Chapter Text
Jeans. Arthur wanted him, the King of Camelot, to wear jeans.
“Are you being serious, son?” Uther asked, whilst staring at the atrocity laid out on the bed before him in horror.
He heard the sound effect of the camera on a phone go off as Arthur said, “As serious as a heart attack, Father.”
The cheek his son possessed whilst holding back a grin, made Uther’s eye twitch. Arthur just gave him a sly grin whilst typing on his phone without looking at it, most likely sending Uther’s mental battle with a pair of jeans to Morgana.
“Why?” He gestured to the jeans.
“We need to blend in.” Arthur walked over, joining Uther at the foot of the bed. “One simply would not wear a suit to the type of concert we’re going to, unless you work there. We’re not seeing an orchestra or the opera.”
The Prince was already dressed, looking like some type of university student with his leather jacket and ratty trainers. Uther stood next to his son, half dressed for the waist up, floundering for any rationality in the predicament he found himself in. Hunting with Morgana was easier. Nimueh’s voice rang through his head that this whole idea wasn’t meant to be an easy thing to go through. His children weren’t him, they were younger, they grew up in a different world than he did.
Uther nodded at what Arthur had said, then asked, “They aren’t the type that… sags, are they?” as he gestured below his hips.
Looking away as he snorted in a very unprincely fashion, Arthur managed to say, “No, they’ll fit perfectly, it’s all been sorted.” He eventually managed to compose himself when he added, “And you get to wear a belt.”
“Oh, thank the Goddess Above.” Uther muttered to himself. Arthur chuckled and left Uther to continue changing.
In the end, with a little bit more heatless squabbling between the two of them, Uther was wearing a turtleneck jumper, the jeans, a jacket, sunglasses - even though it was a dark evening already - and a hat. He looked nothing like a king which Arthur had said was the whole point. They looked like quite the pair in their dark clothes, it was almost a depressing appearance if colour meant what it did in Uther’s day.
Before they left their hotel suit, Arthur handed him medical face masks. The type you see in a hospital. Nothing about this made any sense, from the moment that Arthur said they needed to take a plane to Essetir City, to when they walked through a hotel to a private suit without checking in with anyone, to the clothes Arthur asked him to wear; so, Uther just stopped asking because the sight of Arthur getting quietly giddy with his surprise was worth it.
Essetir City wasn’t what he remembered it to be, then again, he hadn’t been here for years. Probably not since Ygraine had died, he realised in the taxi car. It was a beautiful night as the lights whizzed past. Arthur was quiet again, his leg bouncing more and more as the taxi driver’s phone showed that they were getting closer to their destination. Simply sitting there, in a taxi, next to his son felt remarkably freeing from the weight of the monarchy that claimed his life. Even though he knew at the back of his mind that there were two cars full of security trailing the taxi car, his role felt more like a father than a king.
Uther just followed Arthur closely as they left the taxi, acted as if their security guards that lurked at a distance didn’t exist, and entered a type of massive abstract-architectural dome through a long row of sliding doors alongside hundreds of other people. Uther actually felt very underdressed compared to the outfits and makeup that other people were wearing. But again, that was the whole point, those people stood out. And looked marvelous at it, too. Whilst Uther and Arthur looked like they had just wandered in off the street. The secret King zoned out as their tickets were scanned and felt far out of his depth as he realised that in probably one of the busiest places he had seen in person in the last five years: only Arthur out of everyone was directing their attention to him. None of these people, apart from his own son and the security guards that became part of the furniture, recognised that the sovereign ruler of their country and Kingdom was standing on an escalator and was wondering how the woman two steps above him had gotten her hair to stand like that.
As Arthur found their seats high up in the stands, Uther asked, “Who exactly are we seeing?”
Arthur gestured that he’d answer once they sat down and Uther was left to speculate. The age demographic was wide, very wide. Some people were even older than himself. Not a single factor about any person they passed was consistent. Uther was puzzled.
They ended up in probably the furthest seats from the stage, still surrounded by people. Arthur sat on his right and finally turned to him to talk.
“You’ve heard of this artist before, Father, his name is Merlin Emrys.” His son explained.
The name did ring a bell but Uther couldn’t place it. It wasn’t until the crowd burst into uproar, the people around them screaming in applause - Arthur, ecstatically - as music began to drift through the speakers and a small figure came onto the stage from the wings. The notes of music nagged at Uther with familiarity whilst the enormous screens flanking the stage burst on with a grinning face appearing.
