Merlin Fic: Through the Ashes (5/?)
Title: Through the Ashes (5/?)
Author: vail_kagami
Beta: nightrider101
Rating: PG
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Summary: It's been fortold that Arthur will return at a time when he is needed most. What Merlin needs most, right now, is for Arthur to remember who he is, and not to kill Merlin when he does.
Word count: 5324
Note: Well, better late than never... Damn, I'm sorry for the long wait! I don't really have much of an excuse.
The weather continued to be bad. Or worse. John wasn’t quite sure which one.
Water was still coming from the sky, but now it was frozen. It wasn’t that bad in itself, because snow had the positive side of not being quite as wet was rain, so there was a chance of his clothes still being dry by the time he reached the bus station. On the other hand, snow instead of rain meant it was colder.
John didn’t appreciate the cold very much. Not at the moment.
He began to see the benefits of Martin driving him to work whenever there was so much as a cloud in the sky. Not that he would ever admit it.
When he woke up on the third day after Martin had without warning and somewhat randomly left for the United States, John woke up to find the entire window covered in snow. Opening it, he confirmed that the area around was also covered in snow. It was something that should not have needed confirmation, but he knew from experience that sometimes wind and rain only happened within a close diameter of Martin’s house. The weather here was funny like that.
Or the house was funny like that.
Or Martin was funny like that. If he had to chose one option, John would always lay the blame on his friendly host.
Fortunately, his headache had all but disappeared after a bit of rest. When he had woken up on Monday, alone in the big, empty house, he had felt better already, and by now he was almost perfectly fine again. He still felt a little funny at times, a little dizzy and disoriented, but it was not as bad as it had been.
At least this wasn’t a cold. It would be ages before he got rid of that one.
John had been going to work the last days regardless of the pain in his head and the occasional bouts of nausea, but it had not been fun. Now work still wouldn’t be fun, but at least he wouldn’t feel crappy while he was not having fun.
Having gone to bed unusually early the day before, John woke before the alarm went off, for the first time in days feeling well rested. For once, it seemed, he would have time for breakfast. Somehow, with Martin gone and not having it prepared by the time John was done in the bathroom, he’d found he didn’t have the motivation to even quickly cram down a toast before running off the catch his bus.
This time he still wasn’t motivated. He was, however, hungry. So he had toast and coffee and when he was done, he still had half an hour before his bus left.
Not wanting to have to hurry again, John put on his shoes far sooner than he had to, then his coat. He decided to leave early and take a comfortable walk to the ridiculously far away station, but if he left now, he would have to either walk very slow, or be stuck standing at the station for several minutes. Neither option appealed to him very much.
Better kill a few minutes inside, then. Already fully clothed and ready to leave, John wandered through the living room without anything useful to do, and for lack of a better option gave Martin’s bookshelves a closer inspection.
John liked books. He rarely had time to read, but if he had, he liked to do it. So far, though, his own books had sufficed, and he had never been forced to borrow one from Martin. Fortunately.
He had given the bookshelves his attention before, but never his close attention. Most of the stuff just didn’t interest him, even though Martin had books covering pretty much every genre and at least three centuries. Probably more. Some of it actually did meet John’s interests. But some books were so off-putting he never quite got over his aversion to them enough to care for the others.
Like this one. John grimaced as he read the title. It was a collection of stories based on the Arthurian legend. He had never liked those, tended even to actively avoid them. Books, movies - they just felt wrong to him, in a way that made him want to shoot the creators. It simply wasn’t his cup of tea.
Martin seemed to like them, though. He had a lot of these. Well, to each their own.
John, for his part, disliked these books so much he spent too much time staring at them in dismay and was late to leave the house after all, once again having to run to catch his bus.
-
It was snowing everywhere. There was something comforting in that.
But only in the sense that it confirmed that Martin’s house was not located in some sort of weird otherworld or in the centre of a temporal distortion. It was less comforting in the fact that if it continued to snow this heavily, the bus home might not go, and John would be stuck in the restaurant overnight.
Or the plane would not land and Martin would be stuck in hibernation between Great Britain and the Unites States. Not that John had any idea when he was going to return. For all he knew, it could be next year. His weird friend had been impressively vague with his information.
If John had been in his place, he would have stayed in America for a year. Or at least until the end of winter. He didn’t know where exactly Martin had flown off to, but surely it wasn’t as cold there as it was here. Unless he had gone to Alaska. But what the hell would he be doing in Alaska?
Then again, what the hell would he be doing anywhere else? What the hell was he doing here when John wasn’t around?
John became aware that even after living with him for month, there were countless things about his strange guardian he still did not know. Strangely enough, he never really noticed that when Martin was around to ask. Even now, he had a hard time caring.
A side effect of the heavy snow was a distinct lack of customers. During sudden rainfall the restaurant was crowed with people seeking shelter, but it had been snowing all day, so most people hadn’t even left the house that day. The result was boredom. The result of that boredom was John’s boss giving him the rest of the day off, since there was nothing to do for him anyway.
Another result of the snow was that the bus home really didn’t go. Great. Now John was stuck between sleeping on the street and calling a taxi, which would cost about one hundred trillion pound.
He seriously considered option one.
Standing in the cold wind, getting snowed on and shivering, John was more concerned with keeping his ears from falling off than paying attention to his surroundings. The wind also kept him from hearing very much, so when someone grabbed his shoulder from behind, his first reaction was to turn around quickly and reach for his belt, where absolutely no weapon of any kind could be found.
“Hey, didn’t you hear me?” Carl, a colleague normally working in the kitchen, had no idea how closely he had just now escaped not-so-certain doom. “I called you three times.”
“The wind called louder,” John replied, taking a few steps left so he was sheltered from the wind by Carl’s massive bulk. “What is it?” Secretly, he very much hoped that Carl had a car and was offering him a ride.
“The boss just kicked me out because we’re overstaffed. If the bus’s not going, I can give you a ride.”
