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Arthur’s breath hitches as Merlin’s magic swells over him.
Compared to some of the magic Merlin is truly capable of, Arthur thinks this is a small thing, a dribble to a flood, but he still bows his head against his changing screen, breathing deep.
Nearly as soon as he does so, the sensation disappears, replaced by Arthur’s baseline awareness of Merlin’s presence as he putters idly about the room. The abrupt whiplash stuns him into gasping again, and he pins an unseen glare on the screen, somewhere in Merlin’s direction.
Every time he thinks he gets used to it; every time he thinks he’s getting better at understanding his own abilities and how they work, Merlin is there, proving him wrong.
He wonders what Merlin is doing. Is he cheating on his chores? Stoking the fire without using a poker? Drawing an empty goblet to himself from across the table? He is certainly not stopping time or channeling the elements, as those feats do more than make Arthur gasp aloud.
Arthur tries to parse it out, hunting for the object imbued with Merlin’s power, only to find its touch painted across his chambers in so many hues and depths it makes him dizzy. He retracts his senses with a frustrated frown.
An ache pulses behind his brow. Arthur stubbornly attempts it again, but the recent magical imprint is lost in the noise of the other long-standing spells scattered about the room, which are far more distracting than they have any right to be, considering the cascading storm roiling from Merlin’s skin and into Arthur’s.
At least that has gotten easier to handle. And a good job it had. The prince of Camelot couldn’t go around looking as though he had the wind knocked out of him every time his new servant reentered the palace after a meander to the Lower Town. Even the most absent father would have started getting a little suspicious at such behavior.
As gratifying as it has been to learn some control over his sixth sense over these last few weeks, his progress is slow and insubstantial compared to Merlin’s.
Merlin never says as much, not even when Arthur asks outright. But Arthur knows. As does Gaius, who tells Arthur in private that he’s never seen Merlin’s like. The young man learns fast and with more ease than a traditional sorcerer, no matter the difficulty of the magic he’s attempting. The control he wields over his considerable power is next to none, too, self-taught as he is. It should be impossible, Gaius states.
It should be treasured, Arthur reads between every word. Gaius does not need Arthur’s gift to understand that, and Arthur, in turn, does not need reminding. Arthur doubts he’ll ever need reminding, not since their very first handshake.
He and Merlin don’t speak of that either. Like many things between them, it goes without being said.
Arthur frowns again and ties off his trousers. Merlin’s magic settles comfortably within them, content like a cat basking in sunlight. He does not intend on using more, Arthur thinks, disappointed.
He sighs. Perhaps there are some things that need saying after all.
“You know…” Arthur muses aloud as he walks around the screen, pulling on a fresh shirt. “For all that we’ve done and for all the monsters we’ve routed since you arrived in Camelot, I’ve yet to see you actually perform magic.”
Merlin freezes in place, empty platter falling from nerveless fingers. It clatters and spreads lingering crumbs across Arthur’s dining table.
Arthur stares at the quivering platter before slowly raising his eyes and rolling them at his servant. “For Heaven’s sake, Merlin,” he says, “you act as though we haven’t already discussed your magic openly and at length. Or as though I can’t tell you were using it just now. Or practicing on my armor. Again.”
Merlin reddens as Arthur throws a pointed look at the glistening armor strewn about his chambers. He has done something new to it , Arthur thinks and squints at the interwoven webs enchanted between links of his chainmail. It’s...reinforced? Yes. Stronger. Less likely to give.
He’s oddly touched, now that he has the confirmation. Merlin may not be a knight, who protects the realm and its sovereigns with sword and sinew alone, bound to the Pendragon family and Camelot by their oaths, but enchanting Arthur’s armor to withstand harder and fiercer blows is its own silent exclamation of loyalty.
He’s not so sure he expected that, not from Merlin, though upon second thought, Arthur supposes he should have. If it were anyone else messing about with his armor, Arthur’d have their head, for obvious reasons. But it’s Merlin. And despite having known each other for just over two months…
Arthur trusts him, probably more than he trusts himself, and it would be terrifying if it didn't feel so right.
“And you act as though you’ve forgotten I can’t get too comfortable doing so, my Lord. Considering how we met and how adamantly you insisted I stay away from Camelot, I’m a little surprised at you,” Merlin shoots back, a fraction of a second too late to land as harshly as he probably intends. “I do have some self-preservation instinct. If I got caught and executed, Gaius would resort to necromancy just to have the pleasure of lecturing me back to death.”
“I wouldn’t let that—” Arthur begins to argue.
“I’m not so certain you’d have a choice in the matter,” Merlin interrupts softly. His tone isn’t half as sour as it should be. His eyes are sympathetic. “Not now. Not yet.”
Arthur concedes the point with a grimace, raising his hands in apology. He understands the need for subtlety as well as caution. Merlin’s life and livelihood will depend on it so long as misinformation and paranoia reigns alongside Uther. Despite Arthur’s personal beliefs, he cannot hope to change an entire mentality overnight, not if he hopes to retain his people’s belief in the Pendragon name.
