Work Text:
Rules and customs
There were some things that were obvious for all those who had been raised in Camelot. Some rules of behaviour and customs that everyone was supposed to know.
Number one of those rules was that you didn’t use magic, and this rule was the first for the obvious reason of every person’s want of staying alive. One didn’t even talk about magic if they could avoid it. Arthur had always known this, because from the moment he had first asked what magic was, he had been told that it was pure evil and only people with low moral used it.
The other one was that there were strict rules of proper communication between noblemen and commoners. If a noble asked something, common people were supposed to answer the question and not state their own opinion about the subject. Common people and foremost the servants were supposed to keep their mouths shut about things they knew nothing about, use the correct title of a nobleperson and keep their gazes low when in front of their better.
The third rule concerned courting. There were some very complicated rules about seeking someone’s love in Camelot. Everyone born and raised in the city knew them, and even those who moved in from some outer village, learned them pretty quickly, because love was a common interest for all people, and courting was, after all, about finding that one person who was more important than anything else in this world.
In Arthur’s opinion, Merlin had dismissed all these rules from the moment they had met for the first time. Arthur knew perfectly well that Merlin had magic. They had not talked about it, and Arthur was still thinking that magic could be used to do bad things, but for Merlin to be evil... That was just an impossible thought. He didn’t even like to think about it that often, although he was pretty sure that this was something he should clear up with Merlin at some point. The boy still thought that he had been so secretive all the time, but Arthur knew that Merlin was horrible at keeping secrets. Merlin had also broken the rule number two by opposing him during their first meeting and hadn’t really stopped breaking it since. Arthur was certain he should’ve not taken this kind of behaviour from a servant, but it was Merlin, for God’s sake, so it was alright for most of the time.
The problem about the third rule was that Merlin didn’t seem to comprehend the meaning of courting the same way other people did. He didn’t seem to know what was happening when someone said or did something meaningful in his presence which meant, for Arthur’s relief, that Merlin was still unmarried and not seeing anyone, but it also meant that Arthur would have to try and get the idea in Merlin’s head some other way. The boy also seemed to be completely oblivious of someone courting him, and it was not just because he was unfamiliar with the rules. Arthur wondered if someone had to dance around naked “I love you, idiot” written on the person’s skin for Merlin to notice something was going on. Of course Arthur was going to do no such thing, but he had been wondering.
After Merlin had come to Camelot the rules of interaction between noblemen and commoners had been altered slightly. It was probably because of the fact that the Crown Prince did everything with his insolent, idiotic, irritating manservant who disrespected him all the time and never did as he was told. This clearly meant that it was allowed for other people to communicate with each other too, despite their birth, because of course the Crown Prince must have known best.
What they didn’t know was that Arthur had been half in love with Merlin from the moment Merlin had opposed him of bullying someone the first time they met. There was something about Merlin. It was not just that the boy had magic or that he was the worst manservant in the history of Camelot, but there was also something interesting, something that made people change their deeply-rooted opinions and sincerely like Merlin as a person.
And that was the root of all Merlin-related problems for Arthur. (Well, in addition to the fact that Arthur’s chambers hadn’t been properly clean for at least a year.) The boy was just too popular for his own good. All Arthur’s knights seemed to love him, tease him and throw innuendos at him, but luckily the older knights understood Arthur’s glares and wordless “back off” messages if they went too far with something.
The younger ones did not always seem to know where the boundaries were. They didn’t seem to realise that Merlin was Arthur’s, and no one else except Arthur had a good enough reason to seriously court him. One of the younger knights had tried.
Once.
Arthur wouldn’t have even found out about this incident if Merlin hadn’t been so talkative. He had been talking about his usual rubbish, but then out of the blue he had mentioned that one of the knights had been really friendly towards him after the training that day and asked something about his favourite flowers.
So far Arthur had had little interest towards what Merlin had been saying, but this made him go stiff.
“What did you tell him?”
“I said my favourite flower is forget-me-not, but I have no idea why someone would ask me something like that.”
