He took a deep breath in. This could not be happening.
“I love you” Arthur repeated.
Merlin knew that there was still the telltale traces of gold in his eyes. The world was crumbling around him; the trees seemed to grow into blurry stripes in his peripheral and the lush foliage of the forest turned into blobs of green.
“No, no Arthur” The warlock begged. “Don’t be cruel” a small tear escaped his eye.
“Merlin. Merlin, it’s okay, it’s okay!” The prince tried calming him down, but his manservant only seemed to speed up his breathing, eyes blurring nearly unseeing.
“Ar-thur” he rasped in between breaths.
Arthur slowly walked towards Merlin as if he was approaching a startled child. For every step the prince looked up to check if it was okay for Merlin.
When he finally reached him, he hesitated before putting his arms around his shaking friend.
“Shhh Merlin, it’s okay, it’s okay shh I-“ Arthur soothed “I- I’m so sorry Merlin, I should have told you I knew. But- but I just wanted you to trust me, and now I’ve gone and made you suffer more.”
Merlin looked up at the blonde “you, you knew?” He whispered.
“Yes, Merlin, can you remember 5 months ago when I was really angry for 3 weeks?”
Merlin’s brows furrowed, “where you kept destroying training dummies?”
“Yeah”
The warlocks breathing had calmed down a fair amount, he even huffed out a laugh at the response.
“I was angry, because what the hell was a sorcerer doing in Camelot doing my dirty laundry?!”
Merlin looked up with a hesitant grin “mmh I wonder that myself sometimes” he tried bantering, only really betrayed by his voice cracking mid sentence.
There was a lot of things to talk about, really, both Arthur and Merlin knew it, but for now they let themselves rest in the knowledge that the long hidden secret was out in the open.
“And actually it’s warlock” Merlin added a little braver, with a smug smile, before placing his face into his prince’s neck once more
“Hhm, and the difference?” Arthur spoke into a mob of black hair.
“I was born with it”
Arthur stiffened and Merlin did as well upon the blonde’s reaction.
“THEN WHY THE HELL DID YOU COME TO CAMELOT, U IDIOT!?” The prince was trying to sound mad at his manservant’s idiocy, but he couldn’t help the fondness in his tone. Only Merlin would be that ridiculous.
“Well, you were here” the Warlock simply said.
And as absurd as that sounded, destiny would agree.
