Title: Worst Kept Secrets
Author: EachPeachPearPlum
Rating: T
Warnings: references to sexual situations, minor instances of bad language, the odd historical inaccuracy (though not any more serious than those in the series itself).
Disclaimer: On the A to Z of things I don't have but wish I did, Merlin features between 'the ability to lie convincingly' and 'nice legs'.
Notes: So, this one has taken a little longer to post than I intended it to. I have been distracted, I'm ashamed to say, by other writings. This is the second to last chapter of this, and the last one is really too short to be considered anything more than an epilogue. There is a sequel in the works, of which I have about fifteen thousand words in slightly scruffy handwriting, though it needs serious reworking in places and has rather taken a back seat at the moment to a modern AU I have been semi-challenged to write. Both will begin being posted as soon as they are complete. As always, criticisms, corrections and compliments are very welcome, particularly seeing as this one is potentially riddled with more errors than most of the others put together. Thanks, and thank you for reading. Peach.
Worst Kept Secrets - Chapter Ten
Merlin stays unconscious for four days. Gwaine remains awake for all of them.
Lance fetches food for the pair of them, and a broth Gaius advices for Merlin (who needs nutrition, even if he isn't able to eat solid food), and tells him to sleep every few hours. Gwaine tries, but can't; frankly, he is amazed Lance can, snoring softly from a stack of blankets on the floor.
"You can go, you know," Gwaine tells him on the second day, shortly after Arthur brings reports of earthquakes throughout the kingdom: in the caves where they hid from Morgana, various parts of the forest around the city, the lake a few hours from the castle (Merlin, Gwaine thinks, loves some pretty odd places). "I can take care of him."
"I do not doubt it," Lance says, implacable but not unkind. "But who is taking care of you?"
Gwaine doesn't argue, just picks up the letter Gaius received from Hunith and gave to Arthur to deliver. Merlin's mother, he reads aloud, hopes Merlin knows what he is doing, and requests a warning if there are to be similar occurrences in the future. Merlin does not react, but Gwaine did not really think he would.
X
On the evening of the third day, Gaius comments that magical exhaustion does not usually last this long (a day of unconsciousness, another one or two of needing to sleep every couple of hours; that is the average, or so he says, and Gwaine has no reason to doubt his expertise), and asks what it was that Merlin swore. When Gwaine tells him, he merely hmms and turns to leave.
Gwaine grabs his arm, ignoring Lance's protests. "What?"
Gaius looks at him, assessing him somehow. It seems he passes whatever test the old man set him, because Gaius answers his question. "A brave oath to swear. It's so easy to break an oath, and this one...if Merlin ever uses his magic against, Arthur, Uther, or the kingdom, we fall. Anywhere the earth shook three days ago, anyone who is in one of those places when the oath is broken, and of course us – those who felt the second tremor, I imagine you were one of them? – and Merlin survives it all, us all. The walls may fall on his head and he will live through it. He'll be unable to save any of us, either, and will die, eventually, old and alone, knowing he destroyed everything he ever loved."
"No," Gwaine tells him vehemently. "No, he won't. He won't break it."
Gaius sighs, regarding at him with all the wise sadness of age, and Gwaine feels like a child, trying to understand matters far beyond his comprehension. It is a disconcerting feeling, certainly, but it does nothing to lessen his conviction; there are some sins Merlin will commit, but the betrayal of all he holds dear could never be one of them.
Gaius' expression does not change, but the only reply he gives is one of assent. "No," he says, removing Gwaine's hand from his arm. "I don't suppose he will."
On the bed next to them, Merlin's eyelids flutter and he smiles, not quite waking, but nearly there.
X
When he does wake, Merlin is still too drained to resume his duties.
Gaius permits him a few hours perambulatory each day, but insists that for the most part he should remain in bed. Lancelot returns to training in the mornings and sleeping in his own room, though he still visits during the afternoon. Gwaine regains the ability to sleep now that Merlin can do something else, though insists on doing so on the floor despite Merlin's demands that he does not; much as he would love to give in, Gwaine knows doing so will not be conducive to Merlin's recovery.
Well and truly exasperated with his confinement after two days, Merlin resorts to sulking, and gets increasingly annoyed when Gwaine (who should also be at training, orders Arthur, but since the first time he left Merlin unaccompanied, he ended up missing for the three hours it took for everyone to find him lying unconscious in the stables, Gwaine has decided to stick around) just finds this funny.
