Part One -- Midwestern Running
Master Post
----
Arthur gets jostled by the other boys as they race to the drinking fountain. It’s a breezy afternoon in May on their very last run of his junior year, and they are eager to get out and into the freedom of summer. He’s not really paying attention to Coach du Lac-no-too wound up in the sunlight and the somewhat coy glances Morgan keeps casting in his direction by the fountain. Her looks are less about attraction and more about the promise of mischief later, a look that he has come to know and grow fond of during their long prepubescent summer days. And the promise speaks of the brief and unrelenting summer ahead, Arthur’s last summer before graduation, and all the things that come with it: the sweltering heat and the underage parties and college applications. And the running. Of course.
The men’s team captain, Leon, graduates in a week and after he steps down, Arthur will become the new team captain. Arthur has wanted from the very first day of freshmen year to become the senior captain. He loves running, and his father loves running, and he needs running to get into college. So Arthur knows that this summer his evenings will be filled with friends and house parties and his days filled with hours put into his father’s shop to help make the bills and save a little for college. The mornings will be devoted to his running and all day, every hour, he will think about what he should eat and how many hours he should sleep, and what it will be like to cross the finish line in October as the state cross country champion.
“All right, I expect you to continue running on your own this summer. That means you, freshmen. You don’t get a break,” du Lac says, tapping his clipboard. “Has every one signed up for the e-mail list so you guys can organize group runs?”
There’s a murmur of consent and various hands reaching for the sign-up sheet. A swarm of hugs and high fives happen around Arthur, and he finds himself clapping hands with one of his best friends, Zach, before being gathered up into a huddle around Leon to bid him farewell from high school, cheering, “NUMBER ONE! NUMBER ONE! NUMBER ONE! NUMBER ONE!” over and over.
When the crowd breaks, the captain emerges to find Arthur. He’s as tall as Arthur but broader and wraps his long hair back in a bandana that manages to be cool just on the left side of hippy. He wraps his arm around Arthur’s shoulder and hustles him close. “You’ve got tough shoes to fill, punk. Do you think you can handle it?”
Arthur laughs, and in this moment he feels hot and solid but also so light he could float to the tops of the trees. “You’re just afraid I’ll outshine you, Leon,” he boasts, swaggering slightly under the captain’s arm.
Leon laughs, bats him on the head. “Pendragon, you better learn the difference between fame and infamy. You’re still just the prince until I walk across the stage for my diploma. Capiche?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Arthur snorts. “Capiche.”
Behind them, Zach starts to yell, “CAPICHE YOU MOTHER FUCKERS. WE’RE THE X-DOUBLE-C MAFIAAAAA,” tearing off his shirt to wave above his head like in the rodeo. “MAFIA! MAFIA! MAFIA!” He chants and lets loose the shirt into the air. The three of them watch it soar in slow motion, like an elegant kite rippling in the air, the force of gravity bringing it down to land on-
“Oh shit!” Zach yells, grabbing Arthur by the arm before sprinting. “Run! Run!”
Arthur stumbles, clutching to Zach’s calf as they both come to a crash with Morgan hot on their heels.
“How dare you throw your nasty-ass shirt on my head!” she screeches, whipping them both with it.
Arthur rolls onto his back and brings his arms protectively over his face. “I didn’t-don’t hit me! It was Zach! Zach’s shirt!”
His pleas only cause her to whip harder. “Ugh! You juvenile jerk offs!”
And in the damp spring mud and the hot summer air, this is how Arthur’s junior year comes to a close: Zach laughing riotously beside him taunting the women’s fastest runner into a game of tag across the parking lot.
----
But Arthur’s almost-perfect summer has one foe. By the last day of school, students and teachers alike have mentally checked out. They spend the period handing back left-over assignments and clearing out lockers. A frustrated Arthur-half-ready to dump all of his belongings in the trash for the sake of not having to lug it home-gets stopped by Coach du Lac in the hall.
“Pendragon, just the man I was looking for. Follow me please,” he says. Arthur dumps his pile of accumulated papers back into his locker with relief and follows the man down the hall.
In addition to coaching cross country, du Lac teaches senior English and a course on The American Short Story. In an otherwise dying department, his classes thrive with fawning girls. It must be the hair, Arthur thinks as he inspects the artfully swept back style. Morgan and her friends Ashley and Leah can sometimes be overheard admiring du Lac when he leads speedwork, moaning over his legs and his butt when he runs. Personally, Arthur doesn’t see it, sparing one rapid glance at du Lac before staring at his shoes. Definitely not.
du Lac leads them down the stairs and into the main offices. Arthur has only ever stepped in here to use the PA for cross country announcements, and frowns when he gets lead towards the guidance counselor.
“Um, Coach? Am I in trouble?”
“Oh, not you, Pendragon,” du Lac responds, opening the door and ushering him inside.
Ms. Smith greets them when they enter, sitting in a straight-backed but padded chair designed to make the students feel welcomed and reassured. She wears black, thick-rimmed glasses with tiny studs in the side and more casual clothes, her curly hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. For the most part, Arthur likes her if only because he has only ever interacted with her once or twice, and the team takes a general interest in her because of her relationship with Coach du Lac.
Arthur sits himself in the only other chair in the room next to her and shifts hesitantly. du Lac checks his watch twice, and Ms. Smith frowns.
“Well, the other student is running a little late,” she says in mild irritation, “but I think we can get started without him.” She folds her hands in her lap and smiles in Arthur’s direction. It’s not a friendly smile, Arthur decides, but maybe more a grimace. “Are you aware of a Merlin Emrys?”
“Uh, yes,” he responds. “I know of him.”
“Well, Mr. du Lac and I were discussing that maybe you could help him this summer. He’s behind in his classes and we think it’d be beneficial to him if he had help.”
Arthur blanches. Merlin Emrys? The kid who failed phys ed and cuts chemistry twice a week? Arthur’s heard rumors of him but has never actually interacted with him. All he knows is Merlin Emrys is the hick stoner who lives in a hut in the woods, wearing ratty flannel and obscure, uncool band t-shirts-also that he drools during class and leaves it for Arthur to find on his desk whenever they switch classrooms.
“Oh I don’t know,” he protests. “I’m going to be really busy this summer working in my dad’s shop, so…”
“Mr. du Lac tells me you’re hoping to get a running scholarship to cover your tuition costs after graduation.”
“Yes?”
“Well, I think this would be a good opportunity for you to build up your résumé for when you start applying next year,” Ms. Smith says.
“Um, well-”
“Everyone knows you’re talented Arthur,” she interrupts, “but when a team has to choose between you and some other runner of equal ability, they’re going to look at what else you have to offer to the team and to the school. du Lac says you’ll be the men’s captain in the fall, and I think this experience will help you prepare.”
“She’s right,” du Lac interjects. “This could be really good experience for you and will definitely influence your personal recommendations.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, “but I don’t see how tutoring some wannabe drop-out will help my running, Coach. I get average grades at best anyway.”
“Oh no,” du Lac says. “You won’t be tutoring him. You’ll be helping him prep for the fall cross country season.”
Something in Arthur’s stomach spasms as if a hand has wrenched a fist around his gut. “What?” he croaks.
Ms. Smith pats him on the shoulder. “Merlin’s teachers have struggled to find ways of motivating him. We think putting him in a team environment might help.”
“You mean forcing him.”
du Lac shifts a little uncomfortably, as if he isn’t completely onboard with this plan. After all, it is his team in question. “We’ll see how it goes this summer. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do this, Arthur. You’re really passionate about your running.”
And that’s what seals Arthur’s fate. He is passionate about his running, and if du Lac forces this Emrys kid onto anyone else, Arthur wouldn’t trust him to not screw up the team. After all, Arthur placed third last year in the state championships and has spent his whole life under his father’s direction running in junior regional competitions. “Does he know about this yet?”
The two teachers glance at each other before Ms. Smith half-smiles half-grimaces again. “We’re working on it,” she says.
----
du Lac calls him the first week of summer to inform him that Merlin can meet him anytime next week. Arthur shrugs into the phone and decides they might as well start on a Monday. He sits with his phone, peering out the window at the sunshine and sighs, reminding himself it will only cost him an hour each day.
“Is there anything you want him to bring?” du Lac asks.
“I dunno. Shoes. And no flannel. Tell him to meet me at my house at seven.” He picks at the dirt on the bottom of his shoes.
“He tells me he can’t meet before 11. It’s the only time he can get a ride into town.”
“I prefer to run earlier in the morning.”
“There’s a reason Leon keeps calling you Prince Arthur, isn’t there?” du Lac says. “I’m not here to hold your hand through this whole process. You’re helping him out so you need to communicate with him. Here’s his number so you can work something out yourself.” He adds a little wryly, “Enjoy your summer, Pendragon.”