Forget-me-not. Arthur had better to remember this piece of information.
“Who was the knight?” Arthur asked trying to sound casual about it.
“It was one of the new ones. The quite tall one with brown hair?”
Oh, Arthur knew exactly of which one Merlin was talking about.
The next day Arthur kept an extra-training for all the new knights and during the training battle humiliated the one who had dared to touch Merlin. It served him just right.
The knight got the message and did not try any funny business with Merlin again. After this day Merlin seemed to look at Arthur more often, and Arthur made it his concern to show only the best parts of himself on the battlefield and outside. (Unless he was teasing Merlin or arguing with him, of course.)
The first step of courting in Camelot was asking from the person of interest what their favourite flower was. It was a subtle thing and easy enough to ignore if the other person had no interest in being courted. The next one was picking those flowers and giving them to the person. Usually if the person who was courted also held similar interest, they wore one of the flowers the same evening or next day. But Arthur couldn’t exactly go around picking flowers and giving them to his manservant. Especially when he wasn’t even sure that Merlin held any that kind of interest towards him. Almost every person in this kingdom would have thought it as a flattering compliment to be courted by the Crown Prince Arthur, but Merlin was different. For him the titles mattered little, and if he liked someone, he liked them for the person they were inside.
Arthur knew how to handle situations like that as a Crown Prince but handling them as just Arthur made things so much more complicated. He was not sure if even he himself liked just Arthur and wondered, not for the first time, if Merlin spent so much time with him just because Arthur made him do it or if he actually liked Arthur’s company. Arthur seriously hoped so.
But the flower thing was still unsolved. Arthur knew he should swallow his pride at some point if he wanted to do this properly. He also didn’t want to give anyone else the opportunity to approach Merlin while Arthur was sulking in his chambers, so as a man of action, he called Gwen into his chambers the next morning, before Merlin appeared with his breakfast.
“Guinevere, I believe you are going to go and pick up some flowers for the Lady Morgana’s room later today?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Could I ask you for a favour? I would like you to pick up enough forget-me-nots to fill two vases.”
Gwen grinned knowingly, but did not comment further.
“Of course, my lord. Was there anything else you wanted?”
“No, you can go. Thank you, Guinevere.”
When Arthur returned to his chambers that afternoon followed closely by Merlin, he saw a vase full of forget-me-nots and a note. He picked up the paper and read it quickly, not letting Merlin see what it was saying.
The note said:
“My lord, I put one vase on the table as you can see, but there is another one waiting on the windowsill. You can use that one for the spare flowers.
Good luck with your mission.
Sincerely, Guinevere”
Arthur felt his face heat. So Gwen knew exactly what Arthur was going to do with the flowers. But if she as one of Merlin’s best friends approved, it had to bode well. Arthur pulled himself together and turned around.
“Ah, I think someone has brought flowers to my room, but picked too many of them,” Arthur said aloud and picked the spare vase from the windowsill. He put the flowers from the table in that one and let Merlin begin to unfasten his armour. “What in the world will I do with those?”
When Arthur was back in just a shirt, and Merlin seemed to hover around the room picking up random things from the floor, Arthur finally said:
“If you want, you could take those spare flowers with you into Gaius’s rooms. I don’t do anything with them.”
Merlin grinned and touched one of the flowers gently.
“Was there anything else, sire?” Merlin asked, and Arthur was not sure if he had a drop of amusement in his voice. But Merlin had no idea of the courting customs of Camelot, so Arthur had probably just imagined it.
“No, you can go. I’ll see you in the evening.”
Merlin picked up the dirty clothes and the vase full of forget-me-nots and left the room. Arthur sat down and dropped his head against his palms. This was going to be so horrible.
---
The next day Merlin had a forget-me-not fixed to his neckerchief all day, but Arthur didn’t think it meant anything.
