Chapter Text
Merlin was a year old. He had taken his first step a handful of months ago, and he’d grown tired of his simple brick-in-slot toys. His mother put him in a red plaid onesie that morning, which she said went adorably with his jet black hair. He was dragging his pudgy finger over the criss-crossing green lines that decorated his outfit. Merlin drew a sort of circle-ish shape over the lines, as he was still uncoordinated, and then he glanced towards the blocks. He dragged the rhombus towards himself, traced the edges with his finger. They were the same, he registered in a disconnected way. He could see a pattern on his clothes, and the thought made him smile.
His mother called his name, and entered the nursery to see him alternating between circling the green lines and tracing the wooden edges. She smiled proudly and set his cousin down next to him for their playdate.
Merlin didn’t play well his cousin. She was older by a few months, but more adventurous and less inquisitive. She smashed towers, and took his toys. They were very different babies.
Growing bored of his patterns, Merlin had his mother take out a puzzle. He slotted the pieces together slowly, as a baby would. His mother sat on the floor beside him, watching his brain work and grow. He was sometimes distracted by her reprimanding his cousin, but he was quick to go back to his picture.
He had one piece left, and he lunged for it, excited to have everything fit- when cousin Kenna grabbed it and promptly shoved it in her mouth. Merlin cried out in anger as she drooled over the piece. He thrust out his tiny hand and whined his first words. “Give it!”
Merlin was four, and he didn’t want to start preschool. He told his mother as much as he squirmed away from her comb and scribbled out the letters he was already in the process of learning. So far he had perfected M, E, L, I, and N. His Rs always looked a little wonky.
“You love learning,” she assured him, managing to find enough of a grip to swipe the comb twice through his hair. She patted him on the head and replaced his pencil with a piece of toast.
Merlin, as it turned out, did not like learning. He liked knowing, and finding out- but learning was a wretched thing. It meant sitting in a colourful room full of imagination toys and foam, singing songs and answering the same questions over and over. He had his moments, of course, where he enjoyed those things- but the experiences were few and far between.
During snack time he managed to convince his teacher to actually teach him something, despite it only being his first day and well before curriculum set in. He knew his alphabet, numbers, days, months- she scrambled to find something appropriate to teach him. By the end of the second week, she was arranging for a meeting with his parents and the principal to discuss his giftedness.
Merlin was six years old, and he was eavesdropping. He heard his mother whisper to his father during the night. They had previously never considered more than one child, but now she was telling him that she felt lonely sometimes, as if she had an empty nest already, with a child less than a decade old. He was mature and independent, which was wonderful she said- but almost to a fault. She felt unfulfilled, and she wished for another child. Merlin, who was not well versed in complex adult emotions, felt a burning embarrassment. And a bit of anger. When he touched his face, he realized the sadness was most visible of all.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want a sibling (he didn’t, but that was beside the point). His mother thought him to betoo good. He was too smart for her to teach him anything, and he was too independent to need her coddling. Merlin knew how to read, write, speak, and learn. He didn’t want physical affection quite as much as most children, and when it was forced upon him, he often wriggled out of his mother’s arms and disappeared with whatever gadget he was working on to hide in one of their empty rooms. Really, that only meant one thing: he wasn’t good enough at being a child.
Merlin made it a point to be more affectionate. He let his mother comb his hair, and he didn’t wriggle away from her embrace. One evening when she was stirring a pot of soup, he even went up to her and hugged her waist. He showed her his notebook and the things he wrote in it, he let her play with his latest creation. He even let her explain his math homework.
Nonetheless, five months later he was told he would be having a younger sibling.
Merlin cried that night, the first time since he eavesdropped. After that he bottled up his emotions, let his frustrations out in the solitude of his tinkering rooms, or on the field, jogging- admittedly, he didn’t really believe that his attempts at depending on his mother could last, either. So he gave them up. And he didn’t cry again until the day two identical screaming baby girls came into the world.
