X 3 X

Morgana can pinpoint the moment she fell for Merlin, which is how she knows for sure Arthur was there first.

The pair of them met Merlin an eternity ago, when Arthur was even more of an insufferable little turd than he is now and Morgana still believed half the bullshit Uther spouted on a daily basis, and, quite honestly, Merlin and Arthur's relationship back then could really only be described as hate at first sight. Arthur was used to getting his own way, to people doing exactly what he told them to do, exactly when he told them to do it, and the tiny new scholarship kid with his second-hand, two-sizes-too-big uniform didn't so much throw a spanner in the works as an entire toolbox, and then some.

From the offset, Merlin had pressed all of Arthur's buttons, returned every insult with one just as vehement (odd, certainly, but no one can deny Merlin's jibes are heartfelt), and was almost as good at managing Arthur's temper as Morgana. Arthur pushed, Merlin pushed back harder, and for years, Morgana thought her boys (that's what they were then, what they still are, even if she doesn't tell them it) would hate each other forever.

And then Uther caught her with a boy in her room when she was fourteen – a boy not her brother or Merlin, who was, as far as her father was concerned, gayer than a unicorn skipping over a rainbow and about as much threat as a raisin – and packed her off to an all-girl school a million miles from everyone she knew. No more Merlin, almost no Arthur, and at some point in the four years she was gone, the two of them got over their petty hatred.

At some point in the years she was gone, Arthur fell in love.

They still sniped at each other (still do, always will), still fought and bickered and argued more than they breathed, but the venom was gone, replaced by an entirely different kind of heat. The fights were much more entertaining to watch, once she knew she wouldn't have to step in to stop her brother stealing Merlin's toys or bashing him over the head whenever they disagreed (well, Arthur never hit Merlin with any real force anymore, which was almost the same thing), but at the same time there was something to it that made it feel almost voyeuristic to watch them, so much so that for the first week she was back Morgana was convinced they were getting it on.

They weren't, or so Merlin's awkward I've never done this before confession the first time she slept with him suggested, but that week was probably what made her see Merlin as someone real, someone grownup, someone other than the gawky kid she'd known since they were seven.

He wasn't her usual type, but he made up for the lack of brawn with an excess of brain. Merlin was shy where all her previous boyfriends had been bold, skinny instead of strong, way kinder than the dickheads she'd gone with before, and far more interested in talking to her than getting her out of her knickers, at least at first.

Maybe it was the challenge that sucked her in, maybe the sibling rivalry that neither she nor Arthur had ever really managed to get a hold of, or maybe it was the way Merlin blushed when, a week after she'd gotten back from school, he'd seen her padding down the hall from the bathroom to her bedroom wrapped in just a towel. Blushed, averted his eyes (like he didn't know why she'd been sent away and just how deserved her bad reputation probably was – or, for that matter, like the towel didn't cover way more than the dress she'd worn to her welcome home party the night before), and dropped the bottles of beer he'd been carrying upstairs.

"Put some clothes on, you tart," Arthur had said, fondly exasperated, coming out to investigate the sound of shattering glass. "Merlin, stop being such a blushing maiden and get something to clean this up with. Honestly, half the world's seen her tits, it's not like you need to look away."

Merlin blinked, blushed harder, and refused to make eye contact with either of them. "Even if that was true," he said, halfway between defiance and shame, "It wouldn't be a good enough reason to stare. Sorry, Morgana."

He turned and went back downstairs then, and Morgana saw that the flush on his cheeks went all the way around the back of his neck, too.

"Brother," she said quietly, watching Merlin practically run away from them, "If you're either shagging him or planning on it, tell me now, otherwise I'm going to have to."

Arthur just gaped at her like the possibility hadn't even occurred to him, like he was somehow blind to the way they fought, the way they spoke, they way they goddamn looked at each other, even. "We are talking about Merlin, aren't we?"

"Yes," she answered, even though that ought to be obvious, and paused long enough that if he was going to come to some kind of realisation, he would have done so. His expression didn't change, though, still the face that said he thought she was insane, and as much as part of her wanted to beat some sense into him, that was a level of selflessness most of her disagreed with.

"Thank you, Arthur," she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek and allowing herself one last laugh at the look on his face.

"Can I come back upstairs yet?" Merlin called, and if she'd needed anything more in the way of evidence than Arthur's complete surprise, that was it. There was no way that anyone could be with her brother and still be that innocent, still be that sweet; there was no way he was Arthur's, and since Arthur apparently wasn't even aware he wanted him to be, there was nothing to stop her.

