Every Story is a Love Story (3/3)
Part One | Part Two
“Have you finished being an idiot?” Morgana inquires when she picks up the phone that night.
“It took me ages to figure out with Sophia, and she was trying to get me to fall in love with her, in my defense.”
There’s a pause on the line. “Wait, what?”
“So obviously I wouldn’t notice about Merlin.” Arthur sighs. “Honestly, Morgana, you know better than anyone that I don’t always notice this sort of thing, one gets inured to it after a while. I’m not the only editor with a tragic love life.”
“Yes, but other editors don’t have Merlin practically-what exactly made you realize?”
Arthur sits back on his couch and opens his laptop up. Revelations or no, he’s behind on work and he still wants to get some notes to Merlin as soon as possible. “It’s a long story that ends in me imagining spanking him,” he says, mostly as revenge for her frequent attempts to send him to therapy.
Of course, she never minds as much as he does, but it still takes a second for her to answer. “Why didn’t it end in you actually spanking him?”
He massages his temple. “Gee, Morgana, I’m not sure. Why didn’t I just show up on his doorstep while he’s stoned on painkillers and say ‘Hello, how’s the arm, I’ve just realized that I’d rather our lunch tomorrow was in an entirely non-platonic capacity and also, would you mind terribly if I spanked you?’ It’s Merlin, he deserves at least a modicum of wooing.”
This time, she’s silent for long enough for him to wonder if his phone has dropped the call. He’s about to ask when she bursts out laughing. “Oh dear God, Arthur, really? You edit romance novels for a living, for fuck’s sake, and you can’t even have the decency to figure out when you’re pining for someone? It’s a classic situation! Uther went through it, we’ve all known about you since you decided he’s your romance novel soulmate, figured it was just in the Pendragon blood! I assumed you thought it was none of our business, but this is precious. That’s what you figured out today, that you’re in love with him?”
Arthur actually lifts the phone away from his ear to stare at it for a moment, because Morgana is making less sense than usual. “Well, if it were in the Pendragon blood you’d be in love with Morgause, which is beyond thinking of,” he manages after a second. “And I don’t notice these things precisely because I edit romance novels, you can’t tell me you aren’t a bit jaded about things like meet-cutes by now.”
“You have had years to figure it out, I can’t believe this is your big exciting revelation.”
“If you’re so disappointed, what were you expecting me to figure out?”
Morgana makes a sharp, annoyed sound. “Just … do me a favor, would you? Reread Hunter’s Heart tonight, and think really hard about Merlin.”
Arthur just barely manages to bite down the horrified urge to ask her if she’s got cameras in his flat and wants to catch him wanking or something. “I want to get him editing notes on Sweet Dreams,” he says instead.
She hums. “No, that won’t work, it’s too much like work still, you’ve edited the other enough that you won’t have the urge to take a red pen to it every few seconds. Just … read it, would you? Read it, and forget you’ve got to edit it, and just think about Merlin.”
“Or you could just tell me whatever it is.”
“Don’t be silly,” she scoffs. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“And am I to call you when I figure out whatever it is that I’m missing?”
“I have faith in you, sweetie, don’t worry, you may be thick but given this much direction you aren’t quite thick enough to miss it,” she says pityingly. Before he can muster an objection, which given his mental state would mostly consist of indignant stuttering, she speaks again. “Now, I’ve got plans tonight, and they involve wine and Ovid and not dealing with your shambles of a love life. Spanking indeed,” she adds for good measure, and hangs up the phone.
Arthur considers calling her back to find something to needle her about since he doesn’t relish being made to feel about five years old, but apparently he’s managed to miss a massive blind spot where Merlin is concerned and now she has him paranoid that he’s missing something else as well. Perhaps he’s also managed to miss that Merlin’s madly in love with Freya or something equally inconvenient. He pulls open his current file for The Hunter’s Heart and vows not to tell Morgana anything he figures out from it out of spite.
He likes the beginning much better now-Roland comes across as blustering and a bit pompous, but not cruel, much closer to who he is for the rest of the book. Arthur does his best to set aside thoughts of what to fix in the next sweep through and instead tries to obey and put Merlin in Roland’s shoes, since Morgana told him to think of Merlin and it’s his book and his point-of-view character, after all. It’s next to impossible, and within a page he’s given it up, but then Alan comes into the scene, and Arthur tries again, and it works. They aren’t exactly the same person, Merlin’s too good a writer for that, but it’s certainly more of himself than Merlin usually puts into his characters.
And then, well, it’s a bit too easy to put himself in Roland’s shoes, and imagine the two of them fighting their way through the Medieval forests, and it’s almost distracting how easy it is. If there’s more than usual of Merlin in Alan, Arthur’s finding Roland more like himself than he’d realized on that first read-through, too involved in considering future edits.
When he gets to the first scene he had Merlin re-write from Alan’s point of view, Arthur has to stop, because Morgana’s right, he’s the biggest idiot in the world. All he can think of is Merlin’s e-mail saying we’ve all been in that position, pining after a probably-straight guy, and his surprise at Arthur’s bisexuality, and a hundred pitying looks from Morgana and Freya and Gwen and Mithian and everyone else who’s read the damn book.
I think, he thinks past the shock, that I’ve rather managed to miss the forest for the trees.
He doesn’t bother finishing his reread, just closes the document and opens up Sweet Dreams and skims through. There it is again, recognition that he didn’t notice because he was already thinking of the scenes and pacing he would have to point out to Merlin, while he totally missed the fact that it’s him and Merlin again, from the way they talk to each other to the way their friends all smile at them indulgently and call them married from the very first page. Clearly, if Arthur’s been oblivious, Merlin’s known how he feels for ages-long enough to write two books about it, maybe more if the others are anything like the first ones.
The thing is that Merlin, who sometimes asks what’s the matter before Arthur even realizes he’s upset about something, seems not to have realized that Arthur returns his feelings. Arthur is irrationally miffed, since the one time when it would benefit them both Merlin is apparently unable to read his mind on the matter. He suspects all of this would have been solved much more easily if Merlin had just kissed him a year or so ago.
Arthur spends a panicky minute wanting to call Morgana for confirmation, or even Freya or Gwen, but really, for all he hasn’t seen it before it is painfully, horrifyingly obvious, and nobody he knows is ever going to let him forget about it.
That means that the only thing to do is to figure out what to do about it.
*
Life, unfortunately, has a bad habit of barreling on even in the face of epiphanies, which has been a source of displeasure for Arthur throughout his life, but which has never quite galled him as much as it is doing now. If this were a movie or one of the novels he edits, he would go directly to Merlin’s even though it would be nearly midnight by the time he made it over there, there would be a soppy scene, they would have terribly flowery sex, and then they’d move on to the epilogue. However, it’s a Thursday night and while Camelot Publishing of all workplaces would probably forgive its CEO for skipping work for a confession of love and a shag, it’s still not exactly good form. Besides, if he goes Friday night, he’ll have the whole weekend to get things straightened out between them.
As if to reward his virtue, Merlin e-mails his next Tintagel manuscript right as Arthur is getting ready to go to bed.
From: Merlin
To: Arthur
Subject: The pirate book
Attachment: thedarkesthour.rtf
Managed to spend the whole evening editing, this needed less brushing up than I’d thought it did, or at least I hope so. I might be stoned out of my mind and very very wrong. In which case you should feel free to delete the document from your hard drive and pretend this never happened.
Fair warning, it’s a bit raunchier than some of my stuff. Not, like, creepy and sexual-assaulty like you’re always complaining pirate books are, you would beat me if I did that and that is not romantic anyway, but … lots of sex, basically. Consider yourself warned.
And that, more than anything else could be, is a sign that Arthur’s on the right track. Clearly the universe is rewarding him for getting a clue.
Probably he ought to go to bed and save reading the newest (The Darkest Hour, really? It’s like he’s trying to write a horror novel) until work, so he’ll have an excuse to avoid meetings and Morgana and plan out how to sweep Merlin off his feet. Instead, he opens it up, since if that’s true he can also pretend to read it for the first time at work tomorrow and get some editing done and still avoid Morgana.
From the blurb Merlin’s so helpfully provided at the beginning, Arthur smugly assumes that he’s to be the dashing gentleman explorer who tips occasionally towards piracy and Merlin is to be the man with a past they rescue from a rowboat far from any shore. This is, he discovers within five pages, an erroneous assumption. It isn’t quite so clearly them as Sweet Dreams or even The Hunter’s Heart, but Captain William is almost certainly Merlin, with his quick humor and his way with words and his habit of climbing about the ship’s ropes like a monkey (Merlin’s anything but the most graceful person Arthur knows, but he’s the one who introduced Arthur to rock climbing and he’s shockingly good at it). The stray they pick up is Arthur, a man named Anthony who’s clearly got a secret and who has Arthur’s habit of clenching his jaw when he doesn’t want to answer a question and, he discovers when the book switches points of view, Arthur’s habit of letting his lies get ahead of him and having to scramble to make everything fit and Arthur’s way of skirting around his father in his head.
Physically, they’re nothing alike to either of them, which makes it a bit easier to sink into the story and not wonder if Merlin’s doing it all on purpose and if this is some sort of master plan to either woo Arthur or drive him mad, and other than a few similarities they aren’t that different in other ways. It still nearly makes him squirm, though, the way they so obviously care about one another once they’re no longer at each other’s throats, and how one can’t get up the courage to say and one has no idea at all; it certainly makes him angry with himself for taking so long to figure it out, if Merlin feels at all like Captain William does on a regular basis.
