Fic: Not Even Slightly Dickensian (2)
Fic: Not Even Slightly Dickensian [2/?]
Chapter: because we are both idiots, I will be your lying liar for today
Rating: teen, light R, thus far mainly for adult themes and use of bad language
Spoilers: none, completely AU.
Word count: ~4700 (this chapter)
Summary: Merlin/Arthur, Morgana/Gwen. 19th century AU in which Camelot is on the edge of industrialisation, Merlin is a pick-pocket, Morgana writes Penny Dreadfuls and Arthur has no idea what he's getting into. This chapter: Morgana temporarily kicks out Merlin, Will appears, Merlin tries to get on with some hard work and even means it for a while, Arthur is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
Previous chapters: one
Special thanks to hariboo_smirks for the hand holding and shiny new semi friends only banner.
***
"So what you're saying," Morgana's eyes glinted dangerously, "is that because I'm not in a pleasant mood with you, I must be losing the lining of an organ?"
Merlin grimaced and raised a hand to fend off mental images, but it was too late: Morgana had been reading anatomy books to more realistically slaughter fictional playthings and had so used illustrations against him for years.
"You know how we had that talk when we moved in where I said I wasn't remotely interested in the female body except as an artistic object and you didn't kill me? Still true."
"Either sit down and draw illustrations," Morgana positively hissed, click-click-clacking away on the typewriter, "or get out and rob someone deserving."
Merlin chose the latter.
*
"My friend, it was vicious. And now Morgana's all pissed because it's that time of the month and she has to write some crappy romance thing, so she can't do what she usually does with stomach ache and hang some character by their own guts on a window frame -"
Merlin glared at the still-laughing and deeply insensitive Will and threw the core of his lifted apple at him.
Will held up his hands in surrender and brushed the bits of apple from his shirt. "Sorry, sorry, mate. Honest. I'm-"
Merlin rolled his eyes and waited for him to finish laughing. They were lounging in an alley off the market square, taking their own version of a lunch hour.
"You done yet?" Merlin leveled a glare at Will as he fell silent.
He nodded. "I can't have you throwing the rubbish at me - I just changed this shirt yesterday." Will took a bronze coin from his pocket and began rippling it across and through his knuckles. "Thought Morgana's rubbish always had mooning girls in it, anyway?"
Merlin butted his shoulder against Will's and deftly plucked the coin from his hand. "It does, but they're usually silly bints with long, blond hair that die tragic, gruesome deaths they could've avoided by wearing a thicker coat or something. And I'm going to pretend you meant 'mooning' as in 'swooning', really, I am."
"And they're never, ever based on you, not even a little bit," Will nodded with a very serious expression.
"Good. Keep practicing that," Merlin replied flatly. "I'll even believe you soon."
Will sent him a toothy grin and nodded back to the market. "We going back in?"
"You go ahead," Merlin shook his head and pushed off of the wall, flicking the coin back to Will. "I've got some sketches to do for Morgana and a lift to start thinking about."
Will gave him a speculative look. "You know that sounded nearly like real work, right?"
"I know," Merlin said mournfully. "It's Morgana. She's a bad influence."
"And scary like the gates of hell, which I'm not," Will retorted, grinning. "Go on then, get to it."
Making a face at Will's shooing motions and the mocking way he tipped his cap at him, Merlin wandered off in the direction of the castle.
*
Morgana stared at the blank paper. As unpleasant hints of sounds began to leak through the floorboards from Sophia's upstairs, she groaned and gave up. Clearly sitting in the flat was only going to result in mourning both a quiet morning and that she couldn't write bloody, gruesome deaths for prostitutes, their customers and opium addicts. She gathered a jacket and a cap, slipping out of the door with some scraps of paper and a pencil in her jacket pocket.
Besides, the perceptive bastard she lived with owed her a cup of tea for existing, much like the rest of the world did on the day of the month when her stomach decided to make her life hell.
A hiss stopped her on the stairwell and she realised she'd nearly run straight into Sophia.
The madam gave her a look up and down with her petite, pretty little features, smeared - as always - with too much in the way of rouge and powder. Her clothes had been fine, but were designed for the noble Sophia had once been and not for the rough work she now applied herself to, resulting in wear and fraying that the dainty whore had no expertise in fixing. It didn't help that she was partaking of her own merchandise - Morgana was glad not to have actually run into her in case the shorter woman's bones were every bit as sharp as they looked.
"You are in my way." An epithet similar to scum was tacked on at the end unsaid. Sophia always had that reaction: she seemed to see Morgana as some strange hybrid creature in her rough clothes, and once it had been established that Morgana was beyond her feminine wiles, she'd really disliked her.
"Oh, I'm sorry, m'lady," Morgana inclined her head in a near-bow as a boy would on meeting a duchess, laying on her accent thick in the process. "It's just that I wouldn't want to disturb ye by not paying m' proper respects an' all."
Sophia sniffed the air disdainfully, looked at somewhere over Morgana's shoulder and continued down the stairs. Morgana briefly considered acting on the urge to help her with a firm shove but decided the inevitable screaming and moaning and death threats just weren't worth it.
*
There were two main squares in Camelot and as far as Merlin was concerned, they said everything one needed to know about the place. One was the market square right in the middle of the Lower City, a more recent and shabbier addition, a space that hadn't so much been marked off as had grown into what it was by the building up and falling down of slum housing. The square in front of the castle gates was the opposite: a clean, marked off sector of space complete with guards, tourists and stalls pushed to the side in an embarrassed way. Merlin knew that they sold little of use and robbed people more thoroughly than he could conscience in his honest-to-God professional thievery. There were probably as many people in the same size of square, but where the market was a never-ending mass of shouting, movement and general disregard for authority, the castle square was something between a church, a library and what Merlin thought the room outside a schoolmaster's office would feel like.
