#scarletnerd05

Thank you so much!!! I loved this prompt :)

...

Merlin always expected Arthur had some fears, but he’s never shown them outwardly. That is, until the snake. 

One day, as Merlin is heading toward Arthur’s room with a basket-full of clean laundry, he hears Arthur shriek like he’s never heard Arthur shriek before. It’s like full on shout of terror. 

Of course, Merlin assumes it’s some sort of super dangerous magical creature or assassin, so he immediately drops the laundry and sprints into the room at full speed, ready to protect Arthur at any cost-

-only to find him huddled up on his bed with nothing in sight. Merlin thinks that maybe the threat left, but Arthur is firmly resolved to not moving. 

Merlin: Arthur? What’s going on? I heard you shout.

Arthur: Nothing. It’s nothing, Merlin. 

Merlin: It must have been something. Why are you sitting on your bed, then?

Arthur:...It’s soft

Merlin doesn’t buy it, but he lets Arthur sit there until he puts the laundry away. While he’s doing that, he hears a strange hissing noise and spots something moving out of the corner of his eye. He gets a good look at is just before it goes for cover underneath a chair. It’s a little snake, quite adorable in his opinion. Merlin is familiar with this type of snake, too, as he saw many growing up in Ealdor. He carefully goes over toward it, as not to startle it, then quickly grabs it. It protests, but not for long, as Merlin allows it to comfortably slither around his wrist. 

Merlin: Arthur! Look at this snake I found. 

He walks toward Arthur, who cowers away and pales immediately. 

Arthur: I order you not to come any closer!! Keep that horrible thing away from me!

Merlin: It’s just a little snake. He’s harmless. 

Arthur: None of those vile creatures are harmless!!

Merlin finally puts it together: Wait...are you afraid of snakes? 

Arthur: I am NOT afraid of snakes! I just happen to...have a distaste for them. 

Merlin, holding back a grin: Don’t worry, Arthur, I’ll remove this big, bad snake from your chamber.

Arthur grumbles at him, but doesn’t complain, seemingly still too freaked out to bicker any more.

What Merlin doesn’t tell Arthur is that he decides to keep the snake, as they take a liking toward each other. He names the snake Norbert and keeps him in a huge tank that Gaius wasn’t using. He also carries him around on his wrist and neck when he’s alone in his chambers. 

Arthur finds out eventually, and reacts badly. He yells at Merlin to get rid of it, but Merlin refuses because Norbert is like family now. Arthur looks green in the face when he sees Norbert wrapping around Merlin’s neck and cowers slightly behind Gaius, who looks unamused. 

It takes a while, but Merlin finally convinces Arthur to let him keep Norbert as long as Merlin does not come close to Arthur when he has Norbert with him. 

The Knights find out about Arthur’s fear of Norbert and tease him mercilessly. The teasing ends when Arthur threatens to reveal some of their most embarrassing fears that they’ve accidentally divulged. 

My azeleas are flourishing because of this ask. 

His hand squeezed the space between her shoulder and neck, Darcy’s hand reaching up to lay on top, their smiles muted. Her throat felt tighter, her eyes stinging. 

“Love you.”

She threw around the word ‘love’ a lot. She’d been told before she said it too easily, and she knew why she was like that. She didn’t hear it a lot as a child, her family was kind of uptight that way. She was distinctly opposite to that, too much to handle, too loud with her feelings. She hadn’t expected Bucky to accept her this way. She thought maybe generations apart were too much for a real bond. She’d sold him short, it turned out. 

“Love you, too, sweetheart,” he whispered. 

He was one of her closest friends. She’d been blessed with seeing his progress in real time, seeing him slowly pick himself up time and time again. She saw him get better. She argued he wasn’t broken before, only unwell and lost. She’d felt that way, too. He made her want to be the best version of herself, not that she’d told him that. She might one day, when she was stronger.

“Thank you,” he added, his voice a little clearer. He swallowed, eyes snapping to hers. “For always being there for me.”

Her heart couldn’t take it sometimes, how he’d look at her like she’d hung the moon. She readied herself to separate and leave him alone, to regain some kind of composure. It had been a long week for them both. He’d gone on a mission while she’d stayed in the labs, worrying and not sleeping.