---
“So what would you say is your favourite colour, Merlin?” Arthur asked, once again casually, when he was trying on a new shirt. He had two of them, one red and one blue, and he honestly hoped Merlin would pick one of those colours. During the courting rituals he was supposed to be interested in what the other person thought of things. Because Arthur already knew Merlin’s opinion about almost everything, he was trying the kind of approach where he asked random questions about every small thing Merlin had ever liked.
“I think it would be blue, sire. But I really like both of these shirts. The seamstress made very good work with these,” Merlin said, but Arthur knew well enough not to take that as a compliment to himself. Merlin had been complimenting on the quality of the work and cloth, not how the clothes looked on Arthur.
But Merlin had picked blue. It seemed like a good sign.
“I guess you like the red one better, right?” Merlin asked after a moment when the new shirts were again folded on the table.
“Usually yes, since red is the colour of Pendragons. But I still think I’ll wear this one tonight,” Arthur said and took the blue shirt in his hand.
“Yes. Of course, sire,” Merlin said and smiled a bit.
---
When Merlin served Arthur that night, he was wearing a red shirt.
---
Arthur didn’t particularly search for new books to read, but he did read for enjoyment once in a while if he had enough free time to do so. Because half of the knights of Camelot had caught cold after one very wet hunting trip, the trainings were cancelled until further notice, and Arthur had one precious morning off. He had taken his favourite book out and wiped off the dust, and he was sitting the book on the table and eyes stuck on the text, when Merlin came in. Without knocking, of course. Arthur shot him an annoyed glare and returned to his reading.
“Good book, sire?” Merlin asked. His voice held an insulting amount of astonishment.
“One of my favourites,” Arthur murmured and read on. He could see from the corner of his eye Merlin going around the room carrying out his duties. At one point, when Arthur had almost forgot he was not in the room alone, he looked up and saw Merlin standing beside him, reading over his shoulder. He didn’t mind as much as he should have and continued reading until the lunchtime.
The next day Merlin was nowhere to be found. Arthur had been in Gaius’s rooms and asked Morgana and would have asked some of the knights if they hadn’t still been ill.
Annoyed Arthur returned to his chambers and to his utter surprise saw Merlin curled up on his bed. On Arthur’s bed. Merlin was reading the book Arthur had left on the table the previous day. When Merlin saw Arthur, he suddenly dropped the book on the pillow, tried to get up from the bed and dropped on the floor with Arthur’s bed sheets.
Arthur rolled his eyes and went to help his incompetent manservant to sort out the sheets again.
“Oh for Heaven’s sake,” Arthur sighed when they had got Merlin out of the cloth-trap, and they both were standing again. “Do I even want to know what you were doing?”
Merlin murmured something incoherent.
“I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I was reading your book, alright? It seemed interesting yesterday, and I wanted to know the rest of the story!” Merlin huffed and picked up the sheets from the floor. “It’s really good. I like stories like that.”
“You do?” Arthur said surprised, but he had no idea why it should have been a surprise that Merlin liked reading. The boy was not stupid even if Arthur did call him idiot most of the time. Arthur didn’t mean it after all. At least not always.
“Yeah. I’d better take these to wash and come and make your bed again,” Merlin said and left the room.
If Merlin had been raised in Camelot Arthur would have thought that reading a book in Arthur’s chambers was Merlin’s way of telling him that the boy was interested in being courted. But because Merlin wasn’t...
Arthur groaned. He really didn’t know what to think anymore. Why did it have to be so difficult?
Before Merlin had returned, Arthur had taken his sword and left to take down some steam with it. He didn’t need his armour; he just needed some time to think by himself.
---
During the following weeks, there were many more small, insignificant incidents that left Arthur completely and utterly confused about what Merlin was up to. (Merlin had tied a piece of blue cloth to Arthur’s armour when he had been preparing Arthur for a tourney and said it was “for luck”. Merlin had dragged him out of his chambers to “get some fresh air” when Arthur had had a million important things that needed his attendance, and in the end they had spent the beautiful summer afternoon laying side by side on grass gazing up at the bright blue sky. They had talked and talked about everything more or less important, almost everything else than the secrets both of them kept from each other. There had been more little things, like Merlin being on time with Arthur’s breakfast and Arthur saying once or twice “sorry” and “thank you” when he had a reason to do so. And it was almost like Merlin knew, but he didn’t, so Arthur stubbornly silenced the little hopeful voice in his head.)