Merlin set up among the artists in the square in front of the gate to the castle. The castle itself was an impressive sort of fortress, if you went in for that kind of blocky, you shalt never prevail against me thing. Merlin preferred something with a bit more grace, some twisting towers that would never stand against a breeze and all of the nonsense that Morgana liked when he drew it for her and the hell of it. He'd done a few drawings particularly for her: all fairies and foreign lands they'd read about in books, illustrations for wicked children's stories Merlin loved but knew she'd never get published while fat little cupids and smiling middle class blonds were in fashion. He sighed and put away the sketch of a Camelot among mists and forests he hadn't meant to draw, tracing the basic outline of the castle onto the back of the sheet quickly and getting on with what he reminded himself was going to earn his food for the next week.
He was stretching out after a few hours when an uncertain voice interrupted him.
"Oh, hello, I was wondering, are you-"
Merlin lifted his head and blinked at the couple. He swept off his cap and stood in one smooth motion with a slight bow as she giggled and he looked around, slightly embarrassed. "What can I help you with, good sir?"
The girl giggled again. Merlin shot her a bright and slightly slack grin, tilting his head in a way intended to convince that he wasn't too bright. Morgana had always liked when he practiced this bit; it gave her a chance to say that he didn't have to try very hard to be a convincing idiot.
"Well," the young man seemed to have summoned some courage, "we were wondering if you were drawing portraits. I'd like one of my wife, a small one, to put in a locket or something like that."
That explained it. Not only were they tourists, they were on a honeymoon. Or at least Merlin hoped that was why 'wife' sounded so very awkward on the man's tongue.
"Hmm," Merlin bit his lip somewhat theatrically and looked upwards, pretending to think. He held that pose for a few seconds - long enough for the impatient man to get more impatient - and took a step forward, tugging the man's arm. "I'm not - I'm on a commission from my lady. But if you see-"
It wasn't even a lie, he thought smugly. Merlin turned him with a hand on his upper arm and pointed to a very good street artist at the top of the line. "He's very good, though. And very reasonable."
The couple thanked the simple boy immensely - and speaking quite slowly - before hurrying away. Merlin shook his head, tugged his cap back on and hunched back over the sketch of Camelot. It was coming along quite well - add a colourful banner there, a horse there, maybe a Prince-Beginning-With-P sitting on a unicorn and it would be perfect for Morgana's next serial.
"My, aren't you all kinds of helpful?"
"Can I help you?" Merlin looked up and blinked. "Because I'm on a commission, not for hire, I'm afraid."
"What, no 'good sir'? Really, that's quite remiss of you."
Maybe this one just waggled his eyebrows at all people and inanimate objects. He had the look of someone with a flexible face. And good bone structure, but Merlin didn't really think he should be noticing that.
Letting out a breath slowly and fixing his eyes on his sheet, Merlin turned and took off his cap, looking up with a grin. "Does this better suit His Majesty? Will His Majesty be going away? Pray, please say he will."
And then, because Merlin's luck was special that way, the red shirt shook his head and Merlin realised that he'd convinced yet another person he was simple. He didn't mind that if he meant to do it. "Actually, it's 'your Highness' when one is addressing the prince."
"Sure you are," Merlin scoffed, rolling his eyes and gesturing to the chancer's clothes. "The prince always walks around out of armour without bully boys or bobbies. His father's really lax about his son's life like that, as all Camelot knows from his extensive tours of the city." Merlin gestured to the many guards on the castle door, mentally pointing to the fact that the prince hadn't been seen in public since the attempt on his life at his fifteenth birthday parade and had spent the previous three years at some university further south. That would shut this one up. Thinking about how he should have just stayed home and put up with Morgana and her cramps, Merlin sat down and picked up his half-finished sketches.
"You know, that's really quite good. I didn't expect that of an idiot."
The voice was quite low and, frankly, impolitely close to his ear. Merlin's spine went rigid, his muscles tensed and he raised his chin. A heavy hand on his shoulder - seriously, was the man born of an ox or something? It'd explain him being such a boor - had Merlin's hand reaching surreptitiously for his ankle.
"What have you got there?" Merlin opened his mouth to object in the most innocent of fashions. "Don't pretend you weren't."
Really, it wasn't fair of the blond to be taking a tone with him and especially not the delicately long-suffering kind that only Morgana had earned a right to use. Firstly, they'd just met. Secondly, Merlin wasn't sure if they were going to try to kill each other yet.
"It's a knife. A really sharp one," Merlin answered honestly. Flicking his eyes to the very close blue ones attached to the chin hovering above his shoulder, Merlin caught an incidental view of the hand on his shoulder and fought the urge to wince when the sun glanced off the gold ring there. He swallowed and looked back at the wall in front. He swallowed again and looked back at the ring quickly. It was definitely real gold. It was definitely on a hand with callouses in places that would make sense if the owner of the hand happened to spend time learning how to use a sword, even though the knights were stupid and kind of backward that way.
"You know," Merlin said, trying quite hard not to sound either weak or, god forbid, breathless, "if the crown prince happened to be out here with nothing but the thin shirt on his back-" Merlin had noticed the thinness of the material out of charitable concern. His powers of observation were unparalleled, "-it wouldn't be the um, smartest of things."
Oh, God, now the chancer was grinning.
"No," came the bland answer, the blond giving Merlin a wary but wickedly bright look, "it really wouldn't. And he certainly wouldn't be keeping company with an insubordinate thief surprisingly good at pretending to be an artist."
