But I'd only eat weeds and jump in a frozen lake for you."
***
Merlin stares at Arthur in total disbelief.
"You want to what?" he asks, because he hasn't seen Arthur take a terrible blow to the head recently, and they've been pretty inseparable all night (in a lot of ways) but there aren't a lot of other reasons Arthur could have gone completely mental all of a sudden.
"It's the gentlemanly thing to do," Arthur chides, and Merlin doesn't care that Uther probably had Arthur trained by a nanny or something to be a courtly scholar or some other stupid medieval gayness, but this is beyond all that.
"Arthur, what-" Merlin starts, but Arthur just puts a hand on Merlin's shoulder and gives him the stiffest upper lip since Winston Churchill, bred into Arthur by generations of emotionally stunted Britons. They might say that Wales is full of back-water sheep-shaggers, but really, Arthur is probably so distressingly inbred.
"Don't worry. But I am bound by honor to tell Morgana that we're now in a-" Arthur pauses, and then just mercilessly plows onward. "Yes, well." Arthur looks at Merlin earnestly. "You know, let her down easy."
Merlin washes his hands of the whole thing, but at the last moment Arthur totally wusses out, and takes Merlin with him to see Morgana. Generally, Merlin avoids going into the dungeons that form the Slytherin dorms, but Morgana's room is remarkably nice. Then again, it's Morgana.
About halfway through Arthur's stuttered announcement that he regrets doing wrong by her or some other equally horrid turn of phrase, Morgana cuts him off.
"Arthur, are you trying to tell me that you are Merlin are together?" she asks, patiently, as if asking a small child. Arthur nods gravely. "And you're telling me- what, so I don't feel as though you've jilted me?" she prods further. Arthur nods again. Morgana presses her fingers to her temples. "Arthur, I don't know what Uther told you, but we were not betrothed or anything as children, and we should not date, and I do not like you, just because Uther says so!"
Arthur looks completely bamboozled. Morgana stares at him, and Merlin feels so totally vindicated.
"What, did you think I was secretly pining for you?" Morgana is so clearly horrified and this is ridiculous that Merlin would enjoy it, but he thinks that one of their heads might explode, so he's mostly thinking about triage.
"What?" Arthur finally offers up after an embarrassing amount of silence. Morgana sighs.
"Arthur, I've known you since we were children, and believe me, I knew you swung both ways, or at least just this way, a long time before you did. I have actually had to stop Gwen from sending out your wedding invitations on three separate occasions." Morgana's reign is merciless, and it is only Merlin's self-preservation and desire to ever cop off with another human that is stopping him from laughing and laughing and laughing.
***
Arthur is still sulking the next day. "You could have told me," he complains. They're sitting in one of the many anonymous dormer windows in the library, because Merlin is a Ravenclaw and has appearances to keep up. Merlin gives him a Gaius-like eyebrow, because he. Tried.
"Are you joking? I told you three, no, four times, that it was a terrible idea. Was that seriously not enough?" Merlin insists. And it figures that dating Arthur is pretty much exactly like being someone's mother.
"Still," Arthur says, and it is so distressing that Merlin finds Arthur's complete inability to take responsibility for his own stupid plans endearing. Gryffindors.
They sit in companionable silence for a while, Merlin pretending to read and leaning into his boyfriend’s warm side and Arthur pouting and brooding about his emasculation or some shit. Eventually, Arthur says, “So, Morgana cornered me in the hallway and said that when you give me your manly flower at the Yule Ball, I have to use a... a 'condam'."
To say it was not what Merlin had expected to hear would be something of an understatement. Hr does not even know where to start, but he figures crying could be good. Arthur must see the patent distress on Merlin's face, because he backtracks immediately.
"I mean, not that I'm expecting that you would at the Yule Ball. It's not like I think you have easy virtue or anything-" Arthur breaks off again, obviously horrified by what was coming out of his mouth, too. "Not that if you were planning- the Ball- that I wouldn't, that you would be-"
Merlin doesn't know how he became the rational one in this situation, but someone has to save Arthur from himself.
"I'm just going to focus on the facts," he found himself saying, as if floating by on a cloud made of dismay. "It's a 'condom', and it's a contraceptive." Upon Arthur's blank look, Merlin forces himself to continue. "You know, to stop people from becoming pregnant." Merlin can see the wheels turning in Arthur's head - firstly, that Arthur knows he's been tricked, again, into saying something he will regret (thanks to Morgana) and secondly, that Morgana may or may not want Arthur to impregnate Merlin.
"But I can't get you pregnant," Arthur says, after a few attempts to say something that won't get him slapped. Merlin wishes they had a health class or something, like he'd had in primary school, because wizards probably all have syphilis (which explains a lot), because no one taught their children about STI’s. Then again, Merlin tries to think about Uther explaining to Arthur about sex and dies a little.
"I think Morgana said it, because she's kind of a bitch sometimes," Merlin says gently and decides that they are just going to forget the last five minutes even happened and think of something really awful to do to Morgana.
***
Gwen tries not to laugh at him when he ends up telling her the whole debacle that had happened in the Library. "Oh, Merlin," she says, fondly. (Which definitely means "You're a moron" this time.)
To be fair, she's holding up her part of their bargain about the Yule Ball - she can go with Lancelot after all, if she still helps him pick out his dress robes. He would have asked Morgana, but despite the fact that she is stylish to a fault, Merlin wants something between High-Fashion-I-Look-Like-An-Ass (which would inevitably happen with Morgana, plus he's mad at her right now for the whole "Manly Flower" thing of which they do not speak) and Well-It's-Black-That'll-Do (This would happen if he and Arthur went shopping together, and Morgana-with-whom-he-is-mad had forbade that expressly. This also meant that Morgana had taken Arthur shopping, and they could take out their hatred on each other, and not on Merlin by proxy.)
"What about this one?" she asks and holds up a set of robes, which as stipulated before, they're black, so his criteria is met and presumably Gwen would not fuck with him on a lark.
"Yeah, sure," he says, shrugging and Gwen sighs.
"You have to actually try them on," she says, sort of shaking them at him. As Merlin climbs into the monkey suit, his only source of comfort is that Arthur has probably been taken to some kind of place where they stick tape measures in all sort of disgusting, invasive places, and Merlin is safe with Gwen.
He steps out of the cubicle and Gwen stops fiddling with cummerbunds or something, getting that boot-faced cat expression she gets when her heart overflows with sentiment for something wretched. This is not Merlin's first experience with being given the Look, but he bears it with good grace. Gwen gets over her giant, Hufflepuffian heart in short order and merely straightens him up, tugging here and there and settles for saying he looks quite handsome.
Merlin and Gwen had met on the train to Hogwarts, two confused muggleborn kids ending up in a compartment together and Merlin had instantly come to the conclusion that he was going to marry Gwen after she'd shyly offered him half her sandwich. And then he'd met Arthur. But it doesn't mean that he can't still love Gwen, and Lancelot had better recognize that he is a lucky bastard.
He hugs her hugs her tightly for being his friend, for being pretty much wonderful, always, and hugs her tighter when she faintly fusses about wrinkles.
***
He takes back all the things he ever said about Morgana, about tailors and especially about never wanting to have sex with Arthur after the "Manly Flower" thing of which they do not speak, because good God, Arthur is maybe the most attractive thing he has ever seen, ever.
"It's black," Arthur says with a shrug when Merlin runs his fingers over the lapel. Which, granted, is true, but it's also like a walking invitation to goose Arthur's finely sculpted backside, so he doesn't complain when Arthur puts the robes on over his suit. Merlin must remember to send Morgana a gift basket of some kind. He himself is carrying the robe, because it gives him one less thing to trip on when he has to-
Not even the memory of Arthur's arse can save him from the bleak realization that he will have to dance with Arthur in front of three schools worth of wizards and oh, God, Uther Pendragon.
Arthur is shaking him slightly, and Merlin realizes that he’s been trying to talk to him.
"What, you've gone all ashen, like that time you saw the Fat Friar pleasuring himself," Arthur says, which, also not a visual he had needed then, or ever. Merlin looks at Arthur, handsome and frowning slightly and realizes that the other shoe has not dropped for him yet.
"You know we'll be dancing together, right?" Merlin says quietly, in deference to the gathering crowd of couples around them. Arthur rolls his eyes.
"Is that what you're worrying about? Great Circe's panties, Merlin, it's not hard. I took dancing lessons as a child, my father insis-" And there it drops. Arthur clutches at Merlin's arm.
"Oh my god, we're going to have to dance together in front of my father." Arthur sounds as if he's in the trenches and Merlin agrees whole-heartedly, because it's one thing for Arthur to pull Merlin out of a lake and to be kind of whatever they are with each other, with Gwen, Morgana, even Lancelot, and a whole different thing for Uther to have to murder Merlin for despoiling his son.
***
Saying the Yule Ball goes poorly would be ignoring all the things that do go well.
Merlin does not fall down any more than is expected of him (four times - who thought it was a good idea to decorate with ice, honestly), the army of girls (and a few blokes) that lusts after Arthur's body is still so deep in mourning for his sexuality as to be merely a glowering, weeping mass in the background, rather an active force for Merlin's head on a pike, and Uther does not cut in at any point in the night to tell Merlin that whether or not his intentions are honorable, he is going to have paratroops rappel in and execute him within the hour.
That being said, Merlin is unsurprised that Arthur nearly loses his trousers on three occasions, that he has spiked punch spilled upon him, so that when Uther does reach them (allegedly to give them his "cordial greetings" or some other classy and hugely fake way of saying "look at Merlin as if he's something that has crawled out from the rubbish bin"), Merlin smells like the owner of a brewery in an eastern European country where no one bathes, except in moonshine and their own filth.
Merlin actually has no recollection of what Uther does deign to say to them, as it's all lost in hindbrain survival instincts screaming at him to flee before the headmaster devours his soul. Arthur insists that his father was perfectly polite and in no way implied that he was "giving him to Filch to practice depraved sexual torture upon, God, Merlin." (Merlin does not believe this at all.)
***
(Unfortunately) everyone makes it out of the night with their virtue intact, although (in some cases), not for lack of trying. He is actually terrified that if he were to undress Arthur, an alarm would go off in the Headmaster's office, and he would be summarily shot.
Arthur is yet again sulking about this in that passive-aggressive way he has, which is to say, he is passive in his aggression, because he does not normally make the Quidditch team drill in the snow for three hours despite the fact that a.) he is "not upset about anything, Merlin”, and b.) there is no Quidditch season this year, as the Triwizard Tournament is occurring. Merlin is watching the practice, not because he is worried that Arthur will fall off his broomstick, or anything like that, but because he is worried the remaining members of the Gryffindor team are going to murder him for being a right prick.
