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Merlin fic: Shadowplay -- Chapter Two
Title: Shadowplay
Summary: Stood down from duty on convalescent's leave, secret agent Arthur Pendragon wonders if sheer boredom might just do him in. But when his handler saddles him with a caretaker who is by turns completely inept and strangely brilliant, and invites trouble wherever he goes, Arthur has to concede that death by boredom looks less and less likely. Death by goon squad, high-speed car chase, poison, or fiery explosion, however...
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Rating: NC-17
Chapter word count: ~4,500
Notes:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
venivincere rocks the beta world.
Previous chapters: Prologue + One
CHAPTER TWO
Physical therapy was a bore, but a welcome respite nonetheless. During these sessions Merlin could at least worry a smidge less about his charge since the physiotherapist Leon was one of theirs, and more importantly, knew the circumstances surrounding Arthur's situation, as well as a great deal of very impressive and lethal martial arts moves. He also landed quite firmly on the side of handsome, but that was less important.
After making sure they had everything they needed in the drawing room he'd taken the past week and a half to refashion and outfit for this purpose, Merlin left Leon and Arthur to it, scuttling quickly to a chair in the corner and burying his nose in a notebook, hoping this time he wouldn't betray himself and sneak a glimpse of Arthur stripping his shirt off.
Thinking that Arthur was attractive while he'd been a recalcitrant little beast had posed no problems whatsoever, since Merlin could then tell himself that, yes, the man was gorgeous, but he also had the personality of a toad, a very cranky, belligerent arsehole of a toad. It was like being presented with the Holy Grail, burnished to eternal perfection, only to discover it had been topped off with fresh sewage.
But now, now that Arthur had apparently given up his game and was starting to be nice, to stop pitching up demands for things royalty would never even have dared to imagine, to smile and make the occasional joke, to fulfill Merlin's suspicion that he actually was a real human person with a properly functioning soul -- well, it was all a bit horrible, really.
He wouldn't exactly have preferred that Arthur continue being a complete prat about everything, but at least he'd known how to deal with that. These days, though he no longer seemed to find Merlin's presence objectionable, Arthur still favoured his wide repertoire of smirks as appropriate responses to everything Merlin said or did, but the difference was that now, Merlin's mental log had gone rogue and rechristened every look with kinder, sweeter sentiments. He found himself thinking words like 'golden' and 'warm' and 'bright' whenever Arthur broke into an unexpected smile or deemed something worthy of laughter.
It was nothing but a stupid, ill-timed crush, obviously, and taking into account the fact that Merlin spent most of his day with no one else but Arthur and allocated whatever spare time he had to thinking of ways to keep Arthur safe, he might have seen this coming.
These things often couldn't be helped, however, no matter how hard Merlin tried to stamp them into submission, so there was nothing else for it but to wait it out and hope it passed quickly, like a bout of flu. Or a gallstone. Which, at this point, Merlin would have considered significantly preferable to the irritating intestinal gymnastics he had to undergo every time Arthur so much as stepped within a twenty-foot radius of him. And seeing as they lived in the same house, this only happened all the time.
However, this wasn't anything he couldn't handle, not at the expense of his years of training and professionalism. He had a job to do, and he wouldn't let anything interfere with it, least of all his own ridiculous feelings. They would go away soon enough. Besides, it wasn't as though he was in love with Arthur.
Merlin's gaze flicked upwards involuntarily, and he cursed himself for getting an eyeful of shirtlessness.
*
What Merlin got up to in his spare time technically didn't fall under the realm of Arthur's business, but he wondered why Merlin kept spending that spare time in here, of all places. A normal, mentally stable person might have used the time to settle in for a quiet read or gone for a nice turn about the garden, but Merlin -- well, he wasn't even sure what shenanigans Merlin was perpetrating over in the corner of the room.
It was like this every other afternoon, during his sessions with Leon; while he worked with his physical therapist to regain full use of his limbs and smooth the stiffness out of his muscles, Merlin went and sat himself in the fireside chair, legs sprawled about, cradling a notebook and being distressingly, silently unintrusive.
He'd invited himself in on the sessions initially, claiming professional curiosity about the rehabilitative process. Leon hadn’t had any objections to being observed, and since Merlin did have a bit of a medical background anyway, Arthur hadn't any inclination to deny him sitting in. Like a good pupil on the brink of swottiness, he'd asked a load of questions the first day, nodded and smiled a lot, made himself useful when Leon had asked for an extra hand. After that, however, Merlin mostly just sat quietly in his corner, barely looking up at all except to occasionally stare critically at the window like an army officer come for kit inspection.
It wasn't unnerving, per se, because if there was anyone who exuded earnest agreeableness it was Merlin; it was just slightly perplexing. As was Merlin himself.
"Okay, Mr. Pendragon. All done for today," said Leon, cutting into Arthur's musings and gently removing the hot pack and electrodes from Arthur's skin before rolling his equipment out of the way.
"Good. Thanks," said Arthur, carefully pulling his shirt back on.
Merlin bounded to his feet, discarding his stuff on the seat cushion, the mechanical pencil rolling away into a crevice at the back of the chair. "I'll see you out."
Arthur watched them leave the room and ambled towards Merlin's chair, lifting the notebook, which he'd been wondering about for a while. He leafed through the pages, unsure what to expect; they didn't contain any written incriminations (or worse, feelings), but were chockfull of diagrams and figures and illegible notes in the margins.
Peering out into the hallway, he saw Merlin and Leon having a hushed conversation at the front door. Leon nodded his farewell, and Merlin smiled softly to himself as he shut the door behind him.
"Do you… like Leon?" Arthur asked as he emerged from the drawing room, and then shut his mouth abruptly, for he had no idea where the question had come from.
