Sleep Like the Dead: Part 4 - The Ninth Time
Merlin was in trouble. He had learned a lot about himself over the past two years - about his quirk - and without a doubt, he was in trouble.
He had Camelot in sight - the gate barely a five minute walk away - when his knees abruptly refused to support him and he fell, hard. He tried to get up but found that his body held all of the strength of a newborn child. All he could manage to do was turn on his side and curl his knees to his chest.
After Morgana had been taken away, he had found himself alone once again in dealing with his quirk. He had been determined not to allow it to get the best of him - after all, he was a powerful warlock and should be able to do something to keep himself awake. And, after a few mistrials - and some rather embarrassing off-the-cuff made-up stories to Arthur to explain his absence, including one about a rash that made it too painful to work - Merlin figured it out. If he sent a shot of magic down his spine he would find himself wide awake.
In reality, it wasn’t the best of solutions. If he felt himself getting tired, he would try to sleep. But when circumstances wouldn’t allow it, he would resort to the burst of magic. He didn’t really like it, though. All his nerves would come alive - from his head to his feet - making touch a sometimes painful experience - and sometimes arousing.
He had managed not to embarrass himself with that, yet - after all, it was easier to hide for a five minute wank than it was to hide for an hour nap. Although sometimes he thought that Arthur had noticed - but then decided it couldn’t be so, because that would be something Arthur wouldn’t be able to help but tease him about.
But it went beyond his traitorous nerves - he would become manically awake. Happy and chipper and hyper - enough to annoy not only Arthur, but himself, too. But he couldn’t stop it. And if he finally found the time to sprawl out and sleep - he couldn’t. There was no shutting off the magically-awake nerves until they settled down on their own. The only thing he had to be thankful for was that once they were settled down, he was back to normal - no quirk acting up, no all-consuming tiredness - just normal. It wouldn’t last for long - several hours at the most - but so far he had been able to find a place and a time to sleep.
Until now.
Merlin hadn’t had the chance to sleep for well over two days. He’d done his trick to keep awake more than half a day ago. He should have gone to sleep and probably could have without anyone bothering him, but he felt responsible for the chamber demolished by Morgana’s anguished cries.
Merlin still missed Morgana - the Morgana of long ago. The Morgana that had returned to Camelot after a year was not someone Merlin would ever miss. Why she hadn’t told Arthur about his quirk and tried to convince him to get rid of him he would never know and always wonder about. Maybe it was one last gift to a former friend. Or maybe she had her nefarious reasons.
Whatever her reasons were for her silence, he still felt a connection to her and had wanted to help shift the rubble to find her body - and that of Morgause. But, of course, neither of them had been there, so he lost out on sleep for nothing.
And then he had expended a lot of energy to shove a sword into a stone - something he now felt faintly ridiculous for doing, considering it had been perfectly fine at the bottom of a lake under the watchful eye of Freya. But he’d long ago learnt to go with his instincts when they screamed at him to do something, and the sword-in-the-stone thing had been an instinct louder and shriller than any before.
But vague regrets didn’t matter right then. The only thing that mattered was that sleep was sucking Merlin down into its dark arms.
He gave up fighting and snuggled into the silky black darkness of sleep with a sigh.
*****
Arthur wasn’t worried - of course he wasn’t. He was just looking for Merlin because he was shirking his duties. Who cared if he had released Merlin from his duties hours ago? He needed him and he was nowhere to be found. And Gaius said he ran off without saying where he was going and several people had seen him going off into the woods - and who knew what was lurking in the woods. Maybe a horde of bandits was heading for Camelot, eager to attack when the defences were still weak. Maybe they were out in the woods where Merlin was currently wandering.
Not that Arthur was worried. Because he wasn’t.
He made his way through the brush and bramble, trying to head in the same direction that several of the stable hands had pointed out to him as the direction Merlin had gone.
And then Arthur literally tripped over him in the growing dark.
At first Arthur spun around to kick what he thought was a fallen tree trunk - but managed to catch the familiar red neckerchief just in time.
“Merlin?”
Arthur knelt beside his manservant and shook his shoulders.
“Wake up, you lazy idiot!”
When there was no response panic flooded Arthur’s nerves for a brief moment. All it took was a hand held close to Merlin’s mouth and a soft puff of warm air to sooth his worries.
“Not again,” Arthur sighed out, tired and exasperated - but mostly relieved that he had not just found Merlin dead all alone in the woods.
