Chapter Text
“Ah, Merlin, good. You’re even on time for once,” Arthur greeted when Merlin walked into the king’s chambers without knocking, swinging the bag off his back and setting it at his feet as he stood before his master.
Merlin rolled his eyes at Arthur, but didn’t respond, flashing a quick wave of greeting to the other knights in the room before refocusing on Arthur.
“The patrol will be going by Wexert,” Arthur started, “and Gaius informed me he needed some sort of ingredients from the physician there, and you would make the journey to retrieve them. He has assured me your leg is up to the journey, is that true?”
“Yeah,” Merlin reassured. “It’s almost completely better, it will be fine, but he packed medical supplies just in case.”
“Good,” Arthur said firmly. “He also had something to say about checking the ingredients, have you been informed on what you must do?”
“Yep,” Merlin nodded confidently, and Arthur nodded, accepting his word.
“There’s a patrol scheduled to go out that way anyway, so you’ll accompany them to ensure you don’t trip off a cliff or get attacked by bandits or something. It will not be very long, only three days, are you packed and ready?”
Merlin nodded, patting the bag and sleep roll he had leaned against his leg.
“Alright,” Arthur nodded his approval. “The knights accompanying you will be Leon, Percival, Elyan, Gwaine, and ... and Mordred.”
“Ok,” Merlin nodded with a sunny smile.
The other stared at him in blatant shock, Mordred trying -and failing- to hide a grin as he took in the reactions.
"Really?" Arthur asked, speaking what the rest of the knights were clearly thinking. "No protest? The last time I told you Mordred was accompanying a patrol you were on, you told me that wouldn't be necessary."
Mordred let out a strangled cough that was clearly originally a laugh, but no one commented, still staring at Merlin as if trying to decide if he were sick.
'Really?' Mordred asked over their mental connection, sounding bemused.
Merlin quirked a nonchalant grin and shrugged a casual shoulder.
"Last time it wasn't," he explained simply, clasping his hands behind his back as he waited for Arthur's response.
'Ok, in my defense, I used to hate you,' Merlin defended playfully to Mordred, not looking away from his king as Mordred let out another strangled laugh thinly veiled as a cough.
'I don't think you understand how the phrase 'in my defense' is supposed to be used, Emrys,' Mordred told him wryly, and Merlin sent him the mental link equivalent of an unbothered shrug.
"... Alright," Arthur eventually said, sounding extremely unsure as he studied his unbothered servant waiting patiently before him. "Well... um -, ok. Then... then I suppose you all should get going, you're losing daylight."
"Ok," Merlin agreed brightly, bending to pick up his bag and politely pretending not to see Arthur attempt subtly in gesturing for the non-Mordred knights to stay behind.
Merlin swung the bag over his shoulders, shooting Arthur another smile as he waved goodbye.
"Alright, see you in three days, prat," he announced, turning to the door, waiting for Mordred to fall into step beside him, and pushing down a laugh at the king and knights’ shocked faces he could see reflected in the mirror by Arthur's cabinet. "Have fun with George!"
Arthur waved the knights over as Merlin and Mordred rounded the doorframe, both pausing just outside with barely suppressed amusement as they strained to hear what Arthur would say.
"Will you make sure he's not...," Arthur trailed off, apparently at a loss for even a guess as to what had happened. "Make sure he's ok," he settled on, and Merlin shared a smirk with Mordred, who clamped a hand to his mouth to stifle his laughter, though his eyes danced brightly with his mirth.
"Uh, yeah," Gwaine said after a delay, sounding just as bewildered as Arthur, and Merlin clenched his jaw shut to silence the laughter bubbling up, able to clearly picture the face of utter confusion Gwaine was surely making.
"We... we will, sire," Leon said, even his normal formality sounding stilted and awkward as he tried to understand what had caused Merlin's sudden shift in attitude.