"Hm? Yeah, he's a nice guy," Merlin said. "Why?"
Arthur frowned. "It's -- Never mind."
"That's my book," said Merlin, tipping his head towards it, tucked snugly underneath Arthur's arm.
"Right. What's it for?"
"Not much; just -- drawings, you know."
"Of what? Weapons of mass destruction?" He flipped the notebook towards Merlin.
Snaring it handily from the air, Merlin looked amused at him. "I'm not a mark, Arthur. If you want to know something, you can just ask; you don't have to go round and riffle through all my things."
"Mm, noticed that, did you?"
"Got that far in my classes, at least. Like playing Spot the Difference, only more fun and life-threatening," he quipped. "What did you find out about me, then?"
"Nothing useful yet."
Merlin smiled. "Nothing incriminating, you mean?"
"Depends on what's in the book, I suppose."
Turning a few pages, Merlin crowded close to Arthur and pointed at a complicated illustration. "That's a crosshatched infrared system coded with fingerprint recognition that I can build and install at your doors, and with some adjustments, at all your windows as well. People can douse it in hairspray all they want, but it would be impassable," he said, and flipped to another drawing. "And this one's a silent trigger that can be wired to the back door, in case anyone tries that trick where they break or cut the glass so they can unlock it from the inside, and it heats the lock, see, so straight away they start off with blistery fingers. Oh, or if you'd prefer, we can set it to spray something burny in their face instead. Bit of mace, maybe. It would be easy, with the right kind of sensors, to set the correct height of the nozzle accordingly."
Arthur cocked an eyebrow. "Why?"
"After the burgling attempt last time and everything," Merlin said, shrugging slightly. "I just -- it shouldn't be able to happen again. You need extra security here."
"Yes, well, security's fine and all," Arthur said with a frown, "but I'm really not that keen on turning this place into some kind of funhouse of horrors. No one's spraying anything burny at anyone, all right? Besides, if you'll be so good as to glance to your right, you may notice that I've already got a home security system."
Merlin's head turned dutifully towards the number pad affixed to the wall. "Yes," he affirmed.
"And do you know what home security systems are for?" Arthur inquired with the sweet calm of a kindergarten teacher.
"Ye--"
"Home security, Merlin."
"Well, yeah," he conceded, "but you never use it. And even if you did, it's a bit useless, isn't it? I mean, for god's sake, Arthur, a child could decode one of these things."
Merlin held up a silencing finger in the direction of Arthur's no doubt clever rejoinder, and prodded at the buttons. With an upturned palm and the hammy flourish of an amateur stage magician, he gestured to the 'Alarm Set' notice scrolling across the top of the number pad, and eased open the front door. A whooping alarm blared through the house, and Merlin, unruffled, screwed his nose up in a show of intense concentration before pressing another series of buttons. Restored quiet swooped in obediently.
Arthur's eyes narrowed to slits. "How do you know my code?"
"Like I said. Useless."
"I don't have it written down anywhere."
"Sometimes I'm good at things," Merlin said modestly.
Temporarily bested, Arthur puckered his brow in disapproval. "Well, if you're that concerned about invaders, you could just dig a moat around the property," he supplied dryly.
"Can't," said Merlin. "We wouldn't be able to burrow down far enough without hitting utility lines. People could just wade across. It'd be inconvenient at best; wouldn't really stop anyone."
Arthur gave him a sidelong stare. "I wasn't… serious."
Merlin smiled. "That's okay, it wouldn't have worked anyway. This, on the other hand," he said, showing Arthur another set of illustrations and long formulas.
Arthur shook his head. "Are you secretly some kind of mad genius?"
"Not secretly, no," said Merlin, and laughed.
*
Perhaps he ought to have been suspicious when Arthur had asked instead of demanded to get out of the house and go for a bit of a drive. He had too much faith in people, was the trouble, Merlin decided, and that was why he'd ascribed Arthur's politeness to being part of his rehabilitation as only an occasional arse, and that was why Merlin stupidly let himself be directed onto the M5 towards the agency headquarters rather than the "park" Arthur had said he'd wanted to have a ramble around.
"Here's a good one," said Arthur, pointing at a parking space near the entrance of what, from all outward appearances, seemed like nothing but a dull warehouse.
Obediently, Merlin pulled into it, put the handbrake on and then turned the force of a full-blown frown on Arthur. "This is very much not a park."
"I only left out the 'car' part of it," Arthur said, and smiled a winning smile that wasn't so much a bit of cheer than an instruction to bow down before his wit, peon. The rehabilitative process obviously still needed a little work.
"This is the agency; you can't be here," Merlin argued. "Didn't they banish you for your own good?"
"Banish? What is this, the Middle Ages?" Arthur scoffed. "They only said I couldn't work; nothing about me dropping in for a visit every once in a while."
"Why are we here?"
"We're dropping in for a visit, Merlin. Is it really so difficult to keep up?"
Agency headquarters were fashioned in a labyrinth of cold chrome and dark marble, with branches of long corridors and winding bends that went nowhere. Unwelcome visitors, supposing they'd managed to get past all the security checkpoints, might find themselves turning up in the same supply closet over and over, and agents in training often had to be rescued from the wrong bathroom.
At the centre of it all, the minotaur, Uther Pendragon, who didn't receive appointments so much as erase them from the fabric of humanity once he was done with them. Nobody ever saw him, save Arthur and Morgana, mostly only by dint of being family, and Gaius.
There were occasional rumours about what Gaius Bassingthwaite, with his loud shirts and hippie hair, did or had done to deserve the position he held as Uther's trusted advisor, but Merlin didn't care so much about that as the fact that Gaius was brilliant at his job and a kind, supportive supervisor to boot, on top of which he'd been surprisingly good about Morgana appropriating Merlin from his lab to take care of Arthur.