His hand slid along, up to her neck, then up to cup her jaw. Darcy went still, sure her eyes had widened. 

And on the opposite side, how do you think Arthur would act if Merlin was in a really happy relationship and then suddenly there was talk of his love wanting to leave, go somewhere else or just travel? How would Arthur react? How would he take it?

i combined your asks hope that is ok!

for the first part, arthur would 100% be Horribly Affronted and want to protect merlin. arthur has a want/need to protect his friends. depending on the situation i think arthur would confront merlin and be like What Is Happening Here My Dude My Man and talk about it. but i also think arthur - when he has little guidance - is the type of guy to just react. no thinking, just pure reaction. i think he would confront said partner and basically, yeah, be loud and confrontational. 100% he would get gwaine or someone and and be like “we gotta talk to this person RIGHT NOW” (also i’m picturing said person merlin is with as a guy, lol. also partly seeing this as a modern au, idk why)

and for the second bit i’m assuming you mean merlin then wants to leave with this person and therefore leave camelot. first of all, Bold Of You To Assume merlin would ever leave camelot (that’s mostly a joke, but i also think this person would literally have to be the most incredible person in the world to convince merlin to actually leave camelot.) but anyway, i see this as a situation where arthur would very much close himself off, because he would not want merlin to leave, they’re very close, best of friends, right? but he would also want to respect merlin’s choice and wouldn’t want to put pressure on merlin to make a decision. i think this is a situation where he’d internalize his own feelings, not really voice them properly, probably mope a bit and be sad. 

Read on Ao3

Arya liked animals, she always had. From her pets growing up, her favorite dog Nymeria, to the stray cats that roamed her family’s Northern Ranch, she loved animals. She even dedicated her life to them. 

So why, after all her loyalty and devotion, would they betray her like this?

Storm’s End was like a humid nightmare, it was one of the few things she hated about living there, so, while she was at work it made perfect sense to leave the sunroof of her car open to keep the interior from heating up too much. It was a beautiful day, there wasn’t a cloud insight despite the area’s name and she was confident that everything would be alright. 

Well the jokes on her! 

She was half way home after working the late shift, cruising through the back roads when the little monster made himself known. A squirrel had decided to take her open sunroof as an invitation to enter while her car was parked at work and the little fucker decided to throw itself at her like she had kidnapped it and was trying to fight it’s way to freedom like some action thriller. She screamed, it screamed, there was a whole lot of screaming and then bam, the car was abruptly halted in its tracks, the front end doing it’s best to hug a telephone pole. 

Arya managed to get a hold of the animal, cursing the whole time-herself mostly, but she wouldn’t be surprised if some of those little squirrel squeaks weren’t curses too. She climbed out of the car and set the animal loose across the road. That just left the matter of her car. 

Thankfully she had cell services on the back roads and was able to call the local sheriff’s office for help. Now, she had only been in the area for about six months and she hadn’t had any cause to interact with the local law enforcement in that time, but if all the officers in the Sheriff's department looked like the guy that just pulled up, she would consider turning to a life of crime. 

The patch on his shirt read Waters, G and the man himself was ridiculously tall. He was gorgeous really, his shirt nearly a size too small, muscles bulging. She stamped down the sudden urge to lick him. 

Thankfully the feeling passed fairly quickly, around the time she finished explaining what happened and he started laughing at her. She would give him credit, he had done his best to keep the laughter in, but in the end it was useless and the stoic man who walked up was now doubled over. She stood beside her car, arms crossed, tapping her foot in a gesture very reminiscent of her mother. 

“Stop laughing!” she snaps eventually. “You’re a cop, aren’t you supposed to be helping?”

“Sorry.” he replies, getting a hold of himself. She struck then by how handsome he looks, laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and the brilliant blue shining with tears of laughter. 

Todays Highlight is Merlin. We have 1 Merlin work in our Masterlist: 

Fic - The gift of a cloak (Gen)

If you have any Merlin works yourself, feel free to submit them (while this Highlight is pinned you don’t have to comment on another work first, but it would be appreciated.) Same goes for an underappreciated work by one of your favorite fandom creators. Just make sure they are ok with their word being submitted.