Notes: So, in between my sister's birthday weekend, my abrupt and slightly terrifying confrontation with adult life and the horror that is the housing market, and the fact that it is month end yet again (a big deal in the deeply dull world of accountancy...), this one is late, yet again. Sorry, guys. And thanks for all the love, and for sticking with me through this :)
X 16 X
"Mr Emrys," Uther says, looming up out of the darkness of the hallway like the devil. "Might I ask what you are doing here?"
"Erm," Merlin says, because suddenly the whim that brought him to his (soon to be former) father-in-law's house seems a lot more like insanity than it did when he first thought of it, back when he was leaving his and Morgana's house with an overnight bag. "Morgana said I wasn't to be in the house when she got back from the hospital, and I don't actually have anywhere else to go."
"I see," Uther answers, seeming weary and not at all surprised, which is more than can be said for Merlin; it'd be nice if someone other than himself apparently didn't think his marriage was doomed to failure from the very beginning. "Well, I suppose you'd better come in, then."
X
Arthur's phone can, from time to time, be upsettingly good at receiving communication from people, and when the screen lights up to inform him he has a new text from his sister, Arthur is pretty sure this one of those times.
Expect a visitor, he reads, hating himself for being intrigued enough by that sentence to open the message and read the rest of it. Probably no more than two hours.
Arthur stares, trying to figure that one out. Before he can succeed, though, it's followed by a second text, also from his sister. You have a nephew, this one says. His name is Mordred. You may come with Merlin to see him tomorrow.
The chances of that happening, Arthur thinks, are too small to be worth considering, and that is probably good enough reason to ignore the rest of her crap.
Congratulations, he sends back, and is even more confused when Morgana's reply to that is no more than an image of her right hand, middle finger raised. Surely no day can cement her victory over him better than this one does; what reason does his sister have to be unpleasant any longer?
X
Breakfast is awkward in the extreme, but Merlin can't actually think of a less objectionable alternative to staying in Pendragon Hall, as he explains to Uther when he asks.
"I can't go home," he says, although he's fairly sure that isn't under any question; when Morgana makes her mind up, there's very little powerful enough to change it and, having raised her, there's no chance Uther doesn't know that. "I can't go to my mother's, because no one can do I told you so face like she can, and, anyway, it's too far for me to drive over here to see them as often as I'd want to. Arthur hasn't spoken to me in months, Gwaine is too busy to put up a guest, and no one else has an empty room I can sleep in. I assure you, sir, if I had any other options, I wouldn't be here bothering you."
"I imagine you wouldn't," Uther agrees, sounding as dry as the toast Merlin is currently trying to spread very solid butter on. "Still, at least this way my grandson won't be growing up on the streets, and I might actually get to see him from time to time."
"You can see him this afternoon," Merlin offers before he can think better of it, think of the fact that Morgana might not actually want her father to visit before she's out of the hospital. Still, the offer is made, and if Morgana wasn't prepared to deal with things being difficult, she wouldn't have made him leave; yes, the matter of Arthur makes things less than simple, but surely raising a child alone – or with someone else's help, but in two separate places – is far more complicated.
"I can?" Uther asks, and for half a second he actually sounds shocked.
"I'm going to collect Morgana and Mordred from the hospital," Merlin explains. "I don't see why you shouldn't come with me."
"Mordred?"
"Her idea," Merlin says, suspecting it's probably not going to be the only time in his life he does so. "You must know how hard it is to argue with her and win."
Uther smiles but doesn't speak, a very Pendragon way of agreeing, and Merlin considers the matter closed; a relief, since his next step would be to point out that Uther named his daughter Morgana, of all things, and saying that cannot possibly go well.
X
Merlin puts his wedding ring on his bedside table before he leaves to collect Morgana from the hospital.
As an action, it's almost nothing; as a gesture, it feels like it changes his world.
X
"Knock knock," Merlin calls from the other side of the curtain around her hospital bed, then steps through. He goes straight to the crib and picks up Mordred, continuing speaking before Morgana can protest that she just got him to go to sleep. "You have a visitor, I hope that's okay."