"Hallo," said Merlin, smiling brightly, stiltedly, as he held out a hand to shake. "Nice to meet you, sir."
Gaius gave him a funny look, and then glanced at Arthur, who was clicking a wary tongue at a set of gently fizzing test tubes. "Yes, er, a pleasure. What brings you gentlemen to these parts?"
"Merlin here," said Arthur, clapping a heavy hand onto his shoulder, and Merlin looked at it in alarm, "is some kind of budding inventor, it seems. He's in training but can't do the regular courses at the moment, and I wondered if he might be of some use to your department."
"What, are you farming me out?" Merlin asked, and his voice sounded simultaneously defiant and desperate.
"I'm doing you a favour, Merlin. Show him your notebook," Arthur said, gesturing widely as though Merlin responded to hand signals like a performing seal.
"I haven't got it with -- ah, you packed it for me," said Merlin, dryly, as Arthur pointed with his nose at Merlin's satchel.
Gaius received the notebook with a slightly raised eyebrow, handling it gingerly as though it might go off bang. He turned a few pages, caterpillar eyebrow inching up his forehead still. "Mm, interesting," he said in a low voice.
Merlin pretended to look nervous at the proclamation.
"I'm going to look for Morgana," Arthur announced, already bored, and headed out of the lab, drumming his fingers on a countertop on his way out. "I'll be back in a bit."
When his footsteps faded away, Merlin said earnestly, "I've heard a lot about you, sir; it really would be an honour to work with you someday."
"Indeed?" Gaius said, and the eyebrow was really earning its keep now. He peered over to where Merlin was rummaging through his satchel.
With a slight frown, Merlin produced a tiny bugging device from the depths of the bag, unsure whether to feel pleased or put out, and, after a few seconds of quick work, deactivated the mechanism. "He suspects me," he said, eyeing the bug intently, like he might burst it into flames with his mind.
"As well he might. He isn't one of the agency's best for nothing, you know."
"Shit. It was probably the gun range. Which, did you know, was given to him as a birthday present when he was twelve?"
"Mm?" said Gaius politely.
"I showed off. And then I tried to cover it up," said Merlin, falling like dead weight onto a lab stool and worrying the bug between his fingers. "Never should've let him bring me there. I shouldn't let him do a lot of things, actually. But he's just so... persuasive." That wasn't really the word he wanted, but he wasn't sure there existed an all-inclusive term for the force of Arthur's personality, or why he kept submitting to it, which was probably the more disturbing issue of the two. He swung his gaze onto Gaius. "Can't you order me back here to work for you? You have -- clout, don't you?"
"I only invent things, Merlin," said Gaius, spreading his hands in an apologetic fashion. "Besides, this isn't just a simple matter of politics. It's Uther's son we're talking about."
"Yeah," Merlin sighed, and pressed his lips together. No agent's track record was expected to be flawless, and that was universally understood, but if he met failure on this particular assignment, Uther would probably eat his heart on a stick.
Gaius nodded towards the device in his hands. "On the upside, that's one of your inventions, isn't it?"
"Yeah, from last year," said Merlin with a smile. "At least he's got good taste in equipment."
"It's a sight better than this, at any rate." Gaius handed the troublesome notebook back over. "Spraying things in people's faces? Not really your best work, my boy."
"Eh," Merlin said, shrugging in agreement.
"Well, I suppose you had better go and pretend to lose your way somewhere so Agent Pendragon can find you in a panic. Might I suggest the canteen in the east annex? They have a new cappuccino machine; beautiful thing, more levers than they know what to do with," said Gaius, and the shine in his eyes was probably due to hoping the thing would break down soon so he could take it apart.
Merlin grinned. "Yes, sir."
"Oh, and Merlin. Be careful."
He nodded, and fiddled with the bug again until it came back up and running at about half capacity. It would put a lot of loud, creaky static in Arthur's ears, which Merlin figured was good payback enough for not trusting him. He was paid to have Arthur's best interests at heart, after all.
Merlin dropped the device back into his satchel and made some indistinct noises to alert Arthur that his eavesdropping was back on track.
"Er, yes," said Gaius, a little too loudly, bending over to speak to Merlin's bag. "Well, best of luck, Mister Emrys."
"Right, yeah, thanks for everything," Merlin said brightly, and waved his goodbye.
He stepped out of the lab and considered his directional options. Then, just in case Arthur was keeping tabs, he took a roundabout, scenic route, which wasn't so much scenic for his benefit as for whoever might be watching the CCTVs and see him looking utterly lost and out of his depth and not at all like someone who knew the building so well he might have drawn up the blueprints himself.
"Er, Arthur," he said into his mobile some time later, "I think I'm lost?"
"Didn't I tell you to wait at the lab?" Arthur asked, irritable. "Where are you?"
"Well, if I knew that, I wouldn't be lost," said Merlin mildly, and sipped quietly at a frothy cappuccino.
*
Arthur snapped his phone closed, tossing it onto Morgana's desk. Had Merlin been in his presence, he would have glared hotly, but he only had Morgana within sight, so he turned the glare on her instead. As her gaze was fixed on the laptop in front of her, however, she made a very unsuitable alternative.
"Your little toy's defective," he said.
"I'm sure," said Morgana, perpetually amused by him -- or possibly something on her computer screen, "that remark would be a lot more cutting if it made any sense at all."
Arthur sniffed. Of course it made sense. What didn't make sense was Merlin, who had a habit of compensating for his occasional bouts of brilliance with that of complete stupidity. Arthur could make neither heads nor tails of the man; at best he could only suspect that at least one of those faces was put on to exaggerated effect. Having played both parts in several of his prior missions, however, Arthur knew it was just as easy faking cleverness as it was idiocy, and he couldn't help but feel irked that he hadn't yet figured out which, if either, constituted the real Merlin.
