Merlin woke early, luckily, and dressed quickly and silently, tiptoeing out of Gaius' chambers as so not to wake him and walked to Arthur's room, waking him ready for the day of jousting.
Arthur muttered something unintelligible as he woke, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Sir, it's me." Merlin said quietly.
"Ugh? Wha-?" he rubbed his eyes again, squeezing them shut before squinting at the face in front of his own, "Oh, Merlin, right."
He ran his hand through his hair and sat up, swinging his legs out of his bed and walking over to where his clothes had been laid out. He changed into them, Merlin unsure of where to look while the Prince stripped off down to his undergarments and then back into his joust wear. He helped him into his armour plates and chain mail, and handed him his sword, which he slotted into its holder which was attached to his belt.
"Right, I just wanted to talk to you Merlin. I have heard you talking about that girl, the one you were with last night, getting a job here with Gaius. I know that will only be possible if I beat Knight Everglade in the joust, as a kind of token of sorts, or at least that is how he will see it. So I will try my hardest, for you, because of what you have done for me. But, when I do win, you must play along if you wish for her to get a job here, and you must make sure she does the same, do you understand me?" Arthur said, looking at Merlin.
"I...yes, of course. Thank you, thank you so much-"
"Stop gushing, Merlin."
And with that, Arthur headed out of his room and towards where they were holding breakfast, yelling after him, "And Merlin, clean my clothes from yesterday, would you?"
Merlin gathered up the clothes, smiling to himself. He knew that he had received good luck that Arthur had been so nice, but he was more than Merlin could ever imagine as a 'master'. He might have asked a lot of Merlin, but only because he knew Merlin could do it, and in return he was kind, and help him, and Merlin believed he might truly care for him.
He walked back to Gaius' chambers where he was now awake, sorting through his books to look for a cure to a rash that a man had come in with yesterday after he slipped in a patch of nettles.
He greeted Gaius, dumped the clothes on a surface and grabbed a bucket so that he could go and collect water.
On his way he saw Gwen who was similarly fetching water for her father who was the blacksmith.
"Hey, Gwen!" he called, smiling.
"Oh, hello Merlin!"
He graciously let her fill up her bucket before himself, and they made small talk. He asked how her father was doing with the blacksmith business and she asked him how it was working for the Prince. Gwen was one of the people who he would class as a friend in Camelot, and he waved her goodbye as she headed back to her father, smiling to himself.
He filled up his own pail and practically skipped back, humming to himself as he did so. He was in a terribly happy mood today. Gaius picked up on this.
"Someone's happy today. Would this have anything to do with the girl?" he asked, a smile forming on his lips.
"No! No, I mean, maybe, I mean, she's nice, but..." he trailed off, placing the bucket on the floor.
"You mean, you like her Merlin." Gaius said, chuckling.
"No, well, I do, as a friend, because she's nice, she's..." he stopped again, seeing he was getting nowhere with this.
"Merlin, I know the signs of love when I see them." Gaius replied, climbing a ladder to reach the higher books.
Merlin grabbed the pail and the clothes and retreated to his room to avoid any more questioning, sitting down on his bed and thinking the clothes to clean themselves.
He pulled the book from under his mattress as he had not read it in a while and settled down to study a certain spell he had been trying for a while. He muttered the incantation to himself, but however much he tried, the spell would not work. After about an hour of this he gave up, slamming the book down on the floor and sending it under the bed.
"Merlin, are you okay in there?" Gaius asked.
As he entered the room Merlin sent the washing crashing to the floor also, trying and failing to look as innocent as possible.
"Me? I'm fine." He said, pulling an exaggerated face.
Gaius raised his eyebrows but did not say anything, for by now he was used to telling Merlin off for magic and did not even bother anymore. Instead, he asked Merlin to go into the fields and take a cutting of the Euloc plant, for which he needed to make an ointment to make the swelling reduce in the man's rash.
Merlin took with him the book which contained the picture of the plant and walked down to first where he and Arthur regularly practiced sword fighting. He scoured the edge of the grassy land but to no avail, as he could not spot the plant anywhere.
He tried at least three more similar patches of grass with no luck on each, deducing that the man must have received the sting outside the walls of Camelot. As the jousting match was approaching, he dropped the book back at Gaius' chamber as he now had memorised the look of the plant, and headed for the arena, noting in his head to go and look for the antidote plant later.
He stood at the edge of the arena, looking on at the crowd and the knights lined up. He spotted Arthur and smiled reassuringly at him. He either didn't notice or didn't care, as he looked instead left at Morgana and smiled at her, who actually returned the smile.