[Fic] A Lever and a Place to Stand (pt. 2)- for camelotsolstice
[ Part One]
They abandon Scrabble and spend the rest of the night working up a dull buzz drinking beer and watching TV, floating in that quiescence that hangs in the air after a storm. On Comedy Central, historian of magic Geoffrey Monmouth is tonight’s guest on the Colbert Report, and Merlin says, “They say Monmouth’s part of the movement, but he’s kind of pompous actually.”
“Revisionist prick,” Arthur agrees, and they exchange a smile.
The last thing Merlin remembers is the opening credits of South Park, and the next time he wakes up, the sky is lightening outside the window. He has a crick in his neck, and his mouth tastes disgusting. And he fell asleep on the sofa.
He’s also not the only person on the sofa.
Arthur is sleeping with one arm around Merlin, who is curled around Arthur and resting his head on his shoulder. There are, Merlin supposes, worse ways to wake up. It’s still late enough at night - or early enough in the morning - that all Comedy Central is showing are those ads for Girls Gone Wild. He lifts his head and tries to look around for the remote, but that makes Arthur shift and mumble in his sleep. Merlin’s not all awake himself, truth be told; it must be why he’s fine just lying here in Arthur’s arms. Yeah.
Not for the first time, Merlin wishes the world was like ‘Harry Potter’ and he can just say “Accio remote control!” and have it fly into his hand. Unfortunately, this is the real world and he knows no such spell, but he supposes that’s what you get when you get non-magical people writing about magical things. Still, you have to give J.K. Rowling credit for trying.
Merlin tries to crane his neck without moving. On the coffee table he sees empty bottles, bottle caps, an open bag of potato chips, an empty bag of tortilla chips, and - oh, and he sees a pen.
Okay, that might work.
With a whispered word, the pen levitates and begins to float its way over to the TV. It wobbles precariously, and Merlin is reminded of those claw games at arcades, holding your breath and hoping the claw will actually grab the fricking toy. This idea is probably good in theory - pressing the power button with the pen - but the execution is leaving something to be desired. Merlin misses and misses, and the pen tap tap taps against the television as drunken co-eds bounce around on the screen.
“…Merlin?” says a voice next to his ear, and Merlin freezes. Arthur shifts beneath Merlin, and in a barely awake voice mumbles, “What are you doing?”
“…Um,” Merlin manages.
“What is that sound?” Arthur turns his head and spots the pen hovering by the TV. “What’s that pen doing?”
“It’s… It’s trying to hit the power button.”
“For god’s sake,” Arthur mutters. “That’s what we have remote controls for.” And he pulls out the remote from what seems to be thin air, points it at the TV, and turns it off. Then he shifts so he can hold Merlin tighter, and burrows closer.
The pen clatters to the floor.
Merlin is quite awake.
Was Arthur just sleepwalking? Or sleep-turning-off-the-television, whatever? Does Arthur realize who he’s holding as he sleeps? Well, Arthur is out cold now, and it’s not like Merlin is going to wake him up and verify. Merlin will just have to keep guessing. Yes. Merlin will just have to take this in a stride.
This close, Merlin can count each eyelash. He can close the proximity between him and Arthur with a kiss, and he wouldn’t even have to move that much. Just a tilt of the head. Hypothetically.
Merlin closes his eyes, and lets himself settle into the warmth that surrounds him as his heartbeat sings in his ears.
+
When Merlin first arrived at Arthur’s apartment, Arthur had been skeptical. Standing between Gwen and a solemn man named Aglain, Merlin was dressed in a large overcoat and sunglasses, looking for all the world like a fugitive trying to not look like a fugitive.
At this time, Arthur thought Merlin was just another instrument of the revolution, controlled by it as such, but now Arthur wonders if it’s probably the other way around: the revolution grows from the people; it is rooted in flesh and blood. Merlin is real in a way that a thousand essays on the legislation of magic can never be. He is doing the things that Arthur has opted to write a thesis about instead.
“Just come with me for one meeting,” Merlin had kept on saying in the five minutes before he passed out on the couch. He reached over and clasped Arthur’s shoulder: an unnecessary gesture, but welcomed nonetheless. “You can go in disguise and wear a mustache and everything.”
“I don’t think so,” Arthur kept saying, and Merlin said, “Consider it research for your thesis.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Arthur said. “I’m Uther Pendragon’s son and I can’t just… I have to show solidarity.”
“With who?” Merlin demanded.
“You can’t make me choose between this and my family,” Arthur snapped. “There are other ways to fight this without creating more divisions.”
And then there was a pained look on Merlin’s face, and he opened his mouth as if to protest but nothing came out. Merlin chugged his beer and stared at the television screen, so Arthur did too.
Still, when Merlin slid over asleep onto Arthur’s shoulder in the middle of South Park, Arthur let him. He took the half-empty bottle out of Merlin’s hand, shifted a little bit so that they were both more comfortable, and he watched the episode as Merlin snored on his shoulder. Then Secret Girlfriend came on and Merlin made a gargling noise and changed positions, hugging Arthur’s arm like a pillow. It was, Arthur had to admit, not entirely uncomfortable. Merlin’s hair tickled Arthur’s face, and when Arthur went to smooth it back with his hand, Merlin made a contented-sounding sigh.
Arthur wakes up later than usual the next day. Merlin is no longer sharing the sofa with him, but from the kitchen Arthur can hear the clattering sounds and muttered cursing of one unaccustomed to the practicalities of domesticity. Arthur can smell coffee and burnt bacon.
“I feel bad about your Scrabble game so I’m cooking breakfast,” is Merlin’s explanation, and Arthur smiles.
“Well, thanks for feeding me my own food,” says Arthur. “You’re really stretching yourself here.”
Merlin replies, “Shut up and eat your bacon.”
They don’t say anything about sharing the sofa last night, and neither do they say anything about Arthur’s thesis or Will or the meetings downtown that Arthur apparently should go to. Arthur doesn’t say anything about how he actually has class in twenty minutes because ,just this one time, can’t he just sit back and enjoy a leisurely breakfast of undercooked eggs, burnt bacon, and the affectionately abusive conversation that might actually be flirtation in disguise?
“Maybe I should hire you for my servant,” Arthur muses, spooning up the last of his eggs. “Sign you up for cooking lessons first, though.”
Merlin grins. “A thank you would suffice.”
By the time breakfast is done, Arthur’s class is almost over, so he says goodbye to Merlin and takes off for the library.
Just as Arthur is descending the steps of the subway station, his cellphone buzzes with a text from his father: Morgana isn’t picking up her phone. Tell her to call me asap, I need to contact her Ford Foundation friend. Arthur smiles wryly, snaps the phone shut and shoves it back in his pocket.
His father would blow a gasket if he found out Arthur was harboring magicians. Arthur can see it now, the way he’d crash about and demand WHAT IS THIS OUTRAGE and WHAT IS THIS HYPOCRISY. But what if Arthur is doing this so he won't be a hypocrite?
This is what his thesis is, well, not about, but hints at between the lines, somewhere beyond the abstraction of the literature review and the analysis of case studies. The sufferings obscured by academic vocabulary and run-on sentences. When Arthur told his father the topic of his thesis, his father had nodded and said, "Good. It's good to know the enemy."
It's funny. These magicians are people who can call down the lightning and move the earth, and still they are subject to a handful of words on paper. Around the world, there are laws that segregate the magi from non-magi and laws that invalidate the humanity of sorcerers. There are laws that restrict their travel and laws that displace them, but they cannot escape being villains once the law declares them so, no matter how many lightning bolts they conjure or how their movement grows.