Out of pettiness, Arthur refuses to call Merlin. “Let him have his way,” he snipes at his reflection in the mirror that afternoon. He regrets it when three days later he ends up sitting at his stoop at 11, irritated that his schedule has been interrupted. Down the street, he sees the grill of a car and almost hopes it’s the stupid loser. After all, ‘the sooner you do start, the sooner it’s done,’ his father says when ordering Arthur to do his chores.
Instead, it’s Gaius’s familiar Buick puttering down the road coming into work. Arthur’s father, Uther, runs a privately owned mechanic garage attached to their house called Camelot Repairs. Arthur despairs over the name. There is nothing stately about monkey suits and grease, especially not in a town like Tadita with only 5,000 people.
It’s not that Arthur hates the shop exactly. The jokes about his name get old, but his dad puts in an honest day’s work, and everyone in the town comes to him whenever they have a problem. Even Arthur has gotten pretty good at doing the simple tasks like oil changes and tire rotations so he can help out and make some pocket cash. There’s pride in this little business Uther built from the ground up-Arthur won’t deny that-but in the larger world it doesn’t mean much, and Arthur looks eagerly ahead to college.
Arthur argues out loud that leaving means getting out of Tadita, a small unknown cow-town at the edge of the state, even if he’s unsure about what to study in college. When people ask after his plans, he presses his lips into a thin line and says, “I don’t know yet. I do admire my father’s entrepreneurship. Maybe I’ll go into business studies like the old man.” Uther’s friends chortle and pat him on the back; his teachers encourage him for having strong goals. Gaius, the elderly but sharp-minded man who does Uther’s office work, raises an eyebrow, and his lips curve into the shadow of a smirk. Arthur stops parroting his rehearsed answers around him.
He tries not to talk about it with his father. Sometimes Arthur thinks Uther isn’t really a man anymore. Instead he is a walking husk of regret: regret over Arthur’s mother, regret over not being a more available parent, for not knowing how to cook properly or do laundry without losing the socks. They never talk about these things ever. Instead Uther stalks the house silently, a lion in a cage, and even if Arthur thinks he’s wrong, Uther is always, always right.
They discuss it once in the kitchen while Arthur hovers over the stove. Uther sits at the peninsula with a ledger and his old, brittle carbon copy, a pen in one hand and a tumbler of whiskey to his left. “Do you know what you plan on studying after you graduate high school?”
Arthur stirs the pot once and then twice, testing the noodles. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“You must have some sort of an idea.”
“Lots of people go in undecided, Dad.”
Uther sips at his drink, watching the liquid slosh against the sides as he stirs it slowly for a long moment. “I didn’t know either. Now look at where I am.”
Around other people Arthur says he wants to leave Tadita-it’s too small for a big man like him. To himself he knows he wants to leave his father.
From inside the garage, Arthur can hear Uther’s low tones as he prices a repair for a customer. Though he can’t see the man, he can imagine the way he stands with his feet at shoulder’s width apart, arms crossed over his chest or maybe holding a catalog for the customer to look at. Arthur tries to imagine himself twenty years from now in the same position. Then he draws his knees to his chest and watches the approaching car crawl down the street.
When Gaius pulls up the driveway, Arthur is surprised to see he has a passenger, an unruly haired teenager sitting in the front seat. “Good morning, Arthur,” Gaius says, exiting the car. “I’m sure you know my nephew, Merlin.”
Arthur gapes a little and can’t help but exclaim, “Merlin is your nephew?”
Gaius quirks an eyebrow heavenward and wears a put-upon expression. “Indeed,” he says before entering the garage.
Merlin rolls his eyes and clambers out, leaning against the hood of the car with a sour expression. He glares at the sun as if unused to it, and settles for staring absently somewhere to Arthur’s left.
“You know you can’t smoke pot when you’re on the team,” Arthur blurts out, his gaze catching on Merlin’s ugly hemp bracelet around his bony wrist. It’s not really a proper introduction and he winces internally, though it is a valid point.
“God, you’re a real dick,” the boy says and argues, “I don’t do pot.” He pauses, flicking some invisible fuzz off of his ratty shirt, thankfully not flannel, and adds, “Often.” He grins stupidly as if he thinks he’s clever.
Arthur exhales a slow breath and remembers what du Lac said about scholarships and leadership. “All right, let’s head over to the track then.”
Merlin doesn’t budge and folds his arms over his chest. “Can we just say we ran? I’m certain you don’t want to do this anymore than I do.”
It’s a tempting offer, but Arthur’s stubborn and likes to think true to his word. “No, we’re going to run. I actually enjoy it, and I heard that if you don’t do this, they’ll flunk you and keep you an extra year.”
“They can’t actually do that, you know. Are you seriously that gullible?”
“Are you seriously this lazy? We’ll run a mile or something, tops. Work you into it. Though in your shape, I don’t know if three months is enough time to get you to run even two miles.”
Merlin glowers and balls his hands into fists. It’s laughable really. He’s so scrawny and ungainly that the force of his punch would feel like wind on a breezy day. He takes two angry steps forward and stumbles over his feet, his face growing hot.
Arthur bursts out laughing. “Riiiiight. Not a stoner. I doubt you’ll even be able to run three yards without scraping your face up. Might even be an improvement.”
“Fuck you,” Merlin retorts.
“No,” Arthur responds cheerily. “Because if you don’t do this, you’ll be the one that’s fucked-right out of being able to graduate. Come on, I’d drive us to the track, but I wouldn’t want your sorry ass in my Camaro.”
For a moment, Merlin looks like he might actually hit Arthur this time. He inhales an angry breath before snarling, “No, you know what? Forget it. I don’t want to deal with some big-headed jock. I don’t even fucking care about graduating.” He spits on the sidewalk and stalks off down the road in the direction he arrived in.
Arthur lets him go, a little relieved and guilty. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or chase after him and settles for kicking a clump of grass half-heartedly before turning back towards the house. He stops when he sees Uther leaning against the open garage, his arms folded over his chest in his blue work shirt. His mouth goes dry.
“I want you to know that Gaius is a very old friend of mine,” his father says, standing erect like a statue. “And I want you to know that responsibility is never easy.”
Arthur nods, his hot-headedness grown cool under Uther’s stare. “Yes, Father,” he says.
“Don’t make me take that car from you, son.”
“Yes, Father.”
Uther spares one last pointed look at Merlin’s retreating figure before returning to the depth of the garage, and Arthur rolls his eyes a little and scowls before climbing into his run-down Camaro.
The car has no AC and it’s hot. All Arthur wants to do is grab Merlin and drive to the track as fast as possible. He even half-contemplates pretending to collect Merlin if he knew if father wouldn’t find out in the end. Arthur pulls out of the driveway in reluctant pursuit of the dejected figure, rolls the window down and forces himself to say, “I was only joking you know. I was going to give you a ride. I wasn’t serious, all right? Now will you get inside?”
Merlin snorts and looks at him, his blue eyes sharp and calculating as he continues to walk. “Do you always bully people? Are you a pervert who gets off on pushing people around?”
“What? No! What the hell?” Arthur says, his foot jerking on the brake pedal. The car rolls forward.
“You can’t order me around,” Merlin says.
“Technically, as captain I can,” he retorts, reveling a little at being able to say that.
“Then you can turn the car around and go home.”
Merlin keeps walking without looking at him, and Arthur throws his head back against the headrest in frustration. “Look, what is it that you want? Don’t you even care that you’re, like, going to fail out of high school? You need to do this.”
“What, I need to do this like you need to be a jack ass about everything?”
Arthur squeezes his eyes shut, hating himself just a little bit before saying, “Look, I’m sorry. Please get into the car,” in his most pleasant voice.
Merlin studies him a little before snorting again, and Arthur half-thinks he won’t comply. “Well, pull-over then,” he says finally, coming around the front of the Camaro. “But don’t think I’m doing this just because you asked nicely.”
Merlin hops in and leans on his fist sullenly. Arthur almost feels bad for goading him if he weren’t such an easy target. He turns on the radio and hesitates before reluctantly saying, “Go on and choose a station then.”
Merlin jabs at a random preset button and mutters, “All the stations are crap,” returning to lean on his fist. The rest of the ride is silent except for the Top 40 music and the wind from the open windows.
They arrive at the outdoor track and Arthur leads him to some arbitrary starting line. “I won’t have you run very far today. Just take a couple easy laps and I’ll watch your form and stuff.” He leaves him to climb up the bleachers, and then waves at him to start. He can see Merlin huff a little and imagines him wearing the same surly expression he’s worn all morning as he readies himself in some sort of mock-start up position like they do in the movies.
When Merlin starts running, Arthur fully expects to be able to ridicule everything about him: his flailing, erratic arms, his ungainliness. The thing, he realizes, is that despite Merlin’s penchant for laziness and his inability to walk two feet without tripping over something, he’s fast. For a moment, Arthur’s stunned by the way Merlin’s legs stretch out before him as he strips around the track. And perhaps his hair looks a little ridiculous as the wind whips through it, and his ears are hardly aerodynamic, but still, Arthur finds himself breathing along to the rhythm of Merlin’s footfalls, growing lightheaded and sun-bleached in the stands.