He was usually good at this kind of game, but Merlin remained a resolute puzzle, and sometimes all he wanted to do was to strip Merlin to the bone and study him from the inside out.
In a purely scientific way, of course, a voice in his head added suddenly, for reasons Arthur chose not to pursue. He silenced the voice, though its kind generally didn't stay dead for long.
"I mean --" said Arthur, but he was cut off by his phone whirring suddenly to life with vibration and convulsing all over the desk. A picture of Merlin's face, taken at too close a range by Merlin himself so he looked like a little dog snuffling at a camera, lit up. Arthur shoved the display in Morgana's direction. "Him."
She barely looked up. "He's perfectly functional. Answer it."
"Ahh… Hi, Arthur," said Merlin into his ear when Arthur finally pressed the connection open. "Would you like the good news or bad news first?"
"Unless the good news is that you've suddenly dropped out of the human race, Merlin, I don't think it matters."
"Okay, well," said Merlin somewhat more breezily than the occasion called for, still having failed to understand that he ought to be devastated by Arthur's quips, "the good news is I know where I am now. The bad news is that where I am is locked inside one of the holding cells in the basement. Can you come and fetch me?"
"I'll think about it," said Arthur, and hung up. He turned to Morgana, one hand outstretched. "Let me see his file. Surely there's a massive head injury documented in there somewhere."
Morgana smiled. "Classified," she said. "Besides, what are you so interested in him for? He's only just looking after you for a bit. I didn't see you so involved when Mrs. Winthrop was around."
"Yes, looking after me in between shooting people in the middle of the forehead, cocking up my breakfasts and then disabling my home security in two seconds flat," Arthur said dryly.
Spending enough time around Gaius, everyone thought they could pull off the art of eyebrow elevation, but Morgana actually had it down to a science. "Shooting people? Merlin?" she asked.
"Not real people," Arthur amended.
"What then? Those video games you think I don't know you have?"
"The rifle club," he said, in tones so withering any greenery present would have up and died in that moment, except Morgana didn't believe in clutter or the oxygen cycle.
"Are we talking about the one you never bring anyone to? Including your own dearest sister?" she accused.
"How many gun ranges do you think I own?"
Forgetting herself, Morgana gaped, but the expression soon gave way to smug delight. "Oh my god, you like him."
And if the tone of voice hadn't done it, Arthur's iron stare would have done in anything remotely organic in the room. "Last I checked, lending a person a gun didn't exactly fall under the column of grand romantic gestures."
This time, Morgana laughed, and Arthur saw immediately where he'd veered off course. She eyed him with a sparkle. "I meant, of course, that you were coming round to my point of view, which is that Merlin is a perfectly lovely person. But romantic gestures, Arthur. Is there something I ought to know?"
Arthur tilted his head in annoyance. "Things you don't know, hmm. Where do I even begin?"
"Gosh," said Morgana, perking up like she'd spent the entire day looking forward to ragging on Arthur, "let me think. Maybe you could start with what attracted you to him in the first place. His eyes? Smile? Oh! It's his hands, isn't it? He has beautiful hands."
Arthur spun on his heel and waved a terse goodbye as he walked out of Morgana's office, more idiotic words streaming out of her mouth and following him through the door. He really should have known better than to talk to Morgana about anything.
The looping boughs and bends of the agency corridors were no match for his momentum, as he navigated through their tricks with perfect ease. He'd practically grown up here, after all, trained from birth to follow in his father's footsteps and dedicate his life to the agency. If he had been the kind of man given to regrets, he might lament the lack of a proper social life, or friends, or any semblance of normality, but any good agent long had the capacity for regret beaten out of him during training. Regrets only made you slow, and in a profession where split-second decisions regularly determined who would end up the guest of honour at the local mortician's that week, no one could afford to be slow.
And speaking of slow.
Arthur submitted himself to the retinal scan and voice recognition panel at the entrance of the interrogation sector, and swiped his identification card, striding past the cells until he found Merlin sitting quietly in one of the corners.
He broke into a grin at the sight of Arthur, and he padded over, sticking his face in between two steel bars.
"I told you," Merlin said to the very large security officer who'd presumably thrown him in there.
The man rolled his eyes, which Arthur thought was a very reasonable response, and turned to Arthur, jabbing a thumb towards the detainee. "He belong to you, then?"
"If you must put it that way," said Arthur, flashing his ID.
With some reluctance, the security officer punched in a series of numbers, and the cell door groaned to the side. Merlin leapt out, narrowly avoiding barrelling into Arthur.
Arthur nodded his thanks to the guard, while Merlin winked at him.
"Try," said Arthur, dragging Merlin along by the arm, "not to taunt people who could snap you in half with less effort than it takes to do to a biscuit."
Loping along by his own power now as they exited, Merlin asked, "Don't you want to know why I was in there?"
"Because you look like such a formidable threat to national security?"
"Because somebody," said Merlin, poking the air next to Arthur's ribs, "told me he wanted to go to the park, and being the much put-upon but kindly soul that I am, I acceded to his wishes, only to be tricked into driving him to the agency, for which I didn't have any ID on my person because I thought we were going to the park, and therefore had no proof of security clearance -- perhaps you see where I'm going with this?"
"Yes," Arthur said slowly, as they left the agency and walked back to the car. "You're very ill-prepared for a secret agent."
"In training," Merlin muttered, shoving his car key into the lock.
"Anyway, if you'd only just stayed where you were supposed to," said Arthur, "you wouldn't have ended up chucked in the dungeons. So, the moral of the story, Merlin?"
