Epilogue
By midsummer, Morgana's research on the Fisher-King manuscript was paying off. Nearly every day she strode into Arthur's office, brandishing a sheaf of papers, or a printout from her computer, or an ancient tome she had unearthed at the library, a triumphant smirk on her face. It was becoming really trying.
It had been a relief to almost everybody at the Institute when their senior curator swanned off to Aspen, Colorado, for a breath of cool, mountain air, taking an uncomplaining Leon with her. They were gone for a four-day weekend, having packed up their books (Leon was hastily working up reading lists and study sheets for the course he would be teaching on Chaucer at the university, in the fall), jackets for the cold nights, and bottles of sunblock. As fond as all of the staff members were of Morgana, her intensive research had made her edgy and impatient...in short, more difficult than usual to be around for long periods of time; her brief absence, therefore, gave them an opportunity to relax.
Arthur himself had dragged Merlin away on a brief business visit to a colleague in Paris, a former schoolmate who was now doing freelance work at the Musée de Cluny. They spent two days there-Marcel and his wife provided a guest room in their large, rambling flat a stone's throw from the Champs Elysees-and then, work accomplished, they had spent another three days in Brittany. There, on the edge of a sea the color of his junior conservator's eyes, Arthur had turned a warm golden-bronze as the light freckles on his back and shoulders became more pronounced. They had waded in the shallows, and then dived and swum in the deeper water, watching the sunlight break up into a million blinding splinters of silver on the azure surface. At night, they had wandered along the coast road, or ambled into town for a coffee or a drink; even later, in their rustic hotel bedroom, there had been the blissful contact of limbs cooled by the breeze that came off the water, lips sweet with the taste of pear cider, and a sleepy ardor that even hours of strenuous exercise in the open air could not abate.
"Merlin, I do believe you've got a trace of suntan," Arthur had murmured in the airplane on the way back to New York, eyeing the pale gold flush across his companion's high cheekbones and the bridge of his slender nose.
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A week or so after these events, Arthur ran over his notes for the week's staff meeting as he poured his breakfast coffee and munched absent-mindedly on a butter-soaked crumpet.
He had awakened first, and washed in the guest bathroom so as not to wake Merlin, who was sleeping the sleep of the just and innocent, curled up in the tangled bedclothes. After finishing his coffee and shoving the meeting notes into his briefcase, he returned to the bedroom to retrieve his clothes, just in time to see Merlin open his eyes and smile.
"If it's breakfast you're thinking about," Arthur said, scowling ferociously to hide the sudden surge of happiness that threatened to overcome him, "you're the one who forgot to buy that organic gloop you eat, not me."
Merlin made no reply, but looked up at him, pink and disheveled, from the mess of bedclothes, and held out his arms like a child.
Consequently, Arthur didn't bother to retrieve his clothes at all, but twenty minutes later Merlin bounded out of bed and fled to the bathroom, where he took the briefest shower in history. He returned to the bedroom and, by some miracle, dressed more rapidly than his Assistant Director, who was standing in front of the wardrobe mirror, eying himself groggily as he fastened his trousers, his shirt unbuttoned and hair every which way. Merlin surveyed him from head to foot, eyes lingering, as usual, on his lush lower lip, classic jawline, broad chest, and the fragment of muscular stomach revealed by his unfastened shirt.
"Is something wrong?" Arthur murmured, amused by the serious look on his junior conservator's face. "I hope it's not the effects of too much cake at the various after-parties," he added, as he put on his Ray Bans and glanced back at the mirror.
"Nooooo," replied Merlin consideringly. Then he frowned. "That is, not really." He couldn't resist it; vanity was one of Arthur's little vices, and it was simply too much fun to tease him about his waistline, which so far had resisted the onslaught of wedding calories and was still trim, although by no means as narrow as his own.
"Merlin!" snapped Arthur, frowning in his turn. "If this is your way of saying I'm fat…"
"What about all of those tamales last night?" Merlin asked, and Arthur had to chuckle. They had gone out to eat at a nearby, highly praised Mexican restaurant, the previous evening, and had returned home red-faced and sweating. The food had been wonderful, remarkably delicious, but they had ordered—deliberately—the most chilies-rich items on the menu, a kind of competition to see who could handle them best.
"That was a face-melting experience," Arthur had claimed, wiping his streaming brow, once they reached their flat. Then he had howled with laughter upon discovering Merlin in the bathroom, his tongue extended beneath the cold tap.
"How long does your mouth stay this hot?" he had asked, panting, as Merlin emerged from the bathroom, eyes still watering. "I suppose it's the oil from the chilies. Can it be transferred to other surfaces? Perhaps there are some things we'd better not do once we're in bed."