Merlin was twelve, and he didn’t have any friends. For most of his life, this had never presented itself as a problem to him. He prefered silence and working on equations, so being alone was ideal. He got companionship from his mother, his sisters, his cat- all in small measure, but enough to be content.
The children used to whisper about Merlin behind his back. He had a dreadfully serious expression, even as a young boy. Whether his face reflected his personality or if it was the other way around was a frequently asked question- one that never ceased to cause the gaggle of mean little girls at his private school to giggle. But they never spoke badly of him, as far as he knew- he was raised to be polite and accommodating, and if you asked nicely, you could copy his homework. His peers left him alone, save for asking for help. This wasn’t a problem for Merlin.
But when he turned twelve, his sisters were turning five- and already they were much more sociable than he was at that age. They didn’t excel as well academically, but they knew enough to question him at dinner and ask why he never brought friends home from school. The question confused him. For the longest time, he hadn’t even realized that was something a person would want to do.
However, the challenge of friendship intrigued him. So Merlin studied it.
He watched the boys playing football. In their excitement, they would shout obscenities and shove each other. Their knees were scraped and their clothes muddy. The game looked boring to Merlin; a lot of running back and forth, often not even touching the ball.
He watched the girls playing kickball. He wasn’t a fan of the game to begin with- the premise seemed superior to football, but the last time they’d played it in class he had kicked it nearly behind him and all the other children laughed at him. These girls were nice in class, but the competitive nature of the game had them jeering and clapping as bad as the football crowd. A girl in the outfield, one of the quiet ones that he always sat next to during lessons, offered him a spot on the team. Unprepared for the offer and fearful of being found out for his true intentions, Merlin shook his head and went to find another group.
He found a crowd consisting of both boys and girls. They sat against the fence at the very back of the school yard, arranged in a loose circle. Their entertainment was only each other, depending solely on whatever conversation came to mind to keep the recess interesting. This thought disturbed him. A couple of children sat just outside of the group; two were reading, one was drawing, another was simply popping dandelion heads. He thought he might be able to see himself sitting a safe distance between the readers and the dandelion abuser, writing in his notebook or tinkering. But the conversation half of the group was sometimes loud and distracting, with two or three breaking off every once in awhile and chasing each other around the circle.
He studied the group of kids drawing in chalk on the pavement. They were younger than him, and were often toting skinned fingers from slipping grips. He couldn’t think of anything he would write or draw that he wanted others to see, so he moved on.
The children playing skip rope sang songs that annoyed him. Jumping around seemed ridiculous, and double dutch was intimidating.
He found a small group of friends that talked amongst themselves, played whatever little game they wanted. It looked promising, because one of their members didn’t want to join in the games and they let him be. But then he saw one of them snatch his toy away and tease him until he begged for it back.
Merlin despised the kids that would run in twos with a scarf or a rope of some kind between them, trying to wrangle innocent walkers.
He watched the kids playing hopscotch for only a moment before ruling that out.
There was a group of people playing some imaginary game. There were two kings, and they ruled their kingdoms from opposite sides of the chestnut tree. Their ‘armies’ would wage war every ten minutes or so, participate in an overly dramatic battle sequence, then drag their ‘dead’ back to their respective sides to start over again. The entire thing sounded stupid.
No, Merlin decided, I don’t need friends. They are loud, different, dirty, and they take your things.
When his sisters asked him again why he never talked about his friends, he declared, “I don’t like people.”
Merlin was fifteen, and Ailsa invited him to lunch at her table. She was the quiet girl from class, from the kickball game. He didn’t answer her at first, confused by the offer. He’d spent his time at this new school alone, eating his lunch in the empty classroom he had claimed as his own. Again, he wasn’t disliked by his peers, but he was largely ignored. Merlin hadn’t even realized Ailsa went to the same school as him still. But something in her eyes said the offer was sincere, and important to her. So he agreed.
