"I think one must be insane to think I would be on time with something by now ___ But then again, one should have also learned that even if it took a year, I'm still planning to continue it :D I think I know when I'm going to leave things halfway and then I just don't publish that stuff." Yes, that is what I said and I think you should know it too ;D I know I'm horrible with my time tables, but bare with me. The next chapter has Arthur as a narrator, yay! Or nay, but anyway!
I have a feeling I just accidentally added some random letters in the middle of this chapter... but I don't see them, so possibly not...
"I think…" Gwen started slowly, a puzzled look upon his face.
Merlin stood next to her and looked up at the sky. The sun was shining rather brightly that day and with no cloud up on the sky, it meant that it was also very hot. He swept his forehead with his hand just at the idea of it. However, he was standing safely in the shadows. They were actually outside, in the inner court, but they were right beside the walls of the castle where there was shelter. Gwen was peeking at the square from behind a post, appearing as though she was trying to hide. If she was though, Merlin would have most likely ruined her plan, seeing as he was leaning against that very same post, just on the other side of it. He turned his face towards the girl. Or he would have, if the pole hadn't gotten in the way. He gave up pretty easily.
"Those guys… have slept together", Merlin almost choked on his tongue as she continued, "Or at least kissed!"
Merlin's eyes widened and he felt his heart beat faster after he had gotten his breathing in control. How could she know? No, it was not possible. She must have been talking about the two other guys who were so fond of kissing each other. Because that made so much sense. But then again, it didn't make sense that she knew either.
"What are you talking about?" Merlin asked, once again trying to see her through the post, possibly with even less success.
There was no way anyone saw them. They were in Arthur's room, where people knew better than to knock before entering, and he had heard no such thing. And he should have, considering the castle was almost clear of voices. Which brought them to another obstacle. It was silent because everyone was asleep at that hour. Or too drunk to stand on their own. And Gwen herself was definitely sleeping at her house by then. But didn't she start the declaration with an "I think" and then say "those", which should have counted Merlin out. Merlin sighed. He had to stop jumping into conclusions. The best plan was obviously to hear the story first.
"I mean, look at those two knights there!"
A huge relief on Merlin's part. She had no idea. His heart calmed down and he could see one too many possible outcomes of if the incident had gotten out there in the public, flashing through his eyes. But none of that mattered. She didn't know. And now he could fully concentrate on what the girl was saying. Except, to think about it... What on earth had she gone on about before? Merlin finally rounded the pole to look at her properly. Only, she was looking somewhere farther from him, somewhere under the burning sun. There, Merlin spotted two knights, talking to each other. And that was it. Merlin blinked.
"I don't get it."
Gwen let out a sigh that said "men" in that very specific tone. Merlin wanted to look harder for the sake of his friend, he just had the feeling they'd walk away before he got it. They were talking, yes. Were they talking about something suggestive? But that wasn't it, even if they were, there was no way Gwen could have heard something sensible from this distance since Merlin himself didn't hear the slightest thing. Well then, they had to be showing it. When Merlin was paying attention to them, in a certain angle the other knight had this cold, dead serious face on and the other was just sad. And that didn't quite explain the diagnose Gwen had made, either. Only heartbreak would explain the situation to Merlin if they had something romantic going on. But that was one of the unlikeliest of the reasons. Merlin shook his head in defeat.
"Look at the distance between them", Gwen urged excitedly.
Given the girl's discovery, Merlin expected them to be standing a sprinkle too close to each other. He was truly surprised to find otherwise: they were standing too far from each other. If that was possible. When pointed out loud, Merlin could tell that the distance must have been uncomfortable for a chat. Both had to talk a tad louder than normally to make sure the other heard everything, which in itself was enough to stop the whole nonsense and take a step forward. Also, it was the tiniest bit harder to sense the other's body language. All in all, it was most likely not the distance they had been taught to talk with when they were younger. Merlin couldn't quite tell the reason to that. He felt Gwen's eyes on him and he looked at her. She smiled at his understanding and nodded. She turned to look at the two.
