doubt||merthur

chapter 7

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Doubt comes in and my heart falters and forgets the songs it’s sung

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The morning is flat and colourless. Merlin can tell even before he opens his eyes. He blinks at the canopy above the bed and a bit of him hopes Arthur’s not there. But he is. He’s leaning on the wall by the window. Beyond him the sky is the colour of duck eggs, and Merlin thinks more snow is cascading but it’s hard to say. He can feel Arthur all over him, like he’s still there, whispering with his fingers even as he bites at his shoulder and stifles the noises he’s making with his skin.

The room looks different from here. It strikes Merlin as ludicrous that he’s even thinking about it, but it does. The room used to be familiar to him in specific ways – stupid silverware that always needs cleaning – leaking window – the spot on the floor that never comes out and Arthur claims is boar bile. Now it’s shifted, like he’s really in it for the first time, like it belongs to him as much as Arthur. He already knows it won’t stay like this, and as if to confirm it the pillow rustles beneath his head and Arthur’s eyes flicker down as if he wishes he’d left, too.

Merlin sits up. The covers are heavy and when they shift a rush of cold assails his skin. He gets out anyway, fumbles into his clothes less elegantly than he got out of them. They’re still a bit damp and he shivers as they stick to him. Fleetingly he thinks about just going, slipping into the corridor as if he was never here, but he decides he’s already enough kinds of coward with Arthur. He goes over and peers out of the window. Camelot is still subdued by the snow. He wonders if anyone can see them, but no-one would think anything of it. He’s here more than not.

‘I didn’t mean to sleep so long.’

‘Apparently I managed without you.’

‘Wonders never cease.’

Arthur’s smile is slight but real, and Merlin touches his shoulder and runs his fingers all the way down his spine. Arthur stiffens, then gives in and eases back. Merlin strokes a circle in the hollow at the base, not knowing what he’s trying to say or if he’s doing it just to see if he can.

‘I should go before Gaius sends a search party.’

‘What will you tell him?’

‘Lies.’

He kisses Arthur’s cheek, and leaves him looking at the snow.