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The painting is all wrong. Arthur’s nose wasn’t so small. His lips were more full. His eyes were much more blue, and his hair wasn’t that long. Long days of training and exercise kept royalty from softening his face and rounding his jawline as it was on the canvas. Not to mention he never owned those horrible white furs.
Merlin hates this painting. It makes Arthur less himself, it takes from his image. He looked royal, surely, but he didn’t look noble , and Arthur was nothing if he was not noble.
And yet, whenever he grows lonesome and tired, he travels to this museum and spends the better part of his time glaring openly at it. The anger distracts from that empty feeling he carries, that only grows more heavy when he looks at Excalibur under stage lights and drawn halfway from its scabbard to display the writing in its blade, or sees Gwen’s favorite dress stretched incorrectly onto a mannequin. There were areas of the museum he can’t even bring himself to enter, mainly those that held Arthur’s belongings. How could he bear to see Arthur’s armor locked away from him, propped up by ties and stilts in a glass case, when he’d bent over it countless nights and inspected every scratch and dent?
No. The longing, the mourning of a painful and cold hole in him that was once full, that simply wouldn’t do. Not after a thousand years. It grew tired long before the museum even dared exist.
Hatred, though, that he could do.
So, the painting.
Merlin is in the middle of an internal rant over how Arthur’s face was much more square and much less oval shaped when he hears the chattering and giggling of a tour. The noise echoes through the quiet halls. He glances in that direction, hardly turning his head, and rolls his eyes. It’s a school field trip. A gaggle of loud teenagers follow a tour guide that tries her best not to look as tired and annoyed as she is. They feed on it, and poke fun at everything she says.
“On the topic of Queen Guinevere, it’s interesting to note that her and King Arthur never shared a bed chamber, even well into their marriage. Though this is not unheard of, her second husband sir Lancelot did join her chambers when their marriage was officiated. This leads experts to wonder why the two hesitated to sleep in the same bed.”
One of the teenagers coughs, “ Beard ,” into his elbow, and several of them laugh. She ignores them and continues.
“We think that they did, in fact, sleep in the same chambers, and only claimed to sleep separately so assassins would attack the wrong chamber if attempts were made on the king’s life.” Merlin snorts and raises his eyebrows at the painting in front of him. Arthur and Gwen never shared a bed in their lives. Arthur once said that were he to sleep in Gwen’s bed he’d never get a moment’s rest with how much Lancelot shook the mattress. The joke was, of course, whispered into Merlin’s naked shoulder after their own fair share of mattress shaking, and the hypocrisy of it made Merlin laugh well into the night.
“It was so long ago, though, that the only ones that know for certain are those that lived in that time. Written accounts and paintings are all we have to go on to teach us of the period. Luckily for us, we’ve recently discovered King Arthur was an avid letter writer. He was in close contact with many of his knights and nobles of the court. Most impressive, though, is the large collection of letters we’ve found between Arthur and one of his servants.” Merlin’s focus goes as sharp as a razor. “King Arthur was an eccentric man, and ahead of his time, so it comes as no surprise he was comfortable with a servant as his friend and confidant. We’ve discovered numerous letters between them that suggest they even spoke in code as not to alert spies of court affairs.” Her voice was farther away, now. Merlin cast one more glance to the painting and moved to follow her.
“You can see here we’ve put some of them on display, but these are only a fraction of what we have. Currently we’re transcribing them to make them public, and for those of you curious, you can read them on our website…”
Her voice fades away as he enters the room behind the group of teenagers. His fingertips tingle, his legs are numb, his lungs far too large for his chest. Their letters. Oh, it had been so many years, he’d forgotten about their letters. His mouth and all through his skull is stuffed with cotton.
One of the boys laugh.
“Oh my god, check this! ‘ Would that I be granted a life eternal, I would only ask you live eternity and a day, so that I may not live one moment without you faithfully by my side. ’ That’s fucking gay !” He laughs again, head thrown back, and points to the rather long letter. The chaperone scolds him for his language. Merlin stares at the letter in front of him. He walks around the room twice before he can possibly bear to read a single one of them.
To King Clotpole.
To His Idiocy.
To King Ass, His Holiness Under Lord God.
To A Highly Disrespectful Servant.
To Arthur.
To Merlin.
To My Dearest Friend.
To My Dearest.
Merlin bites his lip and feels as if someone had thrown him against a wall. It hurts, it hurts so terribly he cannot breathe or move or think, but he cannot stop staring. Merlin promised many times that he would destroy the letters Arthur gave him, lest they were discovered. Arthur promised the same.
Merlin was a liar, but that was never a surprise. Arthur always kept his word.
Merlin’s love letters meant enough to Arthur that he would go back on his word. He would risk being outed to his court as an adulterer and be accused of lying with another man, all for some scraps of paper.
"I regret only that when I am proved a mortal man, the times in which we walked together will not allow us to lie together as well." A girl with short cropped hair reads the words aloud, a tremble in her voice. She rubs a bracelet on her wrist, the colors of the rainbow on a string.
Merlin clenches his fists at his sides and walks out as quickly as he can. He tries to dodge the horde of annoying teens but bumps shoulders with many. He doesn’t apologize. He's afraid if he opens his mouth, he’ll puke.
“That guy’s homophobic,” one of the girls jokes, and laughter erupts again.
Merlin doesn’t even glance at the painting on his way out. He doesn’t want to sully this horrible moment with something as silly as a poorly made painting. He wants to let his stomach sink, wants to remember candlelight and that wonderful, all consuming love that lifted every weight and burden from his shoulders. Wet grass on his back and straw in Arthur’s hair, meals over campfires, carefully placed hands and daring smiles. He wants to remember the tears and desperation of a hidden love, and the giggling fondness of one so deeply felt.
Merlin leans his weight against the wall of the museum and catches his breath. He walks home, though it's a fair distance, and uses the time to think and reminisce and feel normal again.
When he arrives home he decides, with certainty, the painting is no longer his least favorite exhibit.