There was justice in the world. John thought he might be grinning, but wasn’t entirely sure because his face was frozen. “That would be great.” Especially since his designated driver was having fun in the sun.
Carl’s car was parked in the parking lot on the opposite side of the building. Instead of entering the restaurant again to exit on the other side, Carl insisted on taking the long way, around the building and all the other buildings that stood too close to leave any room for anything bigger than a mouse to pass through. John didn’t quite get the point of it, assuming that his colleague didn’t enjoy having his ears frozen off and then blown away any more than he did. He was about to make the irritated remark that it wouldn’t have been much longer had he just walked home, when finally they reached the narrow alley connecting the parallel streets.
The buildings protected them from most of the wind. Immediately, the temperature seemed to go up a couple of degrees - which still left it at a level somewhere on the wrong side of freezing. John wasn’t at all happy about having to walk all that way back on the other side to get to the car.
But it might be a while before they actually reached the other end of the passage. John suspected as much the moment he saw Alex and a guy he didn’t know stand in the middle of the alley, leaning against the walls and looking as if they were waiting for them. Something told John that they were not waiting for a lift.
The two were smoking, but stomped out their cigarettes when Carl and John arrived. Contrary to John’s expectation, though, Carl didn’t stop to talk to them but kept walking, with the others following with no more than a nod as a greeting. Apparently they did want to be taken along, which was unexpected and strange. Alex had a car, and on top of that, no reason to be here in the first place. He hadn’t been at work today.
He was too cold to think much about it, though, and asking about it would require wasting energy on speaking. In the end he didn’t really care as long as he was out of the cold soon and didn’t have to walk home.
The cold seemed to freeze everything - even time. It moved rather lazily and stretched minutes to unpleasant lengths as they walked along. Eventually John could make out the parking lot and the white lumps that were cars hidden by snow. He hoped Carl remembered which of these was his, because he really didn’t feel like cleaning them all of snow just to find the right car.
Perhaps that was why he had gotten Alex and the other guy here: to help him search.
But Carl seemed to know where he was going and found his car soon enough. The passenger seat was taken by the Guy John Did Not Know, so he got in the back with Alex. And was confused. Because right beside them stood a car that was mostly clear of snow and looked a lot like Alex’ car.
Carl took the driver’s seat, but made no move to start the car. Instead he turned to the guy beside him and took the bag he handed him. He continued to roam through it until he produced a few smaller bags full of powder from its depths.
John frowned. He frowned even more when Carl handed him one of those. “What’s this supposed to be?” he asked, eying the bag with mistrust, as if it were about to bite him.
“You don’t know?” That was the Guy, who now for the first time acknowledged John’s existence with a disbelieving stare.
“I know what it is. I’m just not sure why you gave this to me, because I sure as hell don’t want it.”
“Don’t worry. It’s free.”
“That’s not what I worry about. I don’t want it.”
Beside John, Alex rolled his eyes. “Just take it already. It’s harmless.”
“That’s the great thing about this stuff,” Carl explained. “It’s cheap, harmless and you get a good kick out of it, without any side effects. I don’t do drugs, so do you think I’d be stupid enough to take anything that would fry my brain?”
Actually, John did think so. Especially since Carl seemed to believe that taking this stuff still qualified as not doing drugs.
He was about to say just that when the car’s door flew open, effectively stopping him, and causing everyone else to stuff their bags away in a hurry.
“John,” Martin hissed, actually hissed, looking like an avenging angel from above. Or, actually, like a very wet, very pissed man. “Get out of there right this moment.”
A part of John was very relieved to see him and be saved from this increasingly awkward and unpleasant situation. The bigger part of him was very, very pissed.
It was, however, the relieved part of him that had control over his actions, as he found out when he found himself leaving the car without hesitation, the bag of powder still in his hand. Martin was standing only centimetres before him, and he still looked incredibly angry. John felt his own anger rise up, like a shield to defend himself with. Martin was faster, though.
“Give me that,” he ordered, and before John could react in any way he had taken the bag from John’s half-frozen hands and burned it between his fingers.
The ashes left dark traces in the snow.
John had about a thousand things he wanted to say to him - staring with “Where the hell did you come from just now?” - but he found himself keeping quiet as Martin dragged him behind by the arm like a little boy. His car was parked on the street right in front of the parking lot, which seemed pretty retarded, but John didn’t even comment on that. Instead he pressed his lips together and just stared out of the window in pouty silence while Martin drove too fast and in angry silence, as if John had actually done anything wrong.
It wasn’t until they were inside the house that they started to speak. Martin, naturally, spoke first.
“Never,” he started, and apparently his anger had not cooled down one bit. “You’ll never again even think about doing something idiotic like that!”
John could have told him that he wasn’t going to do something idiotic like that anyway, thanks for the vote of confidence, and that if Martin had waited just one minute longer he would have seen John exit the car without having to be dragged out by anyone. But he was annoyed and angry and freezing in his still-wet clothes, so what he said was, “Excuse me? Since when is what I do or don’t do your problem?”
“Since I’m responsible for you!” Martin snapped back.
“You’re not responsible for me! You don’t even know me!”
“I know you much better than you think I do.”
Which didn’t sound creepy at all. John was overcome by the image of Martin going through the bag stuffed under his bed while he was out of the house and got even more angry.
“Oh yeah? Is that why you are so ready to assume I’m going to make the first stupid mistake I have a chance of doing without waiting to see what I was actually going to do? What gives you the right to come and take my decisions from me? You’re not my father!”
Martin didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. He only glared, and John turned before he could think of something and hurried up the stairs like a ten-year-old storming up to their room after a fight with their parents. (Except he never had parents to fight with or a room to storm up to.)
Upstairs it took him a minute to calm down enough to remember his cold wet clothes and that he should get out of them. He changed into something dry, fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling as if it was the sole cause for his anger.
