Fic: Disguises and Imposters

[entangled_now]

Title: Disguises and Imposters
Author: Corona
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur, Merlin/Morgana, Merlin/Random Nobleman, Merlin/Uther
Rating: R
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: In which Merlin is in disguise, and not happy about it.
AN: Written for louiex , who wanted 'The Noblewoman plot' that we talked about. I tried to get everything in, I really hope you like it!


Merlin was fairly sure he'd polished Arthur's armour enough, because he could see his own untidy, dirt-smudged face staring back at him.

He glared at it, which was an exercise in futility, but he didn't care.

Today the dragon hadn't been very helpful.

Mysterious yes, helpful no.

Arthur's future continued to be annoyingly vague, and Merlin's place in it, Merlin's place as a part of it, was just as unknowable. It was hard to plan for a vague and mysterious future.

Though Arthur's ability to get himself in trouble, seemed to be working fine.

Arthur seemed to have a talent for attracting nameless peril, or perhaps 'perils' would be more accurate.

Merlin wished there was something he could do about that, because destiny started to look like a lot of work when every other week brought some new and confusing threat to overcome. Merlin may have had magic but he wasn't arrogant enough to think he was a match for every new peril that showed itself at the castle gates.

All of which Uther seemed determined to let in.

Merlin stared at his own face. For a king so ruthlessly opposed to magic he seemed strangely inept at spotting it. Or at least using some caution, in who he invited into his city, and his home.

Merlin thought that Camelot was making him depressingly suspicious.

"What are you doing?"

The armour hit the floor, with a hollow, metallic 'clang' that echoed through the room, then went all the way through Merlin's brain.

He caught it, before it went skittering off across the flagstones, twisted his head round until he could see Arthur peering down at him. His expression was a curious mixture of annoyed and amused. It was an expression he seemed to wear disturbingly often, around Merlin. Which he chose to find encouraging, rather than worry about.

Merlin remembered, belatedly, that he'd been asked a question. He looked at the armour he'd been buffing, while his mind was wandering. He could no longer see just his face, but Arthur's too, and every tiny point of light in the room.

"Buffing," he said simply.

The Arthur in the shield raised an eyebrow, then wobbled and smeared, when Merlin tipped it sideways.

"Any more, and I suspect I shall blind anyone unfortunate enough to look at me."

Merlin tipped his head back, so he could look at the real Arthur, instead of the wobbly one in the shield.

The real Arthur was wearing a very strange expression.

"You look strange," Merlin told him. Which he realised wasn't exactly helpful, or tactful. It was, however, true. "What's wrong?"

"I need your help," Arthur said, and he looked...serious, or rather he looked like he was about to ask for something, that Merlin would want to instantly refuse. Leading Arthur into having to explain exactly why he wanted whatever he wanted.

Which always irritated him.

Only today he didn't look irritated, he looked earnest. Merlin wasn't sure he'd ever seen Arthur looking 'earnest' it was quite disturbing.

Clearly this was serious.

Merlin leant the shield against the wall, brushed dirt off of his trousers and stood up.

"You know the ball my father's throwing tonight, the one all the nobles are coming to?"

"The one you've been fretting about for two months?" Merlin asked.

"I do not fret," Arthur said stiffly.

Merlin nodded.

"Of course, then the one you've been quietly, and manfully, displeased about for the last two months."

Arthur glared at him.

"Yes, that one."

"Why do you need my help?"

Arthur leant against the table, plucked one of the red-green apples out of the fruit bowl and rolled it in his hands for a long second.

"The noblewomen talk about me," he said finally. "Every year they end up in a huddle and they watch me, and they talk about me, and they laugh. For the entire duration of the ball, six hours of being watched and pointed at and laughed over, and it drives me insane."

"And you want to know what they're saying?"

Arthur sighed, like Merlin had made it sound frivolous and immature.

"I think Morgana tells them things about me," he added reluctantly. Though by the sound of his voice it clearly worried him.

"What sort of things?"

"I don't know, so I don't know how much they know, or what they talk about, and they won't talk to me, obviously."

"Why don't you ask Morgana?"

"She won't spy for me any more, she says it's tawdry and beneath her."

Which was probably true.

"To be fair it's probably tawdry and beneath you as well," Merlin told him, which was only honest. He knew Arthur hated it when he was honest.

Arthur pulled a face that suggested this, was why he was delegating.

Merlin rolled his eyes.

"So you want me to what? Hang around being a servant and try to hear something helpful?"

There was a very long pause.