And then there’s the sex. Merlin is right, it’s far more than the requisite two or three scenes that are the stereotype of a romance novel. Anthony and William start getting off together quite early in the book, while they still dislike each other, and it starts rough and ends up almost embarrassingly tender by the time they’ve started to figure themselves out. If even half of it is what Merlin’s fantasized about doing with him they’re never going to be bored in bed, and he feels like he spends half his read-through with his hand pressed to his erection.
It’s nearly four in the morning by the time he gets to sleep (after an embarrassingly short wank that he can’t resist), and he’s exhausted and rethinking his decision to stay up late and read when his alarm goes at seven thirty. At this rate he’s going to be too tired to woo Merlin properly when he gets off work, but at least he can spend most of the day shut away in his office. Marketing has taken much of the load of Tintagel off his hands, since they have a few books getting ready for release, the whole thing moving quicker than Arthur could have imagined, so at least that’s off his plate for the day.
Freya takes one look at him and her eyes go wide. “Are you okay?”
“Didn’t sleep well. I’ll be needing coffee. And I’ve got another new file from Merlin so I’m to be disturbed as little as possible today, please. As I recall my schedule for today is quite clear.”
She looks at him suspiciously for a moment. “It is. Should I be sending you home?”
If Morgana knows, he’s willing to bet any money that Freya knows, and quite likely the rest of the office has their suspicions. He’s not quite ready to face telling anyone yet, though, so he just shakes his head. “No, it’s my own fault for forgetting I’m not in university anymore. It’s Friday, I’ll soldier on.”
“If you say so.” She eyes him again. “Your sister wants to see you, but I think it’s best if we pretend you’ve got some urgent paperwork to take care of in your office, though you’re on your own after closing time.”
“You’re a saint, and you’re getting a massive end-of-year bonus.”
“Exactly,” says Freya, and wisely leaves him be aside from bringing him a thermos of coffee and a mug a few minutes later.
Arthur spends his morning making editing notes for both Sweet Dreams and The Darkest Hour, intermittently interrupted by attempting to figure out what the hell to do with Merlin. He suspects the direct approach will probably be best, just going in and kissing him, but he feels as if he owes Merlin an apology for waiting this long for all of it, even if he hadn’t known before. Merlin won’t expect one, but that’s what makes the thought appealing.
Of course, all his plans are sent straight to hell when Freya knocks on his door around noon with an apologetic look on her face. “Merlin is here.”
“He’s what?” Arthur manages, voice embarrassingly high.
“Here. For lunch, he says. He looks far less stoned than he did the other night.”
“I’m off the worst of the painkillers,” Merlin calls from behind her, and she steps aside to let him into Arthur’s office. “Elena and Mithian are giggling about something behind the reception desk, their editing meetings sound more fun than ours,” he observes, looking around the office and adjusting his sling.
“Elena isn’t a constant trial to Mithian,” he says, mouth on autopilot. “Not that this isn’t a nice surprise, but what are you doing here?”
Merlin peers at him. “Jesus Christ, are you on drugs? You look awful.”
“Oh, thank you-”
“And I’m here because when we were e-mailing yesterday I said I could do lunch today and you agreed, so here I am.” He uses his free hand to make a little ‘tah-dah’ motion. Freya, standing behind him and looking between them with an all-too-knowing expression on her face, hides a smile behind her hand. “Now I’m thinking I should make you take a nap or something.”
Arthur’s running on three and a half hours of sleep and an epiphany and it’s all he can do to stare in panic for a few seconds and scramble for something to say that isn’t oh God, I really do love you, don’t I, since he’d really rather not do that in front of Freya, lovely as she is. “Um, no, that’s fine, lunch is good, we can do lunch.”
Merlin’s looking more concerned by the second. “Or not, not is okay if you forgot or you’re really busy or something, seriously, you look like a crazy person right now, are you okay?”
“I’m-yes. You just surprised me. We should go for lunch.” Arthur shuts his laptop and stands, grabbing his jacket and making sure he has his wallet as he goes. This is throwing his timetable off more than a bit, because he’s a shit liar and if he goes to lunch with Merlin it’s increasingly obvious that he’s going to say something incriminating.
Freya looks between them some more, lips pursed. “Let me know if you can’t make it back in, Arthur, there’s nothing that won’t wait for Monday. I’ll hold Morgana off as long as I can.”
“Thank you,” he says, refrains from offering her yet another theoretical raise or bonus because if she ever cashes in on all of them she’ll be making more money than anyone else in the company, and follows Merlin out his office door.
Merlin fidgets in the elevator the whole way down, not speaking but hovering close like he’s expecting Arthur to collapse any second, as if he could catch him with a broken arm. “You’re really sure you’re okay? Because honestly, I’m pretty sure you look worse right now than I did the other night, and you don’t even have the benefit of an accident.”
“Really, just tired. Was just thinking about you, actually, even though I forgot about lunch, so I’m glad to see you, I promise.”
Merlin stares a bit. “Okay, now I’m really worried. You never tell me you’re glad to see me unless you’re drunk.”
“That is not true.” Except he has a sinking feeling that it is. He rubs a hand across his eyes. “Well, it shouldn’t be. I generally am.” God, he’s going to feel like an idiot forever.
“You’re dying, aren’t you,” Merlin concludes as they step out of the elevator. “Morgana’s been using a slow-acting poison and you just found out last night and you’re giving everyone your last words just in case.”
“You’ve found me out,” Arthur says as dryly as he can through a yawn, and waves at Mithian and Elena, who are indeed giggling at the reception desk, and Percival at the door, who just nods and raises his eyebrows and winks when Merlin isn’t looking, probably assuming Arthur was up late shagging Merlin instead of just thinking about it. “I’ll pass you off to Mithian to edit.”
“Oh, no, if you aren’t my editor I’ll go back to school, I’m used to you now,” says Merlin with a shrug, and starts walking towards the nearest deli.
“Do you want to go back to school?” Arthur winces at how stricken he sounds and continues hastily before Merlin can react. “I mean, I’ll stop harassing you for books if you’d rather go back to mathematics, though God knows why you’d want to.”
Merlin stops walking and stares at him. “Okay, I’m seriously concerned now, what is the matter with you today? If I didn’t want to write for you I wouldn’t write for you, Arthur. I may enjoy maths but I enjoy writing love stories just as much and I’m making a good living of it, so I’m not planning on stopping any time soon.”
“Well, good. You’re … I would miss you. Come on, keep walking, you’ll hold up foot traffic.”
“Three tourists and a pensioner,” Merlin mutters, but he walks alongside Arthur and doesn’t say anything else until they sit down with their sandwiches. “You’re going to tell me what’s wrong now. And bullshit if you say there isn’t, there’s exhausted and then there’s strung out.”
He’s going to confess his love over roast beef sandwiches in a tiny deli with a grumpy old man at the counter and a group of loud university students sitting far too close. This is not a story out of one of his novels. “I was up late reading The Darkest Hour,” he says, starting on the safe ground.
“I sent it at midnight!”
“Yes, ‘late’ might be more accurately termed ‘early.’ I was up late anyway, I was … I’d had an interesting conversation with Morgana.”
“About the poison,” Merlin hazards.
“About the fact that I’m in love with you,” Arthur blurts, and shit, shit, that’s not at all how he meant that to come out, that was not suave at all.
Merlin rolls his eyes. “They’ll get over joking about it eventually,” he says, missing the way Arthur’s staring wide-eyed and stuffed his mouth with a bite of his sandwich before he says anything else awful. Apparently they’re both oblivious, then.
“No,” he says once he’s swallowed. “No, this time it was me bringing it up. Because I, um, am.” Merlin stares at him, mouth hanging a bit open. Arthur uses Merlin’s ridiculous little ‘tah-dah’ gesture from earlier. It doesn’t get a response, as well it shouldn’t, because it was stupid enough when Merlin did it. “Fuck, I really should have got some sleep, but I’d just reread bits of the first two and figured out that you reciprocate, and then I sort of wanted confirmation, and-”
“What,” Merlin interrupts, voice cracking, “what exactly gave you this idea?”
“Well, mostly it was the wanting to spank you, and then Morgana told me to think, and it sort of all happened at once.” Arthur wisely takes another bite of his sandwich, because the spanking is really more of a third-date kind of conversation. When he thinks he’s got the word vomit somewhat under control, he looks back at Merlin, who’s still frozen with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. “This is not at all how I wanted to say this. I was going to come to your flat after work and bring you roses or something equally romantic, not sexually harass you over subpar sandwiches after making you think I’m on drugs. But. The take-away message here is that I love you.”
Merlin closes his eyes, and puts his sandwich down, and Arthur doesn’t know quite what he’s thinking, but he’s smiling a bit to himself, so he thinks it’s all going to end well. “Okay,” says Merlin at last, softly. “Okay. Just-hold on, okay? I need to make a phone call.”
“I confess my love and he makes a phone call,” Arthur says to nobody in particular, but he doesn’t object when Merlin fumbles his phone out of his pocket and dials a few numbers, just goes back to eating his sandwich.
“Freya?” says Merlin when the phone is answered, and Arthur looks sharply up. “Look, Arthur’s knackered, I’m taking him back to his after lunch.” He pauses. “Yeah, everything’s okay. Everything’s great, actually. I’ll call you soon, but we’re still at lunch, so I’ve got to go.”
