Signify
A/N: This oneshot has the potential to grow, but no promises when. And it comes from the direction of Damian, with Bradley James…
"What about your family, then?" Gwen asked, keeping pace with him on the busy sidewalk and swinging their joined hands comfortably.
He shifted his grip of the shoulder-strap of his backpack to cover his hesitation.
It was a normal question, an ordinary question. He knew of her brother and he'd met her father twice, but now that they were going back to his place so he could cook dinner for her before diving into their separate-but-together study session, it felt like he owed her more. Because he liked her in a way that went straight down to the center of his being and he knew this would have to be done slowly, if at all.
Given his… family.
"My father died some years ago, we weren't close," he offered nonchalantly, to diffuse her shock and surprise. "I don't remember my mother at all. I grew up with a cousin, essentially – he always looked out for me. Technically he's my roommate, but he's been away for work for a few months."
"Wow," Gwen said, absorbing his personal information like it mattered to her. He was afraid that it would – he was afraid that it wouldn't. "That sounds…"
"Fascinating?" he supplied, to forestall any words carrying potential connotations of pity. "It was unusual, anyway. Rarely boring."
…..*…..…..*…..…..*…..
He remembered his trike. Blue, with a white plastic seat and handlebars and pedals.
Tricyle, the staff called it, when they were talking above his head to each other. Wouldn't the little master prefer to ride the tricycle out of doors.
No. The little master thought the upstairs hall corridors, with their polished-wood floors, were a much better idea than muddy gravel. Since the ballroom was kept locked.
He remembered there was no one to stop him, that day. Toiling up the richly-carpeted stairs one at a time, dragging his trike by one sweaty handlebar, banging the frame against each step and hoping no one would hear.
And because he was listening for someone to come, he remembered hearing voices. Not what they said, though he knew one was his father. Raised, but behind a closed door.
("It's your fault she's gone! If you hadn't-"
"Hadn't what? I gave you exactly what you asked for, and she gave herself willingly!"
"I don't believe it! If she knew what it would cost – No, you've taken too much from me, you cannot have him too! He's all I have left of her!"
"It's not really your decision, Uther Pendragon. He belongs to us by rights and rituals you could never understand, twined into his blood and bones and breath…")
He was panting by the time he reached the top stair, pointed the trike down the immense hall of closed doors, banister on one side. The pedals and front wheel slipped on the gleaming wood when he pushed hard to get going before anyone noticed him, but he rocked forward to get the trike to move, and when it did – whee!
Best trike ride ever. He thundered down the corridor, echoes chasing him like losing racers and he couldn't tell if there were voices or footsteps hurrying after him and he didn't care.
At the end of the corridor, a door was open that he didn't remember, but it was the perfect escape. He flung himself off the trike – later he expected he'd find it back in its place in the garage – and through the door, discovering a cramped stairwell and winding steps that he clattered down without hesitation, heart pounding with exultation.
He popped out into the kitchen of all places, and skidded on the tile in apprehensive glee before realizing how lucky he was the room was deserted. No one here, either.
But they were calling his name, upstairs. More than one voice, and that never meant anything good. Anything good, he had to pick the person and the time and the place, and beg and wheedle. Ice cream and outings. Otherwise it was baths and lessons and vegetables and don't.
The back door to the covered porch was ajar, and he slipped through like a prowling tabby. The chill of outdoor air kissed his cheeks and he was out to the back step in a flash, inhaling the cut-grass and drowned-worm scent of the last rain.
There was a man sitting there, who turned to look at him. He didn't remember feeling surprise, though the man was a stranger. Rough corduroy and worn leather and fraying canvas clothing, a country cap and black stubble on an unshaven jaw. Blue eyes that crinkled with a smile of recognition and welcome.
That was Arthur's earliest memory. The trike and the hall, the voices and the way Merlin looked at him when they met, though he didn't know Merlin's name at the time. No one ever looked at him. Or listened, or understood, or agreed.
"Hello, you," he said, like he'd been waiting for Arthur to pull up a step and join him. "What are you up to?"
"I'm escaping." Arthur tried to shock him with honesty, to see how the stranger would react.
The man grinned wider. "Want to hop on my back? I'll carry you – we can get farther faster, together."
Arthur didn't remember even making a decision. He didn't remember any feeling of reticence, any hint of disinclination to touch or trust a stranger-man. He simply threw his whole body at the offered back – impossibly broad and strong to Arthur's perception at the time – and the man stood up. He settled Arthur comfortably, then trotted down the steps and galloped away over the patterned paving stones of the back garden.