Of course, Arthur takes this opportunity to fall off his broomstick. For a moment, as he falls, it is worse, so worse than any of the rest of it - Morgana traumatising him constantly, Uther killing him in his sleep, Gwen making subtle allusions to going on double dates with her and Lancelot - because no one told him that letting the Headmaster put him in a lake would mean that when Arthur goes off and does something dangerous and terrible, Merlin will not be able to breathe.
***
Merlin has to stop having these Arthur-related memory blackouts. As a matter of fact, he knows he spells Arthur afloat as Galahad asks, "Is Arthur alright?", but all Merlin can think is that it's wasting time, and he'll probably have to apologize for being an ass later, anyway. So, even though he has no problem with him whatsoever, normally, he punches Galahad in the face for being in the way. The next thing he alleges to know, he's carrying Arthur into the hospital wing, shouting for Gaius at the top of his lungs.
He is sitting with his head in his hands in one of the supremely uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room while Gaius examines Arthur. He has sworn to inform Merlin of Arthur’s condition as soon as possible, but that was probably just a lie to get him out of the room. Somehow Morgana, Gwen, and Lancelot arrive and wait with Merlin silently, and Morgana does not even make fun of him for holding Gwen's hand.
Things really get awkward when Uther shows up, almost out of breath, but thank god Gaius appears before any of them have to acknowledge each others' presence. Gaius goes directly to talk to Uther, but shiftily indicates with a slight nod that they can go in. As soon as Uther is appropriately distracted, they dart into the hospital wing.
Merlin is prepared to sit by Arthur's bedside, bravely waiting for him to wake up so he can murder Arthur for purposefully engaging in a sport where you can fall out of the fucking sky, but Arthur is already sitting up in bed, looking embarrassed and plucking at the bed covers. Merlin is so relieved he loses all the feeling in his legs and nearly falls down, but he manages to makes it to the cot and lands heavily on it.
"Well?" Morgana says sharply, which they all actually know means she's irritated with herself for having been seen publicly worrying about Arthur, but is trying to move past it by being brisk and efficient. "What did you do to yourself?"
Again, Merlin imagines the worst - internal bleeding or broken limbs - but apparently Arthur is fine, which will only encourage him to do other stupid, dangerous shit because he probably thinks he's invincible.
"I'm fine," Arthur says, and Merlin actually thinks it means he has a head injury, because he's not being a twat about it, like, of course he could fall of a broomstick and be fine, even though when everyone else does it they die. Gwen just sort of overflows, because her heart is seriously two sizes too big, but Lancelot takes the brunt of the near silent weeping, even as he punches Arthur in the shoulder.
"Next time, remember you're supposed to be riding the broom," Lancelot gripes, but he's smiling in that foreign underwear model way that makes Merlin sincerely insecure and their manly bro posturing is not helping, because the point of this is to try to scare some sense into Arthur. Then again, Arthur once killed a giant ass snake that lived in an underground cavern of drippy evil, with its own fangs, so maybe a brush with gravity is just not going to do the job.
Merlin is trying to think of a way to get everyone to leave, discreetly, so he can not be as embarrassed by the huge scene he is going to make. Despite the fact that Morgana is undoubtedly leaving to make fun of him, he's nonetheless grateful when she cuffs Arthur on the ear and herds Gwen and Lance out.
Arthur is steadfastly looking anywhere but directly at Merlin, which is good, because that means he already knows that he's done wrong. Merlin thinks about safety and lectures and responsibility and the fact that he punched Galahad, and just sighs, because it did say Arthur Pendragon on the tin. Does what it says on.
***
Merlin does not have to double date with Gwen and Lancelot. This saves him a lot of anguish.
However, Arthur had said, "Maybe, d'you... Are you going to Hogsmeade?" causing Merlin to stare at him and say "Yes," resulting in their current predicament. Arthur looks so uncomfortable that Merlin actually feels twice as uncomfortable himself (which he hadn't thought possible), because Merlin has seen Arthur talking his way out of being murdered by centaurs in the forest for being inexplicably naked and in their territory, and had thought that was as bad as it could get. (The Sophia Week.)
"You forgot." Arthur says, and Merlin thinks that he really cannot be responsible for all of this, because Arthur hadn't realized either. He morosely pushes some confetti off his saucer.
"I wasn't thinking about it," he sullenly insists, because Jesus, it's not like Arthur doesn't have a bloody calendar, too; this is seriously not his fault. Arthur glares viciously at an approaching cherub and it backs away carefully, wide-eyed.
Although he supposes the fact that when they had opened the door at Madame Puddifoot's, an actual explosion of red, white and pink confetti had assaulted them, should have been a clue.
"You said 'not the Three Broomsticks, Merlin, I'm so bloody sick of it'," Merlin hisses. "Where were we going to go, the Hog's Head?" Arthur kicks him under the table.
"Fuck you, this is a nightmare," Arthur hisses back, and well, he is right about that.
In general, this would not be a problem. Merlin thinks that Madame Puddifoot's is a perfectly acceptable place to have a cuppa and a biscuit. This is not his fault.
They are two red-blooded, (reasonably) intelligent men, and they forgot about St. Valentine's Day. Merlin compensates for how much he hates his life by drinking a butterbeer. And, over the course of their three absolutely hideous hours in there (“We cannot just leave, that is so grossly uncouth!”), Merlin drinks roughly ten more butterbeers.
Normally, Gwen cuts him off after two butterbeers, and after one regrettable night over the summer after 5th year with Will and a smuggled-out bottle of Firewhiskey (That Merlin DOES NOT REMEMBER, AT ALL), Hunith had firmly forbade him from ever imbibing anything stronger than a Guinness, and only on bank holidays. Later, Arthur would claim he hadn’t thought this would happen, but so would most people with the tolerance of a small ox, learned harshly as the risk of passing out in front of Morgana to be left at her ‘mercy’.
Objectively, Merlin can acknowledge that he’s drunk out of his mind. This, however, doesn’t prevent him from thinking he’s totally fine and should drink more. Especially because there’s a never-ending legion of women who seem intent on murdering him and leading Arthur back into the heterosexual light who keep parading past their table. (The fact that Arthur is on a date with a man does not seem to be deterring them, which points to a fundamental disconnect with reality, proves Merlin is saving Arthur.)
Arthur finishes his cup of tea and gently places it back down on the saucer (like a dainty fucking miss) and insisting it’s stuffy, accordingly demands a walk in the village. Merlin would normally complain, because it’s snowy and cold as hell outside, but he feels distinctly warm and glowing himself, and he’s not sure his legs work but he is willing to give it a try, because he is the best boyfriend ever. He even pays for the drinks, which he thinks makes him the man, but having to question whether or not you’re the man probably means you’re not. Plus, Merlin has heard rumors that Arthur is hung like a centaur.
The Gryffindor-on-a-bender bitches about Merlin sneakily paying the check (If by “sneakily” Arthur means that Merlin got lost on the way to the loo and gave a woman some money, well, he’s not far off. Merlin is just glad to realize he wasn’t hiring a prostitute accidentally.) as they head out into the High Street.
Merlin blinks and sighs when they keep failing to focus, just giving him a sweet white mass and Arthur’s shining gold hair and red cloak against it. It’s actually sort of pretty and Merlin reaches out for Arthur, to kiss him, but apparently his depth perception is off, and he falls down face first into the snow.
“Ow,” he mutters. Arthur lets loose a scandalized noise, and for a moment Merlin is terrified that his mother has appeared to take him by the ear, and it is only when he remembers his mother cannot Apparate that he starts to breathe again.
“Great Dumbledore’s ghost, Merlin, are you drunk?” Arthur asks incredulously. Merlin figures it’s either a testament to his acting abilities or Arthur’s inherent self-absorption that he hadn’t noticed yet.
“No. Yes,” Merlin admits, still face down, and eats some snow in the process. It’s kind of nice, actually, because he’s suddenly gone from “pleasantly warm in the face of Scotland” to “hot, itchy and vaguely irritable” (like herpes). Arthur eventually picks him up by the scruff of his coat like an errant kitten, which is demeaning, but necessary, because Merlin has lost all his limbs in the snow.
An interminable amount of time later, they are at the gates of the castle, and Arthur has an arm slung under his shoulders (thankfully, Arthur is not carrying him like the cover of the bodice-rippers Morgana reads shamelessly in public) and is sweetly griping about it. And because Arthur is actually a wonderful and amazing person under the veneer of assholery he maintains, Merlin kisses him and kisses him and kisses him until he realizes Uther is standing there.
It is at this point Merlin swears he can remember no more.
But that is most likely because he has banished the fact that he vomited all over the Headmaster’s shoes from his mind forever.
***
Arthur is beyond horrified, as is Gwen, but Morgana is perversely delighted all day.
Merlin is nigh excommunicated from his house, because the evidence that the previous night actually transpired is obvious in the copious lack of sapphires in the Ravenclaw hourglass in the Great Hall.
His life is even more painfully dismal because Gaius is a harsh and vicious mistress, and so every sixth year has to undergo vocational counseling. He doesn’t accept Merlin’s strangled protest that he’s too busy trying not to be murdered by Arthur Pendragon’s psychotic swarm of stalkers or the Headmaster (or fellow Ravenclaws, probably) to think about a job, and Merlin reflects gloomily that it was probably a long shot anyway.
Because God hates Merlin, of course Arthur wants to be an Auror. They discussed it briefly before spiralling into an argument about whether or not Arthur was suicidal and that Merlin doesn’t want to change him. He knows fully that killing evil things and chasing after bad guys are part of who Arthur is, but he just wants him not to die tragically young and fit, either. Then again, Merlin vomited on Arthur’s father, so he’s probably going to change it to something like “bare-hands troll executioner” to spite Merlin.
Gaius looks at him in a move that has withered students for (probably thousands of) years and Merlin babbles something about being a Healer, a) because he will probably need to be able to heal Arthur, and b.) because someone has to pursue a career that will let them keep all their appendages and it will not be Arthur.
When he finally escapes, Uther is laying in wait, which is to say he appears out of nowhere and Merlin finds himself trailing after him toward the Headmaster’s office. Before Merlin can think about casting a protective spell or twenty while he’s still behind Uther, he’s somehow plonked in one of the chairs facing Uther’s terrifying and imposing desk and being stared at. Merlin feels like how he imagines small mice feel when faced with a hawk.