As soon as he hangs up, Arthur starts speaking. “If you think I just said that because I’m tired-”
“I know you too well for that by now,” says Merlin, and the smile breaks out across his face. “I can’t believe it took you this long to figure out I’m in love with you.”
Even if he’s known it since last night, hearing it out loud still makes Arthur catch his breath. “I’m clearly a bit slow.”
“Well, I’ve known that for ages.” Merlin starts laughing. “Oh God, nobody is ever going to let us forget this. I’ve been trying to convince everyone you’re not interested despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you’ve just had no clue at all … for people in the profession we’re in, I’d call that more than a bit ridiculous.”
Arthur laughs too, mostly out of the sheer relief of it, even though it gets them some funny looks from the other patrons. “We’ll have to make up for lost time, then.”
Merlin puts his sandwich down. “I don’t really think I’m hungry anymore, and you seem to have the afternoon unexpectedly off work, and I don’t think this is exactly the place to have the rest of this conversation. Shall we go?”
“My flat’s empty,” Arthur offers, stupidly because of course it is, he lives alone.
Merlin grins at him and stands up. “Of course it is, idiot. Let’s go, then.”
Arthur still is rather hungry, actually, since he didn’t have time for breakfast and coffee isn’t a good meal replacement, but the moment is a good deal more important than the food, so he stands up as well, wrapping his sandwich up and then Merlin’s, since he’s having trouble with it one-handed. When that’s done, he wonders if he ought to go back to his office for his laptop and briefcase, but he can survive a weekend without work so he just picks up the sandwiches in one hand and reaches for Merlin’s free hand with the other.
They don’t talk much on the walk back to Arthur’s flat, but neither of them can stop grinning, and Merlin’s hand doesn’t move from his the whole way.
*
“Go on, into the bedroom,” says Merlin when they get there. “You’re too knackered to walk straight, I have zero faith in your ability to make out while standing up.”
“God, this is unromantic,” Arthur complains, but he obeys when Merlin disentangles their fingers and shoves him gently forward. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I’ll be there in a minute, I’m going to stick our food in the fridge and make sure nothing’s going to explode because you left the gas on this morning or something. Go on, get your kit off, and I’ll be in as soon as may be.”
Arthur goes, because he’s been yawning every few seconds for the last ten minutes at least and bed sounds appealing for a multitude of reasons at the moment. He struggles out of his suit and down to his boxers and a t-shirt before he realizes that Merlin should be coming after him by now. “Did you get lost in my kitchen?” he yells, turning down the covers.
“Things are slow one-armed, just get in the bed and I’ll be right along,” Merlin calls back.
For a second, Arthur thinks about arguing, and then he decides that first of all, he hasn’t got the energy, and second of all, he wouldn’t put it past Merlin to withhold sex before they’ve even had it if Arthur gets stubborn. Instead, he gets on the back and reclines against the pillows and lets his eyes close for just a second …
It’s dark, and there’s music playing softly close by-not his own music, he’s relatively certain he doesn’t have any Katy Perry on his computer, which means there’s someone else here. Someone else humming quietly along to “Teenage Dream,” no less, and resting a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and the day’s events slam into his memory.
Not a dream, then, no matter how the memories have the foggy, sleep-deprived quality he hasn’t dealt with since university. He took Merlin out for sandwiches and told him he loves him and then got tricked into taking a nap before they could even kiss, for fuck’s sake.
Merlin’s still here, though, and sounds happy enough, judging by the humming, so Arthur opens his eyes and squints to see what’s going on. It’s evening, judging by how dark it is, since Merlin hasn’t bothered closing the blinds, and Merlin is listening to music on his phone and leafing his way through one of Arthur’s books, as if he’s been waiting for him to come around for hours. This is undoubtedly the worst-planned seduction in history.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. Merlin starts, swiveling to look at him, humming cut abruptly off. “You must’ve been bored.”
His eyes are adjusted enough to the dark that he can see when Merlin breaks out into a grin, just before he turns away to turn off the music and toss his book off the bed. “You needed sleep, no way you could ravish me while you were that exhausted, and besides.” He turns back to Arthur, slides over him in some movement Arthur isn’t quite awake enough to track yet. “This way I’ve had time to plan.” He settles into a straddle over Arthur’s hips, barely brushing his half-hard erection. Arthur lifts his hands and settles them at Merlin’s waist, since he’s not quite sure what else to do and suspects that at this point he’s just going to be along for the ride. “You see,” Merlin continues, unperturbed, “there’s a lot we can’t do, with my arm in a cast-really, you couldn’t figure it out a week sooner or six weeks later? This is going to be awful-but we can certainly do some things.”
“Did you have any particular ideas in mind?” he manages.
“Well, blowjobs, obviously, and handjobs if you don’t mind me using my off hand for it.” The implications of dating an erotica writer begin to dawn on Arthur, and it’s all he can do to flex his hands on Merlin’s waist to encourage him to continue. “If we get there I’m pretty sure we can figure out ways of fucking one another without putting weight on my arm, though we’ll have to shelve the tying me up and spanking me part for later.” Arthur chokes and tries not to buck his hips. “Remind me to make fun of you for deciding you love me because of an e-mail chain about Freya tying me up.”
Arthur stops him before all his blood runs south, because he’s relatively certain that he needs to say a few things now that he isn’t half-asleep and completely without a brain-to-mouth filter. “It wasn’t deciding.”
Merlin stops with his mouth open, expression gone quizzical. “What was it, then?”
“Figuring it out, after far too long, apparently. This isn’t …” He searches around for the proper word. “It isn’t new,” he settles on. He hasn’t had the time to figure out when it did start, exactly-not at the very beginning, they were too busy fighting for that, but sometime between the day Merlin first made the romance bestsellers’ list and the day Arthur decided to found Tintagel, he settled into it without realizing. “I wouldn’t have said it if it were that new, Merlin.”
Merlin bends down, leans on his good elbow so he can breathe in Arthur’s ear. “Said what?” he breathes, and Arthur shivers.
“That I love you.” It’s Merlin’s turn to shiver. “I do, and I’m sorry I didn’t say it better earlier. You caught me by surprise.”
After a second, Merlin levers himself up again. “I wouldn’t want it any other way. In case you hadn’t figured it out, Arthur, we’re not in one of our novels. I don’t need rose petals or moonlight or anything stupid like that.”
“Pity, I was planning on a redo of all of this tomorrow night, with French wine and two dozen red roses and some specially hired moonlight.”
“God, I love you,” says Merlin, and kisses him. Arthur kisses back, he can’t not, and it takes them both a few seconds to catch up to the fact that this is their first. It shouldn’t feel as thoughtless and natural as it does already, but they fall into it as easily as they fell into fighting and editing, the same way they’ve always been able to bounce off each other. He coaxes Merlin’s mouth open and slips his tongue inside, listens with delight to the distracted little noises Merlin makes at that, and only pulls away when he’s so hard it’s starting to ache.
Merlin makes a sound of wordless objection, and Arthur nudges his nose with his own to shut him up. “If we keep at this, I’m going to come in my pants, and while we needn’t do anything fancy I think I would like to be naked the first time we get off, if you have no objections.”
“None at all,” says Merlin, rough and low and Jesus, Arthur feels like a teenager again just from the sound of his voice. “Hold on a minute.”
They’ve both argued over far too many sex scenes to think trying to stay tangled together while they strip is a good plan (Merlin always holds that the hardest part of sex scenes is figuring out how to get the clothes off, everything is a breeze after that). Merlin rolls off him and Arthur gets off his shirt and boxers in short order, tossing them off the edge of the bed. Merlin wiggles out of his trousers and pants easily, gets his socks off, but he gets stuck in his shirt. “I’ll help,” says Arthur.
Gently tugging Merlin’s loose t-shirt off over his cast somehow feels even more intimate than kissing him, both of them a breath apart, Merlin practically in Arthur’s lap. “Once I get over the shock,” Merlin says quietly, muffled by the cloth as Arthur pulls it over his head, “I’m probably going to say it all the time, just to warn you. You’re going to call me a girl a lot, I’ve been saving it all up.”
“I won’t mind. We can say it together.”
“God, you’re ridiculous.” They get Merlin free of the last of his shirt and Merlin nuzzles at Arthur’s face in a way he can’t bring himself to mock him for. “Come on, what do you want to do?” Arthur manhandles him over onto his back, and Merlin goes with an amused quirk of his eyebrows, putting the arm with the cast on it carefully out of the way as Arthur climbs to straddle him. “I should have known you’d want to be on top.”
“I’m being careful of your arm,” Arthur objects. “If you’re bouncing up and down you’re sure to jostle it and I don’t want to have to take a break for painkillers.”
Merlin laughs a bit and runs his good hand over Arthur’s face. “You’re sort of lovely, you know. It’s a bit surprising. I’d figured you would be trying to fuck me like a porn star by now, by how much of a prat you are normally.”
Arthur shifts enough to kiss Merlin’s wrist before he drops his arm. “And I assume that’s why you have so many fantasies about fucking me?” Merlin’s face goes red. “I don’t have anything against fucking you through the mattress, or the opposite, for that matter, but not tonight.”
“Okay, then.” Merlin squirms, and his cock brushes against Arthur’s. “As long as you do something before we both die of frustration.”