“But if the law isn’t fighting fair, I don’t see why the sorcerers should either,” Morgana protested during the last rare family meal.
“Laws aren’t fair,” Arthur had replied. “They should be, but aren’t always.”
Uther had said, “The law isn’t meant to be fair, it is meant to be correct. The law gives us leverage against magic. It gives us leverage against numbers. Let them pull rabbits out of hats; we have our own power, because the system they are trying to navigate is ours. They are strangers in our house, trying to use our own laws against us. That is their mistake. The law is not a means as such; it is an ends."
Morgana scowled and Arthur focused intently on his pasta pomodoro, and they let the subject drop. Arthur lets him think whatever he wants to think because maybe at some point in the future, Arthur will be able to change his father's mind. The magi community may call Uther Pendragon the patron saint of Muggles, but it’s never too late to change.
Arthur gets off at 96th Street station and takes the stairs to the street.
Autumn has come to Albion, and the days are brisk. He turns up the collar of his coat as he crosses Lexington Ave, and he takes in the sight of humanity walking all around him. How many of them are sorcerers? How many of them give a shit about the Mad Ave Mob? How many of them are doing something about it? At the library, he nods hello at the girl behind the desk and makes his way to his usual spot at the back. He takes out his laptop and his folders. He gets to work, and tries not to think of dark hair tickling his face, long limbs wrapped around him and warm breaths on the side of his neck.
+
The funeral for the victims of the Mad Ave Mob is televised live, and Merlin almost doesn’t watch it. It wouldn’t feel right if he wasn’t actually there himself. ‘Feel right’. There’s something Nimueh would have spat at. “If you’re going to fight by my side, the first thing you have to discard is the notion that victory is going to be perfect,” she had said once. It used to fascinate Merlin, how quickly she could switch between affection and straight directives.
Sometimes, he imagines Nimueh saying, you have to watch your friends’ funeral on television while you do someone else’s dishes. And Merlin can’t even figure out the dishwasher, there’s so many damn buttons. He just loads it up, slams it shut, and suddenly there’s nothing between him and the live broadcast. Nothing else for him to focus on but the images on the screen, the throng of people in mourning garb crowding the inside of St. Mark’s, occasionally interspersed by a perfectly coiffed newscaster keeping everyone updated.
“Hundreds have gathered here at Brookford’s historic cathedral to say goodbye and to remember,” the reporter says, and Merlin thinks, I should be one of them.
The eulogies take forever. The camera pans across the pews, and Merlin spots Gwen near the front and Mordred beside her, holding her hand and looking as hunted as he usually does. Only now does he finally see how tired Gwen is, how drained and frayed at the edges. He remembers how he had yelled at her on the phone and feels the guilt pool in his stomach. Everyone is hurting, and there isn’t much anyone can do.
Merlin cracks a beer open somewhere near the end of the third eulogy, and has another one after that. I can go to St. Mark’s right now, he thinks, and doesn’t. He looks at his phone and thinks, I can call Arthur, but doesn’t. He hates this, he hates doing nothing.
He wishes Arthur were here.
When the coffins are carried out, Merlin takes out his cellphone, already formulating an ill-advised text to Nimueh in his head, when the most recent text in his inbox catches his eye. It was from Will.
wher r u? im by d subway entrance.
Merlin remembers receiving this text at the exact moment he spotted Will in the crowd. He pushes through the throng as Will stands on tiptoe and looks to the left, looks to the right. He tapped Will’s shoulder and Will whirled around to face him, all smiles and giddiness and saying, “You’re late.”
Merlin presses ‘Reply’.
On the TV, the newscaster says, “It is a cool forty degrees outside and we can see everyone preparing to walk to Madison Avenue.”
He stares at the blinking cursor, and slowly punches in, I’m still here.
“Stay with us as we give you the latest from the vigil. We’ll be back after these messages.”
Merlin presses ‘Send’ and feels his face heat up, his vision blur.
“Fuck this,” he mutters, and turns off the television.
He grabs his coat, and he is out the door.
The way Nimueh went on, you'd think Merlin was going to die as soon as he sets foot outside Arthur's apartment building. The only thing that touches him as he steps onto the sidewalk is the chill wind. Merlin turns up the collar of his coat and heads for the subway. Around him, everyone and everything runs like it’s business as usual, and it’s a little disorienting after a week of being cooped up with his grief and Arthur’s strange brand of consolation. Merlin is glad when he reaches the subway station and its familiar glare of fluorescent lights.
This far uptown, the stations don’t smell as much like piss, which is always a plus. He wonders how often Arthur takes the subway, or whether he has a car and a chauffeur. He wonders what Arthur is doing now. Maybe Merlin should have sent a text to Arthur so he wouldn’t worry, but anyway the downtown train is already pulling up and it’s too late. He steps on board.
+
“I don’t know!” Arthur is yelling into the phone. “I have no idea where he could have gone!”
He rushes around his apartment a second time, checking all the rooms and all the closets like there is a chance at all that Merlin is hiding in any one of them, giggling to himself. Or crying to himself, whichever.
“Have you tried calling him?” Gwen asks.
“Of course I did, what do you think I am, an idiot? I’m not an idiot. He left his phone here.” Arthur waves Merlin’s phone for emphasis and mostly his own benefit, since Gwen can’t see. It just feels good to wave things around angrily during times like these. “Where are you now? Can you get up here?”
“I’m at the vigil. I can’t go anywhere, Arthur, I’m supposed to give a speech in ten minutes.”
Arthur turns on the TV and unsurprisingly the channel is turned to the news network’s live coverage. Arthur should have known. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone to the library today, maybe he should have just worked at home. Maybe he should have stayed just to make sure Merlin was okay, because he apparently isn’t - it’s just difficult to tell when he’s joking and cooking you breakfast, and smiling sheepishly over the eggs. Why am I so bad at noticing these things?
“He could’ve at least called me,” Arthur says, halfway between petulance and indignation.
“Arthur, I’m sure Merlin hasn’t gone far, and he’ll probably come back-”
“It’s not my fault Merlin is an idiot, just by the way. I said I'd be back this afternoon and he runs off anyway. Don't you guys have like a magical GPS that can locate him or something?”
“...Like Cerebro?"
"Yes, like Cerebro!"
"Arthur, these are sorcerers, not the X-Men," she says patiently.
“What’s the difference between mutants and sorcerers anyway!”
“Well, one lives in the real world, and one lives in comics and cartoons. Anymore questions?”
Before either of them can say anything more, Arthur hears an unfamiliar voice in the background ask, “Who are you talking to?”
“Arthur, hold on a sec,” says Gwen, and the sound becomes muffled. When she returns, she says, “Hey, I have to go. I’m handing you to Nimueh, okay?”
“Nimueh?” he echoes. “Like Nimueh Nimueh?”
But truth be told, Arthur doesn’t care too much who he’s talking to, and soon after Nimueh’s “Hello Arthur,” he is blabbing to her all the things he has already blabbed to Gwen - Merlin is an idiot, Merlin should have called, why didn’t he call, is he usually this stupid - while Nimueh goes, “Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.”
The television shows a makeshift platform, and Arthur sees Gwen push through the crowd to get to it.
“Well, think about it, Arthur,” Nimueh says, with none of the urgency that Arthur thinks is appropriate for the situation. “Where else would he go?”
He frowns. “The vigil?”
“He will not come to the vigil.”
“He… To the cemetery!” Arthur blurts out. “He’s going to the cemetery!”
“So go and find him. Make sure he’s okay, and tell him he can come home.”
“Home?”
“We’ve adjusted the security measures. He doesn’t have to stay at your place anymore. Thanks for housing him, Arthur, we really appreciate it. I admit I was a little skeptical at first, but Gwen vouched for you.”
