Chapter Text
By the third clear morning after the lake, Camelot had remembered how to be made of stone and sun rather than rain. The courtyard steamed faintly where puddles surrendered to light. From Gaius’s windows the world looked almost polished.
Merlin woke slow and reasonable, the ache in his bones a memory instead of a law. His head felt like a lantern stuffed with wool, yes, and his nose had opinions about the quality of the air, but the fever’s hot hand had let him go. When he sat up, the room didn’t tilt. That felt like a miracle worth not mentioning in case it took offense.
“Hh—ehh—k’TSCHH! … Heh—EHT’TSCHH!” The morning had its taxes. He paid them into the crook of his elbow and blinked his eyes clear.
Gaius was already there with the cloth and the blessing, as inevitable as sunrise. “Bless you, lad.” His palm found Merlin’s forehead, then his wrist with that quiet way he had of touching as if taking a reading. “Cooler. Good.” He nodded to himself. “You may return to your usual foolishness under specific terms.”
“Those being?” Merlin croaked, fishing under the pillow for the lavender sachet Gwen had tucked there and pressing it to his nose as if it could charm away congestion.
“Tea at the turn of every hour—elderflower in the morning, mint at noon, hyssop if the cough troubles you. A stop back here at midday. No hauling, no running, no chasing princes into pigpens. And if you start to shiver, sneeze more than—” Gaius’s eyes narrowed as he chose a number that felt authoritative—“more than six times in two minutes, you turn around and come straight back. Do you hear me?”
Merlin eyed him over the blanket in a manner that suggested heroism and resignation fast friends. “Six. That’s… generous.” He blew his nose, tested a breath, and winced. “I’ll behave.”
“You’ll try,” Gaius corrected, but his mouth twitched. He turned to the table, where he’d set out a small, battered satchel. “I’ve packed the herbs premeasured. Honey, too. And the rosehip syrup Gwen smuggled out of the kitchens as if it were contraband.”
“Because it is,” came a voice from the door, knuckles rapping once before it swung inward. Arthur tried for nonchalance and achieved it for perhaps a heartbeat. Then he registered Merlin sitting up, color in his cheeks, and his shoulders loosened by a measure only someone watching for it would see. “You’re vertical.”
“Mostly,” Merlin said. He reached for his boots and found them suspiciously by the fire, warm. He narrowed his eyes at Gaius, then at Arthur, who studied a spot on the ceiling with undue interest.
“I was passing,” Arthur said, which would have been more convincing had he not also produced—like a conjurer from an expensive sleeve—a second cloak. “The yard’s still damp. Take this.”
“I have one,” Merlin said, even as his hands took the offered wool with the reflex of a man who knew better than to spurn warmth. “Is this the part where you hover?”
“I do not hover,” Arthur said, affronted. “I supervise.”
Gaius made a sound that could have been a cough. “You will supervise him as far as the armory, then send him to the kitchens for broth at midmorning. I’ve sent word; they’ll have it ready.”
Arthur’s chin tipped up, princely in agreement. “Good. Yes. Excellent. And then—”
“And then,” Gaius cut in, “he returns to me before the sun has moved past the second notch. If he does not, I will send Gwen to fetch you both by the ears.”
Arthur, who had faced down sorcerers with steadier nerve, nodded with surprising meekness. “Understood.”
Merlin watched the exchange like a man sitting between two cliff faces as they decided the shape of the valley. He tugged on his boots, shrugged into his shirt, and let Gaius fuss the collar smooth with a tenderness that disguised itself as efficient tugging. “I’m right here,” he said, because it seemed polite to inform them.
“Yes,” Gaius said, fastening the cloak at Merlin’s throat with fingers that lingered for a breath against the pulse there. “And you’ll be right here again by midday. Bless you in advance.”
Merlin opened his mouth to protest the inevitability and sneezed instead. “Hih—k’TSCHH!—ehh—EHT’SHH!” He submitted to the cup of tea pressed into his hands with only half an eye-roll. It wasn’t so terrible anymore. Maybe familiarity had dulled the edge; maybe he was too grateful to keep score.