The blond mop of hair beside Merlin mercifully moved back - he hadn't seriously tried to put a bit of dirt through it and scruff it up, Merlin thought incredulously, because that would be just bloody typical. Unfortunately, humming quietly under his breath, the man crouched down and tilted his head, rifling through the unfinished sketches with an entitled air about him that had Merlin counting backwards from ten in irritation. He got to seven. "Do you mind?!"
A blond eyebrow was delicately raised as Merlin carefully but quickly slipped the sheets from under the hmming and ahhing figure next to him.
"I thought all artists enjoyed being praised," came the hint of a question in his answer, along with a tilt of the blond's head and a mild frown - just one little line between eyebrows. Merlin distracted himself by thinking that he had to maintain those eyebrows and that meant that he was vain, obviously, and that meant he was destined to be horrible and quite possibly evil, if not already. He conveniently forgot the fact that Morgana took tiny little torture instruments to her eyebrows on a regular basis and was the furthest thing from vain that lived.
"Yes," Merlin snapped back, turning his head towards the blond's and glaring. "But they're not finished yet."
"Funny," the blond traced a fingertip down the line that would be the edge of a a turret, "all the artists I know are happy to show unfinished work. And that was neatly done- not a single tear, for all you grabbed at them."
"It's all about timing," Merlin retorted, illustrating said timing again when the man - who he had still not accepted was the actual crown prince because there was a slim chance he wasn't, there really was - lifted his fingertip for a second. Sliding the drawings into his bag, Merlin blinked and stood, the blond standing slowly as he did. "Well, it was really nice and creepy to meet you, but I really have to be going."
"What, gotten the angles of the castle you need?"
Merlin paused, looking back and noting the total absence of the playful tone from before. He shrugged his satchel on, raised his chin and enacted Lessons Learned in the Lower City #5: if you can, lie with the truth. "I work for Feyran O'Day's publishers as an illustrator. If you want to check up on that, please go ahead, good sir."
For some reason, the blond thought that this was the most amusing thing in the history of amusing things, Camelot and quite possibly the human race. Merlin cast an exasperated glance at the sky and glared. He did not put his hands on his hips like a Lower City washing woman, but he was sorely tempted.
And he placed exactly what had been bothering him about this stupid, stupid man.
"You hide it well, my friend, but I know what you are," Merlin grinned as the man stopped laughing and glanced around quickly, "you're a bobby. Go bother some other penniless artist unless you're looking for a picture."
Apparently, this wasn't quite the same height of comedy as Merlin's previous statement, but the blond still struggled to contain a grin at the sheer hilarity Merlin was clearly missing.
"I don't know if friend is the appropriate word," the stranger replied, expression pensive, "after all, you did consider stabbing me."
"Not seriously," Merlin protested, frowning, "I would have waited until you'd tried to stab me. I've been raised to be polite."
"I never would have guessed," the blond said incredulously, shaking his head and lightly hitting Merlin's upper arm. He left Merlin open-mouthed and staring over his own shoulder because apparently, he was taking Merlin's somewhat jesting order to bother another artist seriously.
Merlin looked between the entrance to the street that would take him home and the blond, currently having a discussion about Renaissance brush techniques with an old man that Merlin knew would rob him blind the second he wasn't looking.
He was an idiot and Morgana was going to call him that and it wasn't going to be any kind of fun.
*
Morgana settled in a teashop on the edge of the upper city, tugging out some papers and scribbling. Merlin was being annoyingly elusive, but she'd just gotten an idea for the disaster in the making that Tauron wanted her to pen. She was almost tempted to ask for a new pseudonym. Feyran O'Day had a long and bloody career involving amateur amputations, mutilation, serial killers, gory battles and supernatural fiends. He couldn't be seen to be writing crappy romance novels about princes and flower girls and she really wished she'd never said that, because now it had to be a flower girl.
She flicked through the society pages of the paper and narrowed her eyes, catching sight of a name in the bottom corner.
It had just the right edge of pompous bastard worthy of mocking, it was true.
And here was the proof right in front of her that people actually used it. Occasionally. When they felt like cursing their progeny.
It even started with P.
She set about scribbling with a slightly vicious glint in her eye.
*
The blond looked up as Merlin awkwardly cleared his throat, standing beside them.
"Yes?"
And there was that bloody eyebrow again, except this time there was a warning undertone in the voice.
"I forgot to tell you something."
Merlin trotted out his excuse like the lame horse it was. It was the other reason he preferred to twist the truth or do the kind of thieving that only required running away very quickly: truth be told, he was a terrible liar.
The man he was helping for reasons he didn't even want to think about stood with a muttered apology and hand on the upper arm to the old man, who glared at Merlin when the blond wasn't looking. Merlin shot him one back, one that hopefully conveyed, I'm sorry I'm ruining what must be a truly tragic version of how you lost your leg, because it was really serving King and Country and nothing to do with an infected bite from a guard dog.
A hand on his arm roughly jerked him to stand a few metres away in front of the also-glaring blond. Really, it was a whole glaring-based scenario.
"What."
Merlin looked up from his feet. "I'm reporting a crime, officer. Isn't that what you do?"
"In a manner of speaking," the blond replied in a bored tone, as if Merlin were dashing some great plan just by existing. "Time, place, nature of the offence?"
"Now, over there, you were wearing a ring when you stopped speaking to me," Merlin answered, watching the man's eyes widen. To his credit - he wasn't a complete amateur, at least, Merlin thought - the man didn't throttle him, shout or obviously feel for the ring on his finger.
"So you're not a thief, but you can spot an act of thievery from ten paces that I can't see at two." His voice was laden with disbelief, but he was at least looking at Merlin rather than all the fascinating places Merlin assumed he'd rather be.
"I have diversified interests. Doesn't everyone these days?" Merlin retorted, then decided he was bored of playing this how the blond wanted to play it. Brushing past him, he hissed, "follow my lead."