Merlin envisions that this is going to be a formal reprimand for the whole vomiting thing that he doesn’t remember, so what comes out of Uther’s mouth doubly horrifies him.
“What are your intentions toward my son?”
He thinks he blacks out for a moment in pure horror. When he comes back to himself, he manages a soft and weak “What, sir?” Merlin gets that maybe Uther feels responsible for Arthur’s big gay lake adventure and thus feels compelled to interrogate Merlin, but then the man steeples his fingers, and for a moment Merlin just sees a father trying to protect his child from any hurt, and so he is honest.
“They’re - I’m…” Merlin starts and blurts out, “I love him,” and oh god, he told Uther that before he’s told Arthur and he has to go leap off the Astronomy tower and commit ritual suicide in the Prefect’s bathroom or something because this is the most hideous thing ever, but then he has a minor stroke as a bare corner of Uther’s mouth lifts.
“I do not pretend to understand you, Mr. Emrys,” Uther says, (and in that Merlin reads, loud and clear, “or like you”) “But I think we understand each other on this point.” And yes, Merlin does get it, because for all that Uther is the scariest thing that has ever happened to him, he does not doubt that he loves Arthur, even if he’s completely incapable of showing it.
“Yes, sir,” Merlin says, Uther nods, and there’s a finality to it that suggests that Merlin’s humiliation is hopefully nearing an end.
And suddenly the vague human emotion and connection is gone, and Uther is sharp and distant again. “I don’t believe I need to say that were I to be disappointed in your conduct in this matter, Mr. Emrys, my first reaction would not be to take House Points,” he says.
“Ah, yes, sir,” Merlin says, and Uther makes a flippant gesture that means to leave him and Merlin runs out of there like Satan himself is chasing him.
***
Merlin refuses to tell Arthur what he and Uther talked about, mostly out of shame, but fusses until Arthur fetches him cocoa from the kitchens just to shut him up, because he does tell Arthur that it was horrific and invasive, and expounds upon his trauma in that sole aspect.
Arthur is still cross at him about the whole vomit thing, but Merlin thinks that if Uther can forgive him (which he thinks he sort of has, although Merlin does not for a second harbor any illusions that Uther thinks of Merlin as his son’s “ideal mate”, and does not expect any further clemency) then Arthur certainly can.
They are mostly hidden from sight and Arthur's creepy admirers that inhabit Gryffindor tower, as Merlin is still persona non grata in Ravenclaw after the spectacular loss of 70 points, in a deep seat in a turret. It’s quiet and snowing outside gently, covering the noises of the fire, laughter and people arguing, happy, in a gentle haze and Merlin thinks that despite all the awful things he has had to and will continue to go through in order to be here, with Arthur, it’s all worth it.
***
Spring sneaks up on them while they’re remembering they’re actually students, not just figuring out strange pseudo-public relationships and being happy. Morgana is performing her own strange and amusing version of the Triwizard Tournament amongst the three people it appears were her Yule Ball dates (only Morgana), and Gwen and Lance are carrying on this beautiful and sickening courtship that results in a lot of shy flower gathering and hand holding interspersed with truly filthy snogging sessions.
Arthur and Merlin fall into this pattern that is essentially exactly the same as how they behave toward each other naturally, except they hit each other much less frequently, and when the urge arises, they usually just make out.
Morgana insists alternately that Arthur must be suffering from terrible blue balls while implying that Merlin should wait until marriage, and it frequently makes Merlin wish that her “Champions” were more interesting or something, so she would stop giving Merlin disgusting and confusing advice.
But it is true, that despite the fact that they are teenaged boys, (Merlin is still just shy of 17, and Arthur is actually getting close to 18 - Arthur is a bit old for their year, which had meant that even as a sixth year, he had been eligible to enter the Tournament. Morgana insists it is actually because Arthur was held back a year for behavioral problems.) they’ve still not shagged. It’s not that Merlin wouldn’t - or won’t - it just feels like they’re waiting for something. (And not marriage, whatever Morgana implies.)
They’re so busy dancing around actually defining their relationship that the Third Task totally sneaks up on them.
When Arthur sees the hedges growing out of the Quidditch pitch, Merlin swears for once, when faced with great peril, Arthur seems to be a far cry from his fearless. And Merlin cannot describe all the ways he is not okay with the idea of Arthur traveling in a maze of death. His only consolation is that if it’s entirely dangerous and foul-tempered, Arthur has already tried to and succeeded in killing most of the terrifying things that live in the Forbidden Forest since infancy.
Arthur spends a lot of time trying to reassure Merlin that they probably wouldn't put anything too dangerous in there, which Merlin does not believe for an instant, because they have already had them fight fucking dragons and go into the godforsaken lake; and also, Arthur's interpretation of "not too dangerous" includes a lot of things Merlin weeps over. What can he say, he's a Ravenclaw.
Morgana merely pats his hand and offers to buy him his widow's mourning dress.
Merlin doesn't really want to bother Gwen, because she surely has to be worried about Lancelot, but when he does gently broach the subject in a brave effort of solidarity and friendship, she essentially shrugs and says, "Lance says he will be fine, I trust him."
This is totally maddening, because Merlin does trust Arthur (to an embarrassingly large extent), and it's not as though he hasn't made it to 17, which many had predicted (and even actively attempted to ensure) would not come to pass, but he simply cannot handle the idea that Arthur is going into a school-sanctioned topiary filled with angry things to kill.
He sort of thinks maybe they should shag in case Arthur dies in a hedge tomorrow, but doesn't want to jinx anything, and instead they go to the Room of Requirement and sleep.
***
If Merlin wasn't gripped in terrible fear for Arthur's safety (couldn't they at least have check-ins, so Merlin would at least know that Arthur is missing a limb, for chrissakes), he would wish he had brought a book, because what no one thought about was that the champions went into the maze, and then there was absolutely fuck-all to do until they came out.
They can't really even talk to each other, because what the hell would they talk about, other than the maze in front of them, and they have no idea what is going on inside it, so it'd be an incredibly short and pointless conversation. Luckily, though, no one talks to them either, in a strange display of maturity (for Hogwarts), and also, probably respecting that they'd get shanked by Morgana for interrupting their vigil.
So instead, they wait and wait and wait.
***
After an hour, the Champion from Durmstrang emerges and a ripple goes through the crowd. He is battered and bleeding a little, but fine, somewhat disgruntled, and most importantly, empty handed.
Merlin doesn't know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. So instead, he squeezes Gwen's hand a little tighter and hopes.
***
Three hours later, Arthur emerges from the maze.
He has Lancelot draped over one shoulder and the Triwizard Cup in his other hand.
The stadium erupts into chaos.
***
Two days later, Lancelot is still a little weak but sitting up on his own, and Merlin accepts that he won't see Gwen for the foreseeable future except attached to his side.
Lancelot and Arthur don't talk about what happened in the maze. The Durmstrang guy (who Merlin never bothered to learn the name of) talks too much, and complains loudly that he saw the Cup long before Arthur got there, and had he not been tricked by the Sphynx, he would have won. But people are pretty much shunning him, partially because it's just bad sportsmanship, and also, unlike Lancelot and Arthur, he is not blindingly attractive, which had made him the dark knight in the running the whole way, in any case.
By hanging around the hospital wing, Merlin hears whispers between Gaius, Uther and the Beauxbatons headmaster about how close it was, and that if they do it again, more safety precautions must be taken. Merlin cannot imagine ever wanting to do this again, but Uther is headstrong and fiercely proactive about the reputation and pride of Hogwarts and would enter, if offered, again and again. Merlin also cannot imagine anyone but Athur succeeding in the challenges set forward, but he's keeping that to himself.
Arthur himself is strangely subdued all through the celebrations that had been thrown as soon as it was certain Lancelot would recover, despite all his previous assertions that he was going to take the prize money and roll in it. He is dutiful and receives the money and ceremony with good grace, but he disappears as soon as is conceivable in the resulting feast. Merlin finally finds him out by the lake. After a long moment, Arthur looks up at him from where he's sitting cross-legged on the pier. Merlin is uncertain if Arthur wants company, but he wants his company, so he sits down quietly.
"I am totally fine, Merlin," he eventually says, but there is a shadow around his eyes and even when Merlin pushes, which usually would result in Arthur blowing up and telling him anyway, he just looks grave and resigned, and finally sighs and says, "It's my burden to know, Merlin."
All that time, Merlin was worried about Arthur getting mauled or something, but he thinks maybe some things are worse and harder to heal.
***
Merlin's never been more glad that Arthur's a prefect and has his own room than when, an excruciating week of silences and stoic faces later, he just bursts into Arthur's room and climbs into bed with him.
Arthur looks vaguely startled, but puts his parchment and book aside, anyway.
"Yes, M-" he starts, but breaks off when Merlin curls a hand around Arthur's cheek.
"I can't watch you-" Merlin tries to catch his breath but Arthur's eyes are huge and blue and he cannot get enough air, and he doesn't know what to do. "What do you-- tell me what you want. Anything."
Arthur stares at him, and he's breathing like maybe he can't get any air, either, and then they're kissing, and Merlin cannot remember why that was important in the first place.
***
Merlin had not been scared but he’d had no idea how blokes went about having sex with other blokes. so he’d done the Ravenclaw thing (for once), and gone to the library.
Having sex is not something they explain in the books, apparently
***
He doesn’t know how it happens, but Arthur pins him down to the bed. Then again, Arthur is just in his white Oxford, and the sleeves are rolled up - the man has the forearms of an Olympian, and he is a gangly, pasty Welsh kid. Merlin is suddenly self-conscious because, let’s face it, last Christmas, the Holyhead Harpies sent Arthur a gift basket of their panties, and he got a jumper from his mother.
But for some reason, even though he could probably be having an orgy anywhere else, Arthur is here, so close that he’s a little out of focus, and all Merlin can see is hazy golden fringe falling forward, shadowing Arthur’s eyes, which are a deeper shade of blue than Merlin has ever seen them, and his red, shining mouth.
Merlin still cannot believe that this, that Arthur is for him.
But he’s learning something in the way Arthur’s mouth lovingly chases after his, and so when the Oxford disappears and he’s stripped of his clothes, Merlin can’t find anything to be self-conscious about, after all. He fumbles for the button of Arthur’s pants, and when his hands shake a little too much and it takes him near five times to undo them.
“Should have known you’d be terrible at this,” Arthur says with a snort, and Merlin exhales a laugh, shaky and unsteady.