"... Well, alright," Arthur said a long moment later, and Merlin nodded to Mordred that it was their cue to continue down the hall so they weren't caught eavesdropping. "I guess... um, well, you have your orders...," and they distantly heard the sounds of the knights collecting their bags before they made it to the staircase and hurried down to the front door of the castle.
~*~…~*~…~*~…~*~…~*~
Merlin and Mordred had already pulled all of the horses out of the stable and tied them to the hitching posts, collecting saddles and bridles and laying them on the nearby fence posts, by the time the knights arrived.
"Hey, prats," Merlin greeted, laying the saddle pad over his horse's back and returning to the fence to get his saddle. "About time you got here, you get lost?"
His comment didn't spark the round of bantering responses it usually would have, as the knights were still watching him warily, as if afraid at any moment he would either keel over in a dead faint or reveal he was merely a person who looked like Merlin, but was actually a traitor trying to infiltrate Camelot.
"Thanks for bringing our tack out," Gwaine said cautiously, and Merlin pretended not to notice the scrutiny he was under.
"No problem," Merlin grinned. "Mordred did most of the work," he acknowledged with a nod in the knight's direction, and the other knights froze mid-motion of brushing down their horses.
"... oh, um-, thank you as well, Mordred," Elyan said, halting and confused.
"You're welcome!" Mordred chirped, not acknowledging the obvious confusion all around him. "It was Merlin's idea."
Merlin cast him a fond smile, and the knights seemed to be nearing a collective mental break.
"You ...," Gwaine started, watching the pair cheerfully move through the motions of saddling their horses with an air of a man witnessing his impending doom but not quite comprehending it. "You seem to be.... getting along now?" he finished, more of a question in his voice than he had probably intended.
“Oh, yeah,” Merlin smiled, tone casual and unconcerned, as if addressing the weather and not his abrupt departure from openly despising Mordred that he hadn’t been shy about displaying for the past several months. “We decided we’re friends now.”
Mordred’s face twitched, trying to shove down how funny he found the situation, and he nodded along with an air of flippant casualness.
The knights stared in open mouthed disbelief.
Merlin and Mordred shoved down smirks and continued tacking the horses.
“Here, Mordred,” Merlin said, handing him his horse’s girth with pointed friendliness.
Mordred accepted it with a bright thanks, turning quickly to hide the smile that exploded across his face, but he stopped his shoulders from shaking with his suppressed laughter, so Merlin still considered it a success.
“Did you lot forget how to tack up a horse?” Merlin asked, arching an unimpressed eyebrow at them when they continued to stare at him and Mordred in confusion. “‘Cause I’ll teach you, but I’m not doing it for you. You lot have to do it or you’ll get spoiled, I’m not your servant.”
The men reluctantly pushed themselves into motion, tacking their horses with delayed, stilted movements as they continued sending Mordred and Merlin bewildered looks.
"Good job with the new saddle," Merlin congratulated Mordred, managing to keep a straight face as he patted the knight’s shoulder when he walked by. “You even remembered the extra strap, well done.”
Mordred turned back to his horse to hide his beaming smile with a sincere, “Thanks, Merlin.”
The knights all froze again, watching Merlin with horrified expressions, and he could almost hear them wondering if he had been enchanted.
He shoved down another grin. Messing with them was an opportunity he never passed up.
Pretending not to notice the attention, he meandered through his duties, finally prodding the knights back into tacking when it was clear they wouldn’t be breaking out of their stunned stillness on their own.
He eventually managed to corral all of them through tacking their horses and mounting, spurring his mount into motion with Mordred right beside him, the others following by habit more than a conscious decision.
‘I think Gwaine’s mouth is still hanging open,’ Mordred’s voice said in Merlin’s head, giddy with amusement that he visibly struggled to keep off his face.
‘I bet,’ Merlin sent back, barely stopping himself from nodding along with his agreement. ‘He was one of the strongest supporters of the ‘let’s make Merlin like Mordred’ campaign the knights have been running lately.’