(They’ve all talked about that at length, too, Morgana’s fiery impatience tempered only by Merlin’s odd wisdom and Arthur’s cool logic).
Understanding Merlin’s hesitation, however, does not douse the fire of curiosity licking at Arthur’s heels. When Merlin turns his back to fuss at his minor mess, obviously believing the conversation well and done, Arthur’s eyes do not leave his servant. His tongue works around a few questions, and he fumbles for the best and most succinct way to—
Merlin senses his gaze, and he drops the pretense, shoulders slumping. “You’re not going to let it go.”
Arthur’s eyes brighten, and he smiles. Minimal effort required on his part, then. Excellent. “No.”
Merlin sighs. “Why? You know it when I do it around you anyway. What does seeing it change?”
Arthur purses his lips. Merlin does magic so instinctively, and so often without realizing it—emphasis on so often —he can't imagine exactly why Merlin cares Arthur sees a distinction there at all.
“You’re still afraid,” he realizes aloud. And isn’t that a strange thing. Merlin seemed to conquer fear in the same way he approached learning magic: with a thickheaded persistence that gave way to pure ease. The way Merlin acts, Arthur would never have believed…
“The Crone’s overgrown fingernails,” Merlin curses colorfully under his breath. He rubs his eyes and faces the prince. “Yes, Arthur, I am afraid. I’ve always been afraid. I don’t know if I ever won’t be. Because it’s all I’ve ever known.”
“I understand that,” Arthur snaps because he, too, knows that fear as intimately as a lover. His father would never forgive a crown prince who could sense magic anymore than he would forgive a sorcerer of Merlin’s caliber at court. “I meant you’re still afraid of me.”
Merlin tenses again, but not as though he’s been caught out in a lie. He considers Arthur’s accusation with distant eyes before saying slowly, “They say that seeing is believing.”
Arthur’s eyebrows quirk. “And what?” he demands, crossing his arms. “You think once I see, I’ll go back on what I’ve sworn to you already? That it’ll suddenly strike me that what I’ve sensed of your magic is wrong?”
“They also say that fear isn’t always rational,” Merlin agrees, looking a little frustrated with himself.
“You’re certainly not,” Arthur jibes under his breath.
Merlin gives him a flat look. “Thanks.”
When it appears as though Merlin will not offer any further explanations, Arthur decides it’s time he’s honest. “I don’t mean to make you into a spectacle,” he says, “but I’m honestly just curious. And you’re the only one who can answer my questions.”
And the only one I can practice with, gods help me.
“Morgana has magic,” Merlin points out.
Arthur shakes his head immediately. “Hers isn’t the same. It’s not quite—” He huffs, trying to put it to words. “It’s...like an unripe apple. Still developing on its stem, deep within its trees’ branches. I think she’ll be powerful one day, and once she can control her dreams, she’ll be even more so, but her magic itself? It’s still...”
“Green,” Merlin finished.
“Yes.”
Merlin’s lips quirk in sudden amusement. “Does that make my magic ripe and red?”
Scowling, Arthur picks up the sweat-stiff shirt he’d worn at training and bunches it up to throw at his servant. It misses and flops pitifully to the ground a few paces away. “That’s not the point.”
Merlin laughs, and he plucks the shirt up, manually, only to drop it in his full laundry basket. He was meant to do laundry yesterday, Arthur recalls.
“Besides, you know full well yours is beyond apple metaphors,” Arthur grumbles, slouching across his bed. The line of Merlin’s shoulders stiffens. Arthur frowns at his servant’s back, opens his mouth, hesitates.
He remembers his first reaction upon sensing Merlin’s approach to Camelot. He’d felt as though Bors, an absolute bear of a knight, had swung his quarterstaff with all his might into his gut, knocking the wind and sense out of him with one blow. He’d later said to Morgana that it wasn’t right for one person to contain that much power. Later still, he’d told Merlin his magic was blinding; that it drowned everything else out in its proximity.
Knowing what he knows now—about Merlin, about how he grew up, about how he always wondered if maybe he was a monster after all—Arthur’s ashamed of himself. Words have weight, and they strike with fierce accuracy even when shot blind and ignorant.
Merlin does not deserve to feel that way, not around him. Not when Arthur is one of the only people who can feel exactly what it’s like.
There’s no easy way for him to shrug off Merlin’s reaction and try to tell him it doesn’t matter, Merlin; it’ll never matter to me. Because it does matter. It matters to nearly everyone around them who would see Merlin dead for what he is. It matters to Merlin himself, as his magic is so much a part of him, as is his drive to find a purpose for it all. It matters to Arthur, too, because....
Just because.
Old ghosts and regrets tapdance along Arthur’s spine and cartwheel into his gut. Arthur doesn’t vocalize any of it. He doesn’t know how to, not without sounding like a complete fool. Instead he says, “The point is I can’t ask Morgana because she can’t show me. You can.”
“And what would you have me show you?” Merlin asks, a challenge in his voice.
“Anything you want,” Arthur says casually. When Merlin hesitates again, gnawing on his lip and fiddling at the hem of his sleeves, Arthur resigns himself to the fact he’s probably going to have to sound a fool after all.
