Title: I Found a Diary Underneath a Tree
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: PG-13 (this chapter)
Disclaimer: Arthur and Merlin, they're blokes of legend! Which unfortunately are not of my making… but ultimately, my undoing!
Warnings:
(1)Heterosexuality (sorry…) with always-a-girl!Merlyn, crack-ficcery! (my favorite kind), some angst, some fluff, a LOT of Italics, eventual sexy times preceded by spontaneous bouts of pining!irrationally-jealous!Arthur (in the succeeding chapters), medieval peanut butter and magicks!
(2) Is WIP a warning?
(3) Also, general warnings for Season 1 and/or all the Seasons just to be super safe because it's canon 'verse/or is it canon!AU? – with slight modifications. And by slight I mean slash.
A/N: I've recently hopped aboard the S.S. Merthur – and what a glorious ship! I wanted to write something m/m (I have so many ideas) but this one kept nagging the loudest.
Please leave me some lovely words of encouragement and reviews on the fly?
Unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own.
Summary: "Heaven forbid Arthur couldn't put the thing down!"
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1.
Curiosity
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Arthur flipped the ratty-looking book open, it read:
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My dear Merlyn,
Although it pains me (and no doubt that I will worry every night, to no end) at having you leave, my heart is gladdened that you'll be off to finally find your own adventure – your purpose in life.
My bones are old and weary, weighted by the years spent toiling in the farm. I do not want to weigh you down along with me, love, when we both know that you've always been meant for greater things.
Dazzlingly great things!
We've spent sixteen odd years together, just you and I. And they have been the best of my life, watching you grow up into the young woman you are now. I'm so proud of you – my Merlyn.
I will miss you terribly and I trust you will write to me whenever you have the chance. I've nothing much to give you, except perhaps this diary.
There will be many sunny days and cold nights ahead, many trials to face, many joys to be had and many tears to be shed.
Write them all in here.
Though I cannot be with you to share in your journey, cannot hold your hand when you have lost your way and cannot console or have you confide in me, this diary – this little space – is what I can give. Let it never be empty and fill it.
Fill it with all the things you've learned, all the things you've seen.
As my mother once gifted to me, I give this to you now. (Had I been blessed with an exciting life, I could have left you more than just a worrisome mother's note!)
I will not be there. But I promise that you will never be without me.
My thoughts and prayers are with you.
Love always,
Mother
P.S. Try not to be a burden to Gaius, dear. And remember to stay out of trouble (especially if you can help it!)
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So it was a diary. Merlyn's diary.
Arthur hastily snapped it shut, feeling - on the one part - slightly embarrassed at having stumbled across Hunith's loving and intimate parting words to her daughter. And on the other, feeling something akin to guilt at poking his princely nose into things princely noses (or any other nose in fact) should poke not.
He fastened the clasp and resolved to return it to Merlyn when he's found her.
Where is that bloody lazy maidservant?
Arthur's boots were in need of a shoe-shining.
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Day 14
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Guis is in desperate need of new cauldrons. A leaky cauldron is a danger to society!
Well, one such member of society anyway.
I smelled like dog's urine all afternoon. And if that wasn't bad enough, self-same dog who owned the buggering piss was in heat. Thusly, I was chased by dogs all afternoon as well.
Note to self:
1.) Hem dresses as not to trip over them whilst running away from sexually frustrated royal hounds
2.) Learn to run better, faster.
3.) /-Find a way to eliminate smell of dog's piss from lavender dress-/
4.) Burn lavender dress.
5.) Fetch Arthur's repaired gauntlet from the masonry
So far, my adventure is looking very… abysmal.
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Call him whatever you'd like but at the end of the day Arthur was just a man after all.
Speaking of a day, that's all it took really, for his resolve – to return the diary to Merlyn – to crumble quite vaingloriously to pieces.
He went about his day as usual first, of course: breakfast, training, patrolling etcetera, etcetera. And when he returned to his chambers:
There, sitting temptingly on his desk, was the damned diary.
Arthur snatched it up and toyed with the leather binding for a little while, thumbing at the worn spine. And after much, much internal debate, he deemed it (quite magnanimously) his royal right to sequester whatever information the book held to—
To—
—figure out where Merlyn's loyalties lie.
Yes, that's it!
It wasn't out of curiosity at all.
He opened it to a random page and let his eyes skim hungrily over the clumsy scrawls.
Five minutes later he was clutching at his sides, barely restraining his gasps.
Dog's piss, indeed!
He managed to swallow most of the frantic wheezing after knocking his head back, quite painfully, against his desk chair's oaken backrest.
Arthur absently traced a finger along the page and wondered: When was the last time he had laughed this hard?
It's been a while.
