Merlin sat on a chair by the fire in the Prince's chambers. The first few days had been rough. Merlin not only had to put up with Arthur's relentless teasing, but also perform basically every task for him. He was tired after a long day of waiting after Arthur. He was polishing his boots while Arthur sat at his desk.
Arthur stood up abruptly and crossed the room, sitting in the chair facing Merlin. He sat down and began to read quietly. Every so often Merlin swears he sees Arthur staring at him but when he looks up, the Prince looks down. He chalked it up to his imagination, after all why would a Prince look at a serving boy like that.
"I am to ride out at dawn with a few of my knights, I would like you to come with us." Arthur said putting down his book, finally breaking the silence between them. "One of the small outlying villages has been seized by bandits." Merlin looked up at him. The prince scratched his head and mumbled "I mean you don't have to come, and I totally understand if you don't want to."
"No," Merlin cut in, "I want to come." Arthur smiled softly and returned to his book.
They had been riding all day when the sun started to go down, and Arthur announced that they would stop and make camp for the night. There was a river a couple minutes of walking from the camp, which was now lit up by the fire and filled with the laughs of jolly knights who had a few to many. Merlin was tasked to fill all the waterskins, seven in all, and Arthur had followed him after a few minutes to see if he needed help carrying them back.
"I can carry them myself, Sire. You really didn't need to go out of your way." Merlin said wondering why the Prince had come.
"Nonsense Merlin, I just wanted to make sure you didn't drop mine." Arthur said smirking at him as the two filled all the bags.
"What like this?" he asked dropping one into the water close enough to Arthur's face to splash his face.
"How dare you!" Arthur roared before splashing Merlin with ten times more water. Merlin tensed until he saw the Prince's smiling face as he tried to hide it with his hands.
"Nice one, Sire." He said before standing up holding four of the water skins. Arthur quickly followed with the other three in tow.
"Oi what happened to you lot?" one of the knights said seeing the state of the Prince and his manservant's wet hair.
"Did you fall in?" piped another.
"Shut up!" Arthur growled and nudged Merlin with his elbow playfully. "It seems rank doesn't matter to Merlin here, everyone's fair game for his childish pranks."
The fire died down until it was only embers. All the knights were snoring, even Sir Cow who was sitting against a tree 'keeping watch.' However, Arthur was very much awake. He was too busy staring at the face of the man that lay a mere few feet from him. His chest rose up and down as he breathed steadily, in a deep sleep.
Arthur yearned to wake him, running his finger along his lip, staring into his deep blue eyes before planting a deep passionate kiss on those lips he thought of so much. Merlin turned over in his sleep much to Arthur's dismay, so he was forced to close his eyes to get a little bit of sleep before they would have to get moving.
A/N: This is the first fan fiction I've written since middle school and I am definitely not taking this seriously because that would be extremely embarrassing. Anyways, I'm not going to stick to the script the whole time because that would be boring. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it. Also to all the thirsty underage straight girls reading this, stop fetishizing gay/bi men. Thank.