The first time he had seen Merlin sleep like this had been during a feast. Morgana had tried to tell him that Merlin had fainted, but he hadn’t believed her. Despite all that Arthur teased Merlin, he knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t a fainter - that Merlin would stand strong against anything that he happened to come up against. No, he’d known that Merlin was only deeply asleep, but he had decided that it had to be because of the poisoning incident not long before, so he had let it go.
And then, not that long after, he had succumbed to a deep sleep again and fallen off his horse.
At first Arthur had wanted to keep Merlin back from everything - whether it be an overnight hunting trip or a week-long scouting trip. But he truly did know his manservant - his friend. If he forbid Merlin to go somewhere, Merlin would go anyways and get into even greater trouble. And Arthur preferred to keep an eye on him.
Not that he had seen Merlin sleep as deeply up to this point.
He had eventually cottoned on to the fact that Morgana was helping Merlin lie to him, and that bothered him to no end. It wasn’t a big deal that Merlin had this sleeping issue, but it was a big deal that Merlin felt he could let Morgana in on it and that he felt he had to lie to Arthur about it.
But Arthur let it go. Once Morgana returned she had eventually told him about Merlin’s problem and encouraged him to keep him back at the castle safe and sound like he had originally wanted to do, but he had decided to just let it be. As long as Merlin was staying safe and not getting hurt - and he could keep an eye on him in situations where he might get hurt - he was okay with it all.
And then while Morgana disappeared - and Merlin began doing… something to keep himself awake. And for some reason continued doing it even after Morgana returned.
Arthur wasn’t sure what it was - probably a potion - but whatever it was he didn’t like it. He had seen the affects of powerful potions on people - the way their eyes went wide and their personalities intensified and how they responded to touch in pained and excited ways. It was obvious Merlin was using one of these potions.
Arthur had never felt right bringing it up and accusing him of such a thing. He kept an eye out though, hoping to see a potion bottle pressed against his lips so that he could knock it away and yell at his manservant for being stupid.
But he always missed the moment. He would only know it had happened after being bombarded with an overly-enthusiastic manservant or seeing Merlin flinch after barely hitting his elbow against a door frame - or after catching a dishevelled - but pleased - Merlin stumbling from a vacant room.
When whatever it was would wear off and Merlin would go back to normal, Arthur would be sure to give him time to get some real sleep so that he wouldn’t have to resort to his potion again. Not that Arthur didn’t give him enough time off to sleep all the time, it just seemed like sometimes Merlin was living two different lives and doing twenty different things - and keeping them all from Arthur.
And now here Merlin was, so deeply asleep in the middle of the forest with night closing in that he was barely breathing and not even shivering against the falling temperatures brought on by the slow falling of the sun.
Arthur wasn’t sure what to do at first.
Leave him there so he could suffer the consequences of being too much of an idiot to sleep when given the opportunity to do so? No, that wasn’t an option. Not with that possibility of a horde of bandits lurking about.
Let Merlin sleep in the forest and Arthur would remain by his side in order to protect him from any rogue bandits? Not an option either. Because it was getting colder out and Arthur wasn’t keen on staying out all night in it.
That left Arthur only one option - pick Merlin up and take him inside. And so he did, even though it was always awkward to carry his manservant and something that he hadn’t needed to do for a while. He was a bit disconcerted by how much lighter he seemed. Apparently living out in the woods was not the best way to prevent an already skinny man from getting even skinnier.
The decision for Arthur to bring Merlin to his room wasn’t a difficult one to make. Every muscle in his body was aching and crying out for rest - and the only reason he wasn’t collapsing into a deep sleep himself with Merlin still in his arms was because he didn’t want to give the servants anything to gossip about. But getting Merlin up to his own room in Gaius’ tower just wasn’t going to happen.
Laying Merlin down in his bed rather than on his floor was not such an easy decision to make.
There was no way Arthur as going to be sleeping tonight anywhere but his own bed. He’d earned his rest and he always rested best in his bed. But to make Merlin sleep on the floor - when he had been cuddled up by a tree on top of a soft bed of grass and leaves - seemed a bit cruel. He probably could have taken Merlin to one of the guest rooms, but people were moving in and out of rooms all over the castle, trying to fix the damage caused by Morgana’s short reign.
If Arthur were to be honest with himself he would admit that he wanted to have Merlin lying close to him in his own bed. But there were some things that even princes were too afraid to admit to themselves.