Merlin felt the echo of Mordred’s amusement and replied with his own, the group riding in a comfortable silence as they left the citadel and slowed their horses to a sedate walk as they wandered into the forest.
“So,” Gwaine said, breaking the silence, but apparently not quite knowing where to go from there.
Merlin glanced back at him, slowing his horse so that the group rode in more of one wide line, making it easier to talk to everyone without trying to twist in the saddle.
Gwaine looked hopefully at Merlin to answer the unspoken questions, but Merlin merely arched an eyebrow with a curious expression, and Gwaine’s shoulders slumped.
“So, we see that you two are getting along now, but we were wondering...,” Gwaine trailed off again, glancing at the other knights for support, who gave him encouraging nods but no verbal help.
Oh.
Huh.
Somehow, in all the excitement of imagining how confused the knights would be by the development, he had failed to realize they would surely be asking why Merlin finally accepted Mordred.
Huh.
‘Emrys, what do we tell them?’ Mordred demanded frantically. ‘You didn’t tell them about the prophecy, right?’
“We were wondering...,” Gwaine shot Leon a pointed look, but the first knight looked intentionally away, studying the leaves of the trees overhead with an unrelenting fascination he had never displayed before.
Gwaine glared at him, thankfully taking the attention off the wide-eyed, nearly hyperventilating Mordred.
‘Calm down,’ Merlin instructed, keeping his face impassive while Gwaine worked up the courage to ask what he wanted to know. ‘Of course I didn’t. We’ll figure something out, just give me a second.’
“We... well, Merlin, we... we wanted to know... well, to know why you’ve suddenly decided you don’t hate Mordred,” Gwaine finally finished.
Merlin looked at him, pursing his lips.
‘Unless you’ve thought of something better, tell him I was jealous,’ he instructed Mordred, not waiting for a response before he said, “We just cleared the air is all, and have decided we’re better friends than enemies,” he sniffed, striving -and purposefully failing- for casually unaffected.
“And what air needed clearing?” Elyan asked, bemused, as he watched Merlin’s pointedly unconcerned expression.
“None of your business,” Merlin informed him at the same time Mordred blurted out, “He was jealous!”
Merlin waited a beat for stunned silence before he leaned around the other knights to glare at Mordred.
“Mordred!” he scolded, tone betrayed, and Mordred sent him a wide-eyed, innocent look.
“Sorry?” he offered meekly, and Merlin scowled.
“You were jealous?” Gwaine asked, sounding delighted.
“No,” Merlin refuted, staring straight ahead and refusing to look at the knights he could see grinning widely at him in his peripheral vision.
“I mean, no, he wasn’t,” Mordred added earnestly. “We cleared other air. Other air that was about...,” he visibly struggled for another reason, “about things we’re not going to talk about,” he finished with a satisfied nod, looking proud of himself.
Merlin’s lips twitched up in amusement, wondering how he had ever hated him.
“About things we’re not going to talk about,” Merlin agreed firmly, casting a look at the knights that dared them to press the issue.
The knights had never listened to reason before, and they certainly weren’t going to start when such a perfect opportunity to tease Merlin had arisen.
“You were jealous,” Elyan asked in gleeful insistence.
“No,” Merlin said firmly again.
“What, did you think there was only room in our group for one cheerful, excited brunette who smiles all the time and is unfortunately endearing?” Elyan asked, smirking at the manservant who was pointedly unimpressed with the question.
Merlin rolled his eyes dramatically while the other knights laughed.
“You know,” Leon said thoughtfully, “there actually are several similarities between you two, aren’t there?”
“No,” Merlin said definitively, but the smiles on the knights’ faces only grew.
“They’re both little, and cute, and innocent,” Gwaine said, a note of unmistakable teasing in his voice, and Merlin scowled at him.
“I am none of those things,” he informed Gwaine, unimpressed.