"Not exactly," Arthur said slowly.

~~~

"No," Merlin said flatly. He would have used several other varieties of the word 'no' in various emphatic tones of voice, if he'd known any.

He shook his head.

Which wasn't the easiest of tasks when Arthur was dragging him along the corridors of Camelot, shushing him every time someone came within range of his indignation. He had a horrible feeling that he knew where they were going now. But Arthur was very good at steering people using a combination of charm, enthusiasm and brute force.

"No," he said again.

"You're not that much bigger than Morgana, and I know she has dresses that lace up."

"Did you not hear the no?"

"I'm ignoring it until I've convinced you otherwise," Arthur said simply, which was clearly some sort of thing princes considered acceptable and normal people didn't.

They'd talked about that.

Granted, Arthur hadn't listened much.

"I don't look a bit like a woman," Merlin protested again.

"You don't have to be attractive," Arthur said, like it was the most ridiculous thing in the world. "You just have to fool people into thinking you were born a girl."

"That's the point I'm trying to make, I have the wrong sort of face, and arms and legs, and I'm fairly certain, most of the rest of me too!"

"I'm thinking creatively," Arthur stopped and put his hands on his hips.

"I'm a little afraid that you've gone insane," Merlin said carefully. Arthur didn't even look insulted by that, which couldn't be a good sign.

"It's a good plan," Arthur insisted. "You wouldn't believe how many horrendously ugly noblewomen my father invites to these things."

"Oh thanks, that's really, that's really tactful of you."

"Some of them have beards Merlin!"

"Arthur!"

Arthur set to dragging him again, though Merlin seemed to be in danger of caving, what with his letting himself be dragged along. He hadn't thought of himself as a 'letting himself be dragged' person before.

"Look, just do this for me and I won't ask for anything remotely like this ever again."

"This isn't the sort of thing you should ever have to ask someone to do in the first place."

"Please," Arthur said quietly.

Merlin stopped walking.

"That's completely unfair." He wasn't whining, he wasn't. "Arthur this is a terrible idea."

"Tell me you'll do it."

And yes, Arthur had been covertly steering him in the direction of Morgana's room, which, if anything was perhaps the most terrifying part of the whole idea.

"Arthur!"

"Tell me you'll do it Merlin."

"I'm putting this down as an abuse of power," Merlin said pathetically, and Arthur clapped him hard on both shoulders and pushed him inside Morgana's chambers.

~~~

"Did I mention that this was a bad idea?" Merlin's voice had been gradually going up an octave every few minutes, he could hear it but he couldn't do anything about it. He didn't blame his voice though, this was a terrible idea, that was going to end very badly.

He could feel it.

Arthur didn't appear to care at all

"You realise Morgana may actually kill you," Merlin was referring, of course, to the way Arthur had gone for efficiency and speed, rather than care, and had just dragged every dress Morgana owned out of their careful boxes and had just flung them on the bed.

They laid there in a jumbled pile, sad and creased and dejected.

This was bad, this was very bad.

"Then she'll kill me, probably more gruesomely than you, and I'll probably deserve it."

"Stop talking and get undressed!"

"I'm not going to fit in any of them."

"Merlin!"

Merlin shook his head.

"I'm too tall!"

Arthur dropped, whatever terrifying female garment he was currently foraging through, and stood up.

He pulled one of the red dresses out of the jumbled pile, and threw it at him. Merlin had absolutely no choice but to catch it, or let it fall on the floor.

"Get undressed!" Arthur said fiercely.

"Get undressed or hold the dress? I can't do both!"

Arthur stole the dress back and flung it on the bed. Merlin was about to protest something else, possibly just as some sort of desperate stalling tactic? But Arthur was already dragging his neckerchief and shirt off, with more irritated impatience than skill, and Merlin was briefly choking, before his shirt was gone, and his hair was everywhere!

"I can actually undress myself you know."

"Really? Because I saw nothing remotely like that going on." Arthur left Merlin in charge of his own boots and trousers. Which he was immensely grateful for. There was something about other people taking your clothes off that confused the brain.

"This is never, ever going to work, never, I don't even look a bit like a girl!"

Arthur was still rummaging, but he came to a stop, suddenly holding one shoe.

"You have chest hair," he said and scowled. As if Merlin has disappointed him in some terrible way, or perhaps done it on purpose.

"I think they'll notice my lack of breasts first," Merlin said flatly.

"Women can get away with not having much in the way of breasts, I don't think they can get away with chest hair," Arthur said pointedly.

"I wouldn't know, I've never actually seen any naked women."

Arthur made a noise that was entirely too amused and Merlin glared at him.

"Come on hurry up!"

"It doesn't start for three hours-" Merlin was still fighting with a sock when Arthur put both hands on his waist and spun him around.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm seeing if you have a waist."

"Well obviously, or my legs would be attached to my chest and that would be very disturbing," Merlin told him.

Arthur smacked him in the back of the head.

"Ow!" he provided. Which he thought was only fair, since he was mostly naked. Also it was cold and Arthur was touching him in ways he wasn't really used to. He was half afraid his body would get the wrong idea and make an idiot of itself.

"Put your arms up," Arthur said imperiously. Making Merlin instantly feel about five years old.

But he dutifully did as he was told.

Silk was cold, he hadn't been expecting the slide of it across bare skin, fabric was not supposed to be this cold.

He couldn't stop the inhale, that wasn't quite a gasp, but only just.

Arthur made a quiet grumbling noise and pulled it down over his back and past his waist, and then it just dropped, a shower of cold material across his legs.

