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Lancelot is helpless. It’s an objective fact as he stands in the middle of his destroyed bedroom. His sheets have been thrown to the floor and desk cleared with every object being on the floor. Every article of clothing he owns covers his room. It traps him in place, because the only way to leave his room is to walk on his clean clothes. He hates it. He hates it so much that his hands are balled into fists and his fingernails pierce his palms.
There’s a soft knock on his door. It’s Merlin. No one else treats his space as gently as Merlin does. He always says it’s because he respects Lancelot, which means he respects Lancelot’s things as well. Lancelot used to tell him he could be just a little louder when he knocks, but he likes the softness of it now. It’s like he’s telling him who’s there without saying his name.
“Go away,” Lancelot says, his voice cracking. He doesn’t hear Merlin move away from the door. He doesn’t hear him move at all. Merlin just stands behind the closed door, waiting for Lancelot. It makes a pit form in Lancelot’s stomach, because he can’t run away. Merlin won’t let him.
The knock is louder, but it’s still gentle. There’s still so much care behind it that it only makes Lancelot nauseous. What will Merlin think when he sees the disaster Lancelot is standing in? Will he still treat Lancelot and his things with respect? Will he still care?
Instead of another knock, the door cracks open slightly. Lancelot flinches, but he doesn’t move to stop it. He can’t without tripping over everything on the floor. Maybe his mess will stop Merlin from coming in here. Maybe the door will get stuck and they can only talk through a crack.
“Lancelot,” Merlin says, worry in his voice. “Are you in there?”
“Please don’t come in,” Lancelot says, and he expects the door to close. Merlin gives up, and they live happily ever after days later when Lancelot can function around people again.
“Okay,” Merlin says, but the door doesn’t close. Their happily ever after won’t come in a couple of days. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Lancelot says, even though his voice is now scratchy. It’s easy to hear the tears in his voice. It’s embarrassing. “Go away.”
Merlin treats him with respect, so he should just go away. He should listen to Lancelot and leave, but he doesn’t. He continues to stand at the door that’s cracked open, not leaving. Lancelot is more humiliated than he is upset.
The door opens wider, but it gets caught on something so it can’t open much more. Merlin can still see inside the disaster known as Lancelot’s life, though. He can see the clothes thrown all over the place, covering the floor, and how all the books Merlin gifted him last Christmas are on the floor near the wall, because that’s where Lancelot threw them. Lancelot looks like a disaster too, wearing pajama pants with holes in them and a baggy t-shirt where the collar exposes his shoulder. His hair isn’t brushed, he doesn’t remember the last time he brushed it, and it’s oily. It’s so bad he feels every strand of hair on his head.
“Lancelot,” Merlin says, and gentleness fills it. He’s worried and doesn’t know how to approach this. Lancelot isn’t meant to be like this. He’s meant to be put together and smart and handsome, not whatever he becomes when the world crashes down around him.
“Please don’t,” Lancelot whispers, looking away from Merlin. He stares at how his favorite shirts are piled on top of each other, only a couple of feet away from him.
It’s quiet as Lancelot waits for Merlin to leave. Merlin is meant to respect him, which means he’ll leave. He’ll leave and force himself to forget about what he’s seen, because Lancelot doesn’t know how to go on if he doesn’t. The world is meant to see him a certain way, and this destroys that. He’s spent years painting a beautiful life, only for the canvas to be smashed right in the middle.
“Can you look at me?” Merlin asks, and his voice is louder than before. There’s not as much worry in it, but it’s still there. It’s always there when Lancelot is involved. “Lancelot,” he says, far firmer.
Lancelot looks up at him, and Merlin looks like a dream, like he always does. His dark hair is messy from the February breeze. All that’s seen of his face is the top half, because the ridiculously thick scarf he’s wearing covers his face to the tip of his nose. Today it’s a knitted red scarf, probably made by his mother. His entire outfit screams winter really—the thick work jacket and the coarse jeans that Lancelot doesn’t know how he stands to wear. Merlin looks far better than Lancelot, especially right now.