“You are all of those things,” Percival said, not bothering to hide how hilarious he found the situation, and Merlin transferred his glower to him instead.
“You are both impossibly energetic in the mornings,” Elyan added with mock helpfulness, and Merlin rolled his eyes dramatically.
“You both have an air of innocence, but an undeniable competence,” Leon added, grinning when Merlin opened his mouth to argue, and then shut it again, unsure of how to articulate his protest.
“And you’re both incredibly brave,” Elyan noted, tapping his chin thoughtfully with a faux expression of deep thought.
“And clever,” Percival added.
Merlin glared at all of them, not that any of them showed any remorse, grinning brightly at him instead of being chastised.
“So, which of those was the problem?” Gwaine asked in pseudo sincerity.
“I just ...,” Merlin studied his reins instead of looking at any of the other knights, surprised to find a kernel of truth in his next words. “I had thought that... that you all were avoiding me, and the only times you lot talked to me it was to tell me about how great Mordred was and all the time you were spending with him, and...,” he trailed off, shrugging and looking out toward the trees they were passing.
‘I’m sorry, Emrys,’ Mordred whispered in his head.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Merlin told him, sending a reassuring pulse to the younger man.
“I was being stupid,” Merlin finished, still unable to look any of the knights in the eye.
“Merlin, that’s not stupid,” Gwaine told him in a heartbroken voice, his earlier teasing gone.
Merlin shrugged, internally begging for a topic change.
“We should play a game,” Percival suggested, immediately securing everyone’s attention. “A game called ‘Everyone makes sure Merlin knows we like him’.”
Merlin was so shocked that the suggestion came from Percival that it took him precious seconds to start mounting his arguments, and by the time he had, the other knights had already whole heartedly accepted the idea as their new mission.
“That’s really not necessary,” Merlin tried to argue, only to be cut off by Gwaine.
“Oh, yes it is,” Gwaine said, grinning widely. “I’ll start. Merlin, did you know you’re my best friend and my favorite person in the world?”
Merlin immediately flushed red, and his eyes dropped to Gwaine’s shoulder of their own accord.
“Oh, um, thanks,” he tried to accept, calm and unaffected, and definitively missing the mark.
The knights laughed, warm and fond, which did not help his blush or his ability to look any of them in the eye.
“Good start,” Leon told Gwaine with an approving nod, then turned to the blushing servant. “Merlin, I love talking to you, especially on long trail rides. You have such a way of seeing the world and seeing other people that it inspires me to try to be better.”
Merlin flushed even brighter, trying to sink into his saddle and out of sight.
“Thank you, Leon,” he said quietly, equally as touched as he was embarrassed.
“Merlin,” Elyan said, smile clear in his voice even though Merlin couldn’t make himself bring his eyes up to look. “Polishing my armor is my favorite part of my day because of our talks, which is especially impressive considering I used to hate the chore.”
They wouldn’t need a campfire for the night, the heat from Merlin’s cheeks would be more than enough to keep everyone warm through the night, as he was quite certain he would still be blushing when they stopped to make camp and well into the next morning.
“Thanks, Elyan,” he whispered.
“Merlin,” Percival started before Merlin cut him off, finally able to drag his wide eyes up to meet Percival’s.
“Please don’t,” he said, openly begging, and Percival quirked an amused smile, but went on.
“Merlin,” he said, as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “after watching the effect you have on people for more than a year now, I’ve realized that with every interaction you find good in others, and when it’s not there, you create it.”
Merlin may very well die from the sheer force of his embarrassment, he decided, ducking his head and feeling his face flame even brighter.
“That’s not true,” he argued to his reins, sure he had to be blushing all the way down to his toes by now, “but thank you, Percival.”
“It is,” Percival assured him, affectionate and amused, and Merlin opened his mouth to protest, but Gwaine was already spouting off the next compliment.
It was going to be a very long ride