The Future Soon (3/4)
Part One | Part Two
Uther storms into Arthur’s department at precisely 10:12 two Mondays later, and Arthur watches his whole staff stare in surprise, since it’s a rarity for Uther to be found anywhere but in his office when he’s at Pendragon. He expects others to come to him. However, Arthur is ready with an extra cup of coffee and the rigid chair his father prefers, which Arthur keeps in the corner of his office because nobody else likes it. He knew he would be getting a visit when he sent the e-mail this morning, and sure enough, twelve minutes after his father arrived in the office after a long breakfast meeting, here he is.
He doesn’t shut Arthur’s office door, and Arthur doesn’t bother asking him to. He’ll want to make the shouting as public as possible, and if he caters to him enough, maybe he won’t be dismissed out of hand. The first thing Uther does is slam a printout of the e-mail down on Arthur’s desk and then loom over him. Arthur stands to greet him smoothly, but his father speaks before he can get a word out. “What is the meaning of this, Arthur?”
“The recent … situation with Freya, as well as the current political climate, has made me realize that we need to expand our base of diversity hires.” If he’s going to make a difference, he’s going to start making it now; he’s going to choose it. “We’re one of the highest-rated companies for hiring policies involving gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Including myself.” Arthur gives his most charming smile. “However, the magical community questions our commitment to diversity because no one seems to get hired.”
His father is practically purple with rage, and Arthur braces himself. He loves his father, but even when he followed all the rules he was never good enough. He may as well concentrate more on his own conscience. “You know the reasons for that.”
Of course he won’t be honest with the door open. Everyone knows, but as long as Uther doesn’t say it aloud, he can discriminate against magic users as much as he wishes. “I do. But as I said, with the current political climate--”
“Damn the current political climate, Arthur! You sent this e-mail to Human Resources and they are going to take it as a suggestion to actively headhunt people from the magical community!” Perhaps he might have gone a bit too far, doing that. “You will send them a message and redact your previous e-mail immediately.”
Arthur crosses his arms, aware that the usual bustle outside his door has quieted. His team has been quieter than usual since Freya’s transfer, and Arthur’s been on the receiving end of more than a few glares. This might help him rise in their estimation again, at least. “You may do that yourself, if it matters that much to you. I certainly won’t do it.”
“Your loyalty is to this company, not to whatever foolish idea you have in mind at the moment, Arthur. What if an e-mail like that is leaked to the press? Our reputation is--”
“A joke,” Arthur finishes for him. “We’re behind the times, father, and I understand your position but we need to move from it before our clients start taking business elsewhere.”
He knows it’s a mistake before he finishes saying it, as losing clients is the one surefire thing besides mentions of Arthur’s mother that will make Uther lose his temper, but he can’t say he’s sorry about it. “How dare you? I have built this company from the ground up and--”
“It was just a consideration, in the wake of an event that hit my team close to home. I doubt Human Resources will do anything without checking with you first.”
“They will take this as an excuse to flout company policy and go out of their way to hire incompetents and potential embezzlers.”
“If they would take an excuse as flimsy as the one that e-mail offers, perhaps you might consider why they’re jumping at the chance,” Arthur snaps.
There’s a long, long moment of silence, unbroken by what should be the noise of Arthur’s team doing their jobs in the background. Arthur wonders if he should worry about the shade of violet his father has turned, but he doesn’t say anything conciliatory. Perhaps he’s foolish to draw a line like this, but he’s been planning it since he had Freya moved to Wales and saw himself away from his father’s company. It’s a future he wants to choose--not the loneliness, but certainly the freedom. If his father bends at all, he’ll stay. If he doesn’t …
“Think very carefully before you say anything else, Arthur,” Uther says in the same tone he used when Arthur failed a biology course and every time he got in the paper for doing something stupid. “You are the heir to this company, but that can be changed if I feel that you are not holding up its ideals.”
“Try removing me, and see how many employees stay.”
That is definitely too much, because his father goes from plum to pale in under five seconds, and straightens into businesslike calm. “Perhaps I shall,” he says, and then he’s stalking out of Arthur’s office and out of his department while nobody even pretends not to stare.
Arthur closes his eyes and stands there until he has himself fully under control. When that’s finished, he closes his laptop and packs his briefcase. If it comes to the worst, there isn’t really anything else in his office that he cares about. Owain, one of his team members, is standing at the door when he looks up. “Sir?”
“I believe I’m feeling ill. I’ll be working from home today. Keep things going on as normal.”
“Yes, sir.”
Arthur walks out of the department with his head held high. Word will get round that he went running with his tail between his legs, but his father likes scenes. If he wants one, he’ll have to come get Arthur, and one lesson he learned early on was to press the home court advantage.
Of course, the second he’s out of the building and down the street far enough to be out of sight, he has to stop for a minute and breathe because he might have just done something incredibly stupid. He won’t be able to help anyone else like Freya, that’s for certain, but a big move like this is the only way to force his father’s hand, and if Arthur stays at the company he’ll just have to go over everyone’s records with a fine-toothed comb and make sure any word of magic never makes it to his father.
Arthur goes home, and doesn’t take the turn down the road that would lead him past Taliesin’s shop. He’s not sure he wants to see the results of this morning’s work, at least not yet. For a while, he pretends to do actual work, going through files and case reports he’s been putting off and avoiding his e-mail. A little while after noon, though, he gives up, makes himself an omelet, and opens up his liquor cabinet.
It’s been quite some time since he went about getting drunk quite this methodically--probably since the first time he had a team member fired by his father for being a magic user while he stood helplessly by. Arthur settles himself on his couch with the television blaring something inane and pours himself a new glass of something every half hour or so. The drinks get larger and more frequent as the afternoon wears on and first his mobile, then his land line, start ringing every few minutes. They’re all from his father, he notes when he struggles off the couch to piss, so at least gossip hasn’t got to his friends yet. He doesn’t want to know how Morgana will react.
The calls from his friends start around six thirty, when he’s sprawled out on the couch drunker than he’s been since uni and still miserable and unable to forget what dangerous ground he’s on. Morgana first, of course, perhaps because his father swallowed his pride and called her. Then Elena, and Gwaine, and Gwen and Lancelot and Leon and Elyan and he can almost see the gossip run through their group based on whose name is lighting up his caller ID.
It’s almost an accident when he hits the “talk” button when Merlin’s name appears, sometime around eight. “Hello?” he slurs, or at least thinks it sounds like a greeting.
“...What?” says Merlin, sounding wrong-footed. “Why the hell would you answer my call and not anyone else’s? You’re an hour and a half late for dinner at Elena’s, you know. We’ve had to eat without you in between calling you to make sure you aren’t dead on a highway.”
“Ah.” He tries to muster up a polysyllabic response to that. “I’d forgotten. About dinner. Tell everyone sorry, yeah?”
“Arthur, are you drunk? It’s a Monday night!”
“I might be fired. Or maybe I quit. I don’t know. M’employment status is uncertain.”
“You what?” Someone in the background--probably Morgana, it’s always Morgana, and Merlin said they’re all together--says something. “No, I’ll tell you later, just let me talk to him for now,” Merlin answers, and goes back to talking to Arthur. “Where are you? How much have you had to drink?”
“My flat, of course.” Arthur hasn’t had a drink in nearly an hour, some sort of self-preservation kicking in, and he’s feeling exhausted and more than a bit ill. “And I don’t know. First there was the brandy, but that was only half full. And then the vodka, but that was only a third and it tastes like shit straight. And then Bailey’s, but there’s still some left.”
“Oh, gods.” Someone’s talking to Merlin again. “He’s on a fucking bender, Morgana, this isn’t the time. Arthur, you stupid twat, are you trying to give yourself alcohol poisoning? Someone needs to check on you, make sure you won’t die in the night.”
“Mmm,” Arthur agrees, and drops the phone. He thinks he hears one indignant squawk out of it, but it’s drowned out by the noise of the telly, which is playing the news, and he falls asleep to yet more dire predictions about the economy and the elections.
Eventually, he realizes that there’s some sort of banging noise going on outside his flat, or inside it, or maybe in his head, but he can’t quite bring himself to stand up and do anything about it, because he suspects he’s going to vomit if he actually moves very much. The banging stops quickly enough, though, and Arthur settles back into sleep--only to feel a hand on his forehead what feels like a few seconds later. He makes a noise that’s unintelligible even to him.
“I am going to kill you,” says Merlin conversationally.
Arthur blinks his eyes open to find Merlin standing over him, brows knit. “Hangover,” he argues in what passes for witty repartee at this stage of his alcohol-induced haze.
“Yes, that will be a bitch.” Merlin looks at the coffee table, where the bottles he’s been pouring from are placed in a neat line. “I don’t understand how you didn’t actually explode.”