Ailsa’s group of friends consisted mostly of the children that sat in a circle, the one with the chasing game and the dandelion murderer. Apparently she’d grown out of kickball quickly after he was caught watching, and the new group had welcomed her with open arms. Merlin felt a pinch of regret in not testing their group. Somehow, they managed to stick together into secondary school.
When he arrived at their table, lunch bag in hand, Ailsa introduced him to the students he grew up with. And then the kids that were new additions, ones he had never met before, save for one older boy from his calculus class. They all knew him by name (of course, his mother bestowed upon him a fatally unique title) and grade average; they were happy to accept him at their table, both for novelty and homework help.
Merlin spent that lunch in silence. The teenagers around him talked in an excited but subdued way, as if they feared that a professor might be lurking over their shoulders at any moment, ready to pounce on them for the casual cursing that slipped into their vocabulary.
Next lunch, the boy from calculus asked him for help on a question. He didn’t notice that the rest of the table had gone silent until he was finished railing off the complex formulas with barely a breath between them. His peers looked awestruck, amazed that someone their age could memorize numbers like that. The only ones that weren’t staring blankly were Ailsa and the boy. Ailsa looked impressed, but not surprised. And the boy was grinning at him, amused as he asked, “Could you explain that again, slower?”
A month passed by quickly, mornings and evenings spent alone and content, afternoons spent observing the lunch crew. Merlin fit surprisingly well into the dynamic, or so he thought- the group knew each other well enough that conversation was smooth and expected, and he was only called upon for brief comments before they moved on to something else. Merlin was engrossed in sketching the blueprints to a new invention (he was drawing the inner mechanisms of a tube-like propulsion system, one that could fit in a walking stick or an umbrella, perhaps) when the dark haired girl next to Ailsa squealed and smacked her arm. He looked up from his book to pay attention. They were making plans to meet at the girl’s house before going to the dance. Merlin grimaced.
“Are you coming with us, Merlin?” Lottie asked. “My da has space for one more, if you wanna get there early.”
“I’m not going at all,” he replied.
“Come on, Merlin!” Ailsa held her hands together in front of her face, pleading. “You have to come to the dance! We’ll all be there, it’ll be lots of fun!”
“And no one will force you to dance, either,” Calum from calculus grinned. Merlin closed his notebook, self-conscious about the amount of attention directed at him.
“I don’t….” Merlin hesitated. He couldn’t think of a proper excuse to get out of going, other than he didn’t want to. “It’s not really my kind of place. I don’t know what I would wear.”
“I’m sure you’ve got something. Why don’t we go to your place one day and help you pick something out?” Ailsa was smiling, and he couldn’t find it in his heart to say no. He could, however, make more excuses.
“My father doesn’t like many visitors.”
“Sorry, friends,” Calum said to the group as a whole. “Looks like it’s just the three of us, then.”
Merlin raised an eyebrow. “Cheeky.”
“I prefer, ‘cunning.’”
That Friday, Ailsa and Calum accompanied him home for the first time. They graciously greeted the driver of the private car, and chatted happily on the drive to his house. It felt strange, inviting someone into his private routine. But he also felt that of everyone he knew from school they were the ones he’d like to invite.
“May I?” they both asked. Manners were important at their private school, and it was a good reminder that they both grew up in a relatively similar way to him. Merlin nodded. Aisla ran to his closet, and Calum sat on the end of his bed. He stood between the two, unsure what to do.
Ailsa spent the next hour sifting through his closet, coming out with hangers of clothes and holding outfits in front of him. More often than not, she screwed up her mouth and shook her head.
“How about this?” Calum asked, laughter in his voice. He’d strolled into the closet after getting bored of glancing around Merlin’s bare room. He was holding up the awful floral jumper his aunt gave him for his last birthday.
“Absolutely not.” His friends laughed.
“Alright, fine. How about this, then? I’m serious this time.” Calum raised another jumper, but this time it was a deep gray with more casual, tasteful stitching on the front.
