Merlin fic: Shadowplay -- Chapter Three
Jun. 23rd, 2012 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adelagiaTitle: 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: ~7,000
Notes:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
venivincere is a goddess among betas.
Previous chapters: Prologue + One | Two
CHAPTER THREE
Merlin sighed. With traffic, it took upwards of thirty minutes to drive the distance between Arthur's house and the agency; without, Merlin could probably do it in fifteen. Right now, however, it looked like he was going to be forced to slice his time by half. As if his day hadn't already been fraught with enough distraction.
"Arthur?" he said mildly, flicking his eyes between the road ahead of him and the rearview mirror, where the reflection of a dark car rumbled along close behind. "Have you any friends who drive a green Mustang?"
"No, why?"
"Enemies, then?"
Arthur shrugged. "My work requires me to ruin lots of lives," he said blithely. "I can't say I've kept tabs on what cars they have left to bequeath."
"Okay, then," said Merlin, with what he felt was remarkable calm for what he was about to do. Without warning, he made a hard swerve into a side street. Once Arthur stopped swearing, Merlin added, "It's probably safe to say that the fellows waving guns at us in that car back there are not trying to say hello."
"What?" Arthur cried, and, forgetting himself, whipped his head around. "Ow, damn it!" He clutched at his injury.
Merlin threw him a wild look. "Just -- stay down, will you?"
"With you at the helm, while we get shot at?"
Behind them, a bullet tore into a parked car. Merlin bore down on the accelerator pedal, furious with concentration as buildings and bawling cars streaked by in blurred lines, while Arthur reached for his holster.
"Don't," said Merlin, one hand leaving the wheel for a split second to push at Arthur's shoulder. "You'll only hurt yourself."
"What do you think I bloody am, Merlin?" Arthur shouted over the scream of the engine. "I'm a trained agent; I can --"
"And I --" Merlin interrupted, only to clench his jaw shut as he sheered round a bend and scraped the side of a bus. "Bloody -- That'll be a new paint job. Agh, I'll get us out of this."
"Under what qualifications?" Arthur demanded. "Multiple viewings of The French Connection?"
"Never seen it," said Merlin, and before Arthur could sputter appropriately at him, he added, "but nobody beat my high score on Turbo OutRun at the local arcade for three years." He grinned out the windscreen.
Arthur stared at him and slid down in his seat, bracing one hand on the dashboard as the rest of the world zoomed by in a riot of sound and colour. "This is not how I envisioned my own death," he muttered.
Merlin's passenger side mirror shattered upon a bullet's impact, and he squawked indignantly. "Oh, that is it."
Tyres shrieking, Merlin's little two-door veered into a tight u-turn, and then another, until they were charging right behind their pursuers.
"Can you get a shot?"
Arthur perked up. "Finally," he said, and blew both the Mustang's back tires.
As it galumphed to a frenzied halt, its passengers flailing, Merlin screeched past the Mustang and Arthur put another neat hole in its armour just to make a point, looking utterly pleased with himself.
Merlin gave him a sideways glance, slowing the car to a reasonable speed once more now that they were in the clear. "Enjoyed yourself, did you?"
Arthur laughed. "That was almost brilliant. Where did you learn to drive like that?"
"Like I said, a youth and countless pounds misspent at the Pier Arcade."
"Mm," said Arthur, the amusement fading away from his face, and Merlin wasn't sure what it meant. Arthur sheathed his gun and took out his mobile. "Better call Morgana; make sure it all gets sorted so the police don't accidentally arrest us for that whole debacle."
"Yeah, we'd better."
Merlin pretended not to pay attention to the one-sided conversation that ensued, with Arthur saying things like, No, Morgana, I'm dead and I'm phoning you from the afterlife. Of course I'm bloody well fine, and Well, how the hell should I know? and No, no registration plate. Green. Dark green, like that hideous frock thing Auntie Helen wore at her pearl anniversary.
It was a struggle to feel relieved that it sounded like Arthur had little inkling that the Mustang had been put on their tail specifically for him, or at least seemed fairly unconcerned about it, as though high-speed car chases were just part and parcel of his professional life; on one hand, it did make Merlin's job easier -- it definitely wasn't his place to tell Arthur there was a hit on him and that he wasn't supposed to know -- but on the other, after two failed attempts on his life, surely Arthur was in greater danger than ever.
The next attempt was probably just around the corner, and Merlin had no idea how to prepare for it; the intel Morgana had taken care to feed him throughout the agency's investigation thus far had barely turned up anything useful. For all he knew, the next greengrocer's delivery might well contain poisoned sprouts. As if having to eat sprouts wasn't tragic enough in and of itself.
"Yeah, he's here," said Arthur into his phone, giving Merlin a little glance as though to make sure. "No. No. If you don't change the subject in the next five seconds, I'm -- okay, I'm hanging up now."
"What did she say?" Merlin asked, when Arthur shoved his mobile back in his pocket.
"She'll take care of it. Apparently there's been a rash of these incidents recently; some kind of gang initiation thing," he said, choosing to leave it at that, though the frown that plastered itself across his face said everything of his unwillingness to swallow what Morgana had just fed him.
Arthur remained a man of few words for the rest of the drive, occasionally peering in Merlin's direction out of the corner of his eye, which Merlin only noticed because he was doing the same.
When they reached the house, Arthur ignored Merlin's proffered hand as usual as they went up the front steps, and said instead, "I'll cover the repair costs for your car."
"Oh -- er, you really don't have to," said Merlin.
"No, it's my fault."
Merlin blinked, edging forward warily. "What do you mean?"
"Frankly, the way I see it," said Arthur, preceding Merlin into the foyer, "Morgana's out of her head telling me it's a gang initiation. Something like that would've been in the news."
"Maybe the police want to keep it quiet so they don't start a national panic," Merlin suggested, though he may as well have not spoken at all, as Arthur surged forward with his theories.
"There's probably little chance those two lovely gentlemen with the firearms came after us on a lark, so that means the target was either you or me. And seeing as I'm the government agent who's taken down everything from drug rings to international terrorist cells, it only makes sense that I'd be marked. The only question is, by whom?"
"Mmhm," said Merlin in the most noncommittal tones he could muster.
"Though of course that excludes the possibility that there's something you've done, somewhere in your deep, dark past, to piss somebody off enough for that little incident to have happened. Which would then mean that there's something about yourself you haven't told me," Arthur clipped, and gave Merlin a level look. "Is there?"
He'd been right not to feel relieved; he was trapped -- he'd either have to create a new legend for himself on the spot, admit to working for the agency or allow Arthur, against the agency's wishes, to follow the line of thought that would eventually lead him to discovering the truth.
"No," Merlin said. "I'm -- not anything important."
There was no telling whether it was the right decision or not, but in all honesty, Merlin had never felt completely at ease with keeping Arthur in the dark about the circumstances that had dumped them into each other's lives; sometimes he rather thought that if Arthur suspected someone was after him, so much the better -- surely it would be far more beneficial for Arthur's sake if he was prepared for it, even in some small way. It would mean that, whenever the next murder attempt turned up, Arthur would be his own second line of defense if Merlin failed -- which he had no intention of doing, but it did lift a little weight off his mind knowing he could trust Arthur to take care of himself if all hell broke loose.
Arthur cocked his head thoughtfully. "Well, I wouldn't put it that way," he said, and turned abruptly on his heel towards the living room. Over his shoulder, he added, "Come on, I've got something you need to see."
*
That Merlin was obviously lying about something Arthur had yet to pinpoint was almost as heinous as his never having seen The French Connection, and Arthur reckoned that if he could at least rectify one out of the two things before the day was out, his productivity rate would still be in the black.
From the opposite end of the sofa, he ended up paying more attention to Merlin than to the screen -- having seen the film about seven times prior, he supposed he could be forgiven for the lack of transfixion this once; besides, there were more interesting things to transfix upon. If Merlin could be called interesting.
He was a person of interest, that was for certain, and although Merlin had been living with him for some weeks now, Arthur still knew next to nothing about him. With brains that apparently were allowed to come and go as the fancy tickled, Merlin was a difficult man to pin down; there were times Arthur was convinced Merlin was absolutely, fiendishly brilliant and others when brilliant didn't even seem like a word he could spell correctly.
Arthur had never had so much trouble reading someone before, which made it so much worse that Arthur rather liked him. Perhaps if things were vastly different, they might have figured out a way to be friends; perhaps they might have done normal things together, like waste all of their pocket money at arcade machines.