"Maybe we should play it safe and not use our mouths for…for anything," Merlin replied. Thankfully, by the time they had fallen asleep, the stinging heat had dissipated completely and their digestive systems appeared to be quite intact.
"I am not fat," Arthur was saying now, squinting down at his stomach. "I think my new trousers shrank in the laundry."
"And I suppose your belt shrank in the laundry as well," Merlin commented as he stared innocently at the ceiling.
"Merlin," said Arthur in an ominous voice.
"I'll simply put another hole in the belt," Merlin replied, and then squawked as Arthur lunged at him for the second time that morning.
"Did you not hear me the first time?" Arthur muttered, smiling evilly as he pinned Merlin to the wardrobe door. "I said, I am not fat. There must be something wrong with those ears."
"There's not a thing wrong with them," Merlin replied with as much dignity as he could muster whilst plastered between a mirror and his Assistant Director. "And I thought you rather liked them."
"Well, I do, rather," Arthur said thoughtfully as he stepped back. "They serve very nicely as handles, when you—hey!"
A pillow had struck him full in the face, dislodging his Ray Bans, and forcing him to grab Merlin's wrists and push him back against the wardrobe again.
Astonishingly enough, they were not even a minute late to work, but when they appeared in the staff lounge for coffee, Morgana asked Arthur why on earth he was grinning like a loon, and Merlin seized the closest thing to hand—Gaius' mug of noxious black coffee—burying his face in it, so that Will wouldn't ask him more or less the same question.
"Loons don't grin, Morgs," Arthur replied briskly. "Well, and that's a charming neck scarf you're wearing. Sure you don't have something to hide?"
Morgana gave him one of her most withering looks as Leon nearly choked on his muffin, spraying crumbs across the room.
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The staff meeting went smoothly, in spite of the fact that the younger generation (a term employed by Gaius and Geoffrey Monmouth to describe everybody under fifty) seemed itching to be someplace else. Gwen and Lance displayed an iPhone loaded with photos from a recent beach weekend. Morgana gave a brief summary of her latest research on the Fisher-King manuscript, but she kept forgetting to identify her source materials. Will fell asleep and had to be nudged awake by Merlin, before Arthur could notice. Leon kept sneaking peeks at his Chaucer notes and the medieval history dates he had jotted on note cards, and accidentally referred to museum visitors as "the angry mob." He hurriedly apologized, and said he had been thinking about the peasants' revolt in fourteenth-century England.
They were holding the meeting in the Assistant Director's office, and Arthur, sitting behind his massive desk in a flawlessly pressed white shirt, jacket, and tie, fumbled unconsciously with his gold cufflinks. He said nothing to his staff about the email he had received that morning from Uther, suggesting that, in perhaps five years' time, he would step down from his position as Senior Director and turn the job over to his son. Across the room from him, Merlin was slouched on a sofa next to Gwen, the image of schoolboy insouciance in his faded jeans and slightly more acceptable grey, V-necked tee. It was hard to believe that he had passed the quarter of a century mark; had, in fact, left it behind him.
"Conservators," said Arthur briskly, not looking at his civil partner. "I'd like your reports now, please. John says we have enough funding to bid for that suit of armor coming up at auction—the one Lance showed photos of at the last meeting—so I'd like one of you to go over to the auction house and check on its condition. Now…any new projects I don't know about?"
"Not really," Gaius responded over the rim of his coffee mug. "We're rather busy as it is, no time for new projects. Incidentally, that thirteenth-century French reliquary needs work, and Will's in the midst of treating our other metal pieces for bronze disease. Do you suppose Merlin could take care of it? Yes, Arthur, he may be a paper conservator, not an objects conservator, but you know he's qualified to work on three-dimensional pieces as well as paper."
"Right," said Arthur, looking from his Head of Conservation to Merlin. "If Merlin can spare the time from his other assignments, it's alright with me."
"I can do it; it's fine," said Merlin quietly, from the sofa, and Gaius gave him the glance of a proud papa, watching his fledgling take wing and soar to the heights.
"There aren't any saint's bones left in that reliquary, are there?" Morgana asked absently, looking up from her notes on the Fisher-King manuscript. "I haven't looked at that thing in ages."
"No bones," said Will, grinning. "No relics. Not a scrap."
"Who's going to go to Christies to look at my armor?" Lance demanded, and Arthur shrugged and then chuckled.
"Your armor? It isn't even our armor yet. Well, we can't send Merlin, not if he's working on two things at once. It isn't Gwen's area of expertise, not really. Will, could you kindly run over to the auction house tomorrow, and have a look at the thing? I'm all in favor of acquiring it, but let's just make certain it's intact."
"Yes, sire," mumbled Will, but he said it good-naturedly, and everybody smiled.