Ailsa looked at it skeptically. “It’s nice, but it’s not exactly… dance-y.”
“I’ll give ya that. Why don’t you ever wear this, Merlin?”
Merlin shook his head and suggested they keep looking.
When Merry and Maisie got home from ballet practice that night, they were shocked and overjoyed to hear Merlin had friends over. They were even more thrilled to hear he’d brought a girl home. After flitting around his bedroom for a while, his sisters said as much. Ailsa blushed a bright red and smiled, insisting they were only friends. Merlin closed his eyes in frustration. Calum laughed and clapped him on the shoulder for a short moment. Merlin wondered again how so much had changed in only a month.
When the night of the dance arrived, Merlin changed into the semi-casual dress outfit Ailsa and his sisters picked out, then drove to Lottie’s house. He didn’t fail to notice that his tie matched Ailsa’s dress, or that Lottie and a couple other girls were smiling at him suspiciously. He spent the majority of the dance in the corner of the gymnasium, idly listening to whatever conversation passed by him. Calum kept him company for a while, but the call of the dance floor won out in the end. Merlin was fine with this routine but not upset that the night was nearing an end when Ailsa scurried up to him shyly.
“Merlin, will you dance me?”
He considered saying no. He didn’t like dancing, he didn’t like being the center of attention, he didn’t like touching people all that much. But Ailsa was smiling so shyly, so hopefully, and her flushed face matched her hair in an endearing way. He pushed off the wall, and she grinned. “Aye.”
They didn’t make contact until they’d reached the center of the dance floor, and with perfect timing the last song tapered out into a slow, romantic tune. He placed his hands high on her waist, and she touched his shoulders. They moved in small circles. Merlin had been forced to attend classes as part of his etiquette training, but Ailsa hadn’t. He wouldn’t have broken out a waltz in a hall full of people anyway.
They became less awkward as their bodies became used to the sway of the song. Ailsa finally met his eyes, and her smile was fond. He felt a growing sense of dread that more change was to come.
When the song’s final note rang out and couples around them broke apart or clutched tighter, Ailsa stood on her toes to kiss him. He didn’t know what to feel.
Merlin was sixteen. He and Ailsa had been dating for four months. She got him a new notebook for his birthday- it was bound leather, and had the initials ‘MD’ pressed into the bottom right corner. Calum got him a fancy jumper (much like the others that collected dust in his closet) and a pen to match Ailsa’s present.
In the five months since he was invited to the new table, he’d grown rather attached to the two of them. They were nearly inseparable at school. This bothered him less than he would have expected, because both of them accepted that he was an introverted inventor that needed his silence sometimes. It confused him the first time Ailsa tried to exclude Calum.
“Can I come over this weekend?”
“Of course,” Merlin replied, not looking up from his notes. “I’ll ask Calum if he’s busy.”
“Do you think… maybe, you could not do that?” This made him forget his book.
“Why not?”
“No reason, really. I just thought it might be nice.”
Merlin accepted, albeit hesitantly. He understood her thought process a bit more when she put a record on in the basement and placed his hand over her shirt. He knew, deep down, that he hadn’t been giving his girlfriend the privacy she’d wanted. Weeks passed and they explored themselves and each other, but still Merlin felt a little guilty each time they hid their plans from Calum. He’d never had real friends before, and it felt like cheating to exclude one. Merlin put more effort into planning things to do with all three of them as well.
“May I?” Calum’s hand hovered over his pen. It was the one that he’d bought Merlin for his birthday, his favourite pen. Merlin glanced down it, eyes tracing his engraved name. He nodded.
“Of course.”
Calum smiled. They were both lounging on Merlin’s bed, various papers scattered around them as they reviewed. Merlin’s mother had kicked them out of the dining room so she could prepare for her dinner party, and he found that he didn’t really mind. Calum seemed much more at home without prying eyes on him. Agnes would pester him with questions about his life, and would hover to make sure he was treating her son right. The housekeeper watched him like a hawk, as if he was a mess waiting to happen. Merlin’s sisters fancied him terribly and wouldn’t leave him alone. But behind closed doors with only his friend for company, Calum relaxed, did his homework, and smiled so naturally. He scooped up Merlin’s pen and continued on in his notes where his had died out.