He realised that he knew the music already. He couldn't remember every lyric, but he was able to tap his hand against his knee to the tempo with ease. After so many times of passing Arthur’s rooms when the boy was a young adult, back from uni, it was this music that he would hear behind his doors. It was this music that the staff would hum without realising it was escaping their minds.
He had never paid attention before to the lyrics, but with the base of the music making his lungs vibrate, he was pulled and found it impossible to focus his attention anywhere else. Music had been how he and Ygraine had met, at the Royal Theatre listening to the Camelot Philharmonic Orchestra. It was her enrapturedness by the music unlike anyone else sitting below him that he noticed first, and it was second - when she leaned over to whisper to her friend next to her - that he noticed the dark lines covering her chest almost up to her collarbones, creeping over the bust of her dress. When the crescendo of the orchestra hit its peak perfectly, the fact that the exact same markings in the exact same place lay over his very own chest hit him so harshly he felt that he couldn’t breathe.
Tears began to pour down his face as song after song seemed to tug on every bit of grief he had been trying to avoid over the years. A song about the singer’s father, who had gone missing for some reason and made the tiny man so far away fear the worst, struck harsh memories to the front of Uther’s mind. Those terrifying hours where Uther sat in the waiting room of a hospital, violently jolting at every doctor that passed, praying that she would make it after the accident, were the second worst moments of his life. The worst was knowing, without looking, that the heartbeat monitor said zero.
In the years after her death, after that awful car crash that no one could save her from, Uther was alive but not living. The moment that he realised that he could have lost his children, not to death but worse, made him want to live again. Not for his own sake, but for the twins and Ygraine’s memory.
Oh Ygraine. If only she could see them now, how far they’ve come in these months. Uther smiled to himself under the mask. For the second time, he felt like the luckiest father alive doing this with Arthur. It did ache in his chest, this whole night of sneaking out to go see a concert: it brought back the times that he and Ygraine would do this in the early days of their own courtship. Though that was to more classically based concerts, laying their eyes on a sea of instruments with the conductors back to them - instead of a man belting his bleeding heart out around the stage, wearing clothes that had a great big slit down the side of his leg, and failed to cover half his torso.
If they had had the time to do this as a family, all four of them - together… Uther wouldn’t know what he would do with himself.
Between the face mask and hat, he caught the look in Arthur’s eyes as his son stared out onto the stage to Merlin Emrys as he sang those heartbreaking lyrics. It was a glint in Arthur’s eyes he had never seen before, nor ever expected to see at such an event. Filled with pain and longing. Of course, Arthur, like every unbound person yet to meet their soulmate, wishes for the person that doesn’t complete them but instead makes everything more. Given Arthur’s soulmark, it was bound to be a happy union. Soulmates are matched by the Goddess afterall. There was someone out there, someone perfectly matched for Arthur who could handle the life he leads: someone with a life of their own that Arthur would grow into.
Listening to the music of a new happier but still bittersweet song ringing out across the crown of a hoping type of love: Uther didn’t see a prince. He saw his son looking just like any other unbound person in this crowd of fans. Hopeful. Young. And Free.
After they left the concert in a slow dawdle, once they made some purchases at the merchandise booths, Arthur managed to convince Uther to get take-away chips smothered in something that was meant to resemble cheese but looked more nuclear than a dairy product from a cow. Walking through the city, the two hidden royals decided to opt out of going back to the hotel just yet. Simply wanting to enjoy the high of being anonymous for just a bit longer in public. They walked and walked, talking about the music, the atmosphere and the performance in general in low and quiet tones until they reached a large park.
Their security guards fanned out a wide berth around them, far outwith simple talking earshot but close enough to hear a concerned raised voice. Simply put, neither of them had any plan of a destination and were just wandering.
Until Arthur waved a hand at one of the benches on the side and said, “Let’s sit here, Father.”
Uther followed his lead and continued to happily witter away.
“I must say, this wasn’t what I was expecting for us to do, but I am delighted at what has occurred.” He said in between bites of chips, somewhat enjoying them now. “The performer, Merlin Emrys, was marvelous. Truly, I thought modern music had gone down the drain pipe, but he has surprised me. And I realised that I actually knew his songs as well, he’s the one you’re always playing. Are you aware that half our staff hum his music to themselves-”
“Father, there’s something I need to tell you.” Arthur cut him off.