"Lancelot," Merlin says one day when the other knight is visiting. "Please tell Gwaine I'm going for a walk; if he wishes to follow me like an over-protective puppy, he should prepare to do so."
"Gwaine, Merlin said-"
"I know what he said. I can hear you, Merlin," he replies, as he has done almost every other time. "And you've already taken a walk today. You should stay in bed."
When Lance beings to repeat all this as well, Gwaine decides enough is enough. "Lancelot, stop that! The fool can hear me just fine. Could you give us a minute, please?"
Lance glances at Merlin for permission and Gwaine, seeing no way of expressing his exasperation that is any less dramatic, allows his forehead to fall into his hands. It really shouldn't be this difficult, he thinks, and it wouldn't be, if Merlin wasn't such a child sometimes. Permission is granted, eventually and non-verbally, and Lance leaves, telling (warning?) them that he'll be right outside if he is required.
Gwaine, trying to work out a way to say his piece without irritating Merlin further, lets the silence grow until Merlin breaks it.
"You wanted to say something, Gwaine?" He is no less pissed off than he was before, but at least he now has to talk to Gwaine directly rather than through a third party. "Say it," he demands, and Gwaine figures he might as well just do so.
"Fine. Would you stop being such a brat, Merlin?" He has tried being patient, he really has, but it's boring and he's not very good at it anyway.
"I will, if you stop being such a dick, Gwaine."
This, he thinks, is a little uncalled for; certainly, he has been finding Merlin's sulking amusing, but he hasn't been the one talking to his lover through his friends. "I'm sorry?"
"Oh, like you don't know. It's exactly what you did last time; we sleep together, and then you push me away. If I wasn't confined to your room, you probably wouldn't even be talking to me. You're so bloody predictable."
"I push you away? Idiot." Gwaine sighs. "You think I don't want you? Of course I do. I'll always want you." This is such a revealing sentence, to his ears at least, that he thinks about carrying it on, telling Merlin that he loves him, but he has a feeling Merlin won't want to hear it. So he tells the truth, as per usual, but not quite the whole truth. "You're not well; you can barely stay awake after two hours walking around the castle. Unconscious is really not how I like my lovers. When you're recovered, I promise, I will be completely happy to share a bed with you. If that's what you want."
Merlin looks at him intently, trying to work out just how sincere he is. "Okay," he says, apparently deciding to take Gwaine at his word.
"Are you going to stop talking to me though other people now?"
"I suppose. Will you try persuade Gaius to let me leave this room slightly more often?"
Gwaine concedes, reluctantly, rolling his eyes as he crosses the room to let Lance back in again.
X
Merlin recovers slowly; it is two weeks from the day Arthur found out about Merlin's magic to the day Gaius gives him permission to return to work. Both Merlin and Gwaine are relieved, Merlin because he is unbelievably bored (so much so that by the end of the first week he gives up the location of his spell book so that Gwaine can fetch it for him. Gwaine ensures he spends the second week regretting it, asking as many questions as he can: what does that one do? Have you used that spell before? Can you teach me something? Will you show me that one later?) and Gwaine because he is tired of trying to keep Merlin in his room, particularly seeing as his most effective means of doing so is not one he permits himself to use for the moment.
Gwaine resumes training, finding that nothing much has changed in his absence. Merlin is less than impressed to realise that despite how poor a servant Arthur thinks he is, the prince has not seen fit to find a temporary replacement for him. Gwaine is equally unimpressed, because it means he and Merlin spend much of Merlin's first afternoon of freedom attempting to restore some sort of order to Arthur's rooms, and as a consequence are too tired to do much more than tumble into bed together, curled up close, and fall asleep.
Gwaine doesn't ask what Merlin has told Gaius about his near constant nightly absence (though he does wonder vaguely whether the old man knows where Merlin is staying or why). He doesn't ask whether Merlin intends to tell anyone that they're sleeping together, or how long he thinks they can keep it quiet. The first question he avoids because he has never actually had a conversation with the parents of a lover and if he doesn't know that Gaius knows, he can continue believing that he doesn't. He avoids the second two questions because the answers don't matter.
