Fic: Merlin; Flood Warning
Feb. 22nd, 2009 03:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
definewisdomTitle: Flood Warning
Fandom: Merlin
Rating: G
Pairing/Characters: Merlin/Arthur
Warnings: fluff, a lot of fluff.
Spoilers: The Labyrinth of Gedref? minuscule really.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, I get no money. This is purely for entertainment purposes...
Author’s Note: Written for the in the rain challenge at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
merlinkisses.
And again, thanks go to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wrennette for the beta work.
Summary: Future!fic. When one of the servants tells Arthur that the castle is flooded, he doesn't really believe them until he hears where the flooding is.
Arthur knows better than to believe everything the castle servants say. It’s not that they lie, exactly; it’s just that usually what they are telling him has gone through seven other people beforehand and has been exaggerated on the way.
So when a young man, barely old enough to have a scraping of fluff attached to his chin, comes in to inform him that there’s a flood, Arthur looks out of the window at the cornflower blue sky and the brilliant sun – which have been mocking him and his interminable paperwork all morning – and doesn’t believe a word of it. Someone probably spilled their bathwater over one of the chambermaid’s shoes, that’s all.
Then the boy, stammering a lot more than can possibly be good for anyone, tells him where the supposed flood is and he is forced to accept that maybe the report isn’t quite as embellished as it could be.
He tries to look regretful as he stands up and steps away from the reports and treaties that he is supposed to be reviewing before the diplomatic envoys arrive that night, but he has a sneaking suspicion that the relief shows on his face. Three months after his coronation and he is still trying to establish himself among the realms of Albion. Too many people believe him wet behind the ears for him to slack. But there are some problems that no one can deal with other than him.
The page, or kitchen boy, or manservant – Arthur’s not really sure of the job description, years ago they were all the same to him and now it’s more about names than designations – backs away and bows so deeply that Arthur is concerned he might over balance, or knock himself out on the floor. The King sweeps out of the room, his cloak billowing behind him, and that is why he insists on wearing the thing indoors some days, because it makes him look intimidating and not at all like an idiot, Morgana.
The boy won’t follow him; he knows that as surely as he knows up is up and the sun will rise in the morning. The newer servants, the ones hired since his father’s… passing, are too scared to go where he is going now. The older, more experience servants, just shake their heads and make pointed comments, but even they steer clear.
He’s not surprised when he reaches the staircase to find that the rumours of a flood were not greatly exaggerated. The bottom three steps are submerged and there are a couple of chambermaids at the top, gawking.
One glare is all it takes to make them hurry away. Merlin would yell at him, but really Merlin should think before flooding the castle with one of his no doubt brilliantly over-thought spells.
The water looks cold and dirty and thoroughly unpleasant, but Kings are not afraid of a little water, so Arthur wades in.
After the first moments of horror at the sudden cold, it’s almost pleasant to feel the swish of the water around him. He knows that the maids are back at the top of the stairs gawking even more at the sight of their king up to his knees in water. He doesn’t really mind though, at least it’s a change from paperwork.
The door to the room is closed, but the water level is pretty much the same on both sides so it doesn’t take extraordinary strength (which Arthur has) to open it.
He can’t help it. When he opens the door the sight is just so unbelievable, and there’s no one around – no one important anyway – that he bursts out laughing.
Heavy clouds swirl around the ceiling, dark and forbidding. There is no lightning (which Arthur is very glad of, because fried to death by a freak internal storm is not a good way for a King to die) but the churning of the thick black clouds and the torrential downpour that is coming from them is more sinister.
In the middle of the chaos, looking more dilapidated than intimidating, stands Merlin, sheepish and utterly drenched. The robes that Arthur insists he wear are clinging to his skin and perching on his over-large ears, in some vain attempt to keep the rain off, is the pointy hat the Court Wizard had once sworn he would never be seen dead in.
The point isn’t quite as pointy as it was – squashed into submission by the relentless pelting of the rain.
“Merlin… when I hired you as Court Wizard, I thought you’d lay waste to our enemies, not Camelot itself,” Arthur says, as soon as he’s managed to get his laughter under control.
“Uh… the spell might have gone a little wrong,” Merlin admits, looking up at the magically created clouds with anxiety.
“You’ve flooded my castle,” the King tells him, as though he needs to really, because the water level is creeping up his thighs and is that not evidence enough?
