Sleep Like the Dead: Part 6 - Uncountable 2/2
Arthur was tired. He was beyond tired, really. He shouldn’t even be working any more, but he felt invested in the rescue of the lone victim trapped within the fallen building and they were so close to reaching whoever it was that he just couldn’t bring himself to leave. Besides, he was the one with the most experience on these types of rescues and the rest of his team were content to let him lead them - even though some of them had been on the team longer than he had.
Night had just closed in and the spotlights turned on when Arthur lifted a fallen section of ceiling and finally revealed the man trapped inside. He was curled up in a tiny bit of space with not even enough room to move his arms or legs. Most worryingly of all, though, was the pool of blood by his head. The man had been trapped in the building for almost 36 hours, and yet the blood was shining freshly - which meant severe head trauma.
Arthur catalogued all of this in his mind - and added in the black shaggy hair, the sharp cheekbones and the long legs that would probably make the man just a bit taller than himself once they were uncurled from their position - all in the several seconds it took for the light to register on the man and for him to return to consciousness.
A smile tugged at Arthur’s lips as the man groaned and then tried to curl up further - he reminded Arthur of a kitten reluctant to wake up. But the moment the man’s eyes opened Arthur dropped the smile.
“Sir? Are you all right? We’re going to get you out of here very soon and get you to a hospital and checked out. That looks like a nasty head wound that you have and you need to have ---”
Arthur stopped his rambling and looked into the startlingly blue eyes of the man below them. They had been unfocused and dazed at first. But then they had narrowed in on him - and for an instant Arthur felt like this man knew him better than anyone ever had before in his entire life. He felt like he was the most welcomed sight in the world. Looking into those eyes sent a streak of electricity straight to his heart and niggled at something in the back of his mind. But before he could catch the thought and hold onto it the man’s eyes were rolling into the back of his head and he was out and Arthur was too focused on getting him out of the building to think any further about strange thoughts.
*****
Arthur stayed through the extraction process and watched as medics looked the man over until the ambulance doors shut. And then he was done with the man with the eyes that made him feel so strange.
Or so he thought.
It turned out, he couldn’t get him out of his mind. He dreamed of the man with the blue eyes and tousled black hair and long legs - he dreamed of him often. And at first the dreams made sense. They would be dreams of finding the man in the building - sometimes awake and smiling brightly, sometimes just as he was found and sometimes - sometimes he was dead and mouldering. The pain those dreams brought to Arthur confused him, because he didn’t really know the man to be feeling that level of pain at his imagined death.
And then the dreams began to make no sense whatsoever. Because when had he ever gone horseback riding with the man? Or swam in a lake? Or laughed with him, or ate with him or fought wars side-by-side with him - or made his eyes roll in the back of his head and bite his lip to hold back a scream of pleasure?
None of it made any sense. He was tired of the dreams and the confusion and the longing that bore down to the marrow of his bones and made him crave a man he had only seen awake for a fraction of a moment.
He was going to find this man. What he was going to do once he did, he didn’t know. But he was going to find him.
*****
Merlin was in the hospital for two weeks. There wasn’t really any reason for it - sure, he did have a concussion and several deep scrapes and bruises - although nothing life-threatening. But the doctors had been worried about the apparent coma he had been in when he first arrived. Finally, though, they could keep him no longer and he was free to leave.
He walked out of the hospital with Morgana by his side. Morgana who had rarely left his side the entire time he was in the hospital. He knew he had worried her, and he couldn’t blame her. They’d been companions for long centuries. Thirty years before she had appeared by his side in flesh and blood with no idea where Arthur had been born - and they had found it hard to separate after that. And if they were ever forced to be apart, the nearest reflective surface allowed them to stay together.
And now Merlin had found Arthur and wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“Find him and snog the living daylights out of him,” had been Morgana’s not-so-helpful suggestion while he was lying in his hospital bed. Merlin had considered it for a long, delicious moment - and then discarded it.
“No,” was Merlin’s eventual reply. “No. Arthur returning was never about me. We knew this. He is needed in the world and I’ll just find him and make sure he’s okay and watch him from afar. Keep him safe until he remembers.”
