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Arthur thought he’d never smiled so much before in his life, but he couldn’t help it. Merlin had been so excited when the first snow had started falling last night and insisted they go for a long walk in the morning.
Arthur wasn’t too fond of snow. It was cold, it got your boots wet and you had to wear so many more layers of clothes that you needed to peel yourself out of once you were back at the house.
But the way Gwen was snuffling through the snow, digging for something or other at places, jumping into it only to reemerge with some snow on her nose, was just endearing. And the way Merlin acted almost the same – minus the snuffling and the digging – made Arthur love him even more.
There, he’d thought it. After almost thirty years in which he had insisted he would never let anyone close, that he was meant to be alone, he had found someone who had broken through his walls with his beaming smile, his sometimes childish way of being delighted about something, his seriousness when it counted and his stubbornness when he was fighting for a cause he deemed worthy. Not to mention he played a mean game of chess.
As Arthur stood and watched Merlin and Gwen playing in the snow, he didn’t really know what to do. He needed to express his feelings but had never learned how to do it.
Gwen barked as Merlin ran towards him all breathlessly. “Come on, Arthur, don’t just stand there. Gwen has decided that we have to make snow angels!”
Arthur couldn’t remember ever having made a single snow angel in his entire life, but as he lay in the freshly fallen snow, waving his arms and legs like Merlin showed him, nothing had ever felt more right.