They made it as far as the corridor before Arthur took the satchel from Merlin with the casual theft of a man who would rather carry a kingdom than watch it be carried. “I’ll take that.”
“I can—”
“Yes,” Arthur said. “I can too.” He walked as if he had always walked with a satchel of herbs and honey bumping his hip, as if armor and worry balanced naturally.
The castle felt wider after rain. Light threw itself at everything with the dogged cheer of someone proving a point. Knights clanked toward the yard; a serving girl darted past with a tray, nearly stumbled, and righted herself with a grin that included both of them as if they were part of the furniture of her day.
In the armory, dust motes swam in the slant of sun like a thousand tiny banners. It would have been pretty if not for Merlin’s nose immediately deciding it was under attack.
“Hh—ehh—” He turned away, pressing the cloth hard to his face. “K’TSCHH!—k’tchh—Heh—EHT’TSCHH!” By the fourth, Arthur had a hand on his shoulder, steadying without comment.
“That was four,” Arthur said, with the judicious air of a magistrate. “You’ve two in reserve.”
“I’m not spending my sneezes like coin,” Merlin muttered, watery-eyed, and earned a huff that was ninety percent exasperation and ten percent fondness.
Arthur had arranged matters—of course he had. Where normally he would have tossed Merlin a list of tasks that read like the inventory of a barn, today there were only a few specific and survivable jobs: check the fletchings on the practice arrows, oil the buckles on two harnesses, and—Arthur’s ears pinked faintly on this one—sit in the patch of sun by the door for ten minutes and do absolutely nothing.
“Doctor’s orders,” Arthur added, unnecessarily honest. “And mine.”
Merlin squinted at him. “Are you using your princely authority to make me loiter?”
“Yes,” Arthur said, and then louder to the room at large as if to make it official: “Merlin is under orders to loiter.”
A couple of knights looked over, confused. Sir Leon hid a smile in his beard and nodded solemnly. “At once, sire.”
Merlin did the oiling and the fletching, pausing as necessary to cough into his elbow and sniff resentfully. Arthur hovered—supervised—awkwardly near, making a great show of inspecting the hafts of spears while his gaze flicked back every time Merlin’s breath hitched.
By the time they reached the sunlight patch, Merlin’s head felt heavy with the pleasant fatigue of work done imperfectly but done. He sat because the order existed and the bench was warm. Arthur pretended not to see and then sat as well, the satchel safely between them like a small, earnest chaperone.
“You’re still pink,” Arthur observed, tipping his chin toward Merlin’s nose.
“So are your ears,” Merlin countered, and then ruined the effect by sneezing. “Hh—EHT’SHH!”
Arthur slid the satchel closer with his boot. “Tea,” he said. “You promised Gaius.”
“And you promised Gaius not to send me into a pigpen,” Merlin said, but he drew out the small stoppered jar and the wrapped bundle of herbs with the resigned competence of a man who’d made tea in stranger places. When he went to stand, Arthur had already been halfway up.
“I’ll fetch hot water.” They both froze in the absurdity of a prince offering to ferry a kettle. Arthur recovered first. “I’ll command hot water to be fetched,” he amended, and disappeared with military purpose that did not fit easily in a doorway.
It turned out princes could command kettles; the tea arrived. Merlin sipped, and the hour turned without insult.
At midmorning, they detoured to the kitchens where warmth and bustle smelled like safety. Gwen was there with a ladle and a smile. “Right on time,” she said, as if she’d been expecting them the way one expects sunrise.
“Gaius has spies,” Merlin accused.
“Gaius has friends,” Gwen corrected, easing a bowl into his hands that steamed comfort into his face. “Small sips.”
Arthur stood at his shoulder and pretended to be receiving a briefing on stockpiles while in reality watching to see if Merlin’s hands shook. They did not. Much.
“Your cloak,” Gwen added to Arthur, with the impunity of someone who had seen him muddy from the knees down. “You’ve got the hem dragging.”