It was the same feeling of exhilaration as flying down the corridor on the trike.
The man's motion generated wind on Arthur's face and in his hair, his body solid and warm and willing to carry Arthur's weight, anywhere and everywhere. The ultimate outing.
He remembered not ever wanting to go home again.
And they didn't.
And then he didn't remember ever wanting to go home. Sometimes he thought maybe he should want to, but… nope.
He remembered trudging down a dusty road with no beginning and no end, in the furious sun-glare of a desert. The road was paved, or maybe only packed clay, and maybe he pulled his hand from Merlin's because he was tired. Tired of walking. And thirsty.
Merlin dropped to one knee beside him, swinging their pack off his shoulders to get at the water bottle. Uncapping it, he offered it to Arthur with a grin, though he was grimy with dust and sweat, and his eyes looked wrong. His eyes looked like there was something wrong, like he thought something was after them, and escape wasn't exhilarating freedom.
"How are you holding up?"
Arthur remembered that drink of water as the best he'd ever had. And Merlin dropped one shoulder in invitation, and Arthur didn't hesitate to drape himself over the broad shoulders and strong back once again, clinging to the straps of the backpack Merlin hitched on his chest to balance Arthur's weight.
A few steps later, Merlin began to gallop again. A slow gait, but with an extra skip-hop that livened the trudge and rocked Arthur soothingly.
He remembered when the question occurred to him, and that it felt like he should have wondered sooner.
The room they were in was temporary-home familiar, and he could recall the gray-on-gray stripes of the worn rug between the biggest couch and the television. The other children sat on their knees or leaned sideways on their hands, watching a cartoon program. The seam of the couch cushion rubbed a spot between the bones of his spine and a toddler wailed wearily in the next room.
His attention shifted away from the cartoon and he swiveled, tangling his legs beneath him, to observe Merlin slouched on the couch behind him, knees dropped to the sides and head cradled in a dent in the back-cushion. Merlin's eyes – glowing with the reflection of cartoon light - left the tv screen for Arthur's face, and he waited for Arthur to speak.
"Merlin," Arthur said thoughtfully. "Did you kidnap me?"
They'd been together so long that memories of the big house had begun to fade. The staff no longer had faces when he thought of them, just uniform black clothing, shiny shoes, disapproving voices.
That left only the trike, and the upstairs hallway.
Merlin grinned at the question, unperturbed. "What do you think?"
He couldn't remember a reason Merlin had been there, sitting on the back step that day. He couldn't think of any reason he should have been kidnapped by someone who took care of him without returning him. Merlin was not his father and he'd never called him that, but both of them responded to the assumption of everyone they met as if he was.
"Did I kidnap you?" he asked, then, sitting up higher and leaning on the closer of Merlin's knees.
Merlin laughed at that, a throaty genuine sound that made Arthur grin with triumph.
And a woman called out from another room, "Dinner's ready! Come and get it!"
The kids scrambled madly up from the carpet, the spell of cartoons broken at the offer of food. At the same moment, the picture on the tv blinked and blurred and lines ran through it and it was lost to a static snowstorm. And Merlin's eyes were dark again.
He didn't remember realizing the magic. When he thought about it, reaching way back, he knew he didn't know, the first morning on the back step of his father's house. But he didn't remember any feeling of suspicion or surprise or wonder.
"Magic?" he asked Merlin, pointing up at the explosions of color spreading across the darkened sky above their blanket spread in the crowded meadow.
"Gunpowder," Merlin replied with the gleam of a grin. "Strontium, barium, sodium… and copper."
"Magic?" he asked, when Merlin peeled back the bandaid to show the nasty red scrape on Arthur's knee changed overnight to a faded pink patch.
"Bacitracin," Merlin pronounced, dropping the bandaid in the bathroom trashcan and jumping Arthur down from his seat on the sink.
"Magic," he informed Merlin through a mouthful of warm, soft cookie, kicking his heels on the rungs of a counter stool at a bakery.
"Chocolate," Merlin agreed, indistinct through his own mouthful of crumbs.
He remembered the kitchen at the first house. The linoleum was cracked and colorless under a rickety table that shifted with a cringeworthy scraping sound when he leaned against one leg. There was a penny that he jammed into the bottom corner of his pocket while Merlin moved around the dim edges of the room doing something adult. Something to do with dinner, maybe. Boiling eggs?