It occurs to Arthur to ask how Merlin got into his flat when he locked it just the same as always, but it takes several seconds to figure out how to get the words out of his mouth. “You got in?”
“Magic. Most of the others offered to come, but I figured … well, you answered my call for a reason, right?” Arthur makes an agreeable noise, although at this point he’s not entirely certain what that reason was. “And I sort of had to--what happened with your father?”
“Father?”
“Damn it. I should get you into a bed. You couldn’t have answered a call one or two drinks earlier so we could get some sense out of you?”
“You didn’t call before that,” he points out, and closes his eyes again.
Merlin breathes out hard. “No, I suppose I--no, Arthur, come on, open your eyes, we should probably make you get rid of whatever alcohol you haven’t got in your system yet before you sleep.”
“Can’t make vomit sound appealing.” He opens his eyes just in time for Merlin to get an arm underneath his shoulders and lever him into a half-sitting position. He swallows several times to stave off the effects of the rapid movement. “Why are you here?” he thinks to ask belatedly.
Merlin keeps working at manhandling him to his feet, with surprising amounts of success. Arthur hopes he remembers in the morning so he can be suitably impressed. “Didn’t want you to die of alcohol poisoning, as your veins probably contain more vodka than red blood cells at this point.” He hauls Arthur to his feet and Arthur thinks about anything and everything but his roiling stomach. Liquid dinner might not have been the best idea. “And I was the one whose call you answered. Some sort of responsibility there, I guess.”
“Sent Morgana,” Arthur manages. And then “no, bedroom” when Merlin seems inclined to set him up in his bathroom for the night.
“Morgana is not good to have around while drunk, I know you know this. Especially when she’s mad at you, which she is, what with you not answering your phone for more than an hour.”
“Father.”
It takes Merlin a moment to get that, or maybe he’s just busy hauling Arthur through the door to his bedroom and half-tossing him onto the bed before going to work on his shoes. “That must have been some fight you two had. What over?”
“Magic. Hiring.”
Merlin surveys him once he’s finished taking off Arthur’s shoes. “Your dry cleaner might yell, but you’re going to have to sleep like that tonight. Here, let me put your bin next to the bed, I have a feeling you’re going to need it. And what the hell possessed you to take on your father of all people over that?”
If he trusted himself to get out more than a few words at once, there’s a lot Arthur could say to that. Freya. His most recent vision in Taliesin’s shop, of a life without Merlin but helping magic users nonetheless and away from his father’s ever-increasing bitterness and bigotry. Only one word makes it through, though. “You.”
He squints in the dark to see the way Merlin’s eyes go wide, how his mouth goes round with a soundless exclamation for a second. “I’d better--are you going to be okay on your own?”
Arthur’s been drunk and alone before, and while he isn’t looking forward to the morning, he could survive it. Still, he doesn’t want to be alone, and it’s getting harder and harder to fight off sleep by the second. “No. Stay.”
If Merlin answers, it takes long enough that Arthur’s too far gone to hear or understand. But he does notice when Merlin sits down on the other side of the bed just as Arthur drifts off and rests a hand on his hair.
*
Arthur wakes up with his head pounding and his mouth tasting like something died in it and remembers everything backwards.
Merlin is in his flat. Or at least he was. Not because they had sex again, but because Arthur had answered his phone drunk and Merlin had been … worried? He thinks Merlin was worried. He knows he asked him to stay, but when he flails a hand out to check he’s alone in his bed and the sheets are cold.
Merlin was worried because Arthur was drunk and not answering his phone, and Arthur was drunk because … oh. He sits up carefully, head still pounding, and reaches for the bin placed by his bed--that must have been Merlin too. After a few seconds, his stomach stops complaining about him moving and he dares to open his eyes and squint at the clock. He’s an hour late for work, if he still has a job.
Now that he’s properly awake and at least temporarily upright, Arthur notes the smell filtering into his room. Cooking eggs and coffee, which means that either Merlin called someone else to look after him or he’s still here. That makes Arthur curious enough to overcome his headache and get out of bed.
Once he’s upright, he gets out of the mess of wrinkles that he’s still wearing from yesterday and finds a t-shirt and jeans, not to mention a clean pair of pants. All that goes to make him feel a great deal less disgusting, despite the taste in his mouth, so he decides to brave the rest of his flat.
The smell of eggs and coffee, as well as that of bacon, gets much stronger when Arthur opens his bedroom door, and the curtains in his living room are thrown open. He shields his eyes and peers into the kitchen, where Merlin is standing awkwardly with a spatula in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. “I didn’t know whether I should wake you up or not,” Merlin says eventually. “And then I figured the smell would get you up.”
“Yes. Thank you. You didn’t have to cook.”
Merlin shrugs. “I’m hungry too.”
“You could have left.”
“You asked me to stay.”
“I suppose I did.” There isn’t much else he can say to that without insulting Merlin, and he doesn’t want to do that. “I didn’t think I had bacon,” he adds, peering at the stove.
“You didn’t. I went out earlier.”
“Oh.” Arthur tries to get a handle on the situation, but it’s been a long time since he woke up to someone in his flat, and his hangover is still pounding in his temples, so he just cautiously walks over to his table and sits down. “It’s very kind of you. Far better than if you’d called Morgana or something.”
“I had to deal with Morgana when I had a hangover once.” Merlin sets a cup of coffee in front of Arthur, and Arthur immediately takes a huge gulp of it, which goes a long way towards erasing the taste in his mouth. He concentrates on the mug--one of his biggest, he notes, and he is going to have to buy Merlin dinner or something to thank him--while Merlin bustles around the kitchen and finally sits down with a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon for each of them. They eat in silence for a second. “Your phone started ringing at six thirty,” says Merlin at last. “I took it off the hook. Your mobile’s been ringing too, but I think it’s out of battery now because it stopped about forty minutes ago.”
“Probably my father, since I wouldn’t speak to him yesterday.”
“Right.” Silence for all of five seconds, and then Merlin slams down his cup without warning, making Arthur’s headache flare, and stares at him. “Okay, I’ve got to ask. I shouldn’t be nosy, you weren’t in your right mind last night, but what happened? I mean, obviously it’s to do with your father, but it must have been pretty bad, and you said you might be fired. Is that why you aren’t at work?”
Arthur tries to think of the simplest way to put it. “I sent an e-mail to my father saying we ought to hire more magic users, given the current political climate, and sent it to Human Resources as well. We had a bit of a … disagreement over it.”
“I imagine you did.” Merlin fidgets with his fork. Arthur takes a bite of the eggs, which are delicious, and then has to force himself to swallow because his stomach is still unsteady. “How much of last night do you remember?”
He has to think about it for a minute, running through his foggy memories again. “There aren’t any huge gaps in my recollections that I can tell, but that doesn’t mean I remember absolutely everything. Did I say something embarrassing?”
“You said you did it for me,” Merlin says softly, staring at his plate. “Stood up to your father, I mean. And I … is that true?”
Arthur thinks through the night before again, remembers slurring the word out because it seemed to sum up all the other reasons he had. He tries to think of a proper answer, because he owes Merlin that for somehow dragging him into the shambles he’s made his life into in the past twenty-four hours. “In a way, I suppose. More because of the visions.” Merlin’s eyes go wide. “Not the--not the marrying part, stop looking like you’re about to flee, that’s not what I meant. Just, every single time I was working for magic users somehow, even in the last one, when we weren’t together.” He corrects himself. “Especially in the last one.”
Merlin gives him a lopsided smile. “So you decided to fall right into that just like you fought against falling into being with me?”
“No.” He struggles to think of how to say it, just like he’s been struggling with it in his mind for the past few weeks. “I decided to choose it. It won’t be exactly like I saw in the visions, but I wouldn’t want it to be. I just … I’ve always known my father is a bigot. I just thought I would stay under the radar and change things when he retired.”
“For what it’s worth--and I know it’s not worth much--I’m glad you’ve decided not to wait. It means a lot, to people like--people like Freya.”
“It’s worth a lot,” he says, more fiercely than he intends, then scrambles to temper it. “Coming from someone who’s spent the first several years of our acquaintance needling me about my father, that is.”
“Well.” Merlin shrugs and eats a few bites of his eggs, probably for dramatic emphasis. “I suppose you’re not so bad. You just take getting used to.”
Arthur rolls his eyes, and things are almost normal, if he can forget about the fact that he might not have a job (though that’s not too much of a worry, not yet, since he has enough of a nest egg to pay his rent and his food for quite some time) and Merlin is sitting across the table from him, having made breakfast after Arthur asked him to stay, drunk and pathetic. Then, of course, his mouth gets away from him and ruins it. “What were you doing, in the vision when we weren’t together?”