He opens his mouth, but Merlin beats him to it. “It feels like a dream still, half of the time,” he admits. “It’s stupid, but I sometimes...I don’t know. I wonder if I won’t wake up and see you and Morgana and Gwen staring at me from the other side of a wall of bars.” He shudders. “No recognition in your eyes.”
Incredible, Arthur thinks. “You don’t hold a lot of stock in all that you’ve done for Camelot since you arrived, do you?”
Merlin looks at him blankly, as though he can’t comprehend half of the words that came out of Arthur’s mouth. “It’s what anyone would do, isn’t it?”
“Not anyone,” Arthur mutters. Louder, he says, “This is pointless. I’ve seen enough to believe already, Merlin.” He holds Merlin’s gaze, unflinching and unblinking. “And I believe in magic.”
The words do have some impact on Merlin. Or Arthur sees the last of his resistance crumbling away.
The younger man takes a slow, deep breath through his nose, and Arthur is hardly prepared when his magic whirls in a wildly stunning spiral to the surface, a blade-thin thread of it weaving up into his open palms. This, at least, isn’t so different from other magic Arthur’s sensed Merlin perform, until suddenly…
Arthur watches with mounting incredulity and awe as the magic folds itself into the fabric of their reality, over and over again in infinitesimal and complicated patterns. It swims and darts about, playful and bright within the cup of Merlin’s hands, convalescing and budding into something beyond Arthur’s understanding.
Merlin’s eyes glow burnished gold. Arthur is almost distracted, a yet unlearned swoop of unease catching him by surprise, but in the end, it is nothing like he and Merlin feared it would be. It’s a silly reaction anyway. Arthur knows this magic, and he knows this sorcerer.
It will not startle him again.
Heart in his throat for a completely different reason, Arthur finds he cannot pull his eyes away. He is captivated by the subtle power, the gentle coaxing, with which Merlin directs the threads of his magic. Seeing it is different, though Arthur cannot say how or why, as there is nothing to physically see, but somehow, Arthur has the impression he’s been half-blind this whole time, trying to make his way through the dark without a torch to light his way.
By the time the blossom of bright crimson opens its petals in Merlin’s cupped hands, stretching toward the sun of Merlin’s magic, Arthur is lightheaded and dazed, jaw hanging toward the floor.
Merlin stands awkwardly, not quite looking him in the eye. The gold lingers there, a shimmering mirage, before fading entirely.
Hardly daring to draw breath, Arthur tentatively reaches out, and after a beat, Merlin tips the flower into his hand, watching Arthur as though he’s seeing him for the first time.
It’s no illusion. Light does not bend around its form, nor does Arthur’s touch alter its substantiality. The petals are waxy and smooth against his fingertips. He stares at it, then at Merlin.
“Before you say anything,” Merlin says, a little defensively, “Mother always liked it when I did that, and…” He shrugs, embarrassed. “I guess she’s on my mind. I need to write her.”
“I’m not about to make fun of you for creating life out of nothing, Merlin,” Arthur scoffs.
Merlin’s expression implies Arthur has teased him for less, but Arthur doesn’t rise to the bait. Questions froth at his mind. If that was what it was like to see Merlin craft a flower out of magic, what was it like to see him conjure fire? Would it change how it felt to Arthur when Merlin directed the wind, like he did against the afanc? Or when he used his magic for something as menial as keeping Arthur’s breakfast warm? Was there a difference between a reflexive, instinctive spell and one that required all of Merlin’s concentration? What about the difference between offensive and defensive spells?
And how would another sorcerer’s magic pale in comparison to this?
No. No, he won’t make fun of Merlin for making a flower. Not ever.
(But he will tease him for literally everything else).
“Now was that so hard?” Arthur asks, twirling the flower stem innocently between his fingers and grinning at Merlin. “Did the big, bad magic-sensing prince do anything you feared he would?”
“You are such a prat,” Merlin shoots back, ears red. His tone is dark, but his eyes look a little moist. “Watch me neglect to save your life with my magic next time you’re in mortal danger, you arse.”
Arthur laughs. The threat is as empty as air.
“In all seriousness, Merlin, it was quite remarkable.” He says it with every ounce of nonchalance he can muster. He has a sense of the root of Merlin’s remaining insecurities now. He cannot make too much more of a scene regarding how remarkable, nor can he breach or press the tender trust still settling and ever-growing between them.
That is fine. Arthur doesn't mind. It can be one of those unsaid things.
“I’m going to need you to do that for me every so often. Whenever we’re alone and it’s safe to do so, of course,” Arthur continues, sitting on his bed to pull on a fresh pair of boots, “And when I least expect it.” He looks up at Merlin, utterly serious. “I can’t afford to trip up when facing someone who isn’t quite so willing to show me the good in magic.”
Merlin studies him, and if Arthur didn’t know better, he’d think Merlin was reading him from the inside out. He tries not to let it show it bothers him a little, just how well Merlin can read him. After what he asked of Merlin just now, he supposes it’s only fair, really.
Trust is a two way street, after all.
Arthur’s rewarded with a beaming smile.