“Yes… about that,” Merlin says, “I’ve been meaning to ask.”
“What Merlin?”
“How do you feel about moats? Or ornamental lakes?” the warlock asks, with the grace to look abashed.
“Is that your not-so-subtle way of telling me you don’t know how to stop it?” Arthur asks, groaning out loud, while internally plotting some way of turning the deluge to his advantage tonight at the feast. Maybe they could have mock sea battles in it… or Merlin could conjure up a sea monster or two to perform in an entertainment.
“I wouldn’t say I don’t know,” Merlin tells him, crossing over closer to where the King is standing. The rain is pelting in Arthur’s face and his hair in plastered to his forehead. His chin, his nose, his eyebrows are all dripping in steady streams, and he has to blink to be able to see clearly.
“Then what would you say?” he asks. Years of Merlin’s convenient excuses and evasions have taught him to be more careful.
“I know how…” Merlin says slowly, “It’s just not really working.”
Arthur sighs at that. It is a constant mystery to him how anyone can be afraid of the bumbling idiot in front of him, but every servant in the castle is, even those who used to laugh at him when he ended up in the stocks every other week. The people of Camelot have been taught to see magic, especially magic powerful enough to create clouds indoors, as dangerous and evil and probably having dire consequences for them.
The people Merlin once joked with now edge round him in the corridors, making surreptitious gestures against evil.
Visiting dignitaries treat Merlin with a respect they do not even show Arthur. It is as though, on some level, they acknowledge that Merlin’s power is less arbitrary, more real than that of a king.
Or it would be if he could control it.
“So the whole of Camelot has to become a lake, because you can’t stop it from raining?” Arthur asks, incredulously. Merlin’s still looking like someone kicked a puppy (or shot a unicorn), and he obviously cannot see the funny side of the King and Court Wizard of Camelot being waist deep in water in the middle of the castle. “Well, I suppose we could always relocate. How are you at moving entire towns, anyway?”
Merlin seriously looks like he is considering the logistics of moving Camelot away from the endless rain, and Arthur might actually be a little terrified that he seems to think that that’s possible. But he struggles past the mind-boggling idea that Merlin could probably move whole mountains if he wanted to and back to the matter in hand.
“So what have you tried?” he asked.
“The counter spell, and the spell to stop rain, and the spell to disperse clouds,” Merlin lists, “even a spell to null all magic in the area, but none of them works.” Arthur was wrong: Merlin doesn’t look like someone kicked a puppy, he has the same look as when he had stayed up three nights in a row, trying to keep Arthur’s fever down, a couple of years ago. There’s something completely frantic in the way he’s staring at Arthur and the King suddenly realises exactly what’s going wrong.
“You are the worst Court Wizard ever,” he says walking closer. The rain falling in his face and the water around his lower body slow him down, but he manages to get close enough in the end.
“Arthur…” Merlin says. He is beginning to twitch from foot to foot, and his hands are rising as though he is going to try magic again. Arthur catches them before they can go too far and uses them to pull Merlin towards him.
“All you really need to do,” Arthur told him, stepping forward so that they were close enough to feel the warmth in the water from the other’s body, “is calm down.”
He has known Merlin and his magic long enough to know that when Merlin gets agitated – excepting immediate life or death situations, for which Arthur is terribly grateful – his magic tends to move out of his control. For Merlin, magic is an instinctive thing, as much a part of him as breathing, or moving. If he over-thinks it, as he has a tendency to do, then things tend to end up horrifically wrong. So, Arthur reasons, he has to take his mind off things.
The kiss is soft from familiarity, their lips fitting against each other automatically. Hands shift without thought, pressing against angles and planes of bodies. It does not have the timidity and hesitation of a first kiss, nor the desperation of their more passionate ones. As Arthur’s hand finds its way to Merlin’s hair, the sodden pointy hat (which didn’t suit him anyway) falls into the water to be carried away.
Merlin tastes like the rain, and it’s not as strange as Arthur thought it would be. Their clothes are all sticking to their bodies, making the sensation of hands, smoothing across shoulders and down backs, far more immediate and the sensation of the rain on his scalp is almost pleasurable. It’s a strange combination of cold water and body heat that Arthur thinks he must remember.
