(Untitled)

[pratservant]

Who: supercilious & pratservant
When: Several hours after this.
Where: Chambers, Patrol Headquarters
Format: Prose
What: Merlin waits for Arthur to return from his little visit with a cannibal.
Warnings: TBA

Comments

[supercilious]

Probably Isley wouldn't enjoy knowing that Arthur finds his company simple. He's a creature of machinations, after all. But it's the truth. After that excruciating text post, when Isley had offered to listen if Arthur needed to talk, the Abyssal One had lost most of his power to infuriate. Going to see Priscilla is never a hardship, and the two of them together no longer splinters confusion and jealousy through him. So he brings cherries and freshly killed deer, and enjoys the simplicity for a while.

Arthur does need to talk, but even with his voice back the words are all dried up. His moods can swing black, his humour blacker, and his tone so dry it only needs a spark to catch it.

A conflagration, Merlin had promised him after his last date with Isley, but that was a different kind of flame. This is angry, slow-burning and resentful. When he returns it's dark, and his hands are stained with dried blood. Food hadn't filled the void in his stomach. He'd eaten the deer with feigned relish - all meat tastes like death to him now,

[pratservant]

"Forbearnan."

It was unnecessary. The flame had already caught. But now it flares and crackles, licking at Arthur's fingertips. Even saying the spell itself wasn't necessary anymore. It was so easy for him. He wonders if Arthur has any idea how easy. Easier than breathing.

"I was about to give up and return to my old room again." He doesn't move to greet him the way he normally would, doesn't even look in his direction. "Or have you only returned to pack your things?" Merlin's voice is steady, lacking the fear and sadness that are normally so easy to show themselves. Too easy, a source of endless ammo for Arthur. He doesn't go looking for it. It would be like stopping to check if a pond was really frozen solid or not, as you're walking across it. But Merlin does wonder if maybe he's exhausted his supply of those emotions over the past few weeks.

He wonders if that's a bad thing.

[supercilious]

There's a sudden flare of heat on his face, but Arthur shivers.

Merlin's voice doesn't cause Arthur to visibly startle, but the deliberate way he turns around speaks of how he wanted to whirl. Merlin's sitting there, as he must have been when Arthur entered. As he must have been since... before the sun set, or else surely he would have lit the candles. Troubling. But his apparent dispassion is an effective distraction, since Merlin isn't wracked with worry at all.

"It's my room," he points out, seething. How dare he, how dare he imply that Arthur would be such a coward as to just leave. "And my bed." The old joke suddenly vicious with his next words. "So obviously you should be collecting yours, if that's the way it is."

Everything else he wants to say sticks at the back of his throat. One fist curls into a frustrated ball.

[pratservant]

He does consider it - gathering his few clothes, his book, the carved box. He wouldn't even have to leave the bed to do it. He could leave Arthur here with his anger and frustration, never knowing if there was anything beneath the surface of that either. It wouldn't be the first time Arthur told him to get out and he'd done just that. But whenever he'd left, he'd also continued trying to help him.

"I can. If it pleases you." A pause. "Sire." His words, overly submissive for them lately. But even as he's saying them, Merlin's lifting his gaze and staring at Arthur in a way that a normal servant wouldn't.