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Historians will call them anything but.
Arthur’s armour was polished, wiped from its single particle to the wide range of the metal sheets, the Sun reflecting its rays in perfect ambience to the colouring. “Thanks, Merlin,” he had said, hand touching Merlin’s shoulder as he left to his duties, a smile coating his expression and the awkward contact causing Merlin to smile back. The red scarf tracing his neck felt tight, constricting around his neck, and he pulled at the cloth roughly as it fell from his shoulders. His hair had grown out, dangling in the black strands as it tickled the connecting area of his neck to his back, a stubble shimmering its rough beads of hair at his chin.
He had watched Arthur stumbled across the field, catching his attention as they smiled at each other with an awkward muse, the king ending up back on his feet as he drew away and sparred with his opponent. Merlin felt like an idiot, eyes clung on to the fluid movements of the monarch’s twists and turns, the magic coursing through his veins amplifying his feelings as it added on the force of his desires. The greying age of his hair hurts as he closes his eyes shut, back cracking as his bones weigh under.
Arthur had nice lips, Merlin regards. They are simply nice, beautiful lips, that of which he imagined to himself. He noticed the flustered companion of a blush tainting his cheeks, a stain of love smudged with its own fingerprint. Merlin continued to look at Arthur, barely aware of what he was doing, and simply made himself a goof because Arthur smiled. When Arthur smiled, there was always his lips, teeth, and happiness on collection. Merlin regards it again for a moment, and sighs as he admits to himself that the emotion is love. He loves it. Even in his memory, as he attempts to grasp again the happiness lost in the eyes and creasing his features, Merlin fades a little. His smile was magic.
“Horseplay.” Arthur called it that, and Merlin felt obliged to give a little of a try. He felt amused, any time that he felt exactly like that of embarrassed, ready to be aware of the fact that there were consequences. The construct of Arthur’s face as he realises and turns to face him makes Merlin feel a slight ashamed emotion creep along his neck, like the way the building up of human exhaustion is emptying into the streets of cars and gas pipes, and Merlin feels surprised that he can remember that one emotion so clearly. Love.
A klutz, he reminisces on the times in where Arthur said things that hit his heart in ways that he did not understand. He remembers being told that he cannot keep secrets, even if his life depends on it, and he can feel the strong replica of wanting to use his magic there just for Arthur. When they exchanged insults or lines, he felt so strong in regard to how they were reacted to. There was a connection, one Merlin so desperately craves for, and he holds on dear to when he could easily touch on it and keep it still.
He misses. He yearns. There is a time, Merlin with his aged body and aching mind, where he wishes he had watched longer.
But history hates lovers.