Hi! Shooting Blindly here, again. I have a couple things to cover. 1. I should have mentioned before, but i do not own Merlin or any of the characters from the show. I am not profiting from this venture in any way, save that it makes me happy. 2. Thank you so much to those of you who have followed or favourited (i dont think thats a word) my story. Infinite thanks to my two lovely reviewers. 3. In case you havent noticed, this story has a pretty slow build up. if you're here for the action, as opposed to just for a good story, you're in the wrong place. 4. Your reviews give me sustenance! all reviews appreciated, and i will do my best to do my best. Enjoy!

Chapter Three: Un Dessin Incomplet

Arthur spent the rest of the evening at the little shop with Merlin, Gaius lumbering out of the back room occasionally to gather some herbs and then go back.

"What does he even do back there?" asked Arthur. Merlin scrunched up his face in thought.

"To be honest, I would say that the old man does nothing, if not for the fact that every day, I'm left to clean up a mess he somehow made," Merlin jokes. "But I think he's just trying out new combinations of herbs to make teas with different properties and purposes. Maybe sketching his findings into his book."

"Is that what he was drawing?" Merlin nodded.

"Yeah. He has one page for every combination of tea leaves he's ever tried. The front for detailed illustrations and labels of the plants he used, and the back for a description of the results. He's got like ten sketch books of this stuff. It's kind of amazing."

"Is that why you draw plants and stuff, too? He taught you?" Arthur asked.

"Not exactly. He tried to, but really, I failed miserably. I'm horrendous at documenting what kinds of herbs make what, and what their properties are. That being said, I'm pretty good at drawing them, and using them properly when I already know what they're for," Merlin explained.

"Pretty good? If you draw all of them like you drew on those tea cups, then you draw them fucking amazingly. Idiot," added Arthur, feeling awkward complimenting Merlin. Merlin just smiled a bit and took a sip of his tea, looking at Arthur smugly over the cup's rim. "Shut up."

"I haven't said anything," Merlin protested innocently. Arthur glared.

"Shut up."

When Arthur got back to his room, he threw his hat and scarf onto the floor, the new bag of tea he had gotten from the shop joining his textbooks on his desk. Letting himself fall back onto his bed and wincing at the sound of it, he glanced at the clock. Nine forty nine. Nine forty nine and he didn't feel sleep coming on. Not the slightest bit of fatigue or drowsiness.

Arthur sighed and turned over, staring at the white wall. He was already so bored.

Intelligent people don't get bored, Arthur, his father used to say. Arthur never bothered to tell him that intelligent people probably get bored more often, because of their intelligence. Nonetheless, heading his dead father's advice, Arthur sat up and cast about the room for something to do. Seeing nothing, he simply shrugged and set to doing push ups, hoping that the exercise would tire him out.

An hour later found a sweaty Arthur, tired but not sleepy, from push ups and all manner of core exercises. He glared at his clock, cursing the slow progression of time it displayed. Running his hand through his hair, he wrinkled his nose in disgust and decided a shower was in his best interest.

Standing under the warm water left Arthur feeling uncomfortably warm, so he showered quickly and went back to his room. He rubbed at his hair fiercely with a towel and pulled on a pair of pyjama pants. And again, he assumed his prior position: staring at the wall and wracking his brains for something useful to do.

Whenever you have free time, you must fill it with things that will better you as a person, and distinguish you from others. Anything done simply for pleasure is a waste of time.

Arthur scowled at the memory of his father's voice, and sat up again, staring at his desk. His eyes landed on some of his exam notes, with pens and pencils strewn about them. Maybe…

Arthur got up and sat at his desk, pulling out a fresh piece of paper. He frowned at the lines on it, and decided he would have to get proper paper for what he was about to do. He grabbed the nearest mechanical pencil and set to drawing.

He tried to draw the leaf that Merlin had drawn on the paper cup. He struggled to draw the correct outline, and kept on erasing and redrawing, feeling displeased with his work. By the time he settled with the contour of the leaf, the page was smudged and thin from all the erasing, and he had already gone through several of pieces of lead from all the times the tip of his pencil broke. Checking the clock, he saw that forty minutes had passed. Turning back to his paper, he focused on drawing the veins of the leaf.