“Don’t look,” Lancelot says, and his voice cracks. “Please, don’t look.”
Merlin doesn’t look away. He doesn’t even close his eyes. Instead, he looks right at Lancelot. His eyes never leave him, and it’s suffocating. Lancelot can’t breathe, because it feels like he’s being pinned down by the throat by Merlin’s stare.
“Are you okay?”
Merlin’s question is so, so genuine that something breaks in Lancelot. The string snaps, and he’s crying as he shakes his head. Merlin is immediately walking over all of Lancelot’s clothes to get to him. He pulls Lancelot in, and it’s easy to melt into Merlin’s embrace. He’s so warm and comforting, especially how his fingers brush through Lancelot’s hair to calm him down. Crying in front of him may be humiliating, but he’s not terrified like he thought he’d be. He should’ve realized that Merlin will always be a safe person, even when he doesn’t want him to be.
Merlin presses a kiss to Lancelot’s hair, and Lancelot only cries harder. He doesn’t deserve to be loved so gently. He doesn’t deserve the treatment Merlin gives him so freely, because Lancelot is a bad person. He’s such a bad person, and no one even realizes.
“What happened?” Merlin asks, nearly whispering.
It should be easy to just tell him he forgot to take his medication for three days. He felt better and just forgot to take it. It’s not a crime, and Merlin won’t judge him, but it continues to destroy the canvas known as his life.
“Gwen moved something, and I had to fix it,” Lancelot says, and it doesn’t make sense when he says it aloud. He doesn’t know how to explain that if one thing had been moved, then everything needed to be moved. Everything needed to be destroyed so he could put it back together the right way.
“Okay,” Merlin says, and Lancelot can’t tell if he understands or not. “Are you working on fixing it?” Lancelot nods, his hair brushing against Merlin’s soft scarf. “Do you need help?” Lancelot shakes his head. “Can I stay while you fix it?”
Lancelot pauses. His entire life has been trying to hide himself from the world, because this is embarrassing. It doesn’t matter that his doctor gave him a diagnosis five years ago, because it’s still embarrassing. Having to act on compulsions purely because a thought won’t leave your head is something no one understands. He says it all aloud, and he knows it doesn’t make sense after years of therapy, but it doesn’t make it any less real to him.
“You won’t tell anyone?” Lancelot asks, and Merlin lets out a deep breath. It’s enough to help Lancelot realize his own breathing is hard.
“No, I won’t tell a single soul.”
Lancelot slowly nods. “Okay. You can stay, but you have to sit at my desk. It’s the first thing to be fixed.”
“Okay, I can do that.”
Lancelot collects the books first, placing them exactly how they once were. Then he grabs the small lamp and the pencil holder. It’s item by item to ensure it’s done correctly. Merlin doesn’t touch anything. He just sits in the desk chair, the only thing that hadn’t been thrown to the floor.
They don’t talk, which is good because Lancelot doesn’t want to talk. He just wants to fix his room and patch up the canvas known as his life. Maybe he can convince Merlin to forget about all of this, even though he knows Merlin won’t. Merlin never forgets. He remembers the details and stores them in the back of his mind for future reference.
“My sister has OCD,” Merlin says, breaking the silence between them when Lancelot starts collecting abandoned hangers. “She was diagnosed when she was a teenager. She started high school, and it manifested soon after. One day, all the knives in the house disappeared, because she thought she’d use them against herself or us. My mom spent hours looking for them, and Melody didn’t say anything.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Lancelot asks, interrupting him before it feels like he’s about to be seen through. He’s never had self-harm intrusive thoughts like that, but he understands how she felt. He understands it so well.
“Because you’re going to think this changes something when it doesn’t,” Merlin says, and he doesn’t let Lancelot speak. “I suspected you had it for a while now, but I knew it was better not to ask. You’re always obsessively making lists, which I didn’t think much, but then you were inconsolable when Gwaine deleted a list from three years ago off of your phone.”