It didn't quite fit right, it was tight where it shouldn't have been, and incriminatingly loose where it shouldn't have been, and Merlin thought maybe his collarbones were too big.

Merlin felt like an idiot.

He felt like an idiot in a dress.

And then the dress got significantly tighter.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm lacing you up."

"How do you even know how to do that?"

Arthur laughed, a strange throaty laugh that Merlin had never heard before.

Then the dress became astonishingly tight, and breathing became a far more complicated function than it probably should be.

"Could you stop lacing me up? I can't breathe."

Arthur grunted. "Why do you think women are always fainting all over the place."

"Arthur I don't want to faint in public, if you make me faint in public I will never forgive you."

Arthur grumbled something inaudible, and Merlin could breathe again.

"There, but don't blame me if women make snide remarks about your chunky waist."

"If I really was a girl I'd slap you right now, you realise this."

Arthur came around to the front and looked at him, and scowled.

Arthur squinted.

Arthur squinted some more.

"Your eyes aren't even open any more," Merlin was forced to point out.

Arthur put his hands on his hips and sighed.

"Clearly you need more work."

"This has only just occurred to you?"

"Sit down," Arthur made him sit in Morgana's chair, facing the mirror.

"I'm wearing a dress," Merlin said feebly, because really it hadn't actually sunk in properly until that exact moment.

"Yes you are, now hang on, I know Morgana has some-"

One of the small drawers provided lots of silver tins, half full of loose powder and half full of tacky brightly coloured paint.

"Do you even know how to do this?" Merlin asked dubiously.

"How hard could it be?" Arthur said sensibly.

~~~

It was much harder than it looked.

Merlin had taken a washcloth to his face for what felt like the fiftieth time, and his skin was starting to protest, by going bright red.

"This isn't working," Arthur said in a frustrated tone of voice. "Clearly there's some sort of innate talent involved."

"Yes, it's called being a girl," Merlin said tightly.

There was a stubborn streak of red that would not come off the middle of his lower lip.

"And I'm going to need a hat," Merlin told him.

"Morgana doesn't wear hats, she has fantastic hair."

"I fear that my hair isn't as fantastic as Morgana's," Merlin said honestly.

Arthur scowled at the floor.

"I might be able to find one, in storage," he said quietly. He handed Merlin the powders pots and paints. "See what you can do, with...that."

Arthur paused in the doorway. "And see if you can find some padding."

"For what?"

"For the dress," Arthur said in a slow careful voice, like he was an idiot.

And then he was gone, leaving Merlin sat at Morgana's dressing table, holding a handful of utterly foreign objects, scowling at his own reflection.

He made a noise and let them all slide to the surface.

"Did I mention I'm having a really bad day?" he said to his reflection.

His reflection looked sympathetic.

"And I'm wearing a dress," he added, just for completeness.

His reflection looked thoroughly disgusted.

"Yes, yes, I know."

He sat there in silence for a moment longer.

"I'm not using magic on myself," he told the mirror.

Then he shook his head for good measure.

"It's not worth it, I'm not that good yet, I might end up with a tail, or wings, or an extra head."

His reflection look worried for him.

"I know."

Or actually a girl.

"I wouldn't end up a girl...probably." He laid his face on Morgana's dressing table.

The surface was very cool.

"I'm not using magic on myself," he told the sparkling pot of lip paint.

~~~

"I found you some-" Arthur dropped whatever it was he was holding, it scattered and bounced along the floor and rolled over his shoes.

The look on his face.

Merlin had to briefly check, to make sure he hadn't actually given himself an extra head by mistake.

He hadn't used magic on himself. He might have used a little on the tins, and the dressing table. After all Morgana had sat here a thousand times and done this. This time he'd just slipped in, in her place.

And now, he was starting to feel horribly self-conscious.

"What?"

"You don't...look like you," Arthur sounded stunned.

"Well that's what we were going for wasn't it?"

"I-" Arthur scowled, cleared his throat. "Well you could have told me you knew how to do it!"

"I didn't," Merlin told him. "Maybe it's just because it's my face. Maybe it's just easier to paint your own face, I don't know!"

Arthur was still staring at him.

Merlin suspected he didn't even know he was doing it.

"I need some shoes," he said. Lifted the hem of the dress to produce his own foot.

"You can wear Morgana's she has huge feet." Arthur disappeared briefly to find a pair, thin, delicate strapped, sandal-type things that tied round his ankle, and meant he wouldn't have to relearn how to walk.

Arthur was right, Morgana did have huge feet.

Merlin decided he would take that knowledge to his grave.

Arthur picked up something red that trailed more red fabric and eyed him.

"Hold your hair off your forehead."

"Why?"

"Because it's stupid, and no woman of nobility would be seen dead with it."

Merlin pulled a face that promised dire retribution, in some form or another, later, and did as he was bid, while Arthur made his head heavy and uncomfortable, and far too big, before leaning back and having a look at him.

He went through several expression, a lot of which seemed to involve amusement and annoyance.

