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It was raining. That wasn’t remarkable, it was always bloody raining in London. But what was remarkable, or at least mark-able, was the stranger at the bus stop. He was tall and skinny and perched under a bright red umbrella as if, like Mary Poppins, he was about to float off into the sky.
It shouldn’t have been a noteworthy thing, a stranger at Arthur’s bus stop. There are strangers at every bus stop in London. But Arthur took this route to Pendragon Industries every day at the same time (he was determined to live like the common man) and he had taken the time to learn the names of his fellow travelers as well as the days they rode. He knew that Shannon went to babysit her sister’s five year old son Lewis on Mondays and Wednesdays and that Charlie was perpetually running late to his job at the factory but could never manage to catch the earlier bus.
He didn’t know this man who, when Arthur wasn’t staring directly at him, seemed to flicker into mere shadow at the corner of his vision, like he was just a figment of Arthur’s imagination. And yet, if he was just a figment, he was one Arthur couldn’t take his eyes off. Floppy brown hair, high cheekbones, a slender frame...he was captivating. And then he was gone, disappeared as if he had never been there, and Arthur was grudgingly boarding the bus, shaking the water droplets from his thick trench coat and mentally preparing for the long day ahead - finalizing budget reports for his sister Morgana.
After a long day of Very Important Paperwork, as Morgana called it, a few hours of vegging out during a Netflix binge of The Great British Bake-Off, and a somewhat restless night, Arthur was ready to admit that his eyes had played tricks on him. There was no handsome stranger and no red umbrella. And yet, as Arthur trudged up to the stop, again cursing the sudden light rain, there he was. This time, Arthur tried to really take him in. He noticed the man’s clothes, crisp and clean, but sort of odd for the cold city morning: a brown jacket, thin red t-shirt, well-fitting jeans, worn leather boots, and a blue scarf, tied jauntily around the stranger’s neck.
The stranger’s relationship with the dim light of the morning was again playing with Arthur. At first glance, there was a halo of sun around the stranger, and at second glance, a low hanging puff of clouds. And if Arthur looked away for too long, it was increasingly difficult to find the man again, even though the stop was relatively empty and the umbrella should have been a dead giveaway. When the bus arrived, Arthur boarded it and kept his eyes glued to the door, waiting for the stranger to hop on, but he never did. Then, the bus slowly pulled away from the station and Arthur whipped his head around, looking back out the window to find the man, but he was gone like he never existed.
The whole thing was bizarre. Arthur was seeing a handsome man with a red umbrella that no one else seemed to notice who disappeared if he looked too closely. When he tried to explain it to Morgana over their lunch break, she just giggled.
“Oh, Arthur,” she snorted, taking a huge bite of the gourmet panini her girlfriend Gwen had packed for her. “That’s called schizophrenia. Maybe you should see a doctor.”
But Arthur didn’t think it was schizophrenia. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn it was something else. Magic, maybe.
He quickly wolfed down his own sandwich, joking with Morgana and agreeing to see an optometrist, but not a psychiatrist.
The next morning, a Wednesday, he dressed a little nicer than usual and took extra care with the gel in his hair to achieve that charming “I just woke up but I am somehow messy and perfect,” look. For the first time in years, he snagged his good luck charm, a tiny sword in the stone snow globe, from his desk and shoved it into his pocket. He was going to say hello to the man with the umbrella. And maybe, if he felt brave, he was going to ask him out to dinner.
Sure enough, when Arthur arrived, nervously curling his fingers around the glass orb in his pocket, the stranger was standing tall, still perched under the umbrella, even though, as far as Arthur could tell, the sky wasn’t dropping anything but a light mist. He walked up to the man slowly, stopping a few feet away so that, if he lost his nerve, he could simply pretend that was where he wanted to wait for the bus. He snuck a few quick glances at the man, shuffled his feet, cleared his throat, and -
“Hello, mate. Can you see me?”
Arthur was taken aback. “Uh… yes? Of course I can see you.”
“Interesting,” the stranger remarked, looking up at the underside of his scarlet umbrella. “This must have a bit of a malfunction then.”
“Unless I’m mistaken,” Arthur began, still trying to get his feet under him in a conversation that had not begun quite the way he had envisioned. “Umbrellas are supposed to stop the rain from getting you wet...not prevent people from seeing you.”
The stranger looked at him, an amused smirk starting to creep over his elven features. “Huh. Is that so?”
“I mean, yes. Unless you were to, I don’t know, maybe crouch on the ground and cover yourself up? But I do think the bright red would still be a bit of a dead giveaway.”
“And I do think you’re correct,” the stranger said, a warmness creeping into his voice as he held out a delicate hand towards Arthur. “I’m Merlin.”
