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When Merlin finally managed to exit the stage, beads of sweat hot on his forehead from the glaring lights and suit getting more and more rumpled by the minute, he expected Arthur to be ready at the green room door, tired and tetchy and ready to leave.
What he didn’t expect was to open the green room door to grab his bag and find Arthur splayed across the plush couch, mouth slightly open,
Merlin automatically reached for his phone to snap a picture of how cute his husband looked. Maybe he’d use it in tomorrow’s show.
An open laptop was on the table in front of Arthur; Merlin quietly shifted it to face him to save Arthur’s work and power it down, sliding it into Arthur’s bag.
He quietly gathered all of their things into a pile together so that they would be ready to go right away; Arthur would be distinctly annoyed at being woken up, but they couldn’t stay at the theatre all night. They had a hotel reservation to get to.
Slowly, silently, Merlin lifted Arthur’s head and shoulder. Arthur grunted a little, but Merlin settled into his space, guiding Arthur’s head to his shoulder; Arthur made a contented sound and nuzzled Merlin’s suit jacket.
“Good show?” Arthur murmured, still halfway in dreamland. Merlin reached over to brush Arthur’s hair out of his eyes.
“Mm. Pretty good. Would’ve been better if you watched.”
Merlin could tell Arthur wanted to roll his eyes but didn’t have the energy for it. It was true, though; Merlin always felt funnier and more at ease when he knew Arthur was in the audience, rolling his eyes at all of his dumb jokes.
“When you’re working, I get it,” Merlin teased him lightly, “but this doesn’t seem like very hard work.”
Arthur grumbled, making distressed noises before he finally whined “I was working. I got tired. Look, my computer’s there.”
Arthur didn’t even open his eyes as he gestured at the empty table; he had no idea Merlin had moved it. Affectionately, Merlin rested his head on Arthur’s shoulder.
“We should get going,” Merlin said quietly, taking one of Arthur’s hands in his to stroke his thumb. “I’m sure the hotel bed is more comfortable than this.”
Arthur snorted quietly. “Not by much.”
“Two weeks and then we’re home,” Merlin reminded him, then felt the need to add, “if you want to go home sooner, that’s alright.”
Arthur shook his head into Merlin’s chest. “No. That’d be dumb. Made it this far, didn’t I?”
“Thanks for coming with me,” Merlin whispered into his hair. Arthur hadn’t been overwhelmingly enthused about Merlin being on tour for three months, but he’d understood why he needed to go. Merlin had been expecting to do this long distance thing for a while; instead, he found Arthur packing, saying it’ll be a good excuse to work on my book.
“I want five more minutes,” Arthur muttered petulantly instead of responding to Merlin’s simple yet heavy statement. “Then we can go.”
“Kay,” Merlin played with Arthur’s hand for a few seconds before he said, “since you weren’t watching, can I tell you how I made fun of you tonight?”
Arthur made more disparaging sounds into Merlin’s shoulder, which Merlin took as a yes.
Merlin always told Arthur exactly in what ways his act mocked him; it was an old tradition from back when they were first friends and Arthur’s name snuck into Merlin’s sets more and more often. Arthur just made him laugh like that; all of Merlin’s best stories were Arthur’s, too.
Even now, when he was doing the same show every night, he would still tell Arthur again and again all about how Arthur’s name still circulated in the show, because Merlin couldn’t help but include all of their utter ridiculousness.
“So I was telling the story about how I once got lost in the supermarket and tripped over the cart an employee had left out and ended up smashing all of the eggs in the cooler,” Merlin began conversationally, as if this were something that happened to everyone every day and not just him.
Arthur snorted, but otherwise didn’t move.
“Which, as you might recall, is my transition to putting your picture up and saying, very mockingly, I’m sure you’re wondering how I landed such a babe.”
“Did you use the picture of me with cheese all over my face or the picture of me drunk and trying to scream at the cab driver on New Year’s?” Arthur muttered, his faux-disapproval tangible, but Merlin knew he was just pretending.
“Tonight I used the picture of you drunk and trying to explain to me the Knight’s Code and you had out that plastic sword and were cradling it to your chest,” Merlin replied and Arthur groaned pitifully. “I did not give the audience any context as to why you were doing that.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Arthur’s fingers started playing with the buttons on Merlin’s shirt.
“Then I told the story of how we met when you were being interviewed about your book, because you’re a ridiculous academic sort, and I was just performing on the same show, and I was so nervous to hit on you because you were a professor of medieval history and I was going up there to tell a jokes about me and Will stealing apples on a farm when we were kids like it was the late 1800s and we had nothing better to do. But when I saw your face, I realized you were the same age as me. And when you blushed when I tried to use a line, I realized you were a romantic sop. And when we went out for drinks after the show and I saw you still had a flip phone, realized you were a loser. Then all intimidation went out the window.”