When he crawled into bed he laid facing Merlin’s sleeping form and watched the shallow breaths raise and lower the thin chest until his own eyes fluttered shut and refused to open again.
*****
Merlin woke up in an unusual position - flat on his back and being pressed down by a heavy weight. When he managed to get his eyes open he found himself looking at familiar brocade bed curtains, and a lift of his head confirmed his suspicion that Arthur was draped over him, his ear pressed right over Merlin’s heart.
There was no way Merlin was wiggling out of this.
There was no way he wanted to.
Instead he sighed happily, wove his fingers through Arthur’s hair and closed his eyes again and fell in a lighter, less all-consuming sleep.
When he woke again his and Arthur’s limbs were tangled together and wrapped around each other in a way that he found strangely comforting. The few times he had woken up in the same bed with someone he found cuddling to be awkward and stifling. This was nowhere close to being either of those things.
Until he saw that Arthur was awake. Then it was a little bit awkward.
Both of them pulled away from each other and sat facing each other, red-faced and a bit embarrassed.
“Uh, good morning?” Merlin said cautiously.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine?” Merlin asked more than answered, not sure why he was being asked the question. “You?”
“Good.” Arthur said, and then smacked Merlin on the back of his head, rather hard.
“Ow! What was that for?!” Merlin said with a whine in his throat as he rubbed the back of his head.
“You are not to take it again,” Arthur said, the tone of his voice as forceful and serious as it was before going to battle.
“Take what?”
“Whatever it is that you take to stay awake. Whatever potion you’re using, you’re not going to do it again.”
Merlin stared at the frown on Arthur’s face and tried to puzzle out his words. And then his tired mind woke enough to realize what was going on.
“You know?”
“Know that you’re taking a potion to stay awake or know that you have a sleeping problem? Both, actually,” Arthur said. “And I want you to stop taking that potion. What it does to you isn’t worth it but you’ll probably end up becoming addicted to it anyway like the idiot you are.” Arthur tried to add a smile to lighten the mood, but it was a mere lift of his lips and did nothing to ease the tension in the room.
Merlin wanted to protest that he wasn’t some idiot addicted to potions - but of course he couldn’t explain what he was really doing to stay awake. And then he realised that Arthur had known - about his quirk and about his reactions to his fix. He flamed red and dropped his head.
“I don’t need to know anything about this problem - why you have it and how long you have. I don’t care,” Arthur lied. He wanted to know everything and anything about Merlin, but that could wait. “But you are never to use that potion again. You will sleep when I give you time to sleep. If something is going on and you can’t, you will tell me. And if you think for even a moment that your problem is going to act up, you come to me immediately and you can sleep somewhere that isn’t in the middle of a feast or on the back of your horse or in the middle of a forest where bandits could be around every corner. Do you understand?”
Merlin raised his head and found Arthur looking at him intensely and intently, and he couldn’t refuse.
“I understand.”
All tension fled Arthur, like he was sure he was going to be in for a fight over this.
Then both realised that they were sitting in Arthur’s bed, together. They remembered that they had woken up tangled together - for all intents and purposes they had been cuddling. And they both scrambled off opposite sides of the bed, blushing horribly and trying not to look at each other.
After Merlin found his boots he was all set to rush out the door and find something to do that would keep him far away from these chambers - and the threat of actually combusting from the force of his blush - but then he stopped and turned to face Arthur.
“Thank you,” Merlin said.
Arthur was just tugging down the shirt he had changed into. His hair was wild from stripping off one shirt and putting another one on and a blush still lingered on his cheeks. All-in-all he looked quite endearing, and Merlin couldn’t help but grin at him.
“Thank you for taking care of me last night and for giving me another option. I promise, next time I think my quirk is about to act up I will come to you.”
He left then, not letting Arthur say anything in response. Arthur smiled after him before shaking it off and reaching for his sword - he had things to do, after all.
From then on Merlin did go to Arthur whenever he wasn’t getting enough sleep. On the few occasions where his quirk sneak-attacked him, he would find himself waking up in Arthur’s bed - or on his cot, if they happened to be on a campaign.
Eventually they both agreed that it was best if Merlin always stayed with Arthur - after all, there was no better way for Arthur to know whether or not Merlin was getting enough sleep than if they were sleeping in the same location.
