Title: Songbird (after the Fleetwood Mac song, although I'm partial to the Glee cover, personally)
Rating: T (it's barely two hundred words, and there's not even any swearing. It can't possibly need to be higher than that)
Disclaimer: Of the five (maybe six, depending on how I'm feeling) characters who wouldn't have died if it belonged to me, Freya is probably one of them.
Notes: I've had this sitting around for a while. Thought for a long time that it was going to be part of something else I have on the go, but it's not. It's just this.
And I wish you all the love
in the world,
But most of all
I wish it from myself.
And the songbirds keep singing
Like they know the score.
Songbird
You're beautiful, Merlin tells her, as often as he possibly can.
He says it when he wakes up next to her in the morning, their eyelids heavy with sleep, hair a rumpled, crumpled mess. He says it when she leaves the bathroom, hair smoothed down, clothes neat and tidy, freshly ironed, face free of make-up. He says it when he kisses her goodbye at the door to her lectures, when he meets her for coffee or for lunch, when they go out dancing or sit at home in front of the TV, when they slip free of their clothes and under their bedding and she shivers and blushes at his touch.
You are beautiful, Freya, he tells her, whenever he has a moment, in the hope that one time, just one time, she won't give him that little laugh, soft and sad and haunting, the laugh that tells him you are so very sweet to think so, Merlin and I am not blind, I know I am not and you don't have to try so hard, I love you anyway.
You are beautiful, he tells her, in the hope that one time, just one time, she will smile and answer, "Thank you, Merlin," and finally, actually believe him.
It hasn't happened yet, but Merlin isn't going to give up trying.
You. Are. Beautiful.