Wolfy is a subtle shoutout to Boys Next Door, a manga by the incredible Kaori Yuki.

Title from Elbow's The Bones of You.

/

Merlin called in sick.

It wasn't something he did very regularly, but he had the sinking feeling that if he went to work today he'd simply end up locking himself in one of the copy rooms and bawling his eyes out.

"This," he announced to the empty apartment as he worked on breakfast with a kind of violent intent, "Is simply ridiculous. It really is. I've had bruises before, I've been beaten before, I've been dumped before! Why is this bothering me?"

The apartment was extremely eloquent in its lack of answer. Merlin sighed, took his plate of eggs and bacon into the living area and wrapped up in an oversized blanket on the couch, flicking on the television. He settled on a supremely boring soap opera with a name he had some vague recollection of hearing before, and watched as so-and-so confronted whats-his-face about cheating on her with that-one-blonde-girl. What's-his-face was apparently notorious for this, and that-one-blonde-girl (who Merlin thought looked something like a white Gwen, which was really weird, and, he was pleased to note, Gwen was much better looking than the blonde) seemed to be so-and-so's best friend, but was really sleeping with her brother. The plotline became steadily more tangled, and Merlin dozed off in the middle of a very loud argument.

/

A faint click had him sitting bolt upright, automatically sliding a hand underneath one of the sofa cushions to grab a small Smith and Wesson .38. Flicking the safety off and cocking it, he silently stood and slipped to the edge of the room, waiting patiently. His head thrummed with blood, despite the fact that he'd just barely woken up, and as he heard the door slide open, he stepped into the hall, gun raised.

Freya looked at him with a supremely unimpressed face. "I'm so glad to see you're still on your toes," she said dryly. "You always carry a sissy gun on you?"

Merlin glowered at her, setting the gun on the counter of the kitchen bar. "No- that was just because it was the closest on hand. You know I like the Sig Sauer better."

She grinned, sauntering in and dropping a bag on the counter. "The Sidhe send their regards," she informed him, pulling up a stool. He sat across from her, curious. Freya worked as a hired gun/bodyguard with the Avalon Team, a supremely talented group of highly trained ex-military. As she was ex-Marine who'd been discharged when Don't Ask, Don't Tell was still in full swing, she'd fit right in. The two of them had met up shortly after The Incident had landed Merlin in the streets, and she'd been the one to point him in the direction of the Dragonlord- his father. They'd been close friends ever since. The Sidhe were the higher-up members of the Avalon Team, and as a general rule they didn't like him.

"What is it?"

She nudged the bag to him. "Take a look."

Slowly, he pulled it open to reveal a small box. Lifting it out, he removed the lid and his eyes went wide.

"Freya," he said carefully, "It this a birthday present or a favor?"

"It's a good-will present. They don't want you getting ticked and coming after them...again. That's Damascus steel- real Damascus steel- right there, so treat them nice." She grinned. "Pretty, aren't they?"

Reaching in with trembling fingers, Merlin carefully lifted out a matched set of gorgeous Manji styled sais with black leather bindings. Wide eyed, he turned them over in his hands, amazed by the perfect balance. "I've never seen a pair like this," he breathed, standing so that he could try a few passes with them. "They must be ancient."

Freya leaned her head on her hand, smiling as he spun them quickly, going through the basic kata's. "No idea. I thought you'd like them. I know how much you adore the sai and the steel- and no, don't ask where we got them. I don't even know. You have a sword made of it, don't you?"

"Yeah…" he said, entranced, "Handed down from Dragonlord to Dragonlord since 1400 AD." Reverently, he set the sais on the table, staring at them in awe. "This…this is amazing. I never thought I'd get to see a set of sai's in Damascus steel. It's amazing."

Freya nodded, humming in agreement. "They're beautiful. So," she said with fake innocence, "Where'd that shiner come from?"

His hand flew to his face, draining of color as he felt the bruise. "It's nothing," he said shortly, picking up the blades and taking them into the living room to set them on one of the bookshelves. Freya looked utterly unconvinced.

