Disclaimer: If I'm doing this, does it look like I own anything?
J: These are two drabbles I wrote over at LJ.
Arthur never really noticed at first. But it became rather obvious after awhile. For example, when he dipped his head and smiled with his blue eyes sparkling like tiny jewels in the sunlight, there were a million reasons for that little action. And when he frowned and bit his bottom lip, it could mean he was thinking or he could be worried. Yes. Every single little action meant a million things.
And what's more to say about the subtle changes in his voice?
If he was talking and suddenly his voice drops to a low whisper, he was being serious. When he called Arthur by his name, it wasn't out of disrespect or anything else. No. When he says his name, it was out of pure unabashed respect and reverence and honour of the quiet tentative and strangely comforting thing that they had going on. And when he calls his name in a soft moan as he comes, well… that could only have one meaning, for sure.
Sometimes, when they were all alone together somewhere-in the woods, in his room, on his bed basking in the afterglow of unadulterated sex- there were always times when he seems to have something bothering him.
"What is it?" Arthur would ask then. He always asks. Planting a kiss on his forehead and pulling him close; he would rub soothing circles onto the other man's skin.
After a short contemplative silence, the kiss would be reciprocated and a smile, the brightest, widest smile in the whole world would be bestowed upon him. "It's nothing." Would be the answer. But the soft niggling undertones would always plague him afterwards. Arthur knows that there is always something.
But he says nothing. Instead he learns to listen more. He is learning to listen because he knows that one day, the idiot Merlin would tell him and when he does, Arthur wants to know the correct meaning and emotion of it all.