“I, uh… You’re welcome.”
In a warmer tone, Nimueh says, “It’s good to hear you again, Arthur.”
“Again?” Arthur frowns. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Oh, we have. I’m glad to see you’ve grown up to become an upstanding young man.”
“…Uh, thank you…”
“I would ask you to give my regards to your father, but I suspect he wouldn’t want them. Thanks again, Arthur, and goodbye.”
Nimueh hangs up.
On television, Gwen speaks, her voice steady and her head held high. “Today, we call upon the dead one last time, not so they may be homages to struggle, but so that struggle may be an homage to them. Our friends walked bravely beside us all, and now they will find rest. Let us find once more the spirit of revolution, instead of making its ghost walk again. Let us transcend our fear. Let us move forward.”
Arthur heads for the door.
+
On the train there are these two girls, maybe sixteen or seventeen, sitting across from Merlin. One of the girls' eyes glow gold as she levitates her friend's bottled water in the air, just slightly out of reach.
“Bitch, I’m thirsty,” she says.
“And short,” the other girl smirks.
They giggle and grin, they call each other names, and they don't care who sees them. It used to be that sorcerers were killed for less, but the world is different now, or at least trying to be. It makes Merlin smile, and he notices the other passengers watching the girls, and he takes note of how many of them are also smiling, how many of them are frowning, how many of them are just staring like the girls are aliens from outer space.
"I can’t believe no one is stopping them," someone mutters disdainfully behind Merlin. “Who do these girls think they are?”
Merlin’s eyes flicker gold just for the barest of a second, and the woman behind Merlin curses as her shopping bag falls over, spilling its contents on the floor. He looks away, an expression of innocence on his face and just the slightest quirks of a smile tugging at his lips.
+
St. Mark’s cemetery is located on the southern edge of the city in the farthest reaches of Albion's urban sprawl. Arthur has only driven past it before, only glanced at it in passing: bone-white headstones dot the gentle rise of a hill, interrupted here and there by saints and angels. It’s empty when Arthur arrives. The entire neighborhood seems deserted, and the only sound to be heard is Arthur’s taxi heading back uptown.
The day is segueing from late afternoon to sunset and washed over with the faintest hints of gold. He walks through the cemetery and feels a little like an intruder in the silence. Around him, the air is heavy with the names of the dead, and Arthur wishes he knew some prayer to offer, but the Pendragon household had never been religious. His father is suspicious of religion for its similarity to magic. “The weak take refuge in a belief in miracles,” he would say.
Arthur finds Merlin just over the curve of the hill, sitting in front of five graves that are surrounded by flowers, framed photographs, and candles that were once lit but have now blown out. His back is to Arthur, and he makes no sign of hearing him as he approaches. Arthur stops a few steps behind and says, “You could have called me.”
“Right, ‘cos everything’s about you.”
“Stop that. I didn’t come here to fight with you.”
Merlin looks up at him suspiciously, and Arthur can see how red and puffy his eyes are. “How’d you know I’d be here?”
Arthur lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Where else would you be?”
Something seems to soften in Merlin’s expression. “Well, kudos to your deductive reasoning.”
“Something like that,” Arthur mumbles, blushing. “Look, I just wanted to make to sure you’re all right. I don’t want a bunch of sorcerers calling for my blood because you disappeared on my watch.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I don’t care.”
Merlin smiles - or maybe even smirks, Arthur can’t tell, but he better not be smirking after all this, goddamn. Arthur could have finished annotating his articles by now instead of chasing him across town. Didn’t Merlin ever stop and think about these things? Didn’t he say they could fight together, side by side?
“Look,” Merlin says, and gestures to something at the head of William Miles’s grave. “Do you see that?”
Arthur frowns. “Are those cigarettes?”
Merlin leans forward and half-crawls to the headstone. “These ones are cigarettes,” he says, pointing. “Parliaments, because Will only pretends isn’t a hipster. This one,” Merlin picks it up, “is what we call a joint.”
“I know what a joint is,” Arthur says defensively. Only now does he notice the variety of the objects left in memoriam. Between the photographs and flowers, there are pages torn out of books, letters, shot glasses, little dolls and figurines, all sorts of baubles and trinkets. By Tauren MacAninch’s headstone is a tattered copy of Max Wechsler’s The Druidic Ethic, and hanging around Sofia O’Shea’s is a necklace, a pair of amethyst wings on a silver chain.
“You know Jim Morrison’s grave?”
“What about it?”
“In the Père Lachaise cemetery, in Paris?”
“I know where it is,” Arthur lies.
“People leave joints on his grave all the time. Well, according to Will. He says people ought to, if they didn’t. ‘When I die, bury me like Jim Morrison and leave drugs all over my grave,’ he used to say. ‘Steal my headstone occasionally.’”
“Isn’t that a waste of drugs?”
“Just ‘cos you’re dead, doesn’t mean you can’t get high. That’s probably when you want to get high the most.”
Arthur raises his eyebrows. “…Was that something else Will said?”
“Yeah,” Merlin says with a wistful smile on his face.
“So, do they leave heroin on Jim Morrison’s grave too? Bottles of booze?”
“Well, look,” Merlin says, pointing. The shot glasses by Will’s headstone is filled with something golden brown. “’S rum.”
“Huh.”
“Hey,” Merlin sighs. “Look, I know probably I shouldn’t have taken off without notice-“
“Fuckin’ right.”
“And I know you don’t have to be running after me, you don’t have to be sitting with me right now.” Merlin looks up into his eyes, and says, “but I appreciate it.”
And Arthur thinks, I hope I’m not still blushing. He thinks, He has really nice eyes, and swallows the lump in his throat. “Well,” he manages. “Don’t do it again.”
“Have a seat,” says Merlin.
Arthur, against his better judgment, sits down.
“Hold on,” Arthur sputters when Merlin puts the joint in his mouth and takes out a lighter. “What are you doing?”
“In some parts of the world,” says Merlin, “the dead’s possessions are burned so they can be used by them in the afterlife.”
“We’re out in the open!” Arthur protests as Merlin puts the flame to the tip and puffs. “You’re supposed to be laying low!”
“I’m just delivering Will’s joint to him,” says Merlin, the smoke curling from his mouth. “He would have done the same for me.”
“Oh, so he’s as stupid as you are!”
“Hey,” Merlin chokes out. “Respect the dead, man.” He holds out the joint to Arthur, who just stares at it.
“For Will,” Merlin assures him. “For all these guys.”
“As a student of the law, I find this all very ill-advised..”
Merlin just says, “You ever smoke before?”
“Yeah… Not since college.”
“Uh-huh.” Merlin is still holding the joint out to him.
Fuck it. It’s been a weird day. It’s been a weird week.
“So,” Arthur says, taking the joint, “are we going to drink Will’s rum too?”
Merlin smiles. “One thing at a time.”
+
It gets cold quickly once the sun goes down. Arthur and Merlin stand atop the hill and watch the colors gather on the horizon - the golds and pinks leaking down from the heavens, and the strata of browns and grays rising from the smog. The city of Albion is backlit against the sky, and its skyscrapers reach upwards like the points of a crown.
“We should go back soon,” says Arthur.
“Yeah, you have to finish your bibliography, right?” Merlin asks distantly.
Arthur smirks. “It would have been finished by now if it weren’t for your bad influence.”
“You can’t blame everything on the revolution, Arthur.” Merlin nudges him with his shoulder. “That’s just lazy.” If they are standing closer after the nudge, neither comments on it.
“Well, I don’t have to anymore.” Arthur shifts his weight uncomfortably. “Nimueh says you can go home.”