This time, when Merlin stops to eat a few bites, it looks more like a stalling tactic than a theatrical one. Arthur follows suit, though he’s more trying to make sure nothing else embarrassing slips out. “Exactly what I’m training to do. Social work, and all that. I was babysitting Gwen and Lance’s kid, though, in the vision.”
“Were you--” Arthur has to ask, his headache and maybe a bit of alcohol still in his system conspiring to make him keep talking. “Were you happy? Not content, I mean. Happy like we both were when we were married.” Were you with someone else? He manages to hold that part back, at least.
“No,” says Merlin, after an excruciating silence. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot. I could look tomorrow and be perfectly happy on my own, or with someone new.”
“Of course. Of course, I know that. I just … wondered.”
“So you weren’t?” asks Merlin. Arthur shakes his head, and they both return to their meals. Merlin bolts the rest of his before he speaks again. “I’d better go, I have class.”
“Yes. I’m sorry for detaining you. And thank you for coming. You didn’t have to.”
“Yes I did,” says Merlin, and then he puts his dishes in the sink and leaves with the quickest farewell he can give.
Arthur finishes his eggs and bacon and two cups of coffee, e-mails the office to tell them he’s taking a week of vacation time (and ignores the twenty-three e-mails his father has sent him), and goes back to bed.
*
When Arthur wakes up again, it’s well after noon and he feels human again, if tired. That means, he supposes, that it’s time to face the music, so he brushes his teeth and takes a quick shower to get the grime off before going out into his living room and putting his phone back on the hook. It starts ringing, of course, thirty seconds later, because his father doesn’t know how to leave well enough alone. Surely he’s received word of Arthur’s short leave of absence already.
“Hello, father,” he says when he picks up the phone.
Uther’s voice is dangerously low. “Where have you been?”
“Surely you’ve been informed that I am using a week of my vacation time.”
“We are having this discussion, Arthur, whether you want to or not.”
“I could hang up this phone right now.” It’s not a real threat and they both know it. Neither of them tends to run from confrontation, and that’s a trait he’s not ashamed of inheriting. “And if you’ve called to tell me to take it back, you might as well be the one to end the call.”
“I’m calling to tell you that you’re a fool if you think I’m going to let you dismantle everything this company stands for just because you think you know best.”
Arthur takes a deep breath and counts to three. “Everything the company stands for. So the company stands for bigotry, then? Magic and its use have nothing to do with what our company does, it’s just your past getting in the way of tapping into an important part of the workforce.”
“I am your father and your employer and you--”
“Have a right to voice my opinion just like any employee.” Arthur squares his shoulders even though his father can’t see him. “Support for magic users is on the rise, and pretty soon companies sympathetic to their cause are going to stop doing business with Pendragon. We’re not so well-off that we can afford that.”
“And what gave you this great epiphany?” asks Uther, icy, every inch the employer and not the father, though he’s never been good at the latter. Arthur and Morgana brought each other up far better than he could. “I’d wondered when you asked about the girl from your team. I suppose next you’ll ask to be transferred to Wales to be with her.”
“My intervention on Freya’s behalf was not based on romantic interest. I would have done it for anyone else in our employ. Anyone who does his or her job, at least.”
“Then why haven’t you done it before? You kept her job, Arthur, now be reasonable and let that be an end to it.”
Arthur doesn’t think he’s ever disliked his father this much, not even when he was in his teens and practically required to hate him. “If you’re allowed to spend your whole life working against them because of my mother, aren’t I allowed to work for them, if it’s for someone I care about?”
Uther, of course, continues to assume that Arthur is doing this all for Freya. “You don’t care about the girl, Arthur, you hardly know her.”
“What if it’s for Morgana?”
Morgana and Ygraine are the two lines they never, ever cross in their conversations, and Arthur barely cares that he’s dragged them both out in this one. His father obviously does, because he’s silent for longer than he ever lets himself be during arguments. “Take your week off if you must, Arthur, and remind yourself who your family is in the mean time.”
His family isn’t just his father anymore, though, like it was for his whole childhood and much of his adolescence, at least until Morgana came to live with them. Now it’s Morgana, and Gwen and Lancelot and their new child, and Leon and Elena and Gwaine and Elyan and even Merlin. That’s what gives him the courage to say “She’s your family too, no matter how much you deny it” before he hangs up.
Arthur doesn’t open his liquor cabinet again, though it’s a temptation despite the headache still throbbing at his temples. Instead, he plugs in his mobile and takes care of the e-mails and delegation he needs to do to make sure his department keeps running smoothly in his unexpected absence. His team is generally quite self-sufficient, but he likes to be sure. After that, he turns on the television again, and puts in a movie he’s had rented for weeks when he discovers that nothing good is showing.
Morgana calls at five thirty, and since all his other friends seem to have decided on radio silence, Arthur decides that he can put up with her ribbing for a few minutes. “Hello?”
“Now he answers,” she snaps, which is about what he was expecting, and then she surprises him. “Are you okay?”
“Why do you ask?”
He knows that’s the wrong question before he’s even finished asking it, but he doesn’t try to rephrase, just lets her harangue him. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps because you didn’t show up to dinner last night and didn’t answer phone calls and then answered one from Merlin of all people. Perhaps because Merlin informed us that you were on a bender and ran off after telling us none of us were to come unless he said differently. He called me at my lunch break today and told me that I was to check up on you when I got the chance. What on earth is your problem?”
“Merlin didn’t tell you?”
“Just told us all to leave be last night and then told me to call you today, Arthur, that’s all. What had you so drunk you missed dinner?”
It’s even odds whether she’ll be sympathetic or smug when he tells her he’s had a fight with his father that he might not be able to fix, but Morgana generally knows how far she can push him before he’ll snap and is kind enough not to do it. “I fought with Father.”
“About?” she asks, even though she probably knows.
Arthur tells her the story, from Merlin’s phone call about Freya to his miserable chat with his father earlier. He leaves out most of Merlin’s part of the past two days, though; she knows what she needs to know and he still has to think it over some more before he can talk about Merlin. “He probably wanted to make sure I’m not drinking again,” he tacks on at the end, when she doesn’t comment.
“Oh, Arthur.” Her voice is a bit unsteady. “What do you think you’re going to do?”
He shrugs, even though she can’t see it. “I haven’t made any decisions yet. Things can’t go on as before, I won’t move on that, but he’s my father. I can’t forget that.” Arthur winces, since Morgana spends a great deal of her time trying to forget that. “He’s the only connection to my mother I’ve got,” he adds, embarrassingly quiet.
“Morgause knew her,” says Morgana, but it isn’t a jibe. “I know you two don’t get along, but she’s family too. You can ask.”
“She’s your family.”
“Ours,” she snaps, pretending to be impatient, but he knows her better than that, and is proven right when she speaks again. “You’ve got all of us, you know that, don’t you?”
“I know that.” Arthur clears his throat; the conversation is getting a bit over-emotional for either of their comfort. “For the gods’ sake, if even Merlin came to take care of me when I was pissed and being an idiot, I didn’t figure I’d be left alone if I left Pendragon.”
“Yes. Even Merlin.” Her tone speaks volumes. “Merlin, who started this whole chain reaction by calling you about Freya.”
“I hope you think better of me than to think I did this because I wanted to impress someone.”
“Of course I do. I’m just wondering when you or Merlin will do something about this, one way or the other.”
Arthur thinks of the shambles that is his life, and how unlikely it is he’ll have time to think about romancing anyone, let along Merlin of all people, until he’s done something about that. “I rather think I have bigger things to worry about right now, Morgana, though your concern is touching and appreciated. Merlin and our possible destiny will have to wait until after I’ve figured out my employment status, a new job if that becomes relevant, and whether or not I’ll be disowned if I don’t give in to my father.”
Morgana sighs, like he’s missed the point entirely. “I don’t care if you have a possible destiny. Seers generally don’t. We see how things change. I just care that no matter what else happens in my visions, when you’re with Merlin, you’re happy. I saw you married to Gwen years ago, and you were content enough, and then married to and divorced from both Sophia and Vivian, and even saw you with Gwaine, a bit, when you first met him, but none of it compares.” She lowers her voice while he’s still catching his breath. “And he’s always happiest with you.”
“I’ll think about it when I’ve fixed my latest mess,” Arthur manages to repeat after a few seconds of gaping silence. It’s been a long time since Morgana actually shocked him with anything pertaining to her visions.
“Do.” There’s the sound of a door shutting at her end of the line. “Elena and Gwaine and I are going out to dinner. I don’t think they’d mind too much if you came along, and I can tell them not to ask about what’s going on if you’d rather not talk about it.”
Arthur mentally goes over the contents of his refrigerator, not to mention his level of motivation to cook. “Just tell me where to meet you,” he says after a few seconds. “I’ll be there.”