Merlin slows to a halt after a couple of minutes at the bottom of the bleachers. “Can I stop now?” he hollers up, clambering over the metal seats. He’s barely panting but a slight sheen of sweat has formed at the neck of his t-shirt.
“What?” Arthur asks.
“Can I stop? Now? You said, run the track. I ran the track.”
“What? No! How many laps did you do?”
Merlin lifts one eyebrow at him. “Weren’t you watching? I ran two laps.”
Arthur scoffs, adopting his most authoritative and demeaning tone in a feeble attempt to cover the fact that he actually hadn’t been counting. “Merlin, don’t tell me you’re tired already.”
“Hardly.” Merlin folds his harms over his chest and huffs.
And perhaps it’s something about Merlin that inspires Arthur to react childishly as he has done all morning, setting his hands on his hips as he sneers from his position two rows up. “Oh yeah, Prove it then,” he says.
Merlin stomps back down the bleachers and mutters, “Fine, I will.”
Arthur shakes his head and wonders if anyone else ever tried goading Merlin into doing something or if they just assumed he was incapable.
“Are you watching this time?” Merlin bellows. Without waiting, his legs kick out from under his body as he sprints around the track. Arthur fumbles for the stopwatch around his neck and resolves to focus on counting the laps this time.
After Merlin runs another five laps, it’s apparent how exhausted he’s become. His initial grace peters out into a clumsy wobble, and at every corner he turns to glare at Arthur over his shoulder. Each time his half-hearted trot devolves into walking, Arthur leaps up from his seat and yells, “Come on, you girly wimp! My Aunt Judy runs faster than you and she’s had both hips replaced!” By the end of the last lap, Merlin has his hands clutched to his side, and he collapses dramatically two feet from the start line.
Arthur stomps down the bleacher steps, scowling. He nudges forcefully at Merlin’s prone body as Merlin pants, “Arthur… please… no… more.” His bony fingers reach out to clutch at Arthur’s ankles, and Arthur, unmoved and heartless, glares down at him.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” he grunts, grimacing as he slides his hands under Merlin’s damp armpits to hoist him up. “You know you barely ran a mile and a half, right? And God, you reek.”
“How far do I have to go again?”
“A 5k, Merlin,” he says, swatting him across the head. “That’s 3.1 miles.”
“Nrgh,” Merlin groans and slides back down to the ground. His cheek presses into the rubber surface of the track, and when he lifts his head, black tiny polyurethane granules cling to his skin. “This is death. Why couldn’t they have just given me detention again?”
“The ‘again’ suggests detention stopped working on you.”
Merlin laughs weakly, still a little out of breath. “Yes, well. The goal is to get three detentions. Then you achieve in school suspension. Have you ever gotten in school, Arthur? All you do is sleep.”
For a moment, Arthur looks at him with a baffled expression and wants to say, ‘That’s what you call achievement?’ But then he remembers that this is Merlin, the kid renowned for cutting English to smoke pot down by the creek behind the school lot-that the whole reason they wound up together is that Merlin needs a little direction and Arthur needs to build up his résumé for scholarships with charity case losers.
Later, after Merlin has lolled about on the track and Arthur has demanded no less than seven times that he get up, they meander out of the stadium together.
“You’ll need to buy some decent shoes,” Arthur says, pointing to the tattered Chuck Taylors on Merlin’s feet. “When I said bring a pair of sneakers, I didn’t mean something you hauled out of the dumpster.”
“What’s wrong with these?” Merlin huffs, lifting his left foot up to inspect the sole. He tugs a little where the fabric meets the rubber and shrugs when it separates, leaving a hole clear through to his sock.
“You’ll ruin your feet without a good pair,” Arthur says, exercising his most put-upon tone of voice. “Do you need help finding some?”
“Like there’s a place to buy them in this hick town. I’ll just go to the library and order a pair or something off the internet,” Merlin says. He flushes and stammers then says, “I mean-our internet. It’s down right now, so…”
Arthur studies him briefly, the way he refuses to meet his eye suddenly and instead toes the cracks in the black top with great interest. Arthur wants to ask how it’s even possible to not have internet in his home, but stops and reconsiders Merlin’s shoes, the fraying tops of his socks. “You could come with me to buy a pair when I drive over to buy shop supplies. You wouldn’t even know what to pick out so… I could help?” he says, and then adds, “Gaius will probably go with me anyway. You might as well tag along.”
They reach the gate to the parking lot. Arthur’s old beat up Camaro glistens in the sun from hours spent being polished. From their angle, it almost looks as if it had never been bought after nearly being demolished in an accident.
“Look,” Merlin says. “I’m sure I can figure it out on my own. But, um, thanks.”
“Uh, sure,” Arthur responds less than eloquently.
They stare at each other for a moment before Merlin jerks his thumb behind him awkwardly and says, “Well! I’ll just be going that way, and um, you’ll be going the… other way…”
“Yeah, uh right. To my car.”
“Okay.”
“Right, I will see you tomorrow then?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.”
“Right,” Merlin says, half-smiling and half-grimacing before turning to walk away. He spares Arthur a half-hearted wave before tripping over the curb, and he doesn’t look back after righting himself.
Arthur snorts loudly and without dignity and then pauses for a moment, partly relieved that Merlin has rejected his offer. Arthur hasn’t even told his friends about his little side project that Mr. du Lac foisted onto him yet, and he hopes that nobody finds out until cross country actually begins at the end of summer. But more surprisingly he feels a little disappointed. Why wouldn’t Merlin want to go with him? He was the captain after all, and Arthur was supposed to be guiding him or something. He should make it required that Merlin partake in some lousy trip to the city for auto parts-especially since Uther was sending Arthur along with Merlin’s old uncle, Gaius.
Not that Arthur wants to spend the day out in Rogers with Merlin, he decides. Spending a day with Gaius is bad enough with his eyebrow and his quiet disapproval of Arthur’s driving. And whatever, if Arthur’s father needs these parts so badly then he and Gaius could go while Arthur watches the shop.
Arthur revs the Camaro a little roughly-testing its weak transmission-before pulling out of the parking lot. The gears shift clumsily. He drives home thinking about the rest of the summer and the impossible quest du Lac has ordered him on to make something of Merlin so the freak can graduate.
He absolutely does not think about Merlin’s stride or the defiant look on his face that suggested he might yet prove them all wrong.
----
A week of running later, Merlin hasn’t acquired a decent pair of running shoes, and the soles of his Chuck Taylors have new holes worn clear through the bottom. Arthur takes one look at them as Merlin ties them up and grabs him off the track and to his car.
At first glance, one would expect running to be a fairly inexpensive sport. Cross country is not like swimming. It requires neither swimsuit nor cap nor goggles. Running doesn’t require padding or a ball or special instruments to hit said ball. Running requires a body.
And-well-shoes.
The tons of shoes Arthur has worn could fill every closet in their small ranch-style home. When he drags Merlin into his home, he doesn’t expect the embarrassment he feels when he sees Merlin’s gaping, fish-like expression at all the running paraphernalia the Pendragons keep. The walls of their cramped living room are adorned with medals and pictures of Arthur’s mother cut out from old college newspapers. The shoes she used to lead her alma mater to win nationals her final year in 1984 hang on the wall.
Arthur keeps his own private collection of awards and bibs shoved unceremoniously into a shoebox kept under the bed. But in the same way Uther keeps his late wife alive through the shrine-like arrangement of photos and clippings, he has no problem flaunting every one of Arthur’s achievements, no matter how small. Arthur shoves a pair of child’s Nikes on display on a shelf out of Merlin’s sightline, flushing hotly with sudden embarrassment, and drags him into his bedroom.
“So…” Merlin starts, a small smirk in the corner of his mouth. But it’s less cruel than Arthur expects. He might even go as far as describing that smile as near-fondness. “You really like running then.”
“It was my mom’s thing. Father doesn’t really run anymore, but I’m good at it, so…” He shrugs awkwardly, unused to speaking about this. No one’s ever questioned why he likes to run, just accepts that he does and is good at it.
“Anyway,” he says, changing the subject. “You need good shoes. Now I don’t know if these will fit the shape of your foot, but they’ll have to do for now until we can get you some new ones. Watch out.” He walks to the closet door and opens it, stepping aside as a pile of shoes comes tumbling out. Merlin gapes as Arthur rummages through the pile in search of the least beat up looking pair. Finally, he chooses one-seemingly arbitrarily to Merlin-and hands them over. “They’re my old ones. The soles are worn down, but they’ll keep you upright for now.”
“What’s so special about a pair of running shoes?”
Arthur rolls his eyes. “People run weird. They have weird biomechanics that cause their ankles to roll inward or outward, or they land on their heels. Shoes help correct those quirks.”