“She what? When did you speak to Nimueh?”
“When I was trying to find you, ass.”
“She says I can go?” Merlin says, and is not entirely surprised to feel the lilt of disappointment in his tone. He forces a grin and says, “I bet you threw a party when she told you that.”
“Yeah, it was a real shitshow, only I couldn’t be there because I had to go all the way to St. Mark’s to and make sure you were still alive.”
“Well,” Merlin says, “I still have to go back to your place anyway. My stuff’s still there.”
Arthur nods hurriedly. “Yeah, yeah sure.”
A silence settles in - not uncomfortable, but charged, like the bones have been thrown in the air and the diviner is just waiting for them to fall. Merlin watches Arthur out the corner of his eye, and in the fading light, he cannot tell if Arthur is looking back.
In the end, it’s Merlin who takes the first step down the hill, and he hears Arthur follow behind.
“I was keeping an eye on the road,” says Arthur. “I haven’t seen a cab pass by here in a while.”
“We’ll take the subway. There aren’t as many cabs that come through here. The station’s about a twenty minute walk.”
Arthur asks, “Do I smell like it?”
“…What?”
“Do I smell like weed?”
“What? No, Arthur, no one’s going to care if you smell like weed.”
“What if someone recognizes me as Uther Pendragon’s son and I smell like weed?”
“You don’t smell like weed!”
“What if I run into a classmate.”
“Arthur.”
Arthur says, “Smell me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Just to make sure.”
“Arthur, this is your worst come-on yet,” Merlin guffaws.
“I’m not-“
“C’mere,” Merlin says, slinging an arm around Arthur’s shoulders. He turns his face towards him, and sniffs.
“Do I smell?” Arthur asks cautiously.
“Hmm, I don’t know.” He grins and tugs Arthur closer, and sniffs again. And closer, and again, trying not to giggle.
“Well?” Arthur demands. “Come on, stop joking around.”
“Arthur, you smell like crime all over, with just a touch of B.O.”
“For god’s sake, you idiot. And I do not have B.O.”
Impulsively, Merlin leans over and kisses Arthur on the cheek. “You’re fine,” he says, and pretends his heartbeat is not beating over the average rate.
“Oh, um,” Arthur breathes. “Well, good.”
Merlin takes his arm back and shoves his hands in his pockets, looking straight ahead and wondering what other ruse might let him kiss Arthur. Something harmless, something fun. Like what? If only Arthur weren’t so repressed. If only Merlin weren’t leaving soon.
“Hey,” says Arthur.
Merlin looks over. “Hmm?”
Arthur leans in and kisses his mouth.
+
They burst into Arthur’s bedroom in a confusion of shed clothes and tangled limbs, and fall on the bed with a heavy crashing sound.
Arthur lifts his head and frowns, “Did we just break my bed?”
Merlin says, “God, I hope we do,” and kisses him again.
It’s been a while. Arthur has been in over his head with work that the last time he slept with someone was months ago, and the last time he slept with someone he genuinely liked, well, that was too long ago. He hopes he won’t fuck this up. Arthur can’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction when he shoves his hand down Merlin’s pants and Merlin arches gasping against him.
The high is still sticking with Arthur and every touch tingles on his skin, every kiss has a trailing afterimage. They are less than graceful with each other, and sometimes Arthur bites too hard and Merlin scratches too deep, but Arthur relishes every cry and gasp. They wrap themselves around each other and it is not beautiful, but right, and as messy as one would expect from an exorcism of demons and a struggle for a new horizon. When Merlin pushes in, when Merlin chokes out a cry as Arthur flexes around him, Arthur closes his eyes and parts his lips and loses himself and lets go.
+
The next day, Arthur cooks breakfast as Merlin packs his things, and over breakfast they argue about the things Merlin has broken.
“It’s the price you pay for the pleasure of my company,” Merlin says affably. “Besides, your phone still works sometimes.”
“It used to work all the time. My Scrabble board, on the other hand, is permanently broken.”
“You can fix the Scrabble board with a permanent marker.”
They load the dishwasher together, and Arthur finally shows Merlin how it works. Merlin chuckles and says, “Yeah, teach me how to use it just as I’m about to leave. Perfect.”
“Go on, press the ‘start’ button,” Arthur says. “I already punched in the settings.” So Merlin presses the ‘start’ button, and Arthur grins. “I daresay you’ve gotten steadily better at doing my dishes.”
“Hey, all thanks to this paragon of the upper-crust indoctrinating me into the system, huh?”
“You’re welcome.”
Merlin clears his throat. “So. I still say you should come downtown sometime.” His tone picks up, veering between hope and persuasion. “Seriously, meet some of my friends. See what they have to say, and let them hear what you have to say.”
Arthur crosses his arms and leans against the kitchen counter, frowning. “You really think so?”
Merlin quirks his mouth. “Arthur, look at your thesis. You’re already involved.”
“A thesis is a thesis. It’s intangible, it doesn’t do anything. It’s just words and words and words.”
Merlin resists rolling his eyes, but snorting probably isn’t any less condescending. Arthur doth protest too much. “Of course your thesis isn’t going to do anything. You can, though.”
Arthur frowns. “You think so?”
“Sure.”
But Arthur just picks up the washcloth and starts wiping down the counter with that slow manner that people have when all they’re actually doing is buying time and mulling things over. “I was talking to my father the night after the Madison Avenue riot,” he finally says. “We were talking about it.”
Recognizing his role in the conversation, Merlin sits back down in his chair and asks, “What did he say?”
“He didn’t have much sympathy for them,” Arthur replies quietly. “I guess it shouldn’t be so strange to me, and I shouldn’t be surprised. I grew up hearing this stuff from him, after all. But…” He shakes his head. “My father said, ‘If they demand to be martyrs, someone will make them martyrs.’”
“Oh, yeah,” Merlin scoffs. “Being martyred, that’s exactly what we’re asking for. Yeah.”
“He’s my father, Merlin,” Arthur says insistently, ”and… I love my father. But I am not him.”
“I know that.”
Arthur says, “I think you and I, we’re fighting different battles.”
Merlin says, “But we’re in the same war.”
And Arthur just continues wiping down the counter, so Merlin takes a sponge and does the table. There’s only so much he can say. Sometimes you have to let things be, let things simmer and come to boil in their own time.
All of Merlin’s belongings fit in a backpack and a duffel bag. When Merlin heaves them over his shoulder and shuffles out into the living room, he gets as far as saying, “I cleaned the bedroom the best I can but-“ before Arthur kisses him again. Merlin closes his eyes and kisses back.
“You’re a strange one, Merlin Emrys,” Arthur says, soft against Merlin’s lips.
“Yeah,” Merlin breathes.
“Keep in touch.”
“Funny. I was just going to tell you the same thing.”
Arthur gathers his books and his laptop and accompanies Merlin downstairs, standing side by side in the elevator and watching the numbers change, the countdown to goodbye. Quicker than should happen, they are at lobby level.
“Good luck on your thesis,” Merlin says. “Keep me up to date on it.”
“Good luck with everything,” says Arthur, “and remember, you said you’d send me those interview recordings with the Dragon.”
Merlin grins. “I’ll do my best.”
“You better.”
“Or maybe I’ll get you a new Scrabble set, at least.”
“That’d be nice too.”
Merlin holds out his hand for a handshake and says, “I’ll see you around.”
Arthur pulls him into a hug and says, “Yeah, definitely.”
And if they hug for maybe a little longer than necessary, no one says anything about it.
Merlin hails a cab, and Arthur watches it go until it turns the corner. He straightens his shoulders and starts walking in the opposite direction to the subway. It’s not even noon, and he has a lot of work to catch up on.