*
The next Monday, Arthur goes into his office, unpacks his briefcase, and looks around at his team, all of whom are trying not to stare. Then he packs his briefcase again, nods around the room, and walks right back out. When he’s a block away, he ducks into a cafe and opens his laptop to write an e-mail to Human Resources, CCed to his father: I regret to say that I must tender my resignation at Pendragon, effective immediately. Thank you for the opportunity.
He sends it before he can give himself time to regret or rethink. He’s known since he walked out of the office last week that the only reason to go back would be to try to help people like Freya in whatever way he can, and it wasn’t until he walked back in that he realized how useless that is. If he stayed, his father would be watching his every move and hobbling him wherever he could. He’ll do more good on his own, if he can figure out what to do.
That’s too big a question for the moment, though, and Arthur’s at loose ends. If he goes back to his flat, chances are he’ll pace a rut in the floor, which he’s been trying to avoid doing on his break from work. His friends are all at work, and while he knows they would probably leave if he told them what he’s done and come to him, he can’t quite bring himself to call any of them.
Instead, he buys a coffee when the barista glares and walks out into the city, not entirely sure where he’s going until he ends up three storefronts down from Taliesin’s. From there, it’s all too easy to walk into the shop, and give Taliesin behind the counter an awkward wave.
Taliesin doesn’t say anything for just long enough to make Arthur uncomfortable. He just stands there, leaning on the counter and giving Arthur a somber, intense stare that makes him wonder if Taliesin saw him dying or something. “This is the last time I’ll serve you,” the seer says at last.
Arthur was expecting nearly anything but that. “What?”
“It’s too easy to get addicted to the future if you look at it too often. That’s why seers have to learn how to take it when a grain of salt. Some of us make our living catering to the addicted, but I don’t. You ought to live in the present.”
He gapes for nearly a minute before collecting his wits enough to answer. “I don’t think I’m in much danger of that, if only because my sister would string me up by my ears, but thank you. I’m really only here because--”
“You’ve managed to blow up your life and want to see what’s there when the debris clears,” Taliesin finishes for him.
Arthur has to pause to think about that again. “You said you don’t foresee your customers.”
“No, but I’m not a fool either,” says Taliesin, and walks towards the back room without giving Arthur a chance to ask any more questions. When Arthur follows him back, he’s already removing one of the biggest crystals from one of the higher shelves. “This one’s strong. Hopefully you’ll see what you need to see.”
This time, Arthur does his best to clear his mind before he takes the crystal. He doesn’t want to ask a specific question, about Merlin or his father or anything, because Morgana always says questions are limits. When he looks down, it’s barely a fraction of a second, and then--
He’s at a party again, but not the same one as last time, because he knows many of the people at this one. Morgana and Elena are spinning around on the dance floor, tipsy and laughing while Gwaine takes pictures. Lancelot is carrying around a sleeping toddler and Gwen is holding another baby, talking quietly to Elyan. Leon is talking seriously with--gods, is that Nimueh Lake? Even Freya is in a corner, talking with a dark-haired woman who looks a lot like--
“You’re thinking too hard.” An arm slides around his shoulders and when Arthur-in-the-future turns Arthur isn’t the least bit surprised to see Merlin there beside him. “Upset that he didn’t come?”
“I knew he wouldn’t.” Arthur-in-the-future draws Merlin close for a thorough kiss, and it isn’t until Arthur feels the gentle scrape of metal across stubble that he realizes exactly what it is that he’s witnessing. Of course. He’s seen a few weeks after, he’s seen the proposal, even if things won’t play out just like that in this world. Of course he’s seeing the wedding. “I’m happy. I wasn’t even thinking about him just then, you know.”
Merlin rolls his eyes. “Liar. He’s the only thing that makes you look that serious.”
“I feel like I should be offended that you think I only take one subject seriously. You’re my husband, you know, you shouldn’t be insulting me.”
Whatever retort Merlin is building up gets swallowed by his soppy grin, and Arthur knows he probably looks just as stupidly besotted. “Husband,” Merlin says belatedly.
“Yes, that was rather the point of the exercise.” Arthur-in-the-future waves to someone that Arthur doesn’t know now. Either a friend or coworker of Merlin’s or someone that he meets in whatever new life he’s going to build. “I think that would be hard to miss. What with the rings.”
Merlin takes that as his cue to catch Arthur’s hand in his and kiss the ring. “Maybe now all the journalists will stop flirting with you.”
“That’s a hopeless dream. I’m irresistible, you know. Up-and-coming politician and all that.” Merlin whacks him in the arm, and Arthur-in-the-future just grins at him. “Abusing me already, Merlin? I fear for our future.”
“Keep up being obnoxious, and you’re sleeping on the floor in the suite tonight, I don’t care if the bed is big enough for five people. I can keep you off it.”
“Theoretically, yes, but why would you want to?”
Merlin gives him a lopsided smile. “Fair point, well made. Now come on, Morgana’s going to laugh at us forever if we don’t get out on the dance floor at least--”
Arthur puts the crystal down slowly, doing his best to keep his breathing even and his face expressionless. He and Merlin are together again, and it takes a while to comes to terms with how much he wants that. Wants the happiness threaded through the whole vision, wants Merlin mocking him and kissing him, wants their friends all gathered round. “Are you satisfied?” Taliesin asks.
“I think I am,” says Arthur, and looks up. “Thank you. Perhaps I’ll stop by again to chat sometime. Shall we settle up?”
Taliesin smirks the whole time Arthur’s paying his fee, and sends him off with a clap on the back and a promise to live in the present for a while. Arthur picks up his briefcase again and wanders the city a bit, unwilling to go back to his flat when there’s so much on his mind and itching to call Merlin, to see if maybe he wants to choose that future as well.
He nearly drops the phone when Merlin’s name lights up the caller ID on his mobile just as Arthur is taking a seat next to a pond in the park. “Yes, hello?”
“Arthur.” Merlin’s breathless, a little shocked, and Arthur wonders for a mad moment if he picked today of all days to look for a vision as well and saw what Arthur did, because Merlin sounds almost exactly like Arthur feels at the moment. “You quit,” he says then.
“Right. I did.” Arthur blinks. “Wait, how do you know? I haven’t even told Morgana yet, gossip can’t possibly be traveling that fast.”
“Freya told me. Says she got an e-mail from a friend in Human Resources half an hour ago, just called me ten minutes ago when she could get away. Why did you quit?”
“I couldn’t stay, as simple as that. I was going to try to stick it out a while longer, but I couldn’t stay. I can’t change anything while I’m there.”
The line is silent for a few seconds. “So what are you going to do next?”
“I haven’t exactly got a long-term plan as of yet, in case my night of drunken debauchery last week didn’t clue you in.” He’s starting to have the glimmer of an idea, maybe, but he won’t jinx it, and part of it is Merlin’s choice just as much as his. “Maybe politics. Maybe law, I was Business and Law at school and it wouldn’t take as long as it could to be able to practice.”
“You would be a good lawyer. You can certainly argue a person to death.” Arthur laughs, and it must sound a bit hysterical, because when Merlin speaks again he sounds worried. “Look, I know I’m probably the last person you want around right now, but do you want some company, just to take your mind off things? I’ve got a lecture this afternoon, but I could skip.”
“Don’t do that, I’m a grown man, I ought to be able to sort out my own life.”
“But you don’t need to do it on your own. Sure you don’t want me there? It’s an excuse to skip a boring seminar, we’ve got a Seer coming into talk about job counseling, like I don’t get my ear talked off about hypotheticals where I intern anyway.” He pauses. “Or you could call Morgana or Gwen or something. Of course.”
“Morgana will smirk and Gwen will coo,” Arthur says, even though he knows it isn’t true. “You’re a far better option. Don’t skip your lecture, though.” He takes a deep breath. “Maybe let me buy you dinner? I owe you for coming over last week, not to mention cooking me breakfast.”
Arthur can almost hear Merlin thinking frantically, trying to figure out what Arthur is doing and if it means he’s throwing their efforts at not getting married to the dogs (which he is, in a way, but only if Merlin says yes as well). “You don’t have to do that,” says Merlin at last.
It might be Merlin saying no, in his own polite way, not that he’s ever really been polite to Arthur. In fact, it probably is. Arthur gives it one more shot anyway. “I’d like to, though.”
“Are you--”
“I’d like to treat you to dinner,” says Arthur, and that’s the closest to a confession that he’ll get.
“Okay,” Merlin says. “Okay. I’ll … my lecture gets out at five.”
“I’ll stop by your flat around six, if that’s enough time for you.”
“That’s … yeah. Okay. Six.” Merlin sounds more confused than anything else; Arthur doesn’t know quite how to read it. “Bye, Arthur,” he adds in a small voice, and hangs up.