Merlin kisses him once, twice, with sheer relief running all over his body like a shiver. After that, it’s easy, so easy, because they’ve always been together (in some way), so this is like that feeling when you’re just waking, but before your alarm goes off - because it’s Sunday and there’s clear sunlight pouring through a window tinted ruby and gold, and this is how being happy feels.
This is again, a WIP. I just don't know how I want to go about finishing this. This was only meant as a breather between my other stuff, but I'm kinda liking the vibe from this ahem, story. I'll probably just bounce back and forth with updates.
If there's anything you'd like to see, tell me. For now, all I know is that I'm going to add Gwaine somehow. He's awesome. Maybe the other Round Table knights, too.
Please don't pelt me if I end up pairing Morgana and Gwaine. Their personalities (ya know, when Morgana's not really evil) are actually quite compatible.
Hogwarts AU. Post-canon HP. Merlin, Arthur, Morgana, Gwen, Lancelot are just normal students struggling with matters of love, grades, and Headmaster Uther's wrath.
Oh, and the Triwizard Tournament. No biggie.
Pairings are Merthur, Gwen/Lancelot, and Morgana/her fabulous sadism. There are also ridiculous amounts of swearing and sass, parentheses abuse, references to sexual situations (and one ambiguous and sad attempt at a Merthur love scene, since I can't write smut), and reckless drunkenness.
Enjoy! (It's still a WIP)
Merlin Emrys and the Totally Gay Triwizard Tournament
Merlin abruptly wakes up in History of Magic.
Many people can stealthily remove their slumbering head from their carefully propped fist and appear totally engaged, solemn, thoughtful, and as if they have never fallen asleep in class, ever.
Merlin is not one of those people. He checks the corner of his mouth for drool, first and foremost, and realizes the reason he woke up in the first place is that Gwen has been hissing, "Merlin. Merlinnnnn. MERLINNNNNN” for most likely longer than he wants to know. She points at him.
"What?" Merlin mouths at her. Gwen points again. He hears a sigh, and from his left, Morgana passes him a compact. Merlin has missed at least twenty minutes of lecture and this is compounded by the fact that Arthur seems to have written "I am a fucking wanker" across his forehead.
He takes a moment to wonder how his life came to this pass, and he can pretty much nail it down to when he turned eleven years old and came downstairs to find Gaius having tea with his mother.
"You're a wizard, Merlin," Gaius had said.
Merlin thinks he was pretty much buggered from that point on, because all he had thought in that instant between "Well, that explains a lot," and his mother hugging him, was "I am going to get made fun of so much at wizard school."
And he had not been wrong about that feeling, because within twenty seconds of arriving at Hogwarts, he had met Arthur Pendragon and it had all been downhill from there.
***
Merlin was still scrubbing at his forehead, nearly an hour later when they left Professor Binns muttering to himself about the Gnomish Uprising of 1281. Arthur grins unapologetically as Gwen flutters about, trying to help Merlin.
"Serves you right. Falling asleep in class, bringing shame upon your house," Arthur argues, as Morgana rolls her eyes. "I mean, honestly, when was the last time anyone ever heard of a Ravenclaw falling asleep in class?" He pauses. "Well, actually, yes, last Tuesday, but that was also you."
Morgana elbows Arthur viciously. Merlin figures, fuck it, he'll spell it off, and is patting his pockets for his wand, which is never where he remembers putting it last.
"But that's no reason to write on his face," Morgana counters, reaching into her designer purse and pulling out some kind of cloth that is doubtlessly designed to make you look as flawless as Morgana always does. (Incidentally, it also probably costs more than the gross national product of Switzerland, and hopefully, it removes ink.) Gwen rubs at his forehead, and a relieved smile breaks over her face that most likely marks the end of his face signaling to all and sundry that he is a fucking wanker.
"There, that's better," she says cheerfully. Arthur looks at his pocket watch (Christ, pocket watch, who was the wanker, really) and makes a noise that sounds like Merlin's mother.
"And now we're all going to be late for class, well done, Merlin," Arthur say, grabbing him by the head and dragging them off toward the staircase that will probably drop them on to another staircase mid-staircase movement, then outside to Care of Magical Creatures, and while Merlin can appreciate that Arthur has lived in this castle all his life, and thus is extremely good at time-saving shortcuts, he wishes they weren't so brutally efficient.
Gwen and Morgana leisurely disappear around the corner, Gwen making that face she does when she knows Morgana is going to get them out of trouble by raising an eyebrow or choking someone with her mind. (They're going to Divination anyway and Morgana has such a spiteful hate-on with the professor anyway, so it never seems to matter than they're late, in addition to Morgana's willful insubordination.) Well, actually, probably just by virtue of the fact that she is the Headmaster's ward, which Merlin thinks is totally unfair, because the only reason he is ever late anywhere is Arthur, and the day Arthur Pendragon uses the fact that he is the Headmaster's son to get Merlin out of trouble, Merlin is sending him straight to Gaius.
And because thinking of him summons him, Headmaster Pendragon is directly in front of them. Merlin tries to catalogue escape routes, but there's nothing but retreat, and beyond the fact that Arthur might literally not know what that word means, Merlin's pretty sure that even if he did turn around, Headmaster Pendragon would still be in front of him.
He may be nearly 17 years old now, but for all that, Merlin can still remember being about 4 and a half feet tall and 6 stone, and being thoroughly chastised for the whole troll thing, and realizing that, for a wizard, Headmaster Pendragon didn't seem to like magic much - if by "magic", Merlin meant "Merlin", and he did. And in the past six years, multiple instances of saving Arthur's life and stopping terrible calamities from affecting the entire Wizarding World aside, it does not seem that Merlin has done much to endear himself to Uther.
"Father," Arthur says warily, but not without respect. He still has his arm around Merlin's head. Merlin would be upset about this if Uther didn't already think he was an imbecile. For a long moment, Uther just stares at them.
"I need a word with Mister Emrys, Arthur." Headmaster Pendragon finally says. Merlin is (understandably) confused, but there is no saying no to Uther, so Arthur slowly lets go of Merlin's head and Merlin straightens up, which actually makes him taller than both Arthur and Uther, and he remembers why he normally slouches.
"Ah, yes, Headmaster," Merlin manages as Arthur continues to stare at his father.
"Arthur, lessons," Uther reminds him, and it's not rude, but the dismissal is clear. Arthur frowns slightly, but nods and heads out of the castle. Merlin finds himself alone with Uther, which he generally tries to avoid, primarily out of self-preservation and also a bit because Uther looks at him like a bit of horsehit on a nice rug.
"Sir?" he asks. Uther sighs and walks off, and makes a gesture which he can only assume is a motion for Merlin to follow.
"I believe you are aware of the fact that my son is the selected champion of this school in the Triwizard Tournament," Uther says slowly, as if Merlin cannot possibly understand him. And to be frank, Merlin kind of doesn't, because who doesn't know that Arthur is the Champion? Arthur personally wrote it in flaming letters across the sky and drank until he was sick in celebration of it. (In retrospect, Merlin is just glad Arthur did not write it in flaming letters across his face.) When he had bested all comers while fighting a fucking dragon, Arthur had thrown a party the likes of which will probably never been seen again at Hogwarts, or least not with such impressive property destruction.
Merlin takes a second to wonder how Muggles at boarding school survive illegal debauchery when they can’t spell the evidence (and the hangover) away the next day. At this point, Merlin comes to realize Uther has been waiting while Merlin has been staring at him, and perhaps this is why most people are confused as to why he is in Ravenclaw.
"Ah, yes, sir," Merlin finally remembers to say. Uther frowns more deeply.
"Has Arthur deciphered the clue from the First Task?" he asks. Merlin thinks that maybe Arthur would stop being such a little princess with a daddy complex if Uther would, you know, ask him these questions, rather than Merlin, but better mortals than he have tried and failed to fix Uther and Arthur, and he knows this, because Morgana has tried.
“Ah, yes, sir." Merlin says again, and upon Uther's stink-eye, supposes more explanation is in order. "The lake, mermaids, yes." Uther looks slightly relieved, but whether it's because Merlin has managed a sentence that is not "ah, yes, sir" or because Arthur has figured out the riddle, he is unsure. Regardless, he definitely does not tell Uther that it involved the Prefects' Bath and Lancelot, because he's not even sure if that was legal. That, and having to say the words "Arthur", "Bath" and "Lancelot" in the same sentence, to Uther, might propel him into a stroke.
"Does he have any anticipation of what they will take?" Uther asks. Merlin frowns, because, actually, Arthur had sealed up his broomstick in a waterproof bag some days ago.
"Er, perhaps some, sir, but who knows?" Merlin says, not sure if he should tell Arthur's father that Arthur probably loved his broomstick most in the world. Uther's frown was reaching truly epic proportions that Merlin had not seen since they'd killed a basilisk in the girls' loo in second year.
"Well," Uther prevaricates.
Merlin is alarmed. In all the years of bizarre and terrible announcements - "there's a unicorn plague on the school", "there's a chimera egg poison plague on the school", "there's a dragon under the school", "one of the teachers is an evil douche in the school"- Merlin has never seen Uther hesitate before.
"Your name has come out of the Goblet of Fire," Uther finally says. Merlin stares at him.
"As a- a hostage," Uther continues, and at least he looks as wretchedly unhappy to be saying this as Merlin is to be hearing it.
Merlin stares at Uther.
To clarify, he says, "I have to put you in the lake.”
Merlin still refuses to accept what Uther is saying, because this sounds like a hideous joke, but the Headmaster is not funny; that is a rule at Hogwarts and Merlin is certain this is a joke, but again, the Headmaster is not allowed to be funny.
"What?" Merlin finally comes up with. Uther looks away uncomfortably.
"It appears that you," horsehit on the rug look. "Are what my son would miss the most."
Merlin is so fucked.
***
Merlin spends a beautiful, fleeting moment thinking about robbing Gringotts and running off to the French Riviera with a million Galleons or something, because he is going to die anyway, and he might as well have some fun first. Then he realizes that Morgana would have to plan the heist and Gwen would never run off with him to live a life of glamour and crime, so it'd be pretty crap.
Instead, he just says, "Oh," and wonders if he should wear an extra scarf. He can't be certain, but he thinks the lake is pretty cold in February.
"Yes," says Uther, and for the first time, ever, they are on the same page, which probably just says, "Well, fuck."
"Should I-" Merlin tries and makes a motion that he hopes means "scarf", but Uther just shakes his head.
"This will not hurt, and you will not be in danger," Uther says, and then the next thing he knows he's gasping for air, and the lake is not "pretty cold" - it's INSANELY FUCKING FREEZING, and Arthur has him by the head. Again.