Merlin laughs a little in bewilderment. “Well, thanks,” he says. “I guess I know where to go now when I’m in need of shoes. You could clothe all of Africa with those.”
Arthur lets out a surprised bark of laughter before boxing Merlin’s ears. “Come on, we’re going three miles today!” he says with faux-cheerfulness, dragging Merlin out the door.
----
Gaius pulls Arthur aside to congratulate him for taking on such a daunting case as his nephew. It’s mid-July, a month into summer, and the humidity presses heavily against Arthur’s skin. “Not everyone’s willing to give him a chance,” Gaius says, and adds wryly, “It’s very kind of you, though I’ve been made aware that he’s not doing this by choice.”
To his surprise, Arthur finds himself responding, “He’s not actually half-bad,” and then spends the rest of the day wondering if his body has been abducted by some alien pod person, or if the approach of an oncoming thunderstorm has tricked his brain into complimenting Merlin.
Gaius’s remark raises questions for Arthur. How could someone so rude and delinquent as Merlin be related to someone like his father’s shop assistant? For as long as Arthur can remember, Gaius has been a quiet and venerable presence in the shop. Reduced to office work part-time due to his age, he once worked alongside Uther on repairs, and Arthur’s father never hired a new mechanic as a replacement. Gaius, who perhaps calls in ill less than once a year, could in no way have raised Merlin, who manages suspension four times in one semester and is notorious for flunking phys ed repeatedly.
That afternoon, the clouds unleash hell in the form of rain and hail. Arthur and Merlin get caught five miles out of town on County Road B where they drove out to run hills, and to Arthur’s dismay, the Camaro’s transmission bonks out when they try to drive home again. So Arthur’s not feeling very generous and benevolent, what with the hail denting his beautiful baby on the side of the road and his feet developing blisters from walking home in wet shoes, when he says, “Well how about it then? How come you’re living with Gaius?” It’s not the most tactful investigation into Merlin’s life, but Arthur’s itching for Merlin to react with something more than benign apathy.
They hover in the bathroom, trailing mud wherever they go. Merlin shrugs and snatches Arthur’s towel from his hands, running it through his rain-drenched hair. “Just have been, I suppose.”
“You suppose,” Arthur says nonplussed.
“He moved in when my mom went crazy, stayed when she moved out,” Merlin clarifies, chucking the towel into the sink.
And, okay, that clarifies nothing for Arthur, who is now not only irritated but baffled and growing increasingly angry at the puddles gathering wherever Merlin treads. “Look, can you stop walking everywhere for a second?”
Merlin shrugs again and ignores him in favor of ambling into the kitchen to fish out something to drink from the fridge-without permission of course. Damp footprints mark his path from the bathroom. Arthur chases after him, grabbing him by the shoulders to haul him back with Merlin clutching the refrigerator handle valiantly and having the gall to laugh into his can of Arizona Tea.
“Ugh! Let! Go!” Arthur commands, loosening each of Merlin’s fingers one-by-one, only to have them clamp down again when released. He is grateful for this sudden distraction, this petty quarrel that prevents him from thinking too carefully about Merlin’s slipped confession. Merlin drips all over Arthur’s freshly changed clothes seemingly with intention, and Arthur finally just says, “Fuck it,” tackling him, splattering tea everywhere and generally causing a larger mess than there had been before.
He pins Merlin to the ground by bracing his knees on either side of his hips and uses his hands to hold him in a full nelson so that no matter how Merlin twists or bucks, it’s impossible to throw him off. Merlin yells some combination of “Fine! Uncle! I’m saying Uncle!” and “Eat shit!” and “Geroff, you fatso,” before Arthur relents, but only to drag him by the heels into the bathroom as Merlin’s head bounces against the tiles.
Back in front of the mirror where Arthur scowls, combing tea out of his hair, Merlin hoists himself onto the counter and gingerly pokes at his carpet burn. He swings his feet a little and says, “I was ten when we moved in with Gaius. She was depressed-my mom-but I didn’t really know that then. Gaius isn’t even my proper uncle. He and Mom were half-siblings.”
“What happened to her?”
“Dunno. She left shortly afterwards. Gaius tells me she thought she’d make it harder for me if she stayed. I used to get cards for Christmas and stuff.” He shrugs again, too blandly to be unaffected.
“Do you like living with Gaius?”
“It’s not half-bad.”
Arthur studies Merlin and can imagine what it must have been like: Gaius-with no children of his own and past his prime-being saddled with Merlin but having no clue what to do with him. In the past month, Arthur has discovered that Merlin is unbearably curious, rooting through the shop and hovering over Arthur as he works on the Camaro before their runs. He lacks a censor, says whatever he wants and pursues whatever he wants. Of course he would wind up in detention, endlessly frustrating his superiors. It makes Arthur wonder briefly if Merlin only continues their running experiment because he wants to-if he would walk away the moment he lost interest.
“My mom died when I was three,” Arthur offers, pausing his diligent grooming. “She got in a car accident when the brakes malfunctioned. It’s why my father’s so serious about mechanics.”
Arthur does not add, “It’s why I run,” or, “It’s why my father does not run.”
Merlin hums and says nothing.
----
Arthur grows used to a daily schedule that involves bullying Merlin into runs. At first it’s apparent that Merlin tries to do anything to avoid going, but Gaius always drives him in at the same time he arrives to work in the shop. Merlin pretends to forget his shoes (of which Arthur has many more of) or feigns a headache, but it doesn’t take much goading and insulting from Arthur (“Oh does poor wittle Merwin’s head have an owie? Poor baby”) to get him up on his feet.
One day Merlin legitimately injures himself by tripping over a stack of tires. He flails spectacularly-which Arthur first laughs at-and crashes down violently on his right knee. When it bruises and swells to nearly twice its size, Arthur thinks the knee cap has shattered and spends a good half-hour being talked down by Gaius from driving Merlin to the hospital in Rogers.
“Look, you big bully. It’s just bruised. If anything I’ll get out of going on your boot camp runs for a couple of days.” Merlin props his knee on the stack of tires Arthur is busily rebuilding. “Get me an ice pack, won’t you?”
“I don’t like it.” Arthur drops a tire next to Merlin’s chair and sits down, leaning over the leg. He prods it with gross fascination. “Nothing swells and bruises that fast without being broken.”
“Well if you stop touching it, it might heal faster. That hurts.”
“You know, Merlin,” Gaius says, looking up from an auto parts catalog, “If you minded your surroundings like a responsible person this wouldn’t have happened.”
Merlin rolls his eyes and swats at Arthur’s hand. Then he throws his head back and moans dramatically. “It’s not my fault. Arthur was distracting me.”
“Talking. I was talking to you. Most people can walk and listen at the same time.”
“But there were obstacles.”
Arthur’s hand gets swatted away again and he crosses his arms. “Well at least let me wrap it for you. It’ll help the swelling go down. Compression and stuff.”
“You know what helps swelling? Ice.”
“Fine, but I still say it’s broken.”
Arthur leaves and returns with an Ace bandage and a gel ice pack that Merlin snatches from him immediately. Instead of laying it on his leg, he amuses himself by pressing it against his forehead to combat the grimy humidity of the garage.
“Keep your knee straight,” Arthur says as he unwinds the tape. He wraps it around Merlin’s leg carefully, his knuckles brushing the inside of his knee with every pass. Merlin watches him with hooded eyes from under the shadow of the ice pack.
When he’s finally convinced of no injury, he spends the rest of their allotted time together bullying Merlin about his insufferable clumsiness, but in a way that makes Merlin laugh and chuck clumps of grass at Arthur in retaliation.
-
Which leads to multiple days Arthur is careful not to tally spent tracking deer trails in the woods behind the shop or lolling in the front yard after particularly gruesome runs. Merlin even stops complaining the first time he finishes three miles, laughing, before pretending to pass out. Arthur lets him lie there for a generous five minutes before reviving him with a super soaker he dug out from the attic. And if Arthur refuses to recognize these moments of near-friendship once they’re over, he certainly is unwilling to acknowledge the silent nights he spends contemplating the ripple of muscle when Merlin runs or the corners of Merlin’s eyes when he grins-always cheekily-growing more and more frequent.
Arthur denies himself a lot of things, but most of all he denies contemplating the start of school looming closer every day. He’s kept the training runs with Merlin to himself, moments he unfolds and studies in the dark with both hands fisted beneath his pillow. It’s like thinking about his mother: there are questions that cannot be answered in the light of day but only speculated on at night.
Then there are the times when Arthur finds himself incapable of even facing Merlin head-on, like when Gaius gets called in for some late-night repairs and Merlin tags along. They lay out in the grass a half-foot apart, quietly, as if their breaths possessed their own language. In these moments Arthur is afraid that he might do something irrational, might touch him, might walk along side him in the halls, might call him for inexplicable reasons. He ends up not saying anything at all when Merlin clambers back inside Gaius’s Buick, peering out at him from inside the window as they drive away.
