A/N: After a month of writing about some incredibly dark themes during NaNoWriMo, I needed something cute and fun to counterbalance all the darkness. A big thanks to Staymagical for beta reading, and for the inspiration!
Disclaimer: Merlin and its characters do not belong to me. No money is being made from this.
1. "Coffee and Dragons"- Merlin is finicky about his coffee, and Arthur is determined to get it right.
There was an art to making coffee. Arthur doubted that he had almost perfected it over the past few months. There was always some little thing that could be improved- the timing, the blend he used, the way he poured it into the cup. But aside from the minor flaws, he fancied that his coffee-making technique rivaled any barista's.
Of course Merlin didn't always agree. Self-described coffee snob that he was, he was in tune to every tiny variance in flavor, temperature, scent, and all the other things that contributed to a proper cup of coffee. He could go on at length, describing bloom and blend, and otherwise chattering about a thousand details that went right over Arthur's head.
Coffee was not Arthur's speciality. He drank it for the caffeine alone, and as long as it was hot he would slurp it down like water. Even if it was cold, enough sugar would hide a multitude of sins.
He was learning, though, and despite the fact that he still didn't understand why a person had to swish hot water around the French press before the grounds went in, it was part of the process. So he did it. Merlin was rubbing off on him in more ways than one. Arthur was starting to prefer his homemade coffee to the sludge they made at work. As high class as the office might be, it was still a couple of interns tossing cheap coffee into a machine and hitting 'start' in the morning. Nothing fancy there. No personal touch, and certainly not a hand-crafted brew from a French press.
Arthur sighed and glared at the coffee as he waited for the timer to go off so he could pour the finished product. There was nothing more irritating to a wealthy bloke than to be taught a lesson in the finer points of life by a poor kid from Nowhere, Wales. If it wasn't for the way Merlin's hair stuck up at all angles when he ran his hands through it, or the way he curled up in a corner of the couch, or the brilliant smile that shone on his face like sunshine after a rainy day, Arthur would have kicked him to the kerb in short order.
Granted, he'd go running after Merlin thirty seconds later to drag him back inside and apologize profusely by offering to find him the best coffee in London or giving him the best blow job in the history of ever. Or both.
"'s that for me?" A pair of arms snaked around Arthur's waist, hugging him tightly.
"No," Arthur shook his head and worked around Merlin to pour the coffee. "It's for my other boyfriend. The one who doesn't steal the covers at night, and gets up early to go jogging with me on Sunday mornings."
Merlin's grip on his waist tightened as he snuggled against Arthur's back. "He sounds boring. You should stick with me. Writers are always more interesting than that banker or whoever it was you were snogging before me."
"Is that so?"
"Mm-hmm," Merlin mumbled. He fumbled around for the cup Arthur had just poured, his fingers poking at it until he'd turned the cup far enough to grab the handle. "I'll always have a funny story to tell, anyway."
"Right. Like the one where someone chucked a tomato at your head?"
"Everyone's a critic," he said, his words muffled by the mug as he held it to his nose and inhaled the scent. Arthur held his breath, waiting for the reaction. Merlin smiled, a light shining in his half-open eyes. He took a sip and stopped dead, the blissed out expression on his face telling Arthur that he had nailed the coffee-making that morning.
Inwardly, he cheered. Outwardly, he grabbed the toast and nudged Merlin toward the table. "So how did the writing go? Was it worth staying up until three a.m. for?"
For a moment, Arthur thought Merlin hadn't heard him. He just sat there with the cup cradled in both hands, eyes closed, with the sort of look on his face Arthur normally only saw in bed. "You still awake?"
"Yeah," Merlin said dreamily as he sipped the coffee. "Yeah, it was good. Great. Got to the part where the peasant boy finds the dragon that chained up below the castle, and the dragon tells him all about his destiny. Well, part of his destiny, anyway. Because dragons are manipulative, and they'll only give out the sort of information that benefits them in the end."
"That dragon sounds like an arse."
"A bit of one, yeah. But they're like that. There's that saying, after all. 'Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good dipped in chocolate.'" Merlin nabbed a piece of toast, oblivious to the images that had popped into Arthur's mind at the thought of Merlin being dipped in chocolate. Perhaps not entirely coated. Just being drizzled with syrup would be good enough. Better than that, even.