"Quit squirming!" Arthur shouts at him. Merlin rolls his eyes so hard he thinks he might have sprained something, but that's probably just the insanely fucking freezing water causing him to cramp all over.
"I can swim, you daft prat," Merlin bites back, but Arthur just shifts his grip to drag Merlin by the torso, instead. "What in Christ's name just happened?" He can feel how irritated Arthur is, but it's sort of warm and sort of nice.
"Hell, like I know, Morgana made me eat bedamned weeds and I had to pull your skinny arse out of a lake, and you owe me, because those mermaids are evil," Arthur says, with an excess of feeling, and thank God, because Merlin can see the bizarre dock/tower/bleacher hybrid that someone put in the middle of the bastard lake. "And I will be telling my father, because this lake is filthy and I am going to contract a disease, I am sure of it!"
Merlin is about to say that he sounds like a ruddy Malfoy, but it’s too late. They make it on to the platform and Gaius looks vexed that they've been given hypothermia for everlasting glory and 1,000 bloody galleons, and Merlin is inclined to agree with him, but he covers them in blankets and casts a Warming Charm so strong he can actually feel his toes again. Merlin can see a sodden Gwen being cosseted by Morgana, who is doing an excellent impression of someone's mother, and Merlin thinks Lancelot is actually apologizing to both Morgana and Gwen, while ice crystals are forming in his distractingly attractive hair, even though the Goblet clearly had not dared to put Morgana herself in the lake.
"By the way, I was trying to rescue Gwen, and Lancelot nearly beat me with a piece of driftwood," Arthur remarks quietly in Merlin's ear.
"Well, you were trying to steal his hostage, he wouldn't have been able to complete the task-" Merlin breaks off at the vicious and sardonic raise of Arthur's eyebrow. "Oh. Well." Merlin tilts his head to the side, thinking about it. Lancelot takes off one of his many blankets and adds it to Gwen's pile.
Then it clicks. "I see." Arthur swats him on the head.
"And now you have to find a new date to the Yule Ball," he mocks, but the effect is ruined by his bright red cheeks and nose, because he looks sort of like an evil Santa, jolly and full of malicious mirth. Merlin would normally have no response, because, damn, that's actually true, but he slowly realizes that he probably has the upper hand forever.
"Well, I'm surprised you haven't asked me," Merlin says sweetly, batting his lashes at Arthur, who looks entirely baffled. Merlin savors this. Savors this moment, because he'll probably never find its like again.
"You know, in case someone 'takes what you'll sorely miss,' Arthur."
The following expression on Arthur's face is maybe the single greatest moment of his whole life.
***
It is clear, after a second or two, that Arthur really has not thought about the implications of Merlin waiting for him under the lake, because as much as being the Champion is making Arthur act like a huge berk in every way, he already thinks of himself as the Hogwarts Champion. It is his home, moreso than the rest of them, even, and Arthur loves it with a dedication that most people save for religion or sport.
So when faced with retrieving people, objects, anything for the glory of Hogwarts itself, himself second, Arthur has not thought about the fact that the entire school, his father included, is now certain they are shagging.
***
Arthur looks at him in horror. "I like women!" he blurts out. Merlin resists the urge to leap back into the lake.
"As do I," Merlin replies dryly, because seeing Arthur wibbling and defensive, for once, is a beautiful reversal of fortunes and Merlin wishes to sun in it like a lizard. Of course, preying at the edge of all this delicious mockery is the remaining fact that Uther is probably going to try to murder him in his sleep for making his son a homosexual or something and no woman will ever sleep with him now, because they all think he's a raging poofter. Merlin watches Arthur fidget and preen like an offended bird.
"Well, as long as we're both stra-" Arthur breaks off, closes his eyes as if in pain, and continues. "As long as we are both clear about that." He glances around them, looking a little nettled, but much his normal self again. "And I'm sure that this whole thing will blow over shortly, I mean, it's not like there's really any reason at all to suspect anything, or think anything in the first place. Honestly, Merlin, where you come up with these things, I'll never know. Ridiculous, the whole, yes."
"Really," he asserts, "This is already yesterday's news."
***
It is yesterday's news. And today's. And tomorrow's, and every day after that, and Arthur is starting to look a little mad about the eyes.
Merlin has tried to tell him that people are not really in the middle of saying "Arthur Pendragon is queer" whenever he walks into rooms, but Arthur will have none of it, and besides, Merlin actually sort of thinks Morgana is paying them or doing something equally compelling (probably blackmail), because they sort of are.
"Seriously, he's starting to look like he expects the gay police or something to strike in the dead of night," Merlin hisses at her under the second third floor stairwell. Morgana looks extremely smug.
"Merlin, I'm not forcing anyone to say anything," Morgana says, which Merlin does and does not believe. He believes wholly that Morgana never has to force anybody to do something for her, but he does totally believe that she's at least partially behind half the rumors about Arthur, Lancelot, and Merlin in the broom shed. (Lancelot is devoid of most suspicion, because while he is fiendishly attractive and his hair is extremely well-styled, he has also taken to making out with Gwen in the corridors, so, yes.)
"Well, you could at least stop sending creepy little Slytherins to assault him in the corridors everywhere," Merlin ends up saying plaintively when he realizes nothing can stop her from publicly defaming Arthur's character. Morgana does not exactly grin, but there is something a little too exuberant about her ladylike smile.
Merlin throws up his hands despairingly. "No, seriously, because people keep telling me that Arthur's stepping out on me with fourteen year olds, fourteen, which is ridiculous, because really, I'm not his wife or anything!" he says, incensed to the point where he wants to wring her pretty little neck.
She senses this, but ignores it and gives him a look that says, "No, no, you really are." This is, to an extent, true. Merlin helps Arthur get ready for Quidditch matches (to the extreme irritation of his team on Ravenclaw/Gryffindor matches), chases strange women off of him (Sophia, say no more), and has spent more hours in detention than most students spend in Hogwart because of him. So maybe he is Arthur's wife. Touché.
He buries his face in his hands. Morgana gently pats him on the shoulder.
"Buck up," she says, spritely and twisted, but sincere, "If it'll make you feel better, the best part is that I think it's all true.”
***
Merlin manages to pry Gwen off of Lancelot for about five minutes, because he needs to talk to the one person in the castle who will not be a total asshole to him.
"Oh, Merlin," she says, which is code for all kinds of things, but usually "you're a moron".
"And look, I'm not his wife" - kind of - “but I am getting worried about him, he does seem as if he hasn't slept well in days," Merlin argues, because he figured out where Gwen's soft spots are roughly five minutes after meeting her. She didn't have a mother and made up for it by mothering anything particularly lost, helpless, or hideous - usually Merlin.
Gwen was the type of person who took home and actually loved boot-faced cats. And true to type, Gwen does soften a little bit. Merlin thinks he's finally got it through to someone that this is a bit more serious, at least to Arthur, than they've all been thinking. But instead, Gwen smiles like she learned it from Morgana and says, "You're a little bit sweet on him, aren't you?"
Merlin thinks about throwing himself out the window. "I am NOT a homosexual!"
***
Two days later and an erotic dream where instead of finishing the task, Arthur had kept Merlin as his consort in his undersea kingdom beneath the lake, Merlin revises his earlier statement.
"Okay, maybe I am a little bit of a homosexual," he admitted, under the usual stairwell. Morgana looks gratified to be right but slightly exasperated.
"You dragged us here for that? Merlin, we already knew that." she said, primly setting down on an old crate. Gwen smiles gently at Merlin.
"It's true," she says.
"Why am I here?" Lancelot asks. Gwen opens her mouth to say something, but squeaks suddenly, and Merlin turns around, and there is Arthur, looking a cross, but a little pink around the edges. Merlin spares a moment to thank whatever deities exist that at least it wasn't Uther.
"I'll, I'm-" Arthur tries, and then just walks off. Merlin sighs, because now Arthur's hurt because he thinks they're keeping secrets, and they sort of are, but not because they don't care for him, but because they do care for him, and this line of thinking is probably why Morgana thinks he's Arthur's wife.
"Christ," Merlin mutters, but goes after Arthur anyway and tries to ignore Morgana telling Gwen she owes her a twenty Galleons.
***
Predictably, Merlin finds Arthur on the ramparts of the Astronomy tower, looking out over the grounds. And for all that Arthur's the one sulking on top of a Gothic castle, Merlin thinks he still manages to look like a displaced statuary, a warrior angel, rather than a gargoyle, and Merlin might have to revise further, because that was insanely gay.
"So, you're a bit of a homosexual?" Arthur says, and well, no one's ever accused Arthur of being indirect. Merlin figures he's been screwed since day one anyway, so he might as well be honest.
"Seems to be, yeah," he says bluntly, settling down next to Arthur, who still looked pink and cross and made Merlin sort of want to shove his tongue down his throat. It was with some small measure of chagrin that he realized this was not actually a new feeling. "You?"
"Oh." Arthur fidgets and bit and answers, "Like I said, I like women," and Merlin thinks acerbically, "At least Morgana was wrong, for once", but then Arthur sort of sidles a little closer and adds, "But I, well, you."
Merlin has been called slow a number of times, most of them by Arthur, but he thinks he gets it, and for all he'd thought he had figured Arthur out a long time ago, Arthur still keeps surprising him. He's sort of crap at a lot of things, but he must be pretty good with Arthur, because the whole castle thought they were shagging, after all.
"I would- I would miss you, you know," Arthur says quietly. "I'm glad it was you."
Merlin smiles and kisses Arthur.
"You know, if a magical cup asked me who I liked best, I'd probably say Gwen," Merlin says and Arthur scowls and shoves at him. Merlin catches his hands, and he knows he must look deranged, but he's so happy he can't stop the grin splitting his face. "But I'd only eat weeds and jump in a frozen lake for you."
***
Merlin stares at Arthur in total disbelief.
"You want to what?" he asks, because he hasn't seen Arthur take a terrible blow to the head recently, and they've been pretty inseparable all night (in a lot of ways) but there aren't a lot of other reasons Arthur could have gone completely mental all of a sudden.
"It's the gentlemanly thing to do," Arthur chides, and Merlin doesn't care that Uther probably had Arthur trained by a nanny or something to be a courtly scholar or some other stupid medieval gayness, but this is beyond all that.
"Arthur, what-" Merlin starts, but Arthur just puts a hand on Merlin's shoulder and gives him the stiffest upper lip since Winston Churchill, bred into Arthur by generations of emotionally stunted Britons. They might say that Wales is full of back-water sheep-shaggers, but really, Arthur is probably so distressingly inbred.
