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“Someone’s home late.”
Merlin’s appearance was flyaway and haphazard, with his messy hair and overgrown stubble, but his grin was genuine as he unlatched his bag and threw his keys onto the kitchen table with a jangle. He didn’t immediately greet Arthur vocally, instead opting to shrug off his beat-up brown leather jacket and throwing it on the couch where it landed half on Arthur’s shoulder.
“Aren’t you in a lovely mood!” Arthur laughed, chucking the jacket back toward Merlin, who was rummaging his way through the fridge. “Fun day at work?”
“More fun than yours,” Merlin said through a mouthful of leftover sushi as he made his way over to Arthur. “How are things in the ever-so-exciting world of insurance sales?”
“Wonderful, thank you,” Arthur replied cheekily as Merlin shook his head at him, leaning over the couch to peck Arthur’s lips. He tried to pull Arthur into a proper kiss, but Arthur shoved him away moments later.
“Your breath smells like sushi,” Arthur complained, to which Merlin just smirked, taking the last salmon skin roll from his takeaway carton and throwing it into his mouth. Arthur rolled his eyes, but leaned up for another kiss anyway, to which Merlin happily obliged.
“Why are you late?” Arthur asked as Merlin made his way around to sit on the opposite side of the couch, shoving his feet in between the pair of them so that they tangled with Arthur’s. Arthur nudged Merlin’s toe with his own when he didn’t answer for a moment.
Merlin paused for a moment, eyes flickering up to Arthur’s own with an amused glimmer. “Gwaine started talking. You know how that goes.”
“All too well,” Arthur said, a little disgruntled at the fact that he might have gotten an extra twenty minutes with his overworked boyfriend if not for said overworked boyfriend’s irritating best mate and his personality quirk of thinking that he knew Merlin better than Arthur did. Which was blatantly untrue.
“Don’t be jealous, it’s unbecoming,” Merlin made a face at Arthur, who made a face back, and before long, their legs were shoving at each other in an intense wrestling match.
“Okay, truce!” Merlin laughed after a few minutes, giving Arthur’s thigh one final kick. “I want to be able to work for a while. Double shifts at the hospital are gonna make it nearly impossible for me to ever draw anything again.”
“Well, that would be a shame,” Arthur said, very genuinely, but it became a touch self-aggrandizing when it was followed with his next comment. “The world really needs to know what an excellent model I am.”
“Shove it,” Merlin said, not without affection, as he reached across their legs to the coffee table where his sketchbook lay open on a picture of Arthur in profile, pencil lines marking his features. Arthur smiled at it for a moment before it was out of his view and into Merlin’s hands.
“Anything I should do?”
“Sit there and look pretty,” Merlin said with a cheeky smile, and Arthur saluted in return. “Shouldn’t be too strenuous for you.”
“Are you implying that you think I’m pretty?” Arthur said, playing coy as he leaned across the couch. He couldn’t help but smile as Merlin set his pencil down, attempting to look reprimanding, but his dancing eyes gave him away.
“You’re the most wretched creature I’ve ever seen in my life,” Merlin said, leaning in to meet Arthur and press a chaste kiss to his lips. “Truly the ugliest being I’ve ever come across.” He kissed Arthur again. “That’s clearly why I’ve lived with you for three years, so I can feel oh-so-much-better in comparison.”
He tried to kiss Arthur again, but Arthur pulled away just in time. Merlin’s lips creased into a frown until Arthur immediately volleyed back to kiss Merlin, who laughed into his mouth before they pulled apart.
“Can I watch TV while you draw?” Arthur said, gesturing toward the screen in front of them that had been playing as background noise. It was on a Doctor Who rerun right now; it must have switched since Merlin got home.
Merlin made a face at the television. “Change it to something I don’t like so I’m not distracted. Rugby or cricket or whatever that baking show is that Gwen likes. I’ll gladly tune those out.”
Arthur hummed, grabbing the remote and switching to a rugby match. He was mildly entertained, enough so that he could let Merlin draw in peace without constantly interrupting him or needing him for entertainment.