They rarely hung out without Ailsa. Her aunt’s third wedding meant that the family was off to some tropical destination island, and Ailsa would be gone for the rest of the week. Merlin missed her presence and the casual conversation his two friends always managed to keep, but it was nice to spend time with Calum alone, too.
Dinnertime came and passed, acknowledged only by the housekeeper, Fergie, sneaking upstairs to bring them covered plates. The chatter of the party downstairs trickled through the open door. Merlin hated social parties. Or he hated the ones his father had to put on, at least. He was glad they were allowed to be excluded. Calum, however, grew restless.
“I just think we need to do something,” Calum declared after he set his plate aside and stretched out on his side of the bed. “It’s just wrong that they get to have all fun, don’t you think?”
“They can have their fun,” Merlin said, half focused on his sketches still. “Those parties are terrible.”
“There’s gotta be some fun we can have, just the two of us?” Calum smiling devilishly when Merlin’s gaze snapped towards him. He folded his arms behind his head. “Something new. Something we’ve never done before.”
“What do you have in mind?”
Calum’s eyes fell towards Merlin’s notebook for a moment, seemingly deep in thought. Then they dragged back up to meet his. Merlin felt his stomach drop before the idea was pitched. “We’ve never gone down to your beach before.”
“We’re not supposed to leave my room,” Merlin said.
“We can sneak out.”
“Calum,” he whined, doubtful.
“You won’t get in trouble,” Calum promised, sliding off of the bed. He gently pulled Merlin’s notebook out of his hands, grinning when it came away easily. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Merlin wouldn’t admit how hard his heart was beating, not even years later when he recounted this story to his closest friend. Calum slowly eased the bedroom door open, peeking his head out to check if Fergie had come back upstairs. He was acting like a spy from one of those ridiculous Bond movies. Finding the coast clear, he motioned for Merlin to follow him.
“This is my house,” Merlin whispered, annoyed. “Shouldn’t I go first?”
“Absolutely not,” Calum shot back quietly. “You’d ruin it.”
“How do you reckon?”
Calum suddenly threw his arm out, stopping Merlin in his tracks. A bubbly, drunken couple were stumbling up the stairs and towards the bathroom. He grinned over his shoulder as they passed. “Like that. Sorry, love. You’d be a terrible spy.”
Merlin glared at him halfheartedly, but the jab didn’t mean much. The pair quickly padded down the stairs. Their footsteps were cushioned by the extra socks Calum had insisted on wearing. Merlin thought it was a little much. All the same, a thrill went through him as they crept through hallways, ducked corners, and sprinted across the dining room doorway. He tried to suggest the back way, but Calum had silenced him with a finger to his lips. They muffled their amazed laughter as they tugged their shoes on and shot out the door.
They stopped running once they reached sand, pausing to take off their shoes and socks. Calum breathed deeply, as if the Davis house had been suffocating him. He grinned, “Doesn’t it feel amazing out here, Merlin?”
“It is nice,” he agreed.
They walked and talked comfortably, too afraid to stop moving in case the party moved into the back. After what must have been an hour, the sun had dipped even lower in the sky and Calum’s energy had grown stronger somehow. “You know what we should do?”
Merlin looked back towards him. He shook his head.
“We should go swimming!”
“Isn’t it a bit late?” Merlin asked. “It’ll be cold.”
“Ah, a little cold never killed anybody….” Calum began unbuttoning his shirt.
“‘A little cold’ has killed people, actually,” Merlin crossed his arms, looking back towards the water. It was beautiful, and he enjoyed watching the waves in the distance, but to actually go in-
Merlin started when his friend tossed a pile of cloth at him. He nearly choked when he realized they were his pants. Deliberately not looking downing, he began, “Calum-”
“Are you coming with me?” Calum asked excitedly, careless even in all his glory. Merlin flushed deeper, overwhelmed.