"Don't worry. But I am bound by honor to tell Morgana that we're now in a-" Arthur pauses, and then just mercilessly plows onward. "Yes, well." Arthur looks at Merlin earnestly. "You know, let her down easy."
Merlin washes his hands of the whole thing, but at the last moment Arthur totally wusses out, and takes Merlin with him to see Morgana. Generally, Merlin avoids going into the dungeons that form the Slytherin dorms, but Morgana's room is remarkably nice. Then again, it's Morgana.
About halfway through Arthur's stuttered announcement that he regrets doing wrong by her or some other equally horrid turn of phrase, Morgana cuts him off.
"Arthur, are you trying to tell me that you are Merlin are together?" she asks, patiently, as if asking a small child. Arthur nods gravely. "And you're telling me- what, so I don't feel as though you've jilted me?" she prods further. Arthur nods again. Morgana presses her fingers to her temples. "Arthur, I don't know what Uther told you, but we were not betrothed or anything as children, and we should not date, and I do not like you, just because Uther says so!"
Arthur looks completely bamboozled. Morgana stares at him, and Merlin feels so totally vindicated.
"What, did you think I was secretly pining for you?" Morgana is so clearly horrified and this is ridiculous that Merlin would enjoy it, but he thinks that one of their heads might explode, so he's mostly thinking about triage.
"What?" Arthur finally offers up after an embarrassing amount of silence. Morgana sighs.
"Arthur, I've known you since we were children, and believe me, I knew you swung both ways, or at least just this way, a long time before you did. I have actually had to stop Gwen from sending out your wedding invitations on three separate occasions." Morgana's reign is merciless, and it is only Merlin's self-preservation and desire to ever cop off with another human that is stopping him from laughing and laughing and laughing.
***
Arthur is still sulking the next day. "You could have told me," he complains. They're sitting in one of the many anonymous dormer windows in the library, because Merlin is a Ravenclaw and has appearances to keep up. Merlin gives him a Gaius-like eyebrow, because he. Tried.
"Are you joking? I told you three, no, four times, that it was a terrible idea. Was that seriously not enough?" Merlin insists. And it figures that dating Arthur is pretty much exactly like being someone's mother.
"Still," Arthur says, and it is so distressing that Merlin finds Arthur's complete inability to take responsibility for his own stupid plans endearing. Gryffindors.
They sit in companionable silence for a while, Merlin pretending to read and leaning into his boyfriend’s warm side and Arthur pouting and brooding about his emasculation or some shit. Eventually, Arthur says, “So, Morgana cornered me in the hallway and said that when you give me your manly flower at the Yule Ball, I have to use a... a 'condam'."
To say it was not what Merlin had expected to hear would be something of an understatement. Hr does not even know where to start, but he figures crying could be good. Arthur must see the patent distress on Merlin's face, because he backtracks immediately.
"I mean, not that I'm expecting that you would at the Yule Ball. It's not like I think you have easy virtue or anything-" Arthur breaks off again, obviously horrified by what was coming out of his mouth, too. "Not that if you were planning- the Ball- that I wouldn't, that you would be-"
Merlin doesn't know how he became the rational one in this situation, but someone has to save Arthur from himself.
"I'm just going to focus on the facts," he found himself saying, as if floating by on a cloud made of dismay. "It's a 'condom', and it's a contraceptive." Upon Arthur's blank look, Merlin forces himself to continue. "You know, to stop people from becoming pregnant." Merlin can see the wheels turning in Arthur's head - firstly, that Arthur knows he's been tricked, again, into saying something he will regret (thanks to Morgana) and secondly, that Morgana may or may not want Arthur to impregnate Merlin.
"But I can't get you pregnant," Arthur says, after a few attempts to say something that won't get him slapped. Merlin wishes they had a health class or something, like he'd had in primary school, because wizards probably all have syphilis (which explains a lot), because no one taught their children about STI’s. Then again, Merlin tries to think about Uther explaining to Arthur about sex and dies a little.
"I think Morgana said it, because she's kind of a bitch sometimes," Merlin says gently and decides that they are just going to forget the last five minutes even happened and think of something really awful to do to Morgana.
***
Gwen tries not to laugh at him when he ends up telling her the whole debacle that had happened in the Library. "Oh, Merlin," she says, fondly. (Which definitely means "You're a moron" this time.)
To be fair, she's holding up her part of their bargain about the Yule Ball - she can go with Lancelot after all, if she still helps him pick out his dress robes. He would have asked Morgana, but despite the fact that she is stylish to a fault, Merlin wants something between High-Fashion-I-Look-Like-An-Ass (which would inevitably happen with Morgana, plus he's mad at her right now for the whole "Manly Flower" thing of which they do not speak) and Well-It's-Black-That'll-Do (This would happen if he and Arthur went shopping together, and Morgana-with-whom-he-is-mad had forbade that expressly. This also meant that Morgana had taken Arthur shopping, and they could take out their hatred on each other, and not on Merlin by proxy.)
"What about this one?" she asks and holds up a set of robes, which as stipulated before, they're black, so his criteria is met and presumably Gwen would not fuck with him on a lark.
"Yeah, sure," he says, shrugging and Gwen sighs.
"You have to actually try them on," she says, sort of shaking them at him. As Merlin climbs into the monkey suit, his only source of comfort is that Arthur has probably been taken to some kind of place where they stick tape measures in all sort of disgusting, invasive places, and Merlin is safe with Gwen.
He steps out of the cubicle and Gwen stops fiddling with cummerbunds or something, getting that boot-faced cat expression she gets when her heart overflows with sentiment for something wretched. This is not Merlin's first experience with being given the Look, but he bears it with good grace. Gwen gets over her giant, Hufflepuffian heart in short order and merely straightens him up, tugging here and there and settles for saying he looks quite handsome.
Merlin and Gwen had met on the train to Hogwarts, two confused muggleborn kids ending up in a compartment together and Merlin had instantly come to the conclusion that he was going to marry Gwen after she'd shyly offered him half her sandwich. And then he'd met Arthur. But it doesn't mean that he can't still love Gwen, and Lancelot had better recognize that he is a lucky bastard.
He hugs her hugs her tightly for being his friend, for being pretty much wonderful, always, and hugs her tighter when she faintly fusses about wrinkles.
***
He takes back all the things he ever said about Morgana, about tailors and especially about never wanting to have sex with Arthur after the "Manly Flower" thing of which they do not speak, because good God, Arthur is maybe the most attractive thing he has ever seen, ever.
"It's black," Arthur says with a shrug when Merlin runs his fingers over the lapel. Which, granted, is true, but it's also like a walking invitation to goose Arthur's finely sculpted backside, so he doesn't complain when Arthur puts the robes on over his suit. Merlin must remember to send Morgana a gift basket of some kind. He himself is carrying the robe, because it gives him one less thing to trip on when he has to-
Not even the memory of Arthur's arse can save him from the bleak realization that he will have to dance with Arthur in front of three schools worth of wizards and oh, God, Uther Pendragon.
Arthur is shaking him slightly, and Merlin realizes that he’s been trying to talk to him.
"What, you've gone all ashen, like that time you saw the Fat Friar pleasuring himself," Arthur says, which, also not a visual he had needed then, or ever. Merlin looks at Arthur, handsome and frowning slightly and realizes that the other shoe has not dropped for him yet.
"You know we'll be dancing together, right?" Merlin says quietly, in deference to the gathering crowd of couples around them. Arthur rolls his eyes.
"Is that what you're worrying about? Great Circe's panties, Merlin, it's not hard. I took dancing lessons as a child, my father insis-" And there it drops. Arthur clutches at Merlin's arm.
"Oh my god, we're going to have to dance together in front of my father." Arthur sounds as if he's in the trenches and Merlin agrees whole-heartedly, because it's one thing for Arthur to pull Merlin out of a lake and to be kind of whatever they are with each other, with Gwen, Morgana, even Lancelot, and a whole different thing for Uther to have to murder Merlin for despoiling his son.
***
Saying the Yule Ball goes poorly would be ignoring all the things that do go well.
Merlin does not fall down any more than is expected of him (four times - who thought it was a good idea to decorate with ice, honestly), the army of girls (and a few blokes) that lusts after Arthur's body is still so deep in mourning for his sexuality as to be merely a glowering, weeping mass in the background, rather an active force for Merlin's head on a pike, and Uther does not cut in at any point in the night to tell Merlin that whether or not his intentions are honorable, he is going to have paratroops rappel in and execute him within the hour.
That being said, Merlin is unsurprised that Arthur nearly loses his trousers on three occasions, that he has spiked punch spilled upon him, so that when Uther does reach them (allegedly to give them his "cordial greetings" or some other classy and hugely fake way of saying "look at Merlin as if he's something that has crawled out from the rubbish bin"), Merlin smells like the owner of a brewery in an eastern European country where no one bathes, except in moonshine and their own filth.
Merlin actually has no recollection of what Uther does deign to say to them, as it's all lost in hindbrain survival instincts screaming at him to flee before the headmaster devours his soul. Arthur insists that his father was perfectly polite and in no way implied that he was "giving him to Filch to practice depraved sexual torture upon, God, Merlin." (Merlin does not believe this at all.)
***
(Unfortunately) everyone makes it out of the night with their virtue intact, although (in some cases), not for lack of trying. He is actually terrified that if he were to undress Arthur, an alarm would go off in the Headmaster's office, and he would be summarily shot.
Arthur is yet again sulking about this in that passive-aggressive way he has, which is to say, he is passive in his aggression, because he does not normally make the Quidditch team drill in the snow for three hours despite the fact that a.) he is "not upset about anything, Merlin”, and b.) there is no Quidditch season this year, as the Triwizard Tournament is occurring. Merlin is watching the practice, not because he is worried that Arthur will fall off his broomstick, or anything like that, but because he is worried the remaining members of the Gryffindor team are going to murder him for being a right prick.
Of course, Arthur takes this opportunity to fall off his broomstick. For a moment, as he falls, it is worse, so worse than any of the rest of it - Morgana traumatising him constantly, Uther killing him in his sleep, Gwen making subtle allusions to going on double dates with her and Lancelot - because no one told him that letting the Headmaster put him in a lake would mean that when Arthur goes off and does something dangerous and terrible, Merlin will not be able to breathe.