Though, of course, things weren't different, and Uther had never seen the point of indulging Arthur with consoles for simulated duck hunting when they'd regularly gone out to do the real thing, and Arthur and Merlin weren't friends. At best, they were acquaintances, though it didn't seem fitting to call Merlin an acquaintance, considering he'd quite probably saved Arthur's life earlier that day.
For all his projected nonchalance, the incident had actually been weighing on Arthur's mind quite a bit. He was no stranger to being threatened; in fact, he'd wonder if he was doing his job properly if he wasn't ruffling anyone's feathers enough for them to toss the occasional goon his way, but there was protocol to consider. He wasn't currently working a case, and by rights, should've been left well alone to convalesce; even his former, late nemeses had respected the rules the last time he'd gone off duty for a week due to injury -- one had even sent along a fruit hamper (the contents of which had all been dosed with rat poison enough to extinguish the whole of England's rodent population, but that was only traditional, and Arthur had duly expressed his appreciation for the gesture with a heartfelt, exploding thank-you note).
What this meant was either that one of the many people who wanted him dead had seriously gone off the rails, or that Merlin's presence had had something to do with it. Possibly even some combination of both. He didn't particularly like suspecting Merlin; thinking about Merlin in that light gave him a weird ache in the pit of his stomach that felt uncomfortably similar to guilt, and although he'd had years of experience and training in refusing to answer the door whenever guilt stopped by for a visit, it had apparently found a way to jimmy the lock. He had spent half his life cultivating a natural mistrust of nearly everyone he met, but Merlin seemed to produce the exact opposite reaction in him, and it seemed almost instinctual that Arthur should trust him.
He glanced to his left, where Merlin was perched on the edge of the sofa, clutching a fat cushion to his chest, riveted, as the chase scene sped underway. Arthur smiled to himself for no reasons he could properly discern, and then clamped a frown in its place when it occurred to some part of his brain that his facial movements had accidentally got away from him.
Gene Hackman pounded on the steering wheel, and amidst the cacophony of car horns, a doorbell ring Arthur couldn't remember ever having been in the film suddenly sounded.
Merlin gave a start, abandoning the cushion to the floor. "Uhh," he said, blinking at the room as though he was seeing it for the first time. "I'll get that."
Curious, Arthur got up and followed, lagging around a corner in the front corridor as he heard Merlin unlatch the door and open it cautiously, just a crack.
"Yes?" he asked crisply, through the chink.
Arthur couldn't hear what was said on the other side, but saw Merlin shuffle his feet and hesitate, so he came forward, one hand poised above his holster. "Who is it, Merlin?"
"Neighbour?" Merlin said.
"Oh, well, you probably wouldn't have seen me before," said a soft, girlish voice from behind the door. "I've only just moved up the road recently."
Arthur pulled the door open further, its arc widening at the same pace Merlin's mouth twisted downwards. "Pleased to meet you," said Arthur, discreetly nudging Merlin aside so he could get a better look at their new neighbour.
Even without the sunset at her back, illumining her in a gentle halo, she would have been stunning, with the sort of wild rose beauty that wouldn't have been out of place in an ancient fairy ring.
"I'm Arthur," he said, taking her hand. "How can I help you?"
"Sophia," she said, with a demure smile that seemed to light the entire doorway. "I'm sorry to be a bother, but would you mind if I used your phone? I've left my mobile at home; I was just come out for a little walk, and hurt my ankle a bit."
"Oh, of course," said Arthur, offering an arm. "Why didn't you just say so in the first place?"
She shifted her weight from the doorjamb, wrapping her hands around his proffered arm, and limped in. "Well, I did try to tell your --" Sophia cast a hesitant glance in Merlin's direction.
"Butler," Arthur filled in, feeling Merlin's glare sizzle on the back of his neck and getting an unreasonable amount of enjoyment from irritating him, not only with the title, but inviting Sophia in when Merlin so clearly had taken an instant dislike to the stranger.
"Oh," she said, smiling at Merlin with the bright agreeableness of feigned interest.
Arthur led her into the study, sitting her at the desk and bringing the telephone within her reach, while the blank canvas that had taken over Merlin's face radiated disapproval.
Sophia placed the phone back in its cradle, gingerly getting to her feet once more. "Well, I've called my dad, and he says he can be here in half an hour to drive me home," she said to Arthur, all apologies. "I don't want to impose on you; if it's all right, I could wait for him on the front stoop?"
"Nonsense," said Arthur. "We could give you a lift home, couldn't we, Merlin?"
The blank look cracked with the upward shift of an eyebrow. "Glad to," he said flatly, arms knotted over his chest.
Adding 'chauffeur' to Merlin's list of imaginary occupations, Arthur sat in the back of the car with Sophia, talking in low tones. She was an engaging conversation partner, and beautiful to look at besides, and that would've been enough under any circumstances; that Merlin seemed entirely discomfitted by it was just a bonus, though Arthur, upon reflection, didn't exactly know why goading such a reaction out of Merlin was so satisfying, other than possibly fulfilling some need to get back at him in a completely roundabout way for being so difficult to figure out.
They dropped Sophia off, who gave Arthur a lingering smile (and the look over her shoulder as she let herself in the front door gave Arthur cause for self-congratulation for not having yet lost his touch with the womenfolk) and to Merlin barely a shred of acknowledgement. When she had safely ensconced herself indoors, Arthur deigned to move to the front passenger seat, where Merlin greeted him with more eyebrow action.
"Something you want to say?" Arthur asked, as they backed out of the drive.
Merlin frowned at the road. "You could try being more careful, after what happened today," he said, at length.
"She's harmless," said Arthur flippantly.
"You don't know that."
Arthur rolled his eyes; just because he'd let the girl limp along on his arm didn't mean he'd let his guard down all of a sudden. To date, he'd had nine seductresses saunter his way in order to bed and kill him, and as most of them had only come away with a fifty-percent success rate and lots of time to contemplate their dismal failures while being rolled away on gurneys, Arthur thought it was pretty safe to say that he knew how to handle himself when it came to being careful as to who he let get too close.
It seemed a bit ironic that of all the people he could be having this conversation with, it had to be Merlin, whose abrupt insinuation into his life made the rational part of his brain bristle constantly in opposition to the inexplicable gut feeling that he could trust Merlin implicitly. There weren't words enough to describe how irritating it was to feel himself slip into the comfort of an easy camaraderie with the man, only to have to force himself out of it again.
"Doesn't it seem a bit suspicious that --" Merlin said, and cut himself off, pressing his lips together in a grim line.
"What?" Arthur asked, though he knew what Merlin was getting at.
Maybe it was coincidence; maybe nearly getting killed on the road had absolutely nothing to do with Sophia's sudden appearance; maybe she was simply a lovely girl who couldn't keep her feet in line; maybe she had been sent to sniff around and off him. There were just too many options and it was too early to tell where everything belonged; until then, Arthur couldn't see the harm in letting it all unfold at its own pace. Sometimes getting answers just meant waiting for them.
Merlin's frown deepened. He hesitated, and then the words came out in a rush. "That after almost being run off the road today, a beautiful woman we've never seen before suddenly shows up at the doorstep, comes in to your house and drapes herself all over you?"
"What were we supposed to do? Slam the door in her face? The poor girl was limping."
"She was draping."
Arthur smirked to himself. "The way you're carrying on, Merlin, anyone would think you were jealous."
Merlin turned into their drive. "She's only got perfect skin, that's all," he muttered under his breath, pulling at the handbrake, and trudged over to the passenger side to go through their usual charade of Arthur flapping away at him to turn down his assistance.
Arthur blinked at the dashboard as Merlin made his way round. "I meant of me," he said.
*
Aside from Arthur forcing a crash course in classic action films on Merlin for his own good, the week passed with no further incident -- no stealth attacks, no explosions, no Sophia, and Merlin wondered if perhaps he'd been wrong about her. One could never be too careful, of course, especially when one's charge seemed to give not one whit about possibly being a murder target. And in Arthur's case, he most definitely was a murder target, though even getting shot at didn't seem to make the impression on him that it should have. It was a wonder Arthur was still alive at all, with that kind of attitude.
Though, of course, things might take a very different turn soon if Arthur continued doing whatever he was doing in the kitchen.
Merlin peered over the stove, where what looked like a take-home tar pit was bubbling turgidly on the range. A dark brown globule popped, sending a faintly ominous spatter crusting on contact with the surface of the range.