Uther turned to him, seeing that Arthur was staring at the ground. His elbows dug into his knees as his expression was dark and serious. That look in his eyes from the middle of the concert was at the forefront of it all, the joy of the concert was shedding away and leaving something… bad behind.
“Of course, Arthur, please tell me anything.” Uther said, turning the lid over and setting aside his food.
Arthur stayed quiet, then, “I’ve been sneaking out to concerts for years.”
“We all have our passions, I’m not surprised that music is yours.” Uther accepted, trying not to freak out that Arthur has been breaking so many rules - rules that were meant to protect him from harm - for so long.
“It’s not the music, Father, that I sneak out to see.” Arthur confessed it like he was admitting a crime. “I do love music, but I don’t go to any old concerts by any random singer.”
“Oh, I see, you’re a big fan of Merlin Emrys then?” He naively asked.
That was apparently the wrong thing to say as Arthur folded in on himself, literally. Chest almost pressed against his thighs, shoulders shaking for what Uther felt was too many painful seconds to witness. He went to reach out to Arthur, to provide some type of physical reassurance before Arthur whipped back up with red and watering eyes.
“Fuck…” He rasped out, jaw locked open in the way that people do when they’re trying not to begin aggressively crying.
“Arthur, son, what’s wrong?” Uther panicked.
His son’s face scrunched closed before he turned to look him in the eyes, allowing Uther to see every bit of pain that Arthur had evidently been hiding for far too long from him.
“Do you remember when I was eight and I had to outline my soulmark?” Arthur's tone was that of a frightened child. The person sitting next to him wasn’t the future King of Camelot, not the heir and Crowned Prince, not the chair of several charity organisations, not an honoured former military official, and not an academic with several notable master degrees under his belt. This was Uther’s son, the boy who once cried when he found a butterfly trapped in the east library and wouldn’t stop until everyone helped free it in the gardens at the most flowered section.
“How could I forget, it covers half your body.” Uther said.
The twins, when they were eight years old, were asked by the royal physicians to trace around their soulmarks so that when they started to be stationed in the public view more, they would be able to wear the correct clothes to hide their soulmarks as to forbid outsiders from speculation. Morgana had been simple, she drew a simple outline around her shoulder that reached just to her collarbone. Uther was happy for her, it was an easy placement for her soulmate to discover her. He had always hated the crown’s rule for secrecy of royal’s soulmates, but he understood the intentions behind it.
Arthur, however, drew several lines: a band circling his left thigh, a wiggling line up his stomach to his neck and - with the help of several of the doctors and a lot of mirrors - another wiggling line all the way down his back. It indicated that almost the entire left side of him was covered in a soulmark, including the entirety of his left arm already. Everyone had been shocked at the size of it, not to mention that Arthur was eight. His soulmark was still growing and developing back then. And would grow even more when he would meet his soulmate. Back then, Uther allowed himself, in the security of his solitude, relief in knowing that his sensitive little boy was destined for such a great and deep type of love simply from seeing those pen markings.
Both his children would find happiness, he had hoped all those years ago, happiness that at that time he could not give them.
“Only Morgana knows this,” Arthur cleared his throat, willing himself to continue speaking. “but when I was fourteen I discovered who my soulmate is.”
“Arthur… that’s terrific!” Uther could not contain his happiness for his son. “Have you met them yet?”
Again, the wrong thing to say as Arthur became more and more devastated at his father’s words. “Father, please, just listen to me.”
Uther withdrew himself, realising that he had leaned over to hug his son but Arthur had pulled away. He folded his hands in his lap, nodding to Arthur that he was going to be quiet and hear anything that Arthur would let him hear.
“I was online and a video I came across showed a boy a year younger than me playing an original song that he wrote.” Arthur’s voice was hoarse. “I saw my soulmark on his skin. I had no idea how to reach out to him and have him believe that I was telling the truth. The amount of people that get scammed and catfished online is insane, even back then, so I stayed silent and just watched the videos he posted. He started to get a lot of traction and followers for his music but he knew nothing about me.” Of course Arthur’s soulmate didn’t, the twins were always covered up high to their necks when in public due to that blasted protocol.