"What?"

"Your ears," Arthur said pointedly.

"What about them?"

"Well quite frankly I'd probably be able to spot you a mile away by them alone."

Arthur did something, which was briefly strange and unpleasant.

"What are you doing?"

"Hiding your ears."

"Ow!"

Arthur leant back again, blinked, and nodded in a slightly jerky way.

"That works."

"That kind of hurts," Merlin protested, but didn't dare touch whatever Arthur had done to the hat for fear of it falling off and smacking him in the face.

Arthur was staring at him again.

"Arthur?"

He got a scowl.

"Right, now what's your name?"

Merlin eyed him like he might have some sort of, as far undiscovered, head injury.

"Merlin."

Arthur smacked him.

"Ow, damn it Arthur!"

"Look at yourself," Arthur said pointedly.

Merlin did.

Oh.

"Now what's your name?"

"I don't know, I've never had cause to have a girl's name before. I've never pretended to be a girl, and can I just say, why am I not surprised that I'm sinking to an all time low for you?"

"Because you're my manservant."

Merlin picked up a handful of skirt.

"Or possibly girlservant...what am I supposed to do with this anyway, it's far too long."

"It's supposed to cover your shoes, just walk carefully, and you probably won't fall over."

"And I 'probably won't fall over?' That's not very encouraging," Merlin said sharply, because he was fairly certain that falling over when you were supposed to be a woman was, in some way, a failure.

"Do you have a name yet?"

"No, I'm not used to having to rename myself on the spur of the moment."

"Fine then your name is Merine, it's close enough to you own name that you won't blithely ignore it, and make yourself look like an idiot."

"All right."

"What's your name?" Arthur asked sharply.

Merlin rolled his eyes.

"Merine."

"You can be another one of Sir Edward's daughters, he has about sixty, no one will notice."

"No one will notice an extra daughter?"

"They get introduced to new ones all the time."

"That seems a rather bewildering way to run a family. The nobility are strange, you know this don't you."

Arthur waved a hand.

"Right so now you're..." Arthur attempted to indicate Merlin's passability.

Though something had just occurred to Merlin.

"Oh, umm the thing in my throat, the thing that sticks out, men have them but women don't."

Merlin gestured.

"What at all?" Arthur's face didn't look convinced.

"I'm fairly sure about that."

"You know the strangest things."

Arthur found a scarf in one of the untidy neglected piles and threw it round Merlin's neck.

"There."

"Why must you be so good under pressure?"

"I'm a prince, Merlin."

"I had to ask that didn't I?"

~~~

The ball was huge.

Camelot's main hall had been turned into some sort of terrifyingly multi-coloured, expansively lit, explosion of people, and music and voices.

It was more...it was more than Merlin had been expecting. It was more enough to make him ever so slightly dizzy, and possibly also disturbingly sweaty, inside his, no doubt, expensive stolen dress.

More importantly, Arthur had neglected to tell him what people actually did at balls. So Merlin spent the first half an hour standing in a corner trying to hide behind a curtain, looking vaguely terrified.

Though it soon became clear that what people did do at balls was stand around a lot, and drink, and occasionally dance.

It was really quite boring.

A few minutes ago, he'd ventured out of his alcove for a drink that one of the servers were carting around the room.

He didn't intend to drink it he just wanted something to hold, it seemed the thing to do-

"Hello."

Merlin jumped and very nearly ended up in the curtain.

A hand steadied him. A hand that belonged to a very thin, nervous looking, young noble, looking uncomfortable in something purple that had clearly belonged to a taller man.

"I'm terribly sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," the nervous noble said.

"No, It's all right, I think it was the curtain, it's fine," Merlin managed. What exactly did one do in these sort of situations? He wasn't really used to being spoken to. Be polite? Be distant? Be welcoming yet reserved? Be Arthur? Oh god no, don't be Arthur!

"I'm Roland," the man said helpfully.

"Oh umm, Merine, yes, it's nice to meet you." Merlin stuck out a hand, then realised that was almost certainly wrong. He tried to turn the movement into some sort of wave. But he suspected he'd just given the impression he thought he had an invisible dog.

Roland looked sympathetic.

"Don't worry, I never know how I'm supposed to act at these things either."

"I have no idea what I'm doing," Merlin told him with a smile, and it felt remarkably good to be honest.

His nice conversation didn't last very long, because someone poked him in the back, hard.

He turned round to find out who.

It was Arthur, and he didn't look happy.

"What are you doing over here?" he said sharply.

"What?"

"I thought I told you to-" Arthur stopped talking and glared at Roland, then he snatched up both Merlin's arm and a handful of silk and started dragging him away.

"Umm, goodbye Roland, it was nice to meet you."

Arthur dragged him only as far as the nearest candelabra.

"Who was that?"

"Roland," Merlin said helpfully.

"Who?"

"I have no idea, he was quite nice though."

"Don't forget what you're supposed to be doing, which will involve at some point, going to where there's actually people."

"I was working up to it."

Arthur stole his fake drink and pushed him, not particularly gently, to where the people were.

Merlin wasn't happy about it, but he obeyed.

Arthur drifted off back to do...whatever princes did at balls.

Sit on a chair and sulk apparently.

And to make matters more interesting Gaius was now sweeping about at the other end of the room.

He was quite certain that Gaius would recognise him, he'd stare at him in that particular sharp way, and then one of his eyebrows would raise. And Merlin would never live down the embarrassment. So the next few dances were clearly going to be spent avoiding Gaius.

Or at least avoiding being somewhere he could be spotted.

Or possibly, bumping into Morgana.

Literally.

She looked at him and blinked. Merlin had to give her credit. She only allowed herself a second to look utterly pole-axed. Before she was every inch a lady again.

"Hello Merlin," she said quietly.

"Hello Morgana."

"I would ask, but I suspect I already know."

She gave him one long look.

"Is that my dress?"

Morgana didn't sound angry, Merlin had been expecting angry. She sounded intrigued, and more than a little amused.

Merlin had no idea at all, what the right answer to that was, honesty, evasion, fleeing for his life? He wanted to plump for honesty and say 'yes' but she might have asked him to take it off. So he didn't say anything. He just looked vaguely guilty.

She smiled.

"I'm really, really sorry," he said quietly. He didn't add that it was all Arthur's fault, because she was Morgana, and she'd already know that.

"Your paint is smudged," Morgana said smoothly.

Merlin resisted the terrible urge to lick his lips.

"Open your mouth."

For lack of anything else to do, like perhaps run away, Merlin obeyed.

Morgana lifted a hand and ran her thumb over his teeth. One slow movement that left the edge drifting over his lip in a way that pushed a shiver down his spine.

Then her thumb was gone.

"Try not to curl your lip under when you smile," she said helpfully. "Smile like you're a lady."

She smiled at him, a smile that was full of amusement and teeth, and something else he couldn't quite fathom. He tried to work out how likely it was that she was going to do horrible things to him later.

He smiled, slowly and carefully, and she seemed to approve.

But then she leant in and he was utterly unprepared for her mouth against the edge of his own, warm perfectly painted lips pressed down half on cheek, and half on lips.

She smelled like strawberries and powder and strangely, impossibly, like a woman. Before she was swirling away on a soft, devastatingly throaty little laugh.

Merlin couldn't quite breathe and his mouth tingled.

He thought one of the peculiar nobles was asking if he was all right and he was absolutely certain that he wasn't.

He definitely wasn't.

