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They are two gnarled old grandpas, sitting hunched over in front of the fireplace with an angel-faced girl--all cheekbones and skinny limbs, hair so fair it's almost as white as flour--and a ruddy-cheeked boy--perpetual pout, arrogant tilt of chin, thick curly black hair. The kids' eyes are fixed on the two old men, and they stare with their big blue eyes up at them.
"I tried to take his head off with a mace," Arthur says with a half-smile, eyes crinkling slightly at the corners as he recalls the memory, forever-ago now and yet still as clear as spring on his mind.
"But why, gramps?" Ygraine exlcaims disbelievingly, mouth a thin line of distress. "You're s'posed to like him!"
Before Arthur can open his mouth, Merlin lays a hand upon his knee--a signal for "keep quiet"--and bends forward, slowly. Arthur can just see the curl of his mouth, upwards, and sees Merlin's long index-finger crooking into the universal "come closer" sign. Rolling his eyes good-naturedly (sometimes Merlin is more childish than the kids; but it's something Arthur loves about him, against all odds) Arthur watches the kids creep closer and Balinor giggles as Merlin tickles him with his long white beard.
"Your beard, grandpa!" the young boy complains, and Arthur can relate. That beard is a devilry, a testament to hell itself. Still, it makes for a good pillow, he admits grudgingly to himself as he eyes it suspiciously, albeit a scratchy one. But it's the best pillow Arthur's ever had, and he rather forgoes all the comfort and softness of royal pillows so he can feel Merlin's bony chest expand with breath underneath him as he nuzzles his face into the white mess. Yes, he gladly forgoes all royal pillows; none would ever smell this intrinsically Merlin. Not that Arthur'd ever admit that, of course.
"What!?" comes Balinor's high shriek after the whispering and Arthur raises an eyebrow. What the Gods has Merlin told them again? The boy draws back, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and raises a finger in accusation as he stares at Arthur. "Mam says tryin' to depac--pacit--decip..." He makes a face and scowls. "She says tryin' to hurt someone isn't ok! It says 'I don't like you' and that's not nice!"
“I stopped him, Balinor,” Merlin says soothingly as he raises himself. He groans a little at the pain in his back and Arthur frowns, lays his hand on the small of Merlin’s back.
“You shouldn’t move too much,” he admonishes the other man as if he were a small child, thumb rubbing back and forth over where he assumes the pain to be. “You know your back’s a mess, most days.”
“Shut it,” Merlin says, and Arthur unconsciously smiles at the casual cheek. Merlin clears his throat and folds his hands in his lap. “I stopped him, Balinor, so he didn’t hurt me.”
It’s amusing to see Balinor and Ygraine exchanging looks—they’re suspicious, that much is obvious from their narrowed eyes and pouty lips. They’re clever kids, good at memorising things. They clearly remember all the tales Arthur has told them about his clumsy manservant who resembled more a girl than the most powerful sorcerer, most days, and the tales of the gold-haired prince, as strong as four giants and easily the most skilled warrior of his time. Arthur’s smile widens.
“But—but gramps says he was stronger than you,” Ygraine says slowly after a moment, her eyes wandering from Merlin to Arthur and staying there. Then she scowls and crosses her arms in front of her chest. “You lied, gramps, didn’t you?”
“I’d never lie to you,” Arthur says. He shakes his head and holds Ygraine’s incensed gaze. “You’re my favourite Ygraine,” he says solemnly, “and I could never lie to my favourite Ygraine.”
Ygraine narrows her eyes even more at him and purses her lips in consideration for another moment or two. “I know,” she says airily, raises her head and juts her chin out. For all her smiling she looks like a haughty princess looking down on a lowly subject and Arthur grins a little, shakes his head as he raises a gnarled hand to tousle her hair. The arrogance is gone in a flash and she breaks out into a dimpled smile that puts the sun to shame, snickering as she pushes against Arthur’s hand like a cat.
“I stopped him using magic,” Merlin finally says and clears up the mystery of mysteries. Immediately the kids’ attention is back on Merlin and Arthur can’t begrudge him this. Too long Merlin has had to live in shadows. Arthur doesn’t know if the way the kids love Merlin so fiercely, the way they admire his magic, are enchanted and mesmerized by it so openly and deeply, will ever make up for all those lost years Merlin has had—his lost childhood, lost youth, lost adolescence. For all the wrought crimes. But it’s a start, it’s better than nothing, and Arthur scowls at himself as the sight of Merlin’s obvious delight in the kids’ love of his magic makes his eyes burn. Age doesn’t only make him senile, it seems, it also makes him softer.