He cleared his throat. "I'll keep that in mind if I see any dragons. In the meantime, has the boy met the prince yet?"
"Oh, yeah," Merlin said. "They had a fight in the square, and the boy was put in the stocks. That's where he met the maid. There's still a long way to go, but I made a lot of progress. It's going to be good."
"Until you get to the part where you hate everything about it, and I have to listen to you complaining about how being a writer is such a terrible fate.
Merlin scowled through a big bite of toast. "I don't complain," he said, covering his mouth with his hand.
"You complain all the time. The worst was when you were about halfway through that book review. I took you to dinner to get you out of the flat for a while, and you could talk about was how stupid the book was, and how much you loathed writing that article," Arthur said.
"I hated writing that. Literary criticism is a pain in the arse."
"Even when it's a fantasy novel?"
"Especially that," Merlin grumbled. He took another sip of coffee to chase his grouchiness away. "Having to read a six-hundred page book when you hate every word of it is not a fun proposition."
"It's your profession. If you'd wanted fun, you should have joined the circus."
Merlin glanced up over the brim of his cup, eyes sparkling with mischief. "Feels like I have sometimes. There's this clown I live with, after all…" He giggled and ducked the bread crust Arthur threw at his him.
"A clown, am I? We'll see who's laughing when I tell Morgana you'd cast her as the evil witch in your little story if they ever made it into a movie."
Merlin shoved the last of his toast into his mouth and brushed the crumbs off his sleeve. It was one of Arthur's old t-shirts, worn nearly to translucence and too big for Merlin, thought that didn't stop him from wearing it. "She'd be thrilled. Morgana might pretend to be all sweetness and light, but there's a part of her that wants to be the evil queen. You can see it in her eyes."
"Can you? I'll be sure to watch for that when we see her in about..." Arthur glanced at his watch, "twenty minutes."
"What? Why?" Merlin sputtered, half-choking on a sip of coffee.
"Brunch. She's taking us out, remember? I told you about it on Friday."
"Why didn't you wake me up earlier? I would have had time to get ready and shower and put shoes on!" If Merlin hadn't been awake before he was now, all wide eyes squared shoulders. "I always feel like a scruffy idiot around her."
"I tried to wake you up, Sleeping Beauty, but apparently I wasn't the right prince." Arthur said back in the chair, arms folded, and an eyebrow raised. "You slept through everything I did. More's the pity. We could have had some fun this morning, but nooo."
Merlin down the last of his coffee in one go and scrubbed his hands over his face. "Well try harder next time," he said absently. "I'm going to go get a shower. I'll be down in a few."
Arthur bit his lip, not mentioning that he had been trying hard- in every sense of the word- and Merlin wasn't helping with his unintentionally suggestive phrases. That was the problem with dating a writer. Words and phrases took on new lives and new meanings, and the imagery they inspired ranged from childish to explicit. When it was the two of them, alone, Arthur's mind rolled right into the gutter.
He had half a mind to join Merlin in the shower to show him all the variations a phrase like 'trying hard' could mean.
He cleaned up the kitchen instead. If Morgana came in to find herself alone downstairs, she would march right into the bathroom, regardless of what what- or who- her little brother was doing, and give him a piece of her mind for making her wait. Morgana did love her drama.
'Best not to tempt fate,' he decided as he put the dishes in the sink and tossed the used up coffee grounds in the bin. There would be time for things like that later, when they wouldn't be in danger of having someone walk in on them.
Fifteen minutes later Merlin dashed down the stairs, fully dressed and alert, with still-damp hair, coat in hand, and his shoes laced up. He stopped in front of Arthur and grinned before kissing him hard on the mouth, a slow, lingering thing that turned Arthur's knees to rubber and would have had him on the floor if it had gone on much longer.
"What…?" Arthur took a breath. "What was that for?"
Merlin held up a finger. "One, the coffee. It was pretty much perfect. Two, you are the right prince for me, your royal prat-ness. Don't ever doubt that." He took Arthur's hand and tugged him toward the door. "Now let's go and see what sort of trouble Morgana has in store for us."