@merthurmicrofic prompt: regret
Word count: 461
“Do you ever regret coming here?”
“What do you mean?” Arthur sighed. His eyes were closed, lulled by the soapy fingers pushing through his soapy fringe.
“Leaving Camelot. Giving up the crown, your rule, your—everything.” The fingers stilled in his hair and Arthur opened his eyes to see Merlin’s face like a weathered shield, still trying in vain to hide all the soft and fragile parts of him. “In Camelot you had everything you could’ve wanted. Servants, a soft bed, a kingdom that loved you. Close your eyes.”
“Apart from all the times it tried to kill me,” Arthur pointed out, and Merlin poured the ewer over his head. “You don’t want to go back, do you? Morgana will kill us if we tried to take the throne from her; she and Gwen have only just settled in.”
A fond smile cracked the stoic mask and broke across Merlin’s face. “Nah, I’m rather attached to my bollocks; wouldn’t want to risk it. But you don’t—I don’t know, miss that life?”
“Mm. You’re forgetting that I technically still have a servant.”
“Oh, you do? Next time I see him I’ll be sure to warn him what a great big prat you are.”
Arthur snorted. He found Merlin’s fingers under the water and interlaced them with his own. A warmth that had nothing to do with the steaming bathwater bloomed in his chest at the ease of it. They could do this now, here in their own home, where it was just the two of them. There was no one to hide it from.
“I miss our friends, and the comforts were nice, but I don’t regret leaving, no,” he said quietly. “Do you regret it?”
Merlin didn’t have to say it; the look he was giving Arthur said it plainly enough. Unfortunately for both their senses of pride, embarrassment had never been enough to keep Merlin’s mouth shut, and so he said it anyway. “I already have everything I could ever want.” He had to look away then, as Arthur’s returning look was so full of feeling it made his chest ache dangerously, and Merlin wasn’t about to succumb to death in this bathtub without having taken Arthur multiple times first.
“Not you,” he said, and pushed a soapy hand into Arthur’s face to end the look.
Arthur spat out a mouthful of bubbles. “No?”
“No. What I meant is I can use my magic freely, and we finally have two competent rulers—”
“—And I quite like owning chickens.”
“Right. And that’s all.” Arthur’s hands slid up Merlin’s slippery thighs and he used the water’s weightlessness to pull Merlin easily onto his lap. Merlin’s arms wound effortlessly around his neck.
“That’s all,” Merlin said, and kissed him.
