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"What is wrong with you?" Sir Erec demands, scowling at the scattered arrows.
"Nothing!" Merlin doesn't claim to be graceful. He feels his clumsiness really ought to be a known quantity by now. It doesn't help that today the whole world is a distraction; every scent demands attention, the metallic sounds of swords ringing across the practice field are sharp as blades themselves, and even the sky seems alive with texture and tiny movements like Sidhe zipping impossibly high against the vast blue. Now Merlin crouches in the shadows to collect each arrow, going that extra mile to try to keep them all pointing the same direction.
"Why the Prince keeps you on at all I'll never guess," the knight says as his parting shot, snatching the recovered quiver.
Merlin shuts his mouth tight and does not say he has little enough idea himself. Sometimes he knows; sometimes he is certain of Arthur. Today he feels unfit for any employment, and craves the solitude of the riverbend by Ealdor, the trees that sheltered him when he was small.
"Merlin!" Arthur, across the field, grins against the blinding sunshine, and raises a hand in greeting.
Arthur wouldn't know it (he set himself apart when they visited Merlin's hometown, all business and no gossip), but most of Ealdor was of the opinion that Merlin was some kind of faerie changeling — harmless as such things go, perhaps well-meaning and even rather sweet, but strange, alien. Even Will would have cheerfully agreed that Hunith must have found Merlin in the crook of a tree as an infant, but at least he could make it sound like a compliment.
Merlin's mum would always smile, and deny it: "You're mine all right. Just look at that nose."
The secret of his magic was kept tenaciously, but twelve-year-olds are not made to hold in dangerous truths. Will was with Merlin the day they wondered so hard what clouds were made of that Merlin called one to earth, a rather disappointing puff of fog spreading over the grass as it crashed down upon them.
"That was completely mad," Will pronounced, almost manic with delight. "That was incredible. Next time, let's get a rainbow!"
Unaccountably, two twelve-year-olds guarded Merlin's secret better than one did.
The stocks are a bit of a torment. It's astoundingly uncomfortable not to be able to move his hands, to be restricted from all of the motions he usually relies on to soothe him, although he's improvised a replacement in flicking his fingers. It even looks quite natural, he thinks, considering he's nearly always trying to get a bit of tomato or decaying cabbage off.
"This one's the best one," Elaine declares loudly, hefting a peach so rotted that it's actually sagging between her chubby fingers.
"Stand on the line," Merlin prompts her, and she does, bare toes along the edge of the flagstone.
"You ready?" she crows. Her brothers, behind her, clamour for her to 'hit him right in the nose!'
"Go!" Merlin shouts, then shuts his mouth and eyes just in case. The peach splatters against his forehead, off-centre, every bit as rotten as it looked. Peach sludge trails down his cheek. But he is laughing, because Elaine is doing a victory wiggle, and she squeals as her biggest brother scoops her up to set her on his shoulders.
It would be a real punishment, except that he always laughs when they laugh.
Merlin's chores are manifold. Anything he could conceivably be asked to do, he has at some point done, and he's constantly reordering his least favourite (and his favourite) tasks.
He wouldn't have bet on changing and making the bed being one he'd enjoy. Messing with bedsheets makes his arms feel weirdly heavy and it seems like a huge effort for something that will just be rumpled up again at bedtime anyway. But Arthur's bed is as comfortable a place to flop face forward as anyone could want, and the sheets are wonderfully fine and smooth, and even with fresh bedclothes it always smells extremely Arthurish (which is another thing he didn't expect to enjoy).
He catches himself imagining the weight of the quilts, the softness of the mattress beneath. He thinks of Arthur settling over him and pushing him bodily into the bed, steady and heavy and grounding, freeing him of any need to fidget or toss. He could rest then, really rest, he thinks.
It sounds ridiculous, and also a bit like heaven.
"Merlin?" Arthur's voice comes out of nowhere; Merlin jumps, curses, and ruins the corner he was trying to do on Arthur's bedsheet. He casts two quick glances behind him, taking in Arthur's relaxed stance, between Merlin's very important scowling and peevish re-positioning of the sheets.
"Yes, Sire?"
"I must be stealthier than even I imagined, to sneak up on you while wearing chainmail," Arthur remarks with an amused twist to his voice. "Leave the bed, will you? I need to be ready to greet Lord Hoel in half an hour. His messenger just arrived."
Merlin nods, and abandons the bed linens and his daydreams.
Intellectually he knows that no-one else can see the music. He'd talked it over a hundred times with his mother and others in Ealdor (more forgiving of oddness than they might have been were he not the child of a kindly neighbour); it's just a Merlin thing, almost certainly a magic thing. Still, he's surprised when he's expected to help fetch the last course of the banquet during a performance by the visiting bard and two lutanists. He ought to know that the doorframe is there, too, but he runs flat into it when a broad sweep of green — legato and rippling as the singer's voice — obscures his vision. It's ridiculously incriminating, and the guards are right there, but the nearest only chuckles and says, "Been at the wine, son?"