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Day 103
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Cook has slipped me a smidgeon of chocolate that had been shipped over to Camelot as a present from a neighboring kingdom. I've not had chocolate before in my life.
It tastes wonderful!
.
Especially when prepared as such:
(1) Melt chocolate in saucer of hot milk
(2) Mix in two spoonfuls of sugar
(3) Mix in dollop of peanut butter (must give Cook my thanks!)
**Serves two; eat with biscuits
.
I'd given a cup to Gaius and he's taken to it quite quickly.
He fell asleep quite quickly afterwards, too.
Note to self:
1.) save some chocolate for next time
2.) if I ever get more chocolate, that is
3.) pocket vials of salve, /-for arse-/ for Arthur, bloody git does not know when to quit!
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The prince downed his third cup of warm chocolate drink for the night. He asked a different servant (explicitly not Merlyn) to fetch him the ingredients, which he mixed – all by himself, as per the diary's instructions – locked away in his chambers.
His maidservant had not lied.
It tasted wonderful.
Arthur should feel like a right creep for not having returned the diary to Merlyn yet.
But—
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Day 64
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My small clothes are now quite literally… small clothes. After taking a particularly rough tumble in the wash under the hands of Gretta (the laundress, whose made it her personal mission to vex me, I firmly believe) has somehow magicked my under things into underlings. At least, I think she'd done magic, THEY'RE SO TINY. Why, she's managed to turn my favorite pair of knickers into a ladies glove – gods!
Serves me right for not doing them myself.
Reminder: NEVER let clothes near Gretta, ever again…
—heaven forbid Arthur couldn't put the thing down!
As it was, the prince lounged back in his dining chair with his legs propped up on the table. The diary opened on his lap.
Arthur would argue that he never read more than two entries a night, honestly, and it had scarcely even been a week. Besides, it's Merlyn's own fault. That sodding idiot, leaving her sodding things about...
For Arthur to find.
And anyway, the prince hasn't come across anything that would raise suspicion (the curious eyebrow, perhaps.) Neither has he been met with anything so deeply personal...
So what's the harm? Really?
Most of the entries were just commentary (albeit hilarious commentary) of Merlyn's day-to-day experiences in and about Camelot and on occasion, the odd recipe for some remedy or other.
Arthur didn't even read them in chronological order. (Whatever that's worth.)
From what "little" - "glaringly little" - Arthur has read, he was genuinely surprised to find that Merlyn is actually quite witty, bitingly smart in her writing and not as disastrously disorganized as the prince originally thought. And though her sense of humor was kind of strange, Arthur found it - all of it - endearing. And so very Merlyn - down to the way she crossed her t's and dotted her i's - he couldn't help but laugh and laugh and laugh, only half-way realizing he was doing it.
In a very ungainly and un-princely, strangled babe sort of way.
Merlyn managed to make everything sound interesting. Even that one lengthy entry on the merits of Rosemary being: 'unequivocally, THE most useful herb a girl could ever equip herself with!'
Or that one page where Merlyn had drawn in various kinds of mushrooms and labeled them each so very tediously with their Latin names.
(If you can even call those deformed chunks of brown blobs mushrooms.
Arthur could do better. In fact, he had taken out a roll of parchment and a quill just to prove it.
To whom exactly?
To myself, that's who!
And that's how the prince lost an entire afternoon – having thrown himself emphatically into the task of scrawling mushrooms of every variety he could imagine. And when he was not satisfied with that, he imagined some more sorts of mushrooms that to the best of everyone's knowledge have never even existed.
The prince was nothing but thorough.)
He was so enthralled.
Arthur read on:
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…Note to self:
1.) make time to launder own clothes (to rubbish with Gretta!)
2.) Polish Arthur's armor and sword… for the umpteenth time… today
3.) /-Mother knew exactly how to wash my clothes just right-/
4.) Write to Mother
...
I miss Mothe—
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Where the 'r' should be, instead, was a smattering of ink – that perhaps when it was fresh had turned runny? Wetted maybe?
For some reason, that bothered Arthur; more than Merlyn's frequent insults directed upon his royal person (which he got enough of already from Merlyn-in-the-flesh, thank you very bloody much.
Arthur didn't find that equally amusing to no end, no sir.)
He clasped the diary shut and tucked it under his pillow – this was quickly becoming part of his nightly routine. And with great dignity and grace, the prince crumpled onto his bed intending to sleep.
But just as he was succumbing to surrender though…
Arthur didn't know how or why, but he was suddenly hit with such clarity – reverberating surety – as to the mystery of the ink smattered 'R'.
It was punctuated with a tear.
Merlyn's tear, no less.
The prince lost all pretense of rest.
/-let's all pretend this means Merlyn's slashed that text out-/