Chapter Text
“I actually can’t come along this time, Arthur.”
Arthur froze, having been rifling through the pack that Merlin had presented, meticulously packed, just moments before.
“What?”
“I have duties in the castle today.”
“Your duty is to me, Merlin. What could possibly come before your king?”
“Gaius has home visits,” Merlin shrugged, ignoring the silly blush that Arthur describing himself as his anything always elicited.
Arthur blinked, wondering if this was one of Merlin’s little lies, the ones for when he disappeared for days on end and frayed Arthur’s nerves in ways he’d never admit. He wished Merlin would just ask.
“He’s a very capable physician Merlin, I highly doubt he needs your supervision. If anything, you’d probably give him the wrong vial and kill some poor ailing townsperson stone dead.” Probably the only way Merlin would ever manage to kill a person, Arthur laughed lightly to himself.
“I have other responsibilities here, Sire. Other people who might need my supervision.” Merlin looked awkward, distracted, and Arthur didn’t know what to do about it.
“And you don’t mean me-”
“On any other day I would, but obviously now I’m stupidly letting you out of my sight. It would be just like you to die on the one trip I allow you to go on alone.”
Arthur spluttered, splotchy and red. “Allow- let me out of- what- you-” He took a breath and settled on “Everything you do is stupid, Merlin,” but it lacked the usual bite that kept the fondness at bay.
“Do try not to get gored without me present, my Lord,” Merlin said brightly, with a hand clapped to Arthur’s shoulder.
As Merlin strode out of the door, Arthur followed helplessly into the corridor to watch him go. “I’m still the king, Merlin. I could order you.”
“So order me,” he shouted back without slowing, or even turning his head.
Arthur grit his teeth in a scowl and turned on his heel to finish preparing for the trip.
Now, where did Merlin hide his riding gloves?
-
When the knights returned from their hunt, chilled with rain and caked in mud, Merlin was nowhere to be found. There was a hot bath waiting in Arthur’s chambers, though.
How Merlin managed to be entirely useless and actually pretty competent at the same time was truly a marvel.
It took Arthur three attempts to dress himself, not counting actually getting into the corridor, where Leon informed him that his shirt was on backwards. Bloody Merlin.
Clean and warm and feeling like himself again, Arthur marched out to find Camelot’s worst servant.
“Merlin,” he said, pleased, as he strode into Gaius’s rooms with a perfunctory knock. “What is that?”
Merlin had frozen, but the squirming baby in his arms had certainly not.
“Merlin?”
Merlin shook his head as if to clear it. “This is a human child, my Lord,” he said lightly, “ones as small as this are commonly referred to as ‘babies’.”
“Yes, Merlin, but where did you get this one from?”
After a heavy beat of silence, Arthur asked “Why do you look so guilty?”
“I don’t look guilty,” Merlin scoffed, but the tips of his ears were red.
“Tell me you didn’t steal that baby, Merlin.”
Merlin gaped at him. “Of course I didn’t steal the baby. What kind of idiot- never mind,” he trailed off at Arthur’s expression.
“So what, they’re a patient of Gaius’s?”
“Yes,” Merlin said, slowly and a second too late.
“No, they’re not, you’d have said that at the beginning if it were true. And you wouldn’t look so suspicious.”
A thought occurred to Arthur that made his stomach drop well below his knees. “Is this- is that your baby?”
If anything, Merlin looked more offended at being accused of fathering the child than stealing them. “No.” Arthur was so relieved that he let out a little laugh, until Merlin stopped abruptly. “Well. I suppose it is now.”
Arthur sighed and ran a hand over his windburned face. “Only you could be confused about when in a child’s life you become related to them. Do I need to explain the mechanics of where babies come from, Merlin, or had Gaius covered that one?”
The red tinge had spread from Merlin’s ears all down his face and nearly to the base of his neck, now. “I assure you I had nothing to do with making this baby, you absolute prat,” he hissed.
He’d been awkwardly rocking the child the whole time, but the fussy squawks were quickly spiralling into shrill cries.
“Oh, for- give it here, Merlin.” Arthur held his hands out impatiently, nodding mock-encouragingly when Merlin looked unconvinced.
Merlin held the child out with a faintly disgusted twist to his mouth and Arthur took them with sure hands, setting their tiny body against his warm chest. He began wandering about the room, weaving between work benches and miscellaneous furniture in awkward laps while tracing little circles on a tiny back.
The effect was instant, and the room was quiet.
“Ah, see? That was the problem. They hate you.”
“You smug arse. How did you do that?”
“Merlin!” Arthur said with exaggerated horror, “innocent ears! They pick up everything at this age!”
“That age? That baby can’t hold it’s own head up. I don’t think it’ll be learning language, good or bad, any time soon.”
“It’s the principle, Merlin! And besides, it’s a good habit for when-” Arthur paused. “You never said where you got them from.”
“Oh. Someone left it at the door in the night three days past.”
Arthur blinked at him. “Why didn’t you just say that?”
“I just did.”
“After standing there looking like a guilty kidnapper for who knows how long!”
“As opposed to an innocent kidnapper. Well. There you go. Why does it like you anyway?”
“Everyone likes me,” Arthur said smugly, then sighed. “Do you have any idea how many babies one is forced to hold, growing up as a prince? There is no surer way to the heart of the people than by showing you love what they love. And everyone loves their babies.”
“Not me,” Merlin grumbled, grimacing at the sweet thing in Arthur’s arms. Not that the whole picture wasn’t- well. Arthur’s broad chest in comical comparison to the baby against it, sword-roughened hands so gentle as they soothed. The tiny smile as he looked down into the infant’s (finally) sleeping face.
“What’s not to like,” Arthur murmured, and Merlin realised that he wasn’t talking about himself this time.
Merlin could think of a few things. “They’re noisy. Dirty. Smelly. Generally annoying and entirely helpless.”
“Enough about you, Merlin, what about- do they have name?”
The interruption to the usual flow of their sniping threw Merlin off, as if he wasn’t already catastrophically off.
“Elwyn,” he huffed, a little of his hometown’s accent creeping in with the name.
“There is no way you’re genuinely that disgusted by a baby, Merlin,” Arthur laughed, to disguise the stutter of his being at the lilt in Merlin’s voice. “You’ve mucked out my stables at least once a week for years.”
“Let’s not pretend I enjoyed that either, shall we? Haven’t I cleaned up enough of other people’s mess?”
Arthur ignored him in favour of murmuring “Elwyn,” unbearably gently. “A girl, then?”
Merlin shrugged. “As I said, which you’d know if you’d been listening, it can’t speak. So dunno.”
Arthur rolled his eyes, but looked back to the dark hair on little Elwyn’s head. “Have to assume for now, then, and be corrected later.”
“You do usually get things wrong,” Merlin mused.
“I thought I said enough about you,” Arthur replied mildly.
-
When Gaius returned from his house calls (that bit had been true) he found the three of them slumped on Merlin’s thin mattress. The two men were sat with their backs against the wall, the infant girl looking terribly small laid out on Arthur’s forearm. The men might have sat shoulder to shoulder once, but in sleep Merlin had slipped down until his head rested on Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur’s head on his in turn.
It was blissfully peaceful, and Gaius closed the door gently and deflected unnecessary interruptions for the rest of the day.