Part Four
Uther storms into Arthur’s department at precisely 10:12 two Mondays later, and Arthur watches his whole staff stare in surprise, since it’s a rarity for Uther to be found anywhere but in his office when he’s at Pendragon. He expects others to come to him. However, Arthur is ready with an extra cup of coffee and the rigid chair his father prefers, which Arthur keeps in the corner of his office because nobody else likes it. He knew he would be getting a visit when he sent the e-mail this morning, and sure enough, twelve minutes after his father arrived in the office after a long breakfast meeting, here he is.
He doesn’t shut Arthur’s office door, and Arthur doesn’t bother asking him to. He’ll want to make the shouting as public as possible, and if he caters to him enough, maybe he won’t be dismissed out of hand. The first thing Uther does is slam a printout of the e-mail down on Arthur’s desk and then loom over him. Arthur stands to greet him smoothly, but his father speaks before he can get a word out. “What is the meaning of this, Arthur?”
“The recent … situation with Freya, as well as the current political climate, has made me realize that we need to expand our base of diversity hires.” If he’s going to make a difference, he’s going to start making it now; he’s going to choose it. “We’re one of the highest-rated companies for hiring policies involving gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Including myself.” Arthur gives his most charming smile. “However, the magical community questions our commitment to diversity because no one seems to get hired.”
His father is practically purple with rage, and Arthur braces himself. He loves his father, but even when he followed all the rules he was never good enough. He may as well concentrate more on his own conscience. “You know the reasons for that.”
Of course he won’t be honest with the door open. Everyone knows, but as long as Uther doesn’t say it aloud, he can discriminate against magic users as much as he wishes. “I do. But as I said, with the current political climate--”
“Damn the current political climate, Arthur! You sent this e-mail to Human Resources and they are going to take it as a suggestion to actively headhunt people from the magical community!” Perhaps he might have gone a bit too far, doing that. “You will send them a message and redact your previous e-mail immediately.”
Arthur crosses his arms, aware that the usual bustle outside his door has quieted. His team has been quieter than usual since Freya’s transfer, and Arthur’s been on the receiving end of more than a few glares. This might help him rise in their estimation again, at least. “You may do that yourself, if it matters that much to you. I certainly won’t do it.”
“Your loyalty is to this company, not to whatever foolish idea you have in mind at the moment, Arthur. What if an e-mail like that is leaked to the press? Our reputation is--”
“A joke,” Arthur finishes for him. “We’re behind the times, father, and I understand your position but we need to move from it before our clients start taking business elsewhere.”
He knows it’s a mistake before he finishes saying it, as losing clients is the one surefire thing besides mentions of Arthur’s mother that will make Uther lose his temper, but he can’t say he’s sorry about it. “How dare you? I have built this company from the ground up and--”
“It was just a consideration, in the wake of an event that hit my team close to home. I doubt Human Resources will do anything without checking with you first.”
“They will take this as an excuse to flout company policy and go out of their way to hire incompetents and potential embezzlers.”
“If they would take an excuse as flimsy as the one that e-mail offers, perhaps you might consider why they’re jumping at the chance,” Arthur snaps.
There’s a long, long moment of silence, unbroken by what should be the noise of Arthur’s team doing their jobs in the background. Arthur wonders if he should worry about the shade of violet his father has turned, but he doesn’t say anything conciliatory. Perhaps he’s foolish to draw a line like this, but he’s been planning it since he had Freya moved to Wales and saw himself away from his father’s company. It’s a future he wants to choose--not the loneliness, but certainly the freedom. If his father bends at all, he’ll stay. If he doesn’t …
“Think very carefully before you say anything else, Arthur,” Uther says in the same tone he used when Arthur failed a biology course and every time he got in the paper for doing something stupid. “You are the heir to this company, but that can be changed if I feel that you are not holding up its ideals.”
“Try removing me, and see how many employees stay.”
That is definitely too much, because his father goes from plum to pale in under five seconds, and straightens into businesslike calm. “Perhaps I shall,” he says, and then he’s stalking out of Arthur’s office and out of his department while nobody even pretends not to stare.
Arthur closes his eyes and stands there until he has himself fully under control. When that’s finished, he closes his laptop and packs his briefcase. If it comes to the worst, there isn’t really anything else in his office that he cares about. Owain, one of his team members, is standing at the door when he looks up. “Sir?”
“I believe I’m feeling ill. I’ll be working from home today. Keep things going on as normal.”
“Yes, sir.”
Arthur walks out of the department with his head held high. Word will get round that he went running with his tail between his legs, but his father likes scenes. If he wants one, he’ll have to come get Arthur, and one lesson he learned early on was to press the home court advantage.
Of course, the second he’s out of the building and down the street far enough to be out of sight, he has to stop for a minute and breathe because he might have just done something incredibly stupid. He won’t be able to help anyone else like Freya, that’s for certain, but a big move like this is the only way to force his father’s hand, and if Arthur stays at the company he’ll just have to go over everyone’s records with a fine-toothed comb and make sure any word of magic never makes it to his father.
Arthur goes home, and doesn’t take the turn down the road that would lead him past Taliesin’s shop. He’s not sure he wants to see the results of this morning’s work, at least not yet. For a while, he pretends to do actual work, going through files and case reports he’s been putting off and avoiding his e-mail. A little while after noon, though, he gives up, makes himself an omelet, and opens up his liquor cabinet.
It’s been quite some time since he went about getting drunk quite this methodically--probably since the first time he had a team member fired by his father for being a magic user while he stood helplessly by. Arthur settles himself on his couch with the television blaring something inane and pours himself a new glass of something every half hour or so. The drinks get larger and more frequent as the afternoon wears on and first his mobile, then his land line, start ringing every few minutes. They’re all from his father, he notes when he struggles off the couch to piss, so at least gossip hasn’t got to his friends yet. He doesn’t want to know how Morgana will react.
The calls from his friends start around six thirty, when he’s sprawled out on the couch drunker than he’s been since uni and still miserable and unable to forget what dangerous ground he’s on. Morgana first, of course, perhaps because his father swallowed his pride and called her. Then Elena, and Gwaine, and Gwen and Lancelot and Leon and Elyan and he can almost see the gossip run through their group based on whose name is lighting up his caller ID.
It’s almost an accident when he hits the “talk” button when Merlin’s name appears, sometime around eight. “Hello?” he slurs, or at least thinks it sounds like a greeting.
“...What?” says Merlin, sounding wrong-footed. “Why the hell would you answer my call and not anyone else’s? You’re an hour and a half late for dinner at Elena’s, you know. We’ve had to eat without you in between calling you to make sure you aren’t dead on a highway.”
“Ah.” He tries to muster up a polysyllabic response to that. “I’d forgotten. About dinner. Tell everyone sorry, yeah?”
“Arthur, are you drunk? It’s a Monday night!”
“I might be fired. Or maybe I quit. I don’t know. M’employment status is uncertain.”
“You what?” Someone in the background--probably Morgana, it’s always Morgana, and Merlin said they’re all together--says something. “No, I’ll tell you later, just let me talk to him for now,” Merlin answers, and goes back to talking to Arthur. “Where are you? How much have you had to drink?”
“My flat, of course.” Arthur hasn’t had a drink in nearly an hour, some sort of self-preservation kicking in, and he’s feeling exhausted and more than a bit ill. “And I don’t know. First there was the brandy, but that was only half full. And then the vodka, but that was only a third and it tastes like shit straight. And then Bailey’s, but there’s still some left.”
“Oh, gods.” Someone’s talking to Merlin again. “He’s on a fucking bender, Morgana, this isn’t the time. Arthur, you stupid twat, are you trying to give yourself alcohol poisoning? Someone needs to check on you, make sure you won’t die in the night.”
“Mmm,” Arthur agrees, and drops the phone. He thinks he hears one indignant squawk out of it, but it’s drowned out by the noise of the telly, which is playing the news, and he falls asleep to yet more dire predictions about the economy and the elections.
Eventually, he realizes that there’s some sort of banging noise going on outside his flat, or inside it, or maybe in his head, but he can’t quite bring himself to stand up and do anything about it, because he suspects he’s going to vomit if he actually moves very much. The banging stops quickly enough, though, and Arthur settles back into sleep--only to feel a hand on his forehead what feels like a few seconds later. He makes a noise that’s unintelligible even to him.
“I am going to kill you,” says Merlin conversationally.
Arthur blinks his eyes open to find Merlin standing over him, brows knit. “Hangover,” he argues in what passes for witty repartee at this stage of his alcohol-induced haze.
“Yes, that will be a bitch.” Merlin looks at the coffee table, where the bottles he’s been pouring from are placed in a neat line. “I don’t understand how you didn’t actually explode.”
