Work Text:
Arthur didn't hunt anymore. He'd left that behind in the Dark Ages, where Merlin quite frankly felt it belonged. Nevertheless, Merlin still found himself spending long hours tramping around after Arthur, Albion under their feet and the wide sky above. Rocks shifted, rivers wrote new lines, and the ground they trod was both new and ancient, changed but the same. Just like him. Just like Arthur.
No more crossbows, no more hand-sharpened spears; now Arthur had a complicated GPS orienteering app on his phone, all-weather hiking boots, a pocket knife with more blades and functions than one man could possibly need, and mirrored sunglasses that, more than all the rest, annoyed the bloody hell out of Merlin because they kept him from seeing Arthur’s eyes.
Merlin was glad, truly he was, that Arthur's love of his land remained unchanged. He only wished Arthur would choose to express it at slightly different times. Warmer times. Times far removed from a winter's dawn. The quiet, lonely hills, pale sunshine, and fresh powdered snow were all inarguably pretty, but Merlin would be perfectly happy enjoying them through the windows of their room at the B&B while still snuggled up in bed.
"You're moaning inside your head, aren't you," Arthur said, halting suddenly. "I can always tell. Your lips do a thing."
"My lips," Merlin said with dignity, "do not do a 'thing'."
He didn't actually need to see beyond the sunglasses to know what Arthur's eyes looked like right now: insufferably smug. "Tell that to someone who doesn't know a thing when he sees one," Arthur suggested, then strode off, thick-heeled boots making deep tracks in the snow.
“I’ll be happy to share my thoughts with you, though, since you asked,” Merlin said, half-shouting. He had a lot of experience with making certain Arthur could hear him even as he forged on ahead, and his voice carried clearly in the still of the morning. “My nose is cold. My ears are cold. Every single one of my fingers is cold -”
“And you know a dozen spells to sort all that out," Arthur threw back over his shoulder.
“Don’t tempt me,” Merlin muttered. “Or there won’t be any snow left in the Lake District by the time I’m done."
It was infuriating when Arthur wasn’t actually wrong. And all right, perhaps it was being awake that Merlin objected to right now more than anything else, but there was no complaining about that without being accused of being a lazybones. Which he was not. There was nothing lazy about preferring to still be in bed at the break of dawn on a holiday.
Oh, certainly, the exertion would have its rewards: a full English breakfast in their hosts’ cheerful kitchen, rashers and eggs and hand-sliced bread, spread with creamy pats of sweet local butter. They’d have a bath after that, in the wide, deep tub that fit them both very well, usually with Merlin's back plastered to Arthur's broad chest. They'd linger, because Merlin could keep the water steaming hot for as long as he liked, and maybe they’d exert themselves a bit more, and after that it shouldn't be hard to coax Arthur back into bed….
"If you stopped dawdling we'd be there already," Arthur called.
"Be there? I didn't know this hike was meant to have a destination. I thought it was just a never-ending circle of torture."
"Well, if that’s what you wanted, why didn’t you say," Arthur replied, but he stood and waited, one gloved hand reaching out, and when Merlin grew close enough he grabbed his fingers and squeezed. "Come on. Nearly there."
Arthur’s definition of ‘nearly’ turned out to be ‘fifteen minutes of trudging through snow,’ but eventually they rounded a bend, passed through a grove of trees with snow-dusted limbs, and emerged on the frozen shore of a wide icy lake.
Arthur dropped Merlin’s hand then, unshouldered his backpack, and began fishing around in it. "Here," he said, handing Merlin a pair of ice skates, and drawing out another pair for himself.
"You’re -" Merlin stared at the skates. "You're serious."
“No, Merlin, I carried these all the way here for a joke." He waggled his blades at Merlin. “Lace up.”
The mental image of Arthur Pendragon on ice skates was one Merlin's brain refused to conjure even now that the blades dangled from his hand, much less had ever dreamed up before. It wasn't that he thought Arthur would be bad at it; no, in fact he'd probably be bloody fantastic, all power and grace. It was the sheer frivolity of it that Merlin was having a hard time with. Arthur skating.
He’d like to see it, actually. But there was something else Merlin was having trouble with, and unfortunately, it was a deal-breaker.
"Well, I’m sorry, but you’re not going out there. It’s far too early in winter for the ice to be thick enough to support our weight!"
Those glasses stared at Merlin for a long moment. "Oh, I understand," Arthur finally said. "You think I’m going to laugh at you when you fall down. Which you will." He placed a dramatic hand on his heart. "But I won’t, I promise."
"I don’t trust lakes,” Merlin said, stubborn. Of course Arthur would - he'd focus on the ‘kept his body safe and sound after death’ part, not the ‘kept him away from Merlin for over a thousand years’ part.
"Funny, you've never seemed to object to lake goddesses all that much."
"She’s not here," Merlin said, ignoring the deliberate bait in Arthur's tone. "And she’s a goddess for a reason. This isn’t a bathtub. If the ice is too thin, I can't control it. Water goes its own way."
Of course Merlin got to carry the skates all the way back for ruining Arthur’s surprise, despite having never encouraged Arthur to bring them in the first place. He made a little show of staggering when he shouldered the pack, and Arthur seemed to fall for it, even though he had to know full well that Merlin could turn the pack light as a feather.
Later, back in bed, skin flushed and warm and Arthur snoring with his mouth open beside him, Merlin tapped at his phone until he found what he needed: a nice synthetic outdoor rink in Carlisle city centre. Arthur would complain about Christmas shoppers, and Merlin would point out that Morgana’s Yule gifts weren’t going to buy themselves. He’d drag Arthur to the magic shop and then Arthur would drag him to the rink, where Merlin would skate very slowly while Arthur held him by the elbows and shouted instructions that Merlin would only halfway hear through his beanie hat, and his nose would go desperately pink.
Merlin tucked his phone under his pillow and curled up against Arthur's side, golden morning sun slipping in through the curtains to wash warm over them both. He pressed a kiss beneath Arthur’s ear, then another at the corner of his lips, before snuggling down with his head on Arthur’s shoulder.
For now, together, they could sleep.