----
Part Two
----
Arthur gets jostled by the other boys as they race to the drinking fountain. It’s a breezy afternoon in May on their very last run of his junior year, and they are eager to get out and into the freedom of summer. He’s not really paying attention to Coach du Lac-no-too wound up in the sunlight and the somewhat coy glances Morgan keeps casting in his direction by the fountain. Her looks are less about attraction and more about the promise of mischief later, a look that he has come to know and grow fond of during their long prepubescent summer days. And the promise speaks of the brief and unrelenting summer ahead, Arthur’s last summer before graduation, and all the things that come with it: the sweltering heat and the underage parties and college applications. And the running. Of course.
The men’s team captain, Leon, graduates in a week and after he steps down, Arthur will become the new team captain. Arthur has wanted from the very first day of freshmen year to become the senior captain. He loves running, and his father loves running, and he needs running to get into college. So Arthur knows that this summer his evenings will be filled with friends and house parties and his days filled with hours put into his father’s shop to help make the bills and save a little for college. The mornings will be devoted to his running and all day, every hour, he will think about what he should eat and how many hours he should sleep, and what it will be like to cross the finish line in October as the state cross country champion.
“All right, I expect you to continue running on your own this summer. That means you, freshmen. You don’t get a break,” du Lac says, tapping his clipboard. “Has every one signed up for the e-mail list so you guys can organize group runs?”
There’s a murmur of consent and various hands reaching for the sign-up sheet. A swarm of hugs and high fives happen around Arthur, and he finds himself clapping hands with one of his best friends, Zach, before being gathered up into a huddle around Leon to bid him farewell from high school, cheering, “NUMBER ONE! NUMBER ONE! NUMBER ONE! NUMBER ONE!” over and over.
When the crowd breaks, the captain emerges to find Arthur. He’s as tall as Arthur but broader and wraps his long hair back in a bandana that manages to be cool just on the left side of hippy. He wraps his arm around Arthur’s shoulder and hustles him close. “You’ve got tough shoes to fill, punk. Do you think you can handle it?”
Arthur laughs, and in this moment he feels hot and solid but also so light he could float to the tops of the trees. “You’re just afraid I’ll outshine you, Leon,” he boasts, swaggering slightly under the captain’s arm.
Leon laughs, bats him on the head. “Pendragon, you better learn the difference between fame and infamy. You’re still just the prince until I walk across the stage for my diploma. Capiche?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Arthur snorts. “Capiche.”
Behind them, Zach starts to yell, “CAPICHE YOU MOTHER FUCKERS. WE’RE THE X-DOUBLE-C MAFIAAAAA,” tearing off his shirt to wave above his head like in the rodeo. “MAFIA! MAFIA! MAFIA!” He chants and lets loose the shirt into the air. The three of them watch it soar in slow motion, like an elegant kite rippling in the air, the force of gravity bringing it down to land on-
“Oh shit!” Zach yells, grabbing Arthur by the arm before sprinting. “Run! Run!”
Arthur stumbles, clutching to Zach’s calf as they both come to a crash with Morgan hot on their heels.
“How dare you throw your nasty-ass shirt on my head!” she screeches, whipping them both with it.
Arthur rolls onto his back and brings his arms protectively over his face. “I didn’t-don’t hit me! It was Zach! Zach’s shirt!”
His pleas only cause her to whip harder. “Ugh! You juvenile jerk offs!”
And in the damp spring mud and the hot summer air, this is how Arthur’s junior year comes to a close: Zach laughing riotously beside him taunting the women’s fastest runner into a game of tag across the parking lot.
----
But Arthur’s almost-perfect summer has one foe. By the last day of school, students and teachers alike have mentally checked out. They spend the period handing back left-over assignments and clearing out lockers. A frustrated Arthur-half-ready to dump all of his belongings in the trash for the sake of not having to lug it home-gets stopped by Coach du Lac in the hall.
“Pendragon, just the man I was looking for. Follow me please,” he says. Arthur dumps his pile of accumulated papers back into his locker with relief and follows the man down the hall.
In addition to coaching cross country, du Lac teaches senior English and a course on The American Short Story. In an otherwise dying department, his classes thrive with fawning girls. It must be the hair, Arthur thinks as he inspects the artfully swept back style. Morgan and her friends Ashley and Leah can sometimes be overheard admiring du Lac when he leads speedwork, moaning over his legs and his butt when he runs. Personally, Arthur doesn’t see it, sparing one rapid glance at du Lac before staring at his shoes. Definitely not.
du Lac leads them down the stairs and into the main offices. Arthur has only ever stepped in here to use the PA for cross country announcements, and frowns when he gets lead towards the guidance counselor.
“Um, Coach? Am I in trouble?”
“Oh, not you, Pendragon,” du Lac responds, opening the door and ushering him inside.
Ms. Smith greets them when they enter, sitting in a straight-backed but padded chair designed to make the students feel welcomed and reassured. She wears black, thick-rimmed glasses with tiny studs in the side and more casual clothes, her curly hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. For the most part, Arthur likes her if only because he has only ever interacted with her once or twice, and the team takes a general interest in her because of her relationship with Coach du Lac.
Arthur sits himself in the only other chair in the room next to her and shifts hesitantly. du Lac checks his watch twice, and Ms. Smith frowns.
“Well, the other student is running a little late,” she says in mild irritation, “but I think we can get started without him.” She folds her hands in her lap and smiles in Arthur’s direction. It’s not a friendly smile, Arthur decides, but maybe more a grimace. “Are you aware of a Merlin Emrys?”
“Uh, yes,” he responds. “I know of him.”
“Well, Mr. du Lac and I were discussing that maybe you could help him this summer. He’s behind in his classes and we think it’d be beneficial to him if he had help.”
Arthur blanches. Merlin Emrys? The kid who failed phys ed and cuts chemistry twice a week? Arthur’s heard rumors of him but has never actually interacted with him. All he knows is Merlin Emrys is the hick stoner who lives in a hut in the woods, wearing ratty flannel and obscure, uncool band t-shirts-also that he drools during class and leaves it for Arthur to find on his desk whenever they switch classrooms.
“Oh I don’t know,” he protests. “I’m going to be really busy this summer working in my dad’s shop, so…”
“Mr. du Lac tells me you’re hoping to get a running scholarship to cover your tuition costs after graduation.”
“Yes?”
“Well, I think this would be a good opportunity for you to build up your résumé for when you start applying next year,” Ms. Smith says.
“Um, well-”
“Everyone knows you’re talented Arthur,” she interrupts, “but when a team has to choose between you and some other runner of equal ability, they’re going to look at what else you have to offer to the team and to the school. du Lac says you’ll be the men’s captain in the fall, and I think this experience will help you prepare.”
“She’s right,” du Lac interjects. “This could be really good experience for you and will definitely influence your personal recommendations.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, “but I don’t see how tutoring some wannabe drop-out will help my running, Coach. I get average grades at best anyway.”
“Oh no,” du Lac says. “You won’t be tutoring him. You’ll be helping him prep for the fall cross country season.”
Something in Arthur’s stomach spasms as if a hand has wrenched a fist around his gut. “What?” he croaks.
Ms. Smith pats him on the shoulder. “Merlin’s teachers have struggled to find ways of motivating him. We think putting him in a team environment might help.”
“You mean forcing him.”
du Lac shifts a little uncomfortably, as if he isn’t completely onboard with this plan. After all, it is his team in question. “We’ll see how it goes this summer. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do this, Arthur. You’re really passionate about your running.”
And that’s what seals Arthur’s fate. He is passionate about his running, and if du Lac forces this Emrys kid onto anyone else, Arthur wouldn’t trust him to not screw up the team. After all, Arthur placed third last year in the state championships and has spent his whole life under his father’s direction running in junior regional competitions. “Does he know about this yet?”
The two teachers glance at each other before Ms. Smith half-smiles half-grimaces again. “We’re working on it,” she says.
----
du Lac calls him the first week of summer to inform him that Merlin can meet him anytime next week. Arthur shrugs into the phone and decides they might as well start on a Monday. He sits with his phone, peering out the window at the sunshine and sighs, reminding himself it will only cost him an hour each day.
“Is there anything you want him to bring?” du Lac asks.
“I dunno. Shoes. And no flannel. Tell him to meet me at my house at seven.” He picks at the dirt on the bottom of his shoes.
“He tells me he can’t meet before 11. It’s the only time he can get a ride into town.”
“I prefer to run earlier in the morning.”
“There’s a reason Leon keeps calling you Prince Arthur, isn’t there?” du Lac says. “I’m not here to hold your hand through this whole process. You’re helping him out so you need to communicate with him. Here’s his number so you can work something out yourself.” He adds a little wryly, “Enjoy your summer, Pendragon.”
