fic: the world forgetting, by the world forgot - part 11
title: the world forgetting, by the world forgot
film prompt: eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
characters/pairings: merlin, arthur, morgana, gwen (main); merlin/arthur (main); everyone/everyone on the side
rating: pg-13
| part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10 | part 11 | part 12 | part 13 | part 14 | part 15 | part 16 |
*
|►merlin|
"Oh my god!” Freya practically shrieks. “Are you humming White Houses?”
“What are you even talking about?” He is doing no such thing.
“Vanessa Carlton. You’re humming Vanessa Carlton. Oh my god, I have to tell mom.”
“Do it. Maybe she’ll fire me and I’ll find a real job,” he says with a laugh, because both his and Freya's threats could not be emptier.
“So what’s the occasion?” And Freya does not for an instant buy Merlin’s perfectly confused look. “There has to be an occasion. You’re going on some hot date tonight aren’t you?”
A customer comes in then and saves him from answering. Freya is adorable and would coo at him forever but Merlin’s never been one to mix up his work and personal life, even in a place like this where he knows that it would hardly be unwelcome or uncomfortable. He turns to the man who just walked in and says, “Yes sir, I will be more than happy to check inventory on that vinyl for you,” slipping a small smile Freya’s way.
And yes, fine. Arthur's coming over tonight and Gaius is at a conference in New Jersey and Merlin is allowed to hum Vanessa Carlton once in a while.
*
It occurs to him when he’s tidying up the apartment that he still doesn’t know all that much about Arthur. Sure, he knows about his father and the whack-job family business and where Arthur works and what he does in his free time. He knows that Arthur’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer when he was maybe four years old, that once his father had lost her, he’d become an emotionally unavailable workaholic. And Merlin knows the little things like how Arthur never grew out of hating broccoli stems or being allergic to pineapples, and how he grew up on his father’s music, which seemed to have stopped somewhere at Beethoven, and maybe the odd number by Frank Sinatra. It neatly explained the whole thing with Arthur and the vinyl records and all his derision for the indie kids of today.
All right, so he knows probably more about Arthur than he’s let on about himself, but he finds himself still wanting more. He knows the formula for how these thing go and maybe this is what stops him short. There is supposed to be something of a give and take, and to want more, it's only fair that he give more. It’s still early for the two of them, has barely been a few weeks, and he wonders if it's even perceptible at this point. Even if it was, it’s not that he’s afraid exactly. He likes Arthur quite a lot, so much that it almost frightens him at times because he's not usually one to fall so hard so fast. It’s more that Merlin doesn’t know how to go about sharing much of himself given what little sense he's been able to make of his own life to date.
*
“So how is it,” Arthur asks, “that we know the same people, your friend Gwen, my sister Morgana, and yet…?”
Merlin has been thinking about this for some time as well, especially since running into Gwen who had recognized Arthur on sight. Thing is, he doesn’t have an answer for it either. He remembers something Gwen had said a while ago, when he’d first told her he was forgetting the endings of all the books. “I went to college with your sister.” He doesn't know what kind of weight it holds, if any at all, only that it's the thing that comes to the forefront of his mind.
“I suppose you did. Not only was it a small college but if you went to college with Gwen, and Morgana was her roommate, then it wouldn't be such a stretch that-”
“Arthur,” and it’s clearer now....do you remember Morgana? ...the feisty, pretty one. “I was friends with her.”
“Funny.” It seems to grab Arthur’s interest as well. “She never mentioned you.”
Merlin thinks of how Gwen hadn’t mentioned Arthur either, except that now he’s remembering the day they’d sat on her front porch and her blink-and-miss-it words. He had dismissed it for the longest time. It was such a common name after all, and he’s still thinking about this, trying to catch what’s so odd about it when Arthur’s voice cuts in with alarm.
“Did you hear that?”
It sounds like a buzz followed by a hiss somewhere far away. “It’s probably the hallway light,” Merlin says wearily. “It has the worst wiring ever.”
And he senses it then, feels it rather than sees it, the spark, the jolt, a shock of bright white light like a speck of lightning before the room goes dark.
He thinks he hears Arthur gasp and realizes that in the past half-second, he has somehow managed to both push Arthur away and back himself up into a wall. Arthur reaches out for him but he is sinking to the floor, pulse racing, breathing hard, and crouching awkwardly with his arms over his head because it sounds like thunder in here, deafening and all-consuming.
“Merlin,” Arthur grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him out of it. The last dregs of dusk and the city lights that dot the view from the balcony are the only sources of light in this room. Even in this, Arthur's eyes are too clear, and more than his arms, they hold Merlin in place.
It’s a minute and a half later that all the lights come back on at once. Or all of them except for the chandelier over the kitchen table, which is now in pieces all over the table, the chairs and the tile.
Merlin sits on the floor, hands numb as he digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. Shapes and colours dance in his vision, take up all the room there is behind his eyelids.