Gwaine doesn't care who knows, doesn't really mind if Merlin never willingly tells anyone. He isn't ashamed, and he's pretty sure Merlin isn't either. He's just used to keeping things secret, and if that is how Merlin wants things to be, Gwaine can live with that.
And regardless of who knows it, they are together. Merlin spends most nights in his bed, and Gwaine clears enough space in his drawers for Merlin to keep some clothes there (in the months since he joined in that bar fight and accidentally saved Arthur's life, he has gone from not having enough clothes to fill a drawer to sharing a room and a drawer, his room and drawer, with the same person night after night).
During the day, they are friends again, as though nothing has changed between them, except they keep finding reasons to touch each other (which Gwaine has missed doing, all the time they haven't being talking), or put enough of a twist on a sentence that although it sounds completely innocent to anyone else, it really, truly is not.
It is a game to see who can go furthest without getting caught, a game Gwaine finds himself losing more often than he wins; how can he win, when at any moment Merlin can take control of him? Just how badly he will lose, he does not discover until the day he finds himself propositioning Lance (with similarly terrible pick-up lines to those Merlin tried the time he was outrageously drunk and flirting with everyone) midway though a conversation about Arthur's plans for training the following day.
Lance looks truly horrified, almost as bad as Gwaine feels.
"It's not me." Gwaine snarls. "It's not! It's Merlin, he's making me say things." Lance looks some combination of relieved and confused, and Gwaine is thankful beyond belief when he doesn't ask for any further explanation.
X
That night, when they are both panting and satiated, Gwaine tells Merlin in a low, angry voice, "if you ever do that to me again, I will tell everyone about us, blood oath be damned."
Merlin just nods, and smiles in a way that tells Gwaine he won't, but he has other things planned anyway.
Despite his better judgement, Gwaine smiles back.
X
Gwaine thinks it another of Merlin's games when he finds his feet racing to Arthur's room, and dreads whatever is going to happen when he knocks on the door. When he does, though, it is opened by Merlin, and he has no idea whether this should make him more or less concerned.
"Gwaine," he says, somewhat desperately, "we were just talking about you." His eyes are wide, and if Gwaine didn't know any better he'd say he was actually afraid.
"Talking about me?" He opens the door further and walks in. Arthur is sitting at his table, making use of the late afternoon sunlight streaming through his windows to rummage through the ever increasing stacks of paper he keeps being given of late, while Merlin, if the low stool surrounded by steel plate is any indication, has been polishing his armour.
Arthur smiles at him. "Yes. Nothing bad, don't worry. I was merely asking about how you discovered Merlin's secret." That explains Merlin's bug-eyed fear, then, and the fact that it has lessened since Gwaine shut the door behind him. Gwaine himself skips anything resembling afraid, passing straight on to angry. Does Merlin really have to bring him into this? Can he not make something up by himself, just this once?
Still, he sits obediently at the table when Arthur tells him to, hiding his displeasure from the prince (although Merlin's apologetic dipping of his head as he resumes his work suggests he is not so oblivious).
"Oh," he says. "Didn't I explain that before?"
"No, actually." Arthur smirks, and Gwaine swears the royal bastard is enjoying this; even if he doesn't know what happened, he must be able to tell that they don't want to talk about it. "You didn't explain, either of you. Other than that you were drunk."
"Well, we were." Gwaine, seeing little other option, chooses to lie (yes, he's said many times that a man should be noble by action rather than by blood, but he wants too much to get out of this conversation to care about how hypocritical he's being). "I don't remember too much of it. It was something to do with the fire. Merlin thought I saw his eyes go gold, and I did, but I thought it was because the fire flared, not the other way around. I was drunk."
Repetition, Gwaine tells himself, is probably not helping, but as the fact that is most conducive to his explanation being accepted, he wants to make sure it is entirely clear.
"Could barely remember my name at the time." True, he thinks, but it was more Merlin than the drink. "And then I woke up – well, no, first he made me fall asleep, with magic – and Merlin was gone. You came looking for him, and then Lance came and yelled at me, and I thought it was about...something else, something entirely different, so he had to explain. And that is how I found out. Was never meant to, but, well."
"I see," Arthur says, after the moment it takes him to realise that that is as complete as that sentence is going to get, then turns to Merlin as something seems to occur to him. "Do you often use magic accidentally, Merlin?"