The second house, he remembered the kitchen window. The lace curtain and the sunshine of a Sunday morning, and the black-and-white head of a cow perfectly framed there, because it had broken through the fence into the vegetable garden.
Later he realized that house had been a commune. Merlin was always a constant presence somewhere close by, but at the farmhouse he was just one of many adults. And Arthur was one of many children, who wore bathing suits to play in the mud by the livestock pond, and climbed into the whelping pen under the tree to let the newest litter of puppies crawl over them, whimpering and grunting, awkward and delightful.
The third place he remembered was an apartment in a city, and there was construction next door. Those memories were full of the sounds of saws and nail-guns, the sweet smell of fresh timber and the dust of concrete and brick - an addition to the school Arthur attended, and a job for Merlin. He remembered the schools more clearly, sometimes, and the other children. Some friendly, some decidedly not. Some curious, or judgmental, or dismissive.
Uncle, he called Merlin then.
After the apartment they stayed for a while in a townhouse with a bare leaky basement where witches certainly lived, invisible in the dark corners til Merlin banished them with his presence and his own witch-light. The stairs were steep to the bedrooms on the top floor, and when the neighbors shouted at each other – paper-thin, Merlin said, though Arthur tried to poke holes with a pencil like he did with his spelling test, and couldn't - he and Merlin went to the park around the corner.
Merlin drove the van Arthur rode to school in the morning, and worked as a janitor there during the day. He had a cart with a big yellow bag for trash, assorted squirt bottles and a massive roll of paper towels, and a hand-vacuum. Sometimes he had a mop and a bucket that rolled on wheels.
The stairwell at that school was painted royal blue. And Callie Canfield threw up one day as they were climbing the steps in two long lines. She just turned, halfway up, and vomit spattered all over the stairs and the walls and the kids who squealed and shoved to get away.
Later on, Arthur came out of the classroom to visit the water fountain; he forgot the vomit-scene and Callie Canfield after she was picked up to go home, until he saw Merlin on his hands and knees on the concrete steps, yellow rubber gloves to his elbows and a blue sponge that wasn't the same color as the walls. Merlin paused to rub his face on the cuff of his shirt, rolled to his elbow, exhaled in a way that made him look smaller, somehow, then began scrubbing again, all without noticing Arthur.
He crept quietly back to the classroom door rather than hailing Merlin and commiserating, and never figured out why.
In secondary school he resisted the idea of moving again, something he'd never questioned since the first day. They moved, he and Merlin, it was what they did. Sometimes they didn't understand the language right away, but after a while he forgot he didn't understand it.
Magic, Merlin?
Sometimes there was heat so palpable it struck him in the face and chest to walk outside, and there was a struggle to draw breath in that moment. Large, garishly-colored flowers and strong smells and fast music. Sometimes there were layers upon layers of clothing still insufficient for blunting the edge of the bitter-cold wind, the silence of deep snow and the tang of old evergreen.
But in secondary school, Merlin agreed to stop and stay, for the argued sake of Arthur's last few years of education. He took temporary jobs of every shape and size and shift, and Arthur got used to carrying a key to the apartment and not being surprised to find it deserted.
That never really scared him, though he realized a lot and had grown up even more, over the years. He knew some of the places they'd been, and he knew the two of them, what they had and what they did, wasn't normal. That rarely bothered him; Merlin was good at story-telling to deflect attention and Arthur learned well from him.
He still said uncle, then. And he told people – curious classmates or teachers or neighbors – that his uncle was a freelance journalist, to explain the odd jobs. And to explain the hours typing on the laptop, when Merlin's eyes gleamed in the reflection of the screen when Arthur got up for a glass of water in the night.
That lasted til the day he found the door of the apartment unlocked. And began to call out, "Merlin, I'm ho-"
Someone moved out from behind the door, behind him, seizing him in a bear hug and smothering his face in a weird-smelling cloth.
Merlin didn't really hug him anymore, at that point. He taught Arthur boxing and marksmanship and they were comfortable bumping around the kitchen together, or sprawling over the couch in each other's space to watch tv. Hugs had been left behind when Arthur stopped running to Merlin in tears over the small hurts of life.
He woke on a damp concrete floor in dim light, and confusedly he thought of the townhouse basement… but the voices echoed, not muffled for a small space.