"Of course," Morgana says; it stings that Merlin has actually brought Arthur, that they're already together, but since she invited her brother it's not like she can deny him access.
"See," Merlin says, looking back over his shoulder for barely a second before returning his gaze to their son. "I said she wouldn't mind too much."
"That remains to be seen," her father answers, and even after he's walked in and is gazing at her son, Morgana still finds herself wondering where her brother is.
It's not until Uther climbs, without a word of complaint, into the back of Merlin's car beside Mordred's travel seat that Morgana realises something is desperately wrong.
X
Arthur successfully ignores Morgana's calls and messages for more than a fortnight. It's a shitty thing to do, when she's just had her baby, but Arthur isn't ready to see just how happy she and Merlin are with their perfect new family.
It's Gwaine who tells him about the break-up, with an expression of immense incredulity, like he thinks Arthur is somehow magically supposed to know all the ins and outs of his sister's life; that level of knowledge between them has always been strictly one-way, and it hasn't existed for some time now, anyway.
"What?" he asks, a tad ashamed of how surprised he sounds.
"She left him," Gwaine repeats, sitting on the same sofa he and Arthur got a little too friendly on all those months ago. "Threw him out, even, if you want the whole truth."
Arthur gapes a little more, and if it wasn't for the fact that he's been trying to sober up some since their little mishap and the entirely unrelated promotion that came not long after it, he'd be deciding he's just not drunk enough for this conversation. "That makes no sense," he points out. "She loves him."
Gwaine shrugs, apparently missing the argument Arthur is making here, so Arthur carries on. "He loves her, too."
Gwaine shrugs a second time.
"Why?"
"Sometimes, princess," Gwaine says, "Shit just happens. Best answer I can give. You want anything more than that, I reckon you should probably ask one of them."
"Maybe," Arthur agrees, not really intending to follow through with it.
Still, when his father calls one Friday, six weeks after Morgana's weird text about the baby and the visitor who never showed up, ordering him to stop being ridiculous and start attending their family Sunday lunches again, he sees more harm in refusing than in agreeing; if Merlin and Morgana's marriage is over, Merlin isn't going to be there, and Arthur can use this opportunity to find out how much of what Gwaine told him about the breakup is bullshit.
X
"I trust you have something more respectable to wear than that," Uther says at breakfast on Sunday. "Morgana and Arthur will be joining us for dinner before she and Mordred spend the night, and it is not an occasion for jeans."
"Ah," Merlin says, not entirely sure he can imagine a more awkward meal than that is going to be, equally unsure of his ability to find a way not to be there. "I'll put a suit on."
Uther nods, although his silence leaves Merlin wondering what it is he isn't saying. Morgana and Arthur's refusal to say anything more than they wish to is clearly inherited, though, and Merlin knows better than to try get any more from him; he finishes his eggs and toast, then goes upstairs to change.
It's little more than a spiteful whim, but when he's done tightening the tie around his neck, he slides his wedding ring back on; Morgana won't care, if she even notices, but he's pretty sure that Arthur will.
X
The first thing Arthur notices is that the baby is pretty much a perfect blend of Merlin and Morgana's best features. The second is that the thing doesn't seem to like him at all, judging by the way it shrieks when Morgana shoves it into his arms.
The third, and probably the most surprising, is that there, standing behind Morgana, is Merlin, watching his wife and his child, his perfect little family, with a look of utter adoration on his face; he might not be living with them, but it is very clear where Merlin's feelings still lie.
X
"You're still wearing your ring," Arthur says, when it's just the two of them left in the dining room, Morgana having gone to change the baby, Uther making up some bullshit excuse to follow her after a minute. It's not as if he really needs confirmation that Merlin still loves Morgana but, then again, it's not like anything Merlin says is going to make him feel any worse than he does already, so he might as well say it.
