#merlin decides he'll be the one to court arthur thank you very much

[shanastoryteller]

Happy Christmas Shana! May I ask for some Merlin and Arthur? Maybe the time travel Ygraine one, or something else entirely 🎁🎄🎅🏻

Queen Ygraine is cursed to die during childbirth and the baby is stolen from his very crib that same night.

Uther rages. The grief and the fury of losing them both leave him a broken man and a broken king. The grounds of Camelot turn to mud with all the blood he's spilled and the air turns grey and harsh from the burnings. He sends knights to every corner of his kingdom, but his son remains missing, not even a body to be found.

Tristan and Agravaine de Bois send letters, blaming Uther for their sister and nephew's death and proclaiming they are subjects of Uther's no more. It's a blip in torrent of grief - Uther can't even pretend to mourn the loss of his brothers in law in the face of that of his wife and son.

"I still think we should have killed him," Tristan says, watching the servants pack up the contents of their manor with a scowl.

"He would have killed you and then I'd be stuck doing this alone," Agravaine replies, a blond, blue eyed infant in his arms. "So our revenge will have to wait."

"Alone?" Nimueh scoffs. "Thanks. Is this not revenge enough?"

Tristan softens, reaching out to brush the back of his index finger against Arthur's chubby cheek. "He's not revenge. He's our nephew."

Agravaine briefly tightens his hold on the babe before relaxing. "Where are we going? I suppose Mercia is the obvious choice."

"That old man won't be able to help gloating to Uther and we don't want him giving us a second glance," Tristan says. "Cendred's kingdom is a better choice, I think. That's our where our grandfather's castle is anyway."

The two of them plus a sorceress should be more than compelling enough additions to his court for Cendred to relinquish it back to them. Or at least turn a blind eye when they take it back themselves.

~

Merlin is fourteen and standing by his mother's side, keeping his head down and not moving or thinking or looking or anything as the lords come to collect taxes.

No matter what they say, no matter what they do, he's not to move.

There's cries of pain from the smith as one of the lords kicks him down, shouting at him for how little they have. He's the most educated man in the village, he's the one that keeps track. He's the one that warns them how short they are.

They are especially short this year.

There's the sound of sword being unsheathed and Merlin resists the urge to bury his head in his mother's shoulder. He's not suppsosed to move.

"Oh, for goddess's sake," a new, young voice says. He doesn't sound that much older than Merlin. "This is a waste of time. If you cut off his head, will gold coins fall out?"

"We're here to collect taxes!" he insists.

The young lord scoffs. "And if we were sent to squeeze blood from a stone, how long would you spend with your hands pressing into bedrock? Look at them!"

"We can't just let them get away with it," he argues. "If you're father hears about this-"

"He'll hear about it because I'll tell him myself," he says, annoyed. "We could take everything they have and we'll still lose money when they starve to death and we have to send people to bury the bodies or risk disease settling in. The wages for those soldiers will cost far more than everything this little village has to offer."

"They're on our land, they pay the tax!"

The young lord's voice goes hard. "I think you'll see that they're on my father's land and it's ultimately his responsibility to collect taxes for the king. Which means this is decision, not yours."

"Yes, and he decided that-"

"Well I'm deciding differently and he can yell at me about it then!" he snaps. "Put your sword away before I draw mine."

There's a tense, heavy silence. Then there's the sound of a sword going back in its sheathe and, "Yes, Lord de Bois."

Lord de Bois sighs and then raises his voice so his voice carries travels to everyone standing there, to the whole village standing there and waiting. "I'll return within the week. If there's any sort of bookkeeping you have, gather it for me."

"Y-yes, my lord," the blacksmith stutters.

There's the sound of footsteps then hooves.

He lifts his head and only sees the back of the young Lord de Bois's blond head.

Merlin wonders if when he returns, he'll be allowed to look.

#prompt answers #prompts are closed #asks #anon #merlin

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Touch and Comfort

hi! Could you write a fic where one of the merlin characters have ocd? (Specifically haphemania and uncontrollable intrusive thoughts and fear of forgetfulness) (no im totally not projecting-) – anon

i will readily admit i did not know a lot about these topics before i started researching for this fic so! if i have misrepresented anything please please please tell me

Read on Ao3

Warnings: ocd, haphemania, intrusive thoughts, fear of forgetfulness

Pairings: merthur, can be platonic or romantic you decide

Word Count: 1498

    Merlin keeps touching him.

Not in a bad way, and not in a way that it's a problem, but Merlin just keeps touching him. When he's putting his armor on, he'll run his fingers over every single link and buckle. When he's dressing him for court, he'll tuck his tunic under and brush the lint from his shoulders with an almost manic precision. When he's making ready for bed, he runs his hands up and down Arthur's back until he's smoothed out every single crease, it feels like.

Then, of course, once he notices how much Merlin touches him, he notices how much Merlin touches everything. He touches each and every knob on the bedposts. He fixes each of the chairs at the table even though Arthur only uses the one. He straightens each quill and piece of parchment on Arthur's desk, he opens and closes each of the wardrobe doors, he touches each hinge on the folding screen. He asks what he's doing once and Merlin takes his hand away like it's been burned, but then he spots him going back later to touch the last hinge anyway.

It starts to worry him, just a little, because every time someone interrupts…whatever it is, Merlin won't focus. His fingers will twitch and his shoulders will hunch and he'll look like he's about to explode until he goes back and finishes. Arthur's only made that mistake once; he stormed away before Merlin could finish his armor and Merlin near tackled him to the ground in order to finish it. He almost took his head off until he noticed how wide and frantic Merlin's eyes were and he's let him decide when he's done from now on.