("He belongs to us by rights and rituals you could never understand-"
"Oh, I understand all right.")
Arthur recognized Merlin's voice without consciously wondering where or why or how.
("I deny your rights and your rituals and your claim – always have, always will!")
Then he heard sounds like a boxing match, blows and grunts and scuffling steps. He pushed himself up, disgusted with the damp patches on his sleeve and the hip of his jeans, but something was wrong with his eyes and he couldn't focus. People were moving, where the light was coming from, so he found his feet and staggered – why couldn't he walk in a straight line, wasn't that funny – but before he got there, one figure emerged to come straight to him and it was Merlin.
"Arthur," he said roughly, and gripped his arms, and suddenly everything was clear and steady.
Magic, Merlin? Cuz it wasn't gunpowder and copper…
Merlin wasn't steady, though, he was swaying on his feet and his mouth was bleeding and his nose was bleeding and his hair was bleeding – he was swollen and reddened and clumsy, his hands bloody and battered.
Arthur said his first adult word, and meant it. He turned under Merlin's reaching hand to support most of Merlin's weight and adjusted his hold on Merlin's body when Merlin whined in the back of his throat.
An EXIT sign revealed an unlocked door of weighty metal that led to an alley and sirens on the night and reflected neon. He didn't remember any more of the stumbling trip to the hospital, seven blocks down and three across, than how Merlin couldn't walk right or breathe right, how he didn't say a word. How he didn't take Arthur home, but instead allowed Arthur to take him to emergency medical help.
My uncle, he told them at intake.
And the woman writing his answers on a clipboard cocked her head quizzically instead of writing that down.
And Merlin, in the loose-necked paisley-print hospital gown, bare legs dangling and black hair clumped in his face as he braced himself for the impersonal medical examination of the professionals, looked suddenly like he could be the older brother of one of Arthur's classmates.
So Arthur told the woman a story – they were good at stories, he and Merlin – of a large family and nine kids and his mom was second-born and Merlin was the oops-baby after Grandad and Gramma thought they were done, so he's actually only a few years younger than Uncle Merlin…
It was too much information, and she nodded acceptance just to move on to the next blank to fill out.
Cracked ribs. Broken fingers. Hairline fracture of the leftmost zygomatic bone of the skull. Contusions and butterfly stitches.
And Arthur realized this wasn't the first time. Merlin had to explain scars and anomalies on x-rays and no one told Arthur to come with them and get a lollie while the adults talked. Arthur folded his arms over his chest and held himself together as Merlin eased back into grimy, bloodied clothing, clumsily signed discharge papers and pocketed prescription slips, and limped carefully to the waiting taxi.
"Are you all right?" Merlin asked him, sharing the backseat.
Arthur stared at the curly hair sprouting beneath the cabby's ballcap, and couldn't say anything. Did you kidnap me? Did I kidnap you?
Until they got home, and Merlin limped around the kitchen arranging ice-packs, plural.
Arthur gripped the countertop and felt perspiration on his palms. And said, "Why did you come to my house that day?" Why didn't you ever take me back to my father?
He knew very well that he never asked to be taken back, he didn't remember ever expecting or wanting to leave Merlin's care. He'd never questioned the belief that he belonged with Merlin and had the best childhood anyone could ever want.
Maybe that ended, that night.
Merlin paused halfway from the fridge, dropping the ice pack from his head to his ribs, right hand in its white tape cradled up against him.
"I wasn't sure," he said, rough honesty. Looking at Arthur, listening and understanding and connecting, like he always had, and so many others didn't. "Not until I saw you. Destiny called."
He would have scoffed at the words from anyone else.
"What for?" Arthur demanded. His mouth was dry and his throat hurt and it felt more than a mugging, or a kidnapping-for-ransom, and it felt nothing like he might have expected from a sex-trafficking thing.
"I don't know yet," Merlin said.
Arhtur thought suddenly of the laptop and the late-night research, and didn't want to know any more.
"I'm sorry," Merlin said, as Arthur turned away.
The catch in his voice nearly ruined Arthur. He fled to his room like he'd done only twice before – once when he'd lied to be able to spend the night at Tony Granger's house, and when he'd skipped the pre-algebra test he was afraid to fail.
Not because punishment. But because disappointment. Apologies and renewed dedication to truth and hard work.
