#merther

Secretly he wishes they could speak to him, tell him how he's meant to carry the weight of the crown, but they never do, preferring to be silent supervisors of fate.

Arthur had never met anyone who stared at the night sky as often as he did until Merlin came. Sometime around his first week as the worst manservant Arthur had ever known, they bumped into each other on a late night quest to find clear skies and sparkling lights. They don't speak of it, but Arthur takes note.

He notices when Merlin sits at the window after dinner, polishing a sword or boot with slow, smooth strokes, face turned toward the night sky.

He notices that Merlin also takes nightly strolls along the walls, hands in his pockets, ridiculous neckerchief flapping in the breeze, eyes focused up into the sky.

He notices when they ride home from some quest or other, and Merlin lets the reins go slack, trusting the horse to stay with Arthur, and tosses his head back to stare into the sky with an abandon that Arthur would call reckless. Once, when their conversation had fallen into an easy sort of silence, Merlin even had the gall to lay back on the horse as they walked along the road.

Eventually, noticing isn't enough. Arthur needs to know if Merlin too feels that the divination of their cryptic celestial gods will tell of his future, or if Merlin just views them as something lovely without any deeper meaning. Merlin is often taken with lovely things: a bouquet of flowers, a pretty dish in the market, a particularly ornate goblet. Merlin takes in the world around him with a depth of emotion Arthur had never seen. Merlin seems to enjoy being in a state of awe. Merlin once started crying while staring at a painting gifted to Uther by a visiting dignitary. Arthur stared at the painting long after Merlin left to assist Gaius with gathering herbs, but couldn't figure out what had caused such a strong reaction. The pastoral setting was pretty, deftly painted, and well composed, but nothing more.

Certainly nothing as close to awe inspiring as the stars.

So when Arthur finds Merlin, lying on the stone floor of a turret, staring at the sky and openly weeping, he feels a desperate and sudden tug in his soul to understand. Instead of turning back and finding his own place to look at the sky, he makes his way toward his loyal servant.

(and he is loyal, isn't he? Despite his many faults, Merlin's loyalty remains steadfast. A lighthouse in the storm of Arthur's life.)

Merlin startles when Arthur steps forward.

"Oh.. I..." Merlin begins, scrambling to his feet, "my lord, I thought you went to bed, that I was dismissed for the evening." Then a furrowed brow, a concerned tilt of the head, "did you need something? Is everything alright?"

"oh, sit back down Merlin," Arthur answers with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I hadn't meant to interrupt. Just to enjoy the stars in peace myself." Like a cat, Arthur settles himself against the wall of the turret, craning his neck up, pretending this was his goal all along, and ignoring the quick flutter of his heart that Merlin might somehow reject him. As if Merlin were the prince and Arthur the servant. As if Merlin could send him away. Merlin does not try to send him away, just gives Arthur another long, puzzled look before lowering himself back to where he was laying on the ground. The limbs aren't sprawled in the same carefree way but his face still relaxes once it's pointed heavenward again. Arthur waits for what seems like an appropriate amount of time before speaking again.

"Do you know the constellations?" For some reason this is what comes out of Arthur's mouth and not the question he meant to ask. There is a comfort in teaching, in giving Merlin information. It feels like the right thing for a prince to do for a servant, albeit a close one.

"Some of them" Merlin answers, "the ones that everyone knows. My mother once told me a story about that gathering of seven but it was many years ago." He goes still and quiet for a moment, trying to remember, "I can't recall it now."

Arthur hums a soft agreement and lets the conversation die while he tries to figure out the right words for what he wants to ask; how to say it without changing the shape of their relationship.

"I love looking at the stars," Merlin says after a while, unable to withstand the quiet. "It reminds me that I am small. My problems feel less when considering the vastness of the sky."

Arthur takes the opening Merlin offers him before he has time to regret it, "I used to think I could divine my fate if I understood them well enough."

Merlin sniffs, swiping at his face with a quick motion that Arthur realizes he isn't supposed to have noticed. He does notice. It's Arthur's job to notice, to pay attention to the people around him, to remain vigilant. "I did too, when I was young."

"And now?" Arthur asks too quickly to remain nonchalant. Merlin shifts his legs.

"Now I think destiny is bigger than even them," Merlin replies in that voice he takes on sometimes where he sounds older than his years. "Trying to understand it only makes it harder to see properly."

Arthur stares at his servant, trying to determine where these things come from, these ideas that feel bigger than the young man lying in front of him. Merlin looks particularly young here in the soft glow of the moonlight.

"You're a mystery, Merlin," Arthur replies eventually with a bit of a sigh, suddenly weary of everything. "I feel like I know you one moment, and then once I have you figured out, you say something almost... Wise."

Then Merlin snorts a quick silly laugh and a bit of the spell that's fallen over them has broken and they are once again two not-quite-friends sharing a patch of stone on a cool evening.

"Why were you crying?" Arthur asks now, feeling more confident. He really does want to know, even if he suspects it will be something stupid.

"I was missing home," Merlin answers with that simple honesty that he usually has when answering Arthur's prying questions. "Sometimes it helps to look at the sky and remember that my mother is looking at the same sky back in Ealdor."

Arthur doesn't know how to respond. He can't call Merlin a pansy or a girl for missing his mother. Arthur didn't even know his mother but he still misses her all the same. Arthur's mother is dead, though, and cannot look at the stars even from somewhere else. She can only rot away in her stone casket somewhere deep below the castle.

The thought leaves him cold, and he stands with little ceremony.

"Well," he says to the boy who has no fear of laying himself bare before Arthur in the strangest of ways, "I think it's bedtime for the both of us. You have to clean and polish all of my armor before training tomorrow, as well as repairing my mail, and my laundry needs washing, and who knows what chores Gaius will have for you."

Merlin rolls his eyes at Arthur who leans over to replace the depth of the night sky with his own face, filling Merlin's vision with his own presence. Then Arthur offers down a hand, and Merlin grabs it with his own, and Arthur hefts Merlin to his feet, trying not to think about the way his hand feels as though it burns wherever Merlin touches it.