Arthur Pendragon is a woman

Sometimes I zoom out and realize from Arthur’s perspective, Merlin really is just a weird little freak that sucks at his job. He has bad time management and no respect for propriety, and he generally does weird and questionable things (you know, he disappears for hours to days at a time, stole Morgana’s dress, awkwardly helped Arthur pull his trousers back up in front of court, a myriad of other things, and of course, woodworm??) and yet Arthur is still very enamored with him. Arthur has no insight to Merlin’s destiny, has no idea of the prophecy, none of that, and yet he clearly cares about Merlin so deeply that it leaves me kind of stunned.

every time i rewatch merlin it always bothers me so much that lancelot is such an under-utilized character. as a viewer, there’s so many scenes where the stakes would be so much more interesting if there was someone else who knew what merlin was actually doing and knows he’s always saving arthur’s life when nobody else has a clue

Looking for a fanfic that might’ve been a Merlin fanfiction; I only remember explicitly that a poem was at the start and the end.