Based on "Sometime Around Midnight"- The Airborne Toxic Event
Arthur was having a long day.
There really was no reason he should be in a tavern right now, there were actual important matters that he should be attending to, instead of drinking his stresses away with his knights. It wasn't even particularly safe, considering they were out on patrol outside of Camelot, attempting to regulate smuggling and related crime that had been terrorizing the villages close to the border. It had been bad enough that he'd had to put up with Gwaine's chatter the entire day, and now he had let himself be reluctantly dragged to a night of debauchery.
Gwaine, to Arthur's displeasure, was seemingly the only person in the palace who still spoke to him as candidly as he did a year ago. Most people now treated him with polite respect and careful distance, which Arthur appreciated. The less people who decided it was their right to meddle in his personal affairs the better.
Gwaine, on the other hand, didn't seem to care that Arthur was purposefully keeping everyone on a strict need-to-know basis, and that Arthur's friends now mostly skirted around him, trying not to become the cause of a bad mood. He still strolled around the palace without a care, drinking and talking incessantly and continuing to come up with bad ideas and find ways to include Arthur.
Tonight had been one such unfortunate night that Arthur had given in.
It had been about a year since Arthur had been out like this, doing anything really besides training and working. A year since he exiled Merlin.
Arthur's hand gripped the cup containing the cheap wine tightly, standing in the corner watching his knights laughing and drinking, wondering if there would be a way he could sneak out unnoticed.
The first few weeks were unbearable, he shut himself up in his chambers, yelling at poor new servants attempting to do their jobs, and refusing to see anyone. The only time he'd even left his room was to sneak down to the kitchens to find wine, and then drink himself to sleep, so he wouldn't have to think about where Merlin was, or whether he'd gone home, or if he was safe, or what he was thinking.
The knights were angry, especially Gwaine. Gwaine had been the one to forcefully enter his chambers holding a sword and demanding an explanation, and when Arthur was too drunk to have one, had earned him a substantial punch to the eye.
It wasn't about the magic, at least not anymore.
When he'd found out, he'd been so angry and confused and hurt that he couldn't even look Merlin in the eye. The exile was just a way to get Merlin away so that Arthur didn't have to think about what he was going to do, or look at him, because if he did look into his eyes, he wouldn't have been able to do anything at all.
When Arthur finally started speaking again, the first and only time he'd mentioned Merlin, was to inform his knights that if they ever spoke of him again, they'd be found guilty of treason and promptly executed.
He'd grown cold after that. He couldn't care anymore, he'd decided, about where Merlin was and what he was doing. He had a kingdom to rule, and people who he needed to care about in order to protect. He couldn't care about snarky tones and sarcastic mutterings because he had to save what feeling he had for people who actually needed it. He never actually did stop caring, but Arthur found that working and training helped numb him up enough to keep him from remembering that he did.
No one dared to speak to him without a slightly apologetic, aggravatingly polite tone, and Arthur didn't allow for anything less. Anything that even resembled the way Merlin used to speak to him made him nauseous.
Arthur came back to the sound of broken bottles, and the scene of Gwaine drunkenly trying to explain to the barmaid how he hadn't meant to break anything. Arthur felt the ghost of a small smile come to his lips, but it was gone as soon as it had come. It must have been around midnight, early enough that only Gwaine was particularily drunk and the rest of the tavern was still not quite drunk enough to pick fights or cause chaos in other ways that had made Arthur dislike taverns.
The music in the tavern was horrendously melancholy, and the candle lights lit up the room a strangely ghostly way, mirroring the strings. The wine was clearly not of high quality, but it was strong, and it made the lights and the music seem all a little bit blurry. For a moment, he forgot that Merlin wasn't here, and as he took more sips of wine, it felt easier to forget.
Everything felt kind of hazy, so he thought he was hallucinating when he saw Merlin standing in the opposite corner of the tavern.
Arthur was unconcerned at first, it wasn't the first time he'd, in his frequent intoxication, thought he'd seen Merlin somewhere and turned out to be dreaming.
He stared a little longer, fingers tightening on his mug, blunt fingernails scraping against the hard metal.
Merlin was wearing darker clothes than he usually was when Arthur dreamt about him, and he wasn't alone. There was another young man with him, nothing particularly special about him, but Merlin appeared to be laughing and joking with him. Merlin looked happier than Arthur had remembered him being. Arthur averted his gaze, and leaned more into the wall behind him, trying unsuccessfully not to think about the fact that this might actually be real.
His breathing became hitched and labored. Arthur stared determinedly at the ground, examining the uneven floorboards as his vision grew cloudy and his throat went dry.
The knights seemed preoccupied, to Arthur's relief, because he was sure he probably looked like he was about to pass out.
He almost subconsciously raised his eyes again, and saw that Merlin was looking directly at him. The blue of his eyes was impossible to make out through the dim lighting of the tavern, but his gaze was even, almost concerned. In his delirium, Arthur was close to amused at the fact that Merlin might still be concerned for him after everything that he'd done.
He glanced over again at his knights, making sure they were paying him no attention, gratefully he realized one of them had picked a fight and Arthur would probably be the last thing they were worried about.
He raised his eyes back to Merlin, suddenly seeing every conversation, every fight, every near death experience flash in front of his eyes. Them meeting, the poisoned goblet, the unicorn, the Witchfinder, the dragon, Morgana, when Arthur found out, and every little comment, retort, and wise thing Merlin had ever said. Arthur bit his lip so hard he tasted blood, the alcohol stinging the cut, but partially distracting Arthur from the other kind of pain he was feeling.
Arthur was lost.
Merlin didn't move his eyes away from Arthur until the man Merlin was with tugged on his arm, saying something to attract Merlin's attention. Merlin nodded and brought his eyes back to Arthur's one more time, as the other man walked out the door. Arthur noticed that now although concern still was coloring his face, the same defiance he'd given Arthur every day since they'd met was present, except maybe a little darker.
After Merlin walked out, Arthur first felt a sense of relief, and then the same deep pain he'd been feeling for the past year, and then cold anger sped up his heart rate and left him dizzy with furious jealousy.
For the first time since they'd been in the tavern, one of his knights, Leon, came over to Arthur, but Arthur seemed to barely notice.
In his confusion, Arthur noticed the concerned furrow between Leon's brow, and heard "Sire, are you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost." in the same apologetically polite voice that everyone had been speaking to him with for months, and this did nothing to quell Arthur's anger.
Instead of answering, Arthur started gracelessly toward the door, bumping into several people and hard furniture, and so drunk that he barely noticed that the entire tavern was watching him.
He made it outside into the cold night air, where a light rain had begun to fall. It was cold enough that Arthur could see his sharp breaths in and out and he vaguely realized what he must have looked like running out of a tavern as the king of Camelot (not that many people there would have known it), and he couldn't bring himself to care.
The world was falling around him.