Then the visitors came to Camelot.
Arthur thought later that it shouldn’t have been surprising that the visitors turned out to be sorcerers, who had planned to kill both of the Pendragon men. Why couldn’t the Camelot court even for once host normal non-homicidal visitors? In any case, Merlin had once again saved the day and Arthur’s life with some smart magic, and Uther had once again somehow missed it. Maybe the fact that Arthur succeeded at slicing the other sorcerer’s throat open at the same time as the other fell backwards thrown by an invisible spell, confused even Arthur’s father enough, so that he was just happy to see the two sorcerers dead and didn’t go looking for others to blame about this incident.
When Uther was talking with the knights about removing the bodies and burning them, Arthur threw Merlin a “we will talk about this later” kind of look. Merlin looked awkward and uncertain for a moment. Arthur rolled his eyes just to show he wasn’t as much angry as exasperated, and Merlin relaxed somewhat.
Nevertheless, after the meal finally ended officially, Arthur rose on his feet and almost dragged Merlin with him from the Great Hall. When they got in Arthur’s chambers Arthur let go of Merlin and walked across the room looking for things to throw and break.
He had been so worried that his father would have found about Merlin’s magic and even the thought made him a shaking bundle of nerves. When he had stridden around the room for at least five minutes, he finally faced Merlin.
“You idiot! My father was right there, and you just had to go and risk your own life like that... God, I can’t believe you just did that in front of all those people! If even one of them had seen...”
Merlin’s eyes were wide and surprised.
“You mean... you’re not angry about me being a sorcerer, but for me risking my life for you?”
“Obviously,” Arthur said and rolled his eyes again. When Merlin still looked uncertain, Arthur sighed. “Look, your magic wasn’t exactly a huge surprise for me. I’ve known about it since...”
“Since when?” Merlin asked, now accusation entering his voice.
“Since forever! I suspected after the blue ball of light helped me to get the right plant we needed to save your life, and I certainly knew after the beasts that could be killed only with magic, just kept dying while I was knocked out. You haven’t been too subtle about this, have you? You’re a terrible liar, you know that, Merlin.”
“And you’re upset about me being ready to sacrifice myself for you? I do that every other week, you know,” Merlin said and looked stubborn.
“Yes, but this is different! If my father found out about your magic, I would have to leave Camelot to get you to safety and who knows what kind of hell would break loose after that.”
Merlin’s jaw dropped at this, and Arthur had to think for a moment about what he had said. He flushed and turned away.
“You would do that for me? You would possibly leave your kingdom and everything you have here for good to safe me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Merlin,” Arthur said, back still turned towards Merlin. Even Arthur couldn’t tell if he really meant “of course, idiot, because I love you” or “no, I wouldn’t leave the kingdom for good, but it would hurt like hell to let you go”. Maybe he meant a bit of both. Either way, Merlin was clearly being ridiculous.
“It’s a bit of surprise to hear you say that out loud,” Merlin said with amused voice. His breath was way too close to Arthur’s neck to bring him any comfort.
“Yes well, competent servants are hard to come by. You’re probably the worst manservant I’ve ever had, but I don’t want to take the chances of finding someone even worse.”
Merlin laughed softly behind him.
“Was there anything else you wanted to say to me, sire?”
Arthur lowered his head, thought about the shirts and the flowers and the book and suddenly he turned on his heels and faced Merlin again.
“You are truly an idiot, aren’t you, Merlin? I’ve been trying to court you for weeks and weeks, and you just haven’t realised it! Fine! I give up!” Arthur threw up his hands and was going to turn around again and tell Merlin to just leave the room. “Go and find yourself some other person you might want to...”