"Their distance boundaries have been broken. They have been too close to each other. So now, they don't know how far they used to be with each other. And since the problem in the first place was that they were too close to each other, they choose to be too far away from each other", Gwen thought about her words for a moment, "I guess that's a logical choice. They think now no one can spot them. As if anyone would have thought of that before they… Oh! And it also prevents them from pouncing each other! I wouldn't have thought of anything if they hadn't had that lustful look upon their eyes…"
The girl grinned mischievously. Merlin rolled his eyes, but at the end of their travel, he placed them upon the couple. Could she be right? Merlin surely didn't see the "lusting" Gwen was talking about, but then again, Gwen had been there longer than he had and for all he knew, she could have passed them before coming to the spot where she was hiding now. She didn't seem to mind the situation though. She seemed to be loving it to be quite exact. Merlin wondered if she had never seen anything like it before. If it was normal for her. But before he got to ask about it, the girl flinched and he discovered the other knight moving. Merlin escaped to Gwen's side of the post, seeing as the knight was coming their way in a good pace. It shouldn't have hidden either of them, really, but for some reason the knight with a saddened demeanor didn't seem to notice. They both watched, positively wide-eyed, as, not long after the first one, the one left of the pair followed the other inside the castle. Gwen mouthed a phew and they were both quiet for a moment.
"Hey…" Gwen was the one to break the silence, "Do you think… Do you think a man could get pregnant?"
Merlin stared at her for about a whole minute. The next he spend on furrowing his brows and contemplating on her suggestion. By the third minute he realized neither one of them was really focusing on the important. They both had work to do. He would need to wake Arthur up.
"Uh, I don't know. But I should probably get going…" he was about to leave, waving his hand already, but ended up stopping dead on his tracks and turning back to the girl, "No, I really don't think so. Isn't it physically impossible?"
-
Merlin knocked on Arthurs door, once, twice and, after waiting for a minute, trice, but when nobody answered, he pushed the door open without being called in. He saw it as a privilege of Arthur's private awakener. He walked in and settled the fresh, clean clothes on the back of an armchair. The boy didn't even stir as his servant entered the room and pushed the curtains away, letting the room soak in light. Merlin smiled at the lump on the bed, completely covered by a blanket. It wasn't really a wonder he didn't react to light. But even though he had shielded himself well, it didn't mean he was safe. Merlin flexed his neck from side to side as he walked over to the bed and sat down on it, right next to the lump. He cleared his throat before pronouncing the other's name in a singsong voice. No reaction. He repeated the word. And when that didn't work either, he shouted "Arthur" as loud as he could possibly manage. The other jumped up in a millisecond and looked around himself, his eyes wide as plates. Merlin smiled sheepishly. Arthur just blinked. It took him another moment to realize the situation he was in.
"Get off my bed!"
The prince rose on his knees, which kind of took his servant, who was quick to fell off the bed, by a surprise. Arthur growled and laid himself down once more. Merlin whined and got up, rubbing his back as if he had damaged it more badly than he actually had. The effort went to waste however after he noticed Arthur paid no attention to him, but was trying to fall asleep again. Trying was the keyword, Merlin was going to make sure of that. He crossed his other arm over his chest, stroked his imaginary beard with the other and cast a thoughtful look at the boy very attached to his blanket again. Merlin sat down on the edge of the bed, his back facing the other, and slouched. He then let out an exaggerated sigh, which he knew must have been heard by Arthur, even though he wasn't visibly reacting to it. No one fell asleep that quickly right after hearing a yell like the one he had been forced to hear.
"Arthur, we need to talk…" Arthur expressed his opinion on this by pulling his covers over his ears, "Do you remember going to sleep last night?"
The said boy let out his answer as an obscure mumble. Merlin looked at him, or at least at the direction of him, surprised. The response was an achievement in itself, he was expecting of having to pull a fight over a single word out of him. But the unfortunate side to it was that he had absolutely no idea what the other had just said. And was a little afraid he would possibly hit him with something if he asked. Hoping he really didn't have a secret stash of throwable items under or somehow inside his bed, he nervously scratched his head a little and dared to ask.