It occurs to Arthur to ask how Merlin got into his flat when he locked it just the same as always, but it takes several seconds to figure out how to get the words out of his mouth. “You got in?”
“Magic. Most of the others offered to come, but I figured … well, you answered my call for a reason, right?” Arthur makes an agreeable noise, although at this point he’s not entirely certain what that reason was. “And I sort of had to--what happened with your father?”
“Father?”
“Damn it. I should get you into a bed. You couldn’t have answered a call one or two drinks earlier so we could get some sense out of you?”
“You didn’t call before that,” he points out, and closes his eyes again.
Merlin breathes out hard. “No, I suppose I--no, Arthur, come on, open your eyes, we should probably make you get rid of whatever alcohol you haven’t got in your system yet before you sleep.”
“Can’t make vomit sound appealing.” He opens his eyes just in time for Merlin to get an arm underneath his shoulders and lever him into a half-sitting position. He swallows several times to stave off the effects of the rapid movement. “Why are you here?” he thinks to ask belatedly.
Merlin keeps working at manhandling him to his feet, with surprising amounts of success. Arthur hopes he remembers in the morning so he can be suitably impressed. “Didn’t want you to die of alcohol poisoning, as your veins probably contain more vodka than red blood cells at this point.” He hauls Arthur to his feet and Arthur thinks about anything and everything but his roiling stomach. Liquid dinner might not have been the best idea. “And I was the one whose call you answered. Some sort of responsibility there, I guess.”
“Sent Morgana,” Arthur manages. And then “no, bedroom” when Merlin seems inclined to set him up in his bathroom for the night.
“Morgana is not good to have around while drunk, I know you know this. Especially when she’s mad at you, which she is, what with you not answering your phone for more than an hour.”
“Father.”
It takes Merlin a moment to get that, or maybe he’s just busy hauling Arthur through the door to his bedroom and half-tossing him onto the bed before going to work on his shoes. “That must have been some fight you two had. What over?”
“Magic. Hiring.”
Merlin surveys him once he’s finished taking off Arthur’s shoes. “Your dry cleaner might yell, but you’re going to have to sleep like that tonight. Here, let me put your bin next to the bed, I have a feeling you’re going to need it. And what the hell possessed you to take on your father of all people over that?”
If he trusted himself to get out more than a few words at once, there’s a lot Arthur could say to that. Freya. His most recent vision in Taliesin’s shop, of a life without Merlin but helping magic users nonetheless and away from his father’s ever-increasing bitterness and bigotry. Only one word makes it through, though. “You.”
He squints in the dark to see the way Merlin’s eyes go wide, how his mouth goes round with a soundless exclamation for a second. “I’d better--are you going to be okay on your own?”
Arthur’s been drunk and alone before, and while he isn’t looking forward to the morning, he could survive it. Still, he doesn’t want to be alone, and it’s getting harder and harder to fight off sleep by the second. “No. Stay.”
If Merlin answers, it takes long enough that Arthur’s too far gone to hear or understand. But he does notice when Merlin sits down on the other side of the bed just as Arthur drifts off and rests a hand on his hair.
*
Arthur wakes up with his head pounding and his mouth tasting like something died in it and remembers everything backwards.
Merlin is in his flat. Or at least he was. Not because they had sex again, but because Arthur had answered his phone drunk and Merlin had been … worried? He thinks Merlin was worried. He knows he asked him to stay, but when he flails a hand out to check he’s alone in his bed and the sheets are cold.
Merlin was worried because Arthur was drunk and not answering his phone, and Arthur was drunk because … oh. He sits up carefully, head still pounding, and reaches for the bin placed by his bed--that must have been Merlin too. After a few seconds, his stomach stops complaining about him moving and he dares to open his eyes and squint at the clock. He’s an hour late for work, if he still has a job.
Now that he’s properly awake and at least temporarily upright, Arthur notes the smell filtering into his room. Cooking eggs and coffee, which means that either Merlin called someone else to look after him or he’s still here. That makes Arthur curious enough to overcome his headache and get out of bed.
Once he’s upright, he gets out of the mess of wrinkles that he’s still wearing from yesterday and finds a t-shirt and jeans, not to mention a clean pair of pants. All that goes to make him feel a great deal less disgusting, despite the taste in his mouth, so he decides to brave the rest of his flat.
The smell of eggs and coffee, as well as that of bacon, gets much stronger when Arthur opens his bedroom door, and the curtains in his living room are thrown open. He shields his eyes and peers into the kitchen, where Merlin is standing awkwardly with a spatula in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. “I didn’t know whether I should wake you up or not,” Merlin says eventually. “And then I figured the smell would get you up.”
“Yes. Thank you. You didn’t have to cook.”
Merlin shrugs. “I’m hungry too.”
“You could have left.”
“You asked me to stay.”
“I suppose I did.” There isn’t much else he can say to that without insulting Merlin, and he doesn’t want to do that. “I didn’t think I had bacon,” he adds, peering at the stove.
“You didn’t. I went out earlier.”
“Oh.” Arthur tries to get a handle on the situation, but it’s been a long time since he woke up to someone in his flat, and his hangover is still pounding in his temples, so he just cautiously walks over to his table and sits down. “It’s very kind of you. Far better than if you’d called Morgana or something.”
“I had to deal with Morgana when I had a hangover once.” Merlin sets a cup of coffee in front of Arthur, and Arthur immediately takes a huge gulp of it, which goes a long way towards erasing the taste in his mouth. He concentrates on the mug--one of his biggest, he notes, and he is going to have to buy Merlin dinner or something to thank him--while Merlin bustles around the kitchen and finally sits down with a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon for each of them. They eat in silence for a second. “Your phone started ringing at six thirty,” says Merlin at last. “I took it off the hook. Your mobile’s been ringing too, but I think it’s out of battery now because it stopped about forty minutes ago.”
“Probably my father, since I wouldn’t speak to him yesterday.”
“Right.” Silence for all of five seconds, and then Merlin slams down his cup without warning, making Arthur’s headache flare, and stares at him. “Okay, I’ve got to ask. I shouldn’t be nosy, you weren’t in your right mind last night, but what happened? I mean, obviously it’s to do with your father, but it must have been pretty bad, and you said you might be fired. Is that why you aren’t at work?”
Arthur tries to think of the simplest way to put it. “I sent an e-mail to my father saying we ought to hire more magic users, given the current political climate, and sent it to Human Resources as well. We had a bit of a … disagreement over it.”
“I imagine you did.” Merlin fidgets with his fork. Arthur takes a bite of the eggs, which are delicious, and then has to force himself to swallow because his stomach is still unsteady. “How much of last night do you remember?”
He has to think about it for a minute, running through his foggy memories again. “There aren’t any huge gaps in my recollections that I can tell, but that doesn’t mean I remember absolutely everything. Did I say something embarrassing?”
“You said you did it for me,” Merlin says softly, staring at his plate. “Stood up to your father, I mean. And I … is that true?”
Arthur thinks through the night before again, remembers slurring the word out because it seemed to sum up all the other reasons he had. He tries to think of a proper answer, because he owes Merlin that for somehow dragging him into the shambles he’s made his life into in the past twenty-four hours. “In a way, I suppose. More because of the visions.” Merlin’s eyes go wide. “Not the--not the marrying part, stop looking like you’re about to flee, that’s not what I meant. Just, every single time I was working for magic users somehow, even in the last one, when we weren’t together.” He corrects himself. “Especially in the last one.”
Merlin gives him a lopsided smile. “So you decided to fall right into that just like you fought against falling into being with me?”
“No.” He struggles to think of how to say it, just like he’s been struggling with it in his mind for the past few weeks. “I decided to choose it. It won’t be exactly like I saw in the visions, but I wouldn’t want it to be. I just … I’ve always known my father is a bigot. I just thought I would stay under the radar and change things when he retired.”
“For what it’s worth--and I know it’s not worth much--I’m glad you’ve decided not to wait. It means a lot, to people like--people like Freya.”
“It’s worth a lot,” he says, more fiercely than he intends, then scrambles to temper it. “Coming from someone who’s spent the first several years of our acquaintance needling me about my father, that is.”
“Well.” Merlin shrugs and eats a few bites of his eggs, probably for dramatic emphasis. “I suppose you’re not so bad. You just take getting used to.”
Arthur rolls his eyes, and things are almost normal, if he can forget about the fact that he might not have a job (though that’s not too much of a worry, not yet, since he has enough of a nest egg to pay his rent and his food for quite some time) and Merlin is sitting across the table from him, having made breakfast after Arthur asked him to stay, drunk and pathetic. Then, of course, his mouth gets away from him and ruins it. “What were you doing, in the vision when we weren’t together?”