Maybe an hour or so later, Merlin finally threw his pencil on the coffee table, blearily blinking away overtiredness that came with working such long hours and still having the motivation to do something strenuous afterwards. Arthur chuckled at his boyfriend’s vacant expression, and shoved himself into a more upward position, beckoning Merlin closer.
Apparently Merlin was too tired to have some kind of snappy comment, for he nearly fell forward, head comfortably positioned in Arthur’s lap.
Arthur’s heart seized up just a little bit. Even after five years of dating Merlin and three of living together, moments like this had the ability to knock his breath out of his body and destroy his reasoning. Merlin seemed to realize this, for his previously sleepy smile became brighter, as he reached for Arthur’s hands, lightly playing with his fingers in his own, calloused fingertips running along Arthur’s wrist. A shiver went through his body.
Arthur closed his eyes and reveled in the sensation of Merlin touching him. After being together for so long, it was moments like this that made life worth it. Sex was all well and good, but Arthur would much rather stay in this moment of gentleness for the rest of eternity.
After a few moments, Arthur felt a strange tickling sensation on his arm. He cracked an eyelid open to looked down to find that Merlin had grabbed one of his pens from off the table and was doodling on Arthur’s arm.
“You just don’t know when to quit, do you?” Arthur said teasingly, moving the arm Merlin wasn’t drawing on to ruffle his messy hair.
“One of my issues,” Merlin said softly as he skated the pen across Arthur’s skin. He nudged it upward a moment later for Arthur to see; it was a tiny flower in the center of his palm. The petals were drawn more intricately than they had a right to be. Arthur attested it to Merlin’s supernatural skill set.
He couldn’t just compliment Merlin, though. That wasn’t how this worked.
“I see you’re still too cheap to buy me real flowers,” he informed him snootily, to which Merlin only laughed, his eyes crinkling at the edges as he reached for the flowered hand to press a kiss on each of its fingertips. Arthur couldn’t keep up his pretense for long, and soon broke down, biting his lip to keep from saying something truly stupid and sappy.
“Give me your other hand,” Merlin instructed Arthur, not even wanting for a response as Merlin reached up to guide it toward him. He went to work on the underside of the wrist, where Arthur couldn’t see. Arthur knew it was on purpose, and he pretended to sigh benevolently and let Merlin have his fun but he couldn’t deny how much he loved this, how much it made him feel like nothing could ever be wrong in the world.
“What is it?” Arthur asked as Merlin capped his pen, twisting his wrist to see a series of dots and dashes. They weren’t centered completely, but no one was perfect.
“Your name,” Merlin said with a soft smile, “in Morse Code.”
“You don’t know Morse Code,” a bubble of emotion rose in Arthur’s chest as he leaned down to kiss Merlin’s forehead. Merlin crinkled his nose at the gesture, but Arthur knew he liked it. “You’ve never known Morse Code.”
“Well, I learned your name,” Merlin said snippily, though there was still a grin on his face. “Among a few other things.”
“Like what?”
Merlin just grabbed his hand back in response, and started making more dots and dashes. Arthur closed his eyes and let Merlin work. It seemed he was doing it at a much slower pace now – probably trying to remember the far too complicated phrasings. Morse code had never made any sense to Arthur, and he preferred to keep it that way. Still, he supposed it was pretty nice when your boyfriend was drawing it on your hand. If Arthur knew Merlin, he’d probably be writing either ‘I love you’ or ‘you’re a twat’ – there was a fifty/fifty chance.
What seemed like at least ten minutes later, Merlin finally let go of Arthur’s hand. He lifted it up to see the dots and dashes encircling one of his fingers. He smiled a bit at the ring before asking Merlin “What does it say?”
Merlin looked up at him with vague amusement and a bit of befuddlement before saying slowly “….Take a guess.”
“Um…” Arthur regarded the words for a moment longer. Of course, he had no idea how to read them, and the dots and dashes were even smaller on his finger than on his wrist, with so many wound around it. And yet somehow, even with squeezing all of those tiny marks in, Merlin had managed to make it look artistic. “You’re a twat?”
Merlin’s laugh was full-bellied and incredulous, and he swung his head upward off of Arthur’s left, and Arthur missed the heat and comfort of it immediately. He frowned at his still laughing boyfriend, not exactly hurt but not exactly pleased.