“What he means to say is that he cheated,” he says in an attempt to distract himself from his thoughts. He leans forward slightly, looks from Ygraine to Balinor and then lowers his voice. “He cheated horribly,” he says lowly and very seriously as if telling a secret. “He made things move so they would trip me and he made my weapon tangle itself somewhere so I couldn’t fight properly. Your grandpa,” he says and shoots Merlin a narrow-eyed look, “is a sore loser and a terrible cheat.”
Merlin only laughs at that, a rough, dry sound pulled directly from his belly as the kids look back at him again. Arthur doesn’t really know what’s so outrageously funny about it, but he enjoys it all the same, allows himself another small smile as he soothingly pats down Merlin’s back when another laughter-induced cough wracks through his chest. Merlin’s breath is coming a little wheezing after that.
“But that still doesn’t explain why you attacked him first,” Balinor insists. “Mam says that’s not nice. You don’t hurt—”
“Oh but he liked me all right, Balinor,” Merlin interrupts Balinor. The boy is immediately quiet and attentive, eyes on Merlin as he waits expectantly for an explanation. Balinor is a good lad, intelligent and quiet and stubborn as any Pendragon. He’s also extremely taken with Merlin; Arthur’s heroic stories of knights and wars pull a smile from him, but one glance at Merlin’s magical dragon made from glowing embers dancing around in mid-air, and the smile becomes so wide Arthur fears it’d split his face in two. It makes Arthur smile at night, when he thinks about it. Balinor is always such a serious boy, and anything that makes him smile Arthur will forever value with the highest regard. Frequently Arthur has wished he could go back in time and explain this to his younger self, so things would have changed sooner.
“He liked me all right because, see, sometimes people are a little silly,” Merlin continues and nods at his own words as if to confirm them. “They say things they don’t mean because they’re scared of the truth. Or they’ve always been a certain way and have never been allowed to be any different. Gramps swinging the mace at me—he tried to get me to back down. I was pretty much the only one who told him he was being unfair. He valued that, even if he couldn’t say it. Didn’t you, gramps?”
“I may have.” Arthur hums non-committally, but the way his eyes crinkle at the corners and his mouth tries to twitch into a smile betrays him, really. Merlin’s eyes are blue when they look into his, so blue and unbearably fond, so openly loving that something stings tight in Arthur’s chest. Merlin moves closer to him, his hand finding its way back to Arthur’s knee. Arthur clears his throat. “Anyway,” he says, “it’s the same Ygraine’s doing with you, Balinor.”
And oh, doesn’t that get a lovely reaction. “What?!” Balinor jumps up at this and stares at Arthur, childishly outraged, cheeks flushed, and goes into a full tirade. “She throws our swords at me, and, and, and—”
“Throwing objects,” Merlin says lowly, breath tickling Arthur’s ear while Balinor is stumbling over his own words. “Reminds me of someone, hmm?”
Arthur chooses to ignore him, instead watches in thinly veiled amusement as Balinor tries to convey the devil that his sister is, arms flailing around in some sort of supposed-to-be-convincing gesture (it really looks more like a broken wind mill).
“—pulls my hair, and kicks my shin!” he finishes, out of breath, glares down at his sister.
“You deserve it!” Ygraine snaps, then also jumps up and doesn’t waste any time grabbing Balinor’s ear and tugging at it harshly. “And you always cry like a girl. It’s funny.”
“You’re the girl!” Balinor says, offended, slapping Ygraine’s hand away.
“Yes, and I don’t cry as much as you do.” Ygraine grins at her younger brother, a toothy, terrifying menace. “So what does that say, exactly?”
“That you’re a spoilt, stupid prat!” Balinor spits out, then immediately pales as he darts a glance towards Merlin and Arthur. “Don’t tell Mam I said that, I—”
“We won’t,” Arthur says and raises an eyebrow, looks sideways at Merlin who tries to look innocent and fails miserably. Normally he’d have scolded the kids for using such words, but ‘prat’ can only come from Merlin. It seems he’d have to scold Merlin later.