***
Merlin has to stop having these Arthur-related memory blackouts. As a matter of fact, he knows he spells Arthur afloat as Galahad asks, "Is Arthur alright?", but all Merlin can think is that it's wasting time, and he'll probably have to apologize for being an ass later, anyway. So, even though he has no problem with him whatsoever, normally, he punches Galahad in the face for being in the way. The next thing he alleges to know, he's carrying Arthur into the hospital wing, shouting for Gaius at the top of his lungs.
He is sitting with his head in his hands in one of the supremely uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room while Gaius examines Arthur. He has sworn to inform Merlin of Arthur’s condition as soon as possible, but that was probably just a lie to get him out of the room. Somehow Morgana, Gwen, and Lancelot arrive and wait with Merlin silently, and Morgana does not even make fun of him for holding Gwen's hand.
Things really get awkward when Uther shows up, almost out of breath, but thank god Gaius appears before any of them have to acknowledge each others' presence. Gaius goes directly to talk to Uther, but shiftily indicates with a slight nod that they can go in. As soon as Uther is appropriately distracted, they dart into the hospital wing.
Merlin is prepared to sit by Arthur's bedside, bravely waiting for him to wake up so he can murder Arthur for purposefully engaging in a sport where you can fall out of the fucking sky, but Arthur is already sitting up in bed, looking embarrassed and plucking at the bed covers. Merlin is so relieved he loses all the feeling in his legs and nearly falls down, but he manages to makes it to the cot and lands heavily on it.
"Well?" Morgana says sharply, which they all actually know means she's irritated with herself for having been seen publicly worrying about Arthur, but is trying to move past it by being brisk and efficient. "What did you do to yourself?"
Again, Merlin imagines the worst - internal bleeding or broken limbs - but apparently Arthur is fine, which will only encourage him to do other stupid, dangerous shit because he probably thinks he's invincible.
"I'm fine," Arthur says, and Merlin actually thinks it means he has a head injury, because he's not being a twat about it, like, of course he could fall of a broomstick and be fine, even though when everyone else does it they die. Gwen just sort of overflows, because her heart is seriously two sizes too big, but Lancelot takes the brunt of the near silent weeping, even as he punches Arthur in the shoulder.
"Next time, remember you're supposed to be riding the broom," Lancelot gripes, but he's smiling in that foreign underwear model way that makes Merlin sincerely insecure and their manly bro posturing is not helping, because the point of this is to try to scare some sense into Arthur. Then again, Arthur once killed a giant ass snake that lived in an underground cavern of drippy evil, with its own fangs, so maybe a brush with gravity is just not going to do the job.
Merlin is trying to think of a way to get everyone to leave, discreetly, so he can not be as embarrassed by the huge scene he is going to make. Despite the fact that Morgana is undoubtedly leaving to make fun of him, he's nonetheless grateful when she cuffs Arthur on the ear and herds Gwen and Lance out.
Arthur is steadfastly looking anywhere but directly at Merlin, which is good, because that means he already knows that he's done wrong. Merlin thinks about safety and lectures and responsibility and the fact that he punched Galahad, and just sighs, because it did say Arthur Pendragon on the tin. Does what it says on.
***
Merlin does not have to double date with Gwen and Lancelot. This saves him a lot of anguish.
However, Arthur had said, "Maybe, d'you... Are you going to Hogsmeade?" causing Merlin to stare at him and say "Yes," resulting in their current predicament. Arthur looks so uncomfortable that Merlin actually feels twice as uncomfortable himself (which he hadn't thought possible), because Merlin has seen Arthur talking his way out of being murdered by centaurs in the forest for being inexplicably naked and in their territory, and had thought that was as bad as it could get. (The Sophia Week.)
"You forgot." Arthur says, and Merlin thinks that he really cannot be responsible for all of this, because Arthur hadn't realized either. He morosely pushes some confetti off his saucer.
"I wasn't thinking about it," he sullenly insists, because Jesus, it's not like Arthur doesn't have a bloody calendar, too; this is seriously not his fault. Arthur glares viciously at an approaching cherub and it backs away carefully, wide-eyed.
Although he supposes the fact that when they had opened the door at Madame Puddifoot's, an actual explosion of red, white and pink confetti had assaulted them, should have been a clue.
"You said 'not the Three Broomsticks, Merlin, I'm so bloody sick of it'," Merlin hisses. "Where were we going to go, the Hog's Head?" Arthur kicks him under the table.
"Fuck you, this is a nightmare," Arthur hisses back, and well, he is right about that.
In general, this would not be a problem. Merlin thinks that Madame Puddifoot's is a perfectly acceptable place to have a cuppa and a biscuit. This is not his fault.
They are two red-blooded, (reasonably) intelligent men, and they forgot about St. Valentine's Day. Merlin compensates for how much he hates his life by drinking a butterbeer. And, over the course of their three absolutely hideous hours in there (“We cannot just leave, that is so grossly uncouth!”), Merlin drinks roughly ten more butterbeers.
Normally, Gwen cuts him off after two butterbeers, and after one regrettable night over the summer after 5th year with Will and a smuggled-out bottle of Firewhiskey (That Merlin DOES NOT REMEMBER, AT ALL), Hunith had firmly forbade him from ever imbibing anything stronger than a Guinness, and only on bank holidays. Later, Arthur would claim he hadn’t thought this would happen, but so would most people with the tolerance of a small ox, learned harshly as the risk of passing out in front of Morgana to be left at her ‘mercy’.
Objectively, Merlin can acknowledge that he’s drunk out of his mind. This, however, doesn’t prevent him from thinking he’s totally fine and should drink more. Especially because there’s a never-ending legion of women who seem intent on murdering him and leading Arthur back into the heterosexual light who keep parading past their table. (The fact that Arthur is on a date with a man does not seem to be deterring them, which points to a fundamental disconnect with reality, proves Merlin is saving Arthur.)
Arthur finishes his cup of tea and gently places it back down on the saucer (like a dainty fucking miss) and insisting it’s stuffy, accordingly demands a walk in the village. Merlin would normally complain, because it’s snowy and cold as hell outside, but he feels distinctly warm and glowing himself, and he’s not sure his legs work but he is willing to give it a try, because he is the best boyfriend ever. He even pays for the drinks, which he thinks makes him the man, but having to question whether or not you’re the man probably means you’re not. Plus, Merlin has heard rumors that Arthur is hung like a centaur.
The Gryffindor-on-a-bender bitches about Merlin sneakily paying the check (If by “sneakily” Arthur means that Merlin got lost on the way to the loo and gave a woman some money, well, he’s not far off. Merlin is just glad to realize he wasn’t hiring a prostitute accidentally.) as they head out into the High Street.
Merlin blinks and sighs when they keep failing to focus, just giving him a sweet white mass and Arthur’s shining gold hair and red cloak against it. It’s actually sort of pretty and Merlin reaches out for Arthur, to kiss him, but apparently his depth perception is off, and he falls down face first into the snow.
“Ow,” he mutters. Arthur lets loose a scandalized noise, and for a moment Merlin is terrified that his mother has appeared to take him by the ear, and it is only when he remembers his mother cannot Apparate that he starts to breathe again.
“Great Dumbledore’s ghost, Merlin, are you drunk?” Arthur asks incredulously. Merlin figures it’s either a testament to his acting abilities or Arthur’s inherent self-absorption that he hadn’t noticed yet.
“No. Yes,” Merlin admits, still face down, and eats some snow in the process. It’s kind of nice, actually, because he’s suddenly gone from “pleasantly warm in the face of Scotland” to “hot, itchy and vaguely irritable” (like herpes). Arthur eventually picks him up by the scruff of his coat like an errant kitten, which is demeaning, but necessary, because Merlin has lost all his limbs in the snow.
An interminable amount of time later, they are at the gates of the castle, and Arthur has an arm slung under his shoulders (thankfully, Arthur is not carrying him like the cover of the bodice-rippers Morgana reads shamelessly in public) and is sweetly griping about it. And because Arthur is actually a wonderful and amazing person under the veneer of assholery he maintains, Merlin kisses him and kisses him and kisses him until he realizes Uther is standing there.
It is at this point Merlin swears he can remember no more.
But that is most likely because he has banished the fact that he vomited all over the Headmaster’s shoes from his mind forever.
***
Arthur is beyond horrified, as is Gwen, but Morgana is perversely delighted all day.
Merlin is nigh excommunicated from his house, because the evidence that the previous night actually transpired is obvious in the copious lack of sapphires in the Ravenclaw hourglass in the Great Hall.
His life is even more painfully dismal because Gaius is a harsh and vicious mistress, and so every sixth year has to undergo vocational counseling. He doesn’t accept Merlin’s strangled protest that he’s too busy trying not to be murdered by Arthur Pendragon’s psychotic swarm of stalkers or the Headmaster (or fellow Ravenclaws, probably) to think about a job, and Merlin reflects gloomily that it was probably a long shot anyway.
Because God hates Merlin, of course Arthur wants to be an Auror. They discussed it briefly before spiralling into an argument about whether or not Arthur was suicidal and that Merlin doesn’t want to change him. He knows fully that killing evil things and chasing after bad guys are part of who Arthur is, but he just wants him not to die tragically young and fit, either. Then again, Merlin vomited on Arthur’s father, so he’s probably going to change it to something like “bare-hands troll executioner” to spite Merlin.
Gaius looks at him in a move that has withered students for (probably thousands of) years and Merlin babbles something about being a Healer, a) because he will probably need to be able to heal Arthur, and b.) because someone has to pursue a career that will let them keep all their appendages and it will not be Arthur.
When he finally escapes, Uther is laying in wait, which is to say he appears out of nowhere and Merlin finds himself trailing after him toward the Headmaster’s office. Before Merlin can think about casting a protective spell or twenty while he’s still behind Uther, he’s somehow plonked in one of the chairs facing Uther’s terrifying and imposing desk and being stared at. Merlin feels like how he imagines small mice feel when faced with a hawk.
Merlin envisions that this is going to be a formal reprimand for the whole vomiting thing that he doesn’t remember, so what comes out of Uther’s mouth doubly horrifies him.
“What are your intentions toward my son?”
He thinks he blacks out for a moment in pure horror. When he comes back to himself, he manages a soft and weak “What, sir?” Merlin gets that maybe Uther feels responsible for Arthur’s big gay lake adventure and thus feels compelled to interrogate Merlin, but then the man steeples his fingers, and for a moment Merlin just sees a father trying to protect his child from any hurt, and so he is honest.
“They’re - I’m…” Merlin starts and blurts out, “I love him,” and oh god, he told Uther that before he’s told Arthur and he has to go leap off the Astronomy tower and commit ritual suicide in the Prefect’s bathroom or something because this is the most hideous thing ever, but then he has a minor stroke as a bare corner of Uther’s mouth lifts.