"What?" Merlin asks, looking down at his hand like it's a surprise to him that it's there, like he hasn't noticed Arthur staring at his hand the whole meal (and, knowing Merlin, he probably hasn't). "Yeah, I guess. I'm still her husband. I'm sure she'll remember that sometime soon."
"I see," Arthur manages, after a very long pause, and he was wrong; it makes him feel a hell of a lot worse.
X
"What the hell is this?" Arthur asks, when he finally manages to grab a second of his sister's time without her having Merlin's screaming, squalling offspring in her arms. "You could have warned me Merlin was going to be here!"
"Merlin lives here now," his sister answers, like that's at all normal, like Arthur should have somehow realised the world has gone completely insane before he got here. "You didn't think he'd still be living in the house after we split up, did you? That's ridiculous."
Arthur stares at her, baffled and a little awed at his sister's completely absent grasp of logic. "As opposed to, say, him living with our father? Do you not see how mental that is?"
Morgana stares back at him, equally baffled. "I thought he would go to you."
That, Arthur thinks, is just as crazy; as hard as he has worked to avoid seeing Merlin since the wedding, so Merlin seems to have worked to stay away from him since the morning after he and Morgana announced their pregnancy. "Well," he says, doing his best to sound like someone stating the absolute, undeniable obvious. "Clearly, he didn't."
"Clearly," Morgana agrees, seeming impossibly wearied by the whole thing. "I left my husband because he loves you more than he will ever love me, because you love him just as much in return, and because I will not have my son's life poisoned by my decision to keep Merlin trapped in that life with me. So, Arthur, you tell me. Why is Merlin living here, with our father, rather than with you?"
You're being crazy again, Arthur thinks, but he's far too intelligent to say it; Morgana might let him questioning her sanity slide once, but a second time is definitely one too many. "I don't know," he says, too tired to bother with trying to solve Morgana's riddles. "Why would I know? I'm not the one who dumped him."
Morgana raises an eyebrow at him. "Didn't you?"
"Merlin hasn't spoken to me in months, Morgana," Arthur points out. "He hasn't spoken to me, not the other way around."
"Why?"
"I don't know," Arthur repeats, in what is possibly the most extreme and unnecessary case of stating the obvious ever. "One minute he was yelling at me for sleeping with him when we were stupidly drunk, the next he'd gone from showing up at my house every other day to refusing to do anything more than acknowledge my existence whenever you put us in the same room together. Whatever it was that made him come here, it wasn't me."
X
By this point, Morgana has had quite enough of her brother's denials and his idiocy, and possibly enough of this discussion all together. Unfortunately, she would quite like the sheer stupidity that is her brother and her ex-husband's relationship to resolve itself (largely because Arthur is right; it is seriously weird that Merlin is living here, and she's fed up with having to stay here just because Merlin wants to spend time with their son) which means she has to listen and, far more annoyingly, she has to ask.
"Right," she says. "Tell me what happened, starting from the beginning, and if you could actually make sense, that would be wonderful. After you left our announcement dinner, what happened?"
"I went home," Arthur answers, still in his well, duh voice. "I drank, Gwaine showed up, we drank some more, and then we went to bed. In separate rooms, before you say anything."
"I wasn't going to," Morgana says, although his hasty need to add that last bit does make her wonder a little whether she should. "I'm not sure when you and Gwaine became such good friends, but I'm more interested in what you did to piss off Merlin."
He flinches, and while Morgana no longer feels quite so jubilant at that, it's still a little gratifying. Even if it wasn't, though, it would still be necessary for her to get Merlin out of this place; if Morgana had wanted her son to be raised here half the time, she would have moved back herself rather than making Merlin leave.
"He showed up," Arthur says, "the following morning, while I was still feeling like crap. Shouted at me through the letterbox until I let him in, threatening to tell everyone in hearing range what we… The kind of things I didn't want strangers to know. He said he remembered, I told him it was a mistake, apologised, and then pointed out that nothing would have changed anyway. He agreed, said you'd be worrying, and left. We've barely spoken since. End of story."