"Er, no. It's only happened a few times." Gwaine is both amused and a little offended by Merlin's definition of 'a few', because it is so very different to his own. Merlin continues, adding, in manner that suggests it is supposed to be a reassuring fact, "that was the only time I wasn't expecting it, either."
Gwaine tries to hide his sigh; it had been going so well until Merlin said that. They could have been free and in the clear, no further explanation required, if only Merlin had kept that to himself.
Arthur seizes upon this piece of information with no less intensity than Gwaine had predicted he would. "So you expect to use magic accidentally? If you expect it to happen, surely you can stop it? Or at least avoid situations where it's likely to happen again?"
Merlin looks aghast at the idea (much to Gwaine's delight), and slightly lost for words.
"Perhaps," Gwaine says, hoping against hope that this helps rather than hinders their case, "perhaps such circumstances are unavoidable? Like" – he hunts for an example, thinking he should really have come up with one before introducing the possibility of a comparison – "a sneeze, I suppose. Sometimes you just have to sneeze."
"Perhaps," Arthur muses, pouting a little as he thinks. "Still, be careful, Merlin. I can only protect you from my father as long as he remains oblivious. Pray that these unavoidable circumstances never occur in his presence."
"Believe me, Arthur," Merlin replies, chuckling weakly, "there is very little I pray harder for."
The conversation over, Gwaine escapes, suppressing a shudder as he does so.
X
Arthur, though, is still remarkably interested in the expected yet unavoidable circumstances that lead to accidental use of magic, so much so that Gwaine takes to shadowing Merlin in order to avoid get carried away to random places by his own feet.
"Isn't there some way to warn me the next time you plan on dragging me into an excruciatingly difficult conversation? Give me some time to think up a story?" He asks Merlin, after a particularly gruelling thirty seven minutes and fifteen seconds – Gwaine had counted every single one – on whether the accidental magic ever did anything harmful or dangerous.
Merlin laughs, not unkindly. "I wish there was. Then maybe I could find a way to avoid the conversations all together."
Today, Arthur has called a break during training, immediately crossing to Merlin (sitting alone, in the absence of Gwen). Gwaine walks there before he can be summoned, snagging Lance by the wrist as he does so. The man makes an excellent buffer, diverting attention from the fact that Gwaine and Merlin know precisely what prompts the accidental usage of magic, even if Gwaine does wish he'd stop glancing gleefully between the pair of them (Lancelot is almost worryingly happy that two of his closest friends are shagging).
"I wonder what it is that causes them?" Arthur says.
"Really could be anything," Gwaine replies. He and Merlin have developed a careful system in which anything but an outright lie is acceptable (because Merlin has, apparently, had quite enough of lying to his prince, after spending the last three and a bit years doing little else). When a reply very close to the truth is fine, Merlin answers, and when an almost-complete untruth is necessary, Gwaine talks.
"Yes, I suppose it could. Although..." Once again, Arthur has the thoughtful expression – Gwaine has been told, on pain of total abstinence, that he is not allowed to call it a pout, or think it, even if that is very definitely what it is – that suggests a difficult question is approaching. "Has anyone else witnessed it? Or even been present at the time?"
Honestly is undesirable – because each honest answer gives Arthur another piece of information Merlin prefers him not to have – but otherwise acceptable here, so Merlin answers. "No, no one else has seen. I don't think there's ever been anyone around either."
Arthur finally reaches the conclusion all his questioning has been building up to. "So it seems safe to say Gwaine has something to do with it, then. I wonder if it's just him, or if someone else could act as a catalyst."
"I think it best not to try," Gwaine says, with a pointed glance at Merlin. "We wouldn't want anyone else working things out."
Lance poorly masks his laugh with a cough, the words 'possessive, much?' practically painted across his forehead.
Arthur, luckily, is too busy pou-thinking to notice. "Yes, I suppose not. Still, I wonder, why Gwaine?"
"So do we all," murmurs Lance under his breath, only to yelp a second later, clapping a hand to his arm. "Merlin, what was that?"
"A bee," Merlin lies unabashedly, and Gwaine has to admit he's considerably better at dishonesty than he used to be. "Didn't you see it?"
Lance sneers, as much as someone that nice can sneer, and stalks off. Arthur takes this as a cue to resume training.