This time, when Merlin stops to eat a few bites, it looks more like a stalling tactic than a theatrical one. Arthur follows suit, though he’s more trying to make sure nothing else embarrassing slips out. “Exactly what I’m training to do. Social work, and all that. I was babysitting Gwen and Lance’s kid, though, in the vision.”
“Were you--” Arthur has to ask, his headache and maybe a bit of alcohol still in his system conspiring to make him keep talking. “Were you happy? Not content, I mean. Happy like we both were when we were married.” Were you with someone else? He manages to hold that part back, at least.
“No,” says Merlin, after an excruciating silence. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot. I could look tomorrow and be perfectly happy on my own, or with someone new.”
“Of course. Of course, I know that. I just … wondered.”
“So you weren’t?” asks Merlin. Arthur shakes his head, and they both return to their meals. Merlin bolts the rest of his before he speaks again. “I’d better go, I have class.”
“Yes. I’m sorry for detaining you. And thank you for coming. You didn’t have to.”
“Yes I did,” says Merlin, and then he puts his dishes in the sink and leaves with the quickest farewell he can give.
Arthur finishes his eggs and bacon and two cups of coffee, e-mails the office to tell them he’s taking a week of vacation time (and ignores the twenty-three e-mails his father has sent him), and goes back to bed.
*
When Arthur wakes up again, it’s well after noon and he feels human again, if tired. That means, he supposes, that it’s time to face the music, so he brushes his teeth and takes a quick shower to get the grime off before going out into his living room and putting his phone back on the hook. It starts ringing, of course, thirty seconds later, because his father doesn’t know how to leave well enough alone. Surely he’s received word of Arthur’s short leave of absence already.
“Hello, father,” he says when he picks up the phone.
Uther’s voice is dangerously low. “Where have you been?”
“Surely you’ve been informed that I am using a week of my vacation time.”
“We are having this discussion, Arthur, whether you want to or not.”
“I could hang up this phone right now.” It’s not a real threat and they both know it. Neither of them tends to run from confrontation, and that’s a trait he’s not ashamed of inheriting. “And if you’ve called to tell me to take it back, you might as well be the one to end the call.”
“I’m calling to tell you that you’re a fool if you think I’m going to let you dismantle everything this company stands for just because you think you know best.”
Arthur takes a deep breath and counts to three. “Everything the company stands for. So the company stands for bigotry, then? Magic and its use have nothing to do with what our company does, it’s just your past getting in the way of tapping into an important part of the workforce.”
“I am your father and your employer and you--”
“Have a right to voice my opinion just like any employee.” Arthur squares his shoulders even though his father can’t see him. “Support for magic users is on the rise, and pretty soon companies sympathetic to their cause are going to stop doing business with Pendragon. We’re not so well-off that we can afford that.”
“And what gave you this great epiphany?” asks Uther, icy, every inch the employer and not the father, though he’s never been good at the latter. Arthur and Morgana brought each other up far better than he could. “I’d wondered when you asked about the girl from your team. I suppose next you’ll ask to be transferred to Wales to be with her.”
“My intervention on Freya’s behalf was not based on romantic interest. I would have done it for anyone else in our employ. Anyone who does his or her job, at least.”
“Then why haven’t you done it before? You kept her job, Arthur, now be reasonable and let that be an end to it.”
Arthur doesn’t think he’s ever disliked his father this much, not even when he was in his teens and practically required to hate him. “If you’re allowed to spend your whole life working against them because of my mother, aren’t I allowed to work for them, if it’s for someone I care about?”
Uther, of course, continues to assume that Arthur is doing this all for Freya. “You don’t care about the girl, Arthur, you hardly know her.”
“What if it’s for Morgana?”
Morgana and Ygraine are the two lines they never, ever cross in their conversations, and Arthur barely cares that he’s dragged them both out in this one. His father obviously does, because he’s silent for longer than he ever lets himself be during arguments. “Take your week off if you must, Arthur, and remind yourself who your family is in the mean time.”
His family isn’t just his father anymore, though, like it was for his whole childhood and much of his adolescence, at least until Morgana came to live with them. Now it’s Morgana, and Gwen and Lancelot and their new child, and Leon and Elena and Gwaine and Elyan and even Merlin. That’s what gives him the courage to say “She’s your family too, no matter how much you deny it” before he hangs up.
Arthur doesn’t open his liquor cabinet again, though it’s a temptation despite the headache still throbbing at his temples. Instead, he plugs in his mobile and takes care of the e-mails and delegation he needs to do to make sure his department keeps running smoothly in his unexpected absence. His team is generally quite self-sufficient, but he likes to be sure. After that, he turns on the television again, and puts in a movie he’s had rented for weeks when he discovers that nothing good is showing.
Morgana calls at five thirty, and since all his other friends seem to have decided on radio silence, Arthur decides that he can put up with her ribbing for a few minutes. “Hello?”
“Now he answers,” she snaps, which is about what he was expecting, and then she surprises him. “Are you okay?”
“Why do you ask?”
He knows that’s the wrong question before he’s even finished asking it, but he doesn’t try to rephrase, just lets her harangue him. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps because you didn’t show up to dinner last night and didn’t answer phone calls and then answered one from Merlin of all people. Perhaps because Merlin informed us that you were on a bender and ran off after telling us none of us were to come unless he said differently. He called me at my lunch break today and told me that I was to check up on you when I got the chance. What on earth is your problem?”
“Merlin didn’t tell you?”
“Just told us all to leave be last night and then told me to call you today, Arthur, that’s all. What had you so drunk you missed dinner?”
It’s even odds whether she’ll be sympathetic or smug when he tells her he’s had a fight with his father that he might not be able to fix, but Morgana generally knows how far she can push him before he’ll snap and is kind enough not to do it. “I fought with Father.”
“About?” she asks, even though she probably knows.
Arthur tells her the story, from Merlin’s phone call about Freya to his miserable chat with his father earlier. He leaves out most of Merlin’s part of the past two days, though; she knows what she needs to know and he still has to think it over some more before he can talk about Merlin. “He probably wanted to make sure I’m not drinking again,” he tacks on at the end, when she doesn’t comment.
“Oh, Arthur.” Her voice is a bit unsteady. “What do you think you’re going to do?”
He shrugs, even though she can’t see it. “I haven’t made any decisions yet. Things can’t go on as before, I won’t move on that, but he’s my father. I can’t forget that.” Arthur winces, since Morgana spends a great deal of her time trying to forget that. “He’s the only connection to my mother I’ve got,” he adds, embarrassingly quiet.
“Morgause knew her,” says Morgana, but it isn’t a jibe. “I know you two don’t get along, but she’s family too. You can ask.”
“She’s your family.”
“Ours,” she snaps, pretending to be impatient, but he knows her better than that, and is proven right when she speaks again. “You’ve got all of us, you know that, don’t you?”
“I know that.” Arthur clears his throat; the conversation is getting a bit over-emotional for either of their comfort. “For the gods’ sake, if even Merlin came to take care of me when I was pissed and being an idiot, I didn’t figure I’d be left alone if I left Pendragon.”
“Yes. Even Merlin.” Her tone speaks volumes. “Merlin, who started this whole chain reaction by calling you about Freya.”
“I hope you think better of me than to think I did this because I wanted to impress someone.”
“Of course I do. I’m just wondering when you or Merlin will do something about this, one way or the other.”
Arthur thinks of the shambles that is his life, and how unlikely it is he’ll have time to think about romancing anyone, let along Merlin of all people, until he’s done something about that. “I rather think I have bigger things to worry about right now, Morgana, though your concern is touching and appreciated. Merlin and our possible destiny will have to wait until after I’ve figured out my employment status, a new job if that becomes relevant, and whether or not I’ll be disowned if I don’t give in to my father.”
Morgana sighs, like he’s missed the point entirely. “I don’t care if you have a possible destiny. Seers generally don’t. We see how things change. I just care that no matter what else happens in my visions, when you’re with Merlin, you’re happy. I saw you married to Gwen years ago, and you were content enough, and then married to and divorced from both Sophia and Vivian, and even saw you with Gwaine, a bit, when you first met him, but none of it compares.” She lowers her voice while he’s still catching his breath. “And he’s always happiest with you.”
“I’ll think about it when I’ve fixed my latest mess,” Arthur manages to repeat after a few seconds of gaping silence. It’s been a long time since Morgana actually shocked him with anything pertaining to her visions.
“Do.” There’s the sound of a door shutting at her end of the line. “Elena and Gwaine and I are going out to dinner. I don’t think they’d mind too much if you came along, and I can tell them not to ask about what’s going on if you’d rather not talk about it.”
Arthur mentally goes over the contents of his refrigerator, not to mention his level of motivation to cook. “Just tell me where to meet you,” he says after a few seconds. “I’ll be there.”
