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“Arthur, look! Look – isn’t this the most perfect apple you’ve ever seen? You’re not looking.”
Arthur sighed and looked up from his papers to see the red apple Merlin held in his hand. It was rather attractive—the apple, not the hand—in so far as apples could be considered attractive.
“Merlin, where did you get that?”
“It was a gift!”
“A gift.”
“Yes!”
“You sure you didn’t steal it from the kitchens?”
“No!” Merlin said, with the air of a liar who had never stolen from the palace kitchens. “Harriet gave it to me.”
“Who is Harriet?”
“A girl from town. She was so lovely, Arthur, you should have heard her – ‘A perfect apple for a perfect smile’ – that’s what she said.”
Arthur pursed his lips. Now that he looked closer at it, perhaps the apple was rotten. He hoped it at least had a worm in it. “Are you sure she was talking to you?”
Merlin’s smile didn’t waver. “Of course! I would’ve gotten you one, but, well—she only gave me one.”
“That’s okay, you can give me that one,” Arthur said matter-of-factly.
“What? No!” Merlin cried, clutching it to his chest. “It’s mine!”
Arthur stood from his desk, coming around to where Merlin was shielding the apple from view.
“I am the Prince of Camelot and you do not have my permission to eat while you’re working! Now give it here!”
“No!” Merlin dashed away from him, skirting the dining table and leaping onto Arthur’s bed. Standing, he held the apple high over his head like a child.
It was not in Arthur’s make-up to give in without a proper fight. He lunged onto the bed, tackling Merlin to the blankets by his knees. Beneath him, Merlin arched, catlike, holding the apple as far from Arthur’s reach as his long, lank figure allowed.
“Get—off!” Merlin gasped.
“Give it to me!” Arthur shifted, bracing his knees on either side of Merlin’s hips as he stretched over him.
Then a finger came up and flicked his nose and Arthur recoiled, rubbing at the sting. “Ow!”
Merlin took his advantage, somersaulting over the edge of the bed and landing gracelessly on the floor.
He rose triumphantly, and, locking eyes with Arthur, brought the apple to his lips and took a large bite.
The effect was instantaneous. Merlin slackened; the apple fell from his grasp with a dull thud and rolled under the bed. He swayed precariously, and Arthur, sensing a man not long for the world of consciousness, jumped up.
Merlin fell like a marionette whose strings had been cut, collapsing into Arthur’s arms; and Arthur, with all the gentleness one who had suffered a great fright could muster, lowered him to the floor.
And then he lifted his head and bellowed.
“Help! Guards!”
Gaius held the apple closely to his face, peering at it through his spectacles like it held all the world’s answers. For all Arthur knew, it did.
“Well?” Arthur said, sharper than he’d intended.
He knelt beside his own bed, where he and the guards, who had come bursting in upon his call, had moved the body. It was hard to think of him as Merlin—the living, breathing, laughing Merlin—when he seemed one scant breath away from passing through death’s remorseless veil.
His eyes roved Merlin’s face. So quickly he had become wan and pale, his black fringe plastered to his slick forehead. Arthur clutched at his arm as if through that one touch he could restore some semblance of life to him.
“The apple has been enchanted, sire,” Gaius said, voice low.
Arthur looked up at him. “Isn’t there something you can give him? An antidote?”
“I’m afraid not,” he replied heavily. “If it were a mortal poison, yes, but only magic can counteract magic, sire.”
Arthur frowned. “So, we need to find a sorcerer.”
Gaius hesitated. “Not quite, my lord. There is… one other remedy which has been known to bring even the direst of cases back from death’s brink.”
Arthur stared at him. “Well, what is it, then?”
“True love’s ki—oh—”
Arthur didn’t let him finish. He turned and crushed his mouth to Merlin’s before the words and their meaning had fully registered. It was a brief, chaste thing; one hard press against Merlin’s pale, unyielding lips, then a second, softer, before he pulled away. It was all he could manage: to act, without thinking, because thinking brought with it all the unspoken torments of one unused to the simple act of loving.
He watched, desperate, for any change, any sign of a soul returning to pinken Merlin’s cheeks. He felt Gaius’s hand on his shoulder, and knew, he too, was holding his breath.
And then Merlin stirred; a flutter of an eyelid, a hungry inhale, and the life returned to him. Arthur’s heart returned to him. He would allow himself later, perhaps, to dwell on what it all meant, to have a True Love and for that True Love to be his loud and shabby manservant, but for now he settled for simply grabbing at him and petting the sweat-damp forehead.
“Merlin. Merlin!”
“You had us good and worried, my boy,” Gaius said.
“You were worried about me?” Merlin rasped, the question directed at Arthur.
“No,” Arthur said, vehement.
“You kissed me.”
“Yes—well—that’s what you get for being an idiot and eating random gifts from strangers.”
“If I’d have known all it took was nearly dying, I’d have done it sooner,” Merlin said airily.
Arthur looked at him. “You—”
“It was a nice kiss; much better than Harriet, which is really saying something since I was half-dead.”
“Merlin!”
Merlin just laughed at him. “Maybe… we should try it again, now that I’m not dying?” he suggested, blinking impishly up at him.
Arthur felt his face redden. He looked back for Gaius, but he was already closing the chamber door behind him. “Yes,” he said gruffly, and allowed himself to be pulled back in.