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“Do you know how to walk on your knees?” The gathering crowd, now big enough to be considered a crowd, jeers and cackles, watching the blond as he grins, how white teeth glinting a little too brightly in the afternoon sun. Merlin watches him, his eyes twitching with annoyance, his smile now completely wiped, completely gone. He sighs.
“No,” he responds, fierce, determined to not let this jerk of a knight overpower him, not let this pompous bastard get the better of him.
Merlin stares him in the eyes, and his eyes flash over his body. Big, burly, and the blond could take him apart with not a sweat broken. Merlin could take him apart with a single glance, but considering the execution he saw not even an hour ago, he holds back, his eyes doing nothing but watching the knight move.
“Would you like me to teach you how?” Merlin hates how the knight’s voice makes him shiver, and how the suggestion makes his mind run wild, thinking of a million different things that are decidedly not what the knight, with his muscles and armour and his really pretty face.
Fuck, Merlin was getting side tracked and very distracted. So he ends up picking a fight with the knight, who ends up actually being the Prince, and Merlin ends up in prison and in the stocks. Which was great, awesome, for his first day in Camelot, honestly (that was sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell).
And Merlin ends up saving Arthur, the Prince, a mere few days later, and ends up becoming his manservant by the order of the King himself. Merlin, a manservant! Merlin ultimately regrets his decision of coming to Camelot, and listening to the dragon about his stupid destiny with the stupid Prince.
(“Two sides of the same coin?” Merlin had asked, perplexed. “Isn’t that something usually reserved for string-soulmates?” The dragon had flown away, without answering Merlin’s very important question.)
Worst of all, Merlin’s Red String, tied so tightly yet not tight enough around his ankle, was becoming shorter, it seemed, by the minute, leaving Merlin to become clumsier and more restrained around the Prince, who simply laughs in his face and tells him how stupid and idotic he is, how he wonders how his soulmate will ever deal with him and his shenanigans.
“I do envy you, though,” Arthur said, one night, when Merlin was helping him get undressed, preparing him for bed, making Merlin startled and confused by the comment. Merlin cocks his head to a side, encouraging Arthur to say more. “They say if your string becomes shorter, and it tugs, and makes you generally uncomfortable and uncoordinated-” Merlin glares at Arthur, who laughs him off as he pulls off his undershirt, leaving him bare chested. Merlin simply looks away, willing the blood to leave his face. “They say if that happens, it means your soulmate has already met you, and that they’re already falling in love with you.”
Merlin stares, his mouth slightly hanging open, watching the Prince walk over to his bed, tired, and already half asleep.
“Oh,” he begins, mouth slightly dry, “I was not aware of that.”
The Prince makes a noise, maybe commenting on how of course he didn’t know that, that Arthur knew because he was simply better. Merlin stares, for a moment, then leaves, thinking about who on earth would fall in love with him, even if they were his soulmate.
At first, the very same night that conversation with Arthur occurs, Merlin presumes Gwen, his dear friend Guinevere, to have been his soulmate. He thought it was a reasonable assumption, from the way he could sometimes catch her glance from across the room, her quickly looking away, busing herself with helping Morgana, who smiles at her knowingly, at her blushing cheeks.
Merlin tries to see himself and Gwen together, smiling, as soulmates, the string holding them together tightly strung between them, not letting them lose each other in crowds nor the world itself. Yet… he cannot seem to do that. Instead of Gwen’s more round and curvy body, his other half seems taller than him, stronger looking, with a body fit for battle. His soulmate’s body is all sharp edges and straight lines, with no dresses lingering over the sides nor hair rolling down shoulders.
And with some sort of relief, Merlin realises that it’s a man. In his daydreams about his soulmate, at least. He wasn’t quite sure, when he was younger, speaking with his mother, nor with Will, but he always felt himself grimace at the ‘her’ most people used. And his daydreams probably meant something, at least to the universe.
So when Gwen approaches him a few days later, and he assumes it to be about the String, he pleasantly surprised to find her just wanting to talk to him, and even more pleasantly surprised to find that she has already found her Stringmate. In Morgana, which explains the blushing faces and knowing smiles, and how they seem inseparable in even the worst situations.