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Two days later, Arthur stood in the Objects Conservation studio—not Merlin's usual roost—watching his junior conservator put the finishing touches to his work on the Institute's French reliquary.
Merlin was staring thoughtfully at the thirteenth-century piece, shaped like a miniature church, the exterior of which was gilded and ornamented with gemstones and enameling. Two of the enamel plaques had come loose, and Merlin had re-attached them. He had also cleaned the entire reliquary, and re-aligned one of the tiny "doors" that had been dangling from its hinges. Now he was touching the gold surface very lightly with the tip of the brush held between his pale, slender fingers. True to his conservator's training, he removed his rings when he was working in the studio, placing the simple gold "wedding" band and the more solid Pendragon signet ring on the far end of his worktable. Sometimes he chose to wear them on a narrow strip of leather round his neck, along with his father's dragon. When he did this, they knocked into each other with a light clinking sound, and Arthur would make some pretend-caustic remark about his fancy bling.
Arthur narrowed his eyes and walked round the worktable, examining the reliquary from all angles.
"Don't even breathe on this thing," Merlin said absently, lifting a pair of miniscule tweezers. "It's horribly fragile."
Arthur edged closer, and looked carefully at the re-attached enamel plaques, both of which glowed with rich, glossy color. It was impossible to tell that they had ever been loose from the body of the vessel.
"Gaius thinks the treatment was successful," Merlin said, just a little defensively, because Arthur had been silent for so long.
The Assistant Director raised his head. "That's quite good, really," he murmured consideringly, putting his hand on Merlin's shoulder so that the tips of his fingers just rested lightly on his nape.
"Thanks," replied Merlin, trying not to look surprised. Arthur had never touched him at the Institute, before this, had scarcely done more than shake his hand, within the confines of the building.
"As good, if not better, than the work of any conservator I've ever met," Arthur continued, looking musingly at the reliquary.
"Oh…erm…thanks?" Merlin said again, uncertainly. "Objects conservation isn't really my thing, but—"
"I know Gaius will agree with me," said Arthur, tapping his fingers on Merlin's nape, "if I decide to make you a full conservator, a senior conservator, within the coming year."
It took a moment for this to sink in, and Merlin tried not to let his mouth fall open like an idiot.
"Well?" Arthur drawled, and Merlin bit his lip.
"People are going to say this museum is rife with nepotism and favoritism," he began, with the doubtful, questioning look that Arthur found so ador…infuriating. "And that a relative newcomer like me doesn't deserve it."
"Of course you deserve it, Merlin," said Arthur. "It may not be a democracy here, as you've pointed out on so many occasions, but it is a meritocracy. And you merit a title that reflects your abilities."
"Uth—your father won't approve," Merlin insisted, as if he hadn't heard any of this. "And you already have three full conservators. And The Great Dra…I mean John, won't like it because my salary will go up."
"Don't be stupid, Merlin," Arthur said sharply, although his gaze was gentle. "Gwen and Will aren't paper conservators. As for John, he knows we have contingencies built into the budget, for staff promotion and the like."
"Erm," said Merlin, running out of reasons why Arthur shouldn't promote him to full conservator status. "I still think…"
"Merlin," the Assistant Director said with finality, but his junior conservator could see Arthur's pride in him and, yes, his love, in his softened expression, the intimacy of his smile. "You are an absolute, total idiot."
"Another reason not to promote me," Merlin said resolutely.
Arthur's fingers stroked caressingly through the ends of Merlin's hair, brushing the back of his neck…and the door to the Paper Conservation studio burst open as Will stepped purposefully into the room, before noticing the Assistant Director and stopping in his tracks.
"Ah! Arthur," said Will hastily, backing away, his eyes on the Assistant Director's caressing hand. "Wasn't expecting…oi! Merlin! Where's that acrylic resin I was asking to borrow?"
"Will," said Arthur in a very severe voice, and Will disappeared through the door, closing it behind him with a gentle click.
Merlin looked at the Assistant Director with both eyebrows raised.
"A moment of weakness," Arthur said sternly, removing his hand from Merlin's nape and putting both hands behind his back. "It won't happen again. Not at work. Now, as I was saying. About your promotion."
First, my heartfelt thanks to all of you very kind reviewers, and for your fortitude in slogging through a very long read! A few of you have your 'private messaging' function disabled here on ff.n, so I wasn't able to reply to your reviews. I thank all of you, and am so very grateful for your comments, suggestions, and recommendations.
This may be the end of a "saga" of sorts, but I'd like to be able to turn out occasional one-shot mini fics about the boys and their colleagues at the PI; their further adventures, and various domestic milestones in Arthur and Merlin's relationship.
Now, if only Series 5 would hurry up and get here, so we can all have new material to work with!