They're onto the next song when he returns, but he stays in line and watches the shoes of the servant in front of him from the edge of his vision, and manages not to spill candied fruit down anyone's shirt. Not even his own.
After that he stays back out of the way until it's over, watching the colours burn their way through the air, twisting lines and surging shapes. Spectacular as the sight of the music is, it's a lonely thing, and he wonders uselessly if Morgana mightn't see it too.
He feels quite at home around Gwen. She's never surprised when he doesn't look her in the face, because she's too busy studying her own hands or her shoes or watching a dragonfly flit past, or simply looking sidelong. Merlin is good with sidelong. Her voice and the set of her shoulders tell him more than the twist of her lips or her earnest eyes ever could.
Arthur is something entirely different.
The Pendragons are Intense Look people. They are starers. The King can pin Merlin like a bug on a card, all thoughts flown from his head, and Morgana's piercing glances regularly make him want to hide. Arthur looks and he certainly expects Merlin to look back, but for the longest time it just felt strange with the Prince's eyes on him, awkward because if Merlin did meet his eyes he knew it wouldn't be what Arthur was looking for. Merlin didn't know that silent language; he still does not.
When Arthur drained the cup on the beach of Gedref, Merlin looked because it was his last chance. He could do no more than gasp denial, then, held motionless by the crazy-blue of Arthur's eyes, Merlin's frantic heartbeat drowning out the pounding of the waves.
Since that day Merlin has taken up staring at Arthur, now and then. It fits in well with his other stressful pastimes.
When Merlin looks up from building one morning's fire, Arthur is sitting unexpectedly, almost eerily still.
Arthur's eyes rest closed and his face is relaxed, hands set half-curled on the tabletop and his shoulders propped against the chair back. He is breathing evenly, but not the whispery breaths of sleep. Merlin eyes him, and when Arthur doesn't move approaches soundlessly, seizing this moment to look his fill without the onus of meeting eyes.
Observing, he finds the slightest little vertical creases between Arthur's eyebrows where frowns must have left their slow mark. The fringe of his hair sweeps just so to one side. There is a red line, a healing split in the curve of his lower lip, which looks disconcertingly lickable.
Merlin jerks in a breath and skids backwards one step when he notices the narrow gleam of scarcely-open eyes behind Arthur's eyelashes.
"You're as contrary as a cat, aren't you," Arthur says, eyes going half-lidded. "Why won't you look me in the eye?" he says, quieter, and Merlin cannot explain. "Can't you please?"
And that, well. Merlin fumbles his way into the nearest chair, blood rushing madly in his ears. He looks at Arthur.
His usual tactic — unfocussing his eyes to take the person in more generally — fails against the near-magical sizzle of Arthur's gaze, too direct, too exposed, but he has wanted to show himself to Arthur after all. He can't keep it up for long. His eyes drop to Arthur's faint smile, curving up at one corner as he watches.
This, Merlin thinks dizzily, this is a good compromise.
"Where did you find the description of the counter to trollish hexes?" Gaius asks, flipping through a familiar tome.
"What, the one that didn't work? Erm, it was about three-quarters through, upper left side on the second page in a chapter."
"Thank you, that's very helpful." A cosy silence descends over the scratching of pens: Gaius's as he attempts to recompile his Big Book of Threats to the Kingdom, and Merlin's as he rewrites Arthur's latest training proposal that little bit more legibly. Arthur's handwriting has taken some getting used to, sloppy and idiosyncratic as it is. Apparently Merlin has a better time with it than most people, if the grit in Uther's voice as he 'suggested' Merlin act as scribe for Arthur was any indication. Not that Merlin's penmanship is any great shakes.
"Why do you still use the book?" The specific weight on Gaius's last two words make the subject of his question clear; only one book in Merlin's possession could get anyone killed. "Surely you have it all by heart by now."
"I think it changes, actually. I keep finding pages I'd never seen before, and others seem to vanish."
"Does it really! I had no idea."
"Yeah. Bloody confusing."
"That would be. Not the sort of book one reads straight through, normally, I suppose."
"And did you ever notice that it makes a difference in the spells if you read from it upside down?"
A long moment's pause, then Gaius speaks, sounding bemused as Merlin has ever heard him. "No, my boy, I can't say that I ever did."
In the time they've known each other, Merlin has watched Arthur grow more considerate and aware, but not always, not always. He has been picking at Merlin all evening: references to Merlin's spill down the stairs at the castle's main entrance that morning, and his more metaphoric misstep concerning the Lady Galiene two days ago, and dwelling particularly on the unauthorised three-hour break Merlin had given himself on the castle roof after lunch when he had needed so badly to be alone with no way to explain why, even to himself.