"Last time I saw you with a bruise, the Dragon had just tried to throw you through a wall," she pointed out in typical dry fashion, following him. "So, who was it?"

He said nothing. He didn't need to. Freya knew him well.

"Arthur, huh? I told you that you shouldn't be messing around with him and the politics that came with him." She sighed, shaking her head and smiling. "But you just can't help yourself, can you, Merlin?"

Merlin stroked the sai's blades. "I suppose not."

Freya gripped his shoulder, squeezing softly.

"Go talk to the Dragon. He'll get it."

/

A small warehouse on the East Side was where he ended up after Freya left. He stared up at it miserably, wondering why he'd come here. He'd long since decided that he wasn't going to be dependent on the man, and after their last argument they'd had, he'd sworn never to come back. Yet, here he was, and inside he would have to go if he wanted to speak to the Dragon. Sighing in frustration, he went up to the door in the wall, fished the old key out of his pocket, and slid it in the lock, hoping he wasn't about to be electrocuted. The Dragon, the counterpart to the Dragonlord, was the person who trained the Dragonlord and acted as his counselor. Kilgarrah had been his father's Dragon as well, and was the only reason that the Dragonlord line hadn't ended at Balinor. He'd taken Merlin in when Balinor, bleeding and broken, had brought him there, heavily sedated thanks to a very nasty woman who'd wanted him dead (another story for another time), and had grudgingly worked them both back to something like health. Balinor had died out on a job not four weeks after he recovered, leaving a shell-shocked Merlin to Kilgarrah's tender mercy.

To his great surprise, the key still worked, turning smoothly in the old, rusty lock. Cautiously poking his head inside, he looked around in the gloom. "Kilgharrah?" He called softly, fearful.

A shuff of fabric on cement sounded, and a growling voice said dryly, "So, the son of the prodigal son returns to me at last. You took your time, Merlin."

Taking that as invitation, Merlin hesitantly stepped inside. Lights flickered on, revealing a large, open area inside where a small plane, a miniature Chinese ship- a junk-, and a perfectly restored, jet black 1925 Rolls Royce were ensconced. Catwalks criss-crossed over head, and on the left side of the warehouse, up a flight of stairs that led to the parapet that surrounded the room was a small apartment. Below, on the ground floors North-East corner, was a large dojo. Standing on the stairs and holding an enormous iguana was a tall man with a pair of pince-nez glasses with silver frames. He wore silver- silver shirt, silver slacks, silver toed boots, and his hair, falling to the middle of his back in spiky strands, was silver as well. Slowly, the man came down the stairs, stroking the iguana. Merlin was relieved to see he was smiling.

Closing the door, he came forward and knelt in the Japanese style, palms flat on the floor, head bowed. His heart pounded violently. Kilgharrah was not a necessarily nice man, and should he choose, he could easily end Merlin's life without a second thought. He resisted the urge to run very fast and very far.

Silver toed boots stopped in front of him, and he held perfectly still.

A sigh escaped the man. "Get up, young man. I can't bring myself to kick you when you look like that."

"And if I stand up, will you kick me then?" Merlin dared, heartbeat pounding in his ears.

A light chuckle, deep and warm, emanated from the older man. "Quite possibly."

Merlin sighed, and stood up nervously, keeping his head down. This was unbelievably embarrassing and awkward, not to mention dangerous.

"Look at me, Merlin."

He slowly looked up into soft gold eyes, and to his horror felt himself starting to tear up. Kilgarrah's eyes widened, and then softened. Setting the iguana down, he pulled Merlin into a backbreaking hug.

"Please tell me," he murmured as Merlin buried his face in the fine silk, "That the other person looks worse."

Merlin choked on a sob and a laugh, and let himself break in his adoptive father's arms.

/

An hour later, Merlin was mostly put back together and holding the iguana where he was curled up on Kilgarrah's couch. The iguana, bizarrely named Wolfy, nuzzled at his hand, making strange purring noises. He grinned down at the creature, giving it a tomato. The iguana made happy noises, snapping the tomato quickly out of his fingers.