In answer, Arthur starts rocking his hips, little motions that Merlin soon starts to join in on, nothing fast, nothing hard. He kisses Merlin to keep him from commenting and lingers, eyes closed, while Merlin uses his one good hand to skate over Arthur’s skin wherever he can reach, legs parted so Arthur can get to him more easily. It’s nothing like the sex in Merlin’s books, they both laugh a bit too much and Arthur can’t quite turn off the part of his brain going god god oh god this is Merlin how are we doing with this Merlin god finally and Merlin’s shoulder cramps at one point, but it’s electric and Arthur also can’t stop himself giddily thinking that they get to do it again and Merlin gasps out syllables like “Arthur” and “love” in between kisses.
By the time Arthur comes, he can’t seem to stop smiling, and he laughs half-drunkenly while he finally reaches down between them to jack Merlin to his finish. After, he tugs them hazily closer even if it means they’ll stick together later and arranges Merlin in his arms properly. “What was so funny?” Merlin asks into his neck later.
“I don’t know.” There’s silence, for a while, Arthur on the edge of dozing but a bit too awake for it after his long nap and Merlin absently starting to hum again as his breathing goes back to normal, like he does when he’s thinking hard about a scene he wants to write. “Are you staying here tonight? Should you call Gwen so she doesn’t worry that you aren’t home?”
“Yes, I’m staying.” He can feel Merlin smile. “And I don’t need to call Gwen. Did you think I kept vigil at your bedside all afternoon? I made sure you were asleep and called her to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. So, fair warning, Freya and Morgana probably know by now as well, which means the whole office knows.”
“I don’t care. From what I can tell they’ve been waiting on us for ages, they might as well get a vicarious thrill out of it.”
“I’ve read that book from Elena, the one Mithian picked out of the slush room. Our whole story seems like the sort of plot she would write, we should keep an eye on her and make sure her second book has nothing to do with the publishing industry.” Arthur laughs, and Merlin lifts his head. “I’m serious, you know. It seems the sort of thing they would try.”
“We’ll keep an eye on them,” Arthur assures him, and Merlin settles back in a little farther away so they can look at each other, eyes soft. “What time is it?”
“Not time for bed yet, it’s only eight. My master plan is not to leave the bed until morning except to piss and possibly eat the rest of our sandwiches, but I think I might need a bit of recovery time after that round.”
Arthur grins at him. “I could always give you some editing notes, get some useful work out of you now that I’ve got you at my mercy.”
“Like hell you will,” says Merlin, tumbling him over onto his back and kissing the smile off his face.
“I love you,” Arthur says, because he can, and because he suspects it’s going to be his get-out-of-jail-free card with Merlin for a while. “You know that, right?”
“I’m getting the picture.” Merlin smiles, but softer, a little more restrained. “I’d almost given up, you know. Decided I was pathetic and then after I found out you’re bi and you’d never made a move I tried really hard to be over you.”
God, Arthur could kick himself a hundred times and never stop calling himself an idiot. He half sits up and kisses Merlin swiftly. “You’re not ever to try again, do you hear me? Never.”
In answer, Merlin presses him back into the bed and starts round two a little earlier than planned.
*
From: Arthur
To: Merlin
Subject: Pick up your phone!
First gay romance to make it onto the general romance bestseller list, still climbing the ranks!
If this is because you’ve forgotten to charge your phone I’m firing you.
“He isn’t picking up his phone?” Freya asks from the doorway of his office, over the noise of everybody chattering out in the main office. Someone’s broken out a bottle of champagne, though he has no idea where they got it from, and he suspects not a bit more work is going to get done today, but he doesn’t much mind.
He does, however, mind the fact that he’s been trying to call his boyfriend for ten minutes to give him the news about Sweet Dreams and still can’t get hold of him. “Probably he forgot it somewhere, or didn’t charge it, and I’m going to have to shout at him. Trust the man of the hour to be unavailable.”
She smiles. “I’ll keep trying to call, if you like. You’re the other man of the hour, after all, since you edited the books and you’ve been the one throwing the whole weight of the company behind it.”
“No, I’d like to tell him.” Freya ducks her head and Arthur rolls his eyes. “You go back to the celebrations, and perhaps to answering the phones and e-mail if you really have such a thirst for productivity, the blogosphere is bound to start calling soon.” He glances out of his door just in time to see Vivian climb onto a desk to start making a speech that nobody is going to listen to. This is going to turn into an afternoon of sloppy debauchery, but he doesn’t much mind.
“And they’ll want to talk to you, they’ve been cooing over that dedication ever since the book came out and now they won’t be able to resist.” Outside, Vivian nearly falls off the desk mid-gesture and Percival calmly lifts her one-armed and puts her gently on the floor.
“I’m sure everyone here will be happy to give them quotes about the book or about our relationship, as if anyone cares about the sex lives of romance novelists.” His phone goes before she can get out whatever she’s gearing up to say, and he turns away immediately to check the display and answer the phone when Merlin’s name turns up. “Where were you?”
“Hello to you too, and I was on the Tube. Has the world exploded? I have twelve missed calls from you, three from Freya, four from Gwen, and another three from my mum.”
Arthur grins. He gets to tell him after all, then. “Well, we all wanted to congratulate you, obviously.”
“Congratulate me on what?”
“On being the first author to get a gay romance on the romance bestsellers list-you’re at 92 as of noon, and still climbing.” Arthur grins at the noise Merlin makes on the line. “There’s a party going on in your honor here, everyone’s using it as an excuse to skive off.”
“Do I have to come?”
Arthur blinks and shuts his office door. “Well, not if you don’t want to, though I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to see a bunch of romance editors letting their hair down.”
“Because Morgana will start speculating on our sex life again,” Merlin answer immediately, and then there’s a pause because Arthur can’t respond to that beyond wrinkling his nose, because Morgana seems to think she’s entitled to do that since she takes some of the credit for getting them together. “And because I was on my way to your flat with a surprise anyway, and maybe you’d like to come a few hours early and make it a celebration?”
“What kind of a surprise?” he asks, and he hopes Freya’s out of earshot of the door by now because he can’t help the way his voice goes low, months of Merlin’s periodic “surprises” having conditioned him very well to this sort of thing. “I’ve hours yet before I would normally leave the office, what takes that much preparation?”
“Well, not this, actually, I was just really bored at my place, it’s getting depressing there now that all of Gwen’s things are migrating over to Lancelot’s.” Merlin pauses, then adds brightly, “I could be very thorough about fingering myself? That way I’d be all nice and sensitive for when you come back and I show you what I bought last week.”
Arthur coughs and tries not to think about the fact that Merlin is saying this all on the street because that way lies madness. “Well, you know, nothing’s going to get done this afternoon and all the bloggers can wait a day or two for quotes, they generally have quite enough to say on their own anyway.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say,” says Merlin. “I’m going to hang up now, because it’ll make you get out of the office faster. Love you.”
“I love you. Congratulations.”
He’s barely hung up before Morgana interrupts him with a laugh. “You two are precious. Off to shag him in congratulations? You should ask him to move in, too, go for the double.”
“As ever, Morgana, it remains none of your business. But yes, I’m off for the day. Don’t traumatize anyone from the press, don’t let anyone drunk answer the phones, don’t let Vivian stand on any more tables.” With that, Arthur proceeds to ignore her and packs up his briefcase, grabbing his jacket on his way out the door. “Don’t get the police called on us for sponsoring an orgy, either,” he adds as he passes her.
“We’ll just invite them to join us,” she calls, not bothering to follow (or leave his office. She’s convinced that he keeps pornographic pictures of Merlin in his desk and she’s probably going to continue her fruitless search for them. It’s like she doesn’t live in the digital age, where people keep things like that on their phones and laptops in locked files).
Gwaine wolf-whistles as Arthur goes by, waving at people as he passes, and Arthur decides not to stop and ask what the hell he’s doing at Camelot, since he’s only a contract employee and has some deal modeling for an underwear line at the moment. Freya grins and gives him the signal that she’ll keep an eye on everyone, and almost everyone else raises their coffee mugs full of champagne when he says hello.
Arthur ignores all of it and gets out as quickly as he can, because Merlin will be waiting for him, probably with whatever new toy he’s bought recently, and they’ve got the whole rest of the day to celebrate in between fielding phone calls from their nearest and dearest, and maybe Arthur will take Morgana’s advice for once and bring up the fact that while Gwen’s things have been slowly transferring to Lancelot’s flat Merlin’s have been moving to Arthur’s. Or perhaps he won’t, because there’s a chance that Merlin already knows, and there are some things he’s discovered over the last few months that he doesn’t need to say for Merlin to understand them.
It’s not a particularly glorious profession, publishing romance novels. Camelot Publishing is lucky that way-it’s got enough mythology built up around it that it doesn’t get as boring for its employees as people outside might assume. From the beginning with Ygraine and Uther to now, more of its employees date each other or their authors than is reasonable (or possibly sane), or otherwise end up in the sort of disgustingly sappy stories that they ought to be publishing, not living. People keep finding each other, though, like Elena and Mithian (and nobody knows quite what’s going on there, but judging by how much of the acknowledgments in Elaine Fay’s latest book are gushing about her editor, there’s something) and like Arthur and Merlin. Really, if the general public cared about the love lives of romance novelists they’d never make it out of the gossip papers just for how hideously unlikely it all is.
Arthur likes having it just known to the employees, though, for the way that Morgana makes jokes about matchmaking services and the way Merlin and Elena had an hour-long debate once about which one of them was allowed to write the fictionalized account of the loves and lives of the employees of Camelot Publishing (ended only at the intervention of their respective editors and with the aid of some of the Rising Sun’s lethal cocktails). And besides, it means that when they hire on someone new, they never suspect it’s going to happen to them, as it inevitably will.
After all, if Arthur had to figure it out himself, it’s only fair that they should as well.