After a while his stomach prompted him to wonder if it might be possible to get food from the fridge without running into the man living downstairs.
Well. Food was overrated anyway.
-
Well, that didn’t go so well. Merlin wasn’t sure how he had expected it to go, though, because Arthur was a brat, obviously, and this was how brats reacted when someone tried to get some sense into them. Even more angry than before and pretty put off, Merlin stared at the stairs leading to Arthur’s room for a long time after the door had slammed shut.
Then he snorted. ‘You’re not my father!’ If that wasn’t true! Still, the words stung more than they had any right to, because they reminded Merlin that even though he wasn’t his father, Arthur looked like he might be - and that Arthur didn’t even remember what his real father looked like.
He really could have done without having to deal with this crap right now. Something was going on, people in Florida were creepy, and there was danger to Arthur, so much was sure, because there was always danger for Arthur. And if that wasn’t enough, Arthur had to go out and create even more danger to himself because this Arthur was innocent and carefree and young.
Except he was none of these things except young, which reminded Merlin again why he was so pissed in the second place. But the Arthur Merlin knew back in Albion, he would never have fooled around with drugs or crap like that because even when he was young and a brat, he also knew about responsibility and self-control, more than he probably should.
And any knight of his who would have even thought about falling off the wagon would have royally gotten their arses kicked.
But there are no knights around this time. Just Arthur and his stupid ego and anger, as if he had any right to be angry about anything. Except there is the little voice inside Merlin that plays Arthur’s other words over for him. And, yeah, he kind of didn’t really know that the boy was going to take the drugs. He’s just seen him with the bag and knew there was a danger he needed to be protected from. So Merlin had acted. As he always had.
And it hadn’t always been appreciated either. A memory came up, of a time when another Arthur began to realise just how much Merlin had done for him without his knowledge. He had not been as grateful as he should have been. Arthur never reacted well to having the right to make his own decisions taken from him.
Perhaps Merlin should have seen this coming.
He sighed, then groaned, and decided to sit in the kitchen until nightfall and get drunk. This really wasn’t how he had imagined his return to England to go.
At least the weather hadn’t disappointed him in the least.
-
They managed to not talk to each other for the rest of the day and all of the next one. When Merlin went up to see if Arthur had died in his sleep he found that the boy had left for work already without him noticing - possibly because Merlin had indeed drunk a lot the night before and very nearly died in his sleep himself. Or at least in the morning, when he had to face the hangover.
One of Gaius’s remedies would be welcome now. They worked better than coffee. Even if they tasted so, so much worse.
He missed Gaius.
Oh well. He also missed sleeping in without consequences. Even if in this case the consequence was only deducting that Arthur had left from his absence instead of actually seeing him leave. Because even though it was still cold and uncomfortable outside, Merlin was very sure that the boy wouldn’t have accepted a ride to work from him. He could hold a grudge for an impressively long time.
Not that Merlin would have offered a ride. Because he was still angry as well, and quite rightfully so, thank you very much.
In the evening he heard Arthur return and sneak upstairs, obviously still intent on avoiding his host. It was a miracle that he hadn’t just packed his things and left, because that would have been such an Arthur thing to do, and thanks to a steady job and no rent, he would have enough money to go elsewhere. Florida, for example. Where it was warm and the people were not creepy at all.
It occurred to Merlin that perhaps he should try to make peace with his friend before Arthur decided to be a little more Arthur and do just that. Possibly in the middle of the night and without comment.
He thought the third day after their fight offered a good opportunity, because the bad weather returned with passion at some point in the afternoon, so Merlin drove out to the city to offer Arthur a ride home. Arthur, upon seeing his car when he left the restaurant, refused to get in. They had another fight. The bus wouldn’t come, and they fought some more. Merlin started considering magically zapping his dear friend and dragging him into the passenger seat, but they weren’t alone, and his powers weren’t up to zapping anyway. Then Arthur’s drug-dealing friend showed up to offer him a ride and Arthur told him to fuck off, which Merlin considered a victory, however small.
Arthur still wouldn’t get in the car.
Altogether, in the language of the newly installed and by now fully functional internet, Merlin considered this a “Fail”.
Though not an epic one. It could have been worse.
He left Arthur alone that day, but decided to make peace that same evening - by bringing a pizza up to Arthur’s room and forcing him to eat it. Food was always a good way to break the ice, and if Arthur would see this as a reason to get pissed even more, at least he would be pissed about something else and they could move on from the thing that started this and eventually, in the course of several hundred individual fights, forget about it.
It was a brilliant plan that had worked several times before. Admittedly, that was long ago, but Arthur hadn’t changed all that much after all.
When Merlin knocked on the door, however, he got no reply - not even a grumbled ‘Go away or I’ll have you burned at the stake’. So he knocked again, and was answered by even louder silence. Merlin saw this as justification to use his own key and enter uninvited. It was his house, after all, and besides, he had to make sure Arthur hadn’t died in there. Boy could have starved or something.
The usage of his own key was difficult, because Merlin didn’t know where he’d left it - or if there even was another one. It wasn’t a separate flat up there, after all, but merely a separate room with a very simple lock and a very simple key that probably had no twin.
The door still opened to him, almost before he even realised that it was probably locked and he had no key. The room behind was dark - for a moment Merlin was convinced that Arthur had left again without him noticing. For a moment he was even convinced that Arthur had left for good.
But then he switched on the lights and saw that all of Arthur’s stuff was still there - as was Arthur himself, curled up on the bed and fast asleep. Merlin frowned. It was barely eight in the evening. Arthur rarely slept before eleven, if that.
And he rarely slept in his clothes either.
Moving quietly, Merlin walked over to the bed to have a closer look at his friend. Arthur was pale, even more so than he had been the last several days, and looked exhausted. His cheeks were slightly flushed, indicating a fever. Of course. He had been feeling unwell for weeks. With the weather as bad as it had become, it was no surprise he had finally fallen ill.
