Kink Me! #7

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Kink Me! #7
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An Exercise in Holding One's Breath 9/15 (Spoilers for Season 2 Episodes 9)

[anonymous]

University finished, eventually, after three seemingly endless years with barely enough contact with Merlin to stop Arthur from quitting altogether. He managed his first with honours and Merlin came to his graduation, grinning as proudly as Morgana and his father were. They took photographs and got drunk and then, in the morning, they piled all of his stuff, exponentially more than he had arrived with three years ago, into the car before driving away and leaving that part of his life behind forever.

Merlin’s graduation was a week later and Arthur went and applauded before stealing Merlin’s mortarboard and being chased around the park where Hunith took them for a celebratory picnic. The world was warm and slow, reminiscent of those days, years ago, when they had revised together and Arthur had learnt how to stare at Merlin without him noticing and Merlin had learnt about the chemistry of the blast furnace, happily oblivious.

In the afternoon, he had been introduced to Merlin’s flavour of the month and managed not to break her hand when he shook it. She was short and pretty and her name was Freya. Merlin said it with the terrible reverence of the man in love and Arthur made himself smile, ignoring the feeling of Hunith watching him oh so shrewdly from the other side of the table.

Somehow they both stumbled into jobs. Lowly interns at first, but pulling themselves up the promotion ladder rung by rung. They lived in the same town and they worked out a rough schedule so they saw each other at least once a week.

Arthur bought himself a wii and Saturday Night became Mario Kart night again, even if Freya sometimes came along as well.

He couldn’t hate her, not with the way she made Merlin smile, but he could take great pleasure in thrashing her every time he played against her and he could arrange things to do on evenings when she was busy. Arthur felt horrible, sometimes, when he looked at the pair of them together, but then Merlin would glare at him as he forced him off the track and it would be exactly like that moment when they were five and Arthur just couldn’t bring himself to care.

Weeks grew to months and years, until time seemed to be flying past, yards of boredom punctuated with brief, glowing moments with Merlin.

Which led him to today: seven years out of university and he still worked in the same company, though with significantly better pay and with a much larger office.

He had moved flat twice since then, from the grotty one bedroom hole he had rented at first, to a huge two-bed penthouse. It had a view out over half the city, but Arthur felt a little lost in the place. He was used to large homes, the house he had grown up in had had ten bedrooms and it had just been him, Morgana and his father in it. But there was something different about living alone in a big place. The lack of noise drove him to distraction sometimes, so he had to switch on the radio just for some company. He felt like a pet parrot.

He was making himself a coffee when the knock came on his door.

Visitors weren’t a usual occurrence, and the only people who tended to turn up without warning were Morgana and his father, sometimes.

So, when he swung open the door, he wasn’t expecting to see Merlin standing there looking like a wet weekend.