“Have you finished being an idiot?” Morgana inquires when she picks up the phone that night.
“It took me ages to figure out with Sophia, and she was trying to get me to fall in love with her, in my defense.”
There’s a pause on the line. “Wait, what?”
“So obviously I wouldn’t notice about Merlin.” Arthur sighs. “Honestly, Morgana, you know better than anyone that I don’t always notice this sort of thing, one gets inured to it after a while. I’m not the only editor with a tragic love life.”
“Yes, but other editors don’t have Merlin practically-what exactly made you realize?”
Arthur sits back on his couch and opens his laptop up. Revelations or no, he’s behind on work and he still wants to get some notes to Merlin as soon as possible. “It’s a long story that ends in me imagining spanking him,” he says, mostly as revenge for her frequent attempts to send him to therapy.
Of course, she never minds as much as he does, but it still takes a second for her to answer. “Why didn’t it end in you actually spanking him?”
He massages his temple. “Gee, Morgana, I’m not sure. Why didn’t I just show up on his doorstep while he’s stoned on painkillers and say ‘Hello, how’s the arm, I’ve just realized that I’d rather our lunch tomorrow was in an entirely non-platonic capacity and also, would you mind terribly if I spanked you?’ It’s Merlin, he deserves at least a modicum of wooing.”
This time, she’s silent for long enough for him to wonder if his phone has dropped the call. He’s about to ask when she bursts out laughing. “Oh dear God, Arthur, really? You edit romance novels for a living, for fuck’s sake, and you can’t even have the decency to figure out when you’re pining for someone? It’s a classic situation! Uther went through it, we’ve all known about you since you decided he’s your romance novel soulmate, figured it was just in the Pendragon blood! I assumed you thought it was none of our business, but this is precious. That’s what you figured out today, that you’re in love with him?”
Arthur actually lifts the phone away from his ear to stare at it for a moment, because Morgana is making less sense than usual. “Well, if it were in the Pendragon blood you’d be in love with Morgause, which is beyond thinking of,” he manages after a second. “And I don’t notice these things precisely because I edit romance novels, you can’t tell me you aren’t a bit jaded about things like meet-cutes by now.”
“You have had years to figure it out, I can’t believe this is your big exciting revelation.”
“If you’re so disappointed, what were you expecting me to figure out?”
Morgana makes a sharp, annoyed sound. “Just … do me a favor, would you? Reread Hunter’s Heart tonight, and think really hard about Merlin.”
Arthur just barely manages to bite down the horrified urge to ask her if she’s got cameras in his flat and wants to catch him wanking or something. “I want to get him editing notes on Sweet Dreams,” he says instead.
She hums. “No, that won’t work, it’s too much like work still, you’ve edited the other enough that you won’t have the urge to take a red pen to it every few seconds. Just … read it, would you? Read it, and forget you’ve got to edit it, and just think about Merlin.”
“Or you could just tell me whatever it is.”
“Don’t be silly,” she scoffs. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“And am I to call you when I figure out whatever it is that I’m missing?”
“I have faith in you, sweetie, don’t worry, you may be thick but given this much direction you aren’t quite thick enough to miss it,” she says pityingly. Before he can muster an objection, which given his mental state would mostly consist of indignant stuttering, she speaks again. “Now, I’ve got plans tonight, and they involve wine and Ovid and not dealing with your shambles of a love life. Spanking indeed,” she adds for good measure, and hangs up the phone.
Arthur considers calling her back to find something to needle her about since he doesn’t relish being made to feel about five years old, but apparently he’s managed to miss a massive blind spot where Merlin is concerned and now she has him paranoid that he’s missing something else as well. Perhaps he’s also managed to miss that Merlin’s madly in love with Freya or something equally inconvenient. He pulls open his current file for The Hunter’s Heart and vows not to tell Morgana anything he figures out from it out of spite.
He likes the beginning much better now-Roland comes across as blustering and a bit pompous, but not cruel, much closer to who he is for the rest of the book. Arthur does his best to set aside thoughts of what to fix in the next sweep through and instead tries to obey and put Merlin in Roland’s shoes, since Morgana told him to think of Merlin and it’s his book and his point-of-view character, after all. It’s next to impossible, and within a page he’s given it up, but then Alan comes into the scene, and Arthur tries again, and it works. They aren’t exactly the same person, Merlin’s too good a writer for that, but it’s certainly more of himself than Merlin usually puts into his characters.
And then, well, it’s a bit too easy to put himself in Roland’s shoes, and imagine the two of them fighting their way through the Medieval forests, and it’s almost distracting how easy it is. If there’s more than usual of Merlin in Alan, Arthur’s finding Roland more like himself than he’d realized on that first read-through, too involved in considering future edits.
When he gets to the first scene he had Merlin re-write from Alan’s point of view, Arthur has to stop, because Morgana’s right, he’s the biggest idiot in the world. All he can think of is Merlin’s e-mail saying we’ve all been in that position, pining after a probably-straight guy, and his surprise at Arthur’s bisexuality, and a hundred pitying looks from Morgana and Freya and Gwen and Mithian and everyone else who’s read the damn book.
I think, he thinks past the shock, that I’ve rather managed to miss the forest for the trees.
He doesn’t bother finishing his reread, just closes the document and opens up Sweet Dreams and skims through. There it is again, recognition that he didn’t notice because he was already thinking of the scenes and pacing he would have to point out to Merlin, while he totally missed the fact that it’s him and Merlin again, from the way they talk to each other to the way their friends all smile at them indulgently and call them married from the very first page. Clearly, if Arthur’s been oblivious, Merlin’s known how he feels for ages-long enough to write two books about it, maybe more if the others are anything like the first ones.
The thing is that Merlin, who sometimes asks what’s the matter before Arthur even realizes he’s upset about something, seems not to have realized that Arthur returns his feelings. Arthur is irrationally miffed, since the one time when it would benefit them both Merlin is apparently unable to read his mind on the matter. He suspects all of this would have been solved much more easily if Merlin had just kissed him a year or so ago.
Arthur spends a panicky minute wanting to call Morgana for confirmation, or even Freya or Gwen, but really, for all he hasn’t seen it before it is painfully, horrifyingly obvious, and nobody he knows is ever going to let him forget about it.
That means that the only thing to do is to figure out what to do about it.
*
Life, unfortunately, has a bad habit of barreling on even in the face of epiphanies, which has been a source of displeasure for Arthur throughout his life, but which has never quite galled him as much as it is doing now. If this were a movie or one of the novels he edits, he would go directly to Merlin’s even though it would be nearly midnight by the time he made it over there, there would be a soppy scene, they would have terribly flowery sex, and then they’d move on to the epilogue. However, it’s a Thursday night and while Camelot Publishing of all workplaces would probably forgive its CEO for skipping work for a confession of love and a shag, it’s still not exactly good form. Besides, if he goes Friday night, he’ll have the whole weekend to get things straightened out between them.
As if to reward his virtue, Merlin e-mails his next Tintagel manuscript right as Arthur is getting ready to go to bed.
From: Merlin
To: Arthur
Subject: The pirate book
Attachment: thedarkesthour.rtf
Managed to spend the whole evening editing, this needed less brushing up than I’d thought it did, or at least I hope so. I might be stoned out of my mind and very very wrong. In which case you should feel free to delete the document from your hard drive and pretend this never happened.
Fair warning, it’s a bit raunchier than some of my stuff. Not, like, creepy and sexual-assaulty like you’re always complaining pirate books are, you would beat me if I did that and that is not romantic anyway, but … lots of sex, basically. Consider yourself warned.
And that, more than anything else could be, is a sign that Arthur’s on the right track. Clearly the universe is rewarding him for getting a clue.
Probably he ought to go to bed and save reading the newest (The Darkest Hour, really? It’s like he’s trying to write a horror novel) until work, so he’ll have an excuse to avoid meetings and Morgana and plan out how to sweep Merlin off his feet. Instead, he opens it up, since if that’s true he can also pretend to read it for the first time at work tomorrow and get some editing done and still avoid Morgana.
From the blurb Merlin’s so helpfully provided at the beginning, Arthur smugly assumes that he’s to be the dashing gentleman explorer who tips occasionally towards piracy and Merlin is to be the man with a past they rescue from a rowboat far from any shore. This is, he discovers within five pages, an erroneous assumption. It isn’t quite so clearly them as Sweet Dreams or even The Hunter’s Heart, but Captain William is almost certainly Merlin, with his quick humor and his way with words and his habit of climbing about the ship’s ropes like a monkey (Merlin’s anything but the most graceful person Arthur knows, but he’s the one who introduced Arthur to rock climbing and he’s shockingly good at it). The stray they pick up is Arthur, a man named Anthony who’s clearly got a secret and who has Arthur’s habit of clenching his jaw when he doesn’t want to answer a question and, he discovers when the book switches points of view, Arthur’s habit of letting his lies get ahead of him and having to scramble to make everything fit and Arthur’s way of skirting around his father in his head.
Physically, they’re nothing alike to either of them, which makes it a bit easier to sink into the story and not wonder if Merlin’s doing it all on purpose and if this is some sort of master plan to either woo Arthur or drive him mad, and other than a few similarities they aren’t that different in other ways. It still nearly makes him squirm, though, the way they so obviously care about one another once they’re no longer at each other’s throats, and how one can’t get up the courage to say and one has no idea at all; it certainly makes him angry with himself for taking so long to figure it out, if Merlin feels at all like Captain William does on a regular basis.