Words are whispered into Arthur’s mouth and the staccato noise of the rain, the frantic drumming on their shoulders and scalps, draws to a slow stop.
“Well,” Arthur says, a little smugly, “that wasn’t difficult.” Merlin glares at him, although somehow the look is even less terrifying when one lock of his dark hair is stuck resolutely into one of his eyes and he has to squint around it.
“I would have managed eventually,” he says, petulantly, pushing the offending hair up from his forehead so it sticks out comically.
“Of course you would have done,” Arthur tells him. Humouring the Court Sorcerer is a part of his job that had never come up in any description. Though, considering he was the one to create the position, it probably wouldn’t have done.
“I can manage on my own, you know,” the wizard says, still attempting an intimidating glare. “I did magic for years without you.”
“I don’t know how,” Arthur replies, “all the good ideas are mine. You’re the one who gets us into ridiculous problems like this.”
“Considering that I’ve managed to save your life on so many occasions I’ve given up counting,” Merlin retaliates, “I’d be a bit more polite, if I were you, sire.” There is a tone to his voice that makes shivers run down Arthur’s spine. It’s a reminder that, while Arthur is in control, Merlin has the power, and it never fails to make him heat up, not that he would tell Merlin that (though he has a sneaking suspicion that the irritating warlock already knows).
“Now, how about you get rid of the lake you decided to install.”
“But don’t you think it looks good where it is?” Merlin says, smiling a little wickedly.
“The sooner you get rid of it, the sooner we can get out of these wet clothes,” Arthur murmurs, his voice echoing slightly in the now eerily quiet chamber. Merlin smiles slowly, the grin slipping across his face.
“Perhaps you do have some good ideas.”
-
Fandom: Merlin
Rating: G
Pairing/Characters: Merlin/Arthur
Warnings: fluff, a lot of fluff.
Spoilers: The Labyrinth of Gedref? minuscule really.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, I get no money. This is purely for entertainment purposes...
Author’s Note: Written for the in the rain challenge at
merlinkisses.And again, thanks go to
wrennette for the beta work. Summary: Future!fic. When one of the servants tells Arthur that the castle is flooded, he doesn't really believe them until he hears where the flooding is.
Arthur knows better than to believe everything the castle servants say. It’s not that they lie, exactly; it’s just that usually what they are telling him has gone through seven other people beforehand and has been exaggerated on the way.
So when a young man, barely old enough to have a scraping of fluff attached to his chin, comes in to inform him that there’s a flood, Arthur looks out of the window at the cornflower blue sky and the brilliant sun – which have been mocking him and his interminable paperwork all morning – and doesn’t believe a word of it. Someone probably spilled their bathwater over one of the chambermaid’s shoes, that’s all.
Then the boy, stammering a lot more than can possibly be good for anyone, tells him where the supposed flood is and he is forced to accept that maybe the report isn’t quite as embellished as it could be.
He tries to look regretful as he stands up and steps away from the reports and treaties that he is supposed to be reviewing before the diplomatic envoys arrive that night, but he has a sneaking suspicion that the relief shows on his face. Three months after his coronation and he is still trying to establish himself among the realms of Albion. Too many people believe him wet behind the ears for him to slack. But there are some problems that no one can deal with other than him.
The page, or kitchen boy, or manservant – Arthur’s not really sure of the job description, years ago they were all the same to him and now it’s more about names than designations – backs away and bows so deeply that Arthur is concerned he might over balance, or knock himself out on the floor. The King sweeps out of the room, his cloak billowing behind him, and that is why he insists on wearing the thing indoors some days, because it makes him look intimidating and not at all like an idiot, Morgana.
The boy won’t follow him; he knows that as surely as he knows up is up and the sun will rise in the morning. The newer servants, the ones hired since his father’s… passing, are too scared to go where he is going now. The older, more experience servants, just shake their heads and make pointed comments, but even they steer clear.
He’s not surprised when he reaches the staircase to find that the rumours of a flood were not greatly exaggerated. The bottom three steps are submerged and there are a couple of chambermaids at the top, gawking.
One glare is all it takes to make them hurry away. Merlin would yell at him, but really Merlin should think before flooding the castle with one of his no doubt brilliantly over-thought spells.
The water looks cold and dirty and thoroughly unpleasant, but Kings are not afraid of a little water, so Arthur wades in.