“No,” he bit out.
“Suit yourself,” Calum shrugged. He launched himself towards the water, running full tilt. He laughed when it reached his calves, shouted when it reached his groin. “Fuckin hell, that’s cold!”
“It’s the ocean, ya idiot,” Merlin said, though he was grinning. He watched for a moment longer before shaking his head and giving in. Shucking his shirt, Merlin started towards the water.
“You’re gonna regret wetting those trousers!” Calum teased him. Merlin ground to a halt right before the water. He sighed, tossing his slacks behind him carelessly. He wouldn’t take his pants off. No way.
All of this was already so strange- completely unlike him. What was he doing? He wasn’t doing homework, reviewing, tinkering. He wasn’t doing anything productive. Hell, he wasn’t even doing anything logical. He’d probably catch a cold from the water and be forced away from school and friends for a week. He wasn’t making sense. But maybe, Merlin told himself, life doesn’t have to make sense. Sometimes you can follow your nude best friend into the bitter, filthy water of your beach and let loose, and nothing bad will come of it. Merlin was cold, confused, blushing over Calum’s state of undress, but he was happy.
When Merlin and Ailsa reached five months together, he finally gave in and let his mother plan a little getaway for them. Her and Baron Davis pulled some strings somewhere, and the couple found themselves tucked into a helicopter with his family. His mother had done her research, and found an island with an interesting name. Ailsa Craig was beautiful; Ailsa herself was moved to tears both by the sentiment and the island. Merlin explained the history of the island while everyone crained their necks, trying to see everything at once. It comprised of less than three hundred acres, closer to two hundred really, and it was found in the Firth of Clyde, he said. The mining equipent they spotted upon arrival was used to mine riebeckite, also known as ailsite. They used the granite to make curling stones. In the sixteenth century, it was a safe haven for Catholics during the Scottish Reformation.
“It’s still a haven,” Ailsa breathed.
“Sometimes people call it ‘Paddy’s Milestone,’” he said. She teased him about not knowing romance, then she took his hand and dragged him off to explore. He knew enough to see that this should be romantic- the scenery was beautiful, the birds were funny looking but amazing, and they hiked the forest hand in hand. But he felt strange about the whole ordeal, and wondered idly if he was as emotionally invested in this as she was.
Merlin cared for Ailsa. He couldn’t deny that, she was one of his only two best friends. But nonetheless, it was shortly after his next birthday when they broke up.
Merlin was seventeen, and nothing much had changed. Yet.
He and Ailsa were still close friends, and he still sat with the group at lunch. Ailsa and Calum visited his house most weekends, or they all went out to do something together. He was happy like this. There was no pressure, no expectations; his friends accepted him for who he was, and they were all comfortable with each other. The memory of Ailsa’s body wasn’t awkward for him- and if his was for her, she wouldn’t show it.
But distantly, the knowledge that the school year was drawing to a close worried at the back of his mind. He still had more secondary schooling to go- but Calum was older. He would graduate soon, and would be expected to move onto further education away from home. Merlin felt like he was losing his friend, that the day when a part of him would go missing was drawing nearer and nearer.
Calum’s parents arranged for his departure the day after his graduation. Merlin attended the ceremony with pride, and a deep sadness. He was glad that afterwards Calum’s parents allowed him to go to Merlin’s for a small celebration and final goodbye.
That night, the last night they would likely see each other for months to come, Calum and Merlin took a walk down the beach. The wind was bitterly cold, and no doubt the water was freezing. Merlin watched from the sand, amused, as Calum sprinted into it. He cried out when it reached his ankles, and tripped over himself in an attempt to get out when it reached his calves. If he was uncomfortable in his soaked trousers, he didn’t mention it.