The man blinked and followed, clearing unamused by the turn events had taken but able to do little else.
"So, Silas," Merlin grinned and knelt. "The lordling here wants me to do a fresco, but he wants you to deal with the colour." Merlin threw the blond a look over the old thief's shoulder. "Apparently my brush strokes are nothing compared to yours."
There was a somewhat gratifying widening of eyes and fake coughing.
"Really, my lord?"
If Silas had been anything less than obsequious before, he set about making it up to his supposed-patron in style. The blond entertained him with a tale of a simply tragic decline in fortunes in his family, an utterly divine church that had fallen into a state of disrepair and how it wounded the family to see the walls so bare.
Merlin nodded over his shoulder and the blond sighed dramatically. "If only we had such funds to restore it. But alas, another time." Standing, he nodded to Merlin. "Perhaps another generation, even!"
Merlin put a hand under his elbow and levered him away before he went into Shakespearean raptures as Silas gaped and asked half-questions about whether or not they were hiring him. "Very good, but save the rest for whatever production you put on at whatever university your daddy sends you to."
In the first street off of the square, the blond smirked and held out his hand. Merlin lightly smacked it and when he took his hand away after an exactly appropriate length of time, the ring was sitting in the other man's palm.
"I appear to be gaining an education exactly where I am," he replied with a raise of an eyebrow, "whether I look for it or not." He hesitated, beginning to turn to walk away but paused. "Thank you."
"Nothing to it," Merlin rolled his eyes and then grinned. He'd never see him again anyway. "Try being smarter when you're bored - Arthur."
Merlin smirked as he walked away, turning his back on the crown prince of Camelot and congratulating himself for getting that surprised widening of eyes out of him not once, but twice.
*
He ran into Morgana the fourth turn after leaving the square.
"I couldn't stand the noise-" she drew the sky a black look and Merlin made an ahh sound of understanding, "so I came to look for you. Obviously the last place I was going to look was where you were supposed to be." She looked at him suspiciously. "Where have you been?"
Merlin considered briefly that Morgana would be a wonderful mother if she ever chose to be, having already mastered both the psychic instinct and the you've been up to something, I just don't know what yet tone.
"Drawing sketches," Merlin answered as quickly as he could, fumbling in his bag for the sketches as proof and not to avoid meeting her eyes at all.
Morgana let out a half-proud, half-horrified little gasp. "Merlin Emrys, you will buy me a cup of tea in this little establishment right here and you will tell me everything."
It was lucky they were only approximately as poor as their lodgings: Merlin suspected that Morgana lived there largely so she could dress how she liked and not have it remarked upon be anyone of greater note than Sophia the Whore. They were seated with a look from the lady that softened when they paid for their drinks before sitting down.
Morgana and Merlin traded looks at that, foregoing the usual it's you - you're dressed like a boy, it's you - you look like a fairy argument for the sake of the epic drama of Merlin's day. He was tempted to try not to tell her, but she was doing that tapping thing on the side of the rather fragile tea cup again and that was never a good sign.
"You were helpful to tourists?" There was a polite snort of disbelief.
Merlin grimaced.
"How much."
He winced and looked intently at his cup. "Not much. He was a bit annoying, but I had a good spot in the sun. I didn't want him coming back and getting me kicked off the square."
"And that way he can just kick himself for dropping it somewhere," Morgana nodded, probably filing that away for the life of crime she was convinced would one day be hers.
On his description of the prince - perhaps a little detailed, on reflection - Morgana opened her eyes very wide before laughing until she almost cried. Straightening and looking at him as if saying that never happened, as all breaches of perfect dignity never happened to Morgana, she looked at him intently. "Do you think he's a prat? Even though he's physically attractive in a blond way, I'll grant."
"Insufferable," Merlin nodded, knowing better than to break solidarity on this.
"So what stupid things did you or he say next?"
"Come on, have more faith in me than that," Merlin teased, grinning. Morgana shook her head slowly. "I don't get more faith than Prince Prat? I'm touched."
"Just get on with it," Morgana retorted but grinned.
He resignedly recounted the part where he gave the prince her pseudonym. "Which was of course a filthy lie," she broke in, "but I'm sure you were absolutely indignant in it."
"Actually, it's perfectly true, and that's what he'll hear if ever he should ask about me. Which I doubt and hope he doesn't, of course," Merlin tacked on quickly, trying to recover what had been a perfect smirk before continuing.
"So then I walked away, he walked away, I met you, we came in here-"
"Yes, yes, I know that part," Morgana rolled her eyes, expression turning serious after a quick flash of a grin.
"What?" Merlin asked with a frown. He reached across the table and tapped the back of her hand lightly. "It's fine, you know. Nothing's going to come of it."
"Maybe not, no," Morgana said quietly, looking at the table and then catching his hand tightly, "but maybe something. What does it mean when we thwart something I dream and then it happens anyway?"
Merlin shook his head and looked around, thankful that the noise in the small tearoom covered their conversation and glad it wasn't one of the conversations where they shouted at each other. "You saw- you dreamed that they would arrest me in the flat. I was out. They didn't."
"You still met the prince," Morgana shook her head, leaning forward. "The arrest was the most urgent part at the time, but it wasn't-" She sighed and took a breath. "If the dream was a sentence in a story, the emphasis wasn't on you being arrested; it was on you meeting the prince. That still happened."
It was conversations like this that reminded them both that despite everything, they weren't the same as the figures beyond the windows of the tearoom, drifting home from work or out to it.
"What do I do about it, Morgana?" Merlin forced down his frustration. "The book is not optional; the book is in the castle and so is the prince."
"I'm not sure," Morgana shook her head, looking at him as she did when she was worried about him. He hated that look. "Come on, it's near dark. Let's head back."