Morgana hadn’t looked too pleased with his decision, and Merlin wasn’t pleased either. But while he had been longing for the return of his King for eons upon eons, his King didn’t have a clue. And it would not do to try to bring about the return of Arthur’s memories before he was ready. If he did that, he could scare Arthur off and lose him forever. And forever was so much longer of a time than someday.
*****
It was easy to find Arthur once again. Everyone in the vicinity of the rescue house knew the blond-hair, blue-eyed man whose smile lit up his eyes and whose sense of duty was only outweighed by his ability to lead those around him.
So Merlin set about watching him. Merlin didn’t have to work - sometimes during his life he had worked when he got bored enough, but there were some benefits to being an all-powerful warlock, and not having to work was one of them. So he had all the time in the world to follow Arthur around.
He stayed far enough away that no one noticed him tailing Arthur. Sometimes he had to smile at the irony - the man who had once disparaged of him ever being quiet enough to stalk prey through the forest was now being stalked - and he was completely oblivious to the whole thing.
Merlin woke up early in the morning, went to Arthur’s flat and waited for him to come out - or not come out. Sometimes if Arthur had the day off he was able to get some extra sleep sitting on a bench across from the flat. He would set a warding alarm to go off if Arthur left his apartment - and Merlin would be hiding by the time Arthur was on the street. And then Merlin followed him all day. To work or the store or out to the bar. If Arthur was out until 3 a.m. so he could be the designated driver for this friends and then went into work at 6 a.m. - then Merlin kept the same hours. If Arthur had a fire to go fight on the other end of town - then Merlin was there, as well. (He had long ago figured out transportation spells, even though they tired him out sometimes.)
This went on for several weeks. Morgana tried to get Merlin to stay home, but she was powerless against him - and she understood why he was doing what he was doing. In fact, occasionally she joined him, because sometimes it was easier to hide as a ‘couple’ than as a single man alone on the streets. Besides, she liked watching Arthur almost as much as Merlin did. She loved her brother and had watched over him for so long that sometimes she felt lost without his face to gaze upon.
But most of the time it was just Merlin. A Merlin that was quickly running out of steam but had no idea how to stop what he was doing. Now that Arthur was back in his life - even just in the peripheral - being able to see him smiling and scowling and laughing and just simply breathing - that was the only thing keeping Merlin clinging to sanity. Because having Arthur nearby but not able to touch was slowly but surely driving Merlin insane. So, instead, Merlin drove himself to the brink of exhaustion.
Years ago he had discovered the miracle of caffeine and found that it was a wonderful substitute to shooting himself full of magic - something he had never again done since the day Arthur told him not to. Caffeine was a natural shot of magic - and something that he could have extra shots of added to a sugary, creamy drink that would keep him going far longer than magic ever would. Sometimes human ingenuity really did win out over magic.
This is why Merlin found himself in line to get coffee several blocks from Arthur’s apartment. He was nearing the verge of giving in to sleep entirely, and he probably should - but Arthur would be working today and Merlin couldn’t stand the thought of him fighting a fire and possibly getting hurt. Merlin needed to be there to make sure Arthur never again fell in front of his eyes. That was his only point in life anymore - watching over and protecting Arthur like he once had so long ago. Only this time Arthur didn’t even know he existed.
*****
Arthur found it surprisingly easy to find the blue-eyed man he had rescued from the fallen building once he set his mind to finding him. He ended up needing to not look any further than his favourite coffee shop.
Arthur was in a rather long line of people and watched as the man in the front paid for his coffee and turned around, cradling his cup in between his palms like it was his saviour and he was its disciple. It took several seconds for Arthur to recognize the man under the black raccoon bags below his eyes and the sallow tone to his skin. He looked like shit.
He looked beautiful.
“Excuse me,” Arthur said, stepping out of line and into the man’s path. Eyes heavy with sleep looked up from the coffee and then widened like they were seeing a ghost.
“Excuse me,” Arthur repeated. “But aren’t you -”
Arthur never got to finish his question because the man was collapsing and Arthur was too busy catching him - even managing to rescue the cup of coffee from scalding either of them. Other people rushed to help, but Arthur waved them aside.