Eventually coming to the conclusion that eating was overrated - as were pyjamas - Merlin decided to let him sleep, hoping that a night of good rest would do wonders for Arthur’s health. In the very least, it certainly wouldn’t do any harm.
So he turned off the light and quietly went back downstairs. It was only much later that he realised he had left a part of himself in that room that kept watch over his friend until morning.
-
Arthur didn’t emerge from his room until late the next morning but when he did, he did it in a hurry; unkempt, half-dressed and nearly falling down the stairs.
“I’m late for work!” he exclaimed, his voice somewhere between panic and anger. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Why didn’t you set the alarm?” The words were out of Merlin’s mouth before he could stop them. Arthur hadn’t set the alarm because he’d passed out rather than gone to bed, but, well, it felt good to be on speaking terms again.
One second later he found out that they were on glaring terms as well this morning.
“Don’t worry about it.” Merlin grinned back, unabashed, to signal how very awesome he was. “I called the restaurant, told them you were sick.”
If possible, Arthur’s face turned even paler. “You did what?”
“Uh, called you in sick?” Merlin repeated, in case that information had been lost along the way.
“You… I can lose my job because of this! It’s not like I have a written contract there. What gives you the right to do that?”
That was Arthur-esque gratitude for you.
”I don’t know, maybe the fact that you are feverish and in pain and all that?”
“I’m not in pain!”
“Yes, you are.” And Merlin couldn’t tell how he knew that but he did. “Your head is killing you and your joints ache, and when you swallow…” Arthur stared at him and Merlin became aware that he really wasn’t supposed to know about that. “Uh,” he tried, “that’s what I’d feel like if I was sick.”
Arthur rolled his eyes, apparently willing to ignore this whole topic for lack of a better option. Then all the panic-fuelled energy seemed to leave his body and his shoulders slumped. He made his way over to the couch where he flopped down with a groan.
“I really fucking hate you, you know.”
“I’d offer you chicken soup, but since you’re feeling like throwing up at the thought of food…” Okay, he should really stop talking now.
Arthur, miracle of miracles, only threw a couch pillow at him.
-
Three hours later, Arthur still wasn’t ready for chicken soup, so Merlin left to get some drugs. He would have left to get a doctor (as Arthur couldn’t be arsed to get off the couch long enough to go to the doctor himself) but was strongly discouraged by a boy who apparently was convinced that seeing a doctor because of a cold was an intolerable sign of weakness. (It reminded Merlin of the old days in a way that usually left him nostalgic. Unfortunately, this was one of Arthur’s habits that had usually left Merlin rolling his eyes and setting his boots on fire.)
When he got back with various drugs for headaches and throat aches and fever, and cough and blocked noses (though Arthur neither had a blocked nose nor was he coughing), Arthur had already gotten better, just to spite him. He was also ready to skip the chicken soup and go straight for the cold pizza from the evening before.
After that they watched TV for hours, huddled together on the couch. And while they were not quite touching and Arthur was a teenager who thought Merlin was an airheaded idiot, it was all so familiar and comfortable that for a while Merlin wished they could just stay like this. What did Arthur need to know the past for? He could be happy as John and Merlin could be happy with him as John if he tried to see him as John in the first place, and no one needed to lose their head the moment the other remembered some not so pleasant details from their shared past.
Of course the moment would come, though, and then Merlin would have to come up with a good plan. Yes, a plan would be good. A plan like knocking Arthur out and tying him to the bed before he kicked his memories into working order, so Merlin had a chance to explain himself before Arthur had a chance to kill him.
That sounded like a brilliant plan. Because Arthur was so good at listening even if he had no other choice but to hear. And he took so well to being tied up, too.
Yeah. That was one moment he absolutely looked forward to.
But if luck would have it, that moment was still far in the future. At least further than this evening. And if they were really, really lucky, everything else was also far away, be it aliens or mad scientists or flying magical stuff. It would probably be too much to expect the impending global doom to wait and have a tea and some cookies until Arthur was healthy again, had remembered his past and not-killed Merlin, but at least this evening should go over uninterrupted and full of cold pizza and bad movies.
It did. The only interruption that happened was Arthur nodding off and falling against Merlin, who wrapped an arm around him and perhaps accidentally brushed his hand against the boy’s cheek -
- and magic rushed through him like an electric current. What had been there but out of reach all the time flooded over him the instant he touched Arthur and left him dizzy. Suddenly he felt the world again in a way he hadn’t been aware had faded so much. He felt Arthur, there within that boy before him, waiting to come home, felt his heartbeat, his presence, the magic within him.
Against him, Arthur jolted awake and just then did Merlin remember how to breathe.
He could feel the boy’s confusion as much as he saw it in his face. He sensed something was happening but had no way of naming the feeling. Moving away, his contact to Merlin broke and the feeling faded.
The world became dull again.
Arthur stared at him.
Merlin stared at Arthur. Reached out a hand to cup his face and the magic rushed back as if it had never left. Was aware of the other in a way no words in any language could express, and so he knew it was okay when he leaned in and pressed his lips to Arthur’s. He didn’t think, couldn’t think, but he knew it was okay. Knew Arthur was surprised and lost and not thinking either. After a moment he started to return the kiss, awkward and inexperienced and almost shy, and that was when Merlin’s brain functions returned and he pulled away.
Pulled away and jumped off the couch and to the other side of the table, instantly missing the power and the closeness.
Arthur blinked at him, confusion and irritation mingling in his handsome, young face.
“What the hell…” he began, probably not even sure what was going on. Then the irritation took over. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
‘What’s wrong is that I used to be your lover,’ Merlin thought helplessly. ‘And now I feel like a pedophile.’
He didn’t say it aloud, though - he could too well imagine how that would have gone down.
Instead he just left. Looking back, he later came to the conclusion that might not have been the smartest move either.
