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The prince’s chamber was a chaos worthy of a post-war battlefield. Clothes strewn everywhere, crumpled papers masquerading as important reports, a single boot abandoned on the windowsill, and the lingering smell of blood, sweat, and earth. At the epicenter of the hurricane, Merlin rummaged and muttered to himself.
“Lazy… pig… thinks things fold themselves… ‘Merlin, tidy this,’ ‘Merlin, fetch that’… as if I had nothing better to do than follow the trail of destruction you call a life…”
He spoke to himself with the fervor of a lawyer delivering his most passionate argument to an imaginary jury, shaking a shirt so violently its ties threatened to fly off.
The door opened without ceremony. Arthur stepped inside, and instead of the usual growl or immediate command, his face was lit up by a wide, carefree smile. The contrast with Merlin’s personal storm cloud was almost comical.
“Ah, Merlin!” Arthur announced, his voice full of falsely condescending cheer. “What’s wrong?”
Merlin didn’t even bother to respond. Arthur knew perfectly well what he had done, so Merlin simply continued complaining and cursing the idiot as if he weren’t there.
Arthur, unfazed, laughed, clearly determined to test his servant’s patience.
“Complaining doesn’t solve anything, you know!”
Merlin stopped torturing the shirt and rolled his eyes skyward — a long, slow, dramatically suffering motion, as if begging for patience from deities he knew weren’t listening.
“Excuse me,” he said, his voice loaded with sarcasm so dense it could be cut with a knife. “But I do want to solve things while I complain. It’s a two-step system. I solve on one side,” he began folding the shirt with brusque movements, “and complain on the other. I can do both! It’s a talent. I should put it on my résumé: ‘Specialist in Simultaneous Remediation and Resentment.’”
Arthur crossed his arms, the smile still plastered on his face, and leaned against the doorframe, assuming the classic pose of an entertained spectator.
“After all,” he asked, genuine curiosity mixed with amusement, “what caused all this… storm of negativity today? I know it wasn’t just my room’s mess. Surely you understand I’ve been very busy with the last tournament, so what happened? What bit you?”
Merlin stopped folding and tossed the half-arranged clothes onto a chair. He turned to face Arthur, his blue eyes blazing.
“It’s George,” he declared, as if the name alone were a complete explanation.
Arthur frowned. “George? The new servant? The meticulous one who’s always making jokes about brass?”
“The very same!” Merlin exclaimed, gesturing wildly. “The other day, you, in one of your tyrannical fits, sent me to clean the stables. All of them. Alone.”
“I literally saved you from having to sit in a room full of other irritating heirs,” Arthur said casually, inspecting his nails.
“It was slave labor,” Merlin shot back. “And I, exercising my democratic right to protest, complained. I said something like, ‘Arthur is getting more irritating by the day; one of these days I’ll shove the broom somewhere he won’t like.’”
Arthur made a visible effort not to laugh. “Poetic.”
“And then, from behind a pile of hay, George appeared. Impeccable. With that little smile of someone who’s just licked a lemon. And he says, in the calmest, most condescending voice in the world…” Merlin paused for dramatic effect, then mimicked a serene and unbearably calm tone: “‘I believe our prince is improving every day, actually. A leader from the dreams of any people.’”
Arthur couldn’t hold it in. His smile turned into a smug, satisfied grin. “Hmm. He sounds like a very perceptive man.”
Merlin looked at him as if he had just defended the invention of taxes on air.
“Perceptive? He’s a… a weirdo! I mean, sure, I agreed with him — of course you’ll be a great ruler — but I was still irritated and wanted to complain. So, trying to be friendly, I complained again. I said your speeches were long and that you had the disgusting habit of keeping old cheese in your desk drawer.”
“I do not keep cheese in my desk drawer. That would be disgusting!” Arthur protested.
Merlin ignored him. “And George, the Ambassador of Toxic Positivity, looks at me and says: ‘Oh, I don’t allow negative thoughts about people. I don’t live in that darkness. I choose the light.’”
Arthur lost the battle completely. Laughter burst from his lips, growing into an open, ringing laugh. “My gods, Merlin. ‘I choose the light’? What is that even supposed to mean?”
“It’s not funny! It’s maddening!” Merlin shouted, his hands flying everywhere. “I was so irritated I almost—almost told him to go vibrate his positivity on the devil’s lap! Damn it, Arthur, he’s annoying as hell!”
“Merlin!” Arthur scolded, though his voice was strangled with laughter. “He didn’t do anything wrong! The man just… chooses the light!”
“That’s exactly my point!” Merlin exploded, throwing his hands up in total surrender. “I know he didn’t do anything wrong! But would it have killed him, just once, to complain about you with me? Just once! ‘Yes, Merlin, he’s unbearable, here, take this pitchfork, I’ll help you instead of testing your patience.’ That’s all I needed! A little… negative complicity! A little empathy for my anger! Someone to complain in unison with me! It’s a basic social bonding ritual, everyone knows that!”
Arthur tried to compose his face into a serious, advising expression. He failed miserably. His lips trembled.
“Merlin… maybe… just maybe… this is a sign. A sign that you might be wrong and need to… change your perspective on the world a bit? See the good side of things?”
Merlin froze. Slowly, he turned and fixed Arthur with a stare. It wasn’t anger — it was pure, absolute disbelief, as if Arthur had just suggested Uther remarry the troll.
“Nonsense,” Merlin declared, the word leaving his mouth like a soft spit. “That kind of positivity isn’t healthy, it’s toxic! It’s like covering a pile of manure with flowers and pretending it doesn’t stink. Not complaining is like… like you asking me to endure the torture of life, of working for you, and still smile while I get kicked in the backside! It’s inhuman!”
Arthur couldn’t take it anymore. He doubled over, hands on his knees, shaken by uncontrollable laughter.
“Come on, Merlin… don’t… don’t be so negative… try to be more like George and stop complaining…” He could barely speak between fits of laughter.
The expression on Merlin’s face became a masterpiece of outraged indignation. His eyes narrowed, his lips pressed together. He looked at Arthur, laughing like a hyena, then at the messy room, then back at Arthur. The monarchy, at that moment — embodied in that blond idiot laughing until he cried — seemed like the most absurd system ever conceived.
“That,” Merlin announced, his cold, clear voice cutting through Arthur’s laughter, “is why I am against the monarchy. Even the sacred right to complain you want to take from me. It’s the purest tyranny I have ever suffered.”
That was the final straw. Arthur, already weak with laughter, slipped from the doorframe and collapsed onto the floor, unable to contain himself. His laughter echoed through the room, loud and uninhibited.
“Against… the monarchy…!” Arthur managed, choking. “Because… of George…! Oh, by the gods… my stomach hurts…!”
Merlin watched him for a long moment. Seeing his prince like that almost made him break his serious façade — his lips trembled with the urge to smile, but he held firm. The heir to Camelot, rolling on the floor of his own filthy room, laughing because his servant was passionately defending the fundamental human right to be pessimistic.
A dramatic sigh, heavy with a thousand unspoken complaints, escaped Merlin’s lips. A very small, very stubborn smile touched the corner of his mouth.
“Go on, laugh, laugh,” he muttered, turning back and picking up the shirt again. “I hope you laugh like that when you find a rat in your food tomorrow.”
And as he began folding the clothes again, the muttering returned — quieter now. Merlin no longer had the strength to sustain so much negativity. The idiotic prince laughed in such a loose, genuine way that it seemed to drain all his anger without asking permission.
Damn Arthur Pendragon. Even when Merlin wanted to be grumpy and pessimistic, he managed to draw the best out of him.
And that, perhaps, was the most unfair thing of all.