These were harder, and when he drew them the first time, he couldn't help but be slightly repulsed by his work. All of the veins were too thick and dark, nothing like the delicate strands that Merlin had drawn for him. Frustrated, he crumpled his page and took a fresh one. He redrew the contour of the leaf, and it took him less tries this time, the paper more white than grey with half erased covering it. He tried to draw the veins again, turning the pencil so the sharp part was carefully and lightly tracing patterns onto the page.

Arthur sat back and looked at his work. It didn't look that bad. The amount of times he had erased stuff made it look like there was some kind of shading on the leaf, making it almost pretty if you squinted. The outline he had spent so long drawing and erasing and redrawing was perfect, and he was irrationally proud of himself for this simple accomplishment. The veins looked thin and delicate, but the amount of frustration he'd felt while drawing them was obvious from the eraser smudges all around them. He liked it.

But as he stared more and more, he couldn't help but feel like something was… off. He picked up the paper and turned it in every direction, held it up against the lamp on his desk, and rubbed his eyes in case he wasn't seeing it right. No matter what he did, he couldn't see what was wrong.

Mad that something he was once proud of had almost immediately become the source of frustration, he threw the paper onto the desk and looked at the clock again. It was twelve eleven a.m., and Arthur still wasn't tired. Nonetheless, he laid down in his bed and stared at the ceiling.

Another three hours and repeated attempts at progressive muscle relaxation later, and Arthur was sound asleep.

At six in the morning, the door slammed, jolting Arthur from his sleep; his flatmate had made no effort to hide the fact that he was leaving for the day. Arthur knew than any attempts to go back to sleep would be futile: once he was up, he was up.

Arthur rolled out of bed and decided that he would actually apply himself and do something useful today: studying. He felt more than prepared for all of his exams, but it couldn't hurt.

Still in his pajamas, he brushed his teeth and sat at his desk. The leaf he had drawn yesterday lay on his desk, and he smiled at it a little bit before being struck by the same feeling as last night: something about it was wrong. He flipped the drawing over and pulled out his business notes.

At around noon, Arthur rubbed his eyes and decided it was time for a well-deserved break. He dressed for the cold (of course, forgoing the jacket), tucked his drawing into his pocket, and went outside. He was going to the tea shop, the place he had begun to see as his own private sanctuary.

He walked into the store confidently.

"Morning Merlin! What kind of te – oh. You're not Merlin." Arthur looked at the man behind the counter. While he looked remarkably similar to Merlin – same scruffy hair, same blue eyes, same high cheekbones – he definitely was not Merlin. The young man regarded Arthur with a cool gaze.

"Merlin is my cousin," he said simply. "And it's not the morning anymore." Arthur scowled.

"Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine." There was a crash from somewhere in the back room, and Merlin came out, paint smudging his face and his half-apron.

"Mordred, I told you not sass the customers." Merlin looked at Arthur and grinned. "Unless it's this one. He's ok to be a smart-ass with." Arthur glared at him, but said nothing. Mordred smirked a bit, but other than that, his face remained devoid of emotion.

"Shut up," Arthur told Merlin. Merlin rolled his eyes and made his way around the countertop.

"So are you here for some more tea?" he asked. Arthur nodded.

"I just finished studying and I thought I deserved a break. So maybe some tea, or something." Merlin grinned.

"Alright. You wanna try the new tea that Gaius just came up with?" Arthur shrugged.

"Yeah, alright."

"Excellent." Merlin disappeared into the back room and came out with Gaius's sketchbook and a pair of glasses sitting on his nose. Arthur gaped.

"You wear glasses?!"

"No, Arthur. You're hallucinating."

"Shut up. Idiot," Arthur added for good measure. Merlin grinned and turned to the book, adding pinches of the required herbs into his mortar without looking at them. "How do you even know you're adding the right thing? You're not even looking. You can't even find your own backside, let alone the right herbs without looking." Mordred snickered at Arthur's comment, and Merlin glared at him, an expression which looked positively ridiculous on him, and both of the boys erupted into laughter.

"Mordred! I would expect this kind of ridiculous behavior from this cabbage head, but not from you!" Arthur abruptly stopped laughing.