-tbc
October 9, 2010
Author: vail_kagami
Beta: nightrider101
Rating: PG
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Summary: It's been fortold that Arthur will return at a time when he is needed most. What Merlin needs most, right now, is for Arthur to remember who he is, and not to kill Merlin when he does.
Word count: 5324
Note: Well, better late than never... Damn, I'm sorry for the long wait! I don't really have much of an excuse.
The weather continued to be bad. Or worse. John wasn’t quite sure which one.
Water was still coming from the sky, but now it was frozen. It wasn’t that bad in itself, because snow had the positive side of not being quite as wet was rain, so there was a chance of his clothes still being dry by the time he reached the bus station. On the other hand, snow instead of rain meant it was colder.
John didn’t appreciate the cold very much. Not at the moment.
He began to see the benefits of Martin driving him to work whenever there was so much as a cloud in the sky. Not that he would ever admit it.
When he woke up on the third day after Martin had without warning and somewhat randomly left for the United States, John woke up to find the entire window covered in snow. Opening it, he confirmed that the area around was also covered in snow. It was something that should not have needed confirmation, but he knew from experience that sometimes wind and rain only happened within a close diameter of Martin’s house. The weather here was funny like that.
Or the house was funny like that.
Or Martin was funny like that. If he had to chose one option, John would always lay the blame on his friendly host.
Fortunately, his headache had all but disappeared after a bit of rest. When he had woken up on Monday, alone in the big, empty house, he had felt better already, and by now he was almost perfectly fine again. He still felt a little funny at times, a little dizzy and disoriented, but it was not as bad as it had been.
At least this wasn’t a cold. It would be ages before he got rid of that one.
John had been going to work the last days regardless of the pain in his head and the occasional bouts of nausea, but it had not been fun. Now work still wouldn’t be fun, but at least he wouldn’t feel crappy while he was not having fun.
Having gone to bed unusually early the day before, John woke before the alarm went off, for the first time in days feeling well rested. For once, it seemed, he would have time for breakfast. Somehow, with Martin gone and not having it prepared by the time John was done in the bathroom, he’d found he didn’t have the motivation to even quickly cram down a toast before running off the catch his bus.
This time he still wasn’t motivated. He was, however, hungry. So he had toast and coffee and when he was done, he still had half an hour before his bus left.
Not wanting to have to hurry again, John put on his shoes far sooner than he had to, then his coat. He decided to leave early and take a comfortable walk to the ridiculously far away station, but if he left now, he would have to either walk very slow, or be stuck standing at the station for several minutes. Neither option appealed to him very much.
Better kill a few minutes inside, then. Already fully clothed and ready to leave, John wandered through the living room without anything useful to do, and for lack of a better option gave Martin’s bookshelves a closer inspection.
John liked books. He rarely had time to read, but if he had, he liked to do it. So far, though, his own books had sufficed, and he had never been forced to borrow one from Martin. Fortunately.
He had given the bookshelves his attention before, but never his close attention. Most of the stuff just didn’t interest him, even though Martin had books covering pretty much every genre and at least three centuries. Probably more. Some of it actually did meet John’s interests. But some books were so off-putting he never quite got over his aversion to them enough to care for the others.
Like this one. John grimaced as he read the title. It was a collection of stories based on the Arthurian legend. He had never liked those, tended even to actively avoid them. Books, movies - they just felt wrong to him, in a way that made him want to shoot the creators. It simply wasn’t his cup of tea.
Martin seemed to like them, though. He had a lot of these. Well, to each their own.
John, for his part, disliked these books so much he spent too much time staring at them in dismay and was late to leave the house after all, once again having to run to catch his bus.
-
It was snowing everywhere. There was something comforting in that.
But only in the sense that it confirmed that Martin’s house was not located in some sort of weird otherworld or in the centre of a temporal distortion. It was less comforting in the fact that if it continued to snow this heavily, the bus home might not go, and John would be stuck in the restaurant overnight.
Or the plane would not land and Martin would be stuck in hibernation between Great Britain and the Unites States. Not that John had any idea when he was going to return. For all he knew, it could be next year. His weird friend had been impressively vague with his information.
If John had been in his place, he would have stayed in America for a year. Or at least until the end of winter. He didn’t know where exactly Martin had flown off to, but surely it wasn’t as cold there as it was here. Unless he had gone to Alaska. But what the hell would he be doing in Alaska?
Then again, what the hell would he be doing anywhere else? What the hell was he doing here when John wasn’t around?
John became aware that even after living with him for month, there were countless things about his strange guardian he still did not know. Strangely enough, he never really noticed that when Martin was around to ask. Even now, he had a hard time caring.
A side effect of the heavy snow was a distinct lack of customers. During sudden rainfall the restaurant was crowed with people seeking shelter, but it had been snowing all day, so most people hadn’t even left the house that day. The result was boredom. The result of that boredom was John’s boss giving him the rest of the day off, since there was nothing to do for him anyway.
Another result of the snow was that the bus home really didn’t go. Great. Now John was stuck between sleeping on the street and calling a taxi, which would cost about one hundred trillion pound.
He seriously considered option one.
Standing in the cold wind, getting snowed on and shivering, John was more concerned with keeping his ears from falling off than paying attention to his surroundings. The wind also kept him from hearing very much, so when someone grabbed his shoulder from behind, his first reaction was to turn around quickly and reach for his belt, where absolutely no weapon of any kind could be found.
“Hey, didn’t you hear me?” Carl, a colleague normally working in the kitchen, had no idea how closely he had just now escaped not-so-certain doom. “I called you three times.”
“The wind called louder,” John replied, taking a few steps left so he was sheltered from the wind by Carl’s massive bulk. “What is it?” Secretly, he very much hoped that Carl had a car and was offering him a ride.
“The boss just kicked me out because we’re overstaffed. If the bus’s not going, I can give you a ride.”