"Er, Arthur?" said Merlin, keeping a safe distance from Arthur's chopping board, which, if the mess was anything to go by, seemed to extend across the entire length of the kitchen island. "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like? I'm cooking."
"Mmhm," said Merlin agreeably. "Are you… cooking poison?"
"Poison isn't nearly as complicated to make as beef bourguignon," Arthur said, and waved a hand to encompass the chaos he'd created, ending finally on a sticky page of a cookbook. "Apparently."
Merlin crooked an inquiring eyebrow.
"Sophia's coming for dinner, if you must know," Arthur said, nearly mincing his finger off.
"Sophia?"
"She's rung me a few times; we've talked. And now we're having dinner."
"Dinner," said Merlin flatly.
Arthur eyed him with suspicion. "What?"
"Look, I know I'm not your keeper --"
"Yes, you're my butler."
"For the last time, Arthur, merely saying something again and again doesn't make it true," said Merlin, turning the stove knob off and pouring the congealed glop into the waste disposal. The pot's contents swirled slowly, sadly down the drain, and Arthur stared at it, and then at Merlin, who sighed and cleared a space in his mental daily planner for a bout of regret later that evening. "You really like her?"
Arthur shrugged, noncommittal, as though still deciding whether or not to play his hand.
"Then," Merlin said, clearing the countertop of Arthur's detritus and taking charge of the vegetables, "I'd recommend feeding her something other than whatever that swill was."
"Well, I'll have to now, seeing as you've dumped it all in the sink," Arthur said churlishly, though there was a bright gleam in his eyes that suggested curiosity was winning out as he watched Merlin slice the carrots with an expert hand.
Before long, Merlin had a stew simmering to perfection atop the stove. "There," he said, unable to help the gruff, peevish tones that coloured his voice, though he knew he'd made the decision all by himself to help Arthur win over a girl who was, at best, rather a bit of a snob.
Arthur peered into the pot. "Looks nice," he said, which was about as far as his complimentary vocabulary stretched.
"Just --" Merlin stopped himself before he could tell Arthur to be careful again; he was beginning to sound like a broken record even to himself, and surely there was something in Arthur's repertoire as a spy that had kept him alive this long despite his flippancy when it came to nearly getting murdered all the time. Besides, he had absolutely no proof that any caution was required around Sophia anyway, and there was no reason for Arthur to trust his word just on the basis that he didn't like the look of her. "Just don't expect me to make dessert, too. And hands off my Cornettos. Don't think I haven't noticed you filching them."
"I'll keep it in mind, though I rather doubt we'll even be getting to dessert," said Arthur, and if his voice could have been loaded with any more innuendo, it'd be charging £1.99 per minute for the pleasure of its company.
Merlin flapped his hands around his ears in a futile attempt to drive what Arthur thought passed for flirty out of his head. "We're not having this conversation," he said, fleeing the kitchen before Arthur could share any more unsavoury things he didn't want to know.
Rationally, he understood that Arthur was a functional grown-up and therefore allowed to make his own choices -- even if those choices included sleeping with every attractive woman who happened to pass by complaining of minor injuries -- and it was nowhere near his place to pass judgment on Arthur's questionable taste in potential bed partners, but Merlin still didn't have to like it. Not that Arthur had asked. Not that he'd expected Arthur to.
And definitely not that he secretly resented Sophia in any way for having caught Arthur's fancy in the wink of an eye, while he continued to toil away, cemented in the background.
Merlin groaned softly at the inconvenience and utter uselessness of his own feelings, but the self-pity was cut short when the doorbell chimed, and he slouched to the front door, feeling a scowl form between his cheeks. Arranging his face into a less aggrieved portrait, he opened the door to let Sophia in; she tossed her coat at him by way of greeting, and Merlin decided he'd let the scowl stand after all, though it seemed to make no difference to Sophia, as her entire attention was focussed on Arthur.
"Darling," she trilled as he came forward to receive her, and Merlin made a face at the back of her head. That she'd insinuated herself into a place at their table was bad enough; the saccharine familiarity, however, was horrifying.
Even given the slight chance that he might be biased due to having cultivated an unwilling fondness of Arthur, Merlin rather thought she was pushing it. He missed the hook and let her coat fall on the floor.
As Arthur led her to the dining room, Merlin heard her coo over the place settings and make all sorts of noises about how lovely everything was. Merlin hovered close by in the next room while the meal went on, keeping a sharp ear out for any strange noises, like knife-throwing or Arthur drowning in the stew by her hand.
The meal eventually came to an end, however, with everybody emerging alive, and Merlin's admittedly shoddy plans to foist an hours-long round of Monopoly on them to ensure appropriate and family-friendly behaviour were dashed when Arthur motioned him forward and very firmly suggested that he take care of the dirty dishes.
Arthur and Sophia disappeared upstairs, wine glasses in hand, with Arthur shooting him a significant look that Merlin chose not to acknowledge.
Once the dishwasher whirred to life, Merlin stood in the kitchen and dithered. He scrubbed the back of his head. For all he knew, Sophia could well be turning Arthur into dodgy pie filling already; on the other hand, if he interrupted whatever was going on upstairs that didn't happen to be cold-blooded murder, the odds of preventing his own untimely demise at Arthur's hands seemed dicey at best.
He paced in the hallway, at the foot of the staircase, thinking up increasingly desperate ideas to force Arthur and Sophia back into his sights; he could set the house on fire, for example -- Arthur was rich; he could always buy another.
In the length of his pacing, Merlin accidentally trod on Sophia's coat, and it took him a second to decide against going and putting on a pair of muckboots to tread on it again; lifting it carelessly by one sleeve, he made to hang it up properly, and a little bottle fell out of its pocket, bouncing on the hardwood floors with a dull ping. Grumbling under his breath at Sophia for making his life harder even when she wasn't physically there, Merlin stooped to pick it up; the label plastered along its sides was half torn off, but he recognised it instantly.
Dropping everything, he bolted upstairs, hurdling what seemed like twenty steps at a go, and banged into Arthur's bedroom. "Arthur, no!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "She's going to -- Oh god."
He stared at the body on the ground.
"No, I don't think she is, actually," said Arthur, arms folded loosely across his chest. He followed Merlin's line of sight with the casual air of a gallery observer, and prodded Sophia's shin with his toe. "Bit difficult to do anything, really, when you find yourself dead."
"Did you kill her?"
Arthur shrugged. "In a manner of speaking. She poisoned my wine, but in a great twist of fate," he said, with all signs pointing to events having absolutely nothing to do with fate, "our wine glasses somehow got switched."
"Ah. Well," said Merlin shortly, feeling his heart-rate slow to slightly less fatal levels. "I'm glad you're all right."
"Isn't this also the part where you're supposed to crow at me about having been right all along?"
Merlin narrowed an arch look at him. "Given the circumstances," he said, gesturing to the dead body cooling in their midst, "I thought I might skip the crowing and go straight to the part where we have to dispose of a corpse."
Arthur fished his mobile out. "You were right, though; it's a bit too coincidental, isn't it, that there've been two instances of people wanting to kill me within the space of less than two weeks," he said, and pushed at a speed-dial number, putting the phone to his ear. "Funny thing is, before you turned up in my life, I -- Oh, Morgana, good. You'll never guess what happened. No, guess."
Pretending to afford Arthur's conversation privacy, Merlin slipped out of the bedroom, feeling relieved and panicked and defeated all at once. Whether it was due to his own carelessness or Arthur being much sharper than he looked, Merlin had failed his assignment; Arthur was still alive -- and for that Merlin was thanking every god in the universe's pantheon -- but he was also having no trouble at all connecting all the dots, it seemed.
If Uther discovered that it was Merlin who had inadvertently let all the beans spill right into Arthur's path, he'd probably find a way to reinstate the death penalty for one afternoon just so he could personally stick Merlin in the loving clutches of the gallows.
And even if his head didn't end up on a pike for tourist attractions, Merlin could imagine all sorts of grim ways the senior Pendragon might exact retribution for Merlin's breach of contract -- which he'd be tempted to argue was Uther's own fault for not trusting in Arthur's intelligence and abilities to begin with, but Merlin suspected it might get him vapourised on the spot. And if there was anyone with access to that kind of technology, Uther Pendragon topped the list.
"Merlin."