They abandon Scrabble and spend the rest of the night working up a dull buzz drinking beer and watching TV, floating in that quiescence that hangs in the air after a storm. On Comedy Central, historian of magic Geoffrey Monmouth is tonight’s guest on the Colbert Report, and Merlin says, “They say Monmouth’s part of the movement, but he’s kind of pompous actually.”
“Revisionist prick,” Arthur agrees, and they exchange a smile.
The last thing Merlin remembers is the opening credits of South Park, and the next time he wakes up, the sky is lightening outside the window. He has a crick in his neck, and his mouth tastes disgusting. And he fell asleep on the sofa.
He’s also not the only person on the sofa.
Arthur is sleeping with one arm around Merlin, who is curled around Arthur and resting his head on his shoulder. There are, Merlin supposes, worse ways to wake up. It’s still late enough at night - or early enough in the morning - that all Comedy Central is showing are those ads for Girls Gone Wild. He lifts his head and tries to look around for the remote, but that makes Arthur shift and mumble in his sleep. Merlin’s not all awake himself, truth be told; it must be why he’s fine just lying here in Arthur’s arms. Yeah.
Not for the first time, Merlin wishes the world was like ‘Harry Potter’ and he can just say “Accio remote control!” and have it fly into his hand. Unfortunately, this is the real world and he knows no such spell, but he supposes that’s what you get when you get non-magical people writing about magical things. Still, you have to give J.K. Rowling credit for trying.
Merlin tries to crane his neck without moving. On the coffee table he sees empty bottles, bottle caps, an open bag of potato chips, an empty bag of tortilla chips, and - oh, and he sees a pen.
Okay, that might work.
With a whispered word, the pen levitates and begins to float its way over to the TV. It wobbles precariously, and Merlin is reminded of those claw games at arcades, holding your breath and hoping the claw will actually grab the fricking toy. This idea is probably good in theory - pressing the power button with the pen - but the execution is leaving something to be desired. Merlin misses and misses, and the pen tap tap taps against the television as drunken co-eds bounce around on the screen.
“…Merlin?” says a voice next to his ear, and Merlin freezes. Arthur shifts beneath Merlin, and in a barely awake voice mumbles, “What are you doing?”
“…Um,” Merlin manages.
“What is that sound?” Arthur turns his head and spots the pen hovering by the TV. “What’s that pen doing?”
“It’s… It’s trying to hit the power button.”
“For god’s sake,” Arthur mutters. “That’s what we have remote controls for.” And he pulls out the remote from what seems to be thin air, points it at the TV, and turns it off. Then he shifts so he can hold Merlin tighter, and burrows closer.
The pen clatters to the floor.
Merlin is quite awake.
Was Arthur just sleepwalking? Or sleep-turning-off-the-television, whatever? Does Arthur realize who he’s holding as he sleeps? Well, Arthur is out cold now, and it’s not like Merlin is going to wake him up and verify. Merlin will just have to keep guessing. Yes. Merlin will just have to take this in a stride.
This close, Merlin can count each eyelash. He can close the proximity between him and Arthur with a kiss, and he wouldn’t even have to move that much. Just a tilt of the head. Hypothetically.
Merlin closes his eyes, and lets himself settle into the warmth that surrounds him as his heartbeat sings in his ears.
+
When Merlin first arrived at Arthur’s apartment, Arthur had been skeptical. Standing between Gwen and a solemn man named Aglain, Merlin was dressed in a large overcoat and sunglasses, looking for all the world like a fugitive trying to not look like a fugitive.
At this time, Arthur thought Merlin was just another instrument of the revolution, controlled by it as such, but now Arthur wonders if it’s probably the other way around: the revolution grows from the people; it is rooted in flesh and blood. Merlin is real in a way that a thousand essays on the legislation of magic can never be. He is doing the things that Arthur has opted to write a thesis about instead.
“Just come with me for one meeting,” Merlin had kept on saying in the five minutes before he passed out on the couch. He reached over and clasped Arthur’s shoulder: an unnecessary gesture, but welcomed nonetheless. “You can go in disguise and wear a mustache and everything.”
“I don’t think so,” Arthur kept saying, and Merlin said, “Consider it research for your thesis.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Arthur said. “I’m Uther Pendragon’s son and I can’t just… I have to show solidarity.”
“With who?” Merlin demanded.
“You can’t make me choose between this and my family,” Arthur snapped. “There are other ways to fight this without creating more divisions.”
And then there was a pained look on Merlin’s face, and he opened his mouth as if to protest but nothing came out. Merlin chugged his beer and stared at the television screen, so Arthur did too.
Still, when Merlin slid over asleep onto Arthur’s shoulder in the middle of South Park, Arthur let him. He took the half-empty bottle out of Merlin’s hand, shifted a little bit so that they were both more comfortable, and he watched the episode as Merlin snored on his shoulder. Then Secret Girlfriend came on and Merlin made a gargling noise and changed positions, hugging Arthur’s arm like a pillow. It was, Arthur had to admit, not entirely uncomfortable. Merlin’s hair tickled Arthur’s face, and when Arthur went to smooth it back with his hand, Merlin made a contented-sounding sigh.
Arthur wakes up later than usual the next day. Merlin is no longer sharing the sofa with him, but from the kitchen Arthur can hear the clattering sounds and muttered cursing of one unaccustomed to the practicalities of domesticity. Arthur can smell coffee and burnt bacon.
“I feel bad about your Scrabble game so I’m cooking breakfast,” is Merlin’s explanation, and Arthur smiles.
“Well, thanks for feeding me my own food,” says Arthur. “You’re really stretching yourself here.”
Merlin replies, “Shut up and eat your bacon.”
They don’t say anything about sharing the sofa last night, and neither do they say anything about Arthur’s thesis or Will or the meetings downtown that Arthur apparently should go to. Arthur doesn’t say anything about how he actually has class in twenty minutes because ,just this one time, can’t he just sit back and enjoy a leisurely breakfast of undercooked eggs, burnt bacon, and the affectionately abusive conversation that might actually be flirtation in disguise?
“Maybe I should hire you for my servant,” Arthur muses, spooning up the last of his eggs. “Sign you up for cooking lessons first, though.”
Merlin grins. “A thank you would suffice.”
By the time breakfast is done, Arthur’s class is almost over, so he says goodbye to Merlin and takes off for the library.
Just as Arthur is descending the steps of the subway station, his cellphone buzzes with a text from his father: Morgana isn’t picking up her phone. Tell her to call me asap, I need to contact her Ford Foundation friend. Arthur smiles wryly, snaps the phone shut and shoves it back in his pocket.
His father would blow a gasket if he found out Arthur was harboring magicians. Arthur can see it now, the way he’d crash about and demand WHAT IS THIS OUTRAGE and WHAT IS THIS HYPOCRISY. But what if Arthur is doing this so he won't be a hypocrite?
This is what his thesis is, well, not about, but hints at between the lines, somewhere beyond the abstraction of the literature review and the analysis of case studies. The sufferings obscured by academic vocabulary and run-on sentences. When Arthur told his father the topic of his thesis, his father had nodded and said, "Good. It's good to know the enemy."
It's funny. These magicians are people who can call down the lightning and move the earth, and still they are subject to a handful of words on paper. Around the world, there are laws that segregate the magi from non-magi and laws that invalidate the humanity of sorcerers. There are laws that restrict their travel and laws that displace them, but they cannot escape being villains once the law declares them so, no matter how many lightning bolts they conjure or how their movement grows.
“But if the law isn’t fighting fair, I don’t see why the sorcerers should either,” Morgana protested during the last rare family meal.