Morgana tries not to scoff, fails miserably, and then sighs when Arthur looks horribly put out. "You're missing something, little brother," she says, because he has to be; it had to be more than that that brought Merlin back to her. She doesn't believe Gwaine was lying when he said he'd told Merlin the truth about Arthur's feelings, which means Arthur is either lying now or that there is some crucial detail he has forgotten or, knowing her brother, never actually noticed in the first place. "Try again."
"Fine," Arthur snaps, leaning forwards, his elbows on the table, expression very much a glare, and Morgana suspects this is going to hurt quite a lot; she didn't miss his attempt to spare her feelings earlier, and the complete change in his attitude pretty much suggests that he's done with that entirely. "Fine, Morgana. Merlin stood outside the door telling me that he remembered, and when I didn't open the door right away, he elaborated. I seem to recall that when I let him in he was midway through recounting how I sucked him off in the spare bedroom – you know, the one you used to sleep in with him occasionally, back when you were together, and did I ever thank you for the hugely expensive hand-lotion you left there last time you stopped over?"
She can't not flinch at that, and for a second the look Arthur gives her is triumphant, like this is the biggest victory he can imagine winning today. Only a second, and then he just looks as tired and sad as Morgana feels. "He made coffee," Arthur continues, this time without the edge of venom, which is probably the closest thing she'll get to an apology from him. "We talked about what happened, and he said he didn't blame me for it, that the only thing wrong with what we did was the fact that he was engaged to you. Then Gwaine stuck his head out of my bedroom, asked if he could take a shower, and apparently Merlin changed his mind about the wrongness because that's when he left."
That, Morgana realises, is the detail Arthur seems to have missed, and it's so incredibly huge that she finds herself wondering how on earth he managed not to walk right into it. "Gwaine?" she asks.
"That's what I said."
"He stayed the night," she adds, since he isn't quite there yet.
"In a different room," Arthur argues. "I told you that bit already."
"You did," Morgana agrees, feeling the beginning of a very painful headache crawling up her temples, the kind that makes her grateful she and Mordred are here tonight rather than at home; when their son wakes up crying in the middle of the night, Merlin can be the one to look after him. "Am I to assume that you told Merlin as well? That, before you allowed him to start talking, you warned him that there was someone else in your flat, in your bedroom, and that, apparently, you've taken to sleeping in the spare room?"
His silence is as detailed an answer as she could ask for, and even through the physical pain of talking to her idiot of a brother and the entirely non-physical pain of talking to him about how to fix his relationship with her ex-husband, Morgana cannot quite hold back a smile.
"So," she says, feeling the need to sum up how stupid this all is, just in case Arthur has managed to miss that as well. "Merlin turns up to tell you he remembers sleeping with you, the two of you have a nice, long conversation, he as good as tells you he doesn't regret it, and then you're interrupted by Gwaine, who walks out of your bedroom – and, knowing him, he was probably missing at least some of his clothing – and asks to take a shower, all of which leaves me with only have one question. How is it that you don't know why Merlin isn't living with you?"
Arthur looks downtrodden and defeated, not at all like someone realising that all he has to do to win the man he loves is tell him that he and Gwaine are not now and never have been together. "I think you're missing something pretty important, Morgana," he says, standing up. "He still thinks the two of you are going to work things out."
Morgana looks at him, and if she was pleased with her ability to work through Arthur's nonsense a few minutes ago, now she's lost again. "Arthur, what-?"
"You'll excuse me, Morgana," he says, cutting across her like he never even realised she was speaking. "I'm going home; if you wish to continue discussing the details of your marriage, I suggest you do so with your husband."
X
Merlin hums distractedly, Mordred in his arms, close to sleep but not quite there yet.
"I don't know what Uncle Arthur's problem is," he says softly, although, thankfully, not in that annoying baby-talk voice Morgana seems to have adopted of late; just because Mordred is only tiny, it doesn't mean Merlin ought to speak only in a sing-song to him. "You're lovely, aren't you, little man. He's just being grumpy."