Arthur glanced down, huffed, and stepped back out of the way of a scullery boy with a basin. “Thank you.”
“And you,” Gwen told Merlin, soft severity wrapped in kindness, “come back later for quince syrup. The traders brought a new lot.”
“Quince,” Merlin said reverently, as if the very syllables held pectin. “Tell them I’ll sell my soul.”
“You’ll sell Arthur’s,” Gwen said, perfectly deadpan. “It’s worth more.”
“That is slander,” Arthur said, and then softened it with, “I’ll see to the cost.” His glance toward Merlin made it sound as if he’d already seen to everything.
They made it back to Gaius with daylight to spare and the empty bowl returned as if it had always been part of the agreement. Gaius listened with his hands—the wrist, the cheek, the chest where the cough lived. He hummed approval at the steadiness of Merlin’s pulse and pretended not to notice the way Arthur tried to pretend not to notice him doing so.
“Better,” Gaius conceded. “Still congested, but the fever’s not lurking. You may do one more circuit: inside the walls only.” His gaze sharpened. “And then enough.”
“Inside the walls,” Arthur echoed, not looking at Merlin in case that be interpreted as softness. “I was going to assign exactly that.”
“You were going to assign a pigpen,” Merlin said under his breath.
“I was not,” Arthur said, with all the righteous outrage of a man absolutely thinking about a pigpen five minutes ago. “Come on.”
The circuit inside the walls might have been busywork, except it wasn’t. Market stalls were reappearing like mushrooms after rain. Cobbles held their treachery in the shade. The city had its own lungs. Arthur set a pace that was brisk without being cruel, then slowed just enough every time Merlin’s breath rasped. He asked for reports from the guards at each gate and nodded at each answer like a man who had discovered there were many kinds of enemies, including weather and its aftermath.
Dust rose in little puffs from the cart-wheels. Merlin’s nose, loyal to its own narrative, objected on principle. “Hh—k’TSCHH!—ehh—Heh—EHT’CHH!” He pinched the bridge of it, resigned. “Apologies.”
“Stop that,” Arthur said, and then because he heard himself: “I mean—stop apologizing. For… sneezing.” He made a face as if the concept itself offended him on tactical grounds. “It’s extremely inefficient to be sorry for things you can’t command.”
Merlin’s eyebrows wandered upward. “I’ll remember that the next time you order the rain to cease.”
“I would never,” Arthur said, dead serious for an absurd heartbeat. “That’s… not how it works.”
“Isn’t it?” Merlin said, with a private smile that tucked itself away again immediately. He tugged the cloak closer anyway when a draft found its way under it. Arthur noticed without seeming to, hawk-eye on the breeze.
By the time the sun had sidled past the second notch on the wall, they had spoken to three gate guards, scolded a boy for climbing a statue, rescued a bread-seller’s basket from an overenthusiastic hound, and completed exactly the kind of patrol that looks like nothing and is what cities are made of. Arthur had, at one point, stepped between Merlin and a cart’s wheel with the casual instinct of a man who would interpose himself between his servant and a falling anvil without comment. He didn’t comment now; he only glanced once at Merlin’s face and then at the sky as if to say, yes, enough.
“Back to Gaius,” he said, and made it sound like a military victory.
They returned, and Gaius—who would have welcomed them both whether they came triumphant or chastened—had the mint steaming already. “In,” he said, and ushered Merlin to the stool by the fire like a favorite book to its shelf. “Breathe.”
Merlin bent over the bowl, tented towel around his head, and breathed dutifully. The mint curled into the stubborn corners of his head and coaxed them open. The second breath went easier than the first; the third set something free. He coughed, but it wasn’t the tearing cough of two days ago. Progress could be this small and still be enormous.
Arthur took up his usual post hovering / supervising—the line had become a joke between them now, and if he stood closer than strictly necessary, nobody remarked upon it. He watched the steam wreath Merlin’s face and thought, not for the first time, that the kingdom was a collection of specific faces he could not lose.