Kilgarrah chuckled, sitting beside him with his own plate. Wolfy scrambled off of Merlin's lap, and into his, begging for some of Kilgarrah's sandwich. He gave him a piece of lettuce, and the iguana snapped it up.

"Blasted thing never would eat politely," he said, stroking the spiky head. "And I wanted a komodo dragon, but…well, they're protected for one, and would be expensive to feed for another. So, Wolfy it is. I bought him four months ago."

Merlin smiled at the creature, which was now eying the rest of Kilgarrah's plate. "He's sweet."

"Very," Kilgarrah agreed. Settling back, he looked carefully at Merlin. "So… Are you going to tell me?"

Merlin curled up, hugging his knees, and stared at the small fireplace. It was the central focus of the room, thanks to the fact that Kilgarrah firmly hated the television. "I was stupid," he said quietly. "After I went back, I…I started to remember Arthur. You know, what he was like before… and he took me back, gave me a job, sent me through college, everything. I noticed he was stressed, suggested something to relieve it- Don't growl, you've known that I do these things- and he accepted."

He fell silent for a bit, then continued. "Things got complicated. Neither of us wanted anything serious, but then Uther started pushing for him to marry, and he hates being chained down. He hasn't met anyone who he was interested in, either, and that just set things off. They started arguing, long and loud, and he just got fed up."

"And took it out on you?" Kilgarrah's voice was deadly sweet.

"Not until last night." He explained hurriedly, before Kilgarrah decided to hunt down Arthur, and then said, "We may have done things, but we never went all the way, 'Garrah. Never. I told him from the start that I wouldn't let him do that. I… I want it to mean something, and to be when I choose."

Kilgarrah nodded approvingly. "Good. Now," he said gently, "What are you going to do?"

Merlin shrugged. "Practice. Meditate. Be so excruciatingly polite he wants to shoot me. Be his friend still. Talk to him about it. Break it off, too, I'll bet."

"Good." Kilgarrah was pleased. "Out of curiosity- what did you argue about?"

Merlin's smile was dry. "Whether or not we should stop what we were doing."

/

The spy was not in a good mood. He'd gone to work only to find that Merlin was gone that day, and was thoroughly disgruntled. He'd had great plans for his further attack on Merlin's heart and various other organs, and the man had the indecency to take a day off! It was inconceivable!

"Sir?"

He paused mid-rant, and looked down at the rather amused, dark haired young man who'd just walked in, carrying a green folder. Lowering the small ying-yang paperweight, which he had been angrily talking to, he looked steadily at the man and refused the urge to blush embarrassingly. "What is it?"

"Besides the fact that you're making that poor paperweight quiver in fear, you've got mail." The man handed him the folder. "Anything to go?"

The spy looked at him blankly. "You're a page, aren't you?"

"Yep. Name's Mordred- no, don't look at me like that, I can't help what I got named any more than you can. So- replies?"

"Oh. Yes…Hold on."

It was definitely time to start working on the secretary, the spy thought to himself as he scribbled out a note. Soon. Soon.

/

The next day, Merlin came to work. It wasn't something he necessarily wanted to do, but, as with all things, he had to do it.

He slowly pulled the door to his office antechamber open, and yelped when a yell of "WHERE WERE YOU?!" blasted him with all the force of a hurricane. Startled, he peeked around the door to see his twenty four pages all giving him angry, accusing glares with varied amounts of extreme distaste. He smiled sheepishly, and everyone's eyes widened, zooming into the bruise on his jaw. It was quite pretty, in varying shades of purple and green by now, and had blackened on the edges. He was promptly bombarded with a storm of anxiety ridden voices. This, he thought in amusement as he stepped inside, is what comes of hiring young, impressionable college students, never mind that he was barely mid-twenties himself.

"What happened?!"

"Did you get in a fight?"

"Mr. Emrys, are you feeling well?"

"Are you sick?"

"Can I get you water?"

"That looks so painful, sir!"

"Are you alright?"

"Sir? Sir? Should I get you something stronger than water?"

"Painkillers?"