"Cabbage head?" he demanded, ripping his hands out of his pockets and gesturing wildly at Merlin. "At least my ears aren't comparable to those of a donkey!"

"Please. Elephants wish they had my ears. You're just jealous of these beauties," Merlin boasted with a proud smile. Arthur snorted at him, and Mordred continued to laugh. "Besides, if anyone's a donkey here, it's you, you ass." And then all of them were laughing. Gaius lumbered out of the back room and took in the scene with wide eyes, his eyebrow rising to incredible heights. Shaking his head and muttering to himself about the "young'uns", he lumbered back, and the boys sobered.

"But really, between Merlin's ears and your personality, you two would make a fine mule," Mordred commented. Arthur chose not to dignify that comment with a reply.

"What's a kid like you doing here?" Arthur asked him.

"Well, it's not like this is a club or something. I don't need to be a certain age to get in," Mordred huffed. "Besides, I work here."

"I didn't mean here, here. I meant at the university, here," Arthur explained. Mordred blushed and looked away.

"My baby cousin is a bit of a child prodigy. Graduated at seventeen, got a full ride to Albion." Merlin smiled proudly at him. "It's his second year here, studying life sciences." Suddenly, Arthur felt incredibly stupid in Mordred's presence. There are some really intelligent people in this world, huh, thought Arthur.

"So he's in the same year as we are, but still so much younger?"

"I am not so much younger than you. It's just a year, you arrogant prick," Mordred pouted.

"I see you've been teaching your baby cousin how to insult people," Arthur said, looking at Merlin. He glanced back at Mordred. "It's not working." Merlin sputtered in outrage.

Fifteen minutes later, they were all sitting at the little round table, and Merlin was scribbling on a paper cup for Arthur, and Arthur was trying to contain the childish excitement he felt towards getting to see another beautiful piece of art by Merlin. When Merlin handed Arthur the cup, he was surprised to see that it was almost exactly like the leaf he had attempted to draw the night before, only it was perfect.

Merlin came back and poured some greenish-blue tea for Arthur.

"How did you-?" Arthur began. Merlin held a folded sheet of paper between two fingers.

"I figured I would show you how it's done. Good try though, for an amateur," Merlin said with a wink. Arthur searched his pockets and realized that his drawing was gone.

"When did you get that?!"

"While you were busy insulting my ears," Merlin began nonchalantly, "you failed to realize that a certain piece of paper fell out of your pockets. People who insult the ears deserve to have things fall out of their pockets," Merlin said matter-of-factly.

"Guess it would be better for everyone to just stop putting things in their pockets, then," Arthur huffed. Merlin ignored him and sat down beside him, unfolding the paper.

"Actually, your skill is quite impressive, considering you've never drawn before. The –"

"I have drawn before."

"What?"

"I have drawn before. My father didn't approve of it. Said it was a waste of time, and that it didn't better me as an individual. Anything done simply for pleasure was a waste of time," he sighed. Merlin blinked.

"Why don't you seem sad about losing your father?" asked Mordred.

"Mordred!" Merlin gasped, as if in shock that his baby cousin could be so tactless.

"No, it's ok," Arthur said dismissively. Merlin said nothing, but disapproval was etched onto his face. Arthur squared his shoulders towards Mordred. "Because he's not really gone. I'm not gonna hit you with all the 'he lives on in my heart' kind of shit, but honestly, I never got to see him. He never had time to see me. Now, the only difference is that he can't see me. I can still hear his voice, giving me all sorts of annoying, un-father like advice all the time, like 'emotions like grief are useless if you can't turn them into something profitable'. So, yeah." Arthur shrugged. "I'm sad. My father is dead. But it's not the end of my life. Not much has changed." Arthur held Mordred's gaze.

"Oh," he whispered. Mordred cleared his throat awkwardly. "I'm sorry. I'm just gonna… I'm gonna go, now. Sorry." And with that, he disappeared into the back room. Merlin shifted in his seat.

"Arthur…"

"What, Merlin?" Merlin paused, and his contemplative frown shifted into a playful smirk, and he took a pencil out of his apron, twirling it in his hand.

"So, let me show you how to draw this right."