Part of him thinks it might be something to do with how often Arthur gets into danger. Which is not his fault, thank you very much, for some reason many people want to kill the Prince of Camelot. Perhaps it's some worry on Merlin's part that if he doesn't check absolutely everything, Arthur won't be protected by his armor properly and he'll be hurt. Which is admittedly quite sweet, even for Merlin, but that's why he has the other knights to check and watch his back. And that wouldn't explain why he's touching everything else.

He catches Merlin muttering to himself as he lays out his armor one day, when he thinks Arthur's still out of the room and can't hear him. He says the name of each piece, touching it in the order it needs to be put on, over and over until he can do it all in one breath. Despite the grilling he gave him when he was first starting out, Merlin's never messed up his armor a single time. Is this why? Does he practice over and over until he can do it perfectly? A younger Arthur might've scoffed and said all servants should know that, that if Merlin struggled to remember that he should be practicing. But now he's simply concerned. Merlin…surely Merlin doesn't think that if he makes a mistake with Arthur's armor, something bad will happen, right? He's a poor enough servant, there's no reason for Arthur to dismiss him or punish him for making a mistake—it'll get caught, either by Merlin himself after a moment, Arthur will notice, or Elyan will. And it's unlikely at this point that Merlin could forget; the man remembers the birthday of another serving girl he spoke to for ten minutes three months ago, he certainly remembers how to put on Arthur's armor.

And that doesn't explain the touching either. Half the time, Merlin doesn't even look like he's doing it on purpose.

Then he thinks it might be nightmares.

They've had to sleep close by for a number of reasons, and while Arthur's certainly startled himself awake due to some phantom terror more times than he'd care to admit, he was stunned by the fact that Merlin seems to be jolting awake just as often. He's not too big of a prat—in Merlin's words—to poke fun at someone for having a nightmare, and he's definitely not rude enough to let Merlin deal with it by himself, not when he wakes up with tears on his face and Merlin's there to soothe them away, tell him it's alright, he's safe, nothing bad can happen to him while Merlin's there. No, he's going to do the same; he lets Merlin fuss over him as much as he wants, touching his face, his chest, his arms, murmuring that he's okay, he's alright, everyone's alright, everyone's safe.

If he lets them both fall back asleep with Merlin's arms around him, his around Merlin's too-skinny waist, well, that's no one's business but their own.

He thinks it might be something to do with that, reassuring himself that Arthur's still alright, but it happens regardless of whether or not there's a nightmare the night before. Even if Merlin sleeps as soundly as a stone, the next day he'll be running his fingers along Arthur's armor as readily as ever.

It's almost worse when Merlin refuses to touch something.

He catches him staring at the swords a few times. His hands clenched at his sides, his knuckles white. He looks out the window like that sometimes too, standing so still it's almost as though he'd been turned to stone himself. He grabs a length of twine once to help Leon tie something to his saddle and drops it immediately, backing up at least one horse-length away and nothing they did could coax him to come back over.

Merlin looks so cold during those moments and Arthur doesn't know what to do.

It comes to a head on a slow morning when Merlin's running his fingers along the shoulder seams of Arthur's tunic. His brow is furrowed in concentration, his mouth a thin little line. When he finishes, pronouncing Arthur ready to go, Arthur reaches out and carefully stills him with a hand near his elbow.

"Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Touch me like that." Arthur runs his fingers over Merlin's shoulders. "You…you do it a lot. You touch a lot of things like that."

Merlin starts looking shiftily away. "What are you talking about?"

Slowly, like coaxing a skittish animal to him, Arthur explains what he's seen. Merlin's eyes go from wide and wild to grudgingly impressed by the time he's finished.

"Didn't know you were paying that much attention to me."

"You're my Merlin, of course I paid attention."

Merlin sighs, letting his arm hang limply in Arthur's grip. "I…I have to."

"Have to what?"

"Have to touch stuff like that."

"Okay," Arthur says slowly, "but…why?"

"I just do." Merlin shakes his head. "Otherwise they get bad."

"The—the things you touch get bad if you don't touch them?"

"No. These—" Merlin taps the side of his head— "those get bad."

"Your—your thoughts?"

"Yes. They get bad if I don't do everything right, so I have to touch everything right before I can move on."

"Merlin," Arthur says as gently as he can, "you know I'm not going to be cross with you if you do something wrong, right?"

Merlin scoffs and turns away. "You threaten to banish me every day, sire, I think that—"

"I don't mean that," Arthur interrupts, catching him again, "I never mean it, Merlin, you know that, don't you? It's—that's how we are, we banter and make threats but we don't mean them, I'd never actually send you away, even if you are a lousy servant. You don't have to get everything right all the time."

Merlin looks at him for a second, as if trying to figure out if this is true—it is, Merlin, it is, I promise it's true—before he sighs. "I don't worry about it for you, you prat, it's not worrying about upsetting you."

"It isn't?"

"Well, believe it or not, the world doesn't actually revolve around you—"

"Merlin."

"It doesn't, you know."

Arthur cuffs him gently over the shoulder, even as he rubs carefully on Merlin's other arm. "Someone else, then? Has one of the other lords threatened you? A knight?"

"No, it's not a someone-else thing, it's a me thing. I—I just have to do it, alright?"

While he's not thrilled that Merlin seems to be battling something he can't stab with his sword or banish from the kingdom, Arthur sighs. "Alright, it's a Merlin thing."

"Yeah."

"Can I…is there anything I can do to…help?"

"Just…just let me do it? Don't make fun of me for it?"

"Alright. I won't."

A weight sags from Merlin's shoulders—how long has he been worried about this? "Thank you."

"Of course. You're my Merlin."

Merlin smiles and runs his fingers along Arthur's shoulders again and no, this isn't a problem at all.

#dragonbabbles #fic #merlin #merlin bbc #bbc merlin