"Never to let you leave the house again."
Continue to Chapter Three
Summary: Stood down from duty on convalescent's leave, secret agent Arthur Pendragon wonders if sheer boredom might just do him in. But when his handler saddles him with a caretaker who is by turns completely inept and strangely brilliant, and invites trouble wherever he goes, Arthur has to concede that death by boredom looks less and less likely. Death by goon squad, high-speed car chase, poison, or fiery explosion, however...
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Rating: NC-17
Chapter word count: ~4,500
Notes:
venivincere rocks the beta world. Previous chapters: Prologue + One
CHAPTER TWO
Physical therapy was a bore, but a welcome respite nonetheless. During these sessions Merlin could at least worry a smidge less about his charge since the physiotherapist Leon was one of theirs, and more importantly, knew the circumstances surrounding Arthur's situation, as well as a great deal of very impressive and lethal martial arts moves. He also landed quite firmly on the side of handsome, but that was less important.
After making sure they had everything they needed in the drawing room he'd taken the past week and a half to refashion and outfit for this purpose, Merlin left Leon and Arthur to it, scuttling quickly to a chair in the corner and burying his nose in a notebook, hoping this time he wouldn't betray himself and sneak a glimpse of Arthur stripping his shirt off.
Thinking that Arthur was attractive while he'd been a recalcitrant little beast had posed no problems whatsoever, since Merlin could then tell himself that, yes, the man was gorgeous, but he also had the personality of a toad, a very cranky, belligerent arsehole of a toad. It was like being presented with the Holy Grail, burnished to eternal perfection, only to discover it had been topped off with fresh sewage.
But now, now that Arthur had apparently given up his game and was starting to be nice, to stop pitching up demands for things royalty would never even have dared to imagine, to smile and make the occasional joke, to fulfill Merlin's suspicion that he actually was a real human person with a properly functioning soul -- well, it was all a bit horrible, really.
He wouldn't exactly have preferred that Arthur continue being a complete prat about everything, but at least he'd known how to deal with that. These days, though he no longer seemed to find Merlin's presence objectionable, Arthur still favoured his wide repertoire of smirks as appropriate responses to everything Merlin said or did, but the difference was that now, Merlin's mental log had gone rogue and rechristened every look with kinder, sweeter sentiments. He found himself thinking words like 'golden' and 'warm' and 'bright' whenever Arthur broke into an unexpected smile or deemed something worthy of laughter.
It was nothing but a stupid, ill-timed crush, obviously, and taking into account the fact that Merlin spent most of his day with no one else but Arthur and allocated whatever spare time he had to thinking of ways to keep Arthur safe, he might have seen this coming.
These things often couldn't be helped, however, no matter how hard Merlin tried to stamp them into submission, so there was nothing else for it but to wait it out and hope it passed quickly, like a bout of flu. Or a gallstone. Which, at this point, Merlin would have considered significantly preferable to the irritating intestinal gymnastics he had to undergo every time Arthur so much as stepped within a twenty-foot radius of him. And seeing as they lived in the same house, this only happened all the time.
However, this wasn't anything he couldn't handle, not at the expense of his years of training and professionalism. He had a job to do, and he wouldn't let anything interfere with it, least of all his own ridiculous feelings. They would go away soon enough. Besides, it wasn't as though he was in love with Arthur.
Merlin's gaze flicked upwards involuntarily, and he cursed himself for getting an eyeful of shirtlessness.
What Merlin got up to in his spare time technically didn't fall under the realm of Arthur's business, but he wondered why Merlin kept spending that spare time in here, of all places. A normal, mentally stable person might have used the time to settle in for a quiet read or gone for a nice turn about the garden, but Merlin -- well, he wasn't even sure what shenanigans Merlin was perpetrating over in the corner of the room.
It was like this every other afternoon, during his sessions with Leon; while he worked with his physical therapist to regain full use of his limbs and smooth the stiffness out of his muscles, Merlin went and sat himself in the fireside chair, legs sprawled about, cradling a notebook and being distressingly, silently unintrusive.
He'd invited himself in on the sessions initially, claiming professional curiosity about the rehabilitative process. Leon hadn’t had any objections to being observed, and since Merlin did have a bit of a medical background anyway, Arthur hadn't any inclination to deny him sitting in. Like a good pupil on the brink of swottiness, he'd asked a load of questions the first day, nodded and smiled a lot, made himself useful when Leon had asked for an extra hand. After that, however, Merlin mostly just sat quietly in his corner, barely looking up at all except to occasionally stare critically at the window like an army officer come for kit inspection.
It wasn't unnerving, per se, because if there was anyone who exuded earnest agreeableness it was Merlin; it was just slightly perplexing. As was Merlin himself.
"Okay, Mr. Pendragon. All done for today," said Leon, cutting into Arthur's musings and gently removing the hot pack and electrodes from Arthur's skin before rolling his equipment out of the way.
"Good. Thanks," said Arthur, carefully pulling his shirt back on.
Merlin bounded to his feet, discarding his stuff on the seat cushion, the mechanical pencil rolling away into a crevice at the back of the chair. "I'll see you out."
Arthur watched them leave the room and ambled towards Merlin's chair, lifting the notebook, which he'd been wondering about for a while. He leafed through the pages, unsure what to expect; they didn't contain any written incriminations (or worse, feelings), but were chockfull of diagrams and figures and illegible notes in the margins.
Peering out into the hallway, he saw Merlin and Leon having a hushed conversation at the front door. Leon nodded his farewell, and Merlin smiled softly to himself as he shut the door behind him.
"Do you… like Leon?" Arthur asked as he emerged from the drawing room, and then shut his mouth abruptly, for he had no idea where the question had come from.