~~~

"Do you like the music?"

The voice was familiar enough that Merlin answered without thinking.

"It's amazing, they're all very talented."

Then he turned around and spilled his drink everywhere.

"I had them brought in especially."

Merlin smiled and nodded at Uther, and tried desperately not to look like someone who should be executed.

He really hoped he wouldn't make him wear the dress.

"What's your name?" Uther asked, and he smiled, which was rather disconcerting, since Uther had never smiled at him before.

"I'm-"

Merlin couldn’t remember his fake name. His mind had gone completely blank. He knew it started with an 'M' and was vaguely the same sort of sound as his own.

He floundered desperately.

"Honoured," he forced out, when he thought the silence had probably dragged on for too long. "I'm honoured to meet you."

Uther laughed.

"Of course, but your name."

Merlin remembered, which was nice, because for a minute he thought he'd have to fake some sort of horrible seizure.

"Merine," he said, with a smile of relief.

"Merine." Uther touched his arm, a slide of hand over the silk of his sleeve, warmth instantly seeping all the way through.

He left his fingers there...which was a worrying development.

Uther was touching him.

Should Uther be touching him?

Was there even touching allowed at these sorts of things?

More importantly was it socially acceptable to run away?

"You don't have a drink, here let me get you one." Uther reached out into the throng of ball-goers, and acquired him a drink from one of the trays that had, miraculously, seemed to sweep close just for that purpose.

"Umm."

The goblet was settled in his hand, and that was a rather familiar and unpleasant sensation considering.

Uther smiled at him, in a rather disturbing way, until he took a drink.

It was a lot stronger than the wine he was used to, and he struggled for one horrible second, not to cough it back up.

There was a distinct possibility Arthur's father wanted to get him drunk and take advantage of him.

He was going to kill Arthur.

But then, suddenly, Morgana was back, in a waft of strawberries and blue material.

Merlin had never been so happy to see someone in his life.

Ever.

"Merine, I was wondering where you'd gotten to." Morgana was suddenly holding his hand, and he had a moment to feel a little strange about that until he remembered that he was supposed to be a woman; women were probably allowed to hold each other's hands.

"I'm going to take Merine on a walk of the castle," she said smoothly. Merlin loved Morgana, he had just this moment decided.

Morgana drifted him away in a way he found fascinating.

He tried not to cling.

"Thank you, thank you so very much," he said weakly.

"Arthur sent me to remove you from-" Morgana lost her composure for just long enough to laugh. "Uther's attentions."

"Oh so he does have some concern for my welfare then?"