And then there’s the sex. Merlin is right, it’s far more than the requisite two or three scenes that are the stereotype of a romance novel. Anthony and William start getting off together quite early in the book, while they still dislike each other, and it starts rough and ends up almost embarrassingly tender by the time they’ve started to figure themselves out. If even half of it is what Merlin’s fantasized about doing with him they’re never going to be bored in bed, and he feels like he spends half his read-through with his hand pressed to his erection.
It’s nearly four in the morning by the time he gets to sleep (after an embarrassingly short wank that he can’t resist), and he’s exhausted and rethinking his decision to stay up late and read when his alarm goes at seven thirty. At this rate he’s going to be too tired to woo Merlin properly when he gets off work, but at least he can spend most of the day shut away in his office. Marketing has taken much of the load of Tintagel off his hands, since they have a few books getting ready for release, the whole thing moving quicker than Arthur could have imagined, so at least that’s off his plate for the day.
Freya takes one look at him and her eyes go wide. “Are you okay?”
“Didn’t sleep well. I’ll be needing coffee. And I’ve got another new file from Merlin so I’m to be disturbed as little as possible today, please. As I recall my schedule for today is quite clear.”
She looks at him suspiciously for a moment. “It is. Should I be sending you home?”
If Morgana knows, he’s willing to bet any money that Freya knows, and quite likely the rest of the office has their suspicions. He’s not quite ready to face telling anyone yet, though, so he just shakes his head. “No, it’s my own fault for forgetting I’m not in university anymore. It’s Friday, I’ll soldier on.”
“If you say so.” She eyes him again. “Your sister wants to see you, but I think it’s best if we pretend you’ve got some urgent paperwork to take care of in your office, though you’re on your own after closing time.”
“You’re a saint, and you’re getting a massive end-of-year bonus.”
“Exactly,” says Freya, and wisely leaves him be aside from bringing him a thermos of coffee and a mug a few minutes later.
Arthur spends his morning making editing notes for both Sweet Dreams and The Darkest Hour, intermittently interrupted by attempting to figure out what the hell to do with Merlin. He suspects the direct approach will probably be best, just going in and kissing him, but he feels as if he owes Merlin an apology for waiting this long for all of it, even if he hadn’t known before. Merlin won’t expect one, but that’s what makes the thought appealing.
Of course, all his plans are sent straight to hell when Freya knocks on his door around noon with an apologetic look on her face. “Merlin is here.”
“He’s what?” Arthur manages, voice embarrassingly high.
“Here. For lunch, he says. He looks far less stoned than he did the other night.”
“I’m off the worst of the painkillers,” Merlin calls from behind her, and she steps aside to let him into Arthur’s office. “Elena and Mithian are giggling about something behind the reception desk, their editing meetings sound more fun than ours,” he observes, looking around the office and adjusting his sling.
“Elena isn’t a constant trial to Mithian,” he says, mouth on autopilot. “Not that this isn’t a nice surprise, but what are you doing here?”
Merlin peers at him. “Jesus Christ, are you on drugs? You look awful.”
“Oh, thank you-”
“And I’m here because when we were e-mailing yesterday I said I could do lunch today and you agreed, so here I am.” He uses his free hand to make a little ‘tah-dah’ motion. Freya, standing behind him and looking between them with an all-too-knowing expression on her face, hides a smile behind her hand. “Now I’m thinking I should make you take a nap or something.”
Arthur’s running on three and a half hours of sleep and an epiphany and it’s all he can do to stare in panic for a few seconds and scramble for something to say that isn’t oh God, I really do love you, don’t I, since he’d really rather not do that in front of Freya, lovely as she is. “Um, no, that’s fine, lunch is good, we can do lunch.”
Merlin’s looking more concerned by the second. “Or not, not is okay if you forgot or you’re really busy or something, seriously, you look like a crazy person right now, are you okay?”
“I’m-yes. You just surprised me. We should go for lunch.” Arthur shuts his laptop and stands, grabbing his jacket and making sure he has his wallet as he goes. This is throwing his timetable off more than a bit, because he’s a shit liar and if he goes to lunch with Merlin it’s increasingly obvious that he’s going to say something incriminating.
Freya looks between them some more, lips pursed. “Let me know if you can’t make it back in, Arthur, there’s nothing that won’t wait for Monday. I’ll hold Morgana off as long as I can.”
“Thank you,” he says, refrains from offering her yet another theoretical raise or bonus because if she ever cashes in on all of them she’ll be making more money than anyone else in the company, and follows Merlin out his office door.
Merlin fidgets in the elevator the whole way down, not speaking but hovering close like he’s expecting Arthur to collapse any second, as if he could catch him with a broken arm. “You’re really sure you’re okay? Because honestly, I’m pretty sure you look worse right now than I did the other night, and you don’t even have the benefit of an accident.”
“Really, just tired. Was just thinking about you, actually, even though I forgot about lunch, so I’m glad to see you, I promise.”
Merlin stares a bit. “Okay, now I’m really worried. You never tell me you’re glad to see me unless you’re drunk.”
“That is not true.” Except he has a sinking feeling that it is. He rubs a hand across his eyes. “Well, it shouldn’t be. I generally am.” God, he’s going to feel like an idiot forever.
“You’re dying, aren’t you,” Merlin concludes as they step out of the elevator. “Morgana’s been using a slow-acting poison and you just found out last night and you’re giving everyone your last words just in case.”
“You’ve found me out,” Arthur says as dryly as he can through a yawn, and waves at Mithian and Elena, who are indeed giggling at the reception desk, and Percival at the door, who just nods and raises his eyebrows and winks when Merlin isn’t looking, probably assuming Arthur was up late shagging Merlin instead of just thinking about it. “I’ll pass you off to Mithian to edit.”
“Oh, no, if you aren’t my editor I’ll go back to school, I’m used to you now,” says Merlin with a shrug, and starts walking towards the nearest deli.
“Do you want to go back to school?” Arthur winces at how stricken he sounds and continues hastily before Merlin can react. “I mean, I’ll stop harassing you for books if you’d rather go back to mathematics, though God knows why you’d want to.”
Merlin stops walking and stares at him. “Okay, I’m seriously concerned now, what is the matter with you today? If I didn’t want to write for you I wouldn’t write for you, Arthur. I may enjoy maths but I enjoy writing love stories just as much and I’m making a good living of it, so I’m not planning on stopping any time soon.”
“Well, good. You’re … I would miss you. Come on, keep walking, you’ll hold up foot traffic.”
“Three tourists and a pensioner,” Merlin mutters, but he walks alongside Arthur and doesn’t say anything else until they sit down with their sandwiches. “You’re going to tell me what’s wrong now. And bullshit if you say there isn’t, there’s exhausted and then there’s strung out.”
He’s going to confess his love over roast beef sandwiches in a tiny deli with a grumpy old man at the counter and a group of loud university students sitting far too close. This is not a story out of one of his novels. “I was up late reading The Darkest Hour,” he says, starting on the safe ground.
“I sent it at midnight!”
“Yes, ‘late’ might be more accurately termed ‘early.’ I was up late anyway, I was … I’d had an interesting conversation with Morgana.”
“About the poison,” Merlin hazards.
“About the fact that I’m in love with you,” Arthur blurts, and shit, shit, that’s not at all how he meant that to come out, that was not suave at all.
Merlin rolls his eyes. “They’ll get over joking about it eventually,” he says, missing the way Arthur’s staring wide-eyed and stuffed his mouth with a bite of his sandwich before he says anything else awful. Apparently they’re both oblivious, then.
“No,” he says once he’s swallowed. “No, this time it was me bringing it up. Because I, um, am.” Merlin stares at him, mouth hanging a bit open. Arthur uses Merlin’s ridiculous little ‘tah-dah’ gesture from earlier. It doesn’t get a response, as well it shouldn’t, because it was stupid enough when Merlin did it. “Fuck, I really should have got some sleep, but I’d just reread bits of the first two and figured out that you reciprocate, and then I sort of wanted confirmation, and-”
“What,” Merlin interrupts, voice cracking, “what exactly gave you this idea?”
“Well, mostly it was the wanting to spank you, and then Morgana told me to think, and it sort of all happened at once.” Arthur wisely takes another bite of his sandwich, because the spanking is really more of a third-date kind of conversation. When he thinks he’s got the word vomit somewhat under control, he looks back at Merlin, who’s still frozen with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. “This is not at all how I wanted to say this. I was going to come to your flat after work and bring you roses or something equally romantic, not sexually harass you over subpar sandwiches after making you think I’m on drugs. But. The take-away message here is that I love you.”
Merlin closes his eyes, and puts his sandwich down, and Arthur doesn’t know quite what he’s thinking, but he’s smiling a bit to himself, so he thinks it’s all going to end well. “Okay,” says Merlin at last, softly. “Okay. Just-hold on, okay? I need to make a phone call.”
“I confess my love and he makes a phone call,” Arthur says to nobody in particular, but he doesn’t object when Merlin fumbles his phone out of his pocket and dials a few numbers, just goes back to eating his sandwich.
“Freya?” says Merlin when the phone is answered, and Arthur looks sharply up. “Look, Arthur’s knackered, I’m taking him back to his after lunch.” He pauses. “Yeah, everything’s okay. Everything’s great, actually. I’ll call you soon, but we’re still at lunch, so I’ve got to go.”
As soon as he hangs up, Arthur starts speaking. “If you think I just said that because I’m tired-”
“I know you too well for that by now,” says Merlin, and the smile breaks out across his face. “I can’t believe it took you this long to figure out I’m in love with you.”