Merlin of course congratulates her, smiling broadly, and clapping her shoulder as he might have done to an old friend. She laughs in response, mockingly asking him to be more gentle, that she's only a woman , that she could’ve gotten hurt. Merlin and Gwen both burst out in laughter at the absurd accusation, both knowing damn well that that was not possible.
So Merlin keeps searching, and wondering, thinking about who might’ve been his other half, his soulmate. Morgana is obviously out of the question, immediately, and for some reason Merlin finds himself already lost, because no other servant (or damn, even a knight) has shown any signs of being interested, or shown any signs of perhaps feeling their own string pull and tug at their ankles, making them trip or stumble in their duties. No one else seems close enough to Merlin to have fallen in love with him.
“Merlin!” Arthur shouts, annoyance dripping in his voice, his closed fist banging on the table. Merlin snaps out of a daze, staring out of the window, the cloth in his hand not wiping the window sill like it should have been; instead just there, unmoving, while Merlin got caught up in his own thought process.
“Yes, sire ?” his voice shifted, becoming mocking. Merlin turned around, and he was sure he saw something flash on the Prince’s face, before it was gone, replaced by the distasteful look Arthur almost always had on his face. He looked at MErlin, then looked down at his hands, then at Merlin again, and Merlin watched as he became more irritated with every passing second.
Merlin stood, confused, for a long time, until he noticed Arthur’s hands and immediately jumped, getting bandages and cloth to clean them. Bloody, and bruised, with obvious signs of a fight now evident, and Merlin curses himself for not noticing the forming bruises already on Arthur’s face.
“Gods, you’re slow,” Arthur mumbled when Merlin had gotten close enough, spraying water on his hands and wiping away the blood and dirt, slowly but surely. “Ow! Watch it!” Arthur commanded, after Merlin had pressed a herb paste into his cuts, obviously trying to clean them, but the cuts stinging at the touch.
“Stop being such a pansy,” Merlin mumbles, his voice a bit lower, more gravelly , more authoritative, unlike his usual self. Surprisingly, Arthur shuts up, and Merlin instead has to deal with fidgety hands and legs while he bandages the cuts and bruises, not yet asking exactly where they came from.
Merlin feels his String tug at his ankle, willing him to move. He mutters a curse at it, then pulls on it himself, willing it to stop. It does, but feels Arthur stumble, while sitting, himself. He does not think much of it. Utter coincidence, he tells himself.
When Merlin finally finishes bandaging Arthur’s hands, he looks up, Arthur staring back at him. The Prince looks away, embarrassed, and Merlin notices the few cuts and bruises that are on the Prince’s face, and obviously gets up off his knees, which he was on while cleaning Arthur’s hands, and begins surveying the damage done to Arthur’s face.
Merlin reaches a hand up, to trace the lump, a soon to be bruise, that has already begun forming on Arthur’s left temple, and where it has become fairly noticeable. To his surprise, Arthur flinches away from his hand, though not from fear, it seems. Merlin gives him a look, then opens his mouth to ask, only to have Arthur offer his head again, grumbling to Merlin about just getting on with it.
Merlin does, obviously, but he notices the way Arthur refuses to meet his eyes, looking behind him, downwards, to the side, at his own hands, anything but Merlin’s steady gaze, carefully spraying water on Arthur’s face and wiping away blood. When Merlin has both his hands on the Prince’s face, he feels him heat up, his face turning red and the tips of his ears turning red, too. He watches the Prince stumble over his words when Merlin asks him where it aches, which is so uncharacteristic of Arthur that Merlin considered taking him to Gaius to check if he had any brain injuries that may have caused mental afflictions.
Merlin keeps calm though, and watches as Arthur still stumbles over his words, still stumbles when Merlin places a piece of cotton on his left temple, their faces so close together, they could feel each other’s breath, warm and stuttering, on their own faces. Merlin swears, he swears , he sees Arthur’s eyes flicker down, to his lips, and rest there for a moment, before being hurriedly taken away, now staring at the painting on Arthur’s chamber’s walls.
Merlin watches Arthur’s gaze the entire time he’s cleaning his wounds up, and he watches him struggle to look comfortable.
“So, what happened?” Merlin asks, when finally he’s done taking care of Arthur’s bruises.
“Got into a fight.” Was the brisk, short answer.