Because Merlin, in spite of the magic, was just a guy, who worried that he made mistakes and wrong decisions. Arthur had trusted his infallibility without realizing that, and it wasn't fair of course, but still.
"Good night, Arthur," Merlin called down the hallway, and Arthur closed his door knowing that Merlin would doze uncomfortably on the couch, if he slept at all.
…..*…..…..*…..…..*…..
"It explains a lot about you, actually," Gwen commented, moving her fingers inside the grip of Arthur's hand.
"What do you mean by that?" he said, trying not to be defensive, and not quite succeeding. Because peers were curious, and judgy, and he believed Gwen was different from what he'd seen as their friendship had cozied into something exclusive.
"Well, you're… confidently independent," she said, focusing on him as he focused on navigating the street-crossing. "You hear people say stuff about their families all the time, wanting money from dad or having to call mom back, or whatever. You just… make your own decisions, without needing to check with a parent. Stuff happens, and you deal with it, without… I don't know, the sense that you need to ask for advice."
Arthur wondered if that was a judgment for or against Merlin's parenting-adjacent style.
"I'm looking forward to meeting your cousin – and your aunt and uncle," she concluded with a wide sunny smile.
He didn't bother to correct her assumption of his cousin's parents raising them both.
"Are they going to come to the graduation ceremony next month?" she continued, not releasing his hand as he led her through the street door of his apartment building, but squeezing against him in a deliciously comfortable way. "I think my grandparents are going to try to come, but my brother doesn't sound like he wants to…"
Down the hall, short gray carpet with flecks of blue and purple, up the stairs. Half his attention on her conversation – and was she chatty because she was nervous to visit his place for the first time? – and half trying to remember if he'd done dishes, wiped the counter free of crumbs, organized his bedroom, disinfected the bathroom… When was the last time he'd vacuumed? Today hadn't exactly been planned, after all.
It was a decent place for being economy-housing. Few stains on the carpet and walls, no obvious peeling paint, no noxious smells – no obnoxious neighbors. He tried to see it through her eyes, and hoped his place made a decent impression.
She dropped his hand to let him unlock his door, and he led her inside rather than inviting her to go first. That was instinct, ever since… well, ever since.
He glanced through the sitting area to the kitchen space – no movement, no sound – and down the hall to the bedrooms and bathroom. Again, only emptiness was immediately apparent. He chose to lead her toward the sitting area and away from the mostly-hidden bedrooms, just in case-
"Oh, wow, you have a great view," Gwen commented, lingering in place as she latched the door behind her.
Because half the sitting-room wall was sliding glass and balcony, and fourth floor meant sky and roofs, not just the next building's wall and windows and balconies.
Kitchen window shut, no one crouched behind the peninsula. He swung his backpack down from his shoulder, checking-
The bolt of the sliding glass door was tilted the wrong angle. Unlocked, and he never left it-
"Arthur!" Gwen hissed.
Adrenaline spiked as he slipped out of the kitchen, circling to see her gesture at the couch, which faced the balcony and had its back to the door.
Someone was lying there. Arthur twitched toward the knife-block placed convenient to both rooms even as he recognized the lanky form and disheveled black hair.
Merlin. Tension out and relief in, on a single deep sigh as he padded closer.
"Your cousin?" Gwen whispered, faint frown of concern on her face.
They hadn't been exactly quiet coming in, but Merlin hadn't stirred. One knee crooked up with his boot propped against the opposite armrest, one leg left sprawling off the couch. One arm dangling fingertips to the edge of the rug on the floor, and the other forearm bent across his eyes. Faded black t-shirt, raggedy jeans that badly needed washing.
A new scar jagged pink-white through the soft skin very near his wrist. And had he come through the sliding-glass door? Over the balcony, up four stories?
"Merlin," Arthur said in a normal voice.
He didn't stir, and suddenly Arthur had to watch for the movements that said he was still breathing. Which he was – relief all over again. But…
Gwen made an abortive movement, still frowning, like she meant to shush him and beckon him closer at the same time. And as he crossed the sitting room to her side, Merlin never alerted to their presence in the room.
Why hadn't he gone to sleep in his own bedroom, if he didn't mean Arthur's return to wake him from a quick nap?
"Your cousin?" Gwen whispered, pressing against him to lift herself closer to his ear and he didn't mind that a bit. "Your roommate? I thought you said he was older?"
Arthur blinked, and looked at Merlin as he must have appeared to Gwen and hells, Merlin looked like an underclassman. Like a first-year exploring newfound freedom in all the roughest ways because he hadn't learned not to from personal experience.
