Merlin collapsed heavily on the sofa with a loud, inconsolable groan. The sofa groaned back at the sudden weight threatening to finally break what was left of its frame. Right now, Merlin couldn't really care much less. He was covering his face in his hands, rubbing his forehead.

"He hates me," he whined miserably.

Covering his eyes, he couldn't see Freya, but he could imagine her very well. Sitting by the round dining table, lifting her gaze from the book she had been reading when he came in. Probably lifting an eyebrow as well.

"Did you buy crickets?" she asked lightly.

"Yeah."

Merlin waved his hand, and his bag opened. A packet floated out of it and hovered over to the table, where it landed clumsily in the middle. His magic was as listless as he was.

"Great, well done. We don't want the poor dear going hungry."

He didn't bother answering save for a grumble. She sighed.

"Is this about your banker again?"

He sighed despondently and removed his hand from his face, letting his arms flop pathetically to his sides.

"Who else?"

"Well, I don't know," said Freya, casually stirring her mug of tea, "You could've made some sort of new acquaintance lately. You could've gotten over him. I mean, you haven't seen him in what, a month?"

He shook a corrective finger in her general direction.

"Not true!" he insisted, "I saw him today, in fact."

Actually, he'd rather he hadn't in many ways. Just thinking of the encounter with Arthur and his date in the park was painful. He didn't even know what he'd said or done wrong this time, although he had a suspicion he would have reached at least fifteen different conclusions after inevitably overthinking it for a week.

"Really?" Freya asked, a bit more interested now, "What happened?"

Merlin groaned anew, and recounted the afternoon's incident. How he had spotted a familiar face in the crowd, seen that he was holding onto a woman's hand - which had made him just a little bit jealous, he could admit to that. How he'd finished the show and they'd disappeared, but then he found them again. How he'd given the woman a flower, and she had been both charmed charming, but he had been less impressed. And of course, how it ended with the couple arguing and Merlin being threatened with legal action.

"Aw," said Freya, empathetically. She had put her book down now, and was holding her mug in both hands, smiling a melancholy smile at him.

"That wan't exactly what you were hoping for, was it."

"Nope," said Merlin, blushing a little, perhaps. He wasn't quite sure what he'd been hoping for. Just anything, really, as long as it wasn't overtly hostile, so of course hostility was what he was doomed to get. Over the weeks that had passed since he had made Arthur volunteer in his performance, his interest in the man had only grown. He had hoped he might come back to watch the show, that he might have sparked his curiosity with his unnatural knowledge and successful prediction. That the prediction was successful was not something he knew for sure, but surely, it must have been. He was convinced the scene with the woman leaving him must have happened, since the woman he was with today had looked nothing like her. And her name had been Gwen, hadn't it? Not Mithian.

It didn't really matter whether it had happened or not, he reasoned, because it hadn't made Arthur any more interested in finding out more. It hadn't made him seek Merlin out as he had hoped. Had this man got no sense of curiosity? Merlin had been waiting and hoping to run into him again, but it kept not happening. He wouldn't exactly say he had been obsessed with the idea, but… Well, Freya might disagree on that. The mysterious man came up in conversation every so often, and he did think about him quite a lot. He was very attractive, if a bit stiff, and he was sufficiently mysterious, and according to the spell, Merlin was going to fall in love with him. If that wasn't good reasoning for being a bit preoccupied with someone, then what was?

It took him a few seconds to realise that Freya was laughing at him. Not maliciously, just a little chuckle, but it still annoyed him a little bit.

"What?" he asked grumpily.

"Nothing. It's just, well, you seem to be shit at getting him to like you. Which is odd," she said pensively, "Because usually everyone likes you."

"Well, what was I supposed to do?"

"Okay, let's recap. You see him in a park, where you have been sleeping on a bench for the last few hours, and you promptly start yelling his own personal information at him out of nowhere."

"I wasn't yelling," he protested meekly.