*
The next Monday, Arthur goes into his office, unpacks his briefcase, and looks around at his team, all of whom are trying not to stare. Then he packs his briefcase again, nods around the room, and walks right back out. When he’s a block away, he ducks into a cafe and opens his laptop to write an e-mail to Human Resources, CCed to his father: I regret to say that I must tender my resignation at Pendragon, effective immediately. Thank you for the opportunity.
He sends it before he can give himself time to regret or rethink. He’s known since he walked out of the office last week that the only reason to go back would be to try to help people like Freya in whatever way he can, and it wasn’t until he walked back in that he realized how useless that is. If he stayed, his father would be watching his every move and hobbling him wherever he could. He’ll do more good on his own, if he can figure out what to do.
That’s too big a question for the moment, though, and Arthur’s at loose ends. If he goes back to his flat, chances are he’ll pace a rut in the floor, which he’s been trying to avoid doing on his break from work. His friends are all at work, and while he knows they would probably leave if he told them what he’s done and come to him, he can’t quite bring himself to call any of them.
Instead, he buys a coffee when the barista glares and walks out into the city, not entirely sure where he’s going until he ends up three storefronts down from Taliesin’s. From there, it’s all too easy to walk into the shop, and give Taliesin behind the counter an awkward wave.
Taliesin doesn’t say anything for just long enough to make Arthur uncomfortable. He just stands there, leaning on the counter and giving Arthur a somber, intense stare that makes him wonder if Taliesin saw him dying or something. “This is the last time I’ll serve you,” the seer says at last.
Arthur was expecting nearly anything but that. “What?”
“It’s too easy to get addicted to the future if you look at it too often. That’s why seers have to learn how to take it when a grain of salt. Some of us make our living catering to the addicted, but I don’t. You ought to live in the present.”
He gapes for nearly a minute before collecting his wits enough to answer. “I don’t think I’m in much danger of that, if only because my sister would string me up by my ears, but thank you. I’m really only here because--”
“You’ve managed to blow up your life and want to see what’s there when the debris clears,” Taliesin finishes for him.
Arthur has to pause to think about that again. “You said you don’t foresee your customers.”
“No, but I’m not a fool either,” says Taliesin, and walks towards the back room without giving Arthur a chance to ask any more questions. When Arthur follows him back, he’s already removing one of the biggest crystals from one of the higher shelves. “This one’s strong. Hopefully you’ll see what you need to see.”
This time, Arthur does his best to clear his mind before he takes the crystal. He doesn’t want to ask a specific question, about Merlin or his father or anything, because Morgana always says questions are limits. When he looks down, it’s barely a fraction of a second, and then--
He’s at a party again, but not the same one as last time, because he knows many of the people at this one. Morgana and Elena are spinning around on the dance floor, tipsy and laughing while Gwaine takes pictures. Lancelot is carrying around a sleeping toddler and Gwen is holding another baby, talking quietly to Elyan. Leon is talking seriously with--gods, is that Nimueh Lake? Even Freya is in a corner, talking with a dark-haired woman who looks a lot like--
“You’re thinking too hard.” An arm slides around his shoulders and when Arthur-in-the-future turns Arthur isn’t the least bit surprised to see Merlin there beside him. “Upset that he didn’t come?”
“I knew he wouldn’t.” Arthur-in-the-future draws Merlin close for a thorough kiss, and it isn’t until Arthur feels the gentle scrape of metal across stubble that he realizes exactly what it is that he’s witnessing. Of course. He’s seen a few weeks after, he’s seen the proposal, even if things won’t play out just like that in this world. Of course he’s seeing the wedding. “I’m happy. I wasn’t even thinking about him just then, you know.”
Merlin rolls his eyes. “Liar. He’s the only thing that makes you look that serious.”
“I feel like I should be offended that you think I only take one subject seriously. You’re my husband, you know, you shouldn’t be insulting me.”
Whatever retort Merlin is building up gets swallowed by his soppy grin, and Arthur knows he probably looks just as stupidly besotted. “Husband,” Merlin says belatedly.
“Yes, that was rather the point of the exercise.” Arthur-in-the-future waves to someone that Arthur doesn’t know now. Either a friend or coworker of Merlin’s or someone that he meets in whatever new life he’s going to build. “I think that would be hard to miss. What with the rings.”
Merlin takes that as his cue to catch Arthur’s hand in his and kiss the ring. “Maybe now all the journalists will stop flirting with you.”
“That’s a hopeless dream. I’m irresistible, you know. Up-and-coming politician and all that.” Merlin whacks him in the arm, and Arthur-in-the-future just grins at him. “Abusing me already, Merlin? I fear for our future.”
“Keep up being obnoxious, and you’re sleeping on the floor in the suite tonight, I don’t care if the bed is big enough for five people. I can keep you off it.”
“Theoretically, yes, but why would you want to?”
Merlin gives him a lopsided smile. “Fair point, well made. Now come on, Morgana’s going to laugh at us forever if we don’t get out on the dance floor at least--”
Arthur puts the crystal down slowly, doing his best to keep his breathing even and his face expressionless. He and Merlin are together again, and it takes a while to comes to terms with how much he wants that. Wants the happiness threaded through the whole vision, wants Merlin mocking him and kissing him, wants their friends all gathered round. “Are you satisfied?” Taliesin asks.
“I think I am,” says Arthur, and looks up. “Thank you. Perhaps I’ll stop by again to chat sometime. Shall we settle up?”
Taliesin smirks the whole time Arthur’s paying his fee, and sends him off with a clap on the back and a promise to live in the present for a while. Arthur picks up his briefcase again and wanders the city a bit, unwilling to go back to his flat when there’s so much on his mind and itching to call Merlin, to see if maybe he wants to choose that future as well.
He nearly drops the phone when Merlin’s name lights up the caller ID on his mobile just as Arthur is taking a seat next to a pond in the park. “Yes, hello?”
“Arthur.” Merlin’s breathless, a little shocked, and Arthur wonders for a mad moment if he picked today of all days to look for a vision as well and saw what Arthur did, because Merlin sounds almost exactly like Arthur feels at the moment. “You quit,” he says then.
“Right. I did.” Arthur blinks. “Wait, how do you know? I haven’t even told Morgana yet, gossip can’t possibly be traveling that fast.”
“Freya told me. Says she got an e-mail from a friend in Human Resources half an hour ago, just called me ten minutes ago when she could get away. Why did you quit?”
“I couldn’t stay, as simple as that. I was going to try to stick it out a while longer, but I couldn’t stay. I can’t change anything while I’m there.”
The line is silent for a few seconds. “So what are you going to do next?”
“I haven’t exactly got a long-term plan as of yet, in case my night of drunken debauchery last week didn’t clue you in.” He’s starting to have the glimmer of an idea, maybe, but he won’t jinx it, and part of it is Merlin’s choice just as much as his. “Maybe politics. Maybe law, I was Business and Law at school and it wouldn’t take as long as it could to be able to practice.”
“You would be a good lawyer. You can certainly argue a person to death.” Arthur laughs, and it must sound a bit hysterical, because when Merlin speaks again he sounds worried. “Look, I know I’m probably the last person you want around right now, but do you want some company, just to take your mind off things? I’ve got a lecture this afternoon, but I could skip.”
“Don’t do that, I’m a grown man, I ought to be able to sort out my own life.”
“But you don’t need to do it on your own. Sure you don’t want me there? It’s an excuse to skip a boring seminar, we’ve got a Seer coming into talk about job counseling, like I don’t get my ear talked off about hypotheticals where I intern anyway.” He pauses. “Or you could call Morgana or Gwen or something. Of course.”
“Morgana will smirk and Gwen will coo,” Arthur says, even though he knows it isn’t true. “You’re a far better option. Don’t skip your lecture, though.” He takes a deep breath. “Maybe let me buy you dinner? I owe you for coming over last week, not to mention cooking me breakfast.”
Arthur can almost hear Merlin thinking frantically, trying to figure out what Arthur is doing and if it means he’s throwing their efforts at not getting married to the dogs (which he is, in a way, but only if Merlin says yes as well). “You don’t have to do that,” says Merlin at last.
It might be Merlin saying no, in his own polite way, not that he’s ever really been polite to Arthur. In fact, it probably is. Arthur gives it one more shot anyway. “I’d like to, though.”
“Are you--”
“I’d like to treat you to dinner,” says Arthur, and that’s the closest to a confession that he’ll get.
“Okay,” Merlin says. “Okay. I’ll … my lecture gets out at five.”
“I’ll stop by your flat around six, if that’s enough time for you.”
“That’s … yeah. Okay. Six.” Merlin sounds more confused than anything else; Arthur doesn’t know quite how to read it. “Bye, Arthur,” he adds in a small voice, and hangs up.
Part Four