Merlin nodded, tugging his cap on as they left.
***
Chapter: because we are both idiots, I will be your lying liar for today
Rating: teen, light R, thus far mainly for adult themes and use of bad language
Spoilers: none, completely AU.
Word count: ~4700 (this chapter)
Summary: Merlin/Arthur, Morgana/Gwen. 19th century AU in which Camelot is on the edge of industrialisation, Merlin is a pick-pocket, Morgana writes Penny Dreadfuls and Arthur has no idea what he's getting into. This chapter: Morgana temporarily kicks out Merlin, Will appears, Merlin tries to get on with some hard work and even means it for a while, Arthur is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
Previous chapters: one
Special thanks to hariboo_smirks for the hand holding and shiny new semi friends only banner.
***
"So what you're saying," Morgana's eyes glinted dangerously, "is that because I'm not in a pleasant mood with you, I must be losing the lining of an organ?"
Merlin grimaced and raised a hand to fend off mental images, but it was too late: Morgana had been reading anatomy books to more realistically slaughter fictional playthings and had so used illustrations against him for years.
"You know how we had that talk when we moved in where I said I wasn't remotely interested in the female body except as an artistic object and you didn't kill me? Still true."
"Either sit down and draw illustrations," Morgana positively hissed, click-click-clacking away on the typewriter, "or get out and rob someone deserving."
Merlin chose the latter.
*
"My friend, it was vicious. And now Morgana's all pissed because it's that time of the month and she has to write some crappy romance thing, so she can't do what she usually does with stomach ache and hang some character by their own guts on a window frame -"
Merlin glared at the still-laughing and deeply insensitive Will and threw the core of his lifted apple at him.
Will held up his hands in surrender and brushed the bits of apple from his shirt. "Sorry, sorry, mate. Honest. I'm-"
Merlin rolled his eyes and waited for him to finish laughing. They were lounging in an alley off the market square, taking their own version of a lunch hour.
"You done yet?" Merlin leveled a glare at Will as he fell silent.
He nodded. "I can't have you throwing the rubbish at me - I just changed this shirt yesterday." Will took a bronze coin from his pocket and began rippling it across and through his knuckles. "Thought Morgana's rubbish always had mooning girls in it, anyway?"
Merlin butted his shoulder against Will's and deftly plucked the coin from his hand. "It does, but they're usually silly bints with long, blond hair that die tragic, gruesome deaths they could've avoided by wearing a thicker coat or something. And I'm going to pretend you meant 'mooning' as in 'swooning', really, I am."
"And they're never, ever based on you, not even a little bit," Will nodded with a very serious expression.
"Good. Keep practicing that," Merlin replied flatly. "I'll even believe you soon."
Will sent him a toothy grin and nodded back to the market. "We going back in?"
"You go ahead," Merlin shook his head and pushed off of the wall, flicking the coin back to Will. "I've got some sketches to do for Morgana and a lift to start thinking about."
Will gave him a speculative look. "You know that sounded nearly like real work, right?"
"I know," Merlin said mournfully. "It's Morgana. She's a bad influence."
"And scary like the gates of hell, which I'm not," Will retorted, grinning. "Go on then, get to it."
Making a face at Will's shooing motions and the mocking way he tipped his cap at him, Merlin wandered off in the direction of the castle.
*
Morgana stared at the blank paper. As unpleasant hints of sounds began to leak through the floorboards from Sophia's upstairs, she groaned and gave up. Clearly sitting in the flat was only going to result in mourning both a quiet morning and that she couldn't write bloody, gruesome deaths for prostitutes, their customers and opium addicts. She gathered a jacket and a cap, slipping out of the door with some scraps of paper and a pencil in her jacket pocket.
Besides, the perceptive bastard she lived with owed her a cup of tea for existing, much like the rest of the world did on the day of the month when her stomach decided to make her life hell.
A hiss stopped her on the stairwell and she realised she'd nearly run straight into Sophia.
The madam gave her a look up and down with her petite, pretty little features, smeared - as always - with too much in the way of rouge and powder. Her clothes had been fine, but were designed for the noble Sophia had once been and not for the rough work she now applied herself to, resulting in wear and fraying that the dainty whore had no expertise in fixing. It didn't help that she was partaking of her own merchandise - Morgana was glad not to have actually run into her in case the shorter woman's bones were every bit as sharp as they looked.
"You are in my way." An epithet similar to scum was tacked on at the end unsaid. Sophia always had that reaction: she seemed to see Morgana as some strange hybrid creature in her rough clothes, and once it had been established that Morgana was beyond her feminine wiles, she'd really disliked her.
"Oh, I'm sorry, m'lady," Morgana inclined her head in a near-bow as a boy would on meeting a duchess, laying on her accent thick in the process. "It's just that I wouldn't want to disturb ye by not paying m' proper respects an' all."
Sophia sniffed the air disdainfully, looked at somewhere over Morgana's shoulder and continued down the stairs. Morgana briefly considered acting on the urge to help her with a firm shove but decided the inevitable screaming and moaning and death threats just weren't worth it.
*
There were two main squares in Camelot and as far as Merlin was concerned, they said everything one needed to know about the place. One was the market square right in the middle of the Lower City, a more recent and shabbier addition, a space that hadn't so much been marked off as had grown into what it was by the building up and falling down of slum housing. The square in front of the castle gates was the opposite: a clean, marked off sector of space complete with guards, tourists and stalls pushed to the side in an embarrassed way. Merlin knew that they sold little of use and robbed people more thoroughly than he could conscience in his honest-to-God professional thievery. There were probably as many people in the same size of square, but where the market was a never-ending mass of shouting, movement and general disregard for authority, the castle square was something between a church, a library and what Merlin thought the room outside a schoolmaster's office would feel like.