"Grapefruit?" This was Mordred, of course, who was looking at him knowingly. "And I have some information for you, as well."

Merlin accepted the grapefruit with glee. Mordred knew very well that that was his favorite snack, and that he had gotten it for him was touching- and a bit worrying, actually. "All right." He raised his voice. "Everyone, please calm down, my head is splitting with the noise."

Instant silence. 23 pairs of worried eyes focused on him (Mordred's were simply amused). He smiled.

"Now, I know you're all a shade anxious about me, and I'm very flattered by this, but please relax. I don't have any life threatening disease, I didn't get into a bar fight, I'm not hurt, per se, no I am not going to tell you how I got it, I just have a bit of a headache and a need for some quiet. I received some rather bad news the other day, and I'm still a bit shaken."

Immediately there was a flurry of women coming forward to coo and make other suitably reassuring noises at him. Mordred looked like he wanted to laugh. Merlin sighed. This was going to be a very long day, and he hadn't even seen Arthur yet. Once he had managed to shoo them off to their respective tasks and lowered himself into his chair, he looked over the organized clutter at Mordred, who had commandeered the other one.

"Well?"

The younger man's smile was crafty, smug, and downright scary. "I thought you'd be interested to hear that you had several very worried people asking about you yesterday. Among them were Gwaine Noble and Percival Schloss, and Elyan Nevere was not exactly what you would call happy for the duration of the day. Noble asked me at least four times where you were, and Schloss grumbled under his breath in angry German, which, by the way, was dead sexy- no French hairball noises. He wears tailored Armani suits, too, you know. Those things don't come cheap. I'd go after him, and I'm planning to unless you get there first, of course."

Feeling oddly flattered by the sentiments expressed, he asked hesitantly, "And Arthur?"

"Oh, his royal pain-in-the-arse stormed around angrily most of the day. He locked himself in his office and we think he was throwing things, but none of us mere mortal pages dared check. I think a couple higher ups might have dared breach his inner sanctum, but I'm not positive. We didn't have to cart anyone out on a gurney, so all went well, in a roundabout sense. So, I take it that it wasn't a good break up?"

Merlin winced. "No. It wasn't."

"What did you fight about?"

"Whether or not to break up."

Mordred gave him dead-pan stare for a moment, the broke into snickers. Merlin rolled his eyes, but couldn't help smiling. "Yes, it was stupid, alright?"

"I'll say. That's the best thing I've heard all day."

/

Gwaine burst into the antechamber that housed Merlin's desk and flung himself into the chair across from it. The younger man looked up, startled.

"Where were you?" He all but wailed, staring soulfully into the secretaries supremely surprised eyes. "I had to deal with her highness all day long, and he was horrible! I've never seen a man throw such a fit about not having help!" His eyes focused on the bruise on Merlin's jaw. "What happened?" He demanded, leaning over to grab the pointed chin and turn his head to see it better. "Do I need to go and defend your virtue?"

Merlin blinked, and then grinned broadly, gently pulling away. "No, Mr. Noble-"

"Really, it's Gwaine. Mr. Noble is a horrible name."

"Gwaine, then. I'm fine, actually."

Gwaine snorted, feeling inordinately fond of the thin young man. "I see." Sitting back down and settling his ruffled feathers, he surveyed the man. "What to go out for a drink tonight?"

The man stared at him blankly. "Did you come all the way down here from the 24th floor just to ask me that?"

"Would you say yes if that was my reason?" Gwaine asked, eyes wide in innocence.

Merlin stared, and for a second Gwaine's heart sank. It had been a bit of a long shot-

Merlin's lips twitched in what might have managed to be a smile. "Alright then. When?"

Gwaine grinned triumphantly.

/

The bar was on the louder side, and there'd already been a very well executed fight that had taken out a majority of the toughs. This left some poor soul who was apparently celebrating her 21st birthday with a group of friends and the local gossiping businessmen. They made enough noise to allow for a private conversation. They'd secreted themselves into a smaller corner of the room, which, Merlin had noticed, gave them the perfect view of anyone approaching and kept their backs protected. Gwaine had chosen the seats- someone clearly had had practice with this sort of thing. Merlin was halfway through a very tall Long Island Iced Tea (a stupid decision normally, but his temper had flared later in the day and getting stinking drunk had sounded good so…) when it occurred to him that Gwaine was looking at him with a kind of calculating expression.