“Merlin?” Arthur asked, shaking the man’s hand with his right as he pulled his lucky charm from his pocket with his left. “I’m Arthur. I think this might have been fate.”
“Fate?” said the stranger, no - Merlin. He looked closely at the snow globe Arthur was offering him and an unreadable expression clouded his face for a moment. “Ah...yes. The sword in the stone…Arthur, Merlin. Maybe it was…”
He handed the snow globe back to Arthur gently, and Arthur could have sworn a spark of electricity passed between them as their thumbs brushed. But then, the bus was arriving and in an unconscious habit, Arthur moved to board. Merlin didn’t follow through, and even as Arthur looked for him through the window, he had disappeared into the cold gray of the London streets.
At work, Arthur felt like he was floating on air. It didn’t bother him at all when he waltzed in five minutes late and was on the receiving end of one of his father’s “I am the CEO, how dare you defy me,” death glares and when his intern George spilled a spot of coffee on some of Morgana’s Very Important Paperwork, he waved off the poor boy’s frantic apology easily, promising it would be okay and that he’d handle it, even though on another day, he might have fired George for getting him into that kind of hot bean water.
It didn’t take Morgana long to pick up on it, and while she interrogated him over lunch, sharing the homemade pasta Gwen had sent too much of, he just smiled and said he’d met someone, refusing to answer any further questions and just laughing when she asked him if the person he’d met was more of a jock or an imaginary friend type.
Arthur didn’t stop smiling until he crawled into bed that night, and his dreams were, for the first time in months, not horrid nightmares of witches and wars, so it could be argued that maybe the smile stayed in his sleep as well. There was a bounce in his step and a lilt in his voice as he made his way to the bus stop the next morning. His mood made him bold, and he snagged a yellow rose that had just bloomed from his neighbor’s garden as he left, planning to give it to Merlin or Morgana if he lost the nerve to give it to the former.
This time, when he saw the brightness of the umbrella, he made a beeline for it, swallowing down the bees who had made a nest in his throat. When Merlin saw Arthur, he seemed slightly confused, but covered it easily with a smile.
“Oh! You found me again,” Merlin said. “I could have sworn I fixed the spell, but here you are.”
For a second, Arthur didn’t know what to make of the magic joke, but then he realized, it was simply a callback - the Merlin of legend was a wizard. He gestured up to the sky, which had suddenly decided to drop a downpour, seemingly just on them.
“As your king, I command you to share that umbrella,” he joked, dropping his voice an octave and giving Merlin a wink. The man quickly shifted, making room for Arthur.
“Of course, m’lord.”
Arthur felt like some old rhythm, some familiar rapport, had settled between them, and the world was right again.
“Is that for me?” Merlin asked, noticing the rose dangling from Arthur’s fingertips.
“No!” Arthur said, suddenly defensive. “Of course not! Unless...you’re the sort of guy who enjoys yellow flowers, then I s’pose you could take it off my hands.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m a flower person, but I’ll give it a sniff,” Merlin said, reaching down, cupping Arthur’s hand and the rose in his, and bringing it up to his face. Arthur just knew his whole body must have been shaking because Merlin’s touch made him feel like he was on fire. “Mmm...smells nice. You should take it to your sister though, I have no vase for it.”
“My sister?” Arthur asked. “How do you know I have a sister?”
Merlin looked confused. “I don’t know...I guess I just sensed it. Felt right.”
“Well...okay,” Arthur said, brushing off the momentary weirdness. “I guess I can sense that you...you’re an animal person? You probably have a cat?”
“Hey, you’re right!” Merlin exclaimed. “You must be psychic!”
But then he caught Arthur looking at the sleeve of his jacket and the strands of gold cat hair stuck there and they were laughing all over again. They heard the hiss of the bus arriving and Arthur started to walk towards it before Merlin stopped him.
“Mine’s named Garry,” Merlin said. “What’s yours?”
“My cat? I don’t have a cat.”
“No, your sister!”
“Ohh! Right. Of course,” Arthur chuckled. He boarded the steps of the bus in response to the driver’s dirty look. Just as the doors began to close, he shouted back at Merlin. “It’s Morgana.”
Then, the bus lurched away, and though Arthur strained to see, he couldn’t quite make out Merlin, or the strange expression that had fluttered across his face.
The bus ride to work seemed to fly by as Arthur replayed his conversation with Merlin over and over again in his head, vowing that tomorrow, he’d give the man his number or ask him on a real date. Of course, Morgana was waiting for him when he ducked inside, arms crossed and glowering.
“Arthur, you’re late. Again.”
“No! I’m not late,” he said, still in a great mood. “My bus was.”
Morgana rolled her eyes beneath her exquisitely long eyelashes. “You were on the bus, Arthur. Which means, of course, that you are also late.”
“Okay, okay,” Arthur said. “I was late. Sorry, it won’t happen again.”