“I think he’s just asleep,” he said, and when those around him looked sceptical Arthur rolled his eyes and explained that he was a firefighter and had medical training.
Arthur made the decision to bring the man back to his apartment to sleep. He had been working a lot of overtime and would be okay for a day off - although his superiors might not be completely happy with the last minute notice. But they would have to deal.
So Arthur gathered Merlin up and stood up.
And that was that.
It wasn’t a punch or a rush - there was no headache or nausea - he just knew. One minute he knew he was an ordinary man - a firefighter, a friend, a son - and the next he knew that while that all might be true, he was also a knight and a King, the wielder of Excalibur and the ruler of all Albion.
And he knew who he had in his arms and exactly why he was so precious to him - and had been since the moment he had set eyes on him both eons ago and weeks ago.
“Merlin,” Arthur said with a fond sigh, looking down at the face that he hadn’t known he had missed. Now he realized that a part of his soul had been absent until this man and his gangly limbs and strange sleeping quirks had fallen back into his life.
Arthur kissed Merlin’s forehead and walked out of the coffee shop. He couldn’t wait to talk to Merlin and kiss him and make love to him once again. In the meantime, though, he was satisfied with just holding him and looking at him and remembering how things had once been.
*****
When Merlin woke over a day later and found himself cradled in the arms of Arthur, he cried. And Arthur couldn’t bring himself to tease him about that. Instead he pressed kisses to every inch of Merlin’s face and then proceeded to kiss the rest of him, too - until the tears turned to moans and the moans to gasps and the gasps to a bitten lip and eyes rolling back into his head in an effort to hold back a scream from pleasure.
And then Merlin returned the favour.
*****
They had a lot to talk about - a lot to rediscover about each other and decisions to make about where to go from there. And they had to figure out what was so wrong with the world that Arthur had returned. Merlin had to make sure that Arthur understood who Morgana was now and who she had been in the past - because she would be joining them on whatever adventures they were going to embark on. Merlin was sure of that.
But in the meantime they were content to stay entwined in each other’s arms and sleep the sleep of the justly exhausted.
Now that they had found each other again, they had time enough to figure everything else out.
Night had just closed in and the spotlights turned on when Arthur lifted a fallen section of ceiling and finally revealed the man trapped inside. He was curled up in a tiny bit of space with not even enough room to move his arms or legs. Most worryingly of all, though, was the pool of blood by his head. The man had been trapped in the building for almost 36 hours, and yet the blood was shining freshly - which meant severe head trauma.
Arthur catalogued all of this in his mind - and added in the black shaggy hair, the sharp cheekbones and the long legs that would probably make the man just a bit taller than himself once they were uncurled from their position - all in the several seconds it took for the light to register on the man and for him to return to consciousness.
A smile tugged at Arthur’s lips as the man groaned and then tried to curl up further - he reminded Arthur of a kitten reluctant to wake up. But the moment the man’s eyes opened Arthur dropped the smile.
“Sir? Are you all right? We’re going to get you out of here very soon and get you to a hospital and checked out. That looks like a nasty head wound that you have and you need to have ---”
Arthur stopped his rambling and looked into the startlingly blue eyes of the man below them. They had been unfocused and dazed at first. But then they had narrowed in on him - and for an instant Arthur felt like this man knew him better than anyone ever had before in his entire life. He felt like he was the most welcomed sight in the world. Looking into those eyes sent a streak of electricity straight to his heart and niggled at something in the back of his mind. But before he could catch the thought and hold onto it the man’s eyes were rolling into the back of his head and he was out and Arthur was too focused on getting him out of the building to think any further about strange thoughts.
*****
Arthur stayed through the extraction process and watched as medics looked the man over until the ambulance doors shut. And then he was done with the man with the eyes that made him feel so strange.
Or so he thought.