"What is it?" he asked, feeling abnormally shy. Gwaine smiled, a bit sadly, liquid brown eyes boring into him.

"It was Arthur, wasn't it? No, don't look at me like a deer caught in the headlights, I'm not blind. You two are- make that were- the worst kept secret in the whole building aside from Mordred's traveling copy room entertainment show." He rested his chin in his palm, studying him. "Why'd you stay with him? I never saw any bruises before."

Merlin swallowed hard. Well then- both feet in, he supposed, and the alcohol had loosened his tongue.

"Arthur and I grew up together. My father vanished when I was little. My mother remarried, and I moved in with my uncle rather than deal with my step-father. My uncle is Uther's personal physician, you see, so I was always in their house. I met Arthur, who, by the way, was a spoiled brat-"

"Isn't he still?"

Merlin smirked. "Don't interrupt. Anyway, we somehow got to be friends, and Uther even paid for my schooling so I could stay with him- I was really the only decent friend he had, and Uther was thankfully still sane enough to see that- and we just…we were always together. I don't know why…" His voice trailed off. "Then there was The Incident, and I- I just left, without telling anyone, when I was 18. I stayed away for 4 years, and then dared to go back and apologize. I was figuring that Arthur was going to either have forgotten me or moved on, but when I came back he just hug-tackled me and told me never to do that again. Then he made me his secretary so he could keep an eye on me and…things just happened." He lifted his glass and sipped a bit more. "8 months, by the way. We lasted 8 very long months."

"So, you finally got in a fight?"

Merlin sighed. "Yes. Ironically, it was about whether or not to break up."

Gwaine chuckled, leaning back. "Did you?"

Merlin stared at the scarred table top, tracing the groves that varying knives had carved into the dark wood. "We discussed it this afternoon, and yes." He didn't mention that it had been his idea, and that Arthur's eyes had been more than a bit bloodshot. That wasn't important.

"Good."

Startled, Merlin looked up to see Gwaine watching him with heavy lidded eyes. "Goo-"

Realization hit like a rock. A very heavy, large, spiny rock, tumbling down from the mountainside at an incredible speed and gaining.

"No," he said, stunned. "No way. Not possible. Not a chance. There's no way that you… you…"

"What?" Gwaine said, grinning. "Hasn't anyone ever done this to you?"

"What, take me out to dinner and off-handedly not mention the fact that they find me attractive? No," he said, unbelievably flustered. "No, they haven't. In fact, I've only ever been in two relationships, and one of them ended with a murder, okay?" His heart was pounding hard, and he had the feeling that if this kept up he'd be sobering very quickly. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but bringing up Will had not been good.

"Okay," Gwaine replied, relaxed and calm as ever, though he was clearly curious. A single strand of hair had fallen out of its rigorous pony-tail and was hanging at the side of his face. Merlin firmly squashed the urge to reach out and tuck it behind his ear. That kind of thinking was no good, he firmly told himself. He'd just stepped out of one relationship, and he had no intention of walking straight into another one the day after. But all the same…

"So," Gwaine said, "You going to keep staring longingly at me all night?"

"Staring long- What?! I am not staring longingly!"

"Uh-huh."

/

"This is stupid," he mumbled as they crashed against the wall, his fingers tangling in Gwaine's hair to keep him firmly tethered. "We're both drunk-"

"I'm not drunk, I'm mildly buzzed, thank you," Gwaine mumbled, turning to gain access to Merlin's neck and make himself busy. "You might be drunk though."

"Ung. Maybe."

Another crash, a slight curse as Gwaine caught his toe on the edge of the coffee table, and then, praise be, they made it to the bedroom, Merlin fumbling at the handle. They stumbled inside, Merlin tripped, both fell on the bed, and the rest, as they say, was history.