“Stop laughing at me! I don’t know what it means!”
“Arthur,” Merlin twisted around so that they sat face to face, his electric eyes dancing with something humorous and affectionate and – and something else that he couldn’t name. “What hand is it on?”
“My left,” Arthur answered, not sure why it mattered.
“What finger is it on?” Merlin pushed him forward, his voice going a little higher as he reached the end of the question, squeezing his eyes shut as if waiting for a reaction.
“My ring – Oh,” Arthur said, realizing. “Oh.”
“It says,” Merlin said, taking Arthur’s inked hand in one of his own, moving his calloused thumb to stroke the underside of Arthur’s finger, “Marry me. As in will you. Marry me. Will you marry me?”
Arthur gaped at Merlin, with his still dancing eyes, though now they were decidedly less amused, more filled with raw emotion and – and love. That was what Arthur couldn’t name earlier. Love.
“I’m sorry I don’t have a real ring,” Merlin said in a small voice as Arthur just sat there with his mouth open. “I couldn’t afford anything in the shop. It was either this or a ring pop, and I thought this was more original. I see now I should have gone with the ring pop. Or maybe just saved up some money and got you the real thing.”
“Merlin, no, this –” Arthur rasped, knowing he’d been silent for too long, but the overflow of emotion was making it difficult to speak. “– this is wonderful. This is perfect. I don’t care if you don’t have a ring. Yes, yes, I’ll marry you. Of course I will. I – I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”
“Well then, you’re a bit daft, aren’t you?” Merlin said, trying to sound condescendingly snarky but the tears threatening to burst in his eyes made it hard to take that sentiment seriously as he leaned in to press a kiss against Arthur’s temple. Arthur pulled at his chin, guiding him into a fuller kiss, long and slow and sweet.
“I want to keep this,” Arthur said, looking down at the marks on his finger. There were so many of them, and yet they were perfectly spaced around his finger. “How long did you work on it?”
“Too long,” Merlin muttered with a slightly laugh, his nose pressing against Arthur’s neck. “Spent weeks trying to figure out how to get it right. And finding the right moment to do it.”
“Do you think I could get it tattooed there?” Arthur said, flexing the finger just slightly, already dreading the idea of it coming off in the shower.
Merlin stared at him incredulously for a moment, eyes wide with affection. “You hate tattoos.”
“That’s a lie,” Arthur said, thinking of the dragon on Merlin’s arm and the human heart on his chest, right above where his real heart was. “I like your tattoos.”
“That’s because you think they’re sexy,” Merlin said with a small laugh. “Are insurance agents even allowed to have tattoos?”
“I don’t think anyone will take much notice of this one,” Arthur said, knowing how genuinely touched Merlin was at the sentiment, of Arthur’s willingness to mark his body to show that he was Merlin’s and no one else’s. “And yes, your tattoos are sexy. Very sexy. So it only makes sense that mine will be sappy and romantic.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Merlin leaned in to kiss Arthur again. “You really want this.”
“I really, really do,” Arthur said honestly. “First thing tomorrow morning. Maybe a little higher on my finger, so that you can still see it when I have a real wedding ring.”
Merlin gazed at Arthur with unabashed adoration. “How did I get this lucky? How the hell did the universe decide that I was the person who was going to get you?”
“Guess it was destiny,” Arthur replied, biting his lip to keep from smiling.
“God, we’re being sappy right now,” Merlin broke his gaze from Arthur’s with a laugh. “I guess we did get engaged, so there’s a reason for it. But tomorrow – after we find a tattoo parlor that will take us last minute – we have to do something irritating and piss each other off to keep the brand name strong.”
Arthur couldn’t help but chuckle. “Only you, Merlin. God. Only you.”
He looked down at his hands one more time, at the little flower in his palm, his name sketched across his wrist, and the posed question on his finger. Merlin had echoed his sentiments exactly – how the hell was he so lucky?
Merlin knew what Arthur was thinking, because he always did, and leaned down to press kisses across all of Arthur’s fingertips. “I love you so much, you have no idea.”
“I do,” Arthur said, looking at the extreme care put into the dots and dashes on his hand, at the fragile beauty of this moment here and now, and wondered who he should be thanking for this. “I really do."