Merlin set up among the artists in the square in front of the gate to the castle. The castle itself was an impressive sort of fortress, if you went in for that kind of blocky, you shalt never prevail against me thing. Merlin preferred something with a bit more grace, some twisting towers that would never stand against a breeze and all of the nonsense that Morgana liked when he drew it for her and the hell of it. He'd done a few drawings particularly for her: all fairies and foreign lands they'd read about in books, illustrations for wicked children's stories Merlin loved but knew she'd never get published while fat little cupids and smiling middle class blonds were in fashion. He sighed and put away the sketch of a Camelot among mists and forests he hadn't meant to draw, tracing the basic outline of the castle onto the back of the sheet quickly and getting on with what he reminded himself was going to earn his food for the next week.
He was stretching out after a few hours when an uncertain voice interrupted him.
"Oh, hello, I was wondering, are you-"
Merlin lifted his head and blinked at the couple. He swept off his cap and stood in one smooth motion with a slight bow as she giggled and he looked around, slightly embarrassed. "What can I help you with, good sir?"
The girl giggled again. Merlin shot her a bright and slightly slack grin, tilting his head in a way intended to convince that he wasn't too bright. Morgana had always liked when he practiced this bit; it gave her a chance to say that he didn't have to try very hard to be a convincing idiot.
"Well," the young man seemed to have summoned some courage, "we were wondering if you were drawing portraits. I'd like one of my wife, a small one, to put in a locket or something like that."
That explained it. Not only were they tourists, they were on a honeymoon. Or at least Merlin hoped that was why 'wife' sounded so very awkward on the man's tongue.
"Hmm," Merlin bit his lip somewhat theatrically and looked upwards, pretending to think. He held that pose for a few seconds - long enough for the impatient man to get more impatient - and took a step forward, tugging the man's arm. "I'm not - I'm on a commission from my lady. But if you see-"
It wasn't even a lie, he thought smugly. Merlin turned him with a hand on his upper arm and pointed to a very good street artist at the top of the line. "He's very good, though. And very reasonable."
The couple thanked the simple boy immensely - and speaking quite slowly - before hurrying away. Merlin shook his head, tugged his cap back on and hunched back over the sketch of Camelot. It was coming along quite well - add a colourful banner there, a horse there, maybe a Prince-Beginning-With-P sitting on a unicorn and it would be perfect for Morgana's next serial.
"My, aren't you all kinds of helpful?"
"Can I help you?" Merlin looked up and blinked. "Because I'm on a commission, not for hire, I'm afraid."
"What, no 'good sir'? Really, that's quite remiss of you."
Maybe this one just waggled his eyebrows at all people and inanimate objects. He had the look of someone with a flexible face. And good bone structure, but Merlin didn't really think he should be noticing that.
Letting out a breath slowly and fixing his eyes on his sheet, Merlin turned and took off his cap, looking up with a grin. "Does this better suit His Majesty? Will His Majesty be going away? Pray, please say he will."
And then, because Merlin's luck was special that way, the red shirt shook his head and Merlin realised that he'd convinced yet another person he was simple. He didn't mind that if he meant to do it. "Actually, it's 'your Highness' when one is addressing the prince."
"Sure you are," Merlin scoffed, rolling his eyes and gesturing to the chancer's clothes. "The prince always walks around out of armour without bully boys or bobbies. His father's really lax about his son's life like that, as all Camelot knows from his extensive tours of the city." Merlin gestured to the many guards on the castle door, mentally pointing to the fact that the prince hadn't been seen in public since the attempt on his life at his fifteenth birthday parade and had spent the previous three years at some university further south. That would shut this one up. Thinking about how he should have just stayed home and put up with Morgana and her cramps, Merlin sat down and picked up his half-finished sketches.
"You know, that's really quite good. I didn't expect that of an idiot."
The voice was quite low and, frankly, impolitely close to his ear. Merlin's spine went rigid, his muscles tensed and he raised his chin. A heavy hand on his shoulder - seriously, was the man born of an ox or something? It'd explain him being such a boor - had Merlin's hand reaching surreptitiously for his ankle.
"What have you got there?" Merlin opened his mouth to object in the most innocent of fashions. "Don't pretend you weren't."
Really, it wasn't fair of the blond to be taking a tone with him and especially not the delicately long-suffering kind that only Morgana had earned a right to use. Firstly, they'd just met. Secondly, Merlin wasn't sure if they were going to try to kill each other yet.
"It's a knife. A really sharp one," Merlin answered honestly. Flicking his eyes to the very close blue ones attached to the chin hovering above his shoulder, Merlin caught an incidental view of the hand on his shoulder and fought the urge to wince when the sun glanced off the gold ring there. He swallowed and looked back at the wall in front. He swallowed again and looked back at the ring quickly. It was definitely real gold. It was definitely on a hand with callouses in places that would make sense if the owner of the hand happened to spend time learning how to use a sword, even though the knights were stupid and kind of backward that way.
"You know," Merlin said, trying quite hard not to sound either weak or, god forbid, breathless, "if the crown prince happened to be out here with nothing but the thin shirt on his back-" Merlin had noticed the thinness of the material out of charitable concern. His powers of observation were unparalleled, "-it wouldn't be the um, smartest of things."
Oh, God, now the chancer was grinning.
"No," came the bland answer, the blond giving Merlin a wary but wickedly bright look, "it really wouldn't. And he certainly wouldn't be keeping company with an insubordinate thief surprisingly good at pretending to be an artist."
The blond mop of hair beside Merlin mercifully moved back - he hadn't seriously tried to put a bit of dirt through it and scruff it up, Merlin thought incredulously, because that would be just bloody typical. Unfortunately, humming quietly under his breath, the man crouched down and tilted his head, rifling through the unfinished sketches with an entitled air about him that had Merlin counting backwards from ten in irritation. He got to seven. "Do you mind?!"