"Uh… Could you possibly repeat that, please?"
Arthur sat up, his hair all messy and a frown glued to his face. He glared at Merlin venomously. Merlin grinned and got up. The other was still rather absently staring at the spot where his face had previously been and seemed to be chewing something. Merlin leaned against the bedpost and crossed his arms, waiting patiently for an answer. Arthur licked his lips.
"I said that I obviously did go to sleep."
His voice was rather monotone, though Merlin knew that had he been fully awake, there would have been a ridiculing tone to it. Merlin rolled his eyes and turned to look towards the window. There was a moment of silence between them. Wasn't it easier that Arthur didn't remember? Then Merlin would be the only one who knew and to the rest of the world, the accident never happened. Like a dream. But he figured he had made it pretty clear that his mind wasn't just letting the thing go. And the knights outside… He then realized that he wanted to know why exactly Arthur had done it. "Because he could" was not enough. And if that really was the reason, he would want to know why Arthur saw it necessary to do everything he was able to. He wondered if Arthur had fallen asleep again while he was thinking.
"Last night… Before you went to sleep… you…" how could he ever speak out the words? "You kissed me."
Merlin felt his face heat up. Why was this needed again? Oh yeah, to get his sleep back. He wanted to add that part as an explanation, but then Arthur would probably choose to concentrate on that. And he didn't want to repeat the question, change the new topic about Merlin's sleeping habits and seem like he was obsessed with what happened, even though he most likely was. He could only imagine what Arthur was thinking. Suddenly a thought struck him. What if he didn't believe him? Or what if he thought Merlin had been the one to start the kiss? That could have been considered as a problem. Merlin had no idea how these people would react to boys kissing other boys.
"And?"
Suddenly very much awake, Arthur's answer was sharp and demanding, quite different from his previous one. When Merlin turned to face the prince, he was looking straight at him, brows furrowed somewhat suspiciously. Merlin blinked, his mind blank. His words came out dumbly.
"What?"
Arthur groaned and rolled his eyes.
"Well, so what if I kissed you? It's not like it's something new, trust me, you're not the first one", he thought about what he had just said for a second, "Unless it was your first kiss and you're one of those people who make a big deal out of first-stuff", The boy was grinning like mad by now, "In that case, don't worry, friendly kisses don't count."
Arthur stretched his arms and Melin stared. The latter, after a moment of realization, murmured to his god, covered his eyes with his hands and threw himself on a wooden chair in Arthur's room. His shoulders slumped and his head fell. Note to self, stop ogling at half naked princes. Now what had the other been talking about. In the corner of his eye, he saw Arthur get up. Merlin rubbed his forehead and watched as the other took in the sight outside his window. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to break it to the prince that he definitely shouldn't kiss his friends in such a provocative manner. Arthur didn't remember the kiss. He couldn't possibly tell him that it was "just a friendly kiss". Merlin decided then that he would never ever drink even if he got the chance to. He did not want to do things he couldn't remember, especially if it meant kissing other boys. He wasn't even sure if he meant that he didn't want to kiss boys or that he didn't want to forget kissing boys.
"It wasn't a friendly kiss."
There, simple and clean. Arthur glanced at him over his shoulder and gave him an incredulous look. He shook his head in a way that said "no, it was, that's final, I know better than you even though I wasn't even around when it happened". Merlin crossed his arms and pouted. Arthur came over and pulled the chair from under him. He took that as a cue that the prince wanted him to start dressing him. Merlin grunted and began on his mission. He truly wondered if Arthur even knew how to dress himself. He had probably never tried and probably very happy with that fact. Merlin had done the same thing a hundredth and one times and he could do it professionally. Even with the rerun of last night going through his head. He was still annoyed with the other for not believing him.
Or maybe he just thought it to be easier if Merlin hadn't said anything and now that he had, the easier thing to do would be to pretend it was just a little, friendly peck. But Merlin wasn't necessarily okay with that. Didn't Athur care to think that he hadn't tried it already? Because he had and it hadn't worked, so why would it work if he had someone pretending with him? It didn't make sense. And then again, it did, because in reality Arthur was a spoiled, selfish little brat, thinking about himself first during a problematic situation he had caused. A brat, who unfortunately really knew how to kiss.
