Author:
bunnysworldTitle: Manly Valentine's
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Merlin/Arthur
Summary: Hunith is very amused about the boys' plan to have a very manly Valentine's.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 706
Prompt: Valentine's Day Cards
Author's Notes: Take this humble offering as an apology for the horrible cards I made. I'm just a bit better writing about them than making them ;) I hope I can be forgiven for both. Once again, not beta'd, sorry.
Hunith smiled as she made dinner. She would never admit it, but she was almost giddy about Merlin having his first serious boyfriend and that this boyfriend was Arthur. At first glance, they seemed to be too different, but they were good for each other.
“What are we going to do on Sunday?”
The boys were in the living room where they had pretended to work on some presentation for a while before they had moved on to necking.
“Sunday? Don’t know.”
“Yes, Sunday…it’s…”
“Oh, Valentine’s. That’s for girls, isn’t it?”
Hunith grinned as she imagined Merlin’s face falling. Merlin hadn’t been talking about anything else for more than a week, pondering what to get Arthur and wondering what they would do together.
“Hmm…yeah, you’re right.” Merlin sounded disappointed. “But we can do something anyway. It’s a day off, you know…”
“I thought we could…I don’t know. Let’s do something manly.”
Hunith had a hard time not to giggle. Some days, Arthur didn’t seemed to have come to terms with being gay, others, he needed to prove that he still was a boy. A man!
“Like what? Car racing and getting a tattoo?”
Arthur huffed out a laugh. “We don’t have drivers’ licenses yet and I’m not going to get a tattoo.” He paused. “And you’re not getting one either!”
“What if I wanted one?”
“You’re not going to scar your body like that.”
“Why?”
“I want it the way it is.”
Oh! Hunith frowned. She knew that they did a bit more than just holding hands already if the sounds coming from Merlin’s room and the wide grin on his face some nights after Arthur left were anything to go by. Of course she was aware of the fact that this time would come and her little boy would finally have sex but no mother needed to hear it like that.
“So…no hearts, no bears, no candy, okay?”
“Okay.”
The next couple of days Merlin padded around the house and sighed and pouted. When Sunday came, Hunith woke up to Merlin rummaging in the kitchen. She put her bathrobe on, tied her hair up and went to see what was going on.
“Morning, dear.”
“Hi mam.”
“What are you doing?”
“Did I wake you up? I’m sorry!”
“Don’t worry.” She went to make herself a tea. “What are you making?”
“A cake.” Merlin rummaged through the cupboards. “Where is the cake pan you made the cake for my last birthday with?”
“The heart-shaped one?” Hunith tried not to grin. “Over there.”
Merlin found it and brought it over.
“So we’re going to have cake with our tea in the afternoon?” Keeping a straight face got more difficult.
“No.” Merlin didn’t look at her and poured the dough into the pan.
She went over and pressed a kiss on his cheek. “Call me if you need help.”
“Thanks.”
Over the next hours, Hunith heard Merlin make decorations for the cake. Each time she ‘accidentally’ went into the kitchen, the chaos was bigger than before, but Merlin had managed to put an even icing on the cake, to write a wobbly ‘Love you’ on it and now was busy making a marzipan figure.
He put it on the cake very carefully, stepped back and sighed.
“What’s wrong, dear?”
“It looks like…I don’t know, a creature from the swamp. And Arthur will hate it anyway.”
“To me, it looks like a dragon.”
“It does?” Merlin’s face lit up.
“Don’t worry, Arthur will love it. You put so much work into this, just for him, what’s not to love about it?”
Merlin leaned against the counter and took a deep breath. “We said no hearts, no chocolates, no flowers, no girlish things. But just a card seemed so…not enough, you know?”
Smiling, Hunith nodded. “I understand. He’ll love it, I’m sure.”
That was the moment, the doorbell rang.
Hunith went to get it and almost laughed when she saw Arthur standing there, a huge teddy bear in his arm, holding some heart-shaped balloons and a heart-shaped box with chocolates and wearing an uncertain expression on his face.
She bit back a remark about the ‘manly man stuff’ he was holding and just turned to yell “Merlin, it’s for you!”