He shot Arthur a wary glance, dread doing a soft-shoe all the way down his spine. That Arthur had never fully trusted him was clear -- why go through the trouble of bugging him, after all, if he had -- but even knowing that he'd been under suspicion this whole time didn't take away the sting of disappointing Arthur by turning out to be someone other than what he'd said he was.
There was a chance he was projecting all of this onto Arthur, of course, and that Arthur didn't much care either way, but part of the reason why Merlin had left the field in the first place was because he'd never got to be himself; he'd made friends and dropped them with a myriad of different personas, tracked and killed criminals under whatever guises the agency saw fit to assign him. The constant deception was what had got to him at last, and he'd managed to put it behind him with his transfer to the lab, but now, thanks to whoever was trying to hunt Arthur down, it had come back to gnaw at his insides again.
It smarted a little more this time; whether that was due to his resistance to it having been worn down from disuse, or because Arthur was -- different, somehow, Merlin wasn't sure. Even putting his inappropriate crushing aside, he liked Arthur; there were times when he'd have easily called Arthur his friend before remembering, suddenly, that he was actually on a case and that Arthur was his charge and nothing more. There was no place for friendship to begin with; he'd simply been hired to be here.
And there would be no place for friendship once Arthur figured out the reason for Merlin's presence. Which it looked as though he just had.
*
Arthur tilted the phone away from his ear, letting whatever story Morgana was spinning simply drift and dissipate into the room. With at least two attempts made on his life now, it was abundantly clear that he was a marked man, no matter what anyone said. What did matter was that everything Morgana was saying was meant to push his thoughts in the opposite direction, to placate his suspicions; it made no sense, and Arthur was tired of picking through the cracks in her words and leeching onto the miniscule clues Merlin accidentally dropped when his guard was down.
He'd have to teach Merlin to be better about that, Arthur thought, and then felt a sardonic smile form across his lips. He was still assuming Merlin needed to be taught anything; with everything having gone down the way it had, it would be little surprise to find out Merlin was actually some kind of criminal mastermind who'd been plotting his doom all this while.
Merlin's wan profile appeared in the corridor, chewing industriously at the side of his thumb, and Arthur felt guilt prod him in the chest again. It was patently ridiculous how much he wanted to be able to trust Merlin, and Arthur axed the thought before it could take up any more valuable real estate in his brain, feeling a spike of anger at himself for letting someone get past his armour so easily and at Merlin for having the gall to do it in the first place.
"Merlin," he said, charging his voice with so much authority entire armies would have fallen at his feet if he'd wanted them.
"Sir?" Merlin jumped to attention, eyes wide as though he'd been caught daydreaming at school.
"Tell me exactly what's going on," Arthur said.
"Er," he said. "You gave Sophia doctored wine, and now she's dead, and a clean-up crew is on its way?"
Arthur's mouth twisted into a frown, and he stepped forward, all rules of personal space thrown to the wind. "You know that's not what I mean. Tell me who you are," he ordered, but the menace he'd intended never made it past his lips.
Merlin stared at his mouth. "I --" he said, and failed to finish the thought as the front door burst open.
"Arthur?" Morgana's voice sailed in from downstairs. "Merlin?"
Merlin blinked and coiled himself away from Arthur, his face pale with what looked like relief and regret. "Up here," he called back.
With two agents at her heels, Morgana flew up the stairs, grave concern flooding her eyes as she affirmed for herself that Arthur was all right, one hand on his arm as though to make sure he wasn't just an apparition. "Everybody okay, then?" she asked.
"If you're not counting the dead body, then yes," Arthur said, rather wearily. "Look --"
"Good," said Morgana before Arthur could get another word in, and encased herself in a thoroughly professional demeanour once more. "Agents Edwin and Alvarr here will take your statement, Arthur, and deal with the body. Merlin, you're with me," she added briskly, moving downstairs again with light, quick tread.
Merlin's eyebrows rose a fraction, but, after throwing Arthur a short glance, he followed in Morgana's wake without a word.
While Arthur crossed his arms over his chest and glowered, the two agents peered into Arthur's bedroom, where the one identified as Alvarr clucked his tongue at the scene, as though he disapproved of the decor, not least the corpse spread in the middle of it.
"This must be a great shock to you," said Alvarr, reading off some ill-suited mental script as he led Arthur away to an empty guest bedroom, and not appearing to notice Arthur teeming with contempt. He sat Arthur down in what he obviously thought was a soothing manner. "We'll take care of everything, sir, not to worry. Just stay here; don't move. I'll be back later for your statement."
Arthur scowled at his retreating back and immediately got to his feet, wondering where the hell Morgana and Merlin had disappeared off to and deciding just how hard he'd throttle them both when they came back.
*
"He knows," was the first thing out of Merlin's mouth once he'd left Arthur's earshot.
"Yes, well," Morgana replied, as they slipped into her car, "as much as I hate to admit it, Arthur can be rather bright sometimes."
"Can't we just tell him, then? Get it all out in the open? You have to admit it's all getting a bit out of hand."
Morgana hesitated. "Uther --"
"Is an idiot," Merlin huffed, feeling less than charitable. Belatedly, he looked around for listening devices, and added, "With all due respect."
"Is this is the one?" Morgana asked, as they drove up to the house at which he'd dropped Sophia off a week prior.
The shades were all drawn and there was no sign of light or life within. Morgana and Merlin stepped out of the car and knocked on the door, weapons at the ready. When no reply seemed forthcoming, Morgana kicked the door in. The last dregs of a late sunset filtered dimly through the curtains, but even in the near darkness, they could tell that the house was empty, not only of people, but of everything. The only indications that anyone had lived there at all were the occasional bits of rubbish that scattered the floor. When a thorough search proved their assumptions correct, Merlin and Morgana returned to the ground floor.
Merlin flicked the lights on, his eyes drawn at once to the fireplace in the hall, a large amount of ash piled up in its grate. With the end of a pen, he sifted through the ash, finding charred remnants of documents and pictures.
"That's definitely Arthur there," said Merlin, holding up a small fragment of a photograph with seared edges.
Morgana squinted at it. "That's an eye. Not great grounds for positive identification."
"I've been glaring at him every minute of every day, Morgana; I think I know his eye when I see it," Merlin said, a wry smile forming on his lips. He picked up and dropped all the pieces that had escaped a fiery end into a clear plastic bag with a pair of tweezers.
Morgana regarded him with faint amusement. "Often carry evidence kits on your person, then?"
Merlin sifted through another pile of ash, quiet. When he was satisfied that there were no further secrets to be found amidst the debris, he looked up at her. "Well, you know the motto: be prepared."
"That's the Scouts."
Merlin shrugged. "Bear attack, hired assassin, Arthur Pendragon's whims at three in the morning; basic tenet's the same."
Morgana smiled. "Has he treated you all right?"
"If by 'all right' you mean did he finally stop trying to run me off the property, then yes," said Merlin, though there was much more to it than that, which he didn't want to get into.
"I know he can be abrasive," said Morgana, "and a bit of an arse, but he's got a good heart underneath."
"Mm," said Merlin, not entirely sure why she was telling him this. In any case, he already knew Arthur's heart, not that it mattered much anymore, considering his assignment was as good as over now that Arthur had already worked the bulk of it out himself; there would be no point in keeping Merlin on when it was clear that Arthur could take care of himself with no trouble, on top of which Arthur had never fully warmed to him anyway.
"I think he quite likes you, you know," said Morgana, whose ambiguous job as a handler and Uther's second-in-command sometimes consisted solely of saying things that weren't true, and this was obviously one of them.
Merlin raised an eyebrow at her, one of Gaius's trademark specials. "Funny," he said dryly, and drove his focus back to the task at hand. "Well, I think that's it. This was Sophia's safehouse, and she destroyed everything before her mission. No reason to return once she was done."
Morgana's lips puckered into a frown. "We couldn't find anything on her when you called in her name last week; no prior criminal records, no connections. She was just -- ordinary. And now she's dead," Morgana said, in a voice wavered between lament and triumph. After all, the woman had tried to kill Arthur. But now that she'd got what was coming to her, she couldn't tell them anything. "And so are the two men who came after you on the road last week, about an hour after you got away from them. Officially, it was a freak car accident, but no one really gets strangled by their cars, do they?"
"No way to trace the source, then," Merlin said.
"No," she said grimly. Morgana gave the silent house one last look and turned the lights off, gesturing for Merlin to follow her back out to the car. "Come on, we've got some serious regrouping to do."