"You're quite pretty when you smile, I don't think Arthur counted on that."

"Mostly he just insulted me, so he deserves to sit over there and be miserable."

"Oh he was also quite cross," Morgana added, and smiled a smile with teeth in.

"It wasn't my fault," Merlin told her.

"That's not what I meant," Morgana said in that teasing, liquid voice she had, and Merlin was horribly confused.

But she was already gone again, sliding away between the guests in a way Merlin envied at the moment.

Gwen drifted by with a tray of drinks, stopping elegantly beside Merlin and curtseying, Merlin had never been curtseyed at before.

"Good evening my lady, can I get you-"

Gwen's face did something complicated.

"Oh my-" For one horrible moment Merlin thought she was going to do something. But then she cleared her throat and restrained herself.

"That was unexpected," she said very quietly, almost under her breath.

"Do you think you could leave the mocking me part until later," Merlin pleaded quietly.

"Of course...my lady." Gwen's eye twitched.

"Stop that," Merlin said out of the corner of his mouth.

"I can't help it, you look-" Gwen floundered for a word and Merlin was both horribly curious, and dreading what she would eventually settle on.

Apparently she came to some conclusion she wasn't going to share. She smiled instead.

"It was Arthur's idea," Merlin said belligerently.

Gwen blinked.

"He wanted to put you in a dress?"

She was laughing, when it wasn't funny, at all, in the slightest.

"I'm sorry it's just, I never expected-" she gestured.

Merlin stole one of the goblets of wine off of the tray she was carrying and drained the lot.

Then he lifted his hand to wipe his mouth, only for Gwen to catch his sleeve and make a pointed throat-clearing noise.

Ah.

Yes, he was wearing paint wasn't he.

And oh, he kept forgetting that the wine was a lot stronger than it usually was.

"Uther touched me," he said quietly.

Gwen gave him a funny look, then an even funnier look, but at least the second seemed vaguely sympathetic.

"Oh," she said and Merlin watched her swallow and switch the tray to her other hand.

She used her free hand to pat him consolingly

He was officially a girl.

"Do you want another one?" she offered.

"I think I do." Merlin set the empty one back, and lifted another goblet off of her tray.

Gwen straightened them without looking.

"I think I'm going to have to stop letting Arthur talk me into ridiculous things," Merlin said flatly.

Gwen sighed, then eventually seemed to give in.

"If it's any consolation, I think you're very pretty. I mean usually I think you're pretty anyway, but in a way where men are pretty- well more handsome because men usually aren't pretty. I just meant today that you're girl-pretty, if that helps, at all."

Merlin blinked.

"Umm, thanks?"

"I'm just going to take the drinks away now," Gwen said carefully.

"Thanks, really." Merlin told her.

She looked sheepish and nodded.

"Oh and Merlin?"

"What?"

"Your sleeve is in your drink."

Merlin looked down.

"Oh crap!"

~~~

Merlin drifted around self-consciously for a while, until he remembered that he was supposed to be spying.

So the next time he saw a collection of noblewomen he followed them.

It turned out the noblewomen did congregate together, like geese, around the musicians.

They didn't bat an eye at his claiming to be the 61st daughter of the afore-mentioned Sir Edward, apparently more than a few of them were children of Sir Edward.

Merlin still felt like a filthy imposter nonetheless.

He was introduced around, twice. Though he was almost certain he'd never remember any of them by name, they were just a variety of different dress colours and levels of enthusiasm.

One of them, very rich and very loud, and in a dress so many bright shades of yellow that it made Merlin's eyes hurt if he looked at it too long, kept putting her arm around Merlin's waist, and making sympathetic noises. While one of the other's made pointed comments about lacing, baking and Merlin's chances of finding a husband.

He thought maybe he should be horribly insulted but everyone was smiling.

It was hard to be horribly insulted when everyone was so cheerful.

He drank more of the deceptively strong wine instead.

But Arthur was right, they did talk about him, a lot, in intimate detail.

Most of which he wasn't sure he could ever, ever repeat, and especially not to Arthur.

Women were terrifying.

He escaped when they weren't looking.

~~~

He took up his position back by the curtain, because the music and all the different coloured dresses, and almost certainly the wine, were starting to make him feel dizzy.

He thought perhaps he'd had a few too many goblets of wine.

Possibly three or four too many because he kept getting the urge to laugh for no reason.

He restrained himself.

After a while Roland appeared at his side again, looking tired and hot and nervous.

"Hello Roland," Merlin offered through a smile.

Roland smiled back.

"Do you dance?" Roland asked curiously.

"What, me, no, no" Merlin shook his head. "I think it best if I don't. I think social embarrassment is something I'm trying to avoid."

Roland made a sympathetic noise.

"I tend to spend most of each song wracked by the terrible fear that I will crush my partners feet, but I always feel compelled to ask nonetheless. Social convention I suppose."

"It seems quite awful to be compelled into dancing when you don't want to," Merlin pointed out.

"I can't seem to help myself."

"Social convention can be stifling," Merlin guessed.