After the first moments of horror at the sudden cold, it’s almost pleasant to feel the swish of the water around him. He knows that the maids are back at the top of the stairs gawking even more at the sight of their king up to his knees in water. He doesn’t really mind though, at least it’s a change from paperwork.
The door to the room is closed, but the water level is pretty much the same on both sides so it doesn’t take extraordinary strength (which Arthur has) to open it.
He can’t help it. When he opens the door the sight is just so unbelievable, and there’s no one around – no one important anyway – that he bursts out laughing.
Heavy clouds swirl around the ceiling, dark and forbidding. There is no lightning (which Arthur is very glad of, because fried to death by a freak internal storm is not a good way for a King to die) but the churning of the thick black clouds and the torrential downpour that is coming from them is more sinister.
In the middle of the chaos, looking more dilapidated than intimidating, stands Merlin, sheepish and utterly drenched. The robes that Arthur insists he wear are clinging to his skin and perching on his over-large ears, in some vain attempt to keep the rain off, is the pointy hat the Court Wizard had once sworn he would never be seen dead in.
The point isn’t quite as pointy as it was – squashed into submission by the relentless pelting of the rain.
“Merlin… when I hired you as Court Wizard, I thought you’d lay waste to our enemies, not Camelot itself,” Arthur says, as soon as he’s managed to get his laughter under control.
“Uh… the spell might have gone a little wrong,” Merlin admits, looking up at the magically created clouds with anxiety.
“You’ve flooded my castle,” the King tells him, as though he needs to really, because the water level is creeping up his thighs and is that not evidence enough?
“Yes… about that,” Merlin says, “I’ve been meaning to ask.”
“What Merlin?”
“How do you feel about moats? Or ornamental lakes?” the warlock asks, with the grace to look abashed.
“Is that your not-so-subtle way of telling me you don’t know how to stop it?” Arthur asks, groaning out loud, while internally plotting some way of turning the deluge to his advantage tonight at the feast. Maybe they could have mock sea battles in it… or Merlin could conjure up a sea monster or two to perform in an entertainment.
“I wouldn’t say I don’t know,” Merlin tells him, crossing over closer to where the King is standing. The rain is pelting in Arthur’s face and his hair in plastered to his forehead. His chin, his nose, his eyebrows are all dripping in steady streams, and he has to blink to be able to see clearly.
“Then what would you say?” he asks. Years of Merlin’s convenient excuses and evasions have taught him to be more careful.
“I know how…” Merlin says slowly, “It’s just not really working.”
Arthur sighs at that. It is a constant mystery to him how anyone can be afraid of the bumbling idiot in front of him, but every servant in the castle is, even those who used to laugh at him when he ended up in the stocks every other week. The people of Camelot have been taught to see magic, especially magic powerful enough to create clouds indoors, as dangerous and evil and probably having dire consequences for them.
The people Merlin once joked with now edge round him in the corridors, making surreptitious gestures against evil.
Visiting dignitaries treat Merlin with a respect they do not even show Arthur. It is as though, on some level, they acknowledge that Merlin’s power is less arbitrary, more real than that of a king.
Or it would be if he could control it.
“So the whole of Camelot has to become a lake, because you can’t stop it from raining?” Arthur asks, incredulously. Merlin’s still looking like someone kicked a puppy (or shot a unicorn), and he obviously cannot see the funny side of the King and Court Wizard of Camelot being waist deep in water in the middle of the castle. “Well, I suppose we could always relocate. How are you at moving entire towns, anyway?”
Merlin seriously looks like he is considering the logistics of moving Camelot away from the endless rain, and Arthur might actually be a little terrified that he seems to think that that’s possible. But he struggles past the mind-boggling idea that Merlin could probably move whole mountains if he wanted to and back to the matter in hand.
“So what have you tried?” he asked.
“The counter spell, and the spell to stop rain, and the spell to disperse clouds,” Merlin lists, “even a spell to null all magic in the area, but none of them works.” Arthur was wrong: Merlin doesn’t look like someone kicked a puppy, he has the same look as when he had stayed up three nights in a row, trying to keep Arthur’s fever down, a couple of years ago. There’s something completely frantic in the way he’s staring at Arthur and the King suddenly realises exactly what’s going wrong.