"Still, you didn't really achieve much except creeping him out. And then, when you see him again, no apologies or explanations, you just take it upon yourself to make him the butt of the joke on your little magic show."

"I couldn't resist!" he cried defensively, and for a moment, his indignant expression turned into a wicked grin, "You should see him when he gets flustered. It's quite cute."

"But not when he's pissed off."

The grin evaporated.

"No, I suppose not."

"And then, of course, you see him on a date with a woman. Now, you're interested in him yourself, so obviously this is not ideal. However, you go on to make friends with her and completely alienating him, which I think is a bit backwards in terms of your objectives."

"Well, I did succeed in ruining their date," he pointed out, even though that had been far from his intention.

"And thereby making him hate you even more. You need to change your tactics, man. You're trying to get a date, not to get arrested."

Merlin buried himself in the sofa cushions.

"You're right, I am shit at this," he grumbled, "He hates me. And I love him."

"Merlin," said Freya, and the fact that she was rolling her eyes was irritatingly audible, "You don't even know him."

"I know, I know, that makes it worse."

"Are you fourteen years old, is that it?"

"Yes," he sulked, "…No. Do you think I'd be less shit at romance now if I'd gotten more experience when I was fourteen, and allowed to be clueless and crap?"

"Yes, definitely," she said drily.

"Hmph. Then I blame you, 'cause you were the only one I had a crush on at that point."

He heard a chair being moved, followed by footsteps, then he felt her hand ruffling his hair.

"If I've any fault in this, it's not for being pretty at fourteen, it's for showing you the spell."

The pressure of her hand disappeared from his head and she continued towards her room.

"Mostly it's your own fault, though, for being such an idiot about it. Now, are you going to wallow in self-pity all day, or are you going to remember that it's your turn to make dinner?"

"The latter," he responded reluctantly, slowly dragging himself out of the pillows.

Surprisingly, the cooking got him in a better mood. It got his mind focusing on other things than being depressed over Arthur's hatred and his own inability to change it. Fresh vegetables were, after all, delicious things as well. And they were a lot easier to seduce. By the time he placed the food on the table, he was smiling.

"Well, at least something good came out of today," he said as he sat down, "I've finally learned his name."

"Ooh!" Freya responded, "You left that out of your story! Let's hear, then, what does the A stand for?"

Merlin grinned.

"Arthur."

"Oh," she said, not quite as gobsmacked as he'd hoped. "Well, that's a bit… Anticlimactic?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, its kind of a boring name, isn't it? A bit too… Normal, I'd say."

"I think it's perfect," Merlin insisted.

It was true, Arthur wasn't an unusual name, he could think of many people he had known in his life that had been called Arthur. But from the moment he had heard Mithian say it that afternoon, there had emerged a difference between 'someone called Arthur' and Arthur. It was as if he and he alone was the true meaning of the name, all the others just happened to be called the same thing. Some of these gushing thoughts - because he was very aware and slightly ashamed that that's what they were - must have shone through in his voice, because Freya laughed.

"Oh dear," she said, "You really are besotted, aren't you." She paused and had a sip of water. "The next time you meet him will be on his birthday."

Merlin's face snapped up.

"You're not supposed to look into my future, you know. You're definitely not supposed to tell me about it."

This was an agreement they'd reached long ago - Merlin had a tendency to react badly to prophecies.

"I know. But it's not as if fortune telling is completely unrelated to this whole ordeal in the first place. I just thought I'd tip you off. Could be useful."

"Yeah. I guess."

She looked at him ponderously.

"Beats me what you see in him, though," she said after a while, "I mean, I've not met him, but from what you describe, he doesn't sound like a very nice person."

Merlin considered this.

"No, maybe not. Actually, he doesn't seem like a very nice person to me, either." he shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe I'm just developing a thing for arseholes."

"Well, with the whole gay aspect, that might just be convenient."

That made him choke on his food, and in retaliation he flicked a piece of broccoli at her laughing face.