“But when I was eighteen and he was seventeen, he started posting really sad music and just seemed so miserable online. I tried my best to not be parasocial about it, he had no idea about me and everyone’s allowed their own privacy,” Arthur’s eyes misted over with the past. “Until he explained that his father had been declared missing in action by the army. He seemed so alone, Father, and so scared. So I did the stupid thing and tried to make it so that he didn’t feel alone…” Tears slipped down Arthur’s face and each one that Uther watched fall drove an aching pain through his being. “I didn’t think about the consequences because all I was thinking about was making him not sad anymore. So, the scandal with my soulmark on the beach in Gawant happened. I just wanted him to know that he wasn’t alone…”
Uther let out a small exhale in understanding. In what he believed to be an act of teenage rebellion, the twins on an Uther-less holiday to Gawant had disobeyed every rule that was engrained into them with the soulmark protocols and wore swimsuits that they knew would clearly display their soulmarks for the world to see.
It brought an onslaught of chaos to the news and press for months, yet Uther never reprimanded them for it. Feeling so proud of them both for their youthful courage. He did his best to protect them from the backlash and scheming liars and frauds.
“You know about him, and he knows about you. But you’ve never met or spoken?” Uther failed to understand why Arthur had never dared to come forward yet.
“No, we’ve never.” Arthur shook his head. “I’ve never allowed it.”
“Why?”
“Before the retaliation of everyone after what happened in Gawant, it was because I had no idea how to contact him and make him believe me. And also because - I saw what happened to you after Mother died. The mere chance that that could happen to me and him was terrifying.” Arthur admitted.
And that hurt the most to hear. He had done everything - what he now knows was a very wrong manner to act in - to protect the twins from his grief. To try and not let the hole that Ygraine’s absence from his life harm them. He stupidly pulled himself out of their lives, thinking that it would do them good. That it would protect them. Nimueh had helped him understand that his actions were a poor way to handle her death and the impact it had on their children was near irreparable.
He shut them out. He kept them at a distance, thinking that it would shield them from the pain he felt at every moment of every day. But it just led to an impossible distance between him and them, distance that he used to think was for the better.
How wrong he was…
“Arthur, you cannot go around believing that history will repeat itself.” Uther urged him. “It is irrational and very unhealthy to live that way. The world has improved, my son, a relationship with your soulmate won’t condemn him to a fatal accident.”
“It’s not his death I feared, Father.” Arthur said in such a small voice. “The idea that I could leave this world with him ending up like you, it terrified me. It still does.”
“Son…” Uther choked out. The idea of Arthur being in Ygraine’s place was unimaginable, and to realise that Arthur had carried this notion with him for so long… it- It was another, possibly the most painful, reminder of just how much Uther has failed as a father.
“But that was before Gawant, Father.” He said gently, as if what he said no longer mattered. “You saw how the papers reacted. How the world reacted! I realised the mistake I had made the moment the headlines came out. I couldn’t condemn him to the lives we lead as royalty, it’s not fair to him. He’s not like Mother, he’s not of noble birth. He would have no idea how to live in our world, and he wouldn’t be comfortable in it even if he did learn.
“I could never forgive myself by asking him to give up everything he knows for me. It’s one thing being the soulmate of a royal, but a future king? It would be too much for anyone…” He paused, drawing back into himself, wiping his eyes dry and returning to the persona that is the Crowned Prince that he performs. “I’ve kept my distance ever since. When he started to get more known for his talent and he began performing live, I would sneak out to watch him. It’s the closest I can ever allow myself to him.”
Arthur shared a cautious expression with him, silently urging Uther to connect the dots. “Thank you for coming with me, I’ve wanted you to know the truth for years.”
The concert. The sneaking out. The look in his eyes when he listened to those songs, seeing the performance live. Uther stared at him in horrific realisation. “Merlin Emrys is your soulmate.”
“Yeah.” Arthur said as he looked out to the city skyline, that sad expression returning.
When they returned back to the palace, Uther watched as Arthur retreated back into himself.
“George?” Uther summoned his secretary.
“Yes, Your Majesty?” The man appeared, the picture of a perfect royal staff member.
Uther knew that it was wrong to meddle in his adult son’s decisions, but he wouldn’t allow his child to continue learning how to carry the same grief that he had grown accustomed to living with. Especially not when Arthur’s soulmate was alive and flourishing.
Ygraine’s eyes bore through him as he ordered, “I want a full profile and history of the singer, Merlin Emrys, please.”