"Indeed it can, indeed it can."

Roland seemed to stretch for something else to say.

"Would you like another drink?" he asked.

Merlin shook his head carefully.

"No, no I think I might have had too many already."

"I understand," Roland nodded. "I have to be careful too, I have a low tolerance and must guard against losing my balance in public."

"I'm sorry," Merlin said helpfully.

"The nobility have long memories," Roland said sadly.

Merlin wondered if she should pat him on the shoulder in some sort of consoling way. The social conventions for women were different and strange.

He did think of something vaguely consoling to say, but then Arthur appeared from nowhere and dragged him off again.

~~~

"Excuse me Prince Arthur!"

Arthur stopped and turned around, and Merlin, who was attached to his arm, had no choice but to stop and turn as well.

Roland was standing just inside the door leading out of the main hall. He looked pale and purple and strangely indignant.

"Do you ever ask yourself if she wants to go with you?" Roland asked shakily.

Arthur blinked.

"Excuse me?"

Roland took an uncertain step forward and an extra breath.

"If she enjoys the way you treat her? Dragging her around your castle like she's your servant."

Arthur looked, for a brief moment, at where his hand was wrapped round Merlin's arm, and exactly what that might look like.

He very carefully let Merlin go.

Roland seemed to take that as encouragement towards whatever point he was trying to make.

"And quite frankly I think the way you speak to her is disgusting!" Roland's moment of courageous honesty drew a red flush up his narrow throat. "And I- I don't care that you're a prince, she deserves better."

Merlin wasn't sure if he was supposed to say something. He couldn't see what Arthur looked like, because he couldn't see his face.

Roland cleared his throat, and looked at Merlin.

"You're clearly in love with him, but I had to say something. Because-" whatever had sent Roland out of the main hall and along the corridor seemed to deflate inside him. And he couldn't quite get out whatever final words he had to say.

He shuffled.

The silence grew awkward and strange.

"You're right of course," Arthur said slowly. "I've been terribly rude, and quite awful to her and I apologise."

Arthur looked at Merlin and raised an eyebrow.

"I apologise."

There was a strange, heavy silence, in which Merlin wasn't sure whether he was suppose to say anything or not.

According to Arthur's eyebrow he was.

"Umm, you're forgiven," Merlin hazarded, though he suspected Arthur would make him pay for that later.

Roland fidgeted for a moment longer, then drifted back into the main hall, a slow, but not dejected walk.

The door shut with a loud thud.

"Who was that?" Arthur asked, through an expression which was clearly bewildered.

"Roland," Merlin said. "I think I quite like him."

"That man is in love with you," Arthur said flatly.

"I only met him four hours ago."

"That doesn't seem to matter to him," Arthur's voice had gone tight and annoyed.

"What does that mean?"

Instead of answering Arthur pushed at his back in a gesture that clearly meant 'upstairs.'

"Hang on a minute, I have to pick up my dress first!" Merlin said in a vaguely annoyed voice.

Arthur made expansive, long-suffering, noises behind him, and followed him back to his rooms.

~~~

Arthur shut the door rather harder than was probably necessary.

"I think I'm slightly too drunk to have this argument," Merlin said miserably.

"That's no excuse."

"I wasn't using it as an excuse, I was just pointing it out, and I don't want you to hold it against me later if I call you a prat."

Arthur ignored that.

"What was that down there?"

"Perhaps it's just nice to have someone wanting to defend you," Merlin said crossly, and Arthur gave him a very strange look. One of the many strange looks he'd given him today.

"You're not a girl, Merlin."

"Well maybe I want to be defended anyway. I've spent all night down there, in a dress, being propositioned by your father and drinking too much wine and being insulted by smiling, terrifying noblewomen-" Merlin tried to take the hat off and realised that some time earlier in the evening Arthur had been crafty and pinned it in place. "Damn it, does this come off?"

Arthur came close enough to do something complicated to the back of the hat. Sliding pins out of the curve at the back. It tipped off in one movement, leaving Merlin's hair a wreck and his ears stinging like the blazes.

"I do defend you," Arthur said softly. "Never think that I don't, that I wouldn't."

Merlin wanted to continue to be cross, but Arthur smelled very nice up close, hot and sharp, and his throat was smooth under the edge of Merlin's jaw in a way that was strangely tantalising.

He grunted out an answer to Arthur's non-question, breath curling in the damp skin under Arthur's ear.

Arthur didn't move away.

"I don't expect you do to everything I want without question," he said softly.

"I know," Merlin said quietly. "I know, Arthur-"

There were fingers on his jaw, turning it.

Arthur was kissing him.

Quick, hot kisses against his open mouth, then tilting and straying inside, and Merlin made a noise that was probably shameful, but it just made Arthur's hand push up into his damp crushed hair and hold him there.

Arthur tasted like wine, that strong rich smooth wine he'd been drinking all night, the sharp edge of it on his tongue. Merlin couldn't help wondering if his own mouth tasted the same. Arthur seemed compelled to find out. One hand pushing and catching in Merlin's hair in a way that would have wrecked it, if the ridiculous hat hadn't done so already.