“Better,” Gaius pronounced when the towel fell back and Merlin’s eyes were damp but clearer. He pressed his wrist to Merlin’s forehead the way one might set a seal. “You may return to your prince for the afternoon provided your prince returns you by dusk.”
“I’m not a stable boy,” Arthur objected, mostly for form. “I don’t sign for deliveries.”
“You do today,” Gaius said dryly. “And if he sneezes more than six times in two minutes—”
“Back,” Arthur said, with the firmness of a man reciting battle orders. “Understood.”
Merlin’s laugh came out a little rough but genuinely amused. “I’m right here,” he said again, for the shape of the ritual.
“Yes,” Gaius said, fussing the blanket’s corner over Merlin’s knees even though he was no longer in bed. “And you will keep being right here because you will be sensible—both of you.” His hand lingered, a benediction disguised as habit. “Bless you, lad.”
They made it through the afternoon in that wobbly way that looks like competence from a distance. Arthur found reasons to keep Merlin indoors—inventory in the stores, a message to be taken three corridors away instead of three courtyards. He performed these manipulations with the awkward grace of someone not used to being gentle but determined to learn. Merlin let himself be steered because being stubborn had its time and its cost, and he’d done enough of both this week.
He still sneezed: at dust, at sun, at the sheer indignity of air. “Hh—EHT’SHH!—k’tchh!” And each time, Arthur’s hand would appear with the cloth, the cup, the satchel. He never made a ceremony of it. He never made light either. He was, in this narrow and specific theater, unexpectedly good.
By dusk, the light in Gaius’s windows had thickened to honey. Arthur delivered Merlin back with all the pomp of a man returning a sacred relic. “On time,” he announced, and looked absurdly pleased with himself.
Gaius took Merlin’s temperature with his wrist and Arthur’s with his eye. “On time,” he agreed, and then, because praise should be meted carefully, added, “You can both have soup.”
Gwen turned up as if conjured by the word with a basket and the promised quince syrup. Morgana drifted past the threshold long enough to declare the book she’d brought “unbearably dull and therefore medicinal” and to ask after the tally of sneezes with a straight face that made Merlin laugh into his sleeve.
“Down by half,” Arthur reported, as if submitting a dispatch from the front.
“Promising,” Gaius said, and slid a bowl into Merlin’s hands that tasted like the kitchens’ forgiveness.
They ate. They talked about nothing—the best sort of talk. When the bowls were empty and the mint cooled, Arthur rose like a man setting down a worry he would pick up again in the morning.
“I’ll be in the yard at first light,” he said to the air, and to Merlin: “Not for you. For training. But if you are there—slowly—then… good.”
“I’ll be there,” Merlin promised, with a glance to Gaius, who gave him a look that meant: if you are there, you will be wrapped like a parcel and you will drink your tea first.
“Take it easy,” Gaius said aloud, because some spells have to be spoken. He adjusted the blanket one last unnecessary inch, then laid his palm to Merlin’s forehead the way he always did and would, long after this cold and the next were stories. “Bless you, lad.”
Merlin breathed in lavender, mint, and the simple shape of being looked after. “I will,” he said, and for once he meant it exactly the way Gaius meant it: not as surrender, but as a kind of bravery.
Arthur lingered just long enough to tuck the extra cloak over the back of the chair—“in case”—and then retreated with the peculiar stiffness of a prince caught being kind.
When the door closed, Gaius’s sigh threaded fondness and relief. “Awkward,” he said, which was his term for miracles that refused to admit themselves.
Merlin smiled into his bowl. “Supervising,” he corrected, and sneezed once, small and unremarkable. “Hh—k’tchh.”
“Bless you,” Gaius said, reflex and prayer, and set the water for the next hour’s tea. Outside, Camelot went on being Camelot—stone and sun and the murmuring breath of a hundred kitchens. Inside, Merlin sat where he belonged, a little congested, a lot mended, and exactly supervised enough. The day turned toward night uncomplicated by lakes or fevers. For once, that was plenty of adventure.