There was justice in the world. John thought he might be grinning, but wasn’t entirely sure because his face was frozen. “That would be great.” Especially since his designated driver was having fun in the sun.
Carl’s car was parked in the parking lot on the opposite side of the building. Instead of entering the restaurant again to exit on the other side, Carl insisted on taking the long way, around the building and all the other buildings that stood too close to leave any room for anything bigger than a mouse to pass through. John didn’t quite get the point of it, assuming that his colleague didn’t enjoy having his ears frozen off and then blown away any more than he did. He was about to make the irritated remark that it wouldn’t have been much longer had he just walked home, when finally they reached the narrow alley connecting the parallel streets.
The buildings protected them from most of the wind. Immediately, the temperature seemed to go up a couple of degrees - which still left it at a level somewhere on the wrong side of freezing. John wasn’t at all happy about having to walk all that way back on the other side to get to the car.
But it might be a while before they actually reached the other end of the passage. John suspected as much the moment he saw Alex and a guy he didn’t know stand in the middle of the alley, leaning against the walls and looking as if they were waiting for them. Something told John that they were not waiting for a lift.
The two were smoking, but stomped out their cigarettes when Carl and John arrived. Contrary to John’s expectation, though, Carl didn’t stop to talk to them but kept walking, with the others following with no more than a nod as a greeting. Apparently they did want to be taken along, which was unexpected and strange. Alex had a car, and on top of that, no reason to be here in the first place. He hadn’t been at work today.
He was too cold to think much about it, though, and asking about it would require wasting energy on speaking. In the end he didn’t really care as long as he was out of the cold soon and didn’t have to walk home.
The cold seemed to freeze everything - even time. It moved rather lazily and stretched minutes to unpleasant lengths as they walked along. Eventually John could make out the parking lot and the white lumps that were cars hidden by snow. He hoped Carl remembered which of these was his, because he really didn’t feel like cleaning them all of snow just to find the right car.
Perhaps that was why he had gotten Alex and the other guy here: to help him search.
But Carl seemed to know where he was going and found his car soon enough. The passenger seat was taken by the Guy John Did Not Know, so he got in the back with Alex. And was confused. Because right beside them stood a car that was mostly clear of snow and looked a lot like Alex’ car.
Carl took the driver’s seat, but made no move to start the car. Instead he turned to the guy beside him and took the bag he handed him. He continued to roam through it until he produced a few smaller bags full of powder from its depths.
John frowned. He frowned even more when Carl handed him one of those. “What’s this supposed to be?” he asked, eying the bag with mistrust, as if it were about to bite him.
“You don’t know?” That was the Guy, who now for the first time acknowledged John’s existence with a disbelieving stare.
“I know what it is. I’m just not sure why you gave this to me, because I sure as hell don’t want it.”
“Don’t worry. It’s free.”
“That’s not what I worry about. I don’t want it.”
Beside John, Alex rolled his eyes. “Just take it already. It’s harmless.”
“That’s the great thing about this stuff,” Carl explained. “It’s cheap, harmless and you get a good kick out of it, without any side effects. I don’t do drugs, so do you think I’d be stupid enough to take anything that would fry my brain?”
Actually, John did think so. Especially since Carl seemed to believe that taking this stuff still qualified as not doing drugs.
He was about to say just that when the car’s door flew open, effectively stopping him, and causing everyone else to stuff their bags away in a hurry.
“John,” Martin hissed, actually hissed, looking like an avenging angel from above. Or, actually, like a very wet, very pissed man. “Get out of there right this moment.”
A part of John was very relieved to see him and be saved from this increasingly awkward and unpleasant situation. The bigger part of him was very, very pissed.
It was, however, the relieved part of him that had control over his actions, as he found out when he found himself leaving the car without hesitation, the bag of powder still in his hand. Martin was standing only centimetres before him, and he still looked incredibly angry. John felt his own anger rise up, like a shield to defend himself with. Martin was faster, though.
“Give me that,” he ordered, and before John could react in any way he had taken the bag from John’s half-frozen hands and burned it between his fingers.
The ashes left dark traces in the snow.
John had about a thousand things he wanted to say to him - staring with “Where the hell did you come from just now?” - but he found himself keeping quiet as Martin dragged him behind by the arm like a little boy. His car was parked on the street right in front of the parking lot, which seemed pretty retarded, but John didn’t even comment on that. Instead he pressed his lips together and just stared out of the window in pouty silence while Martin drove too fast and in angry silence, as if John had actually done anything wrong.
It wasn’t until they were inside the house that they started to speak. Martin, naturally, spoke first.
“Never,” he started, and apparently his anger had not cooled down one bit. “You’ll never again even think about doing something idiotic like that!”
John could have told him that he wasn’t going to do something idiotic like that anyway, thanks for the vote of confidence, and that if Martin had waited just one minute longer he would have seen John exit the car without having to be dragged out by anyone. But he was annoyed and angry and freezing in his still-wet clothes, so what he said was, “Excuse me? Since when is what I do or don’t do your problem?”
“Since I’m responsible for you!” Martin snapped back.
“You’re not responsible for me! You don’t even know me!”
“I know you much better than you think I do.”
Which didn’t sound creepy at all. John was overcome by the image of Martin going through the bag stuffed under his bed while he was out of the house and got even more angry.
“Oh yeah? Is that why you are so ready to assume I’m going to make the first stupid mistake I have a chance of doing without waiting to see what I was actually going to do? What gives you the right to come and take my decisions from me? You’re not my father!”
Martin didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. He only glared, and John turned before he could think of something and hurried up the stairs like a ten-year-old storming up to their room after a fight with their parents. (Except he never had parents to fight with or a room to storm up to.)
Upstairs it took him a minute to calm down enough to remember his cold wet clothes and that he should get out of them. He changed into something dry, fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling as if it was the sole cause for his anger.
