Disclaimer: Yeah, see, about that. No.
Story Title: Of Grace
Word Count: 1055
Rated: T/PG14
Genre: Romance/Angst
Pairings: Arthur x Merlin, mentions of Arthur x Gwen, and an Arthur x Gwen x Lancelot love triangle.
Notes: Canon-compliant, to an extent; some stretching of character that comes with character study. Takes place in an unspecified time roughly throughout the storyline so far, briefly references episodes up to season two and vaguely mentions the Reveal. Rated for non-explicit descriptions of sex and sexual undertones. Comments, criticism, and suggestions gratefully accepted.
Summary: It is nameless, creeping, something entirely different and yet entirely the same all at once. It's not love, what they feel. It never had to be.
Author's Statement: . . . I'm ninety-two percent certain that this is not what OP!anon wanted, but this is what sprang to mind immediately after reading the prompt (and out of my fingers, two hours later, when I finally got back to school and got the muses flowing). I should be working on the epic!AU that's blew up from a ten-page fic into a (fifteen? Twenty?) big-page fic, but I'm not, and frankly, I'm just glad that I actually managed to write something close to under a thousand words this time (the last time I tried, I ended up with over forty pages of fic and well over ten thousand. Yes, I'm pathetic). Look well, and memorize, for it shall likely never happen again.
No, no soundtrack, don't worry. That would be stretching it a bit, even for me.
Happy reading!
It's not love.
It can't be. Not really. Young as they are, wise as they are, guileless and artless and stupid and still possessed of that hint of naïvete that war has not yet managed to take from them, they know of love, at least - Roman Cupid and soft pink clouds, a parent's touch on baby-soft skin, infinite tenderness in a way both of them might have experienced once, long, long ago, before fires and purges and wars were even thought of. They know of love as the glassy hatred of a mother trapped under a chandelier as metal arches through the air, pyres and axes, death and steel, and a portrait, tucked safely into the bottom of a cabinet in the far corner of Uther Pendragon's bedroom, that one, dust-beautiful corner that not even the king's own servant dares touch. They know enough of love to define it, to give it form and shape with their lips - something so elusive and yet so ever, ever present. Love is something that they understand.
Love is something broad, they say, giving, capable of immensity and just this side of everything (and miracles? . . . perhaps), soft enough to bend with time and strong enough to hammer death. Love - is when the only life that matters has never been your own.
That part, at least, is true.
They know enough of love to know that it's not. It's not - not able to be described that way, the thing they have together, because love is named and there is something about the two of them (together or apart, for the world has seen nothing like either way) that is thoroughly un-named, and thrives that way. It's not love, after all, in the arguments and insults they half-mean and half-unmean, not love when their words are sharpened and cut to hurt ever other barb. Love is very clearly not the sting of satisfaction that precedes guilt when an pointed dart hits its mark (not poisoned, yes, but certainly no less harmful because of it). There is nothing remotely close to love in the tenseness of the glances that soar and fall in the space between them - maybe trust and maybe a bond on a level deeper than either of them would care to admit, but certainly not love.
It's not love that they feel, not really, when Arthur delights in pushing forward like commander in charge of his armies, feeling Merlin tense and reach and break the end of his limits. It's not love, not love like Lancelot looks at Gwen, not love like a heart tearing in half as the two finest men in all of Albion reach. It's not love like arrows and hearts, not love like gilded gold and finery. It's not anything that would have been able to break the enchantment on Arthur when Olaf and Vivian happened to be unfortunate in the vicinity, and it's not love that they think of, not love that struggles, weak and mewling, through the heavy, metal clouds, not love that paints the sky with winestains and blood, not love that reflects off water and light on the days when the sun holds triumphant (not love that is laughter and tenderness and the hint of steel in their arguments when neither deigns to bow).
It's not love, that first, electric brush in the stables, lips on lips and something so much unlike love there. It's not love when Merlin's arms come up to shove Arthur flat across the barn. It's not love in Arthur's eyes when he looks up and all he can see is gold.
It's not love in Merlin's face when he turns and runs.
It's not love that raises the dead, and it's not love in the blood that slowly seeps from an open shoulder wound (deep enough to pierce armor), and it's not love in poisoned cups and goblets and fangs. It's not love that pierces the veil of sleep into the world of dreams, and it's not love that lies like gleaming rosebuds beneath a fallen knight's form, and it's not love that cuts steel with water, makes miracles on a daily basis (for love is incapable of such a thing, and if it were love, how could they ever have survived this long?). It's not love, this half-unspoken trust between them, that has saved kings and kingdoms alike. It's not love that defies magic. It's not love that defies fathers. It's not love that shapes destines.
It's not love that brings Merlin to Arthur's bed that night, in an evening cloaked with dark, almost-painful relief for the common folk, relief for the king, relief that can ease the ache of battle wounds (but not heal, because some lessons need to be scars and some scars need to last forever), and it's not love in that second, searing, too-hot, too-bright kiss, and it's not love, not in the whisper of the curtains catching moonlight, not in the arc of Merlin's body and the scrabbling and twisting and tangling of his fingers in Arthur's hair and the song of that beats a drum in the breeze, not in Arthur's fever-bright eyes and the finger-shaped bruises that will be on Merlin's hips tomorrow, not in the matching pulse-for-pulse, moment-and-a-moment, just for a beat, in Arthur's eyes (one. To break, to destroy, to consume, to devour. Two. A gentleness greater than in the executioner's axe, than in a mother's embrace of her child, than love could ever hope to imagine).
It's not love. If that's what they call it, behind closed doors and in the safety of each others' warmth, well. If that's what they murmur, lazy morning-afters, golden afternoons spent lounging around in the roughness of a friend and the softness of a lover, if that's what they say, for their own lack of anything else to call it-
It's not love. It never has been.
But it's something very, very close.
And it's something that maybe - maybe-
(fifteen hundred years later, and all there is is blue sky and blue laughter and a blue-crinkled gaze grinning down at him, Welcome to the future, oh mighty Once and Future King)
-maybe will prove to be even better than either of them could have ever dreamed, that first time one turned to the other and lied - love.
Full prompt: "It's not love; it's something better."
So very character study-based and introspective that I honestly think any notes would just cheapen the effect. On the matter of anachronisms: Merlin is a fandom in which local anachronisms are exempt from my study. Partly because for the life of me, I can't find if roses were (I'm not even sure of the actual time period itself, which is fairly telling) in England at the time or not, and partly because tomatoes are thrown at stock-y peasants, and sorcery is apparently so high-profile that even commoners get the privilege of the axe. Yes, I'm done. Yes, you can take that soapbox away now. No, I won't be needing it again 'till next Thursday. Thanks you sir. Mm-hmm, you too. Good-bye.
As always: review. And as always - thanks for reading or for just skipping down to the Author's Notes if you're like me and read from the bottom up.