Same unshaven scruff. Same uncombed, uncut hair. Did he still have the same boots and jacket Arthur remembered… from almost twenty years ago.
Why didn't Merlin look nearly fifty? There was no gray in his hair, and Merlin was not the sort to dye. Wrinkles from laughing, from frowning, from squinting into distances when they traveled still smoothed completely when he slept – there was no flesh sagging beneath his chin or jaws.
"I should go," Gwen said softly. "He looks tired, not ready for company…"
"You and I can-" Arthur tried to redirect.
She shook her head, meeting his eyes and connecting to his soul. "You guys should catch up, if you haven't seen him in a while. I can talk to you tomorrow."
What about dinner, he didn't say. Nor, I'm sorry. "I'll call you later."
She smiled her wide happy smile, and rose to kiss him just beside his mouth – not a perfunctory peck on the check, but not quite kissing kissing, either. Yet. "I'll be waiting…"
Gwen reached for the door and let herself out with another smile.
Arthur watched Merlin slumber for several long moments before thinking, he should have walked Gwen out, at least. Not that she needed it. And it would be a little weird to go out on the balcony and shout down to wave if he saw her, right?
Merlin remained limply motionless, and after another indecisive moment Arthur moved to the kitchen to heat up a can of condensed soup and assemble sandwiches. And he didn't bother closing cabinets softly, or lifting the pot he chose delicately away from its neighbors – and left the soup to keep warm on the lowest stovetop setting, to slouch in one of the armchairs across from Merlin.
The room was dim-golden with expiring daylight when Merlin finally moved, shifting hips and shoulders fractionally, like his joints were sore from sleeping so awkwardly so long. He grunted to himself – settled briefly – then flung his arm down and twisted alertly to face Arthur in the chair, relaxing almost as swiftly to recognize him.
"Hey," he said, his voice as rough and rumpled as his clothes.
Arthur opened his mouth and what came out was, "Were you followed?"
Merlin dropped his hand from rubbing his face and scrunched his shoulders around to look at Arthur upright.
Arthur was mad, a little bit. It was an odd feeling – he wasn't sure where it came from, if he was mad at himself or at Merlin, whether it was over the lost evening with Gwen or Merlin's sudden appearance after little to no contact for months. And he never really worried for Merlin's well-being because magic, but if Merlin had come through the balcony door, four floors up-
"I don't think so," Merlin said, gifting him honesty like he always did.
So maybe he was mad at himself, for willful thoughtlessness, or childish oblivion. Merlin held his gaze through another change in position, getting both his feet on the ground and now his face and bare arms looked thinner than usual. He looked gaunt. And what did Arthur know about his life, anyway? Had he ever bothered to learn Merlin as a person, as a peer, and not just as a parent?
"How old are you?" he said conversationally.
Merlin didn't react for the space of five heartbeats. Then he heaved a deep sigh. "Centuries."
Arthur shook his head slowly – but he believed Merlin. How was that possible?
Magic.
"Are there others like you?"
Merlin's mouth twisted, and his gaze flicked over Arthur's shoulder, out the window toward the sunset-streaked sky. "Not really. Others who use magic, but…" Not like me.
Arthur offered an olive branch in the form of a sardonic suggestion, "Younger?"
A grin cleared Merlin's strange expression. "Yeah."
"What do you do?" Arthur said. What have you done, with all those years?
Merlin shrugged a bit helplessly. "Try to make things better, make the world a better place. Lately? I'm with Humanitarian Aid for Children, at a refugee camp on the border of-"
Arthur couldn't stop thinking of Merlin elbow-deep in tractor grease – wielding a nail-gun – scrubbing a primary-school stairwell.
Centuries. What about family, then? Merlin had been friendly, engaging, even flirtatious on occasion – but he'd never dated. Arthur glimpsed why not – magic was complicated and inexplicable. But if there were others who used magic, why not?
"Why me?" Arthur said narrowly. "If you're-" Superman? – "why'd you spend the last two decades playing baby-sitter?"
Taking jobs that meant he could keep an eye on Arthur.
Merlin's chest expanded with a deep, quiet breath, which he held for a moment and sighed out slowly before answering. "You're significant. And you needed… someone else."
A splinter slid smoothly through his chest – a twinge that died quickly before the blood spilled.