“I do not pretend to understand you, Mr. Emrys,” Uther says, (and in that Merlin reads, loud and clear, “or like you”) “But I think we understand each other on this point.” And yes, Merlin does get it, because for all that Uther is the scariest thing that has ever happened to him, he does not doubt that he loves Arthur, even if he’s completely incapable of showing it.
“Yes, sir,” Merlin says, Uther nods, and there’s a finality to it that suggests that Merlin’s humiliation is hopefully nearing an end.
And suddenly the vague human emotion and connection is gone, and Uther is sharp and distant again. “I don’t believe I need to say that were I to be disappointed in your conduct in this matter, Mr. Emrys, my first reaction would not be to take House Points,” he says.
“Ah, yes, sir,” Merlin says, and Uther makes a flippant gesture that means to leave him and Merlin runs out of there like Satan himself is chasing him.
***
Merlin refuses to tell Arthur what he and Uther talked about, mostly out of shame, but fusses until Arthur fetches him cocoa from the kitchens just to shut him up, because he does tell Arthur that it was horrific and invasive, and expounds upon his trauma in that sole aspect.
Arthur is still cross at him about the whole vomit thing, but Merlin thinks that if Uther can forgive him (which he thinks he sort of has, although Merlin does not for a second harbor any illusions that Uther thinks of Merlin as his son’s “ideal mate”, and does not expect any further clemency) then Arthur certainly can.
They are mostly hidden from sight and Arthur's creepy admirers that inhabit Gryffindor tower, as Merlin is still persona non grata in Ravenclaw after the spectacular loss of 70 points, in a deep seat in a turret. It’s quiet and snowing outside gently, covering the noises of the fire, laughter and people arguing, happy, in a gentle haze and Merlin thinks that despite all the awful things he has had to and will continue to go through in order to be here, with Arthur, it’s all worth it.
***
Spring sneaks up on them while they’re remembering they’re actually students, not just figuring out strange pseudo-public relationships and being happy. Morgana is performing her own strange and amusing version of the Triwizard Tournament amongst the three people it appears were her Yule Ball dates (only Morgana), and Gwen and Lance are carrying on this beautiful and sickening courtship that results in a lot of shy flower gathering and hand holding interspersed with truly filthy snogging sessions.
Arthur and Merlin fall into this pattern that is essentially exactly the same as how they behave toward each other naturally, except they hit each other much less frequently, and when the urge arises, they usually just make out.
Morgana insists alternately that Arthur must be suffering from terrible blue balls while implying that Merlin should wait until marriage, and it frequently makes Merlin wish that her “Champions” were more interesting or something, so she would stop giving Merlin disgusting and confusing advice.
But it is true, that despite the fact that they are teenaged boys, (Merlin is still just shy of 17, and Arthur is actually getting close to 18 - Arthur is a bit old for their year, which had meant that even as a sixth year, he had been eligible to enter the Tournament. Morgana insists it is actually because Arthur was held back a year for behavioral problems.) they’ve still not shagged. It’s not that Merlin wouldn’t - or won’t - it just feels like they’re waiting for something. (And not marriage, whatever Morgana implies.)
They’re so busy dancing around actually defining their relationship that the Third Task totally sneaks up on them.
When Arthur sees the hedges growing out of the Quidditch pitch, Merlin swears for once, when faced with great peril, Arthur seems to be a far cry from his fearless. And Merlin cannot describe all the ways he is not okay with the idea of Arthur traveling in a maze of death. His only consolation is that if it’s entirely dangerous and foul-tempered, Arthur has already tried to and succeeded in killing most of the terrifying things that live in the Forbidden Forest since infancy.
Arthur spends a lot of time trying to reassure Merlin that they probably wouldn't put anything too dangerous in there, which Merlin does not believe for an instant, because they have already had them fight fucking dragons and go into the godforsaken lake; and also, Arthur's interpretation of "not too dangerous" includes a lot of things Merlin weeps over. What can he say, he's a Ravenclaw.
Morgana merely pats his hand and offers to buy him his widow's mourning dress.
Merlin doesn't really want to bother Gwen, because she surely has to be worried about Lancelot, but when he does gently broach the subject in a brave effort of solidarity and friendship, she essentially shrugs and says, "Lance says he will be fine, I trust him."
This is totally maddening, because Merlin does trust Arthur (to an embarrassingly large extent), and it's not as though he hasn't made it to 17, which many had predicted (and even actively attempted to ensure) would not come to pass, but he simply cannot handle the idea that Arthur is going into a school-sanctioned topiary filled with angry things to kill.
He sort of thinks maybe they should shag in case Arthur dies in a hedge tomorrow, but doesn't want to jinx anything, and instead they go to the Room of Requirement and sleep.
***
If Merlin wasn't gripped in terrible fear for Arthur's safety (couldn't they at least have check-ins, so Merlin would at least know that Arthur is missing a limb, for chrissakes), he would wish he had brought a book, because what no one thought about was that the champions went into the maze, and then there was absolutely fuck-all to do until they came out.
They can't really even talk to each other, because what the hell would they talk about, other than the maze in front of them, and they have no idea what is going on inside it, so it'd be an incredibly short and pointless conversation. Luckily, though, no one talks to them either, in a strange display of maturity (for Hogwarts), and also, probably respecting that they'd get shanked by Morgana for interrupting their vigil.
So instead, they wait and wait and wait.
***
After an hour, the Champion from Durmstrang emerges and a ripple goes through the crowd. He is battered and bleeding a little, but fine, somewhat disgruntled, and most importantly, empty handed.
Merlin doesn't know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. So instead, he squeezes Gwen's hand a little tighter and hopes.
***
Three hours later, Arthur emerges from the maze.
He has Lancelot draped over one shoulder and the Triwizard Cup in his other hand.
The stadium erupts into chaos.
***
Two days later, Lancelot is still a little weak but sitting up on his own, and Merlin accepts that he won't see Gwen for the foreseeable future except attached to his side.
Lancelot and Arthur don't talk about what happened in the maze. The Durmstrang guy (who Merlin never bothered to learn the name of) talks too much, and complains loudly that he saw the Cup long before Arthur got there, and had he not been tricked by the Sphynx, he would have won. But people are pretty much shunning him, partially because it's just bad sportsmanship, and also, unlike Lancelot and Arthur, he is not blindingly attractive, which had made him the dark knight in the running the whole way, in any case.
By hanging around the hospital wing, Merlin hears whispers between Gaius, Uther and the Beauxbatons headmaster about how close it was, and that if they do it again, more safety precautions must be taken. Merlin cannot imagine ever wanting to do this again, but Uther is headstrong and fiercely proactive about the reputation and pride of Hogwarts and would enter, if offered, again and again. Merlin also cannot imagine anyone but Athur succeeding in the challenges set forward, but he's keeping that to himself.
Arthur himself is strangely subdued all through the celebrations that had been thrown as soon as it was certain Lancelot would recover, despite all his previous assertions that he was going to take the prize money and roll in it. He is dutiful and receives the money and ceremony with good grace, but he disappears as soon as is conceivable in the resulting feast. Merlin finally finds him out by the lake. After a long moment, Arthur looks up at him from where he's sitting cross-legged on the pier. Merlin is uncertain if Arthur wants company, but he wants his company, so he sits down quietly.
"I am totally fine, Merlin," he eventually says, but there is a shadow around his eyes and even when Merlin pushes, which usually would result in Arthur blowing up and telling him anyway, he just looks grave and resigned, and finally sighs and says, "It's my burden to know, Merlin."
All that time, Merlin was worried about Arthur getting mauled or something, but he thinks maybe some things are worse and harder to heal.
***
Merlin's never been more glad that Arthur's a prefect and has his own room than when, an excruciating week of silences and stoic faces later, he just bursts into Arthur's room and climbs into bed with him.
Arthur looks vaguely startled, but puts his parchment and book aside, anyway.
"Yes, M-" he starts, but breaks off when Merlin curls a hand around Arthur's cheek.
"I can't watch you-" Merlin tries to catch his breath but Arthur's eyes are huge and blue and he cannot get enough air, and he doesn't know what to do. "What do you-- tell me what you want. Anything."
Arthur stares at him, and he's breathing like maybe he can't get any air, either, and then they're kissing, and Merlin cannot remember why that was important in the first place.
***
Merlin had not been scared but he’d had no idea how blokes went about having sex with other blokes. so he’d done the Ravenclaw thing (for once), and gone to the library.
Having sex is not something they explain in the books, apparently
***
He doesn’t know how it happens, but Arthur pins him down to the bed. Then again, Arthur is just in his white Oxford, and the sleeves are rolled up - the man has the forearms of an Olympian, and he is a gangly, pasty Welsh kid. Merlin is suddenly self-conscious because, let’s face it, last Christmas, the Holyhead Harpies sent Arthur a gift basket of their panties, and he got a jumper from his mother.
But for some reason, even though he could probably be having an orgy anywhere else, Arthur is here, so close that he’s a little out of focus, and all Merlin can see is hazy golden fringe falling forward, shadowing Arthur’s eyes, which are a deeper shade of blue than Merlin has ever seen them, and his red, shining mouth.
Merlin still cannot believe that this, that Arthur is for him.
But he’s learning something in the way Arthur’s mouth lovingly chases after his, and so when the Oxford disappears and he’s stripped of his clothes, Merlin can’t find anything to be self-conscious about, after all. He fumbles for the button of Arthur’s pants, and when his hands shake a little too much and it takes him near five times to undo them.
“Should have known you’d be terrible at this,” Arthur says with a snort, and Merlin exhales a laugh, shaky and unsteady.
Merlin kisses him once, twice, with sheer relief running all over his body like a shiver. After that, it’s easy, so easy, because they’ve always been together (in some way), so this is like that feeling when you’re just waking, but before your alarm goes off - because it’s Sunday and there’s clear sunlight pouring through a window tinted ruby and gold, and this is how being happy feels.
This is again, a WIP. I just don't know how I want to go about finishing this. This was only meant as a breather between my other stuff, but I'm kinda liking the vibe from this ahem, story. I'll probably just bounce back and forth with updates.
If there's anything you'd like to see, tell me. For now, all I know is that I'm going to add Gwaine somehow. He's awesome. Maybe the other Round Table knights, too.
Please don't pelt me if I end up pairing Morgana and Gwaine. Their personalities (ya know, when Morgana's not really evil) are actually quite compatible.