Merlin crossed the threshold, his eyes resting on Arthur's house in the near distance, which saved him the trouble of looking up a second later, when it decided to explode.
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: ~7,000
Notes:
venivincere is a goddess among betas.Previous chapters: Prologue + One | Two
CHAPTER THREE
Merlin sighed. With traffic, it took upwards of thirty minutes to drive the distance between Arthur's house and the agency; without, Merlin could probably do it in fifteen. Right now, however, it looked like he was going to be forced to slice his time by half. As if his day hadn't already been fraught with enough distraction.
"Arthur?" he said mildly, flicking his eyes between the road ahead of him and the rearview mirror, where the reflection of a dark car rumbled along close behind. "Have you any friends who drive a green Mustang?"
"No, why?"
"Enemies, then?"
Arthur shrugged. "My work requires me to ruin lots of lives," he said blithely. "I can't say I've kept tabs on what cars they have left to bequeath."
"Okay, then," said Merlin, with what he felt was remarkable calm for what he was about to do. Without warning, he made a hard swerve into a side street. Once Arthur stopped swearing, Merlin added, "It's probably safe to say that the fellows waving guns at us in that car back there are not trying to say hello."
"What?" Arthur cried, and, forgetting himself, whipped his head around. "Ow, damn it!" He clutched at his injury.
Merlin threw him a wild look. "Just -- stay down, will you?"
"With you at the helm, while we get shot at?"
Behind them, a bullet tore into a parked car. Merlin bore down on the accelerator pedal, furious with concentration as buildings and bawling cars streaked by in blurred lines, while Arthur reached for his holster.
"Don't," said Merlin, one hand leaving the wheel for a split second to push at Arthur's shoulder. "You'll only hurt yourself."
"What do you think I bloody am, Merlin?" Arthur shouted over the scream of the engine. "I'm a trained agent; I can --"
"And I --" Merlin interrupted, only to clench his jaw shut as he sheered round a bend and scraped the side of a bus. "Bloody -- That'll be a new paint job. Agh, I'll get us out of this."
"Under what qualifications?" Arthur demanded. "Multiple viewings of The French Connection?"
"Never seen it," said Merlin, and before Arthur could sputter appropriately at him, he added, "but nobody beat my high score on Turbo OutRun at the local arcade for three years." He grinned out the windscreen.
Arthur stared at him and slid down in his seat, bracing one hand on the dashboard as the rest of the world zoomed by in a riot of sound and colour. "This is not how I envisioned my own death," he muttered.
Merlin's passenger side mirror shattered upon a bullet's impact, and he squawked indignantly. "Oh, that is it."
Tyres shrieking, Merlin's little two-door veered into a tight u-turn, and then another, until they were charging right behind their pursuers.
"Can you get a shot?"
Arthur perked up. "Finally," he said, and blew both the Mustang's back tires.
As it galumphed to a frenzied halt, its passengers flailing, Merlin screeched past the Mustang and Arthur put another neat hole in its armour just to make a point, looking utterly pleased with himself.
Merlin gave him a sideways glance, slowing the car to a reasonable speed once more now that they were in the clear. "Enjoyed yourself, did you?"
Arthur laughed. "That was almost brilliant. Where did you learn to drive like that?"
"Like I said, a youth and countless pounds misspent at the Pier Arcade."
"Mm," said Arthur, the amusement fading away from his face, and Merlin wasn't sure what it meant. Arthur sheathed his gun and took out his mobile. "Better call Morgana; make sure it all gets sorted so the police don't accidentally arrest us for that whole debacle."
"Yeah, we'd better."
Merlin pretended not to pay attention to the one-sided conversation that ensued, with Arthur saying things like, No, Morgana, I'm dead and I'm phoning you from the afterlife. Of course I'm bloody well fine, and Well, how the hell should I know? and No, no registration plate. Green. Dark green, like that hideous frock thing Auntie Helen wore at her pearl anniversary.
It was a struggle to feel relieved that it sounded like Arthur had little inkling that the Mustang had been put on their tail specifically for him, or at least seemed fairly unconcerned about it, as though high-speed car chases were just part and parcel of his professional life; on one hand, it did make Merlin's job easier -- it definitely wasn't his place to tell Arthur there was a hit on him and that he wasn't supposed to know -- but on the other, after two failed attempts on his life, surely Arthur was in greater danger than ever.
The next attempt was probably just around the corner, and Merlin had no idea how to prepare for it; the intel Morgana had taken care to feed him throughout the agency's investigation thus far had barely turned up anything useful. For all he knew, the next greengrocer's delivery might well contain poisoned sprouts. As if having to eat sprouts wasn't tragic enough in and of itself.
"Yeah, he's here," said Arthur into his phone, giving Merlin a little glance as though to make sure. "No. No. If you don't change the subject in the next five seconds, I'm -- okay, I'm hanging up now."
"What did she say?" Merlin asked, when Arthur shoved his mobile back in his pocket.
"She'll take care of it. Apparently there's been a rash of these incidents recently; some kind of gang initiation thing," he said, choosing to leave it at that, though the frown that plastered itself across his face said everything of his unwillingness to swallow what Morgana had just fed him.
Arthur remained a man of few words for the rest of the drive, occasionally peering in Merlin's direction out of the corner of his eye, which Merlin only noticed because he was doing the same.
When they reached the house, Arthur ignored Merlin's proffered hand as usual as they went up the front steps, and said instead, "I'll cover the repair costs for your car."
"Oh -- er, you really don't have to," said Merlin.
"No, it's my fault."
Merlin blinked, edging forward warily. "What do you mean?"
"Frankly, the way I see it," said Arthur, preceding Merlin into the foyer, "Morgana's out of her head telling me it's a gang initiation. Something like that would've been in the news."
"Maybe the police want to keep it quiet so they don't start a national panic," Merlin suggested, though he may as well have not spoken at all, as Arthur surged forward with his theories.
"There's probably little chance those two lovely gentlemen with the firearms came after us on a lark, so that means the target was either you or me. And seeing as I'm the government agent who's taken down everything from drug rings to international terrorist cells, it only makes sense that I'd be marked. The only question is, by whom?"
"Mmhm," said Merlin in the most noncommittal tones he could muster.
"Though of course that excludes the possibility that there's something you've done, somewhere in your deep, dark past, to piss somebody off enough for that little incident to have happened. Which would then mean that there's something about yourself you haven't told me," Arthur clipped, and gave Merlin a level look. "Is there?"
He'd been right not to feel relieved; he was trapped -- he'd either have to create a new legend for himself on the spot, admit to working for the agency or allow Arthur, against the agency's wishes, to follow the line of thought that would eventually lead him to discovering the truth.
"No," Merlin said. "I'm -- not anything important."
There was no telling whether it was the right decision or not, but in all honesty, Merlin had never felt completely at ease with keeping Arthur in the dark about the circumstances that had dumped them into each other's lives; sometimes he rather thought that if Arthur suspected someone was after him, so much the better -- surely it would be far more beneficial for Arthur's sake if he was prepared for it, even in some small way. It would mean that, whenever the next murder attempt turned up, Arthur would be his own second line of defense if Merlin failed -- which he had no intention of doing, but it did lift a little weight off his mind knowing he could trust Arthur to take care of himself if all hell broke loose.
Arthur cocked his head thoughtfully. "Well, I wouldn't put it that way," he said, and turned abruptly on his heel towards the living room. Over his shoulder, he added, "Come on, I've got something you need to see."
That Merlin was obviously lying about something Arthur had yet to pinpoint was almost as heinous as his never having seen The French Connection, and Arthur reckoned that if he could at least rectify one out of the two things before the day was out, his productivity rate would still be in the black.
From the opposite end of the sofa, he ended up paying more attention to Merlin than to the screen -- having seen the film about seven times prior, he supposed he could be forgiven for the lack of transfixion this once; besides, there were more interesting things to transfix upon. If Merlin could be called interesting.
He was a person of interest, that was for certain, and although Merlin had been living with him for some weeks now, Arthur still knew next to nothing about him. With brains that apparently were allowed to come and go as the fancy tickled, Merlin was a difficult man to pin down; there were times Arthur was convinced Merlin was absolutely, fiendishly brilliant and others when brilliant didn't even seem like a word he could spell correctly.
Arthur had never had so much trouble reading someone before, which made it so much worse that Arthur rather liked him. Perhaps if things were vastly different, they might have figured out a way to be friends; perhaps they might have done normal things together, like waste all of their pocket money at arcade machines.
