LGBT Oneshots ✅

The Blue of Your Sky (Merlin)

Choose a colour and write about it.

It's an unspoken rule between the two of you that Arthur always rides through first because he's a Prince, a knight, and it wouldn't do for a mere servant to stride in front of him, despite the fact you both know you're more than that. It suits you just fine, though, because that means you can catch him when he's at his most honest, gritting his teeth in that tight smile that means he's hiding the pain. You've tried to talk to him about it, hinted at how the best leaders are human and are allowed to do more than sit in their saddle, stoic, but he shakes his head every time and says "you wouldn't understand it, Merlin".

You understand it more than he knows.

There are other days, calmer and without the danger that seems ever present in Camelot, when Arthur is supposed to be tied up with matters of the realm but still manages to harass you. You're the first person he can shout at in the morning and also the last because he spars at night, sweats off the day's frustrations with the sword you hand to him. He doesn't need you there, really, isn't suited up in his armour but you stay anyway because you have nothing else to do and, honestly, you quite like to watch him like this. In the moonlight, he paints a graceful, fluid figure that treats the sword as an extension of his own body, an extra limb. You can't look away.

He's normally in a better mood when he finishes, walking over to you for a wet rag to wipe his face with, and he smiles, genuine and open, and you're always struck by how beautiful and blue his eyes are.

Arthur prefers the colour red, though, because it's strong and sharp and it reiterates the kind of leader he is so you match your scarf to him in a show of support and, unconsciously, you always throw on a blue shirt when you're too rushed in the morning to properly think about it. You try to mix it up but that usually leads to a red shirt and blue scarf and, in the end, you give up trying. If Arthur ever notices, he never mentions it.

You don't think he does, though, because he's always too busy looking for trouble as if it doesn't automatically gravitate itself towards him. You're normally the first one to find him, to get him out of his messes, and you learn quickly to carry around salves and clean pieces of cloth all the time because Arthur and his injuries wait for no healer. Before you realise it, you're calling the right side of your trousers Arthur's side and it's been months since you've last used them for yourself. It's not a big thing because you're his servant and you're meant to look after him, but, sometimes, it makes you pause and think for a beat.

Arthur never allows you that much time, though, clapping a hand around your shoulders and dazzling you with a smile that promises only bad things. You should learn to tell him no but it's Arthur and he's smiling at you with his blue eyes crinkled at the sides which is something he knows you're weak to. It surprises no one when the two of you return, dirty and tired but grinning so wide your cheeks hurt, and you know that, the next time he decides to chase a rumour through the woods, you're going with him. It's something you pretend to hate but, when the war takes over everything, you wish for the simpler times when you could both shirk your duties for a day and lose yourselves on a disastrous hike again.

That's the first Arthur you know. It isn't the last.

It's later, when you've watched your friends grow old and die—Gwen and Percival and Gaius—that you find yourself wishing for a miracle, for Arthur. It's only a few years later, though it felt like forever back then, when you stumble into a boy with blond hair and big blue eyes and your breath comes short and your legs shake and you can't. You can't.

He looks at you, a sharp, discerning gaze that's so out of place on his young face, breathing in quick, "Merlin?"

You're a grown man and yet you're reduced to tears in front of a child.

Twenty years you spend with this Arthur, watching him grow into the man you used to know, always coming to you with his bad ideas and you, haunted with the image of him dying in your arms, saying yes every time. They are at once the best and worst years because this is Arthur and you would follow him anywhere but this is not the Camelot you know and your happiness is tainted by loss. It still hurts as bad as the first time, though, when he gets involved in a particularly bad bar brawl and you watch him leave you again.

You spend a century alone.

When you see him again, he is a man and brunet and he doesn't remember you. There is an ache in your chest, a hurt that makes it hard to breathe, but you finally have Arthur back in your life and you would brave anything for that so you grit your teeth in that tight smile and pretend you're not in pain. This Arthur dies at thirty, a precious two years after you meet, and you hate everything in the world. More than anything, it scares you that this might be the last Arthur you meet, that you might spend another hundred years without him, and you would even take the Arthur that looks at you with no recognition than no Arthur at all. Because those eyes are the blue of your sky, are the colour of faith and hope and love.

Those eyes are a constant when all else changes and that specific, indescribable blue is always what gives him away.

You start to make mental notes, the curse of having too much time to think about it, and you learn that the colour of his hair means nothing and that it's a roll of the dice as to whether he remembers you or not. Once, in a fit of desperation, you try to use your magic and make him remember but it doesn't work and you scare him off:  you never try again. The memories, in the end, don't matter and, rather, it's the time the two of you have together. You like best the ones where you meet him as a child and use your magic to create an illusion so he believes you the same. You grow up together, walking behind him in red and blue, always ready to nurse his injuries. It's in one of those that he first kisses you.

It's a kiss you've waited your entire life for.

And it's also a bad idea, one of the worst Arthur's ever had, but he looks at you with those blue, blue eyes and, together, the two of you learn why men speak so highly of the slippery thighs of a boy.

You realise, all of a sudden, that you love Arthur.

But he does not always love you.

Those lives, where he's happy and settled without you, start to hurt more and more than the ones in which you never meet. You hate them but you love Arthur and you forgive him every time because he's him, brilliance and perfection and as unattainable as the sky. It makes you wonder, when he's not there and you have the time to think, what he sees in you.

Sometimes, your thoughts are crippling and you don't know why you torture yourself by following him through five, twenty, a hundred lifetimes but then you see those blue eyes and he loves you back and you understand.

Because this is what people spend an eternity searching for; you're lucky enough to have found it already.

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