A blond eyebrow was delicately raised as Merlin carefully but quickly slipped the sheets from under the hmming and ahhing figure next to him.
"I thought all artists enjoyed being praised," came the hint of a question in his answer, along with a tilt of the blond's head and a mild frown - just one little line between eyebrows. Merlin distracted himself by thinking that he had to maintain those eyebrows and that meant that he was vain, obviously, and that meant he was destined to be horrible and quite possibly evil, if not already. He conveniently forgot the fact that Morgana took tiny little torture instruments to her eyebrows on a regular basis and was the furthest thing from vain that lived.
"Yes," Merlin snapped back, turning his head towards the blond's and glaring. "But they're not finished yet."
"Funny," the blond traced a fingertip down the line that would be the edge of a a turret, "all the artists I know are happy to show unfinished work. And that was neatly done- not a single tear, for all you grabbed at them."
"It's all about timing," Merlin retorted, illustrating said timing again when the man - who he had still not accepted was the actual crown prince because there was a slim chance he wasn't, there really was - lifted his fingertip for a second. Sliding the drawings into his bag, Merlin blinked and stood, the blond standing slowly as he did. "Well, it was really nice and creepy to meet you, but I really have to be going."
"What, gotten the angles of the castle you need?"
Merlin paused, looking back and noting the total absence of the playful tone from before. He shrugged his satchel on, raised his chin and enacted Lessons Learned in the Lower City #5: if you can, lie with the truth. "I work for Feyran O'Day's publishers as an illustrator. If you want to check up on that, please go ahead, good sir."
For some reason, the blond thought that this was the most amusing thing in the history of amusing things, Camelot and quite possibly the human race. Merlin cast an exasperated glance at the sky and glared. He did not put his hands on his hips like a Lower City washing woman, but he was sorely tempted.
And he placed exactly what had been bothering him about this stupid, stupid man.
"You hide it well, my friend, but I know what you are," Merlin grinned as the man stopped laughing and glanced around quickly, "you're a bobby. Go bother some other penniless artist unless you're looking for a picture."
Apparently, this wasn't quite the same height of comedy as Merlin's previous statement, but the blond still struggled to contain a grin at the sheer hilarity Merlin was clearly missing.
"I don't know if friend is the appropriate word," the stranger replied, expression pensive, "after all, you did consider stabbing me."
"Not seriously," Merlin protested, frowning, "I would have waited until you'd tried to stab me. I've been raised to be polite."
"I never would have guessed," the blond said incredulously, shaking his head and lightly hitting Merlin's upper arm. He left Merlin open-mouthed and staring over his own shoulder because apparently, he was taking Merlin's somewhat jesting order to bother another artist seriously.
Merlin looked between the entrance to the street that would take him home and the blond, currently having a discussion about Renaissance brush techniques with an old man that Merlin knew would rob him blind the second he wasn't looking.
He was an idiot and Morgana was going to call him that and it wasn't going to be any kind of fun.
*
Morgana settled in a teashop on the edge of the upper city, tugging out some papers and scribbling. Merlin was being annoyingly elusive, but she'd just gotten an idea for the disaster in the making that Tauron wanted her to pen. She was almost tempted to ask for a new pseudonym. Feyran O'Day had a long and bloody career involving amateur amputations, mutilation, serial killers, gory battles and supernatural fiends. He couldn't be seen to be writing crappy romance novels about princes and flower girls and she really wished she'd never said that, because now it had to be a flower girl.
She flicked through the society pages of the paper and narrowed her eyes, catching sight of a name in the bottom corner.
It had just the right edge of pompous bastard worthy of mocking, it was true.
And here was the proof right in front of her that people actually used it. Occasionally. When they felt like cursing their progeny.
It even started with P.
She set about scribbling with a slightly vicious glint in her eye.
*
The blond looked up as Merlin awkwardly cleared his throat, standing beside them.
"Yes?"
And there was that bloody eyebrow again, except this time there was a warning undertone in the voice.
"I forgot to tell you something."
Merlin trotted out his excuse like the lame horse it was. It was the other reason he preferred to twist the truth or do the kind of thieving that only required running away very quickly: truth be told, he was a terrible liar.
The man he was helping for reasons he didn't even want to think about stood with a muttered apology and hand on the upper arm to the old man, who glared at Merlin when the blond wasn't looking. Merlin shot him one back, one that hopefully conveyed, I'm sorry I'm ruining what must be a truly tragic version of how you lost your leg, because it was really serving King and Country and nothing to do with an infected bite from a guard dog.
A hand on his arm roughly jerked him to stand a few metres away in front of the also-glaring blond. Really, it was a whole glaring-based scenario.
"What."
Merlin looked up from his feet. "I'm reporting a crime, officer. Isn't that what you do?"
"In a manner of speaking," the blond replied in a bored tone, as if Merlin were dashing some great plan just by existing. "Time, place, nature of the offence?"
"Now, over there, you were wearing a ring when you stopped speaking to me," Merlin answered, watching the man's eyes widen. To his credit - he wasn't a complete amateur, at least, Merlin thought - the man didn't throttle him, shout or obviously feel for the ring on his finger.
"So you're not a thief, but you can spot an act of thievery from ten paces that I can't see at two." His voice was laden with disbelief, but he was at least looking at Merlin rather than all the fascinating places Merlin assumed he'd rather be.
"I have diversified interests. Doesn't everyone these days?" Merlin retorted, then decided he was bored of playing this how the blond wanted to play it. Brushing past him, he hissed, "follow my lead."
The man blinked and followed, clearing unamused by the turn events had taken but able to do little else.