Though, of course, things weren't different, and Uther had never seen the point of indulging Arthur with consoles for simulated duck hunting when they'd regularly gone out to do the real thing, and Arthur and Merlin weren't friends. At best, they were acquaintances, though it didn't seem fitting to call Merlin an acquaintance, considering he'd quite probably saved Arthur's life earlier that day.
For all his projected nonchalance, the incident had actually been weighing on Arthur's mind quite a bit. He was no stranger to being threatened; in fact, he'd wonder if he was doing his job properly if he wasn't ruffling anyone's feathers enough for them to toss the occasional goon his way, but there was protocol to consider. He wasn't currently working a case, and by rights, should've been left well alone to convalesce; even his former, late nemeses had respected the rules the last time he'd gone off duty for a week due to injury -- one had even sent along a fruit hamper (the contents of which had all been dosed with rat poison enough to extinguish the whole of England's rodent population, but that was only traditional, and Arthur had duly expressed his appreciation for the gesture with a heartfelt, exploding thank-you note).
What this meant was either that one of the many people who wanted him dead had seriously gone off the rails, or that Merlin's presence had had something to do with it. Possibly even some combination of both. He didn't particularly like suspecting Merlin; thinking about Merlin in that light gave him a weird ache in the pit of his stomach that felt uncomfortably similar to guilt, and although he'd had years of experience and training in refusing to answer the door whenever guilt stopped by for a visit, it had apparently found a way to jimmy the lock. He had spent half his life cultivating a natural mistrust of nearly everyone he met, but Merlin seemed to produce the exact opposite reaction in him, and it seemed almost instinctual that Arthur should trust him.
He glanced to his left, where Merlin was perched on the edge of the sofa, clutching a fat cushion to his chest, riveted, as the chase scene sped underway. Arthur smiled to himself for no reasons he could properly discern, and then clamped a frown in its place when it occurred to some part of his brain that his facial movements had accidentally got away from him.
Gene Hackman pounded on the steering wheel, and amidst the cacophony of car horns, a doorbell ring Arthur couldn't remember ever having been in the film suddenly sounded.
Merlin gave a start, abandoning the cushion to the floor. "Uhh," he said, blinking at the room as though he was seeing it for the first time. "I'll get that."
Curious, Arthur got up and followed, lagging around a corner in the front corridor as he heard Merlin unlatch the door and open it cautiously, just a crack.
"Yes?" he asked crisply, through the chink.
Arthur couldn't hear what was said on the other side, but saw Merlin shuffle his feet and hesitate, so he came forward, one hand poised above his holster. "Who is it, Merlin?"
"Neighbour?" Merlin said.
"Oh, well, you probably wouldn't have seen me before," said a soft, girlish voice from behind the door. "I've only just moved up the road recently."
Arthur pulled the door open further, its arc widening at the same pace Merlin's mouth twisted downwards. "Pleased to meet you," said Arthur, discreetly nudging Merlin aside so he could get a better look at their new neighbour.
Even without the sunset at her back, illumining her in a gentle halo, she would have been stunning, with the sort of wild rose beauty that wouldn't have been out of place in an ancient fairy ring.
"I'm Arthur," he said, taking her hand. "How can I help you?"
"Sophia," she said, with a demure smile that seemed to light the entire doorway. "I'm sorry to be a bother, but would you mind if I used your phone? I've left my mobile at home; I was just come out for a little walk, and hurt my ankle a bit."
"Oh, of course," said Arthur, offering an arm. "Why didn't you just say so in the first place?"
She shifted her weight from the doorjamb, wrapping her hands around his proffered arm, and limped in. "Well, I did try to tell your --" Sophia cast a hesitant glance in Merlin's direction.
"Butler," Arthur filled in, feeling Merlin's glare sizzle on the back of his neck and getting an unreasonable amount of enjoyment from irritating him, not only with the title, but inviting Sophia in when Merlin so clearly had taken an instant dislike to the stranger.
"Oh," she said, smiling at Merlin with the bright agreeableness of feigned interest.
Arthur led her into the study, sitting her at the desk and bringing the telephone within her reach, while the blank canvas that had taken over Merlin's face radiated disapproval.
Sophia placed the phone back in its cradle, gingerly getting to her feet once more. "Well, I've called my dad, and he says he can be here in half an hour to drive me home," she said to Arthur, all apologies. "I don't want to impose on you; if it's all right, I could wait for him on the front stoop?"
"Nonsense," said Arthur. "We could give you a lift home, couldn't we, Merlin?"
The blank look cracked with the upward shift of an eyebrow. "Glad to," he said flatly, arms knotted over his chest.
Adding 'chauffeur' to Merlin's list of imaginary occupations, Arthur sat in the back of the car with Sophia, talking in low tones. She was an engaging conversation partner, and beautiful to look at besides, and that would've been enough under any circumstances; that Merlin seemed entirely discomfitted by it was just a bonus, though Arthur, upon reflection, didn't exactly know why goading such a reaction out of Merlin was so satisfying, other than possibly fulfilling some need to get back at him in a completely roundabout way for being so difficult to figure out.
They dropped Sophia off, who gave Arthur a lingering smile (and the look over her shoulder as she let herself in the front door gave Arthur cause for self-congratulation for not having yet lost his touch with the womenfolk) and to Merlin barely a shred of acknowledgement. When she had safely ensconced herself indoors, Arthur deigned to move to the front passenger seat, where Merlin greeted him with more eyebrow action.
"Something you want to say?" Arthur asked, as they backed out of the drive.
Merlin frowned at the road. "You could try being more careful, after what happened today," he said, at length.
"She's harmless," said Arthur flippantly.
"You don't know that."
Arthur rolled his eyes; just because he'd let the girl limp along on his arm didn't mean he'd let his guard down all of a sudden. To date, he'd had nine seductresses saunter his way in order to bed and kill him, and as most of them had only come away with a fifty-percent success rate and lots of time to contemplate their dismal failures while being rolled away on gurneys, Arthur thought it was pretty safe to say that he knew how to handle himself when it came to being careful as to who he let get too close.
It seemed a bit ironic that of all the people he could be having this conversation with, it had to be Merlin, whose abrupt insinuation into his life made the rational part of his brain bristle constantly in opposition to the inexplicable gut feeling that he could trust Merlin implicitly. There weren't words enough to describe how irritating it was to feel himself slip into the comfort of an easy camaraderie with the man, only to have to force himself out of it again.
"Doesn't it seem a bit suspicious that --" Merlin said, and cut himself off, pressing his lips together in a grim line.
"What?" Arthur asked, though he knew what Merlin was getting at.
Maybe it was coincidence; maybe nearly getting killed on the road had absolutely nothing to do with Sophia's sudden appearance; maybe she was simply a lovely girl who couldn't keep her feet in line; maybe she had been sent to sniff around and off him. There were just too many options and it was too early to tell where everything belonged; until then, Arthur couldn't see the harm in letting it all unfold at its own pace. Sometimes getting answers just meant waiting for them.
Merlin's frown deepened. He hesitated, and then the words came out in a rush. "That after almost being run off the road today, a beautiful woman we've never seen before suddenly shows up at the doorstep, comes in to your house and drapes herself all over you?"
"What were we supposed to do? Slam the door in her face? The poor girl was limping."
"She was draping."
Arthur smirked to himself. "The way you're carrying on, Merlin, anyone would think you were jealous."
Merlin turned into their drive. "She's only got perfect skin, that's all," he muttered under his breath, pulling at the handbrake, and trudged over to the passenger side to go through their usual charade of Arthur flapping away at him to turn down his assistance.
Arthur blinked at the dashboard as Merlin made his way round. "I meant of me," he said.
Aside from Arthur forcing a crash course in classic action films on Merlin for his own good, the week passed with no further incident -- no stealth attacks, no explosions, no Sophia, and Merlin wondered if perhaps he'd been wrong about her. One could never be too careful, of course, especially when one's charge seemed to give not one whit about possibly being a murder target. And in Arthur's case, he most definitely was a murder target, though even getting shot at didn't seem to make the impression on him that it should have. It was a wonder Arthur was still alive at all, with that kind of attitude.
Though, of course, things might take a very different turn soon if Arthur continued doing whatever he was doing in the kitchen.
Merlin peered over the stove, where what looked like a take-home tar pit was bubbling turgidly on the range. A dark brown globule popped, sending a faintly ominous spatter crusting on contact with the surface of the range.
