Work Text:
In general, Arthur cares not a whit for flowers or longing glances or the hesitant brush of fingertips across palms. He has no interest in any of it and thinks the whole thing is stupid. Who cares whether your hand touches that of your beloved? Arthur touches plenty of people’s hands all the time, he really does not believe this can possibly be a big deal.
“I’ll leave this with you, then,” says Arthur, and because they’re surrounded by council members instead of alone in Arthur’s chambers, he does the very magnanimous favour of handing the scroll to Merlin directly, rather than chucking it at him.
“Thank you, sire,” says Merlin, who clearly recognises this magnanimous favour but is somehow still ungrateful for it. He closes his hand around the scroll, and as he does, his cold fingers drag against Arthur’s for the excruciatingly long period of perhaps two and a half seconds. Arthur, most unfortunately, notices.
“Of course,” he says, while he privately laments and curses whatever cruel deity decided to make him fancy Merlin. “I’ll see you later?”
Merlin hums and scurries away, and Arthur watches him with a dawning sense of horror.
The thing is, right, is that Arthur knows he likes Merlin. It’d be hard not to, what with how much daily grief the affliction causes him. He’s quite aware that he finds Merlin horrifically funny and painfully lovely and hideously kind, but he’s not— it doesn’t affect him. It doesn’t. Arthur is a knight, Arthur is the future king of Camelot, he does not suffer from butterflies. Not for anyone.
He collapses into his chair, pensive, and handwaves off Lord Edgar’s concern. Would that he could write this off as easily as he has Longstead’s winter tax break. Would that this situation could be resolved by something as simple and low-effort as merely going to war.
It doesn’t even matter, he berates himself. It doesn’t even matter, Arthur touches loads of people’s hands and he touches Merlin all sorts besides, it doesn’t matter that Merlin touched his hand. He’s not a girl. He’s not Morgana. He’s not—
He slouches a bit lower in his chair. He bets Morgana’s never ever gotten like this, heart-of-steel harpy that she is. He bets she’s never spent a meeting staring at her palm and considering the fact that it’s now a very different palm to the one it was this morning. Who the hell gave Merlin the right, anyway, to make Arthur feel like this? Hasn’t anyone seen him? You’re meant to get sympathetic over those ears, not sentimental!
He scowls and crosses his arms, only to find that his body won’t comply with the demand. He has to stare down at the table and bite down on his cheeks instead, all the while trying to convince his chest that it doesn’t need to crack open and fly his heart away, honestly. It’s horrible, it’s terrible. Arthur can’t stop smiling.
Oh, god, thinks Arthur, propping an elbow on the table and hiding his mouth behind his hand. This is going to get him into trouble. This is going to end so, so badly, and there must be something actually wrong with his head, he must’ve hit it really hard sometime earlier today, because he can’t help but observe that the hand he’s got pressed to his mouth is also the one that Merlin lovingly cradled just ten minutes ago, and that makes him feel sort of loopy.
Merlin touched my hand, tests out Arthur, as if acknowledging the thought will make it more repulsive. Merlin’s eyes are blue. Merlin rolled his sleeves up two days ago and exposed the entirety of his lanky white forearms and it should’ve been a horrible sight but it really, really wasn’t. He considers the arms a few moments more and tries not to be sick.
Terrible. Absolutely terrible. As if it wasn’t enough that Merlin had turned Arthur’s ideals on his head with the whole magic business, now Arthur has to face this, as well: that the hands brushing might, possibly, have been a bit of a big deal. Just this once.