Out of pettiness, Arthur refuses to call Merlin. “Let him have his way,” he snipes at his reflection in the mirror that afternoon. He regrets it when three days later he ends up sitting at his stoop at 11, irritated that his schedule has been interrupted. Down the street, he sees the grill of a car and almost hopes it’s the stupid loser. After all, ‘the sooner you do start, the sooner it’s done,’ his father says when ordering Arthur to do his chores.
Instead, it’s Gaius’s familiar Buick puttering down the road coming into work. Arthur’s father, Uther, runs a privately owned mechanic garage attached to their house called Camelot Repairs. Arthur despairs over the name. There is nothing stately about monkey suits and grease, especially not in a town like Tadita with only 5,000 people.
It’s not that Arthur hates the shop exactly. The jokes about his name get old, but his dad puts in an honest day’s work, and everyone in the town comes to him whenever they have a problem. Even Arthur has gotten pretty good at doing the simple tasks like oil changes and tire rotations so he can help out and make some pocket cash. There’s pride in this little business Uther built from the ground up-Arthur won’t deny that-but in the larger world it doesn’t mean much, and Arthur looks eagerly ahead to college.
Arthur argues out loud that leaving means getting out of Tadita, a small unknown cow-town at the edge of the state, even if he’s unsure about what to study in college. When people ask after his plans, he presses his lips into a thin line and says, “I don’t know yet. I do admire my father’s entrepreneurship. Maybe I’ll go into business studies like the old man.” Uther’s friends chortle and pat him on the back; his teachers encourage him for having strong goals. Gaius, the elderly but sharp-minded man who does Uther’s office work, raises an eyebrow, and his lips curve into the shadow of a smirk. Arthur stops parroting his rehearsed answers around him.
He tries not to talk about it with his father. Sometimes Arthur thinks Uther isn’t really a man anymore. Instead he is a walking husk of regret: regret over Arthur’s mother, regret over not being a more available parent, for not knowing how to cook properly or do laundry without losing the socks. They never talk about these things ever. Instead Uther stalks the house silently, a lion in a cage, and even if Arthur thinks he’s wrong, Uther is always, always right.
They discuss it once in the kitchen while Arthur hovers over the stove. Uther sits at the peninsula with a ledger and his old, brittle carbon copy, a pen in one hand and a tumbler of whiskey to his left. “Do you know what you plan on studying after you graduate high school?”
Arthur stirs the pot once and then twice, testing the noodles. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“You must have some sort of an idea.”
“Lots of people go in undecided, Dad.”
Uther sips at his drink, watching the liquid slosh against the sides as he stirs it slowly for a long moment. “I didn’t know either. Now look at where I am.”
Around other people Arthur says he wants to leave Tadita-it’s too small for a big man like him. To himself he knows he wants to leave his father.
From inside the garage, Arthur can hear Uther’s low tones as he prices a repair for a customer. Though he can’t see the man, he can imagine the way he stands with his feet at shoulder’s width apart, arms crossed over his chest or maybe holding a catalog for the customer to look at. Arthur tries to imagine himself twenty years from now in the same position. Then he draws his knees to his chest and watches the approaching car crawl down the street.
When Gaius pulls up the driveway, Arthur is surprised to see he has a passenger, an unruly haired teenager sitting in the front seat. “Good morning, Arthur,” Gaius says, exiting the car. “I’m sure you know my nephew, Merlin.”
Arthur gapes a little and can’t help but exclaim, “Merlin is your nephew?”
Gaius quirks an eyebrow heavenward and wears a put-upon expression. “Indeed,” he says before entering the garage.
Merlin rolls his eyes and clambers out, leaning against the hood of the car with a sour expression. He glares at the sun as if unused to it, and settles for staring absently somewhere to Arthur’s left.
“You know you can’t smoke pot when you’re on the team,” Arthur blurts out, his gaze catching on Merlin’s ugly hemp bracelet around his bony wrist. It’s not really a proper introduction and he winces internally, though it is a valid point.
“God, you’re a real dick,” the boy says and argues, “I don’t do pot.” He pauses, flicking some invisible fuzz off of his ratty shirt, thankfully not flannel, and adds, “Often.” He grins stupidly as if he thinks he’s clever.
Arthur exhales a slow breath and remembers what du Lac said about scholarships and leadership. “All right, let’s head over to the track then.”
Merlin doesn’t budge and folds his arms over his chest. “Can we just say we ran? I’m certain you don’t want to do this anymore than I do.”
It’s a tempting offer, but Arthur’s stubborn and likes to think true to his word. “No, we’re going to run. I actually enjoy it, and I heard that if you don’t do this, they’ll flunk you and keep you an extra year.”
“They can’t actually do that, you know. Are you seriously that gullible?”
“Are you seriously this lazy? We’ll run a mile or something, tops. Work you into it. Though in your shape, I don’t know if three months is enough time to get you to run even two miles.”
Merlin glowers and balls his hands into fists. It’s laughable really. He’s so scrawny and ungainly that the force of his punch would feel like wind on a breezy day. He takes two angry steps forward and stumbles over his feet, his face growing hot.
Arthur bursts out laughing. “Riiiiight. Not a stoner. I doubt you’ll even be able to run three yards without scraping your face up. Might even be an improvement.”
“Fuck you,” Merlin retorts.
“No,” Arthur responds cheerily. “Because if you don’t do this, you’ll be the one that’s fucked-right out of being able to graduate. Come on, I’d drive us to the track, but I wouldn’t want your sorry ass in my Camaro.”
For a moment, Merlin looks like he might actually hit Arthur this time. He inhales an angry breath before snarling, “No, you know what? Forget it. I don’t want to deal with some big-headed jock. I don’t even fucking care about graduating.” He spits on the sidewalk and stalks off down the road in the direction he arrived in.
Arthur lets him go, a little relieved and guilty. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or chase after him and settles for kicking a clump of grass half-heartedly before turning back towards the house. He stops when he sees Uther leaning against the open garage, his arms folded over his chest in his blue work shirt. His mouth goes dry.
“I want you to know that Gaius is a very old friend of mine,” his father says, standing erect like a statue. “And I want you to know that responsibility is never easy.”
Arthur nods, his hot-headedness grown cool under Uther’s stare. “Yes, Father,” he says.
“Don’t make me take that car from you, son.”
“Yes, Father.”
Uther spares one last pointed look at Merlin’s retreating figure before returning to the depth of the garage, and Arthur rolls his eyes a little and scowls before climbing into his run-down Camaro.
The car has no AC and it’s hot. All Arthur wants to do is grab Merlin and drive to the track as fast as possible. He even half-contemplates pretending to collect Merlin if he knew if father wouldn’t find out in the end. Arthur pulls out of the driveway in reluctant pursuit of the dejected figure, rolls the window down and forces himself to say, “I was only joking you know. I was going to give you a ride. I wasn’t serious, all right? Now will you get inside?”
Merlin snorts and looks at him, his blue eyes sharp and calculating as he continues to walk. “Do you always bully people? Are you a pervert who gets off on pushing people around?”
“What? No! What the hell?” Arthur says, his foot jerking on the brake pedal. The car rolls forward.
“You can’t order me around,” Merlin says.
“Technically, as captain I can,” he retorts, reveling a little at being able to say that.
“Then you can turn the car around and go home.”
Merlin keeps walking without looking at him, and Arthur throws his head back against the headrest in frustration. “Look, what is it that you want? Don’t you even care that you’re, like, going to fail out of high school? You need to do this.”
“What, I need to do this like you need to be a jack ass about everything?”
Arthur squeezes his eyes shut, hating himself just a little bit before saying, “Look, I’m sorry. Please get into the car,” in his most pleasant voice.
Merlin studies him a little before snorting again, and Arthur half-thinks he won’t comply. “Well, pull-over then,” he says finally, coming around the front of the Camaro. “But don’t think I’m doing this just because you asked nicely.”
Merlin hops in and leans on his fist sullenly. Arthur almost feels bad for goading him if he weren’t such an easy target. He turns on the radio and hesitates before reluctantly saying, “Go on and choose a station then.”
Merlin jabs at a random preset button and mutters, “All the stations are crap,” returning to lean on his fist. The rest of the ride is silent except for the Top 40 music and the wind from the open windows.
They arrive at the outdoor track and Arthur leads him to some arbitrary starting line. “I won’t have you run very far today. Just take a couple easy laps and I’ll watch your form and stuff.” He leaves him to climb up the bleachers, and then waves at him to start. He can see Merlin huff a little and imagines him wearing the same surly expression he’s worn all morning as he readies himself in some sort of mock-start up position like they do in the movies.
When Merlin starts running, Arthur fully expects to be able to ridicule everything about him: his flailing, erratic arms, his ungainliness. The thing, he realizes, is that despite Merlin’s penchant for laziness and his inability to walk two feet without tripping over something, he’s fast. For a moment, Arthur’s stunned by the way Merlin’s legs stretch out before him as he strips around the track. And perhaps his hair looks a little ridiculous as the wind whips through it, and his ears are hardly aerodynamic, but still, Arthur finds himself breathing along to the rhythm of Merlin’s footfalls, growing lightheaded and sun-bleached in the stands.
