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English
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Published:
2022-06-22
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1,417
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1/1
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Practice Makes Perfect (Sense to Arthur)

Summary:

When Merlin confessed to practicing magic, Arthur thought he meant magic. Not, you know, MAGIC.

Notes:

It's a little rough.

Work Text:

By some miracle, Arthur’s great-aunt Agnes was still alive. Unfortunately, this meant that Arthur had to write to her and that she in turn had to pretend to be pleased to receive a letter from him.

Arthur was convinced that his job was the more difficult of the two. 

What else could he say beyond comments on the weather and how well Morgana or his hunting dogs were doing? The state of the wheat crops? The quality of the chicken at dinner?

And on top of that, Merlin was being quiet.

Oddly quiet.

Too quiet.

Perhaps it was because of a hangover after spending yet another night at the tavern or wherever it was he snuck off to when he thought Arthur wouldn’t need him. 

In the absence of off-key singing or whistling, Arthur couldn’t think. But he wasn’t about to tell Merlin to start making some noise after all the times that he’d asked him to shut up. 

On any other day, this would have been a blessing. 

With a sigh, he dipped his quill into and looked down at what he had already written. 

Dearly esteemed Aunt Agnes-

Like a child, he squirmed in his seat. 

“Arthur, I need to tell you something.”

At the shaky, serious tone of Merlin’s voice, Arthur looked up at Merlin, setting his dripping quill down on the mostly blank piece of paper. “What? What is it? Is something wrong?”

As he stood in front of the desk, Merlin twisted the cleaning rag in his hands. “No, no, not at all. At least, not yet,” he mumbled. “It’s…it’s about what I’ve been doing in the evenings.”

Arthur raised his eyebrows.

Well. It was about time that Merlin did some confessing.

This ought to be good, he thought as he crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Well, what about?”

For several seconds, Merlin stood there, staring at Arthur and biting his bottom lip. “I-I-”

“Yes?”

How hard could it be to admit to having five-too-many pints?

“I practice magic.”

Arthur blinked.

That was not what he had been expecting. Although now that he thought about it, it made sense. While searching Merlin’s room under Uther’s orders once, he’d seen a deck of cards, and Merlin always seemed to like doves. But he didn’t see why Merlin had to make such a big deal out of it.

“So?” he prodded. 

Merlin looked as though he were about ready to pass out. “You’re not upset?”

“Why on earth would I be upset?”

“Because - because-”

“It makes no difference to me what little hobbies you have in your spare time as long as you don’t let it interfere with your service to me.”

“Little…hobby,” Merlin echoed. “You call practicing magic a little hobby? You’re fine with it?”

“Listen, Merlin, I’m trying to write a letter here. I don’t have the time to deal with your little issues. I don’t care what you do in your free time, so yes, I suppose I’m fine with it. Was there anything else you needed?”

Mouth agape, Merlin stared at him as though he were looking at a ghost.

“Well?”

“No,” Merlin stammered. “No, that was it.”

“Good. Now, get out of here. Go…do something useful. I think the knights needed help polishing their armor.”

He knew for a fact that they didn’t, but by the time Merlin got around to finding them, he was sure to be distracted by something and disappear for four hours.

Enough time for Arthur to finish this letter.

“All right, I’ll…just…go, then.” Merlin made some kind of awkward motion with his hands and then fled from the room.

Arthur sighed again. Now that Merlin was out of the way instead of moping around the room like a spirit, he could finally get some headway on this letter. Looking down again, he discovered that the ink had bled through the page and ruined his current attempt. He removed the quill, crumpled the paper up, and threw it over his shoulder.

After dipping his quill into the inkwell anew, he stared down at the blank sheet of paper.

Dearly esteemed Aunt Agnes-

…

Arthur was seconds away from dying, and he had two final thoughts:

He’d never finished that letter to his great-aunt Agnes, and he was glad that he’d sent Merlin from the room before he could witness this.

He couldn’t move.

When he tried to stand, all he could manage was a twitch of his fingers.

“How does it feel now?” the sorcerer sneered above the ringing in his ears. “How does it feel to be weak and powerless as you watch your end approach?”

Arthur groaned.

“Making pathetic noises isn’t going to alert your guards. I disposed of them.”

And he was soon to follow, it appeared.

He cursed himself for it.

Of all the ways to die - alone, in his bedroom, without being able to put up even a decent fight in defense of himself.

His corpse was going to look like a fool.

“Goodbye, Arthur Pendragon.”

The sorcerer started chanting something, but before her eyes could turn gold or she could get more than three syllables out of her mouth, a crash came from the other side of the room, and she whirled around to face the cause of it.

Merlin tumbled out of Arthur’s wardrobe.

Oh, goodness. 

Wasn’t he supposed to be in the stables? 

How in the blue blazes had he gotten there? 

“Leave now, and nobody gets hurt,” Merlin said, brandishing one of Merlin’s greaves as a weapon.

The sorcerer laughed.

Arthur groaned again.

Merlin was going to die, and all he could do was lie on the floor like a rock - of all the stupid, stupid-

Merlin threw the greave at her head.

It missed by a mile.

With three quick words, the sorcerer summoned fire to her palm.

So burning it was, then, Arthur thought as he struggled to get to his feet, far too late to do anything but face his own death standing.

Merlin yelled something - gibberish to Arthur.

A vase from Great-aunt Agnes that was sitting on a table as decoration went flying across the room.

It connected with the back of the sorcerer’s head and shattered.

Eyes rolling, she collapsed in a heap in the middle of Arthur’s floor.

For a second, nobody moved.

Merlin had used magic against magic , Arthur realized as he braced himself against the wall.

And he didn’t seem to care that he’d just done it in front of Arthur.

“Don’t worry, that knocked her out cold. She won’t be getting up anytime soon. I think.”

“What-” Arthur started, his mind racing. “What was that?” 

As he bent over the body, Merlin looked up, confused. “What was what?”

“That!” Arthur thrust his hands in that direction. 

“Her?”

“No! What you just did!”

“Magic?”

“Yes, that! Merlin, that’s illegal.” 

And now he didn’t know what to do because he knew what he was supposed to do, but what he was supposed to do wasn’t what he wanted to do and his head was throbbing from hitting that blasted wall-

“I told you about that already!”

He most certainly had not. 

“When?” Arthur demanded as Merlin started dragging the unconscious - or possibly dead - sorcerer across the room. “When did you tell me?”

“The other week. I told you I practice magic, and you yelled at me for bothering you.” 

Practicing magic…practicing magic.

Wait a minute.

He remembered now. 

The conversation they’d had while he was trying to write that stupid letter.

“I thought you meant card tricks at the tavern!”

“You’re a Pendragon! What other meaning could it have?” 

Arthur’s mouth was opening and closing like a fish. 

What else was he supposed to think? The idea of Merlin being a sorcerer was ludicrous - he’d proven the point himself on several occasions. 

But now that he thought about it, Merlin was too much of an oaf and klutz to master the finer points of card tricks and hiding doves up his sleeves.

And Merlin had just used magic in front of him. 

He’d made a horrible assumption.

As he watched Merlin try to get the sorcerer’s body into the wardrobe for safekeeping, Arthur realized that somehow, he needed to clean up the grand mess that had just been created.

Perhaps he should have just let her kill him.

But at that moment, there was only one thing he could do -

He started helping Merlin shove the body into the wardrobe.