“It better not. I covered for you with Father, but I won’t again. Maybe you should just buy a car.”
Arthur felt his stomach drop. Ordinarily, he would have given in. He had the money, after all. But the bus stop had started to feel almost magical and he didn’t want to give that up just for the sake of a shorter, more reliable commute.
“Maybe,” he said, hoping that would be enough to appease her, but she didn’t move out of his way, so he held out the yellow rose, still clutched in his hand. “I brought you a flower?”
Morgana accepted it gracefully and slid out of his way, but not before she gave him one last jab. “Did your loverboy give you this?”
Of course, he could tell her the truth, that the “loverboy” making him giddy all day was just a stranger he’d met twice and exchanged maybe 50 words with, but that wasn’t as fun, so he smiled at her, said “Maybe,” with a wink, and returned to his desk for a long day of busywork that felt shorter each time he daydreamed how the next morning might go.
The next morning, Arthur wrote his number in elegant cursive on a scrap of paper lying on the kitchen table and headed out for the bus stop. It took him a second of looking, but sure enough, there was Merlin, wearing the same outfit, holding the same umbrella, and standing in the same way. Merlin had a glazed look on his face, and to Arthur, it looked like the man was looking out over some foreign horizon, reliving an old memory.
Arthur approached him quietly. “Hi stranger, how’s your morning?”
Merlin twitched as if a spell had been broken. “Oh, hello! You found me again?”
“It’s not too difficult, red umbrella and all,” Arthur answered, closing the distance between them.
“Interesting...maybe I’ve lost my touch,” Merlin muttered, flicking at the handle of the umbrella.
There was a second of silence between them and Arthur realized something. The man never boarded the bus. He never went anywhere. He just stayed and stood.
“So, where are you headed?” Arthur asked lightly.
“Nowhere, really.”
“Just like this particular bus stop?”
“I guess so,” Merlin said. “It just feels right...Where are you headed?”
“Just work! Today’s a big day,” Arthur answered, remembering the new client meeting Morgana had circled in red pen on his calendar.
“Too broke to afford a car?” Merlin joked. He’d seen Arthur’s expensive wool coat and patent leather shoes; he knew he wasn’t poor. He just wasn’t sure why a man with money would be riding the bus.
“Oh! Uh, no. I work for Pendragon Industries, actually,” Arthur said, noticing a twitch in Merlin’s face at the word Pendragon. “I just...I want to stay in touch with the common man, you know?”
“Yes, of course. Well, here I am: ‘The Common Man,’” Merlin said, doing a little bow for Arthur, who couldn’t tell if he was being mocked or not.
“You don’t exactly look...common,” Arthur answered. He meant it as a compliment, for Merlin didn’t look ordinary. He looked beautiful, dangerous, and maybe even a little Fey. But Merlin didn’t seem to take it as a compliment.
“I don’t want to look anything,” Merlin hissed. “I don’t even know how you saw me to begin with.”
Arthur was shocked but soldiered on bravely anyway, “I wouldn’t want to see anyone else.”
And then, the bus was pulling up and Arthur found himself slipping the piece of paper into Merlin’s slightly unwilling hand.
“It’s my number. Call me? Please?” Arthur asked, and he waited for an answer as long as he could before boarding the bus, but Merlin just stared unmoving at the paper in his hand, and Arthur finally had to leave.
For the first time, his interaction with Merlin hadn’t left him buoyed, but instead, made him feel as if he was sinking. There was something off about the man, something that didn’t make sense. Why had his face dropped when Arthur mentioned Pendragon Industries? Why would he be waiting at a bus stop each morning only to go nowhere? Why did no one else ever notice him?
Arthur wanted to take a guess at the answers, but nothing logical truly made sense. Many people hated Pendragon Industries, and there were valid complaints that his father’s running of the company was causing real ecological damage to certain parts of the world, but Arthur couldn’t do anything about any of his father’s unethical behavior until either he or Morgana took over as CEO. However, Merlin didn’t give off the vibes of an enraged environmentalist. He just seemed...haunted.
Work dragged by. Arthur checked his phone every ten minutes for a text from an unsaved number, barely being able to put it away even during the very important meeting with his father, Morgana, and Rod, a CEO of a company his father was courting for a new contract. Arthur had briefly dated Rod’s daughter, who he’d affectionately called Mitty, and Morgana never let him forget it. However, despite multiple anxieties weighing on him, the meeting went fine and Arthur rushed home, calling an Uber instead of waiting for the bus back.
Arthur couldn’t separate from his phone, even setting it next to him during a bath that had been intended to help him destress and that had done the complete opposite. Just as he’d given up hope, it chimed. He dived for the phone, reading it instantly.