"What exactly are you doing now, may I ask?"
And another misfortune, he had just been staring at the depths of those deep eyes, all forgetting about the dress up. And another, his voice sounded way too pleasant in Merlin's ears, voice that had held such a mixture of curiosity, amusement and irritation that it shouldn't have sounded pleasant of all things. Maybe he wasn't being a brat. Maybe it was an automatic reaction. Maybe he thought it'd be better for both him and Merlin if they wouldn't have that talk. Maybe Merlin was the one being selfish, because he wasn't exactly thinking about Arthur's feeling either. Maybe he just needed time like Merlin had. Though the difference there was that Arthur didn't remember the kiss. Oh no, he was too drunk to. While he only had to come in terms with the fact that they had kissed, Merlin also had to come in terms with the mental images of it. He threw the jacket in his hands to the ground. Arthur raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"This is not a friendly kiss!"
And then Merlin pressed their lips together, mimicking Arthur's actions in the previous night as best as he could. There was no question of if he could remember it perfectly. Because he could. Only now it was Arthur's lip caught between the two of his own. He backed away. The prince blinked in obvious shock while Merlin just smiled proudly. He tried to ignore the butterfly feeling in his stomach and the urge to touch his lips, almost burning from the touch.
"You do not kiss your friends like that."
Arthur opened his mouth, most likely as a reflex to a verbal challenge, but no words left him. He eventually found the power to shut it and instead responded by narrowing his eyes in an incredulous manner. Merlin wasn't sure if he doubted if the kiss was alike to the one he had given the previous night or if he doubted that it supposedly wasn't of a friendly kind. He suspected the former, but knowing Arthur, it could have just as easily been the latter. The fact that the prince didn't seem to exactly, totally mind their most recent kiss gave him a sense of security. It was visible to the eye that Arthur was a way more normal and calmer with it than Merlin had been. And Merlin got a feeling the boy had the power to make everything right. Right after Arthur got through his speechlessness of course. It was probably because he was processing the situation anyway. Which was actually a pretty wise thing to do, to think before acting.
"I remember it, you don't, so you cannot say that it wasn't exactly like that."
Merlin was there just to make sure his thoughts didn't take the wrong way. Because if he was going to think about how the kiss couldn't have been like that and how Merlin was crazy and possibly obsessed with him, he could save him the trouble and let him know now. Though Arthur would literally throw him out if he was just going to stay there and watch him think in silence. Not that he didn't annoy the prince with it, because he would do that too, but he also had actual work to do. He had his daily chores and Arthur expected him to do them without a reminder. He suddenly realized Arthur was staring at the ground quite pointedly and Merlin realized the jacket was still there. Merlin kneeled to pick it up.
"I don't see why you couldn't kiss your friends like that. It's not like I used any tongue or anything. Most people are just overly sensitive about their personal space."
Arthur said it offhandedly, as if just voicing his current thoughts, but Merlin knew for sure that the sentence had been planned and he smiled mischievously. He dusted the jacket and walked around the prince to get it on him, Arthur helpfully raising his arms. Once he had got it on, Merlin once again circled the prince to see the front. He examined him carefully from a small distance and then moved forwards to adjust the collar, like a mother taking care of her, or in this case, his child. Using the same tone Arthur had used earlier, Merlin phrased his thoughts also.
"Well in truth, I'm not really one of those people."
And then he kissed Arthur again, still holding on to his collar, on the mouth and very, very friendly, like the honorable prince of Camelot said it. Arthur's reaction had not gotten better since the last time, in fact it was quite identical to it. Merlin decided he would just have to get used to it, since he certainly wasn't going to quit the habit before Arthur admitted that the kiss was something else than friendly. Then he'd think about what happens afterwards. He smiled softly at the boy, waved at him, turned on his heels and walked away, head held high.