It turned out, he couldn’t get him out of his mind. He dreamed of the man with the blue eyes and tousled black hair and long legs - he dreamed of him often. And at first the dreams made sense. They would be dreams of finding the man in the building - sometimes awake and smiling brightly, sometimes just as he was found and sometimes - sometimes he was dead and mouldering. The pain those dreams brought to Arthur confused him, because he didn’t really know the man to be feeling that level of pain at his imagined death.
And then the dreams began to make no sense whatsoever. Because when had he ever gone horseback riding with the man? Or swam in a lake? Or laughed with him, or ate with him or fought wars side-by-side with him - or made his eyes roll in the back of his head and bite his lip to hold back a scream of pleasure?
None of it made any sense. He was tired of the dreams and the confusion and the longing that bore down to the marrow of his bones and made him crave a man he had only seen awake for a fraction of a moment.
He was going to find this man. What he was going to do once he did, he didn’t know. But he was going to find him.
*****
Merlin was in the hospital for two weeks. There wasn’t really any reason for it - sure, he did have a concussion and several deep scrapes and bruises - although nothing life-threatening. But the doctors had been worried about the apparent coma he had been in when he first arrived. Finally, though, they could keep him no longer and he was free to leave.
He walked out of the hospital with Morgana by his side. Morgana who had rarely left his side the entire time he was in the hospital. He knew he had worried her, and he couldn’t blame her. They’d been companions for long centuries. Thirty years before she had appeared by his side in flesh and blood with no idea where Arthur had been born - and they had found it hard to separate after that. And if they were ever forced to be apart, the nearest reflective surface allowed them to stay together.
And now Merlin had found Arthur and wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“Find him and snog the living daylights out of him,” had been Morgana’s not-so-helpful suggestion while he was lying in his hospital bed. Merlin had considered it for a long, delicious moment - and then discarded it.
“No,” was Merlin’s eventual reply. “No. Arthur returning was never about me. We knew this. He is needed in the world and I’ll just find him and make sure he’s okay and watch him from afar. Keep him safe until he remembers.”
Morgana hadn’t looked too pleased with his decision, and Merlin wasn’t pleased either. But while he had been longing for the return of his King for eons upon eons, his King didn’t have a clue. And it would not do to try to bring about the return of Arthur’s memories before he was ready. If he did that, he could scare Arthur off and lose him forever. And forever was so much longer of a time than someday.
*****
It was easy to find Arthur once again. Everyone in the vicinity of the rescue house knew the blond-hair, blue-eyed man whose smile lit up his eyes and whose sense of duty was only outweighed by his ability to lead those around him.
So Merlin set about watching him. Merlin didn’t have to work - sometimes during his life he had worked when he got bored enough, but there were some benefits to being an all-powerful warlock, and not having to work was one of them. So he had all the time in the world to follow Arthur around.
He stayed far enough away that no one noticed him tailing Arthur. Sometimes he had to smile at the irony - the man who had once disparaged of him ever being quiet enough to stalk prey through the forest was now being stalked - and he was completely oblivious to the whole thing.
Merlin woke up early in the morning, went to Arthur’s flat and waited for him to come out - or not come out. Sometimes if Arthur had the day off he was able to get some extra sleep sitting on a bench across from the flat. He would set a warding alarm to go off if Arthur left his apartment - and Merlin would be hiding by the time Arthur was on the street. And then Merlin followed him all day. To work or the store or out to the bar. If Arthur was out until 3 a.m. so he could be the designated driver for this friends and then went into work at 6 a.m. - then Merlin kept the same hours. If Arthur had a fire to go fight on the other end of town - then Merlin was there, as well. (He had long ago figured out transportation spells, even though they tired him out sometimes.)
This went on for several weeks. Morgana tried to get Merlin to stay home, but she was powerless against him - and she understood why he was doing what he was doing. In fact, occasionally she joined him, because sometimes it was easier to hide as a ‘couple’ than as a single man alone on the streets. Besides, she liked watching Arthur almost as much as Merlin did. She loved her brother and had watched over him for so long that sometimes she felt lost without his face to gaze upon.