"I see," he said steadily. "I was like a job for you, then." I thought… I thought maybe… Maybe I was nobody, and only important to you because we chose each other.
Merlin leaned forward, brows drawing together. "Arthur-"
He pushed himself up from his chair. "Soup and sandwiches in the kitchen – help yourself, I'm not hungry."
And left the room, while Merlin was still struggling to gain his feet.
Arthur didn't speak to Merlin for weeks.
Because, he told himself. Finals. Gwen. Graduation.
Not necessarily in that order.
Gwen didn't mention that afternoon and their interrupted plans. Not to question, nor to suggest they reschedule, not to ask to meet his cousin.
His fault, probably. Because of that instinct, growing up, to tell stories and deflect attention – or simply to offer no information, and deflect.
He wanted to blame that on Merlin.
Who was making himself scarce – gone or asleep when Arthur left their shared apartment, gone or asleep when he got back. Moving about his own room when Arthur had claimed the kitchen, moving about the kitchen only when Arthur retreated to his closed room.
Merlin was never sullen or bitter. Arthur was old enough now to concede that Merlin had handled his teen years with humor and patience and support… and self-aware enough to realize he'd turned out halfway decent, comparatively, and that was probably due to Merlin.
Why. The big question now, wasn't it?
Because Merlin was still there. The sense radiating from every sound he generated, every sensation of movement, even from his absence, was calm distress. Controlled unhappiness. Willing endurance.
Arthur, shifting his paradigm away from parent to… something else, wanted to like him, as he'd never thought he needed to actively decide. People loved their parents in an abstract way, described them to others in positive or negative terms depending on whether that parent was being overbearing or permissive. But not as a peer, never as a peer.
But Merlin wasn't some fifty-year-old minor executive, or junior partner, or distracted business owner, or high-level manager, comfortable and confident in middle age.
Merlin cooked noodles in a microwave bowl and ate them standing up, leaning his hips into the corner formed by the kitchen's peninsula – and turned his body alert to Arthur's entrance. Ready to engage, even as he focused on lifting his next twirled forkful to his mouth. Giving Arthur the decision, to join or to turn and retreat again to his bedroom, without expectations to disappoint.
Finals were done. Grades were pending. Caps and gowns had been purchased and Gwen's brother had showed up early.
So Arthur dropped his backpack next to the door and stalked to the kitchen, crossing his arms over his chest. Merlin swallowed his mouthful hastily, almost choking himself, and set the bowl so close to the edge of the sink that it tilted on the uneven join to countertop.
Merlin was slightly taller than he was, but his strength was wiry rather than muscular; Arthur weighed more, and thanks to continuing his training in boxing and Merlin's own demeanor of constant deflection, he had the heady feeling of being in charge of this encounter. Whatever he wanted it to be.
"I know who my father was," Arthur said without preamble.
Something tense in Merlin's bones relaxed; something cleared in his eyes, like apprehension for which words would eventually break Arthur's silence.
"Uther Pendragon," Merlin said. Could've been an answer, or a request for clarification.
He'd never lied, when Arthur asked. Because Arthur had checked that, these last few weeks. Maybe he hadn't told everything, but what he had said was the truth.
"You had to know I'd look him up," Arthur continued narrowly. "That I'd research."
Merlin nodded, holding Arthur's gaze like he was innocent, nothing to hide any longer, willing once again to accompany Arthur wherever he wished for this to go.
"He was a wealthy man," Arthur stated, and meant to go on with influential, but-
"Your inheritance is secured," Merlin said. "I took care of it, when he passed away."
Years ago. Arthur vaguely recalled Merlin imparting the news – a sunny day at a busy park with a battered kickball. And it had been easy to decline the offer to visit the cemetery, since – he now realized – it would have been complicated for the two of them to show up to the funeral.
But – "Inheritance," he said blankly. "What…"
"I've got all the paperwork if you want to see it," Merlin told him, watching for his reaction. "We didn't need much, earlier on. But it's helping pay for this place, and your education."
Merlin in yellow rubber gloves, wearily scrubbing child-vomit from primary school stairs. One by one, on his knees. And a refugee border camp with Humanitarian Aid for Children probably didn't pay much, even if Arthur had a quarter scholarship and a supplementary grant to pay for incidentals.
"I thought I was going to have to…" Work for a living. But Uther had been wealthy, and if his estate had been liquidated to burgeon slowly in accounts and investments…
"You probably should," Merlin suggested.