"Hm? Yeah, he's a nice guy," Merlin said. "Why?"
Arthur frowned. "It's -- Never mind."
"That's my book," said Merlin, tipping his head towards it, tucked snugly underneath Arthur's arm.
"Right. What's it for?"
"Not much; just -- drawings, you know."
"Of what? Weapons of mass destruction?" He flipped the notebook towards Merlin.
Snaring it handily from the air, Merlin looked amused at him. "I'm not a mark, Arthur. If you want to know something, you can just ask; you don't have to go round and riffle through all my things."
"Mm, noticed that, did you?"
"Got that far in my classes, at least. Like playing Spot the Difference, only more fun and life-threatening," he quipped. "What did you find out about me, then?"
"Nothing useful yet."
Merlin smiled. "Nothing incriminating, you mean?"
"Depends on what's in the book, I suppose."
Turning a few pages, Merlin crowded close to Arthur and pointed at a complicated illustration. "That's a crosshatched infrared system coded with fingerprint recognition that I can build and install at your doors, and with some adjustments, at all your windows as well. People can douse it in hairspray all they want, but it would be impassable," he said, and flipped to another drawing. "And this one's a silent trigger that can be wired to the back door, in case anyone tries that trick where they break or cut the glass so they can unlock it from the inside, and it heats the lock, see, so straight away they start off with blistery fingers. Oh, or if you'd prefer, we can set it to spray something burny in their face instead. Bit of mace, maybe. It would be easy, with the right kind of sensors, to set the correct height of the nozzle accordingly."
Arthur cocked an eyebrow. "Why?"
"After the burgling attempt last time and everything," Merlin said, shrugging slightly. "I just -- it shouldn't be able to happen again. You need extra security here."
"Yes, well, security's fine and all," Arthur said with a frown, "but I'm really not that keen on turning this place into some kind of funhouse of horrors. No one's spraying anything burny at anyone, all right? Besides, if you'll be so good as to glance to your right, you may notice that I've already got a home security system."
Merlin's head turned dutifully towards the number pad affixed to the wall. "Yes," he affirmed.
"And do you know what home security systems are for?" Arthur inquired with the sweet calm of a kindergarten teacher.
"Ye--"
"Home security, Merlin."
"Well, yeah," he conceded, "but you never use it. And even if you did, it's a bit useless, isn't it? I mean, for god's sake, Arthur, a child could decode one of these things."
Merlin held up a silencing finger in the direction of Arthur's no doubt clever rejoinder, and prodded at the buttons. With an upturned palm and the hammy flourish of an amateur stage magician, he gestured to the 'Alarm Set' notice scrolling across the top of the number pad, and eased open the front door. A whooping alarm blared through the house, and Merlin, unruffled, screwed his nose up in a show of intense concentration before pressing another series of buttons. Restored quiet swooped in obediently.
Arthur's eyes narrowed to slits. "How do you know my code?"
"Like I said. Useless."
"I don't have it written down anywhere."
"Sometimes I'm good at things," Merlin said modestly.
Temporarily bested, Arthur puckered his brow in disapproval. "Well, if you're that concerned about invaders, you could just dig a moat around the property," he supplied dryly.
"Can't," said Merlin. "We wouldn't be able to burrow down far enough without hitting utility lines. People could just wade across. It'd be inconvenient at best; wouldn't really stop anyone."
Arthur gave him a sidelong stare. "I wasn't… serious."
Merlin smiled. "That's okay, it wouldn't have worked anyway. This, on the other hand," he said, showing Arthur another set of illustrations and long formulas.
Arthur shook his head. "Are you secretly some kind of mad genius?"
"Not secretly, no," said Merlin, and laughed.
Perhaps he ought to have been suspicious when Arthur had asked instead of demanded to get out of the house and go for a bit of a drive. He had too much faith in people, was the trouble, Merlin decided, and that was why he'd ascribed Arthur's politeness to being part of his rehabilitation as only an occasional arse, and that was why Merlin stupidly let himself be directed onto the M5 towards the agency headquarters rather than the "park" Arthur had said he'd wanted to have a ramble around.
"Here's a good one," said Arthur, pointing at a parking space near the entrance of what, from all outward appearances, seemed like nothing but a dull warehouse.
Obediently, Merlin pulled into it, put the handbrake on and then turned the force of a full-blown frown on Arthur. "This is very much not a park."
"I only left out the 'car' part of it," Arthur said, and smiled a winning smile that wasn't so much a bit of cheer than an instruction to bow down before his wit, peon. The rehabilitative process obviously still needed a little work.
"This is the agency; you can't be here," Merlin argued. "Didn't they banish you for your own good?"
"Banish? What is this, the Middle Ages?" Arthur scoffed. "They only said I couldn't work; nothing about me dropping in for a visit every once in a while."
"Why are we here?"
"We're dropping in for a visit, Merlin. Is it really so difficult to keep up?"
Agency headquarters were fashioned in a labyrinth of cold chrome and dark marble, with branches of long corridors and winding bends that went nowhere. Unwelcome visitors, supposing they'd managed to get past all the security checkpoints, might find themselves turning up in the same supply closet over and over, and agents in training often had to be rescued from the wrong bathroom.
At the centre of it all, the minotaur, Uther Pendragon, who didn't receive appointments so much as erase them from the fabric of humanity once he was done with them. Nobody ever saw him, save Arthur and Morgana, mostly only by dint of being family, and Gaius.
There were occasional rumours about what Gaius Bassingthwaite, with his loud shirts and hippie hair, did or had done to deserve the position he held as Uther's trusted advisor, but Merlin didn't care so much about that as the fact that Gaius was brilliant at his job and a kind, supportive supervisor to boot, on top of which he'd been surprisingly good about Morgana appropriating Merlin from his lab to take care of Arthur.