“Laws aren’t fair,” Arthur had replied. “They should be, but aren’t always.”
Uther had said, “The law isn’t meant to be fair, it is meant to be correct. The law gives us leverage against magic. It gives us leverage against numbers. Let them pull rabbits out of hats; we have our own power, because the system they are trying to navigate is ours. They are strangers in our house, trying to use our own laws against us. That is their mistake. The law is not a means as such; it is an ends."
Morgana scowled and Arthur focused intently on his pasta pomodoro, and they let the subject drop. Arthur lets him think whatever he wants to think because maybe at some point in the future, Arthur will be able to change his father's mind. The magi community may call Uther Pendragon the patron saint of Muggles, but it’s never too late to change.
Arthur gets off at 96th Street station and takes the stairs to the street.
Autumn has come to Albion, and the days are brisk. He turns up the collar of his coat as he crosses Lexington Ave, and he takes in the sight of humanity walking all around him. How many of them are sorcerers? How many of them give a shit about the Mad Ave Mob? How many of them are doing something about it? At the library, he nods hello at the girl behind the desk and makes his way to his usual spot at the back. He takes out his laptop and his folders. He gets to work, and tries not to think of dark hair tickling his face, long limbs wrapped around him and warm breaths on the side of his neck.
+
The funeral for the victims of the Mad Ave Mob is televised live, and Merlin almost doesn’t watch it. It wouldn’t feel right if he wasn’t actually there himself. ‘Feel right’. There’s something Nimueh would have spat at. “If you’re going to fight by my side, the first thing you have to discard is the notion that victory is going to be perfect,” she had said once. It used to fascinate Merlin, how quickly she could switch between affection and straight directives.
Sometimes, he imagines Nimueh saying, you have to watch your friends’ funeral on television while you do someone else’s dishes. And Merlin can’t even figure out the dishwasher, there’s so many damn buttons. He just loads it up, slams it shut, and suddenly there’s nothing between him and the live broadcast. Nothing else for him to focus on but the images on the screen, the throng of people in mourning garb crowding the inside of St. Mark’s, occasionally interspersed by a perfectly coiffed newscaster keeping everyone updated.
“Hundreds have gathered here at Brookford’s historic cathedral to say goodbye and to remember,” the reporter says, and Merlin thinks, I should be one of them.
The eulogies take forever. The camera pans across the pews, and Merlin spots Gwen near the front and Mordred beside her, holding her hand and looking as hunted as he usually does. Only now does he finally see how tired Gwen is, how drained and frayed at the edges. He remembers how he had yelled at her on the phone and feels the guilt pool in his stomach. Everyone is hurting, and there isn’t much anyone can do.
Merlin cracks a beer open somewhere near the end of the third eulogy, and has another one after that. I can go to St. Mark’s right now, he thinks, and doesn’t. He looks at his phone and thinks, I can call Arthur, but doesn’t. He hates this, he hates doing nothing.
He wishes Arthur were here.
When the coffins are carried out, Merlin takes out his cellphone, already formulating an ill-advised text to Nimueh in his head, when the most recent text in his inbox catches his eye. It was from Will.
wher r u? im by d subway entrance.
Merlin remembers receiving this text at the exact moment he spotted Will in the crowd. He pushes through the throng as Will stands on tiptoe and looks to the left, looks to the right. He tapped Will’s shoulder and Will whirled around to face him, all smiles and giddiness and saying, “You’re late.”
Merlin presses ‘Reply’.
On the TV, the newscaster says, “It is a cool forty degrees outside and we can see everyone preparing to walk to Madison Avenue.”
He stares at the blinking cursor, and slowly punches in, I’m still here.
“Stay with us as we give you the latest from the vigil. We’ll be back after these messages.”
Merlin presses ‘Send’ and feels his face heat up, his vision blur.
“Fuck this,” he mutters, and turns off the television.
He grabs his coat, and he is out the door.
The way Nimueh went on, you'd think Merlin was going to die as soon as he sets foot outside Arthur's apartment building. The only thing that touches him as he steps onto the sidewalk is the chill wind. Merlin turns up the collar of his coat and heads for the subway. Around him, everyone and everything runs like it’s business as usual, and it’s a little disorienting after a week of being cooped up with his grief and Arthur’s strange brand of consolation. Merlin is glad when he reaches the subway station and its familiar glare of fluorescent lights.
This far uptown, the stations don’t smell as much like piss, which is always a plus. He wonders how often Arthur takes the subway, or whether he has a car and a chauffeur. He wonders what Arthur is doing now. Maybe Merlin should have sent a text to Arthur so he wouldn’t worry, but anyway the downtown train is already pulling up and it’s too late. He steps on board.
+
“I don’t know!” Arthur is yelling into the phone. “I have no idea where he could have gone!”
He rushes around his apartment a second time, checking all the rooms and all the closets like there is a chance at all that Merlin is hiding in any one of them, giggling to himself. Or crying to himself, whichever.
“Have you tried calling him?” Gwen asks.
“Of course I did, what do you think I am, an idiot? I’m not an idiot. He left his phone here.” Arthur waves Merlin’s phone for emphasis and mostly his own benefit, since Gwen can’t see. It just feels good to wave things around angrily during times like these. “Where are you now? Can you get up here?”
“I’m at the vigil. I can’t go anywhere, Arthur, I’m supposed to give a speech in ten minutes.”
Arthur turns on the TV and unsurprisingly the channel is turned to the news network’s live coverage. Arthur should have known. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone to the library today, maybe he should have just worked at home. Maybe he should have stayed just to make sure Merlin was okay, because he apparently isn’t - it’s just difficult to tell when he’s joking and cooking you breakfast, and smiling sheepishly over the eggs. Why am I so bad at noticing these things?
“He could’ve at least called me,” Arthur says, halfway between petulance and indignation.
“Arthur, I’m sure Merlin hasn’t gone far, and he’ll probably come back-”
“It’s not my fault Merlin is an idiot, just by the way. I said I'd be back this afternoon and he runs off anyway. Don't you guys have like a magical GPS that can locate him or something?”
“...Like Cerebro?"
"Yes, like Cerebro!"
"Arthur, these are sorcerers, not the X-Men," she says patiently.
“What’s the difference between mutants and sorcerers anyway!”
“Well, one lives in the real world, and one lives in comics and cartoons. Anymore questions?”
Before either of them can say anything more, Arthur hears an unfamiliar voice in the background ask, “Who are you talking to?”
“Arthur, hold on a sec,” says Gwen, and the sound becomes muffled. When she returns, she says, “Hey, I have to go. I’m handing you to Nimueh, okay?”
“Nimueh?” he echoes. “Like Nimueh Nimueh?”
But truth be told, Arthur doesn’t care too much who he’s talking to, and soon after Nimueh’s “Hello Arthur,” he is blabbing to her all the things he has already blabbed to Gwen - Merlin is an idiot, Merlin should have called, why didn’t he call, is he usually this stupid - while Nimueh goes, “Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.”
The television shows a makeshift platform, and Arthur sees Gwen push through the crowd to get to it.
“Well, think about it, Arthur,” Nimueh says, with none of the urgency that Arthur thinks is appropriate for the situation. “Where else would he go?”
He frowns. “The vigil?”
“He will not come to the vigil.”
“He… To the cemetery!” Arthur blurts out. “He’s going to the cemetery!”
“So go and find him. Make sure he’s okay, and tell him he can come home.”
“Home?”
“We’ve adjusted the security measures. He doesn’t have to stay at your place anymore. Thanks for housing him, Arthur, we really appreciate it. I admit I was a little skeptical at first, but Gwen vouched for you.”