"Honestly, Merlin," says Arthur, shaking his head in mock-amazement, laying it on thick. "You really are a complete—"
"If you say 'freak'," Merlin bursts out angrily, cutting Arthur off, and he can feel the weight of Arthur's stare. Merlin turns his head away a little more and shifts his weight from foot to foot, feeling hot and uncomfortable — he's heard it too many times already, and can't bear to hear it from Arthur now — and says, still sharply, "Arthur, I swear."
Arthur lets out a little half-cough chuckle and a smiling sigh, the one that makes Merlin love him far more than he'd choose to. "A complete idiot," Arthur finishes with an angelic note in his voice, diffusing the hurt without even knowing. "Of course. A mockery of our livery. But you'd look better in velvet after all."
Merlin rolls his eyes so hard they actually hurt. "For the last time, that was not for me! There were moths."
"No need to be so defensive, Merlin. I'm not disputing there's some demand for that sort of thing in certain parts of town, 'though you've no hips to speak of."
"And what would you know of it," Merlin taunts him.
"Don't you know I know everything?" Arthur is getting quite skilled at saying outrageous things with a straight voice.
Merlin has just turned out of the shop with a bundle of glass bottles for Gaius, packed between rags, and is idly debating whether to spend or save the extra coin Gaius slipped him when he picks out the familiar shape of Arthur, half-hidden by people. Merlin has a habit of glancing down alleyways from the corner of his eye, walking with his head half-turned, watching the corners of buildings simply for the way they sit square against the street and following the lines with his eyes. Of course he's going to notice Arthur, whose stance, whose everything sets him apart.
Arthur probably thinks he's being subtle.
He leads him about town a bit, and down to the edge of the castle, nearly to the square where they first met. Around the corner Merlin pauses in the shade, tucking himself out of sight to wait. He can think of a dozen reasons why he would follow Arthur around, but Arthur trailing after him is new. Despite Arthur's prided stealth, Merlin can clearly hear his approaching footfalls, and when Arthur turns the same corner his hand shoots out to grab Arthur's sleeve; Merlin finds himself pinned abruptly against the wall. One of the bottles in his pack bursts from the pressure. He clears his throat.
"Oh. It's you." From this close Merlin can actually feel Arthur's voice.
Merlin breathes out a quiet laugh. "You were following me?"
Arthur steps back, releasing him, and says nothing.
"Why?"
Arthur fidgets. "I was only curious."
"Haven't had enough of me today?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Arthur snaps, but he's edging nearer; Merlin can feel him watching, can feel his own breath coming a little faster. For him, it was always going to be Arthur.
"I'll be ridiculous if I want."
Arthur makes a confused noise that is probably meant to sound scornful, and a motion toward Merlin likely meant to be a move away. Merlin drops the pack to one side (catching it against the wall with his knee so it doesn't smash to the ground), and lets Arthur nose along his jaw, and re-angles Arthur's face to kiss him. His hands are on Merlin's waist, brushing over his sides like something fragile. The barely-there contact almost burns.
"Not light like that," Merlin instructs him. "Harder." Arthur makes a broken sound in his throat and tightens his grip. "Yeah," Merlin says, and tugs him closer still.
"Will you?" Arthur is almost begging between kisses, "Will you?"
"Yes. I just, I wish I could show you—"
"You are," Arthur insists. "You do."
"'F we get caught," Merlin says, after a time, "I'm getting beheaded, aren't I." His lips are wet and faintly stinging, and taste fascinatingly of Arthur.
Arthur tilts back to look at him, excitement blatant in his voice: "You look a bit mad when you grin like that."
When Merlin raises his eyes to Arthur's toothy smile something cool and fizzy trickles through his chest, like a much sweeter flavour of fear. "So do you."
In the morning Arthur is up first, waking him with a touch to the back of his bare shoulder, then proceeding about his morning business quite serenely. He doesn't snap at Merlin when Merlin lingers in bed. Merlin doesn't expect Arthur to be an ungracious lover, exactly, but he does expect the defensiveness or the denial, any time now.
It doesn't come. Arthur remarks on the weather (raining steadily, apparently; Arthur winds open the window a crack to let the fresh smell in) and wonders what the kitchen might have for them today and tells Merlin, "I wasn't sure you'd say yes, but I knew if you said no you'd really say no." He mutters to himself, and climbs onto a chair for no reason Merlin can fathom, and circles the bed like it's inevitable that he'll get back in, soon, closer and closer.
Not until Arthur sets to singing tunelessly does Merlin realise that this is Arthur, happy.
Merlin decides he can tolerate the scratchy maroon line wavering below the midline of his vision, speckling as Arthur's voice rasps over a high note in a song Merlin would swear Arthur is making up on the spot.
He can't say it's not music.