"Hallo," said Merlin, smiling brightly, stiltedly, as he held out a hand to shake. "Nice to meet you, sir."
Gaius gave him a funny look, and then glanced at Arthur, who was clicking a wary tongue at a set of gently fizzing test tubes. "Yes, er, a pleasure. What brings you gentlemen to these parts?"
"Merlin here," said Arthur, clapping a heavy hand onto his shoulder, and Merlin looked at it in alarm, "is some kind of budding inventor, it seems. He's in training but can't do the regular courses at the moment, and I wondered if he might be of some use to your department."
"What, are you farming me out?" Merlin asked, and his voice sounded simultaneously defiant and desperate.
"I'm doing you a favour, Merlin. Show him your notebook," Arthur said, gesturing widely as though Merlin responded to hand signals like a performing seal.
"I haven't got it with -- ah, you packed it for me," said Merlin, dryly, as Arthur pointed with his nose at Merlin's satchel.
Gaius received the notebook with a slightly raised eyebrow, handling it gingerly as though it might go off bang. He turned a few pages, caterpillar eyebrow inching up his forehead still. "Mm, interesting," he said in a low voice.
Merlin pretended to look nervous at the proclamation.
"I'm going to look for Morgana," Arthur announced, already bored, and headed out of the lab, drumming his fingers on a countertop on his way out. "I'll be back in a bit."
When his footsteps faded away, Merlin said earnestly, "I've heard a lot about you, sir; it really would be an honour to work with you someday."
"Indeed?" Gaius said, and the eyebrow was really earning its keep now. He peered over to where Merlin was rummaging through his satchel.
With a slight frown, Merlin produced a tiny bugging device from the depths of the bag, unsure whether to feel pleased or put out, and, after a few seconds of quick work, deactivated the mechanism. "He suspects me," he said, eyeing the bug intently, like he might burst it into flames with his mind.
"As well he might. He isn't one of the agency's best for nothing, you know."
"Shit. It was probably the gun range. Which, did you know, was given to him as a birthday present when he was twelve?"
"Mm?" said Gaius politely.
"I showed off. And then I tried to cover it up," said Merlin, falling like dead weight onto a lab stool and worrying the bug between his fingers. "Never should've let him bring me there. I shouldn't let him do a lot of things, actually. But he's just so... persuasive." That wasn't really the word he wanted, but he wasn't sure there existed an all-inclusive term for the force of Arthur's personality, or why he kept submitting to it, which was probably the more disturbing issue of the two. He swung his gaze onto Gaius. "Can't you order me back here to work for you? You have -- clout, don't you?"
"I only invent things, Merlin," said Gaius, spreading his hands in an apologetic fashion. "Besides, this isn't just a simple matter of politics. It's Uther's son we're talking about."
"Yeah," Merlin sighed, and pressed his lips together. No agent's track record was expected to be flawless, and that was universally understood, but if he met failure on this particular assignment, Uther would probably eat his heart on a stick.
Gaius nodded towards the device in his hands. "On the upside, that's one of your inventions, isn't it?"
"Yeah, from last year," said Merlin with a smile. "At least he's got good taste in equipment."
"It's a sight better than this, at any rate." Gaius handed the troublesome notebook back over. "Spraying things in people's faces? Not really your best work, my boy."
"Eh," Merlin said, shrugging in agreement.
"Well, I suppose you had better go and pretend to lose your way somewhere so Agent Pendragon can find you in a panic. Might I suggest the canteen in the east annex? They have a new cappuccino machine; beautiful thing, more levers than they know what to do with," said Gaius, and the shine in his eyes was probably due to hoping the thing would break down soon so he could take it apart.
Merlin grinned. "Yes, sir."
"Oh, and Merlin. Be careful."
He nodded, and fiddled with the bug again until it came back up and running at about half capacity. It would put a lot of loud, creaky static in Arthur's ears, which Merlin figured was good payback enough for not trusting him. He was paid to have Arthur's best interests at heart, after all.
Merlin dropped the device back into his satchel and made some indistinct noises to alert Arthur that his eavesdropping was back on track.
"Er, yes," said Gaius, a little too loudly, bending over to speak to Merlin's bag. "Well, best of luck, Mister Emrys."
"Right, yeah, thanks for everything," Merlin said brightly, and waved his goodbye.
He stepped out of the lab and considered his directional options. Then, just in case Arthur was keeping tabs, he took a roundabout, scenic route, which wasn't so much scenic for his benefit as for whoever might be watching the CCTVs and see him looking utterly lost and out of his depth and not at all like someone who knew the building so well he might have drawn up the blueprints himself.
"Er, Arthur," he said into his mobile some time later, "I think I'm lost?"
"Didn't I tell you to wait at the lab?" Arthur asked, irritable. "Where are you?"
"Well, if I knew that, I wouldn't be lost," said Merlin mildly, and sipped quietly at a frothy cappuccino.
Arthur snapped his phone closed, tossing it onto Morgana's desk. Had Merlin been in his presence, he would have glared hotly, but he only had Morgana within sight, so he turned the glare on her instead. As her gaze was fixed on the laptop in front of her, however, she made a very unsuitable alternative.
"Your little toy's defective," he said.
"I'm sure," said Morgana, perpetually amused by him -- or possibly something on her computer screen, "that remark would be a lot more cutting if it made any sense at all."
Arthur sniffed. Of course it made sense. What didn't make sense was Merlin, who had a habit of compensating for his occasional bouts of brilliance with that of complete stupidity. Arthur could make neither heads nor tails of the man; at best he could only suspect that at least one of those faces was put on to exaggerated effect. Having played both parts in several of his prior missions, however, Arthur knew it was just as easy faking cleverness as it was idiocy, and he couldn't help but feel irked that he hadn't yet figured out which, if either, constituted the real Merlin.