Merlin slows to a halt after a couple of minutes at the bottom of the bleachers. “Can I stop now?” he hollers up, clambering over the metal seats. He’s barely panting but a slight sheen of sweat has formed at the neck of his t-shirt.
“What?” Arthur asks.
“Can I stop? Now? You said, run the track. I ran the track.”
“What? No! How many laps did you do?”
Merlin lifts one eyebrow at him. “Weren’t you watching? I ran two laps.”
Arthur scoffs, adopting his most authoritative and demeaning tone in a feeble attempt to cover the fact that he actually hadn’t been counting. “Merlin, don’t tell me you’re tired already.”
“Hardly.” Merlin folds his harms over his chest and huffs.
And perhaps it’s something about Merlin that inspires Arthur to react childishly as he has done all morning, setting his hands on his hips as he sneers from his position two rows up. “Oh yeah, Prove it then,” he says.
Merlin stomps back down the bleachers and mutters, “Fine, I will.”
Arthur shakes his head and wonders if anyone else ever tried goading Merlin into doing something or if they just assumed he was incapable.
“Are you watching this time?” Merlin bellows. Without waiting, his legs kick out from under his body as he sprints around the track. Arthur fumbles for the stopwatch around his neck and resolves to focus on counting the laps this time.
After Merlin runs another five laps, it’s apparent how exhausted he’s become. His initial grace peters out into a clumsy wobble, and at every corner he turns to glare at Arthur over his shoulder. Each time his half-hearted trot devolves into walking, Arthur leaps up from his seat and yells, “Come on, you girly wimp! My Aunt Judy runs faster than you and she’s had both hips replaced!” By the end of the last lap, Merlin has his hands clutched to his side, and he collapses dramatically two feet from the start line.
Arthur stomps down the bleacher steps, scowling. He nudges forcefully at Merlin’s prone body as Merlin pants, “Arthur… please… no… more.” His bony fingers reach out to clutch at Arthur’s ankles, and Arthur, unmoved and heartless, glares down at him.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” he grunts, grimacing as he slides his hands under Merlin’s damp armpits to hoist him up. “You know you barely ran a mile and a half, right? And God, you reek.”
“How far do I have to go again?”
“A 5k, Merlin,” he says, swatting him across the head. “That’s 3.1 miles.”
“Nrgh,” Merlin groans and slides back down to the ground. His cheek presses into the rubber surface of the track, and when he lifts his head, black tiny polyurethane granules cling to his skin. “This is death. Why couldn’t they have just given me detention again?”
“The ‘again’ suggests detention stopped working on you.”
Merlin laughs weakly, still a little out of breath. “Yes, well. The goal is to get three detentions. Then you achieve in school suspension. Have you ever gotten in school, Arthur? All you do is sleep.”
For a moment, Arthur looks at him with a baffled expression and wants to say, ‘That’s what you call achievement?’ But then he remembers that this is Merlin, the kid renowned for cutting English to smoke pot down by the creek behind the school lot-that the whole reason they wound up together is that Merlin needs a little direction and Arthur needs to build up his résumé for scholarships with charity case losers.
Later, after Merlin has lolled about on the track and Arthur has demanded no less than seven times that he get up, they meander out of the stadium together.
“You’ll need to buy some decent shoes,” Arthur says, pointing to the tattered Chuck Taylors on Merlin’s feet. “When I said bring a pair of sneakers, I didn’t mean something you hauled out of the dumpster.”
“What’s wrong with these?” Merlin huffs, lifting his left foot up to inspect the sole. He tugs a little where the fabric meets the rubber and shrugs when it separates, leaving a hole clear through to his sock.
“You’ll ruin your feet without a good pair,” Arthur says, exercising his most put-upon tone of voice. “Do you need help finding some?”
“Like there’s a place to buy them in this hick town. I’ll just go to the library and order a pair or something off the internet,” Merlin says. He flushes and stammers then says, “I mean-our internet. It’s down right now, so…”
Arthur studies him briefly, the way he refuses to meet his eye suddenly and instead toes the cracks in the black top with great interest. Arthur wants to ask how it’s even possible to not have internet in his home, but stops and reconsiders Merlin’s shoes, the fraying tops of his socks. “You could come with me to buy a pair when I drive over to buy shop supplies. You wouldn’t even know what to pick out so… I could help?” he says, and then adds, “Gaius will probably go with me anyway. You might as well tag along.”
They reach the gate to the parking lot. Arthur’s old beat up Camaro glistens in the sun from hours spent being polished. From their angle, it almost looks as if it had never been bought after nearly being demolished in an accident.
“Look,” Merlin says. “I’m sure I can figure it out on my own. But, um, thanks.”
“Uh, sure,” Arthur responds less than eloquently.
They stare at each other for a moment before Merlin jerks his thumb behind him awkwardly and says, “Well! I’ll just be going that way, and um, you’ll be going the… other way…”
“Yeah, uh right. To my car.”
“Okay.”
“Right, I will see you tomorrow then?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.”
“Right,” Merlin says, half-smiling and half-grimacing before turning to walk away. He spares Arthur a half-hearted wave before tripping over the curb, and he doesn’t look back after righting himself.
Arthur snorts loudly and without dignity and then pauses for a moment, partly relieved that Merlin has rejected his offer. Arthur hasn’t even told his friends about his little side project that Mr. du Lac foisted onto him yet, and he hopes that nobody finds out until cross country actually begins at the end of summer. But more surprisingly he feels a little disappointed. Why wouldn’t Merlin want to go with him? He was the captain after all, and Arthur was supposed to be guiding him or something. He should make it required that Merlin partake in some lousy trip to the city for auto parts-especially since Uther was sending Arthur along with Merlin’s old uncle, Gaius.
Not that Arthur wants to spend the day out in Rogers with Merlin, he decides. Spending a day with Gaius is bad enough with his eyebrow and his quiet disapproval of Arthur’s driving. And whatever, if Arthur’s father needs these parts so badly then he and Gaius could go while Arthur watches the shop.
Arthur revs the Camaro a little roughly-testing its weak transmission-before pulling out of the parking lot. The gears shift clumsily. He drives home thinking about the rest of the summer and the impossible quest du Lac has ordered him on to make something of Merlin so the freak can graduate.
He absolutely does not think about Merlin’s stride or the defiant look on his face that suggested he might yet prove them all wrong.
----
A week of running later, Merlin hasn’t acquired a decent pair of running shoes, and the soles of his Chuck Taylors have new holes worn clear through the bottom. Arthur takes one look at them as Merlin ties them up and grabs him off the track and to his car.
At first glance, one would expect running to be a fairly inexpensive sport. Cross country is not like swimming. It requires neither swimsuit nor cap nor goggles. Running doesn’t require padding or a ball or special instruments to hit said ball. Running requires a body.
And-well-shoes.
The tons of shoes Arthur has worn could fill every closet in their small ranch-style home. When he drags Merlin into his home, he doesn’t expect the embarrassment he feels when he sees Merlin’s gaping, fish-like expression at all the running paraphernalia the Pendragons keep. The walls of their cramped living room are adorned with medals and pictures of Arthur’s mother cut out from old college newspapers. The shoes she used to lead her alma mater to win nationals her final year in 1984 hang on the wall.
Arthur keeps his own private collection of awards and bibs shoved unceremoniously into a shoebox kept under the bed. But in the same way Uther keeps his late wife alive through the shrine-like arrangement of photos and clippings, he has no problem flaunting every one of Arthur’s achievements, no matter how small. Arthur shoves a pair of child’s Nikes on display on a shelf out of Merlin’s sightline, flushing hotly with sudden embarrassment, and drags him into his bedroom.
“So…” Merlin starts, a small smirk in the corner of his mouth. But it’s less cruel than Arthur expects. He might even go as far as describing that smile as near-fondness. “You really like running then.”
“It was my mom’s thing. Father doesn’t really run anymore, but I’m good at it, so…” He shrugs awkwardly, unused to speaking about this. No one’s ever questioned why he likes to run, just accepts that he does and is good at it.
“Anyway,” he says, changing the subject. “You need good shoes. Now I don’t know if these will fit the shape of your foot, but they’ll have to do for now until we can get you some new ones. Watch out.” He walks to the closet door and opens it, stepping aside as a pile of shoes comes tumbling out. Merlin gapes as Arthur rummages through the pile in search of the least beat up looking pair. Finally, he chooses one-seemingly arbitrarily to Merlin-and hands them over. “They’re my old ones. The soles are worn down, but they’ll keep you upright for now.”
“What’s so special about a pair of running shoes?”
Arthur rolls his eyes. “People run weird. They have weird biomechanics that cause their ankles to roll inward or outward, or they land on their heels. Shoes help correct those quirks.”