After a while his stomach prompted him to wonder if it might be possible to get food from the fridge without running into the man living downstairs.
Well. Food was overrated anyway.
-
Well, that didn’t go so well. Merlin wasn’t sure how he had expected it to go, though, because Arthur was a brat, obviously, and this was how brats reacted when someone tried to get some sense into them. Even more angry than before and pretty put off, Merlin stared at the stairs leading to Arthur’s room for a long time after the door had slammed shut.
Then he snorted. ‘You’re not my father!’ If that wasn’t true! Still, the words stung more than they had any right to, because they reminded Merlin that even though he wasn’t his father, Arthur looked like he might be - and that Arthur didn’t even remember what his real father looked like.
He really could have done without having to deal with this crap right now. Something was going on, people in Florida were creepy, and there was danger to Arthur, so much was sure, because there was always danger for Arthur. And if that wasn’t enough, Arthur had to go out and create even more danger to himself because this Arthur was innocent and carefree and young.
Except he was none of these things except young, which reminded Merlin again why he was so pissed in the second place. But the Arthur Merlin knew back in Albion, he would never have fooled around with drugs or crap like that because even when he was young and a brat, he also knew about responsibility and self-control, more than he probably should.
And any knight of his who would have even thought about falling off the wagon would have royally gotten their arses kicked.
But there are no knights around this time. Just Arthur and his stupid ego and anger, as if he had any right to be angry about anything. Except there is the little voice inside Merlin that plays Arthur’s other words over for him. And, yeah, he kind of didn’t really know that the boy was going to take the drugs. He’s just seen him with the bag and knew there was a danger he needed to be protected from. So Merlin had acted. As he always had.
And it hadn’t always been appreciated either. A memory came up, of a time when another Arthur began to realise just how much Merlin had done for him without his knowledge. He had not been as grateful as he should have been. Arthur never reacted well to having the right to make his own decisions taken from him.
Perhaps Merlin should have seen this coming.
He sighed, then groaned, and decided to sit in the kitchen until nightfall and get drunk. This really wasn’t how he had imagined his return to England to go.
At least the weather hadn’t disappointed him in the least.
-
They managed to not talk to each other for the rest of the day and all of the next one. When Merlin went up to see if Arthur had died in his sleep he found that the boy had left for work already without him noticing - possibly because Merlin had indeed drunk a lot the night before and very nearly died in his sleep himself. Or at least in the morning, when he had to face the hangover.
One of Gaius’s remedies would be welcome now. They worked better than coffee. Even if they tasted so, so much worse.
He missed Gaius.
Oh well. He also missed sleeping in without consequences. Even if in this case the consequence was only deducting that Arthur had left from his absence instead of actually seeing him leave. Because even though it was still cold and uncomfortable outside, Merlin was very sure that the boy wouldn’t have accepted a ride to work from him. He could hold a grudge for an impressively long time.
Not that Merlin would have offered a ride. Because he was still angry as well, and quite rightfully so, thank you very much.
In the evening he heard Arthur return and sneak upstairs, obviously still intent on avoiding his host. It was a miracle that he hadn’t just packed his things and left, because that would have been such an Arthur thing to do, and thanks to a steady job and no rent, he would have enough money to go elsewhere. Florida, for example. Where it was warm and the people were not creepy at all.
It occurred to Merlin that perhaps he should try to make peace with his friend before Arthur decided to be a little more Arthur and do just that. Possibly in the middle of the night and without comment.
He thought the third day after their fight offered a good opportunity, because the bad weather returned with passion at some point in the afternoon, so Merlin drove out to the city to offer Arthur a ride home. Arthur, upon seeing his car when he left the restaurant, refused to get in. They had another fight. The bus wouldn’t come, and they fought some more. Merlin started considering magically zapping his dear friend and dragging him into the passenger seat, but they weren’t alone, and his powers weren’t up to zapping anyway. Then Arthur’s drug-dealing friend showed up to offer him a ride and Arthur told him to fuck off, which Merlin considered a victory, however small.
Arthur still wouldn’t get in the car.
Altogether, in the language of the newly installed and by now fully functional internet, Merlin considered this a “Fail”.
Though not an epic one. It could have been worse.
He left Arthur alone that day, but decided to make peace that same evening - by bringing a pizza up to Arthur’s room and forcing him to eat it. Food was always a good way to break the ice, and if Arthur would see this as a reason to get pissed even more, at least he would be pissed about something else and they could move on from the thing that started this and eventually, in the course of several hundred individual fights, forget about it.
It was a brilliant plan that had worked several times before. Admittedly, that was long ago, but Arthur hadn’t changed all that much after all.
When Merlin knocked on the door, however, he got no reply - not even a grumbled ‘Go away or I’ll have you burned at the stake’. So he knocked again, and was answered by even louder silence. Merlin saw this as justification to use his own key and enter uninvited. It was his house, after all, and besides, he had to make sure Arthur hadn’t died in there. Boy could have starved or something.
The usage of his own key was difficult, because Merlin didn’t know where he’d left it - or if there even was another one. It wasn’t a separate flat up there, after all, but merely a separate room with a very simple lock and a very simple key that probably had no twin.
The door still opened to him, almost before he even realised that it was probably locked and he had no key. The room behind was dark - for a moment Merlin was convinced that Arthur had left again without him noticing. For a moment he was even convinced that Arthur had left for good.
But then he switched on the lights and saw that all of Arthur’s stuff was still there - as was Arthur himself, curled up on the bed and fast asleep. Merlin frowned. It was barely eight in the evening. Arthur rarely slept before eleven, if that.
And he rarely slept in his clothes either.
Moving quietly, Merlin walked over to the bed to have a closer look at his friend. Arthur was pale, even more so than he had been the last several days, and looked exhausted. His cheeks were slightly flushed, indicating a fever. Of course. He had been feeling unwell for weeks. With the weather as bad as it had become, it was no surprise he had finally fallen ill.