Merlin stares, willing him to say more, but Arthur does not. Merlin waits and waits, until, after a couple minutes, the Prince sends him away, saying, “Go do something else, or I may do something I will very much regret.”
It isn’t until two days later, when Merlin’s String hangs ever so slightly off the ground and he stares at where it is leading, that he notices that he and Arthur are connected by the Red String of Soulmates, Arthur still maybe completely oblivious, as he trains with the knights and pays his string no attention.
And then Merlin remembers Arthur’s words that night, about him being lucky, and Merlin realises something; Arthur was jealous.
And at that, Merlin laughs, very much amused by the idea, and already plotting many things in his stubborn head. He must not immediately tell the Prince, he says to himself, plotting some things in his head, things to tease and test Arthur, who he is so amused by.
Merlin is thinking, later, when he is mucking out the horse stables, when he remembers the Prince’s words that night, when Merlin was bandaging his fists and cleaning the cuts on his face, about doing something he ‘will very much regret’. Merlin smiles at the absurdity of it all, at Arthur being jealous , of all things, and at Arthur having to hold himself back from doing something to Merlin, something he very much will regret.
Merlin, at that moment, very much wishes that Arthur do something that he very much will regret, preferably in that moment, in the stables. But Merlin obviously knows that will not happen, so instead he hopes for something to happen maybe later that night, when Merlin is helping Arthur undress, when he hopes to tell Arthur a very important thing, and maybe point out their String.
So that night, when Merlin enters the Prince’s chambers without knocking, because he is an awful servant, Merlin immediately busies himself with helping Arthur take off his armour, being more gentle, more slow, then usual, taking his time at each bit and piece. Merlin smirks when he notices Arthur squirm in front of him, and he fully grins when Arthur bites his lip, trying to be secretive.
When Merlin goes to remove the Prince’s shirt, he takes special care to slowly, so painstakingly slowly, to untie the strings at the front of it, and Merlin takes special effort to make sure his fingers touch the bare skin of Arthur as much as possible; Merlin makes sure to make it known that it was him touching the Prince, not a random piece of cloth or other.
Then he helps Arthur pull the shirt over his head, and he makes sure to trace his fingers, as many as he can manage, up Arthur’s side, with little to no effort to hide his intentions. The Prince gives a frustrated growl in return, but nothing else, possibly afraid that another comment may give away his feelings. Merlin knew anyway.
“For Gods’ sake, Merlin, get on with it!” Arthur shouted, when Merlin had spent maybe a moment too long eyeing Arthur in a way that suggested so much more. Merlin simply laughed him off, folding the shirt and placing it over Arthur’s chair. He then stared at his String, and a very mischievous idea sprung to his mind.
“I’m sorry, sire ,” he said ‘sire’ like he always might, mockingly and with no real intention for politeness behind it. “My Soulmate has been such a bother, I keep getting dragged and tugged everywhere.”
Arthur gave him an annoyed look, possibly still jealous, and rolled his eyes, pretending to be uncaring. Merlin rolled his eyes, knowingly, then bent down, and picked up the String on the floor where it lay.
“I just wonder…” Merlin began, giving his String a strong tug, causing some of it to slither in from under the chamber door, though not completely. He smiles innocently at Arthur “Who…” another tug, causing the String to completely enter the room, making Arthur’ eyes go saucer wide with surprise. “They….” Merlin pulls again, making Arthur stumble, and move closer towards him. “Are.” he finishes, now with Arthur right in front of him, not even inches apart, their faces centimetres from each other.
“Oh.” Was Arthur’s dumb reply, his eyes fleetingly focusing on Merlin’s lips, then up again.
“Oh, indeed, your Highness,” Merlin says, his smile playful.
“You knew?” Arthur asks, and dear Gods, is that a tone of embarrassment in his voice? Merlin fought the urge to cackle with glee and amusement.
“Of course I knew, sire,” Merlin answers, finally dropping the String from his hands, and pulling Arthur closer still.
“And you…?”
Merlin smirks, his eyes glinting with joy and a possible chance to tease the Crown Prince. “I am glad of it, yes. Very glad.”
And then he pulled Arthur in closer, closing the gap, kissing him.
Gaius would decidedly
not
see Merlin return to his chambers that night.