Merlin laughs a little in bewilderment. “Well, thanks,” he says. “I guess I know where to go now when I’m in need of shoes. You could clothe all of Africa with those.”
Arthur lets out a surprised bark of laughter before boxing Merlin’s ears. “Come on, we’re going three miles today!” he says with faux-cheerfulness, dragging Merlin out the door.
----
Gaius pulls Arthur aside to congratulate him for taking on such a daunting case as his nephew. It’s mid-July, a month into summer, and the humidity presses heavily against Arthur’s skin. “Not everyone’s willing to give him a chance,” Gaius says, and adds wryly, “It’s very kind of you, though I’ve been made aware that he’s not doing this by choice.”
To his surprise, Arthur finds himself responding, “He’s not actually half-bad,” and then spends the rest of the day wondering if his body has been abducted by some alien pod person, or if the approach of an oncoming thunderstorm has tricked his brain into complimenting Merlin.
Gaius’s remark raises questions for Arthur. How could someone so rude and delinquent as Merlin be related to someone like his father’s shop assistant? For as long as Arthur can remember, Gaius has been a quiet and venerable presence in the shop. Reduced to office work part-time due to his age, he once worked alongside Uther on repairs, and Arthur’s father never hired a new mechanic as a replacement. Gaius, who perhaps calls in ill less than once a year, could in no way have raised Merlin, who manages suspension four times in one semester and is notorious for flunking phys ed repeatedly.
That afternoon, the clouds unleash hell in the form of rain and hail. Arthur and Merlin get caught five miles out of town on County Road B where they drove out to run hills, and to Arthur’s dismay, the Camaro’s transmission bonks out when they try to drive home again. So Arthur’s not feeling very generous and benevolent, what with the hail denting his beautiful baby on the side of the road and his feet developing blisters from walking home in wet shoes, when he says, “Well how about it then? How come you’re living with Gaius?” It’s not the most tactful investigation into Merlin’s life, but Arthur’s itching for Merlin to react with something more than benign apathy.
They hover in the bathroom, trailing mud wherever they go. Merlin shrugs and snatches Arthur’s towel from his hands, running it through his rain-drenched hair. “Just have been, I suppose.”
“You suppose,” Arthur says nonplussed.
“He moved in when my mom went crazy, stayed when she moved out,” Merlin clarifies, chucking the towel into the sink.
And, okay, that clarifies nothing for Arthur, who is now not only irritated but baffled and growing increasingly angry at the puddles gathering wherever Merlin treads. “Look, can you stop walking everywhere for a second?”
Merlin shrugs again and ignores him in favor of ambling into the kitchen to fish out something to drink from the fridge-without permission of course. Damp footprints mark his path from the bathroom. Arthur chases after him, grabbing him by the shoulders to haul him back with Merlin clutching the refrigerator handle valiantly and having the gall to laugh into his can of Arizona Tea.
“Ugh! Let! Go!” Arthur commands, loosening each of Merlin’s fingers one-by-one, only to have them clamp down again when released. He is grateful for this sudden distraction, this petty quarrel that prevents him from thinking too carefully about Merlin’s slipped confession. Merlin drips all over Arthur’s freshly changed clothes seemingly with intention, and Arthur finally just says, “Fuck it,” tackling him, splattering tea everywhere and generally causing a larger mess than there had been before.
He pins Merlin to the ground by bracing his knees on either side of his hips and uses his hands to hold him in a full nelson so that no matter how Merlin twists or bucks, it’s impossible to throw him off. Merlin yells some combination of “Fine! Uncle! I’m saying Uncle!” and “Eat shit!” and “Geroff, you fatso,” before Arthur relents, but only to drag him by the heels into the bathroom as Merlin’s head bounces against the tiles.
Back in front of the mirror where Arthur scowls, combing tea out of his hair, Merlin hoists himself onto the counter and gingerly pokes at his carpet burn. He swings his feet a little and says, “I was ten when we moved in with Gaius. She was depressed-my mom-but I didn’t really know that then. Gaius isn’t even my proper uncle. He and Mom were half-siblings.”
“What happened to her?”
“Dunno. She left shortly afterwards. Gaius tells me she thought she’d make it harder for me if she stayed. I used to get cards for Christmas and stuff.” He shrugs again, too blandly to be unaffected.
“Do you like living with Gaius?”
“It’s not half-bad.”
Arthur studies Merlin and can imagine what it must have been like: Gaius-with no children of his own and past his prime-being saddled with Merlin but having no clue what to do with him. In the past month, Arthur has discovered that Merlin is unbearably curious, rooting through the shop and hovering over Arthur as he works on the Camaro before their runs. He lacks a censor, says whatever he wants and pursues whatever he wants. Of course he would wind up in detention, endlessly frustrating his superiors. It makes Arthur wonder briefly if Merlin only continues their running experiment because he wants to-if he would walk away the moment he lost interest.
“My mom died when I was three,” Arthur offers, pausing his diligent grooming. “She got in a car accident when the brakes malfunctioned. It’s why my father’s so serious about mechanics.”
Arthur does not add, “It’s why I run,” or, “It’s why my father does not run.”
Merlin hums and says nothing.
----
Arthur grows used to a daily schedule that involves bullying Merlin into runs. At first it’s apparent that Merlin tries to do anything to avoid going, but Gaius always drives him in at the same time he arrives to work in the shop. Merlin pretends to forget his shoes (of which Arthur has many more of) or feigns a headache, but it doesn’t take much goading and insulting from Arthur (“Oh does poor wittle Merwin’s head have an owie? Poor baby”) to get him up on his feet.
One day Merlin legitimately injures himself by tripping over a stack of tires. He flails spectacularly-which Arthur first laughs at-and crashes down violently on his right knee. When it bruises and swells to nearly twice its size, Arthur thinks the knee cap has shattered and spends a good half-hour being talked down by Gaius from driving Merlin to the hospital in Rogers.
“Look, you big bully. It’s just bruised. If anything I’ll get out of going on your boot camp runs for a couple of days.” Merlin props his knee on the stack of tires Arthur is busily rebuilding. “Get me an ice pack, won’t you?”
“I don’t like it.” Arthur drops a tire next to Merlin’s chair and sits down, leaning over the leg. He prods it with gross fascination. “Nothing swells and bruises that fast without being broken.”
“Well if you stop touching it, it might heal faster. That hurts.”
“You know, Merlin,” Gaius says, looking up from an auto parts catalog, “If you minded your surroundings like a responsible person this wouldn’t have happened.”
Merlin rolls his eyes and swats at Arthur’s hand. Then he throws his head back and moans dramatically. “It’s not my fault. Arthur was distracting me.”
“Talking. I was talking to you. Most people can walk and listen at the same time.”
“But there were obstacles.”
Arthur’s hand gets swatted away again and he crosses his arms. “Well at least let me wrap it for you. It’ll help the swelling go down. Compression and stuff.”
“You know what helps swelling? Ice.”
“Fine, but I still say it’s broken.”
Arthur leaves and returns with an Ace bandage and a gel ice pack that Merlin snatches from him immediately. Instead of laying it on his leg, he amuses himself by pressing it against his forehead to combat the grimy humidity of the garage.
“Keep your knee straight,” Arthur says as he unwinds the tape. He wraps it around Merlin’s leg carefully, his knuckles brushing the inside of his knee with every pass. Merlin watches him with hooded eyes from under the shadow of the ice pack.
When he’s finally convinced of no injury, he spends the rest of their allotted time together bullying Merlin about his insufferable clumsiness, but in a way that makes Merlin laugh and chuck clumps of grass at Arthur in retaliation.
-
Which leads to multiple days Arthur is careful not to tally spent tracking deer trails in the woods behind the shop or lolling in the front yard after particularly gruesome runs. Merlin even stops complaining the first time he finishes three miles, laughing, before pretending to pass out. Arthur lets him lie there for a generous five minutes before reviving him with a super soaker he dug out from the attic. And if Arthur refuses to recognize these moments of near-friendship once they’re over, he certainly is unwilling to acknowledge the silent nights he spends contemplating the ripple of muscle when Merlin runs or the corners of Merlin’s eyes when he grins-always cheekily-growing more and more frequent.
Arthur denies himself a lot of things, but most of all he denies contemplating the start of school looming closer every day. He’s kept the training runs with Merlin to himself, moments he unfolds and studies in the dark with both hands fisted beneath his pillow. It’s like thinking about his mother: there are questions that cannot be answered in the light of day but only speculated on at night.
Then there are the times when Arthur finds himself incapable of even facing Merlin head-on, like when Gaius gets called in for some late-night repairs and Merlin tags along. They lay out in the grass a half-foot apart, quietly, as if their breaths possessed their own language. In these moments Arthur is afraid that he might do something irrational, might touch him, might walk along side him in the halls, might call him for inexplicable reasons. He ends up not saying anything at all when Merlin clambers back inside Gaius’s Buick, peering out at him from inside the window as they drive away.
----
Part Two