Summary: “I ought to be home by dinner,” Arthur calls as he walks out the door. “Don’t burn the house down while I’m out!”
~
Arthur looks around the house, a wondrous confusion in his eyes. “What the hell happened?”
“Well, I didn’t burn it down.”
_____________________________________
“Are you sure you want to stay home today?”
“Yes, Arthur. I’ll be alright. You go help Darcy at the shop.”
Arthur begins to lace his boots. “Danielle,” he says.
“What?” Merlin queries distractedly as he cleans up from lunch.
“Danielle, not Darcy,” Arthur continues, standing upright and shrugging on a jacket.
“Right. Yes. Danielle.”
“Well, I ought to be home by dinner,” Arthur calls as he walks out the door. “Don’t burn the house down while I’m out!”
Arthur has done this several days a week as of late – going to the local town, Ecrin, that lies just a few miles down the road. Granted, one has to walk through pathless woods to get to that road, but it isn’t far nevertheless. Not for Arthur, at least, who’d trekked across kingdoms on horseback many years ago. It feels like mere months for him, however, as he’s only returned in as much time.
He doesn’t trek with a horse now, though, so Merlin usually takes the car into Ecrin with him. Only, on days like today, Merlin stays home to tend to things, so Arthur is left with a taxi as transport into town.
When they do go into town together, it is for Arthur’s sake, who goes to local shops and helps people of all sorts out. He isn’t even paid for his labor, whether it be moving stock at the farmers’ market or organizing books for the local library. They offer, of course, but that foolish man always declines any payment.
Merlin doesn’t like these ventures much, as he has been secluded in this little cabin in the woods for many years. He built it long ago, with his own two hands – no magic. During his counterpart’s. . . absence, Merlin found himself desperate to keep busy. He all but completely halted his use of magic as he always strayed from taking the easy path. But Arthur doesn’t need to know Merlin’s lack of enjoyment with those days in Ecrin. And he wouldn’t know because Merlin knows Arthur, and he knows how much it means to him.
Despite the many years to mourn the passing of everyone he ever knew, the sorcerer never truly moved on from them. He saw them with him in little ways; Gwen in his garden and basket weaving, and Gaius with his remedy making, and even the smallest of things, like thinking of Elyan whenever he wore something hooded. These reminders always paint him with a bittersweet smile.
But for Arthur, everyone he has ever known and loved, his entire kingdom, his land, is all gone – save Merlin, of course. His mourning is fresh, and Merlin recognizes himself in Arthur – doing everything he can to keep busy, just as Merlin had.
It’s more than that, though. It’s Arthur needing to help people, no matter how seemingly menial this help may appear. Merlin knows Arthur feels responsible for the wellbeing of those in this new land, even if he doesn’t have any actual power. He has no kingdom to lead, no meetings to attend or councils to speak with, no Gaius, and no Guinevere.
But he has this, and Merlin will be damned if he doesn’t respect that.
Merlin does worry ever so for Arthur, though. Even if he won’t admit it.
‘Why didn’t I just go into town with him?’ Merlin curses to himself as he washes up the dishes from a recent lunch.
~
The cottage Merlin lives in is a quaint thing. Surely it’s at least not as small as the chickens’ coup that resides around the back, but it certainly shows having been built by hand many years ago. It sits tucked in a secluded wood beside Lake Avalon, and it previously served as a place where Merlin would wait for his king. The inside is only one room, save the bathroom that sits separately as a tiny outbuilding behind the home. A little kitchen space lies in the back corner, accompanied by a fireplace with a sitting area and a bed between the two. There is a dining area too, though Merlin only started using it upon Arthur’s return. Before then, he ate in the armchairs by the fireplace (if he even ate at all, seeing as he technically doesn't have to).
As Merlin finishes up the washing, he sets the dishes out to dry and turns round to survey the house for all he has to do today. His hopes to weed the garden (and use the loo) fall short as he glances out the window, remembering that a great storm was due for today and seeing that it has most definitely arrived. Perhaps he should stop it for Arthur’s sake?
‘No,’ Merlin thinks to himself with a quick shake of his head. ‘I’m not supposed to be worrying about Arthur today. He’s alright. He’s okay.’
The man repeats these affirmations in his head as he makes his way outside and round the house to the outbuilding, letting the rainfall unto him freely in a vain attempt to ground himself from his troubled woe.
As he finishes up in the outbuilding, there is a great crack of thunder, and Merlin hears the sounds of tree branches cracking. ‘That wasn’t me!’ Merlin thinks almost habitually, pondering back on times when he’d lost his patience (and temper) with the Sidhe.
Leaving the outbuilding, Merlin squints through the heavy rain before noticing a dreaded branch landed atop the house.
“Oh, you must be joking,” Merlin mutters to himself bitterly, a hush barely audible over the thundering storm that envelops everything around him. He looks to the sky and curses at it before trudging inside, silently praying to himself that the roof was alright.
The roof is not alright.
As Merlin looks around the cabin, he spots a trickle of water dripping in from a concentration of spots on the ceiling just above the dining table. It’s small, but Merlin knows from experience to not underestimate a sprung ceiling leak.
Lumbering back out into the harsh weather, Merlin squints to the roof, dredging a hand through his hair as it grows moppy with rainfall. He could move the branch with magic, sure, but he’s grown so adept at not taking the easy route that he almost doesn’t want to, even now. He isn’t with Arthur, so he will need something to keep his mind busy, and that something could be fixing the roof by hand. Then again, at this rate, he’ll surely have enough to engross himself with for the day.
As he ponders this, he spots a small white figure toddling around through the heavy rain and thickening fog. Walking closer, somehow furthering his squint despite not thinking it possible, he realizes what the figure is.