But Arthur never finished that sentence, because Merlin had stepped in front of him and pulled him into a kiss. For a moment Arthur was shocked, but then pushed one hand behind Merlin’s neck and put one around his waist. Arthur felt Merlin’s fingers moving in his hair and pulled the damned, infuriating servant closer against his body.
Merlin seemed quite happy to remain inside the circle of his arms even when they finally parted from the kiss.
“You really thought I hadn’t figured out what you were trying to do, Your Royal Prattiness?” Merlin said grinning from ear to ear.
“You knew!? And you did not say anything?” Arthur said furrowing his eyebrows and tried to pull away. But Merlin held his shirt tightly and didn’t let go.
“I had too much fun watching while you squirmed and pouted. I didn’t want to ruin it too early. And I’d like to remind you that you never brought up my magic, now that we’ve reached the topic of keeping secrets from each other.”
“I do not pout!” Arthur said and tried to adopt a serious and un-pouting expression. He did not comment on the magic accusation. Merlin grinned again.
“You do, but it’s alright. I think it’s adorable.”
Arthur felt like he should fold his arms and go sit on the bed, but he was quite sure that Merlin would count that as pouting, so he remained where he was.
“But you were not supposed to know about the courting rituals!” Arthur said accusingly.
“Are you complaining?” Merlin said and looked closely at Arthur. “Oh God, you really are, aren’t you?”
Merlin let him go and turned his back. Arthur had a feeling Merlin was trying his best to hide his laughter.
“How did you find out?”
“After you gave me the vase of forget-me-nots, and I took them to Gaius’s rooms, he wanted to know who gave them to me. When I told you did, he sat me down and explained all he knew about your stupid courting habits. Even before that, I had heard rumours, but I truly understood only after Gaius explained it to me.”
Arthur blushed.
“So Gaius knows?”
“Errm...” Merlin said. “Apparently Gaius had the impression we had already been shagging for months even before that. He was quite surprised that we hadn’t... you know.”
Merlin’s back was still turned, and Arthur was grateful for that because he had never before in his life been this embarrassed. He coughed softly, and Merlin turned to see him again.
“Actually, if I’m not mistaken, almost every person inside this castle seems to think we’ve had something going on for forever. Gwen said something about it, and after her Morgana commented that you must be serious about our assumed relationship if you take the time to properly court me after all this time.”
“What?”
Arthur was shocked. How could he have missed all this discussion that was apparently happening behind his back?
“Yeah,” and now Merlin really looked smug. “Sir Leon asked me yesterday if you are, if we are, alright. He seemed to think you’ve been under the weather lately.”
“Oh God, kill me now,” Arthur said and turned to face the window. Then he had an idea and turned back. “Well, I guess it could be worse. At least my father doesn’t... What, Merlin?”
Merlin had blushed furiously at the mention of Arthur’s father.
“Um, yeah, I should’ve probably told you. Earlier this week the King asked me if we’ve had a row, because you’ve been so quiet and sulky.”
Arthur groaned and threw himself on the bed. He took a pillow and hid his head under it. Merlin was moving in the room, but Arthur did not get up.
“Personally, I think this might even be a good thing,” Merlin said and sat on the bed.
“How is it a good thing that my father believes I’m shagging my manservant? That I have been shagging said servant for... I don’t know. When do they think it even started?” Arthur said, raising his head, and smacked Merlin with the pillow when the boy grinned at him.
“At least I don’t have to explain everyone why I’m not sleeping in my own room anymore,” Merlin said and leaned closer. “And you don’t have to explain your father why I’m sleeping in your chambers, because he already thinks we’re fucking.”
Something about hearing Merlin talk about fucking made Arthur’s mouth go dry, and he licked his lips. Well, Merlin was already sitting on his bed so there was no reason to throw away a perfectly good opportunity.
“Right. You... may have a point. Somewhere under all that rubbish,” Arthur admitted.
“Hey! I was just saying that...” Merlin objected, but Arthur just dragged the insolent manservant on top of him.
“Shut up, Merlin,” Arthur said and then pulled Merlin into a kiss.