Fic: there are only walls to hold me here

[little_giddy]

Title: there are only walls to hold me here
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: entire first series
Warning: language
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur (assumes established relationship)
Summary: Merlin felt his stomach lurch when he carefully and deliberately said, "Lad, I don't think I can save the arm." Not a tag but set a few months after 1x13.

Comments

[stealingpennies]

Really, really enjoyed this fic. I liked the overall set-up and the swift transitions from humour to angst, the fact that the words said are not always the same as things meant. (Something that works very well in the series itself.) Also loved the sense that Merlin is often perched on the edge of a cliff with his powers and uses them at a cost.
Some favourite lines/phrases:
this was just where the speech Merlin had prepared for the Pratigal Son's return started
Apparently opening Arthur's door from the inside often enough had transfered some of his powers of insensitivity.
No, it really wasn't the end of everything, just a close and abrasive brush against it, one that filled his ears with a funny roaring noise and made whatever force had been stopping his hands from shaking sadly remiss in its duties. No, it wasn't the end of everything, but what it'd do to Arthur to come through it made something in his chest contract painfully and turned his vision white.
He took a shuddering breath, feeling his heartbeat speed up in a reassuringly human way, and reached over the space in the bed to put a fingertip on Arthur's cheekbone like the sap he was. It hadn't felt so breakable - they hadn't felt so breakable - since the first time he'd reached over like this, when the wrong word and the wrong pressure in the wrong grip around their wrists could have broken it all.

[little_giddy]

Thank you very, very much! I'm incredibly flattered. You picked out things in the fic that I love in the show, which is... well, incredibly flattering. Sorry, I'm not explaining very well, but thanks!