“Betrys?” Merlin cries with exasperation. “What the hell are you doing out here? Can you not see that it is downpouring?”
Betrys, an old stubborn chicken, only clucks in response and continues her dotting venture to the treeline.
“Oh, come on now,” Merlin says to her, moving to pick her up and take her back to her coup where there is a roof and walls and warmth. “How on earth did you even get out?” he wonders aloud.
Merlin rounds the corner of the house, gaze set on the chicken coup, before stopping dead in his tracks as he spots the state of it.
“You must be joking,” Merlin echoes with conniption.
There, across the far fence of the chicken coup, lies yet another branch. It certainly isn’t as big as the one atop the roof, but then, it doesn’t need to be nearly as big to damage the wiring fence that houses the hens, does it? Thankfully, none of them were injured by this fall, but Merlin notes that five of the bloody things were missing.
‘Five! Unbelievable little bastards,’ he thinks with a scoff.
After removing the branch and haphazardly mending the fence, Merlin sets the nearest hens back into the roofed portion of their coup and ponders finding a spell to allow him to speak to the stubborn chickens so he can tell them to stay in their damned house when it’s storming.
Looking about, the sorcerer ponders using his magic to stop the storm, but he doesn’t. It hasn’t rained in ages, so he knows the land needs it. And that Arthur would give him that one look after he gets home and realizes Merlin has changed major weather events. Again.
‘Where have you all gone off to?’ he wonders silently as he makes his way deeper into the forest.
Merlin spends far too long in that wooded seclusion, trudging about through heavy rain and fallen limbs and mud. A lot of mud.
He falls on more than one occasion as well, meaning that when he finally returns to the cottage, he is bespattered in mud and only trailed by four of the five absent hens. The last remaining – Glennys, he calls her – is at least a spritely hen who always finds her way home within a few days when lost; Merlin only hopes the weather won’t impair this likelihood.
“Merlin?” Arthur calls through the rain, stopping in his dash to the front door. “What were you doing in the bloody woods with this weather? Why are you covered in mud?”
“How long have you been home? What time is it?” Merlin quips back and walks closer towards Arthur, the hens still in tow. He looks up to the startlingly dark sky before raindrops pelt his face, skewing his gaze.
Arthur shakes his head as Merlin turns back to him. “I only just got home,” he calls over the rain. “Come on, let’s get inside!”
Merlin shakes his head too then. “No, you go. I’ve just got to get the hens back into the coup; I’ll only be a moment.”
“Do you want some help?”
~
Merlin surveys the damage inside the home after returning the chickens to their coup with Arthur’s help. He notes the usual mess – some laundry scattered about, a soot-coated fireplace that truly needs a cleaning, and the like. Then there is the matter of the ceiling’s growing aperture that has been leaking while he was out, which has now slightly flooded the home, leaving a thin sheet of water across the entirety of the floor.
“You must be joking. Honestly!” Merlin mantras once more with a growing ire, tossing his hands up in pure exasperation.
Arthur looks around the house too, a wondrous confusion in his eyes. “What the hell happened?” he asks, though any impudence-prompted annoyance that Merlin is accustomed to is lacking, instead replaced with what sounds like astonishment.
“Well, I didn’t burn it down.”
Arthur plops his feet through their shadow puddle of an excuse for a floor as he makes his way to the couch adjacent to the fireplace. “Come on, sit down,” he says, so Merlin does.
“So?” he prompts after a moment of silence.
Merlin sighs. “It was a long day.”
“Care to enlighten me?”
The sorcerer slouches back into the couch and heaves a deep breath before launching into the afternoon’s events. He stares at the crackling fire all the while, which he started with a nod of his head a brief while into his telling. Arthur sits back and listens without interruption, but his facial expressions speak for themselves, just as they usually do.
“I suppose I ought to apologize for being gone in town later than I had planned,” Arthur begins after Merlin finishes his telling. The sorcerer sits beside his king with a stressed expression. “I'm sorry, Danielle just needed me too—”
“I needed you! I need you here!” Merlin hastes. His words should sound snide as he is put out, but they lack any quality of it. He thinks of how dearly Arthur holds the act of helping others, and he reminds himself not to disregard that. “I’m sorry," he says defeatedly. "I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you’re right. I should be of more help to you. You do much around here, but I’m always going off into town.” Arthur sits up and turns towards his counterpart. “You do most everything, actually,” he admits, eyes now casting through the room to avoid his concession.
“As if you’d be of any use with house and garden chores,” Merlin muses. “You ready to clean the chicken’s coup when it needs it?”
“Well, surely I could—”
Merlin fixes him with a doubtful look.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Arthur admits again, a smile tugging at his lips.
The two sit like that for a moment, a comfortable silence shared between them. They nestle in beside each other on the couch out of habit, but Arthur backs away hastily. “You’re drenched with rain and covered in mud, Merlin,” he states.
“Yeah, I s’pose I am.”
“And on the couch.”
“Didn’t we just establish that I will be the one cleaning it anyway?”
“True,” Arthur allows with a nod. “Really, though,” he continues after another bout of silence, “I’ll make an effort to be here with you more.” He pauses. “Maybe I’ll even learn to garden.”
Merlin laughs at that. “It does seem like something you would enjoy, once you get the hang of it.” After a moment, he continues, “I’ll make an effort to go into town with your more as well. I know you enjoy. . . you know, helping out the locals and such.”
“Yeah,” Arthur agrees, looking a bit uncomfortable at this acknowledgment. “Thank you.” His words are hushed, and he looks downward, but Merlin knows Arthur, and he knows these words are genuine.
Merlin’s lips crescent softly, and he feels a certain warmth despite his chilled clothes. “So, how was your day, then?”
By powered_by_notes on ao3