And that, she thinks, was it. Game over and, as shitty as she feels sometimes when she catches Arthur watching them with an expression more wistful than jealous, she's just not selfless enough to wish it was otherwise.

X

Merlin is already home when Morgana gets back, has clearly been there a while; the floors have been vacuumed, the surfaces dusted, and the bathroom can only be described as gleaming, but it's when she goes into the bedroom to change out of her uncomfortably pressed work clothes that Morgana is most impressed.

All the clothes littering the floor (his and hers, because Merlin has never really cared too much about the mess and, of Morgana's many rebellions, it's the ones that started out smallest that have lasted the longest) are gone, the bed has been made (and not just in the scruffy, I've just changed the sheets and this is as close to tidy as I can be bothered with making it way that Merlin usually leaves it) and, most of all, the place seems to have been covered in enough lit candles to give a fire-safety officer a heart attack.

In the middle of it all, leaning over to hold a lighter to one last candle, is Merlin, her Merlin, and Morgana really doesn't know what to think of it all.

"Hey," Merlin says, soft and awed, and Morgana's hands freeze on the buttons of her blouse, halfway through unfastening them. "Want a hand with those?"

"What's the occasion?" she asks, since a scathing I have mastered buttons, you know won't go down well, and she loves him enough that she won't ruin this for him.

"You know full well what the occasion is," Merlin says, and even though he has to know the retort she had ready to fly, he thinks nothing of sliding into her space and flicking the rest of her buttons free with deft fingers. "I know you know," he continues, quieter now, closer, nuzzling at her neck as he slides her blouse down her arms and off, the silk pooling on the floor around her feet like water.

"I have to say," she says, his mouth dragging hot over her collarbone towards her shoulder as his hands rest feather-light on her hips. "I was expecting the bed to be strewn with rose petals. I'm a little disappointed."

Merlin laughs, a tad self-deprecating, as his laugh usually is. "I know, it's lame," he says. "And it's cheesy and ridiculous, but I love you, and I kind of hoped you might just take it as a romantic gesture and ignore the lameness." He pauses, smiling against her skin. "Of course, I could always call the whole thing off. Put out the candles, clear all this up, return that really expensive bottle of red, the same one we had in Rome two years ago…"

"Don't you dare," Morgana says, sliding her hands under his shirt, mapping the planes of his stomach as she has a thousand times or more; her Merlin, her heart. "Shouldn't there be more kneeling involved in this?"

Merlin kisses her like the world is ending, all the sweetness of their first kiss and all the fire she'd want for their last, even though she wants more than almost anything for there not to be a last. "If you're offering," he says softly, catching her bottom lip with his teeth as he pulls back. "No bloke is ever going to say no to that, particularly not when it's you."

"Perv," she mutters, but the only spark to it is the one curling inside her, an ember burning low but ready to blaze as soon as it's fed. "Can't you just hurry up and propose already, so that we can get to the good stuff?"

Unfortunately, Merlin seems to take that as his cue to stop (she'd call it stupid boy-logic, but in truth it's probably just stupid Merlin-logic), or at least to slow down in a fairly major way; his hands drop, hanging limply by his sides, and his mouth is distressingly far away from hers.

"Is that a yes?" he asks, and the wonder in his voice and on his face suggests that he actually thought there was a chance of her turning him down. It's sweet, and silly, and so very Merlin that she can't resist dragging it out a little longer.

"I wasn't aware you'd actually asked me anything yet."

Merlin takes a step back, then a second, and clasps her left hand in both of his, then drops to his knees. It's unexpected, even after the over-the-top romantic gestures he's made already, and Morgana has never been so glad that Merlin isn't really one for public displays of affection, because there's no way her face doesn't show how melt-y she feels right now; in private, just between the two of them, it's okay, but in public, it would probably only turn her into a monster. If Merlin ever made a spectacle like this in public, she'd be obliged to turn him down just to save face, even if she'd have to engage in some form of ritual suicide afterwards.

"Morgana," he says, kneeling before her and lifting her hand to his mouth, his eyes so intent on hers that she can almost believe she's the centre of his world, the only one he'll ever see, and it hardly matters that standing half-naked in their bedroom wasn't how she saw this moment going. It only matters that it's Merlin and that, here and now, he is hers.

"Will you marry me?" he asks, and that is it; maybe it should feel anticlimactic after the candles and the cleaning and the wine he must have spent ages trying to get hold of and a fortune buying once he actually tracked it down, but mostly it just feels like Merlin.

Even if Arthur had asked her to, she's not sure she could ever have said no.