But most of the time it was just Merlin. A Merlin that was quickly running out of steam but had no idea how to stop what he was doing. Now that Arthur was back in his life - even just in the peripheral - being able to see him smiling and scowling and laughing and just simply breathing - that was the only thing keeping Merlin clinging to sanity. Because having Arthur nearby but not able to touch was slowly but surely driving Merlin insane. So, instead, Merlin drove himself to the brink of exhaustion.
Years ago he had discovered the miracle of caffeine and found that it was a wonderful substitute to shooting himself full of magic - something he had never again done since the day Arthur told him not to. Caffeine was a natural shot of magic - and something that he could have extra shots of added to a sugary, creamy drink that would keep him going far longer than magic ever would. Sometimes human ingenuity really did win out over magic.
This is why Merlin found himself in line to get coffee several blocks from Arthur’s apartment. He was nearing the verge of giving in to sleep entirely, and he probably should - but Arthur would be working today and Merlin couldn’t stand the thought of him fighting a fire and possibly getting hurt. Merlin needed to be there to make sure Arthur never again fell in front of his eyes. That was his only point in life anymore - watching over and protecting Arthur like he once had so long ago. Only this time Arthur didn’t even know he existed.
*****
Arthur found it surprisingly easy to find the blue-eyed man he had rescued from the fallen building once he set his mind to finding him. He ended up needing to not look any further than his favourite coffee shop.
Arthur was in a rather long line of people and watched as the man in the front paid for his coffee and turned around, cradling his cup in between his palms like it was his saviour and he was its disciple. It took several seconds for Arthur to recognize the man under the black raccoon bags below his eyes and the sallow tone to his skin. He looked like shit.
He looked beautiful.
“Excuse me,” Arthur said, stepping out of line and into the man’s path. Eyes heavy with sleep looked up from the coffee and then widened like they were seeing a ghost.
“Excuse me,” Arthur repeated. “But aren’t you -”
Arthur never got to finish his question because the man was collapsing and Arthur was too busy catching him - even managing to rescue the cup of coffee from scalding either of them. Other people rushed to help, but Arthur waved them aside.
“I think he’s just asleep,” he said, and when those around him looked sceptical Arthur rolled his eyes and explained that he was a firefighter and had medical training.
Arthur made the decision to bring the man back to his apartment to sleep. He had been working a lot of overtime and would be okay for a day off - although his superiors might not be completely happy with the last minute notice. But they would have to deal.
So Arthur gathered Merlin up and stood up.
And that was that.
It wasn’t a punch or a rush - there was no headache or nausea - he just knew. One minute he knew he was an ordinary man - a firefighter, a friend, a son - and the next he knew that while that all might be true, he was also a knight and a King, the wielder of Excalibur and the ruler of all Albion.
And he knew who he had in his arms and exactly why he was so precious to him - and had been since the moment he had set eyes on him both eons ago and weeks ago.
“Merlin,” Arthur said with a fond sigh, looking down at the face that he hadn’t known he had missed. Now he realized that a part of his soul had been absent until this man and his gangly limbs and strange sleeping quirks had fallen back into his life.
Arthur kissed Merlin’s forehead and walked out of the coffee shop. He couldn’t wait to talk to Merlin and kiss him and make love to him once again. In the meantime, though, he was satisfied with just holding him and looking at him and remembering how things had once been.
*****
When Merlin woke over a day later and found himself cradled in the arms of Arthur, he cried. And Arthur couldn’t bring himself to tease him about that. Instead he pressed kisses to every inch of Merlin’s face and then proceeded to kiss the rest of him, too - until the tears turned to moans and the moans to gasps and the gasps to a bitten lip and eyes rolling back into his head in an effort to hold back a scream from pleasure.
And then Merlin returned the favour.
*****
They had a lot to talk about - a lot to rediscover about each other and decisions to make about where to go from there. And they had to figure out what was so wrong with the world that Arthur had returned. Merlin had to make sure that Arthur understood who Morgana was now and who she had been in the past - because she would be joining them on whatever adventures they were going to embark on. Merlin was sure of that.
But in the meantime they were content to stay entwined in each other’s arms and sleep the sleep of the justly exhausted.
Now that they had found each other again, they had time enough to figure everything else out.