*
|►arthur|
Arthur is pretty sure this is Merlin’s way of quietly freaking out. He's walking around the apartment as if he can’t remember what he set out to do. After watching him for several minutes, Arthur decides that he’s probably surveying the damage.
Arthur hasn’t started with his own quota of freaking out just yet. He can’t explain why that is but he’s not complaining either. He figures he’ll probably start once Merlin calms down.
“I think you should to go,” Merlin says when he catches Arthur staring.
“I think you should call someone." Arthur would do it himself if he knew who exactly the go-to person was after witnessing someone initiate a power outage with their mind. "How far is your uncle?”
“He’ll be back tomorrow. I don’t want to worry him.”
“You just blew up a chandelier. I think he should know.” For a second, Arthur recalls that it was almost as if he'd seen a speck of gold in Merlin’s eyes. He disregards the thought and blames it on a trick of the very unreliable lighting in this place, never mind that he has just given Merlin full responsibility for the chandelier. It would probably have made more sense to blame the wiring first, to have it checked out, but he doesn't even bother with that. In a twisted sort of way, it works in his head. Just don't ask him to explain it because he can't.
“I’ll be fine," Merlin says, sounding decided not fine. "It’s happened before. I think. I’m not sure. I’m okay. Just go.”
“I really don’t think that's happening,” and Merlin can glower and make all the sullen faces he wants but there is no way Arthur is going to leave him like this. They're going to make sense of this. He'll get to the how part of it a little later. Right now, he just needs Merlin to keep his head on straight and stop feigning composure, and very badly at that, in order to get Arthur to leave.
A glass of water and two arguments later, Arthur miraculously manages to steer Merlin towards his bed with a hand on the small of his back and sits beside him.
“Arthur, you should go.”
“Here's a tip," Arthur says. "If it didn't work the last twenty-five times, it's not going to work now.” It earns him a groan partly muffled by the pillow at this angle. “I called work, yours and mine. Now I'm not going anywhere and you are going to make it easy for yourself and stop wasting your breath.”
Merlin looks at him, death-pale and heavy-lidded, and croaks, “I’m sorry. Tonight sucks.”
“What are you talking about?” Arthur smirks. “Dinner and fireworks? Best date ever.”
Merlin shoots him a glare but there’s no steel in it. In turn, Arthur pushes back his hair and tells him to stop before he hurts himself.
It’s when Merlin's breathing finally evens out and Arthur's sure that he's asleep that he allows himself to think about it. The shock and horror or whatever it is that he’s supposed to feel simply does not come and Arthur gives up when he's sure that he couldn't force the feeling if he tried. Instead, he switches off the light and settles in beside Merlin, wrapping an arm around him like a second blanket at his back.
It’s something he picked up on from the get-go, the way they fit and fell into a rhythm, from the way they walked in step to the way they kissed. It went beyond that, to a broader knowledge of how the other person moved and functioned in their space. It was wholly new and yet like clockwork in its familiarity, quick and effortless, and that in itself was startling at times.
*
He dreams they’re on a moving train, red and yellow and white lights zooming by outside the window.
Montauk is the next station, the final station, someone has just announced, and Arthur tries not to wonder why they’re going to a beach in the middle of the night.
Next to him, Merlin looks out the window. Out of seemingly nowhere, he says, "Sometimes you love so much that it burns you out,” before taking Arthur’s hand.
There’s the sound of static and Morgana’s voice whispering close to him from somewhere he can’t see. It burns you out and burns you up, like a candle, like a cigarette. Merlin’s mouth is still moving but Arthur can’t hear his voice, only Morgana’s, and soon, it becomes layered with another woman’s. It might be Gwen, might be his mother. He cannot say for sure. He only knows that they are saying, whisper-soft: It consumes you until it destroys you. And when there’s nothing left to burn-
The train comes to a sudden halt with a screech, and Merlin is gripping his hand so tight that the whites of his knuckles show through. One of his bracelets rides up on his arm and away from the rest, a thin chain with a silver charm, shaped like a lightning bolt, dangling at the side.
Arthur reaches out to touch it with his free hand, and Merlin says, “You like it? Gwen got it for me.”
Something feels disproportionately wrong about that. He knows he should be worrying about the train, about whatever else is going on, but he can only think, that's not true, and, I gave it to you.
He’d seen it at a jewelry stall in the city and, for reasons that make no sense to him now, he’d thought of how fitting it would be.
*
He wakes up disoriented some time in the first few hours of the morning. Merlin sleeps surprisingly soundly so Arthur takes care in untangling himself.
The thing is, he remembers that stall, the sights and sounds and the smell of food vendors and their street meat, the city and the cigarettes, in the air all around. He wonders if this is why he sat so still through the power going out and Merlin’s crisis that followed. Part of him had been used to it, had seen it play out before a hundred times or so.
*
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