Yuletide Cheer
Category: Gen (Canon AU)
Characters/Pairings: Merlin, Arthur/Gwen
Rating/Warnings: G
Summary: Merlin is spreading cheer behind Arthur's back.
Word Count: 440
Written for Heart of Camelot Gift Exchange Recipient: 'Réalta Cuardach'
HOC EXCHANGE CLAIM #13
Dear Santa Emrys,
I have been (relatively) good (for most of) this year. I would like a fic where Merlin sees that somebody needs help or some cheering up and tries to fill your shoes for a day.
Doesn't need to be set around Christmas time, although that is certainly a bonus.
It can involve magic or not, although I would prefer some magic, and he can drag some of the knights or his other friends along for the ride. But he must be doing it in secret. Is he caught? That's up for you to decide!
Please please let me have this wish!
Yuletide Cheer
Yule was here again and Merlin knew it was the time of secrets and presents. Merlin was good at secrets, most of the time.
During the Yule season, Merlin was busier than ever. Arthur always sent him on this errand or that errand to order or pick up a gift. This year was no exception. Add to that the Queen had a list of things for him as well. It was as if he had no time left for anything at all.
There was one thing Merlin made sure to have time for and that was to deliver the baskets for the families in the Lower Town. Every year since Arthur became King, families would wake up to find baskets of food at their door. Merlin made sure that there were also toys for the children in them too. It was his secret.
Arthur didn't know about the toys Merlin was putting in the baskets and Merlin wasn't about to tell him. He always added them after he left the castle with the cart.
After he went to all the houses and delivered the baskets, he would go home and sleep. Arthur would let him have the morning off. That was Arthur's gift to him.
The first year, Gaius was called out to a house in the lower town to take care of a child that had taken ill. The little girl was holding a new wooden doll. He asked the parents where it came from and they pointed to the basket. That was when Gaius found out.
The year she married Arthur, the Queen was walking down the street of the lower town and she saw a boy with a toy Knight. She remembered seeing it poking out of cover on a crate in Merlin's room when she went to ask him about Arthur's Yule gift. That was when Gwen realized what Merlin had done.
Eventually everyone found out what Merlin was doing with the Yule baskets. By the third year that Arthur was King; the Knights were 'helping out' by bringing toys here and there to Merlin for the next year.
The only one that seemed to have no clue was Arthur. Merlin hoped that it stayed that way. Merlin enjoyed the faces on the children right after Yule as they played with their new things.
Merlin thought that if Arthur knew that he would stop it. He was wrong. Arthur was the one supplying the Knights with the coin to buy toys to give to Merlin for the baskets.
Some secrets are just not what you would think they are. Other secrets are too good to keep.