In the timeliest punctuation Merlin's come across in a long time, the front door slams closed; he looks out the window of Mordred's nursery, watching as Arthur storms across the gravel driveway and unlocks his car, climbing into the driver's seat. He doesn't drive off, though, just sits, his head in his hands, and there is a possibility Merlin feels a little bit guilty; he may have only exchanged a few words with Arthur, but they were a long way from being his best.
"Merlin?" Morgana calls softly from the doorway. "Is he asleep?"
"Sulking, I think," Merlin answers, then realises she's probably talking about their baby rather than her brother. "I mean, almost. He will be in a few minutes, I think."
"Okay," she says. "I'll wait until he's down. We need to talk."
Unfortunately, Mordred decides that, despite the noise of Arthur slamming the door, and now the crunch of his tires rolling over the gravel, this is the best possible time to yawn, wave his arm one last time, and then fall to sleep. It's probably the first time Merlin has wished his son was awake and shrieking at him, because talking with Morgana has never been simple and talking with her now is probably only going to be worse.
Morgana's freakish ability to know everything is just as active now as it ever has been, though; within seconds of Merlin placing Mordred down in his crib, she's pushing the door open, beckoning him into the hall with such absolute surety that he will obey that Merlin finds he has to.
"What's up?" he asks, quietly enough that his voice shouldn't disturb Mordred through the half-open door.
"Merlin," she says, then sighs, looking down for a second and taking what Merlin can only consider an unnecessarily deep breath before continuing softly, almost sorrowfully. "You know I've filled out the papers for a divorce, don't you?"
"I do," Merlin agrees, slowly, feeling very much like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"We're not getting back together," she continues.
"Yeah, I've worked that much out, too," Merlin says, and now that he's muddled his way through her reasoning he can agree with her, can even manage to be something like friends with her, although he's fairly sure that will still turn to ash and venom sometimes.
Morgana looks a little surprised, more so by his tone than his words, Merlin thinks; she has to know that he'd say that even if he didn't mean it, because admitting weakness is not at all the way to win Morgana over. "Okay," she says, one last moment of care before she apparently decides that defenestrating caution is obviously the way to go. "So, why did you tell Arthur we would?"
"Ah," Merlin says, since that about covers the state of his mind right now. "What happened to you being too selfish to wish Arthur and me happiness?"
She laughs, a little insane and a lot wonderful, and, really, this whole thing would be far easier if she was a total bitch who made their breakup unbearable for him. At least that way, he wouldn't have to feel guilty about it, about Arthur.
"That," she says, still smiling, "was before I realised the pair of you are too dumb to find it without my help."
Merlin thinks of a thousand things to say, discarding them all: I was happy; it hasn't even been a month; Arthur doesn't want me anyway. As it often is when talking with Morgana, silence seems by far the smartest approach.
"Talk to him," she instructs, when it becomes apparent he's not going to answer. "Tell him the truth. And, for fu- for God's sake, stop wearing the ring. The two of you are never going to work this out if you keep goading him."
She whirls, as much of a drama queen as ever, and stalks away down the hall, getting out of there just before Mordred starts crying.
X
A promotion sounded great in principle, Arthur thinks, but in practice, not so much. It's one thing to be at work constantly because he can't bear to be sat at home thinking about Morgana and Merlin shagging, but it's another entirely to be there because he has to be, because there's no other way to do everything he has to do.
Still, he accepted it, for a short time felt like it was his reward, something he deserved for all he'd put in, karma's way of saying here, you were fucked over when it came to your personal life, so at least let me help you out professionally, and he can't back out now.
Plus, if he's not at home, he can't answer Morgana's calls demanding he babysit for her when she goes out for a meal with Gwen and Lance, can't be expected to obey Uther's orders-disguised-as-invitations to join he and Merlin for dinner.
It's not really a whole lot better than running away and hiding in a bottle, but at least this way he's not trying to shag any of the few friends he has left, friends that are only going to reject him because he's still hopelessly gone on Merlin. As far as Arthur's concerned, that's enough of an improvement for him to keep showing up.