"So, Silas," Merlin grinned and knelt. "The lordling here wants me to do a fresco, but he wants you to deal with the colour." Merlin threw the blond a look over the old thief's shoulder. "Apparently my brush strokes are nothing compared to yours."
There was a somewhat gratifying widening of eyes and fake coughing.
"Really, my lord?"
If Silas had been anything less than obsequious before, he set about making it up to his supposed-patron in style. The blond entertained him with a tale of a simply tragic decline in fortunes in his family, an utterly divine church that had fallen into a state of disrepair and how it wounded the family to see the walls so bare.
Merlin nodded over his shoulder and the blond sighed dramatically. "If only we had such funds to restore it. But alas, another time." Standing, he nodded to Merlin. "Perhaps another generation, even!"
Merlin put a hand under his elbow and levered him away before he went into Shakespearean raptures as Silas gaped and asked half-questions about whether or not they were hiring him. "Very good, but save the rest for whatever production you put on at whatever university your daddy sends you to."
In the first street off of the square, the blond smirked and held out his hand. Merlin lightly smacked it and when he took his hand away after an exactly appropriate length of time, the ring was sitting in the other man's palm.
"I appear to be gaining an education exactly where I am," he replied with a raise of an eyebrow, "whether I look for it or not." He hesitated, beginning to turn to walk away but paused. "Thank you."
"Nothing to it," Merlin rolled his eyes and then grinned. He'd never see him again anyway. "Try being smarter when you're bored - Arthur."
Merlin smirked as he walked away, turning his back on the crown prince of Camelot and congratulating himself for getting that surprised widening of eyes out of him not once, but twice.
*
He ran into Morgana the fourth turn after leaving the square.
"I couldn't stand the noise-" she drew the sky a black look and Merlin made an ahh sound of understanding, "so I came to look for you. Obviously the last place I was going to look was where you were supposed to be." She looked at him suspiciously. "Where have you been?"
Merlin considered briefly that Morgana would be a wonderful mother if she ever chose to be, having already mastered both the psychic instinct and the you've been up to something, I just don't know what yet tone.
"Drawing sketches," Merlin answered as quickly as he could, fumbling in his bag for the sketches as proof and not to avoid meeting her eyes at all.
Morgana let out a half-proud, half-horrified little gasp. "Merlin Emrys, you will buy me a cup of tea in this little establishment right here and you will tell me everything."
It was lucky they were only approximately as poor as their lodgings: Merlin suspected that Morgana lived there largely so she could dress how she liked and not have it remarked upon be anyone of greater note than Sophia the Whore. They were seated with a look from the lady that softened when they paid for their drinks before sitting down.
Morgana and Merlin traded looks at that, foregoing the usual it's you - you're dressed like a boy, it's you - you look like a fairy argument for the sake of the epic drama of Merlin's day. He was tempted to try not to tell her, but she was doing that tapping thing on the side of the rather fragile tea cup again and that was never a good sign.
"You were helpful to tourists?" There was a polite snort of disbelief.
Merlin grimaced.
"How much."
He winced and looked intently at his cup. "Not much. He was a bit annoying, but I had a good spot in the sun. I didn't want him coming back and getting me kicked off the square."
"And that way he can just kick himself for dropping it somewhere," Morgana nodded, probably filing that away for the life of crime she was convinced would one day be hers.
On his description of the prince - perhaps a little detailed, on reflection - Morgana opened her eyes very wide before laughing until she almost cried. Straightening and looking at him as if saying that never happened, as all breaches of perfect dignity never happened to Morgana, she looked at him intently. "Do you think he's a prat? Even though he's physically attractive in a blond way, I'll grant."
"Insufferable," Merlin nodded, knowing better than to break solidarity on this.
"So what stupid things did you or he say next?"
"Come on, have more faith in me than that," Merlin teased, grinning. Morgana shook her head slowly. "I don't get more faith than Prince Prat? I'm touched."
"Just get on with it," Morgana retorted but grinned.
He resignedly recounted the part where he gave the prince her pseudonym. "Which was of course a filthy lie," she broke in, "but I'm sure you were absolutely indignant in it."
"Actually, it's perfectly true, and that's what he'll hear if ever he should ask about me. Which I doubt and hope he doesn't, of course," Merlin tacked on quickly, trying to recover what had been a perfect smirk before continuing.
"So then I walked away, he walked away, I met you, we came in here-"
"Yes, yes, I know that part," Morgana rolled her eyes, expression turning serious after a quick flash of a grin.
"What?" Merlin asked with a frown. He reached across the table and tapped the back of her hand lightly. "It's fine, you know. Nothing's going to come of it."
"Maybe not, no," Morgana said quietly, looking at the table and then catching his hand tightly, "but maybe something. What does it mean when we thwart something I dream and then it happens anyway?"
Merlin shook his head and looked around, thankful that the noise in the small tearoom covered their conversation and glad it wasn't one of the conversations where they shouted at each other. "You saw- you dreamed that they would arrest me in the flat. I was out. They didn't."
"You still met the prince," Morgana shook her head, leaning forward. "The arrest was the most urgent part at the time, but it wasn't-" She sighed and took a breath. "If the dream was a sentence in a story, the emphasis wasn't on you being arrested; it was on you meeting the prince. That still happened."
It was conversations like this that reminded them both that despite everything, they weren't the same as the figures beyond the windows of the tearoom, drifting home from work or out to it.
"What do I do about it, Morgana?" Merlin forced down his frustration. "The book is not optional; the book is in the castle and so is the prince."
"I'm not sure," Morgana shook her head, looking at him as she did when she was worried about him. He hated that look. "Come on, it's near dark. Let's head back."
Merlin nodded, tugging his cap on as they left.
***