Even if he’s known it since last night, hearing it out loud still makes Arthur catch his breath. “I’m clearly a bit slow.”
“Well, I’ve known that for ages.” Merlin starts laughing. “Oh God, nobody is ever going to let us forget this. I’ve been trying to convince everyone you’re not interested despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you’ve just had no clue at all … for people in the profession we’re in, I’d call that more than a bit ridiculous.”
Arthur laughs too, mostly out of the sheer relief of it, even though it gets them some funny looks from the other patrons. “We’ll have to make up for lost time, then.”
Merlin puts his sandwich down. “I don’t really think I’m hungry anymore, and you seem to have the afternoon unexpectedly off work, and I don’t think this is exactly the place to have the rest of this conversation. Shall we go?”
“My flat’s empty,” Arthur offers, stupidly because of course it is, he lives alone.
Merlin grins at him and stands up. “Of course it is, idiot. Let’s go, then.”
Arthur still is rather hungry, actually, since he didn’t have time for breakfast and coffee isn’t a good meal replacement, but the moment is a good deal more important than the food, so he stands up as well, wrapping his sandwich up and then Merlin’s, since he’s having trouble with it one-handed. When that’s done, he wonders if he ought to go back to his office for his laptop and briefcase, but he can survive a weekend without work so he just picks up the sandwiches in one hand and reaches for Merlin’s free hand with the other.
They don’t talk much on the walk back to Arthur’s flat, but neither of them can stop grinning, and Merlin’s hand doesn’t move from his the whole way.
*
“Go on, into the bedroom,” says Merlin when they get there. “You’re too knackered to walk straight, I have zero faith in your ability to make out while standing up.”
“God, this is unromantic,” Arthur complains, but he obeys when Merlin disentangles their fingers and shoves him gently forward. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I’ll be there in a minute, I’m going to stick our food in the fridge and make sure nothing’s going to explode because you left the gas on this morning or something. Go on, get your kit off, and I’ll be in as soon as may be.”
Arthur goes, because he’s been yawning every few seconds for the last ten minutes at least and bed sounds appealing for a multitude of reasons at the moment. He struggles out of his suit and down to his boxers and a t-shirt before he realizes that Merlin should be coming after him by now. “Did you get lost in my kitchen?” he yells, turning down the covers.
“Things are slow one-armed, just get in the bed and I’ll be right along,” Merlin calls back.
For a second, Arthur thinks about arguing, and then he decides that first of all, he hasn’t got the energy, and second of all, he wouldn’t put it past Merlin to withhold sex before they’ve even had it if Arthur gets stubborn. Instead, he gets on the back and reclines against the pillows and lets his eyes close for just a second …
It’s dark, and there’s music playing softly close by-not his own music, he’s relatively certain he doesn’t have any Katy Perry on his computer, which means there’s someone else here. Someone else humming quietly along to “Teenage Dream,” no less, and resting a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and the day’s events slam into his memory.
Not a dream, then, no matter how the memories have the foggy, sleep-deprived quality he hasn’t dealt with since university. He took Merlin out for sandwiches and told him he loves him and then got tricked into taking a nap before they could even kiss, for fuck’s sake.
Merlin’s still here, though, and sounds happy enough, judging by the humming, so Arthur opens his eyes and squints to see what’s going on. It’s evening, judging by how dark it is, since Merlin hasn’t bothered closing the blinds, and Merlin is listening to music on his phone and leafing his way through one of Arthur’s books, as if he’s been waiting for him to come around for hours. This is undoubtedly the worst-planned seduction in history.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. Merlin starts, swiveling to look at him, humming cut abruptly off. “You must’ve been bored.”
His eyes are adjusted enough to the dark that he can see when Merlin breaks out into a grin, just before he turns away to turn off the music and toss his book off the bed. “You needed sleep, no way you could ravish me while you were that exhausted, and besides.” He turns back to Arthur, slides over him in some movement Arthur isn’t quite awake enough to track yet. “This way I’ve had time to plan.” He settles into a straddle over Arthur’s hips, barely brushing his half-hard erection. Arthur lifts his hands and settles them at Merlin’s waist, since he’s not quite sure what else to do and suspects that at this point he’s just going to be along for the ride. “You see,” Merlin continues, unperturbed, “there’s a lot we can’t do, with my arm in a cast-really, you couldn’t figure it out a week sooner or six weeks later? This is going to be awful-but we can certainly do some things.”
“Did you have any particular ideas in mind?” he manages.
“Well, blowjobs, obviously, and handjobs if you don’t mind me using my off hand for it.” The implications of dating an erotica writer begin to dawn on Arthur, and it’s all he can do to flex his hands on Merlin’s waist to encourage him to continue. “If we get there I’m pretty sure we can figure out ways of fucking one another without putting weight on my arm, though we’ll have to shelve the tying me up and spanking me part for later.” Arthur chokes and tries not to buck his hips. “Remind me to make fun of you for deciding you love me because of an e-mail chain about Freya tying me up.”
Arthur stops him before all his blood runs south, because he’s relatively certain that he needs to say a few things now that he isn’t half-asleep and completely without a brain-to-mouth filter. “It wasn’t deciding.”
Merlin stops with his mouth open, expression gone quizzical. “What was it, then?”
“Figuring it out, after far too long, apparently. This isn’t …” He searches around for the proper word. “It isn’t new,” he settles on. He hasn’t had the time to figure out when it did start, exactly-not at the very beginning, they were too busy fighting for that, but sometime between the day Merlin first made the romance bestsellers’ list and the day Arthur decided to found Tintagel, he settled into it without realizing. “I wouldn’t have said it if it were that new, Merlin.”
Merlin bends down, leans on his good elbow so he can breathe in Arthur’s ear. “Said what?” he breathes, and Arthur shivers.
“That I love you.” It’s Merlin’s turn to shiver. “I do, and I’m sorry I didn’t say it better earlier. You caught me by surprise.”
After a second, Merlin levers himself up again. “I wouldn’t want it any other way. In case you hadn’t figured it out, Arthur, we’re not in one of our novels. I don’t need rose petals or moonlight or anything stupid like that.”
“Pity, I was planning on a redo of all of this tomorrow night, with French wine and two dozen red roses and some specially hired moonlight.”
“God, I love you,” says Merlin, and kisses him. Arthur kisses back, he can’t not, and it takes them both a few seconds to catch up to the fact that this is their first. It shouldn’t feel as thoughtless and natural as it does already, but they fall into it as easily as they fell into fighting and editing, the same way they’ve always been able to bounce off each other. He coaxes Merlin’s mouth open and slips his tongue inside, listens with delight to the distracted little noises Merlin makes at that, and only pulls away when he’s so hard it’s starting to ache.
Merlin makes a sound of wordless objection, and Arthur nudges his nose with his own to shut him up. “If we keep at this, I’m going to come in my pants, and while we needn’t do anything fancy I think I would like to be naked the first time we get off, if you have no objections.”
“None at all,” says Merlin, rough and low and Jesus, Arthur feels like a teenager again just from the sound of his voice. “Hold on a minute.”
They’ve both argued over far too many sex scenes to think trying to stay tangled together while they strip is a good plan (Merlin always holds that the hardest part of sex scenes is figuring out how to get the clothes off, everything is a breeze after that). Merlin rolls off him and Arthur gets off his shirt and boxers in short order, tossing them off the edge of the bed. Merlin wiggles out of his trousers and pants easily, gets his socks off, but he gets stuck in his shirt. “I’ll help,” says Arthur.
Gently tugging Merlin’s loose t-shirt off over his cast somehow feels even more intimate than kissing him, both of them a breath apart, Merlin practically in Arthur’s lap. “Once I get over the shock,” Merlin says quietly, muffled by the cloth as Arthur pulls it over his head, “I’m probably going to say it all the time, just to warn you. You’re going to call me a girl a lot, I’ve been saving it all up.”
“I won’t mind. We can say it together.”
“God, you’re ridiculous.” They get Merlin free of the last of his shirt and Merlin nuzzles at Arthur’s face in a way he can’t bring himself to mock him for. “Come on, what do you want to do?” Arthur manhandles him over onto his back, and Merlin goes with an amused quirk of his eyebrows, putting the arm with the cast on it carefully out of the way as Arthur climbs to straddle him. “I should have known you’d want to be on top.”
“I’m being careful of your arm,” Arthur objects. “If you’re bouncing up and down you’re sure to jostle it and I don’t want to have to take a break for painkillers.”
Merlin laughs a bit and runs his good hand over Arthur’s face. “You’re sort of lovely, you know. It’s a bit surprising. I’d figured you would be trying to fuck me like a porn star by now, by how much of a prat you are normally.”
Arthur shifts enough to kiss Merlin’s wrist before he drops his arm. “And I assume that’s why you have so many fantasies about fucking me?” Merlin’s face goes red. “I don’t have anything against fucking you through the mattress, or the opposite, for that matter, but not tonight.”
“Okay, then.” Merlin squirms, and his cock brushes against Arthur’s. “As long as you do something before we both die of frustration.”
In answer, Arthur starts rocking his hips, little motions that Merlin soon starts to join in on, nothing fast, nothing hard. He kisses Merlin to keep him from commenting and lingers, eyes closed, while Merlin uses his one good hand to skate over Arthur’s skin wherever he can reach, legs parted so Arthur can get to him more easily. It’s nothing like the sex in Merlin’s books, they both laugh a bit too much and Arthur can’t quite turn off the part of his brain going god god oh god this is Merlin how are we doing with this Merlin god finally and Merlin’s shoulder cramps at one point, but it’s electric and Arthur also can’t stop himself giddily thinking that they get to do it again and Merlin gasps out syllables like “Arthur” and “love” in between kisses.