But, it was only a work email, confirming that Rod had signed the contract and would be happy to work with Pendragon Industries for the foreseeable future. Arthur sighed, and climbed unhappily into bed, dreading having to look Merlin in the eye the next day, knowing the man had declined to text him.
The next morning, Arthur woke, still tired from a restless sleep filled again with nightmares, and found that he had a text waiting on his phone.
“ hey,” it read. “ see you in ten?”
Arthur couldn’t wipe the grin off his face as he sped through his morning routine and even though it was a Saturday and he had nowhere to go, he speed-walked to the bus stop.
This time, Merlin was clearly waiting for him and smiled when Arthur made eye contact. Arthur had intended to ask Merlin a million questions and to tease him for taking so long to text, but when Merlin smiled, it was a brilliant thing and Arthur lost all words.
“Hello Arthur,” Merlin said, stepping over to share his umbrella, even though it still wasn’t raining. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“I’m guessing I couldn’t stop you if I tried,” Arthur said lightly. As they squeezed together under the umbrella, their elbows touched. There were at least three layers of fabric between them, but the warmth of Merlin, the proximity of him, had awakened a heat in Arthur.
“This didn’t use to be a bus stop,” Merlin said softly.
“Is that the secret?” Arthur asked, looking down into Merlin’s blue eyes, which seemed to be catching the sunlight in a way that made them glow almost gold.
“Yes,” Merlin said, looking out over the bus stop, and when Arthur followed his gaze, he realized with a shock that London was gone. He wasn’t looking at a cobblestone street or an endless string of cars or the dull brick of office buildings.
Stretched out before him was a grassy plain that was truncated by a misty lake lapping at its shores. If he squinted, he could just barely make out an island sprouting from the middle of the lake. If he didn’t know better, he might say it looked like the scene from his snow globe…
Arthur was in such a state of awe and confusion that it was difficult to string words together, but he so valiantly attempted it. “How...where? How did you….what?”
“The Lake of Avalon,” Merlin said in answer, and Arthur noticed that, at some point, Merlin’s narrow hand had found its way into his. “We’ve been here before.”
“We...we have?”
Arthur was supremely confused. Sure, there had been something familiar about Merlin, and when they spoke it felt like the last piece of a puzzle falling gently into place, but he was pretty sure he could say for a fact that they’d never met. And they’d certainly never visited a lake before. And...if this was what the bus stop used to be then surely, that was hundreds of years ago, so how could -
Merlin cut off the avalanche of thoughts. “I thought it was you, you know. When I caught you staring at me.”
“You did not!” Arthur exclaimed, taking a moment away from his amazement to defend his honor. “You did not catch me staring! I’m very subtle.”
“You’re not very subtle. And you weren’t supposed to be able to see me at all,” Merlin said, tapping again at the umbrella with his free hand. “My magic recognized you, I guess. It let you in.”
“Magic?” Arthur asked, and he felt a sudden pang of sadness when he realized the look on Merlin’s face was disappointment.
“Do you really not remember?”
“No...What should I remember?”
“It’s alright, I suppose. It did take me a few days to be 100% sure it was you. But...the snow globe, Morgana, Pendragon Industries...It’s definitely you.”
“I can’t be anyone else,” Arthur joked, still a few steps behind.
“I’ve waited here for so long, you know. Every morning of every day for 1500 years,” Merlin said. There was a faraway look in his eyes as he continued. “I thought one day you’d just climb out of the lake, dripping wet, and stumble into modern-day London. Stumble into my arms, maybe.”
Though what Merlin was saying was completely ridiculous, it had an unmistakable ring of truth. But Arthur could tell he was still missing something crucial that would make all Merlin’s riddles make sense.
And then Merlin turned to him, searching Arthur’s face for something. An answer maybe...but before Arthur could give him anything, the man was leaning in, hand sliding up Arthur’s cheekbone, gently drawing their lips together, and the world was set ablaze.
It was a kiss to destroy the world or to forge it, burning away all the curtains and frayed edges. Suddenly, Arthur could see clearly. He could see London as it was and as it had been. The spires of Camelot, the luscious forests, the cave of crystals, he could see it all.
And he remembered. He remembered everything. In Merlin’s embrace, in Merlin’s arms, he remembered the last time he had been here, cradled as Merlin watched him take his last breath. The Lake of Avalon had swallowed him whole and spit him out, nearly 1500 years later, and they had found each other yet again, drawn together by a bus stop and a red umbrella and the strings of Fate itself.
They were Arthur and Merlin, the King and his Sorcerer, Once and Forever, and they were kissing under a clear sky that shone with the light of a thousand sunrises not shared.
When they broke apart, at last, needing to come up for air, Arthur realized the light wasn’t coming from the sun. It was coming from Merlin.
“I missed you, clotpole,” Merlin said.
Arthur answered in the only way he could.
“And I love you, dollophead.”