The sun broke in the sky the morning after Beltane. Gwaine staggered slowly down the street, back to the inn, hair scruffled and spiked with twigs after a night spent sleeping off the village's portent cider in a gorse hedgerow. A distant blackbird tweeted a song of disapproval, dulcet notes hitting the outlaw's skull like a sledgehammer. He groaned and shielded his eyes before swinging the inn door open.
Morning Gwaine!" called MErlin in a sun bright voice. It beirced Gwarin' skull like a jousting lance that splinter and split through Gwaine's skull on impact. He groaned like a bear and gave Merlin a dark look.
"How come you aren't hangover?!" He asked offedned but MErlin just wriggled his fingers at him.
"Like magic" He said cheekily and Gwaine ground ludly.
"Where are you going?!" he asked Merlin. The other man heald up a bucket.
"Water for mum." Gwarin nodded and went inside the coole soothing shade of the inn. Merlin set off once more the for the well in the centre of the village to pull some water up on the rickity winch to take back to his home. When he got to the well he saw broad shoulders and blonde hair: Dirk was already there, pulling up his one water. Merlin waited his turn gladly because it meant he could watched the strong muscles in the other mna's back move as he pulled p the heavy bucket from the deep cavern of water. He was mutch quicker as he was able to pull the bucket back up with magic which made it much easier. Dirk did not acknowledge Merlin at all, evn when they both walked off in the right direction as each other. Eventually the weight of the flowering silence to become heavy and cloying with the blacksmiths derosion. So MErlin spoke:
"What's your problem?!" He exploded scowling. Dirk didn't look at him.
"You." he barked shortly, without moving his eyes, he picked up his pace to try and speedily outwalk the trailing thief.
"Me?!" Merlin crie, offended.
"You." The other man repeated i the same tone, not caring for Merlin's offense.
"What have I done?!" Merlin asked glaring at him in outrage.
"Your a theif. You and your no good robber friends need to stay away from my sister!" He said and addjuted water bucket he carried making water fall over the side with a sound.
"And youre a...a..prat!" Merlin stammered blushing similar in colour to that of a tomato. He caught up with Dirk, standing in front of him so he couldn't move further down the dusty beige road that he already was.
"Lancelot's not a thief. He's a good man." Merlin insisted defending his close friend with a fierce loyalty that burned through him like a wildfire rvavishing the woods in the arid summer that Ealdor got. Dirk rolled his eye cyically.
"A good man who makes his living steeling? Who runs with a bumch of out laws? Who has no home and no prospect? Whos good for nothing and assocciates with people like you and womanisers like that Gwaine? What's he going to do to my suster: Gwen?!" Dirk was shouting in Merlin's face now standing up to up to his full height in an attempt to cower the other man. His anger echoed around the empty village morning streets, riquetting off the low buildings through the hungover village.
"He's not a thif" Repeated Merlin, voice calmer than the waters of the Lake he swamp in as a boy, slightly amused at the blacksmith's ire: and wanting to wind him up more. Merlin went to turn away from the handsomely annoyed blond man, who growled in frustation and in a fit of peek. Merlin smirked, unable to resits a parting shot he called over his shoulder cheekily:
"You need to cool down, mate," and got some water from his bucket with his magic and splished it in his face, feeling victorious. He turned away but heard Dirk gasp of shock. Feeling pleased with himself Merlin went towards his house but was taken by surprise when suddenly it felt like he had been hit by a freight train around hid mid riff. He went flying and landed in his mothers pig sty with a heavy weight on top of him, soaked to the skin with the water from his bucket he had got from the well.
Sprawed like an eagle in the dirt on his back, he looked up from hims dropped bucket and into Dirk's intense blue eyes that pierce his hear with their fury like an arrow shot from the bolt of Cupid's bow. A drip of water dripped from Dirk's sudden blond fringe and onto Merlin's nose, which he scrunched up.
"You need to learn so respect, theig" snarled Dirk, face so close to Merlin's that he could feel the angry man's breath. It send a shiver down his spinal chord.
"Your cute when your angry" Merlin smirked his eyeslashes looking up at the larger man croqettishly. He used his secret magic to flip Dirk onto his back, and sat astride him, pinned the bigger man's hands to the ground above his head, leaning over his lean hulking body.
"I like you when you're angry." Merlkin whispered into his ear. The stronger man grunted deeply in respose angry at being pinned to the floor like a dog in the dirt. He rallied his strength and flipped the pair of them again, Merlin's legs flying akimbo as Dirk pounded him into the groud. The slight man squirmed and wiggled his way from Durk's grasp, knocking part of the rickety wall over into them in his haste to get away from him. He turned on the other man arms spread wide and body low ready to fight him. Dirk pulled himself to his feet caked in mud straw tossling his hairs: his eyes twinkled with a mad glimmer.