And if sometimes Arthur was the reason why Merlin didn’t get enough sleep some nights? Well, neither of them were complaining about that.
Part 5
He had Camelot in sight - the gate barely a five minute walk away - when his knees abruptly refused to support him and he fell, hard. He tried to get up but found that his body held all of the strength of a newborn child. All he could manage to do was turn on his side and curl his knees to his chest.
After Morgana had been taken away, he had found himself alone once again in dealing with his quirk. He had been determined not to allow it to get the best of him - after all, he was a powerful warlock and should be able to do something to keep himself awake. And, after a few mistrials - and some rather embarrassing off-the-cuff made-up stories to Arthur to explain his absence, including one about a rash that made it too painful to work - Merlin figured it out. If he sent a shot of magic down his spine he would find himself wide awake.
In reality, it wasn’t the best of solutions. If he felt himself getting tired, he would try to sleep. But when circumstances wouldn’t allow it, he would resort to the burst of magic. He didn’t really like it, though. All his nerves would come alive - from his head to his feet - making touch a sometimes painful experience - and sometimes arousing.
He had managed not to embarrass himself with that, yet - after all, it was easier to hide for a five minute wank than it was to hide for an hour nap. Although sometimes he thought that Arthur had noticed - but then decided it couldn’t be so, because that would be something Arthur wouldn’t be able to help but tease him about.
But it went beyond his traitorous nerves - he would become manically awake. Happy and chipper and hyper - enough to annoy not only Arthur, but himself, too. But he couldn’t stop it. And if he finally found the time to sprawl out and sleep - he couldn’t. There was no shutting off the magically-awake nerves until they settled down on their own. The only thing he had to be thankful for was that once they were settled down, he was back to normal - no quirk acting up, no all-consuming tiredness - just normal. It wouldn’t last for long - several hours at the most - but so far he had been able to find a place and a time to sleep.
Until now.
Merlin hadn’t had the chance to sleep for well over two days. He’d done his trick to keep awake more than half a day ago. He should have gone to sleep and probably could have without anyone bothering him, but he felt responsible for the chamber demolished by Morgana’s anguished cries.
Merlin still missed Morgana - the Morgana of long ago. The Morgana that had returned to Camelot after a year was not someone Merlin would ever miss. Why she hadn’t told Arthur about his quirk and tried to convince him to get rid of him he would never know and always wonder about. Maybe it was one last gift to a former friend. Or maybe she had her nefarious reasons.
Whatever her reasons were for her silence, he still felt a connection to her and had wanted to help shift the rubble to find her body - and that of Morgause. But, of course, neither of them had been there, so he lost out on sleep for nothing.
And then he had expended a lot of energy to shove a sword into a stone - something he now felt faintly ridiculous for doing, considering it had been perfectly fine at the bottom of a lake under the watchful eye of Freya. But he’d long ago learnt to go with his instincts when they screamed at him to do something, and the sword-in-the-stone thing had been an instinct louder and shriller than any before.
But vague regrets didn’t matter right then. The only thing that mattered was that sleep was sucking Merlin down into its dark arms.
He gave up fighting and snuggled into the silky black darkness of sleep with a sigh.
*****
Arthur wasn’t worried - of course he wasn’t. He was just looking for Merlin because he was shirking his duties. Who cared if he had released Merlin from his duties hours ago? He needed him and he was nowhere to be found. And Gaius said he ran off without saying where he was going and several people had seen him going off into the woods - and who knew what was lurking in the woods. Maybe a horde of bandits was heading for Camelot, eager to attack when the defences were still weak. Maybe they were out in the woods where Merlin was currently wandering.
Not that Arthur was worried. Because he wasn’t.
He made his way through the brush and bramble, trying to head in the same direction that several of the stable hands had pointed out to him as the direction Merlin had gone.
And then Arthur literally tripped over him in the growing dark.
At first Arthur spun around to kick what he thought was a fallen tree trunk - but managed to catch the familiar red neckerchief just in time.
“Merlin?”
Arthur knelt beside his manservant and shook his shoulders.
“Wake up, you lazy idiot!”
When there was no response panic flooded Arthur’s nerves for a brief moment. All it took was a hand held close to Merlin’s mouth and a soft puff of warm air to sooth his worries.
“Not again,” Arthur sighed out, tired and exasperated - but mostly relieved that he had not just found Merlin dead all alone in the woods.