“Cry-baby,” Ygraine immediately sing-songs, picking up on the opportunity to humiliate her brother. Sometimes she’s like a dog sniffing a bone from ten miles away. “Cry-baby, cry-baby, scaaaareeed of Maaaam!”
“I’ll show you scared,” Balinor growls. Ygraine gives a high-pitched squeal and runs out of the chamber, Balinor a blur at her heels, giving pursuit.
Arthur shakes his head and tsks under his breath, watches the two run off. There’s a blessed silence in their chambers, and he groans as he arches his back, his spine popping. Eyeing Merlin with what he assumes is a neutral, non-judging look, he mutters, “’Prat,’ Merlin?”
“They’ll pick up on it anyway,” Merlin says, waving a hand dismissively. “The sooner, the better. That way they’re better prepared for other kids.”
“I thought you were an advocate of peace, not of violence.” Arthur sighs, put-upon. “You really should stop telling them—”
“It’s the truth, though, isn’t it? Calling you a prat’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.” Merlin grins at him unrepentantly, blue eyes twinkling from underneath white bushy eyebrows. He shifts a little closer so that their knees are bumping together. His hand on Arthur’s knee tightens. “It made you notice me,” he says then, softly, his grin giving way to a smile, a gentle curve of cracked lips that still, after all those years, sets Arthur’s heart aflame.
“You still cheated,” Arthur says and tries to sound affronted, but it comes out as thankful. Thankful because if Merlin hadn’t called him a prat, hadn’t cheated—hadn’t stood up to him the way no one’d ever done before, Arthur would’ve dismissed him as another stupid peasant boy not worth his time. Thankful because Merlin’s cheek and insolence had ultimately changed his life, and he needed it, still does, that for someone on this earth he’s just Arthur. He’s just Arthur and that’s more than enough, and he doesn’t need to change, to be a better man, because he’s all Merlin needs already.
“I did,” Merlin concedes, rubbing his wrinkly palm over the bony swell of Arthur’s knee. His touch is warm and familiar, calm and soothing like the first spring sun warming his skin after a harsh winter. It’s coming alive and coming home, their own special kind of magic that doesn’t need any supernatural help. It’s them, it’s as old as the earth and intrinsic as his heartbeat, and Arthur would gladly give his kingdom for an eternity of Merlin’s wrinkly palm upon his knee. Not that he’d ever say that. He has changed, that much is true, but he’d never be that much of a girl as Merlin is.
Instead he says, “I’m glad you did,” and holds Merlin’s gaze for a long moment. His throat closes up when he sees Merlin’s eyes water. He grips the back of Merlin’s neck gently, his palm exerting gentle yet insistent pressure against the worn skin there, and Merlin goes to him, lets himself be led without hesitation. His coarse hair tickles Arthur’s collarbones, irritating the skin slightly, but Arthur doesn’t mind. It’s as irritating and endearing as the rest of Merlin, and all Arthur can do is press his dry lips against the wrinkled skin of Merlin’s forehead and move his thumb in small, slow circles against Merlin’s neck.
They sit there, two bags of weary, broken bones and old skin, sharing body warmth in front of the fireplace. The silence is comfortable even if the floor is not, even with the thick fur underneath them. For a moment Arthur considers relocating to the bed for an afternoon nap, but that would include Merlin moving away from him. He’s too lazy, and anyway, the floor isn’t half that bad.
After a while, Merlin says, “Just imagine what a pompous, arrogant, supercilious turniphead you’d have become without me,” and it’s so random, such a Merlin thing to say that it startles Arthur into a laugh. It’s such a joyful thing that his upper body moves with it, chest jolting with the force of his laughter. Merlin makes it worse when he complains, and only slowly Arthur’s laughter dies down. And Gold help him, he can’t help the smile—again. It’s a curse, it’s a blessing, it’s just so Merlin that in a single moment Arthur’s eyes sting again. But it’s not sadness, it’s not grief—it’s unabashed happiness, because yes, even though he still doesn’t know what exactly a turniphead is (or a dollop head or a clotpole) he’ll take it all. He’ll take it all with him wherever he goes.
“I’m glad you’re here with me,” Arthur says quietly, smiling into Merlin’s hair. “I’m glad you never changed.”