"Er, Arthur?" said Merlin, keeping a safe distance from Arthur's chopping board, which, if the mess was anything to go by, seemed to extend across the entire length of the kitchen island. "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like? I'm cooking."
"Mmhm," said Merlin agreeably. "Are you… cooking poison?"
"Poison isn't nearly as complicated to make as beef bourguignon," Arthur said, and waved a hand to encompass the chaos he'd created, ending finally on a sticky page of a cookbook. "Apparently."
Merlin crooked an inquiring eyebrow.
"Sophia's coming for dinner, if you must know," Arthur said, nearly mincing his finger off.
"Sophia?"
"She's rung me a few times; we've talked. And now we're having dinner."
"Dinner," said Merlin flatly.
Arthur eyed him with suspicion. "What?"
"Look, I know I'm not your keeper --"
"Yes, you're my butler."
"For the last time, Arthur, merely saying something again and again doesn't make it true," said Merlin, turning the stove knob off and pouring the congealed glop into the waste disposal. The pot's contents swirled slowly, sadly down the drain, and Arthur stared at it, and then at Merlin, who sighed and cleared a space in his mental daily planner for a bout of regret later that evening. "You really like her?"
Arthur shrugged, noncommittal, as though still deciding whether or not to play his hand.
"Then," Merlin said, clearing the countertop of Arthur's detritus and taking charge of the vegetables, "I'd recommend feeding her something other than whatever that swill was."
"Well, I'll have to now, seeing as you've dumped it all in the sink," Arthur said churlishly, though there was a bright gleam in his eyes that suggested curiosity was winning out as he watched Merlin slice the carrots with an expert hand.
Before long, Merlin had a stew simmering to perfection atop the stove. "There," he said, unable to help the gruff, peevish tones that coloured his voice, though he knew he'd made the decision all by himself to help Arthur win over a girl who was, at best, rather a bit of a snob.
Arthur peered into the pot. "Looks nice," he said, which was about as far as his complimentary vocabulary stretched.
"Just --" Merlin stopped himself before he could tell Arthur to be careful again; he was beginning to sound like a broken record even to himself, and surely there was something in Arthur's repertoire as a spy that had kept him alive this long despite his flippancy when it came to nearly getting murdered all the time. Besides, he had absolutely no proof that any caution was required around Sophia anyway, and there was no reason for Arthur to trust his word just on the basis that he didn't like the look of her. "Just don't expect me to make dessert, too. And hands off my Cornettos. Don't think I haven't noticed you filching them."
"I'll keep it in mind, though I rather doubt we'll even be getting to dessert," said Arthur, and if his voice could have been loaded with any more innuendo, it'd be charging £1.99 per minute for the pleasure of its company.
Merlin flapped his hands around his ears in a futile attempt to drive what Arthur thought passed for flirty out of his head. "We're not having this conversation," he said, fleeing the kitchen before Arthur could share any more unsavoury things he didn't want to know.
Rationally, he understood that Arthur was a functional grown-up and therefore allowed to make his own choices -- even if those choices included sleeping with every attractive woman who happened to pass by complaining of minor injuries -- and it was nowhere near his place to pass judgment on Arthur's questionable taste in potential bed partners, but Merlin still didn't have to like it. Not that Arthur had asked. Not that he'd expected Arthur to.
And definitely not that he secretly resented Sophia in any way for having caught Arthur's fancy in the wink of an eye, while he continued to toil away, cemented in the background.
Merlin groaned softly at the inconvenience and utter uselessness of his own feelings, but the self-pity was cut short when the doorbell chimed, and he slouched to the front door, feeling a scowl form between his cheeks. Arranging his face into a less aggrieved portrait, he opened the door to let Sophia in; she tossed her coat at him by way of greeting, and Merlin decided he'd let the scowl stand after all, though it seemed to make no difference to Sophia, as her entire attention was focussed on Arthur.
"Darling," she trilled as he came forward to receive her, and Merlin made a face at the back of her head. That she'd insinuated herself into a place at their table was bad enough; the saccharine familiarity, however, was horrifying.
Even given the slight chance that he might be biased due to having cultivated an unwilling fondness of Arthur, Merlin rather thought she was pushing it. He missed the hook and let her coat fall on the floor.
As Arthur led her to the dining room, Merlin heard her coo over the place settings and make all sorts of noises about how lovely everything was. Merlin hovered close by in the next room while the meal went on, keeping a sharp ear out for any strange noises, like knife-throwing or Arthur drowning in the stew by her hand.
The meal eventually came to an end, however, with everybody emerging alive, and Merlin's admittedly shoddy plans to foist an hours-long round of Monopoly on them to ensure appropriate and family-friendly behaviour were dashed when Arthur motioned him forward and very firmly suggested that he take care of the dirty dishes.
Arthur and Sophia disappeared upstairs, wine glasses in hand, with Arthur shooting him a significant look that Merlin chose not to acknowledge.
Once the dishwasher whirred to life, Merlin stood in the kitchen and dithered. He scrubbed the back of his head. For all he knew, Sophia could well be turning Arthur into dodgy pie filling already; on the other hand, if he interrupted whatever was going on upstairs that didn't happen to be cold-blooded murder, the odds of preventing his own untimely demise at Arthur's hands seemed dicey at best.
He paced in the hallway, at the foot of the staircase, thinking up increasingly desperate ideas to force Arthur and Sophia back into his sights; he could set the house on fire, for example -- Arthur was rich; he could always buy another.
In the length of his pacing, Merlin accidentally trod on Sophia's coat, and it took him a second to decide against going and putting on a pair of muckboots to tread on it again; lifting it carelessly by one sleeve, he made to hang it up properly, and a little bottle fell out of its pocket, bouncing on the hardwood floors with a dull ping. Grumbling under his breath at Sophia for making his life harder even when she wasn't physically there, Merlin stooped to pick it up; the label plastered along its sides was half torn off, but he recognised it instantly.
Dropping everything, he bolted upstairs, hurdling what seemed like twenty steps at a go, and banged into Arthur's bedroom. "Arthur, no!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "She's going to -- Oh god."
He stared at the body on the ground.
"No, I don't think she is, actually," said Arthur, arms folded loosely across his chest. He followed Merlin's line of sight with the casual air of a gallery observer, and prodded Sophia's shin with his toe. "Bit difficult to do anything, really, when you find yourself dead."
"Did you kill her?"
Arthur shrugged. "In a manner of speaking. She poisoned my wine, but in a great twist of fate," he said, with all signs pointing to events having absolutely nothing to do with fate, "our wine glasses somehow got switched."
"Ah. Well," said Merlin shortly, feeling his heart-rate slow to slightly less fatal levels. "I'm glad you're all right."
"Isn't this also the part where you're supposed to crow at me about having been right all along?"
Merlin narrowed an arch look at him. "Given the circumstances," he said, gesturing to the dead body cooling in their midst, "I thought I might skip the crowing and go straight to the part where we have to dispose of a corpse."
Arthur fished his mobile out. "You were right, though; it's a bit too coincidental, isn't it, that there've been two instances of people wanting to kill me within the space of less than two weeks," he said, and pushed at a speed-dial number, putting the phone to his ear. "Funny thing is, before you turned up in my life, I -- Oh, Morgana, good. You'll never guess what happened. No, guess."
Pretending to afford Arthur's conversation privacy, Merlin slipped out of the bedroom, feeling relieved and panicked and defeated all at once. Whether it was due to his own carelessness or Arthur being much sharper than he looked, Merlin had failed his assignment; Arthur was still alive -- and for that Merlin was thanking every god in the universe's pantheon -- but he was also having no trouble at all connecting all the dots, it seemed.
If Uther discovered that it was Merlin who had inadvertently let all the beans spill right into Arthur's path, he'd probably find a way to reinstate the death penalty for one afternoon just so he could personally stick Merlin in the loving clutches of the gallows.
And even if his head didn't end up on a pike for tourist attractions, Merlin could imagine all sorts of grim ways the senior Pendragon might exact retribution for Merlin's breach of contract -- which he'd be tempted to argue was Uther's own fault for not trusting in Arthur's intelligence and abilities to begin with, but Merlin suspected it might get him vapourised on the spot. And if there was anyone with access to that kind of technology, Uther Pendragon topped the list.
"Merlin."
He shot Arthur a wary glance, dread doing a soft-shoe all the way down his spine. That Arthur had never fully trusted him was clear -- why go through the trouble of bugging him, after all, if he had -- but even knowing that he'd been under suspicion this whole time didn't take away the sting of disappointing Arthur by turning out to be someone other than what he'd said he was.