“Did you tell them you’re smarter than me?” Arthur said with a little laugh in his voice, the most awake he had sounded yet.
“I am smarter than you,” Merlin said and Arthur shoved his hand against his chest in mimicry of a push that didn’t even sway him. “You didn’t know how much bananas cost until you met me.”
“The how much can a banana cost, Merlin? Ten dollars? joke?” Arthur groaned. “Really? That’s so old, Merlin.”
“It’s an accurate topical reference,” Merlin defended himself, playing with one of Arthur’s hands gently. “I also told the story of you and Will meeting and how it was like ultimate wrestling. Poshest boy who ever lived versus the concept of working class anger embroiled in a single body of rage. Who will win the ultimate smackdown?”
“Me, obviously,” Arthur said, and now he sounded fully awake. His and Will’s age0old feud probably riled him up enough. “We are married now.”
“Yes, but is who is number one in my heart?” Merlin asked jokingly and Arthur’s hand let go of his shirt to smack the side of his head.
“Me, obviously,” Arthur repeated a little aggressively, his head sliding from Merlin’s shoulder to his chest, curling up even further as if to show the precisely zero people who were in the room with them who was his husband, thank you very much.
Arthur had used those words on more than one occasion, all of them in the presence of Will.
“Are we ready to talk about The Nice Thing yet?” Arthur asked, his voice a little smug, and rolled his eyes.
That was Arthur’s one corollary for getting mercilessly laughed at by strangers each night; Merlin had to tell the audience one good thing about his husband, so sarcasm or mockery allowed.
The Nice Thing was becoming well-known as Merlin’s most prominent bit, and there were definitely worse bits to have. It was the bit that other comedians knew him by, the thing he was asked about most often when he was interviewed, the thing audiences seemed to look forward to and love the most.
Merlin changed The Nice Thing every night, and had created a graphic behind him that said The Nice Thing in a curly, fancy, font, along with a much more flattering picture of Arthur than the one Merlin used earlier in the show. Usually, it was the picture from their wedding when Merlin was shoving cake in his mouth and Arthur couldn’t stop laughing.
“I talked about how much I hate airplanes,” Merlin said, a little dopey now himself as he let himself fall deeper and deeper into Arthur’s little sleep trap. “And that I’m a nervous wreck hopped up on meds when I have to go alone, but you make everything calmer and hold my hand the whole time and recite statistics about the likelihood of airline crashes. How you always remind me that even if we did crash, it could be like Lost, and Lost is my favorite show, so it always makes me feel better.”
He felt Arthur press a smile into Merlin’s collarbone.
“Thanks for coming on tour with me,” Merlin said quietly, reaching a hand up to stroke Arthur’s hair. “So I don’t have to be nervous on airplanes.”
He was thanking him for a lot more than that, and Arthur knew it.
Instead, Arthur said what he always said when Merlin thanked him. “It’s hard to teach and work on a book at the same time. Good opportunity to work on the book.”
What he meant was I didn’t want to be without you for that long, and Merlin knew it.
It was a good thing, because Merlin didn’t want to be without him either.
“It’s been seven minutes,” Merlin nudged Arthur after a glance at his watch. “C’mon. Up. Hotel and then bed.”
Arthur groaned petulantly, burying his head deeper into Merlin’s chest as if it would convince him otherwise. “Carry me.”
“No,” Merlin said, trying to stand up, but Arthur’s hands dragged him back into his seat, his eyes bleary with sleep yet bright enough to glare at him for removing his people.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a long way to the door,” Merlin said logically.
“I’d carry you,” Arthur muttered, and Merlin just snorted.
“You would not,” Merlin rolled his eyes. “You would think yourself grand and romantic and carry me approximately a fourth of the way there before you set me down whining that your legs hurt, and remind me that I’m perfectly capable of walking myself.”
The whining noises Arthur was making were clearly an acknowledgement that Merlin was right, even if Arthur didn’t realize that’s what they were.
“C’mon,” Merlin dragged Arthur out of his seat, and his husband purposefully stumbled into him, wrapping his arms around Merlin’s waist and keeping his head balanced on Merlin’s shoulder.
“Good enough?” Arthur mumbled, closing his eyes.
“Sure,” Merlin laughed, reaching to put his arm around Arthur’s waist to make sure that if he really did fall back asleep, he wouldn’t fall down. With some amount of difficulty, he grabbed both of their bags while still keeping Arthur upright, and led him to the waiting car.