Eventually coming to the conclusion that eating was overrated - as were pyjamas - Merlin decided to let him sleep, hoping that a night of good rest would do wonders for Arthur’s health. In the very least, it certainly wouldn’t do any harm.
So he turned off the light and quietly went back downstairs. It was only much later that he realised he had left a part of himself in that room that kept watch over his friend until morning.
-
Arthur didn’t emerge from his room until late the next morning but when he did, he did it in a hurry; unkempt, half-dressed and nearly falling down the stairs.
“I’m late for work!” he exclaimed, his voice somewhere between panic and anger. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Why didn’t you set the alarm?” The words were out of Merlin’s mouth before he could stop them. Arthur hadn’t set the alarm because he’d passed out rather than gone to bed, but, well, it felt good to be on speaking terms again.
One second later he found out that they were on glaring terms as well this morning.
“Don’t worry about it.” Merlin grinned back, unabashed, to signal how very awesome he was. “I called the restaurant, told them you were sick.”
If possible, Arthur’s face turned even paler. “You did what?”
“Uh, called you in sick?” Merlin repeated, in case that information had been lost along the way.
“You… I can lose my job because of this! It’s not like I have a written contract there. What gives you the right to do that?”
That was Arthur-esque gratitude for you.
”I don’t know, maybe the fact that you are feverish and in pain and all that?”
“I’m not in pain!”
“Yes, you are.” And Merlin couldn’t tell how he knew that but he did. “Your head is killing you and your joints ache, and when you swallow…” Arthur stared at him and Merlin became aware that he really wasn’t supposed to know about that. “Uh,” he tried, “that’s what I’d feel like if I was sick.”
Arthur rolled his eyes, apparently willing to ignore this whole topic for lack of a better option. Then all the panic-fuelled energy seemed to leave his body and his shoulders slumped. He made his way over to the couch where he flopped down with a groan.
“I really fucking hate you, you know.”
“I’d offer you chicken soup, but since you’re feeling like throwing up at the thought of food…” Okay, he should really stop talking now.
Arthur, miracle of miracles, only threw a couch pillow at him.
-
Three hours later, Arthur still wasn’t ready for chicken soup, so Merlin left to get some drugs. He would have left to get a doctor (as Arthur couldn’t be arsed to get off the couch long enough to go to the doctor himself) but was strongly discouraged by a boy who apparently was convinced that seeing a doctor because of a cold was an intolerable sign of weakness. (It reminded Merlin of the old days in a way that usually left him nostalgic. Unfortunately, this was one of Arthur’s habits that had usually left Merlin rolling his eyes and setting his boots on fire.)
When he got back with various drugs for headaches and throat aches and fever, and cough and blocked noses (though Arthur neither had a blocked nose nor was he coughing), Arthur had already gotten better, just to spite him. He was also ready to skip the chicken soup and go straight for the cold pizza from the evening before.
After that they watched TV for hours, huddled together on the couch. And while they were not quite touching and Arthur was a teenager who thought Merlin was an airheaded idiot, it was all so familiar and comfortable that for a while Merlin wished they could just stay like this. What did Arthur need to know the past for? He could be happy as John and Merlin could be happy with him as John if he tried to see him as John in the first place, and no one needed to lose their head the moment the other remembered some not so pleasant details from their shared past.
Of course the moment would come, though, and then Merlin would have to come up with a good plan. Yes, a plan would be good. A plan like knocking Arthur out and tying him to the bed before he kicked his memories into working order, so Merlin had a chance to explain himself before Arthur had a chance to kill him.
That sounded like a brilliant plan. Because Arthur was so good at listening even if he had no other choice but to hear. And he took so well to being tied up, too.
Yeah. That was one moment he absolutely looked forward to.
But if luck would have it, that moment was still far in the future. At least further than this evening. And if they were really, really lucky, everything else was also far away, be it aliens or mad scientists or flying magical stuff. It would probably be too much to expect the impending global doom to wait and have a tea and some cookies until Arthur was healthy again, had remembered his past and not-killed Merlin, but at least this evening should go over uninterrupted and full of cold pizza and bad movies.
It did. The only interruption that happened was Arthur nodding off and falling against Merlin, who wrapped an arm around him and perhaps accidentally brushed his hand against the boy’s cheek -
- and magic rushed through him like an electric current. What had been there but out of reach all the time flooded over him the instant he touched Arthur and left him dizzy. Suddenly he felt the world again in a way he hadn’t been aware had faded so much. He felt Arthur, there within that boy before him, waiting to come home, felt his heartbeat, his presence, the magic within him.
Against him, Arthur jolted awake and just then did Merlin remember how to breathe.
He could feel the boy’s confusion as much as he saw it in his face. He sensed something was happening but had no way of naming the feeling. Moving away, his contact to Merlin broke and the feeling faded.
The world became dull again.
Arthur stared at him.
Merlin stared at Arthur. Reached out a hand to cup his face and the magic rushed back as if it had never left. Was aware of the other in a way no words in any language could express, and so he knew it was okay when he leaned in and pressed his lips to Arthur’s. He didn’t think, couldn’t think, but he knew it was okay. Knew Arthur was surprised and lost and not thinking either. After a moment he started to return the kiss, awkward and inexperienced and almost shy, and that was when Merlin’s brain functions returned and he pulled away.
Pulled away and jumped off the couch and to the other side of the table, instantly missing the power and the closeness.
Arthur blinked at him, confusion and irritation mingling in his handsome, young face.
“What the hell…” he began, probably not even sure what was going on. Then the irritation took over. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
‘What’s wrong is that I used to be your lover,’ Merlin thought helplessly. ‘And now I feel like a pedophile.’
He didn’t say it aloud, though - he could too well imagine how that would have gone down.
Instead he just left. Looking back, he later came to the conclusion that might not have been the smartest move either.
-tbc
October 9, 2010