He was usually good at this kind of game, but Merlin remained a resolute puzzle, and sometimes all he wanted to do was to strip Merlin to the bone and study him from the inside out.
In a purely scientific way, of course, a voice in his head added suddenly, for reasons Arthur chose not to pursue. He silenced the voice, though its kind generally didn't stay dead for long.
"I mean --" said Arthur, but he was cut off by his phone whirring suddenly to life with vibration and convulsing all over the desk. A picture of Merlin's face, taken at too close a range by Merlin himself so he looked like a little dog snuffling at a camera, lit up. Arthur shoved the display in Morgana's direction. "Him."
She barely looked up. "He's perfectly functional. Answer it."
"Ahh… Hi, Arthur," said Merlin into his ear when Arthur finally pressed the connection open. "Would you like the good news or bad news first?"
"Unless the good news is that you've suddenly dropped out of the human race, Merlin, I don't think it matters."
"Okay, well," said Merlin somewhat more breezily than the occasion called for, still having failed to understand that he ought to be devastated by Arthur's quips, "the good news is I know where I am now. The bad news is that where I am is locked inside one of the holding cells in the basement. Can you come and fetch me?"
"I'll think about it," said Arthur, and hung up. He turned to Morgana, one hand outstretched. "Let me see his file. Surely there's a massive head injury documented in there somewhere."
Morgana smiled. "Classified," she said. "Besides, what are you so interested in him for? He's only just looking after you for a bit. I didn't see you so involved when Mrs. Winthrop was around."
"Yes, looking after me in between shooting people in the middle of the forehead, cocking up my breakfasts and then disabling my home security in two seconds flat," Arthur said dryly.
Spending enough time around Gaius, everyone thought they could pull off the art of eyebrow elevation, but Morgana actually had it down to a science. "Shooting people? Merlin?" she asked.
"Not real people," Arthur amended.
"What then? Those video games you think I don't know you have?"
"The rifle club," he said, in tones so withering any greenery present would have up and died in that moment, except Morgana didn't believe in clutter or the oxygen cycle.
"Are we talking about the one you never bring anyone to? Including your own dearest sister?" she accused.
"How many gun ranges do you think I own?"
Forgetting herself, Morgana gaped, but the expression soon gave way to smug delight. "Oh my god, you like him."
And if the tone of voice hadn't done it, Arthur's iron stare would have done in anything remotely organic in the room. "Last I checked, lending a person a gun didn't exactly fall under the column of grand romantic gestures."
This time, Morgana laughed, and Arthur saw immediately where he'd veered off course. She eyed him with a sparkle. "I meant, of course, that you were coming round to my point of view, which is that Merlin is a perfectly lovely person. But romantic gestures, Arthur. Is there something I ought to know?"
Arthur tilted his head in annoyance. "Things you don't know, hmm. Where do I even begin?"
"Gosh," said Morgana, perking up like she'd spent the entire day looking forward to ragging on Arthur, "let me think. Maybe you could start with what attracted you to him in the first place. His eyes? Smile? Oh! It's his hands, isn't it? He has beautiful hands."
Arthur spun on his heel and waved a terse goodbye as he walked out of Morgana's office, more idiotic words streaming out of her mouth and following him through the door. He really should have known better than to talk to Morgana about anything.
The looping boughs and bends of the agency corridors were no match for his momentum, as he navigated through their tricks with perfect ease. He'd practically grown up here, after all, trained from birth to follow in his father's footsteps and dedicate his life to the agency. If he had been the kind of man given to regrets, he might lament the lack of a proper social life, or friends, or any semblance of normality, but any good agent long had the capacity for regret beaten out of him during training. Regrets only made you slow, and in a profession where split-second decisions regularly determined who would end up the guest of honour at the local mortician's that week, no one could afford to be slow.
And speaking of slow.
Arthur submitted himself to the retinal scan and voice recognition panel at the entrance of the interrogation sector, and swiped his identification card, striding past the cells until he found Merlin sitting quietly in one of the corners.
He broke into a grin at the sight of Arthur, and he padded over, sticking his face in between two steel bars.
"I told you," Merlin said to the very large security officer who'd presumably thrown him in there.
The man rolled his eyes, which Arthur thought was a very reasonable response, and turned to Arthur, jabbing a thumb towards the detainee. "He belong to you, then?"
"If you must put it that way," said Arthur, flashing his ID.
With some reluctance, the security officer punched in a series of numbers, and the cell door groaned to the side. Merlin leapt out, narrowly avoiding barrelling into Arthur.
Arthur nodded his thanks to the guard, while Merlin winked at him.
"Try," said Arthur, dragging Merlin along by the arm, "not to taunt people who could snap you in half with less effort than it takes to do to a biscuit."
Loping along by his own power now as they exited, Merlin asked, "Don't you want to know why I was in there?"
"Because you look like such a formidable threat to national security?"
"Because somebody," said Merlin, poking the air next to Arthur's ribs, "told me he wanted to go to the park, and being the much put-upon but kindly soul that I am, I acceded to his wishes, only to be tricked into driving him to the agency, for which I didn't have any ID on my person because I thought we were going to the park, and therefore had no proof of security clearance -- perhaps you see where I'm going with this?"
"Yes," Arthur said slowly, as they left the agency and walked back to the car. "You're very ill-prepared for a secret agent."
"In training," Merlin muttered, shoving his car key into the lock.
"Anyway, if you'd only just stayed where you were supposed to," said Arthur, "you wouldn't have ended up chucked in the dungeons. So, the moral of the story, Merlin?"
"Never to let you leave the house again."
Continue to Chapter Three