There was a chance he was projecting all of this onto Arthur, of course, and that Arthur didn't much care either way, but part of the reason why Merlin had left the field in the first place was because he'd never got to be himself; he'd made friends and dropped them with a myriad of different personas, tracked and killed criminals under whatever guises the agency saw fit to assign him. The constant deception was what had got to him at last, and he'd managed to put it behind him with his transfer to the lab, but now, thanks to whoever was trying to hunt Arthur down, it had come back to gnaw at his insides again.
It smarted a little more this time; whether that was due to his resistance to it having been worn down from disuse, or because Arthur was -- different, somehow, Merlin wasn't sure. Even putting his inappropriate crushing aside, he liked Arthur; there were times when he'd have easily called Arthur his friend before remembering, suddenly, that he was actually on a case and that Arthur was his charge and nothing more. There was no place for friendship to begin with; he'd simply been hired to be here.
And there would be no place for friendship once Arthur figured out the reason for Merlin's presence. Which it looked as though he just had.
Arthur tilted the phone away from his ear, letting whatever story Morgana was spinning simply drift and dissipate into the room. With at least two attempts made on his life now, it was abundantly clear that he was a marked man, no matter what anyone said. What did matter was that everything Morgana was saying was meant to push his thoughts in the opposite direction, to placate his suspicions; it made no sense, and Arthur was tired of picking through the cracks in her words and leeching onto the miniscule clues Merlin accidentally dropped when his guard was down.
He'd have to teach Merlin to be better about that, Arthur thought, and then felt a sardonic smile form across his lips. He was still assuming Merlin needed to be taught anything; with everything having gone down the way it had, it would be little surprise to find out Merlin was actually some kind of criminal mastermind who'd been plotting his doom all this while.
Merlin's wan profile appeared in the corridor, chewing industriously at the side of his thumb, and Arthur felt guilt prod him in the chest again. It was patently ridiculous how much he wanted to be able to trust Merlin, and Arthur axed the thought before it could take up any more valuable real estate in his brain, feeling a spike of anger at himself for letting someone get past his armour so easily and at Merlin for having the gall to do it in the first place.
"Merlin," he said, charging his voice with so much authority entire armies would have fallen at his feet if he'd wanted them.
"Sir?" Merlin jumped to attention, eyes wide as though he'd been caught daydreaming at school.
"Tell me exactly what's going on," Arthur said.
"Er," he said. "You gave Sophia doctored wine, and now she's dead, and a clean-up crew is on its way?"
Arthur's mouth twisted into a frown, and he stepped forward, all rules of personal space thrown to the wind. "You know that's not what I mean. Tell me who you are," he ordered, but the menace he'd intended never made it past his lips.
Merlin stared at his mouth. "I --" he said, and failed to finish the thought as the front door burst open.
"Arthur?" Morgana's voice sailed in from downstairs. "Merlin?"
Merlin blinked and coiled himself away from Arthur, his face pale with what looked like relief and regret. "Up here," he called back.
With two agents at her heels, Morgana flew up the stairs, grave concern flooding her eyes as she affirmed for herself that Arthur was all right, one hand on his arm as though to make sure he wasn't just an apparition. "Everybody okay, then?" she asked.
"If you're not counting the dead body, then yes," Arthur said, rather wearily. "Look --"
"Good," said Morgana before Arthur could get another word in, and encased herself in a thoroughly professional demeanour once more. "Agents Edwin and Alvarr here will take your statement, Arthur, and deal with the body. Merlin, you're with me," she added briskly, moving downstairs again with light, quick tread.
Merlin's eyebrows rose a fraction, but, after throwing Arthur a short glance, he followed in Morgana's wake without a word.
While Arthur crossed his arms over his chest and glowered, the two agents peered into Arthur's bedroom, where the one identified as Alvarr clucked his tongue at the scene, as though he disapproved of the decor, not least the corpse spread in the middle of it.
"This must be a great shock to you," said Alvarr, reading off some ill-suited mental script as he led Arthur away to an empty guest bedroom, and not appearing to notice Arthur teeming with contempt. He sat Arthur down in what he obviously thought was a soothing manner. "We'll take care of everything, sir, not to worry. Just stay here; don't move. I'll be back later for your statement."
Arthur scowled at his retreating back and immediately got to his feet, wondering where the hell Morgana and Merlin had disappeared off to and deciding just how hard he'd throttle them both when they came back.
"He knows," was the first thing out of Merlin's mouth once he'd left Arthur's earshot.
"Yes, well," Morgana replied, as they slipped into her car, "as much as I hate to admit it, Arthur can be rather bright sometimes."
"Can't we just tell him, then? Get it all out in the open? You have to admit it's all getting a bit out of hand."
Morgana hesitated. "Uther --"
"Is an idiot," Merlin huffed, feeling less than charitable. Belatedly, he looked around for listening devices, and added, "With all due respect."
"Is this is the one?" Morgana asked, as they drove up to the house at which he'd dropped Sophia off a week prior.
The shades were all drawn and there was no sign of light or life within. Morgana and Merlin stepped out of the car and knocked on the door, weapons at the ready. When no reply seemed forthcoming, Morgana kicked the door in. The last dregs of a late sunset filtered dimly through the curtains, but even in the near darkness, they could tell that the house was empty, not only of people, but of everything. The only indications that anyone had lived there at all were the occasional bits of rubbish that scattered the floor. When a thorough search proved their assumptions correct, Merlin and Morgana returned to the ground floor.
Merlin flicked the lights on, his eyes drawn at once to the fireplace in the hall, a large amount of ash piled up in its grate. With the end of a pen, he sifted through the ash, finding charred remnants of documents and pictures.
"That's definitely Arthur there," said Merlin, holding up a small fragment of a photograph with seared edges.
Morgana squinted at it. "That's an eye. Not great grounds for positive identification."
"I've been glaring at him every minute of every day, Morgana; I think I know his eye when I see it," Merlin said, a wry smile forming on his lips. He picked up and dropped all the pieces that had escaped a fiery end into a clear plastic bag with a pair of tweezers.
Morgana regarded him with faint amusement. "Often carry evidence kits on your person, then?"
Merlin sifted through another pile of ash, quiet. When he was satisfied that there were no further secrets to be found amidst the debris, he looked up at her. "Well, you know the motto: be prepared."
"That's the Scouts."
Merlin shrugged. "Bear attack, hired assassin, Arthur Pendragon's whims at three in the morning; basic tenet's the same."
Morgana smiled. "Has he treated you all right?"
"If by 'all right' you mean did he finally stop trying to run me off the property, then yes," said Merlin, though there was much more to it than that, which he didn't want to get into.
"I know he can be abrasive," said Morgana, "and a bit of an arse, but he's got a good heart underneath."
"Mm," said Merlin, not entirely sure why she was telling him this. In any case, he already knew Arthur's heart, not that it mattered much anymore, considering his assignment was as good as over now that Arthur had already worked the bulk of it out himself; there would be no point in keeping Merlin on when it was clear that Arthur could take care of himself with no trouble, on top of which Arthur had never fully warmed to him anyway.
"I think he quite likes you, you know," said Morgana, whose ambiguous job as a handler and Uther's second-in-command sometimes consisted solely of saying things that weren't true, and this was obviously one of them.
Merlin raised an eyebrow at her, one of Gaius's trademark specials. "Funny," he said dryly, and drove his focus back to the task at hand. "Well, I think that's it. This was Sophia's safehouse, and she destroyed everything before her mission. No reason to return once she was done."
Morgana's lips puckered into a frown. "We couldn't find anything on her when you called in her name last week; no prior criminal records, no connections. She was just -- ordinary. And now she's dead," Morgana said, in a voice wavered between lament and triumph. After all, the woman had tried to kill Arthur. But now that she'd got what was coming to her, she couldn't tell them anything. "And so are the two men who came after you on the road last week, about an hour after you got away from them. Officially, it was a freak car accident, but no one really gets strangled by their cars, do they?"
"No way to trace the source, then," Merlin said.
"No," she said grimly. Morgana gave the silent house one last look and turned the lights off, gesturing for Merlin to follow her back out to the car. "Come on, we've got some serious regrouping to do."
Merlin crossed the threshold, his eyes resting on Arthur's house in the near distance, which saved him the trouble of looking up a second later, when it decided to explode.