They talked about many things as they treked the beach, watching the stars twinkle as they got farther and farther from the light pollution of Merlin’s house. Some topics he couldn’t remember even a moment after they had passed; others he would never forget. They talked about school, and their group, and calculus, and meeting each other. They talked about the time they’d shared, the outings, the endless hours of simply sitting in silence when words weren’t necessary. They talked about Ailsa, and the breakup. Strangely, even though through the majority of their companionship words hadn’t been necessary, Merlin was completely comfortable in having this long conversation. Granted, Calum was doing most of the talking.
Merlin had no idea how long the two of them spent walking the beach. The wind chilled Calum to the bone, but it seemed as though it was the last thing he cared about. Merlin was wearing the sophisticated looking jumper from his birthday, something he had refused to wear before that night, and it kept him warm enough to keep from complaining. Calum complimented him on it, and he smiled. Merlin felt like he rather liked the style of it now.
They reminisced about the first time Calum was invited to the Davis house. Merlin asked what he thought school would be like away from home, and Calum only smiled back. Not the same, he told Merlin a moment later, but not bad. And he would return home soon enough. Calum asked about the future; Merlin’s future, his family’s future, their future. Merlin didn’t know the answer. A child prodigy he may be, but he had no idea what he wanted to do. Nothing seemed to interest him, career-wise. He and his family would probably just go about business as usual, and he would inherit the company. As for their future- they would see each other in the new year, wouldn’t they? And in another handful of years, Calum would return home. Calum seemed to like these answers, despite how vague they were. When he would be twenty-three, Merlin would be twenty-one. Calum would come home to Scotland, and they would be neighbours. This train of thought seemed to brighten his mood even more; he planned their houses, his career, how he would tailor his life to include his friend.
When Calum stopped them, he wouldn’t say he was surprised. But even as Calum took his hand and kissed him, he still wasn’t sure what he felt.
Merlin was eighteen when his uncle arrived and gave him his greatest opportunity. He was eighteen when he was recruited as a Kingsman tech agent. He moved to England, and spent the rest of the year there going through rigorous testing.
Merlin was nineteen when he won. He was given a job, a house, and a meaning in life. This was the year his uncle died.
Merlin was twenty when he missed Calum, considered calling him after so long.
Merlin was twenty one when he admitted why that was. He hadn’t had a friend like him in years, but Harry was so similar. This new friendship was digging up memories. He didn’t call because this would be the year Calum came home, and he didn’t have the proper excuses to explain why he wasn’t there to meet him.
Merlin was twenty five when Ailsa called him, and invited him to a reunion. He went, in a fit of unexpected spontaneity. It wasn’t a school reunion, but a reunion of the lunch crowd. He smiled plenty, dodged questions about his job, asked many of his own. And if the silences between him and Calum were supposed to be awkward, he couldn’t tell. He spent the weekend happy to be with old friends, but sad that those times were gone. Merlin almost wished he had a group of friends more like this again. However, when Sunday drew to a close and the remaining members saw him off at the airport (not going on a private plane was worth the goodbye), he said nothing. He didn’t offer for Ailsa to visit, and he didn’t promise to call Calum soon. He thanked them for the weekend and boarded. He didn’t know what to feel.
Merlin was twenty six when his sister, Merry, got hitched. He stood as a groomsman, though he’d only met the groom twice. Their mother cried quite a bit, and it was touching to see their reserved father smile so warmly.
Merlin was twenty seven when his father had a heart attack.
Merlin was thirty when his sister, Maisie, got married. He walked her down the aisle, and only cried a little.
Merlin was thirty two when Maisie got pregnant and, much to the amusement of everyone but her, gave birth to twins one day before his next birthday. He took the week off, flew to Scotland, and spent his entire visit coddling his nephews, showering them with gifts, and visiting the family he so rarely got to see.
Merlin was thirty three when Merry adopted, and he was overjoyed to meet the little girl.
Merlin was thirty six when he received his new title, his old name.