The first time he had seen Merlin sleep like this had been during a feast. Morgana had tried to tell him that Merlin had fainted, but he hadn’t believed her. Despite all that Arthur teased Merlin, he knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t a fainter - that Merlin would stand strong against anything that he happened to come up against. No, he’d known that Merlin was only deeply asleep, but he had decided that it had to be because of the poisoning incident not long before, so he had let it go.
And then, not that long after, he had succumbed to a deep sleep again and fallen off his horse.
At first Arthur had wanted to keep Merlin back from everything - whether it be an overnight hunting trip or a week-long scouting trip. But he truly did know his manservant - his friend. If he forbid Merlin to go somewhere, Merlin would go anyways and get into even greater trouble. And Arthur preferred to keep an eye on him.
Not that he had seen Merlin sleep as deeply up to this point.
He had eventually cottoned on to the fact that Morgana was helping Merlin lie to him, and that bothered him to no end. It wasn’t a big deal that Merlin had this sleeping issue, but it was a big deal that Merlin felt he could let Morgana in on it and that he felt he had to lie to Arthur about it.
But Arthur let it go. Once Morgana returned she had eventually told him about Merlin’s problem and encouraged him to keep him back at the castle safe and sound like he had originally wanted to do, but he had decided to just let it be. As long as Merlin was staying safe and not getting hurt - and he could keep an eye on him in situations where he might get hurt - he was okay with it all.
And then while Morgana disappeared - and Merlin began doing… something to keep himself awake. And for some reason continued doing it even after Morgana returned.
Arthur wasn’t sure what it was - probably a potion - but whatever it was he didn’t like it. He had seen the affects of powerful potions on people - the way their eyes went wide and their personalities intensified and how they responded to touch in pained and excited ways. It was obvious Merlin was using one of these potions.
Arthur had never felt right bringing it up and accusing him of such a thing. He kept an eye out though, hoping to see a potion bottle pressed against his lips so that he could knock it away and yell at his manservant for being stupid.
But he always missed the moment. He would only know it had happened after being bombarded with an overly-enthusiastic manservant or seeing Merlin flinch after barely hitting his elbow against a door frame - or after catching a dishevelled - but pleased - Merlin stumbling from a vacant room.
When whatever it was would wear off and Merlin would go back to normal, Arthur would be sure to give him time to get some real sleep so that he wouldn’t have to resort to his potion again. Not that Arthur didn’t give him enough time off to sleep all the time, it just seemed like sometimes Merlin was living two different lives and doing twenty different things - and keeping them all from Arthur.
And now here Merlin was, so deeply asleep in the middle of the forest with night closing in that he was barely breathing and not even shivering against the falling temperatures brought on by the slow falling of the sun.
Arthur wasn’t sure what to do at first.
Leave him there so he could suffer the consequences of being too much of an idiot to sleep when given the opportunity to do so? No, that wasn’t an option. Not with that possibility of a horde of bandits lurking about.
Let Merlin sleep in the forest and Arthur would remain by his side in order to protect him from any rogue bandits? Not an option either. Because it was getting colder out and Arthur wasn’t keen on staying out all night in it.
That left Arthur only one option - pick Merlin up and take him inside. And so he did, even though it was always awkward to carry his manservant and something that he hadn’t needed to do for a while. He was a bit disconcerted by how much lighter he seemed. Apparently living out in the woods was not the best way to prevent an already skinny man from getting even skinnier.
The decision for Arthur to bring Merlin to his room wasn’t a difficult one to make. Every muscle in his body was aching and crying out for rest - and the only reason he wasn’t collapsing into a deep sleep himself with Merlin still in his arms was because he didn’t want to give the servants anything to gossip about. But getting Merlin up to his own room in Gaius’ tower just wasn’t going to happen.
Laying Merlin down in his bed rather than on his floor was not such an easy decision to make.
There was no way Arthur as going to be sleeping tonight anywhere but his own bed. He’d earned his rest and he always rested best in his bed. But to make Merlin sleep on the floor - when he had been cuddled up by a tree on top of a soft bed of grass and leaves - seemed a bit cruel. He probably could have taken Merlin to one of the guest rooms, but people were moving in and out of rooms all over the castle, trying to fix the damage caused by Morgana’s short reign.
If Arthur were to be honest with himself he would admit that he wanted to have Merlin lying close to him in his own bed. But there were some things that even princes were too afraid to admit to themselves.
