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Arthur liked to think of himself as a patient man.
Because he liked to think of himself as a patient man, he allowed Merlin to spend ten minutes attempting to light a fire before he allowed himself any sardonic comments.
Sardonic looks he had allowed himself almost immediately, but he was a patient man, not a saint.
Merlin, as usual, failed to appreciate him properly. “I’d like to see you light it then, if you’re so talented,” he said, waving a piece of admittedly quite damp wood around wildly.
Arthur looked down at his messily broken leg - the leg that Merlin had insisted he prop up and not move - before looking back at Merlin.
“I think I’ll stick to supervising,” he said cheerily.
The leg didn’t hurt, at least. Merlin had managed that much.
It didn’t particularly matter, though; what mattered was that he was most certainly not moving from his relatively comfortable position against the cave wall to help Merlin deal with the fire. The rain outside the cave might have finally stopped, but he didn’t trust it to last, and he’d already lost his footing once today; he didn’t think his pride could take an encore.
Merlin looked sheepish, as he should.
Arthur pressed his advantage. “Just start it already and be done with it.”
Merlin was back to squawking in protest. “Oh, if that’s all there is to it - what do you think I’ve been doing for the past ten minutes?”
“I haven’t the slightest,” Arthur said frankly. “Do you need me to close my eyes? Is that it?”
“It’s not stage fright, Arthur, it doesn’t matter if someone’s watching - “
“Well, how was I supposed to know? It’s not like Gaius is teaching me magic, I don’t know how all this works.”
Merlin froze.
Arthur automatically froze with him, ears pricked for any danger that might be approaching.
Except Merlin was staring at him, not at the mouth of the cave.
“What?” he said.
“What?” Arthur repeated.
Merlin swallowed. “Gaius - Gaius isn’t teaching me magic.”
Arthur considered this. “That would explain a lot,” he allowed. “You should ask him to. I’m sure he knows a spell for lighting fires.”
Merlin looked unnaturally pale. “I don’t - I can’t do magic.”
Arthur looked at him flatly. “Merlin. Broken legs don’t stop hurting after a teaspoon of herbs. Especially,” he said, raising his voice over Merlin’s attempts at protest, “when that herb is rosemary. I can recognize some herbs, you know, I’m not a complete idiot.”
Merlin very visibly swallowed back a response to that.
“Also, bandits don’t fall over just because you point at them,” Arthur added. “Not unless there’s magic involved.”
Merlin was still looking unhealthily pale. He really needed to get that fire going. “How long have you known?”
Arthur thought about this.
“How long was I out? After - “ He waved a hand at his mangled leg. The cloud cover had been too heavy for him to judge properly himself.
“About half an hour.”
He added that up. “About two hours, then,” he said cheerfully. “Possibly I will have more of a reaction to it once whatever you’ve done for my leg wears off.” Merlin might not have given him an actual tonic, but he was still feeling some of the usual side effects for Gaius’s pain killing ones; everything felt a little distant, and rosier than it should.
“Right,” Merlin said, sounding rather distant himself.
“The fire?” Arthur prodded helpfully.
“Right,” Merlin repeated before mumbling something that sent the damp wood blazing to life.
That felt very nice, so Arthur relaxed and leaned back against the cave wall. A nap sounded like just the thing at the moment.
“If you kill me - “ Merlin started.
Arthur didn’t bother to open his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous, Merlin. I’ve a broken leg and no horse. If I kill you, I’d have to crawl back to Camelot through the mud, and I don’t think my armor would ever recover.”
“If you tell your father - “
Arthur cracked an eye open. “If I tell my father, he will probably forget it within the next five minutes. That’s how long most things seem to stick with him these days.” That was another thing that would probably bother him more when whatever this was wore off.
“If you kill me once we get back to Camelot - “
“Then I will have to fight Gwaine. And Lancelot. And probably Gwen.” He considered things further. “Possibly Morgana. Do you think she would come avenge you if she found out you had magic?”
“No,” Merlin said, sounding very certain about this.
“Alright,” Arthur said, shrugging. “So just those three, then. And I would have to fire Gaius. And send someone to tell your mother. And hire a new manservant. And,” he said, “I would have to do all of this with a broken leg. If you’re going to replace Gaius someday, Merlin, you really need to have more sympathy for the injured.”
Merlin considered this for a long moment.
“So you’re not going to kill me,” he said at last. “Not because we’re friends or because you’ve seen the error of your ways when it comes to magic, but because it would be inconvenient to you personally.”
“That’s what we’re telling Agravaine,” Arthur agreed and then decided that any further squawking Merlin decided to do would really have to wait because he desperately needed that nap.