Wasn't really raised to be one of the idle rich, after all.
Did you do that on purpose, Merlin?
He could see none of that. No calculation, no indoctrination of a rich man's son forced to live just above the poverty level to teach him a lesson.
And Merlin was wearing a pullover he'd owned since before Arthur was in high school, a pair of jeans that had earned the soft white holes beginning to dangle snapped fabric-string at the knees and cuffs. He hadn't taken. He hadn't bought a sprawling suburban mansion with a pool and a garden and two or three eye-catching vehicles. Two or three eye-catching ladies. He rode the bus, and the tube.
"Did you know my father?" Arthur asked, leaning one hip against the opposite counter and relaxing his arms.
"No. Just as a name familiar for being rich and powerful." He held Arthur's gaze, and Arthur believed him.
Here was more tentative ground. "And my mother?"
Merlin went completely still, and that was an answer in itself. "I never met her," Merlin said cautiously. "I didn't know her name til… you were with me."
"Well, then, what?" Arthur demanded. "You know something. I read that she died when I was born."
"That's true," Merlin allowed.
"Then whatever you know has nothing to do with me," he challenged, throwing his assumption out like a gauntlet. Pick it up, Merlin. Let's do this.
The echo didn't die. The gauntlet was still sailing, still floating, and he saw from Merlin's expression, whatever he knew had everything to do with Arthur, and he couldn't rescind the challenge fast enough.
"There was someone there, the day I came," Merlin said, eyes as deep as centuries. "She came in the front door as I sat on the back step and I knew then that she'd come for the same thing I had."
Me. Arthur was struck still as stone. The truth was the head of Medusa, hair all snarling snakes.
"I don't know her. I know of her. And maybe she thinks the same way I do, that she's trying to make the world a better place…"
"But my father never would have…" Arthur couldn't finish. He hadn't known his father, after all, how could he guess what Uther Pendragon was capable of.
You cannot have him, too – he's all I have left…
"I think they had something to do with your conception," Merlin said – slow and careful and protective. "It's a fact that your parents were… older. When you were born."
The reason his mother hadn't survived labor, he thought. Complications. She'd been nearly forty-five.
So they thought he belonged to them? They'd come for a child, and Merlin had, what, snatched him out from under their noses? Why? No one person was that significant – any position or influence he might have inherited with his father's wealth was probably lost when he'd gone that day. No matter what Merlin had done to secure the money, he wasn't going to be able to reveal himself to the world as his father's son with anything to gain, by that.
"Do they know it was you?" he said.
Merlin almost smiled.
And Arthur found himself thinking of a rank damp warehouse echoing with emptiness and violence, stinking of blood and something like chloroform, and the damage done to Merlin's face and ribs and knuckles when they emerged. Were you followed.
"Probably," Merlin said.
"What do they want me for?" Arthur demanded, frustrated. The life he'd had, compared to what he might have expected, left with his father – now compared to what else he might have experienced, raised by the unknown magic-wielding woman.
"I don't know," Merlin said, and it was the truth.
And Arthur wasn't yet ready to say, What do you suspect…
"Have they given up?" Arthur thought of his name on the apartment lease, on the university roles, advertised for graduation. He thought of Gwen.
Merlin pressed his lips together. "Probably not."
Safety wasn't really something Arthur thought about. He'd learned caution from Merlin, the protection of secrecy disguised as innocuity; he'd learned to box.
He'd also learned responsibility. And wouldn't it be irresponsible of him to interview for jobs, to sign another year's lease, to intimate intentions with Gwen, without this thing resolved? Should he expect Merlin to find menial labor where he could keep watch over whatever Arthur wanted his life to become?
It would be irresponsible to alienate Merlin – who genuinely cared about him as a person, about other people in specifics and abstracts, who willingly worked for children and refugees.
His future had been narrowing in his vision – one home, one school, one major, one girl, one job in one city. He realized that in the same moment as considered options expanded exponentially – he could go anywhere in the world. Do anything. He had the money for it, evidently.
"After graduation," he said deliberately – watching Merlin for his reaction. "Perhaps I'll go with you."
"Back to the refugee camp?" Merlin said. Surprise was foremost, but the set of his shoulders and the way he held his eyes relaxed, rather than tensing. He was relieved Arthur wasn't walking away – moving out, ending contact.
We can get farther, faster. Together.
"For starters," Arthur said.