By the time Arthur comes, he can’t seem to stop smiling, and he laughs half-drunkenly while he finally reaches down between them to jack Merlin to his finish. After, he tugs them hazily closer even if it means they’ll stick together later and arranges Merlin in his arms properly. “What was so funny?” Merlin asks into his neck later.
“I don’t know.” There’s silence, for a while, Arthur on the edge of dozing but a bit too awake for it after his long nap and Merlin absently starting to hum again as his breathing goes back to normal, like he does when he’s thinking hard about a scene he wants to write. “Are you staying here tonight? Should you call Gwen so she doesn’t worry that you aren’t home?”
“Yes, I’m staying.” He can feel Merlin smile. “And I don’t need to call Gwen. Did you think I kept vigil at your bedside all afternoon? I made sure you were asleep and called her to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. So, fair warning, Freya and Morgana probably know by now as well, which means the whole office knows.”
“I don’t care. From what I can tell they’ve been waiting on us for ages, they might as well get a vicarious thrill out of it.”
“I’ve read that book from Elena, the one Mithian picked out of the slush room. Our whole story seems like the sort of plot she would write, we should keep an eye on her and make sure her second book has nothing to do with the publishing industry.” Arthur laughs, and Merlin lifts his head. “I’m serious, you know. It seems the sort of thing they would try.”
“We’ll keep an eye on them,” Arthur assures him, and Merlin settles back in a little farther away so they can look at each other, eyes soft. “What time is it?”
“Not time for bed yet, it’s only eight. My master plan is not to leave the bed until morning except to piss and possibly eat the rest of our sandwiches, but I think I might need a bit of recovery time after that round.”
Arthur grins at him. “I could always give you some editing notes, get some useful work out of you now that I’ve got you at my mercy.”
“Like hell you will,” says Merlin, tumbling him over onto his back and kissing the smile off his face.
“I love you,” Arthur says, because he can, and because he suspects it’s going to be his get-out-of-jail-free card with Merlin for a while. “You know that, right?”
“I’m getting the picture.” Merlin smiles, but softer, a little more restrained. “I’d almost given up, you know. Decided I was pathetic and then after I found out you’re bi and you’d never made a move I tried really hard to be over you.”
God, Arthur could kick himself a hundred times and never stop calling himself an idiot. He half sits up and kisses Merlin swiftly. “You’re not ever to try again, do you hear me? Never.”
In answer, Merlin presses him back into the bed and starts round two a little earlier than planned.
*
From: Arthur
To: Merlin
Subject: Pick up your phone!
First gay romance to make it onto the general romance bestseller list, still climbing the ranks!
If this is because you’ve forgotten to charge your phone I’m firing you.
“He isn’t picking up his phone?” Freya asks from the doorway of his office, over the noise of everybody chattering out in the main office. Someone’s broken out a bottle of champagne, though he has no idea where they got it from, and he suspects not a bit more work is going to get done today, but he doesn’t much mind.
He does, however, mind the fact that he’s been trying to call his boyfriend for ten minutes to give him the news about Sweet Dreams and still can’t get hold of him. “Probably he forgot it somewhere, or didn’t charge it, and I’m going to have to shout at him. Trust the man of the hour to be unavailable.”
She smiles. “I’ll keep trying to call, if you like. You’re the other man of the hour, after all, since you edited the books and you’ve been the one throwing the whole weight of the company behind it.”
“No, I’d like to tell him.” Freya ducks her head and Arthur rolls his eyes. “You go back to the celebrations, and perhaps to answering the phones and e-mail if you really have such a thirst for productivity, the blogosphere is bound to start calling soon.” He glances out of his door just in time to see Vivian climb onto a desk to start making a speech that nobody is going to listen to. This is going to turn into an afternoon of sloppy debauchery, but he doesn’t much mind.
“And they’ll want to talk to you, they’ve been cooing over that dedication ever since the book came out and now they won’t be able to resist.” Outside, Vivian nearly falls off the desk mid-gesture and Percival calmly lifts her one-armed and puts her gently on the floor.
“I’m sure everyone here will be happy to give them quotes about the book or about our relationship, as if anyone cares about the sex lives of romance novelists.” His phone goes before she can get out whatever she’s gearing up to say, and he turns away immediately to check the display and answer the phone when Merlin’s name turns up. “Where were you?”
“Hello to you too, and I was on the Tube. Has the world exploded? I have twelve missed calls from you, three from Freya, four from Gwen, and another three from my mum.”
Arthur grins. He gets to tell him after all, then. “Well, we all wanted to congratulate you, obviously.”
“Congratulate me on what?”
“On being the first author to get a gay romance on the romance bestsellers list-you’re at 92 as of noon, and still climbing.” Arthur grins at the noise Merlin makes on the line. “There’s a party going on in your honor here, everyone’s using it as an excuse to skive off.”
“Do I have to come?”
Arthur blinks and shuts his office door. “Well, not if you don’t want to, though I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to see a bunch of romance editors letting their hair down.”
“Because Morgana will start speculating on our sex life again,” Merlin answer immediately, and then there’s a pause because Arthur can’t respond to that beyond wrinkling his nose, because Morgana seems to think she’s entitled to do that since she takes some of the credit for getting them together. “And because I was on my way to your flat with a surprise anyway, and maybe you’d like to come a few hours early and make it a celebration?”
“What kind of a surprise?” he asks, and he hopes Freya’s out of earshot of the door by now because he can’t help the way his voice goes low, months of Merlin’s periodic “surprises” having conditioned him very well to this sort of thing. “I’ve hours yet before I would normally leave the office, what takes that much preparation?”
“Well, not this, actually, I was just really bored at my place, it’s getting depressing there now that all of Gwen’s things are migrating over to Lancelot’s.” Merlin pauses, then adds brightly, “I could be very thorough about fingering myself? That way I’d be all nice and sensitive for when you come back and I show you what I bought last week.”
Arthur coughs and tries not to think about the fact that Merlin is saying this all on the street because that way lies madness. “Well, you know, nothing’s going to get done this afternoon and all the bloggers can wait a day or two for quotes, they generally have quite enough to say on their own anyway.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say,” says Merlin. “I’m going to hang up now, because it’ll make you get out of the office faster. Love you.”
“I love you. Congratulations.”
He’s barely hung up before Morgana interrupts him with a laugh. “You two are precious. Off to shag him in congratulations? You should ask him to move in, too, go for the double.”
“As ever, Morgana, it remains none of your business. But yes, I’m off for the day. Don’t traumatize anyone from the press, don’t let anyone drunk answer the phones, don’t let Vivian stand on any more tables.” With that, Arthur proceeds to ignore her and packs up his briefcase, grabbing his jacket on his way out the door. “Don’t get the police called on us for sponsoring an orgy, either,” he adds as he passes her.
“We’ll just invite them to join us,” she calls, not bothering to follow (or leave his office. She’s convinced that he keeps pornographic pictures of Merlin in his desk and she’s probably going to continue her fruitless search for them. It’s like she doesn’t live in the digital age, where people keep things like that on their phones and laptops in locked files).
Gwaine wolf-whistles as Arthur goes by, waving at people as he passes, and Arthur decides not to stop and ask what the hell he’s doing at Camelot, since he’s only a contract employee and has some deal modeling for an underwear line at the moment. Freya grins and gives him the signal that she’ll keep an eye on everyone, and almost everyone else raises their coffee mugs full of champagne when he says hello.
Arthur ignores all of it and gets out as quickly as he can, because Merlin will be waiting for him, probably with whatever new toy he’s bought recently, and they’ve got the whole rest of the day to celebrate in between fielding phone calls from their nearest and dearest, and maybe Arthur will take Morgana’s advice for once and bring up the fact that while Gwen’s things have been slowly transferring to Lancelot’s flat Merlin’s have been moving to Arthur’s. Or perhaps he won’t, because there’s a chance that Merlin already knows, and there are some things he’s discovered over the last few months that he doesn’t need to say for Merlin to understand them.
It’s not a particularly glorious profession, publishing romance novels. Camelot Publishing is lucky that way-it’s got enough mythology built up around it that it doesn’t get as boring for its employees as people outside might assume. From the beginning with Ygraine and Uther to now, more of its employees date each other or their authors than is reasonable (or possibly sane), or otherwise end up in the sort of disgustingly sappy stories that they ought to be publishing, not living. People keep finding each other, though, like Elena and Mithian (and nobody knows quite what’s going on there, but judging by how much of the acknowledgments in Elaine Fay’s latest book are gushing about her editor, there’s something) and like Arthur and Merlin. Really, if the general public cared about the love lives of romance novelists they’d never make it out of the gossip papers just for how hideously unlikely it all is.
Arthur likes having it just known to the employees, though, for the way that Morgana makes jokes about matchmaking services and the way Merlin and Elena had an hour-long debate once about which one of them was allowed to write the fictionalized account of the loves and lives of the employees of Camelot Publishing (ended only at the intervention of their respective editors and with the aid of some of the Rising Sun’s lethal cocktails). And besides, it means that when they hire on someone new, they never suspect it’s going to happen to them, as it inevitably will.
After all, if Arthur had to figure it out himself, it’s only fair that they should as well.