Until suddenly, he wasn't kissing him any more. Leaving him breathing cold air, and staring at his face from an inch away.

Arthur's mouth was an angry red.

"How much have you had to drink," he asked fiercely.

"Not that much," Merlin lied, he was fairly sure that if he was honest Arthur would stop kissing him.

"I won't do this if you don't want to," Arthur's voice across the edge of his mouth was a flicker on sensation that made him briefly sway into him again.

Because he'd kissed him already, so surely Arthur would let him kiss him again.

Arthur was annoyingly slow at times, but he seemed to get the point.

Merlin made several, just to make sure.

"Take this off," Arthur said roughly, but Merlin couldn't do anything but breathe while Arthur picked at the laces and catches of his dress with only bare success.

Merlin wanted the warmth of Arthur's mouth back, and he thought perhaps, just this once, Arthur would forgive him for being greedy. So he pushed his fingers into Arthur's hair and pulled him back in.

Arthur's own hands tightened in the material of the dress, and suddenly there was a wall at his back, and Arthur pressed up tight against him, thigh sliding on the silk between Merlin's legs, then pressing up and in.

Arthur pulled his mouth away, breathing hard against the curve of Merlin's lower lip.

"Take this off, or pull it up, I want to touch you," his voice had dropped into a snarl and Merlin had just enough breathe left to decide that that was perhaps the filthiest thing he'd ever heard.

But he knew for certain that if he had sex in Morgana's dress he would never, ever be able to look at her again.

Arthur didn't seem to care.

"I've spent all night wanting to touch you," He said harshly, and Merlin thought he should have laughed at that, but all that came out was a half-broken noise that made Arthur swear and pick up enough of his dress that he could drag him over to the bed.

It was ridiculously soft, and Merlin hadn't known because he'd had no reason to lay on it before. It still seemed rather bewildering that he had reason to lay on it now.

He had just enough time to say 'oh' before Arthur was pressing him into the sheets, with weight and hands and eventually mouth, and Arthur clearly knew how to get underneath a skirt. Merlin for the life of him didn't know whether to be jealous about that, or just grateful with every quick, wet slide of silk up his thighs.

Still he thought he should be doing something, and since he had such experience undressing Arthur he thought he'd start there, he leant up far enough to drag the shirt and undershirt off in one go.

Merlin had never worked at the buttons and laces of anyone's trousers but his own, but it was easy, it was so easy, the waist sliding down Arthur's hips, where Merlin followed it with his hands.

He was half afraid that now they were at some sort of edge Arthur wouldn't let him touch him.

But his fingers were circling Merlin's wrist, turning it and pushing it down into the open gap while Arthur lifted his hips and-

Merlin groaned into Arthur's mouth when hot, hard skin pressed into his palm. He couldn't do anything but curl his fingers around it and listen to the way it made Arthur's breath stutter and catch in his throat.

Morgana really would- probably not want the dress back if they kept going.

Arthur's mouth followed the stretched line of his throat, and Merlin suspected he was smearing paint everywhere in sticky red lines, and he had to look a wreck but Arthur was making breathless noises between every bite and drag of tongue, hands restless and greedy and tight on Merlin's waist and thighs and he decided he didn't care.

Arthur pushed the skirts off the dress all the way to his waist in one movement, pushed at the loose fallen edge of his trousers with the other.

Merlin let Arthur slide his hand free and push it down into the sheets, let him hold it there.

When Arthur pressed down again everything was different. There was heavy press and push of cock against, and beside, his own, in a way that was utterly foreign and yet made him completely breathless. And he couldn't stop the quiet little noises he was making every time he exhaled, every time Arthur pushed up, one hand tangled in his hair one pressed down over Merlin's into the sheets.

Then he couldn't breathe and Arthur was heavy, and solid enough to dig his fingers into if he wanted to, which he did, and judging by the noise that came out of Arthur's throat he didn't mind.

Merlin was certain this was markedly different from the way he'd been taught these things usually went.

But then he was groaning into Arthur's hair and mumbling nonsense while the world ceased to be very important at all.

~~~

"I can't believe you...in Morgana's dress."

"It's your fault," Arthur said quietly somewhere around his shoulder.

"Why is it my fault."

"You're always so-" Arthur exhaled against his skin and grunted rather than finish, though his hand did stray to the edge of Merlin's waist, the silk, slip-sliding over the damp skin beneath.

Merlin couldn't think of anything to say for a while.

Though he'd drunk a lot of wine and if he laid here much longer he was going to fall asleep.

"I should-"

"Stay here," Arthur said flatly, and it was a suggestion more than a question, or a demand.

Merlin tipped his head sideways. Arthur was watching him, face serious, fingers still fidgeting softly on the edge of Merlin's waist.

"All right," he said quietly. "But you have to help me out of the dress."

Arthur pushed himself up on an arm, and his hair looked as devastated as Merlin's own.

"I will," he said smoothly. "In a minute."