When he crawled into bed he laid facing Merlin’s sleeping form and watched the shallow breaths raise and lower the thin chest until his own eyes fluttered shut and refused to open again.
*****
Merlin woke up in an unusual position - flat on his back and being pressed down by a heavy weight. When he managed to get his eyes open he found himself looking at familiar brocade bed curtains, and a lift of his head confirmed his suspicion that Arthur was draped over him, his ear pressed right over Merlin’s heart.
There was no way Merlin was wiggling out of this.
There was no way he wanted to.
Instead he sighed happily, wove his fingers through Arthur’s hair and closed his eyes again and fell in a lighter, less all-consuming sleep.
When he woke again his and Arthur’s limbs were tangled together and wrapped around each other in a way that he found strangely comforting. The few times he had woken up in the same bed with someone he found cuddling to be awkward and stifling. This was nowhere close to being either of those things.
Until he saw that Arthur was awake. Then it was a little bit awkward.
Both of them pulled away from each other and sat facing each other, red-faced and a bit embarrassed.
“Uh, good morning?” Merlin said cautiously.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine?” Merlin asked more than answered, not sure why he was being asked the question. “You?”
“Good.” Arthur said, and then smacked Merlin on the back of his head, rather hard.
“Ow! What was that for?!” Merlin said with a whine in his throat as he rubbed the back of his head.
“You are not to take it again,” Arthur said, the tone of his voice as forceful and serious as it was before going to battle.
“Take what?”
“Whatever it is that you take to stay awake. Whatever potion you’re using, you’re not going to do it again.”
Merlin stared at the frown on Arthur’s face and tried to puzzle out his words. And then his tired mind woke enough to realize what was going on.
“You know?”
“Know that you’re taking a potion to stay awake or know that you have a sleeping problem? Both, actually,” Arthur said. “And I want you to stop taking that potion. What it does to you isn’t worth it but you’ll probably end up becoming addicted to it anyway like the idiot you are.” Arthur tried to add a smile to lighten the mood, but it was a mere lift of his lips and did nothing to ease the tension in the room.
Merlin wanted to protest that he wasn’t some idiot addicted to potions - but of course he couldn’t explain what he was really doing to stay awake. And then he realised that Arthur had known - about his quirk and about his reactions to his fix. He flamed red and dropped his head.
“I don’t need to know anything about this problem - why you have it and how long you have. I don’t care,” Arthur lied. He wanted to know everything and anything about Merlin, but that could wait. “But you are never to use that potion again. You will sleep when I give you time to sleep. If something is going on and you can’t, you will tell me. And if you think for even a moment that your problem is going to act up, you come to me immediately and you can sleep somewhere that isn’t in the middle of a feast or on the back of your horse or in the middle of a forest where bandits could be around every corner. Do you understand?”
Merlin raised his head and found Arthur looking at him intensely and intently, and he couldn’t refuse.
“I understand.”
All tension fled Arthur, like he was sure he was going to be in for a fight over this.
Then both realised that they were sitting in Arthur’s bed, together. They remembered that they had woken up tangled together - for all intents and purposes they had been cuddling. And they both scrambled off opposite sides of the bed, blushing horribly and trying not to look at each other.
After Merlin found his boots he was all set to rush out the door and find something to do that would keep him far away from these chambers - and the threat of actually combusting from the force of his blush - but then he stopped and turned to face Arthur.
“Thank you,” Merlin said.
Arthur was just tugging down the shirt he had changed into. His hair was wild from stripping off one shirt and putting another one on and a blush still lingered on his cheeks. All-in-all he looked quite endearing, and Merlin couldn’t help but grin at him.
“Thank you for taking care of me last night and for giving me another option. I promise, next time I think my quirk is about to act up I will come to you.”
He left then, not letting Arthur say anything in response. Arthur smiled after him before shaking it off and reaching for his sword - he had things to do, after all.
From then on Merlin did go to Arthur whenever he wasn’t getting enough sleep. On the few occasions where his quirk sneak-attacked him, he would find himself waking up in Arthur’s bed - or on his cot, if they happened to be on a campaign.
Eventually they both agreed that it was best if Merlin always stayed with Arthur - after all, there was no better way for Arthur to know whether or not Merlin was getting enough sleep than if they were sleeping in the same location.
And if sometimes Arthur was the reason why Merlin didn’t get enough sleep some nights? Well, neither of them were complaining about that.
Part 5