“I, uh… You’re welcome.”
In a warmer tone, Nimueh says, “It’s good to hear you again, Arthur.”
“Again?” Arthur frowns. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Oh, we have. I’m glad to see you’ve grown up to become an upstanding young man.”
“…Uh, thank you…”
“I would ask you to give my regards to your father, but I suspect he wouldn’t want them. Thanks again, Arthur, and goodbye.”
Nimueh hangs up.
On television, Gwen speaks, her voice steady and her head held high. “Today, we call upon the dead one last time, not so they may be homages to struggle, but so that struggle may be an homage to them. Our friends walked bravely beside us all, and now they will find rest. Let us find once more the spirit of revolution, instead of making its ghost walk again. Let us transcend our fear. Let us move forward.”
Arthur heads for the door.
+
On the train there are these two girls, maybe sixteen or seventeen, sitting across from Merlin. One of the girls' eyes glow gold as she levitates her friend's bottled water in the air, just slightly out of reach.
“Bitch, I’m thirsty,” she says.
“And short,” the other girl smirks.
They giggle and grin, they call each other names, and they don't care who sees them. It used to be that sorcerers were killed for less, but the world is different now, or at least trying to be. It makes Merlin smile, and he notices the other passengers watching the girls, and he takes note of how many of them are also smiling, how many of them are frowning, how many of them are just staring like the girls are aliens from outer space.
"I can’t believe no one is stopping them," someone mutters disdainfully behind Merlin. “Who do these girls think they are?”
Merlin’s eyes flicker gold just for the barest of a second, and the woman behind Merlin curses as her shopping bag falls over, spilling its contents on the floor. He looks away, an expression of innocence on his face and just the slightest quirks of a smile tugging at his lips.
+
St. Mark’s cemetery is located on the southern edge of the city in the farthest reaches of Albion's urban sprawl. Arthur has only driven past it before, only glanced at it in passing: bone-white headstones dot the gentle rise of a hill, interrupted here and there by saints and angels. It’s empty when Arthur arrives. The entire neighborhood seems deserted, and the only sound to be heard is Arthur’s taxi heading back uptown.
The day is segueing from late afternoon to sunset and washed over with the faintest hints of gold. He walks through the cemetery and feels a little like an intruder in the silence. Around him, the air is heavy with the names of the dead, and Arthur wishes he knew some prayer to offer, but the Pendragon household had never been religious. His father is suspicious of religion for its similarity to magic. “The weak take refuge in a belief in miracles,” he would say.
Arthur finds Merlin just over the curve of the hill, sitting in front of five graves that are surrounded by flowers, framed photographs, and candles that were once lit but have now blown out. His back is to Arthur, and he makes no sign of hearing him as he approaches. Arthur stops a few steps behind and says, “You could have called me.”
“Right, ‘cos everything’s about you.”
“Stop that. I didn’t come here to fight with you.”
Merlin looks up at him suspiciously, and Arthur can see how red and puffy his eyes are. “How’d you know I’d be here?”
Arthur lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Where else would you be?”
Something seems to soften in Merlin’s expression. “Well, kudos to your deductive reasoning.”
“Something like that,” Arthur mumbles, blushing. “Look, I just wanted to make to sure you’re all right. I don’t want a bunch of sorcerers calling for my blood because you disappeared on my watch.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I don’t care.”
Merlin smiles - or maybe even smirks, Arthur can’t tell, but he better not be smirking after all this, goddamn. Arthur could have finished annotating his articles by now instead of chasing him across town. Didn’t Merlin ever stop and think about these things? Didn’t he say they could fight together, side by side?
“Look,” Merlin says, and gestures to something at the head of William Miles’s grave. “Do you see that?”
Arthur frowns. “Are those cigarettes?”
Merlin leans forward and half-crawls to the headstone. “These ones are cigarettes,” he says, pointing. “Parliaments, because Will only pretends isn’t a hipster. This one,” Merlin picks it up, “is what we call a joint.”
“I know what a joint is,” Arthur says defensively. Only now does he notice the variety of the objects left in memoriam. Between the photographs and flowers, there are pages torn out of books, letters, shot glasses, little dolls and figurines, all sorts of baubles and trinkets. By Tauren MacAninch’s headstone is a tattered copy of Max Wechsler’s The Druidic Ethic, and hanging around Sofia O’Shea’s is a necklace, a pair of amethyst wings on a silver chain.
“You know Jim Morrison’s grave?”
“What about it?”
“In the Père Lachaise cemetery, in Paris?”
“I know where it is,” Arthur lies.
“People leave joints on his grave all the time. Well, according to Will. He says people ought to, if they didn’t. ‘When I die, bury me like Jim Morrison and leave drugs all over my grave,’ he used to say. ‘Steal my headstone occasionally.’”
“Isn’t that a waste of drugs?”
“Just ‘cos you’re dead, doesn’t mean you can’t get high. That’s probably when you want to get high the most.”
Arthur raises his eyebrows. “…Was that something else Will said?”
“Yeah,” Merlin says with a wistful smile on his face.
“So, do they leave heroin on Jim Morrison’s grave too? Bottles of booze?”
“Well, look,” Merlin says, pointing. The shot glasses by Will’s headstone is filled with something golden brown. “’S rum.”
“Huh.”
“Hey,” Merlin sighs. “Look, I know probably I shouldn’t have taken off without notice-“
“Fuckin’ right.”
“And I know you don’t have to be running after me, you don’t have to be sitting with me right now.” Merlin looks up into his eyes, and says, “but I appreciate it.”
And Arthur thinks, I hope I’m not still blushing. He thinks, He has really nice eyes, and swallows the lump in his throat. “Well,” he manages. “Don’t do it again.”
“Have a seat,” says Merlin.
Arthur, against his better judgment, sits down.
“Hold on,” Arthur sputters when Merlin puts the joint in his mouth and takes out a lighter. “What are you doing?”
“In some parts of the world,” says Merlin, “the dead’s possessions are burned so they can be used by them in the afterlife.”
“We’re out in the open!” Arthur protests as Merlin puts the flame to the tip and puffs. “You’re supposed to be laying low!”
“I’m just delivering Will’s joint to him,” says Merlin, the smoke curling from his mouth. “He would have done the same for me.”
“Oh, so he’s as stupid as you are!”
“Hey,” Merlin chokes out. “Respect the dead, man.” He holds out the joint to Arthur, who just stares at it.
“For Will,” Merlin assures him. “For all these guys.”
“As a student of the law, I find this all very ill-advised..”
Merlin just says, “You ever smoke before?”
“Yeah… Not since college.”
“Uh-huh.” Merlin is still holding the joint out to him.
Fuck it. It’s been a weird day. It’s been a weird week.
“So,” Arthur says, taking the joint, “are we going to drink Will’s rum too?”
Merlin smiles. “One thing at a time.”
+
It gets cold quickly once the sun goes down. Arthur and Merlin stand atop the hill and watch the colors gather on the horizon - the golds and pinks leaking down from the heavens, and the strata of browns and grays rising from the smog. The city of Albion is backlit against the sky, and its skyscrapers reach upwards like the points of a crown.
“We should go back soon,” says Arthur.
“Yeah, you have to finish your bibliography, right?” Merlin asks distantly.
Arthur smirks. “It would have been finished by now if it weren’t for your bad influence.”
“You can’t blame everything on the revolution, Arthur.” Merlin nudges him with his shoulder. “That’s just lazy.” If they are standing closer after the nudge, neither comments on it.
“Well, I don’t have to anymore.” Arthur shifts his weight uncomfortably. “Nimueh says you can go home.”
“She what? When did you speak to Nimueh?”