Merlin dove towards him, fainting left pretending to go that way, before approaching to the right, glancing a blow into Dirk's ribs as the other man grabbed his wrist and pinned him close against the wall, arm twisted behind his back, just like in the forge the day before. Both men ponted hard. Dirk's breathing tickling Merlin's flushed ear.
"BOYS!!" Merlin and Dirk froze. Hunith stood athe side of the pinpen staring in schock at the mess they had made, glad the pigs where elsewhere.
"Mum!" MErlin said and scamblred out of the mud. Dirk stood up as well next to him.
"Hunith. Allow me to apologise. We were carried away with ourselves." He said earnestly and Merlin rolled his eyes. Hunith smiled at him sweatly but Merlin recofnised a glint in her eyes.
"Apology accepted, Dirk. Now I expect both of you to fix this up. WITHOUT magic Merlin!!" she firmly said pointintg at her son, who's mouth dropped open in shock. That was so unfair!! Hunith turned and left.
"Hmph." Merlin huffed and cleaned himself off with magic sending mud flying everywhere and landing all over Dirk who was stood next to him. Merlin grinned at him cheekily and he scowled.
"Come on muscles it's time to put those guns to good use" Mrlin said and smacked him in the arm playfuly.
He twirled off and picked up one of the broad planks of wood that now lay on the ground and Dirk headed towards him to pick up a different, bigger, plank. They worked in silence for a while restruturing th pigsy.
"Im not really a theif, you know.!" saip Merlin without any reason for saying so in the silence between them.
"You literally steal thing" pointed out an indigant Dirk. Merlin was beginning to think that the scowl lived permanantly on the blonde's chiselled face. He grinned in a response.
"Yeha, but only from the rich and cruel lords" Merlin said back, scooping a pile of clean straw in his wiry strong arms as he spoke. Dirk quirked an intrigued eyebrow and lifted one of the large stones that formed the base of the pig sty wall. He didn't missing the way that Merlin's eyes widened a little bit at his tort mussles. He hid the small smile that was darring to sneak onto his blond face.
"There are lords who treat their tenants awefully - they take so much in rent that they charge the poor have nothing left to feed themselves with or clothe their children with. All we do is rebalance things slight" Merlin explained nonchalently with a small shrug.
"You stole from me." Pointed out Dirk quickly.
"I knew you'd catch me" Merlin responded flirtily smiling again.
"You are very cute when you're pessed" he carried on: smilige the width of his pale face. Dirk was unable to opress the eye roll and responding smile that cross his treachoruous mouth. He paused, thinking of the words before talking.
"I can identity with that. It would have been nice to have had help like that. We didn't have much, when I was young, with just my dad and the three of us. Especially as Elyan's so wild an incontrolable" Dirk said slowly. He had stopped his working to converse. Merlin looksed at him genuinely and Dirk felt a little bit of the wall around his head cerumble at the signt of the black haired mans shingin eyes.
"It's people like you and your family we want to help" He said softly, resting his hand on Dirks' exposed forear. Their eyes met, blue joining with blue, and a gentle breeze ruffled their fringe. Merlins thumb stroked idally over the inky black letters of Dirks arm.
"I bought lemonade!" Hunith voice shatted the destitute quiete between them and they tore there eyes away from eachother.
"What a good job you've both done. I'm sure it's better now than it was before!! Merlin smiled at his mum and both him and Dirk took drinks from her gratefuly for the day was hot even in the sahde of the barn.
The three of them stood in the newly recomstricted pig sty sipping the blessedy cool drinks. Hunith smiled slightly behind her glass, happy the her recoltrient son had made a new friend in the handsome blacksmith. As they drunk, Morgana appeared at the pig sty door, long floing white chifton dress wafting behind her in the light spring breeze. Her face smiled when she saw the three of them.
"Ooooh, Hunith. Is that your lemonade?" she enthused enthusiasticly. Reaching out and taking the bearker that Merlin's talented mother now hel dup for her with a smile.
"Here you, go, love. You look so pale you could do with the sugar." Said Hunith: maternally.
"Thank you," replied Mogana to her, setting herself down delicitly on an upside down barrow.
"I was plauged again, last night, by dream visions" She said into the air, staring into that nothing as she spoke those words. There was a hushed silent among her small audience.
"I dreamed of the two of you; Dirk, and Merlin too. There's great forces at play that I can't yet understand. Some things are obfuscated to me. But they are all clear in one thing. You two shall depend upon one another for all your remaining days. Your are two sides of one coin." She itoned. The trio was stunned. Silence rained breifly between them. The Morgana came back to herlsf with a shudder, like her body was there but her spirit had been removed from her body, but had now come back.
"I must leave!" the seer announcced. Placing her beaker delicately back on Hunith's tray before leaving sharplu. The trio remained stunned.
"A great destiny? Us? You and me?" Dirk asked, incrediculous, at Merlin as he rolled up his shirt sleeve. In his scathing, he missed the knowing glint that flickered through Hunith's brown eyes as she saw the name emblased there: his soulmark, a single word in an inky black scrawl: Emrys