“You are the worst Court Wizard ever,” he says walking closer. The rain falling in his face and the water around his lower body slow him down, but he manages to get close enough in the end.
“Arthur…” Merlin says. He is beginning to twitch from foot to foot, and his hands are rising as though he is going to try magic again. Arthur catches them before they can go too far and uses them to pull Merlin towards him.
“All you really need to do,” Arthur told him, stepping forward so that they were close enough to feel the warmth in the water from the other’s body, “is calm down.”
He has known Merlin and his magic long enough to know that when Merlin gets agitated – excepting immediate life or death situations, for which Arthur is terribly grateful – his magic tends to move out of his control. For Merlin, magic is an instinctive thing, as much a part of him as breathing, or moving. If he over-thinks it, as he has a tendency to do, then things tend to end up horrifically wrong. So, Arthur reasons, he has to take his mind off things.
The kiss is soft from familiarity, their lips fitting against each other automatically. Hands shift without thought, pressing against angles and planes of bodies. It does not have the timidity and hesitation of a first kiss, nor the desperation of their more passionate ones. As Arthur’s hand finds its way to Merlin’s hair, the sodden pointy hat (which didn’t suit him anyway) falls into the water to be carried away.
Merlin tastes like the rain, and it’s not as strange as Arthur thought it would be. Their clothes are all sticking to their bodies, making the sensation of hands, smoothing across shoulders and down backs, far more immediate and the sensation of the rain on his scalp is almost pleasurable. It’s a strange combination of cold water and body heat that Arthur thinks he must remember.
Words are whispered into Arthur’s mouth and the staccato noise of the rain, the frantic drumming on their shoulders and scalps, draws to a slow stop.
“Well,” Arthur says, a little smugly, “that wasn’t difficult.” Merlin glares at him, although somehow the look is even less terrifying when one lock of his dark hair is stuck resolutely into one of his eyes and he has to squint around it.
“I would have managed eventually,” he says, petulantly, pushing the offending hair up from his forehead so it sticks out comically.
“Of course you would have done,” Arthur tells him. Humouring the Court Sorcerer is a part of his job that had never come up in any description. Though, considering he was the one to create the position, it probably wouldn’t have done.
“I can manage on my own, you know,” the wizard says, still attempting an intimidating glare. “I did magic for years without you.”
“I don’t know how,” Arthur replies, “all the good ideas are mine. You’re the one who gets us into ridiculous problems like this.”
“Considering that I’ve managed to save your life on so many occasions I’ve given up counting,” Merlin retaliates, “I’d be a bit more polite, if I were you, sire.” There is a tone to his voice that makes shivers run down Arthur’s spine. It’s a reminder that, while Arthur is in control, Merlin has the power, and it never fails to make him heat up, not that he would tell Merlin that (though he has a sneaking suspicion that the irritating warlock already knows).
“Now, how about you get rid of the lake you decided to install.”
“But don’t you think it looks good where it is?” Merlin says, smiling a little wickedly.
“The sooner you get rid of it, the sooner we can get out of these wet clothes,” Arthur murmurs, his voice echoing slightly in the now eerily quiet chamber. Merlin smiles slowly, the grin slipping across his face.
“Perhaps you do have some good ideas.”
-
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 06:46 pm (UTC)I love futurefic, and it's great how you made Arthur an essential part of Merlin's magic by calming the poor boy down and everything. And hee, ppl afraid of Merlin! :D Lovely!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 06:52 pm (UTC)That's so adorable! Arthur understands Merlin so well. And it's funny how the servants are afraid of him for no real reason. XD
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 09:42 pm (UTC)So true!
Adorable!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 10:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 03:20 pm (UTC)because it makes him look intimidating and not at all like an idiot, Morgana.
Bwahahahahahahahaha!!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 01:14 am (UTC)and that is why he insists on wearing the thing indoors some days, because it makes him look intimidating and not at all like an idiot, Morgana.
I hear that line in Bradley's voice. (From the video diaries when he's talking to Colin.) It's perfect, and it makes me laugh.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-27 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-02 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-16 11:00 pm (UTC)VERY GOOD IDEAS*SMIRK*
no subject
Date: 2009-07-27 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 09:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-26 01:45 am (UTC)lol. That is too hilarious. Good job with this. So adorable.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-08 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-31 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-13 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 06:05 pm (UTC)