“When I was trying to find you, ass.”
“She says I can go?” Merlin says, and is not entirely surprised to feel the lilt of disappointment in his tone. He forces a grin and says, “I bet you threw a party when she told you that.”
“Yeah, it was a real shitshow, only I couldn’t be there because I had to go all the way to St. Mark’s to and make sure you were still alive.”
“Well,” Merlin says, “I still have to go back to your place anyway. My stuff’s still there.”
Arthur nods hurriedly. “Yeah, yeah sure.”
A silence settles in - not uncomfortable, but charged, like the bones have been thrown in the air and the diviner is just waiting for them to fall. Merlin watches Arthur out the corner of his eye, and in the fading light, he cannot tell if Arthur is looking back.
In the end, it’s Merlin who takes the first step down the hill, and he hears Arthur follow behind.
“I was keeping an eye on the road,” says Arthur. “I haven’t seen a cab pass by here in a while.”
“We’ll take the subway. There aren’t as many cabs that come through here. The station’s about a twenty minute walk.”
Arthur asks, “Do I smell like it?”
“…What?”
“Do I smell like weed?”
“What? No, Arthur, no one’s going to care if you smell like weed.”
“What if someone recognizes me as Uther Pendragon’s son and I smell like weed?”
“You don’t smell like weed!”
“What if I run into a classmate.”
“Arthur.”
Arthur says, “Smell me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Just to make sure.”
“Arthur, this is your worst come-on yet,” Merlin guffaws.
“I’m not-“
“C’mere,” Merlin says, slinging an arm around Arthur’s shoulders. He turns his face towards him, and sniffs.
“Do I smell?” Arthur asks cautiously.
“Hmm, I don’t know.” He grins and tugs Arthur closer, and sniffs again. And closer, and again, trying not to giggle.
“Well?” Arthur demands. “Come on, stop joking around.”
“Arthur, you smell like crime all over, with just a touch of B.O.”
“For god’s sake, you idiot. And I do not have B.O.”
Impulsively, Merlin leans over and kisses Arthur on the cheek. “You’re fine,” he says, and pretends his heartbeat is not beating over the average rate.
“Oh, um,” Arthur breathes. “Well, good.”
Merlin takes his arm back and shoves his hands in his pockets, looking straight ahead and wondering what other ruse might let him kiss Arthur. Something harmless, something fun. Like what? If only Arthur weren’t so repressed. If only Merlin weren’t leaving soon.
“Hey,” says Arthur.
Merlin looks over. “Hmm?”
Arthur leans in and kisses his mouth.
+
They burst into Arthur’s bedroom in a confusion of shed clothes and tangled limbs, and fall on the bed with a heavy crashing sound.
Arthur lifts his head and frowns, “Did we just break my bed?”
Merlin says, “God, I hope we do,” and kisses him again.
It’s been a while. Arthur has been in over his head with work that the last time he slept with someone was months ago, and the last time he slept with someone he genuinely liked, well, that was too long ago. He hopes he won’t fuck this up. Arthur can’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction when he shoves his hand down Merlin’s pants and Merlin arches gasping against him.
The high is still sticking with Arthur and every touch tingles on his skin, every kiss has a trailing afterimage. They are less than graceful with each other, and sometimes Arthur bites too hard and Merlin scratches too deep, but Arthur relishes every cry and gasp. They wrap themselves around each other and it is not beautiful, but right, and as messy as one would expect from an exorcism of demons and a struggle for a new horizon. When Merlin pushes in, when Merlin chokes out a cry as Arthur flexes around him, Arthur closes his eyes and parts his lips and loses himself and lets go.
+
The next day, Arthur cooks breakfast as Merlin packs his things, and over breakfast they argue about the things Merlin has broken.
“It’s the price you pay for the pleasure of my company,” Merlin says affably. “Besides, your phone still works sometimes.”
“It used to work all the time. My Scrabble board, on the other hand, is permanently broken.”
“You can fix the Scrabble board with a permanent marker.”
They load the dishwasher together, and Arthur finally shows Merlin how it works. Merlin chuckles and says, “Yeah, teach me how to use it just as I’m about to leave. Perfect.”
“Go on, press the ‘start’ button,” Arthur says. “I already punched in the settings.” So Merlin presses the ‘start’ button, and Arthur grins. “I daresay you’ve gotten steadily better at doing my dishes.”
“Hey, all thanks to this paragon of the upper-crust indoctrinating me into the system, huh?”
“You’re welcome.”
Merlin clears his throat. “So. I still say you should come downtown sometime.” His tone picks up, veering between hope and persuasion. “Seriously, meet some of my friends. See what they have to say, and let them hear what you have to say.”
Arthur crosses his arms and leans against the kitchen counter, frowning. “You really think so?”
Merlin quirks his mouth. “Arthur, look at your thesis. You’re already involved.”
“A thesis is a thesis. It’s intangible, it doesn’t do anything. It’s just words and words and words.”
Merlin resists rolling his eyes, but snorting probably isn’t any less condescending. Arthur doth protest too much. “Of course your thesis isn’t going to do anything. You can, though.”
Arthur frowns. “You think so?”
“Sure.”
But Arthur just picks up the washcloth and starts wiping down the counter with that slow manner that people have when all they’re actually doing is buying time and mulling things over. “I was talking to my father the night after the Madison Avenue riot,” he finally says. “We were talking about it.”
Recognizing his role in the conversation, Merlin sits back down in his chair and asks, “What did he say?”
“He didn’t have much sympathy for them,” Arthur replies quietly. “I guess it shouldn’t be so strange to me, and I shouldn’t be surprised. I grew up hearing this stuff from him, after all. But…” He shakes his head. “My father said, ‘If they demand to be martyrs, someone will make them martyrs.’”
“Oh, yeah,” Merlin scoffs. “Being martyred, that’s exactly what we’re asking for. Yeah.”
“He’s my father, Merlin,” Arthur says insistently, ”and… I love my father. But I am not him.”
“I know that.”
Arthur says, “I think you and I, we’re fighting different battles.”
Merlin says, “But we’re in the same war.”
And Arthur just continues wiping down the counter, so Merlin takes a sponge and does the table. There’s only so much he can say. Sometimes you have to let things be, let things simmer and come to boil in their own time.
All of Merlin’s belongings fit in a backpack and a duffel bag. When Merlin heaves them over his shoulder and shuffles out into the living room, he gets as far as saying, “I cleaned the bedroom the best I can but-“ before Arthur kisses him again. Merlin closes his eyes and kisses back.
“You’re a strange one, Merlin Emrys,” Arthur says, soft against Merlin’s lips.
“Yeah,” Merlin breathes.
“Keep in touch.”
“Funny. I was just going to tell you the same thing.”
Arthur gathers his books and his laptop and accompanies Merlin downstairs, standing side by side in the elevator and watching the numbers change, the countdown to goodbye. Quicker than should happen, they are at lobby level.
“Good luck on your thesis,” Merlin says. “Keep me up to date on it.”
“Good luck with everything,” says Arthur, “and remember, you said you’d send me those interview recordings with the Dragon.”
Merlin grins. “I’ll do my best.”
“You better.”
“Or maybe I’ll get you a new Scrabble set, at least.”
“That’d be nice too.”
Merlin holds out his hand for a handshake and says, “I’ll see you around.”
Arthur pulls him into a hug and says, “Yeah, definitely.”
And if they hug for maybe a little longer than necessary, no one says anything about it.
Merlin hails a cab, and Arthur watches it go until it turns the corner. He straightens his shoulders and starts walking in the opposite direction to the subway. It’s not even noon, and he has a lot of work to catch up on.