“You saw that?” Lancelot says, and his stomach churns as his throat closes up. He’s had meltdowns over the years, but that had been a particularly bad one. He’d recently lost his therapist of four years, and then Gwaine steals his phone and deletes one of the only things that keeps him sane. The fear that Gwaine deleting that list meant he was losing part of his life. He’d never remember the events listed for him to do and the days they were done. If he couldn’t remember, then he’d lose bits of his life, meaning losing himself in the process.
“No one else saw,” Merlin says, which eases some of the worry but not all of it. “I came by because I looked up how to retrieve deleted notes, and Gwen let me in. I don’t think she even knew what was happening, because she was hurrying out to meet up with Morgana, but I heard you. I heard you crying and screaming the moment she closed the front door behind her. You just kept repeating yourself.”
These are just thoughts. This is not real. I’m okay. It’s okay.
It was the best at grounding thoughts he could do when he was like that. Today, they hadn’t even crossed his mind. It was just an immediate switch from existing to surviving.
“I want to be different,” Lancelot says. He knows it doesn’t seem like he really wants that as he continues to feed into the compulsions, but he never got to real exposure therapy. Everything hypothetical and panic attacks just from the thoughts. “I just don’t know how.”
“That’s okay,” Merlin says, so genuine. “Melody’s therapist has openings if you want to try therapy. She’s really helped Melody.”
“You don’t mind?” Lancelot asks, and he grips the hangers in his hand tightly. He feels the coolness of the plastic that’s too smooth to hurt him. “That I’m like this?”
Merlin shakes his head with a sad smile. “No, I don’t mind. I love you as you are.”
“Even if this isn’t even the worst of it?”
Merlin slowly stands up, watching Lancelot carefully, and Lancelot nods slightly. It’s hard to walk over the clothes on the floor, but Merlin manages to. He’s right in front of Lancelot, taller than him from the pile of clothes beneath his feet. His scarf sags a little more, showing the bottom of his face completely.
“I promise that I will stay right here with you no matter what you show me,” Merlin says as he takes Lancelot’s free hand into his own. “Even if it’s worse than this.”
“What about when you realize how terrible of a person I am?”
Merlin brings Lancelot’s hand up to his mouth, pressing a gentle kiss to the back of it. “I won’t realize that, because it’s not true. You’re one of the best people I know, even if you don’t believe it.”
Lancelot doesn’t believe it. He’s spent years listening to intrusive thoughts scream at him how terrible he is and how everyone either hates him or will. He’s spent years living his life in survival mode as he hides this side of him from everyone so no one runs away. His parents never supported him when they were alive, and he always fought with his health insurance just to see a therapist once a month. He’s been isolated for so long that he doesn’t know what it’s like to have someone on his side.
“I love you,” Merlin says, and there’s so much love in his voice. “I love the person you are now and the person you’ll eventually be. So, please don’t shut me out. I want to be here.”
Lancelot slowly nods as his eyes burn. He won’t cry again. He refuses. Merlin won’t judge him, but he’ll judge himself.
“Okay, you can stay,” Lancelot says, and Merlin lets out a deep breath as he gently smiles. He doesn’t let go of Lancelot’s hand, and Lancelot doesn’t want him to. He wants to stay connected to each other forever. “And I love you more than I can even put into words.”
Merlin kisses the back of Lancelot’s hand once again, as if he can’t help himself. Lancelot’s thoughts may continue to scream at him. The room is destroyed; he needs to fix it. Merlin will eventually hate him when he sees the real him; he needs to say goodbye and save himself from heartbreak. His to do list for today hasn’t been touched, meaning his day has no direction and all of his plans wasted. He’s pathetic and disgusting and his brain continues to scream at him.
But Merlin stands in front of him, looking down at him with gentle eyes, and Lancelot lets himself breathe. Love won’t fix him, but having someone on his side for once will help. Maybe that’s all he’s really needed before—someone who will really help.