MERLIN ANNIVERSARY SHARE YOUR WIPS CHALLENGE
(tagged by @aemelia and @diaryofatrekker)
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The following morning, Merlin was woken by a peremptory knock on the door, and a decidedly too-cheerful voice calling, “Get up, Merlin, I know you’re in there! Are you going to leave your prince waiting on the doorstep?”
“I’m going to turn my prince into a toad if he doesn’t shut up,” Merlin muttered, rolling out of bed with a reluctant groan. Fortunately, Arthur was too far away to hear him, and Merlin tugged on his tunic and hose quickly before stumbling over to open the door. “What are you even doing here?” he asked, as Arthur shouldered his way inside without so much as a by-your-leave. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
“I’m here to help,” Arthur said, folding his arms. “Given your abysmal performance yesterday, I spoke to my father and he agreed that I should supervise you in my free time, to make sure you don’t end up poisoning anybody again.”
“I didn’t poison anyone,” Merlin retorted, watching in disbelief as Arthur began collecting ingredients from Gaius’ shelves and setting them on the table. “I told Sir Olwin not to drink the whole lot at once; it’s not my fault he didn’t listen.”
“Then you should have explained it better, shouldn’t you?” Arthur said patronisingly, dumping an armful of comfrey into a nearby cauldron. “Honestly, Merlin, you’re lucky that the only side-effect was an hour or two spent on the privy. He could have died!”
‘Help’ in Arthur’s world obviously meant something different than it did in Merlin’s; it was possible he had confused the term with ‘be as much of a condescending prat as possible.’ Taking a deep breath, Merlin said as evenly as he could,
“Arthur. Sir Olwin always drinks his potion all in one go—he’s blind as a bat and never listens to directions, so Gaius has given up trying to make him. We always give him a diluted version of the purgative to be on the safe side. He would have been fine without your ‘help’.”
“Oh.” For a second, Arthur only blinked at him, looking—of all things—almost disappointed. Then he shrugged. “Well, at least someone has the good sense to plan for these things, I suppose. But so long as I’m here, I might as well supervise you anyway. Lord knows what you might get up to if I left you to your own devices.”
He smirked at Merlin then, clearly daring him to argue, and Merlin wondered darkly how Arthur would feel about being turned into a fish. At the very least, not being able to breathe above water might shut him up for a while, and Merlin was bound to have far less desire to kiss him if he were all wet and scaly.
“That really isn’t necessary, sire,” he said, with as little inflection as he could manage. “I wouldn’t want to take you away from your duties.”
“Don’t be silly, Merlin.” Arthur, still smiling, clapped him heartily on the back. “A good ruler should take the time to understand everything that goes on in his kingdom. Even the mundane, inconsequential parts.”
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tagging YOU, and also @makesoneteam, @secondstar-acorn, @merlinlikethebird, @slantedknitting, @gyrhs, and @thesongistheriver