Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Sophia sighs and puts her hand over her heart as she stares at the Chiari. Arthur looks and tries to appreciate, but his eyes slide over the figures and colors, never catching on anything that interests him. It’s just another painting to him. He reads the name card next to the painting instead: Agar et l’ange. He looks over at Sophia's face and the way it's shining. Fuck, he has to stop dating art history PhD candidates.

It's not that he doesn't like art. He likes it as much as the next guy who has grown up with a private collection so carefully curated that his father gets letters weekly about putting on display for the public. But when Sophia had suggested that they get away to Paris for the week, Arthur had envisioned feeding each other expensive chocolates from one of the many chocolateries in the city and taking a night boat ride down the Seine and fucking lazily in their extravagant hotel room. Maybe even in the bathtub. Not going to the Louvre to look at art that makes Arthur feel guilty for not appreciating it properly.

“If you like it that much, why don’t I just buy it for you?” Arthur says provocatively. It has the desired effect. Sophia leaves off glowing over the painting so that she can give him a deadpan look. Arthur kisses the tip of her nose. He winds his fingers through hers and tugs her gently away from the painting.

She resists. “I want to take this gallery slowly,” she says.

Arthur looks down the very long hall in something akin to despair. Sophia laughs and calls him melodramatic.

“You don’t have to stick around,” she says. “Go wander around at your own pace. I’ll text you when I’m done and we can meet up outside or something.” When Arthur hesitates she says, “Seriously, go. I can’t appreciate the Italian masters with you looking at these paintings like they’re your prison bars. Go on.”

Arthur goes happily.

He means to head for the exit, thinking that he’ll go find that macaroon place that Elyan recommended or maybe just go back to the hotel and nap, but he gets turned around. The Louvre is a strange sort of labyrinth with far too few halls connecting the galleries and too few staircases connecting the different levels. Somehow he ends up on the second floor, among the eighteenth century French paintings, with no clear memory of having gone upstairs. He spins in a slow circle to get his bearings, then proceeds warily through the exhibit in the direction the exit signs point him. There is a docent in the first room, so he pretends to examine a couple of the paintings on his way through. He’s not sure he could stand up to the disapproval of an old French woman today.

There are almost no other tourists up here. Probably because finding staircases is so difficult, Arthur thinks. He breezes through two rooms without seeing anyone. In the next room there is one other person.

A man about his own age is sitting on a tall stool with an easel before him. He’s copying the painting in front of him, a young woman sitting on a long settee. Her white gown spills onto the floor down by her feet. Besides the woman, there is almost nothing else in the painting, only the yellowish walls. The woman herself is turned mostly away from Arthur, looking over her shoulder at him. It’s fine, but it’s nothing like what the man is painting on his own easel.

The figure and the room are the same, and yet so different. So alive in a way that the original is not. The golds are richer in his copy, and more fluid. The woman’s expression is the same, but somehow different, less passive. If Arthur knew anything about art, he could probably articulate his observations better. All he can do is think that this painting draws him in like no other one has ever done.

The painter is looking between his work and the original with a slightly annoyed expression like he’s dissatisfied with his work. Which is ridiculous, Arthur thinks, because if the painter of the original saw this man’s copy, the painter would be the one who was dissatisfied.

The man raises his brush and adds little strokes of color, practicing the motion of the brushstroke in the air before he applies it to the canvas. Arthur is captivated by the process. A tourist brushes past Arthur and the motion jars him out of his trance. He realizes with a jolt that he’s been hovering over the artist for at least five minutes. He backs off and moves around the room, pretending to look at the other paintings. All of them are bland in comparison to the one the artist is working on. Arthur drifts back over to him.

This is creepy. You’re being creepy, Arthur tells himself. You can’t just stand here and watch him paint. It’s weird. Say something.

“Vous…vous êtes un très bon peintre,” he says slowly, stumbling over the pronunciation and not sure if he’s getting the words right. He took some French when he was younger, but not much of it has stayed with him since then. The man jumps a little at Arthur’s voice and swings around to see who spoke. Their eyes meet.

“Thanks,” the man says in English. “I think. My French is terrible, but I think you just complimented me.”

“I did,” Arthur says. “You’re very good.” He nods to the painting.

The man shrugs. “David is the real genius.”

“Who?”

“David,” the man repeats. He points to the original. “Jaques-Louis David, he painted this.”

“Oh, that David. I’ve heard of him.”

“Really? Where?” the man asks sarcastically. He raises his paintbrush like he’s about to make a dramatic stroke, but then restrains himself to making only a small one, adding a highlight to the wall, then another and another. A few minutes later he looks back at Arthur.

“Are you going to stand here all day? Because I don’t think I’m going to finish this painting today and won’t it be so unsatisfying to wait around all day and then not see the finished piece?”

Arthur bites back a flippant reply and considers the man’s question. The idea of sitting around an art museum all day watching a stranger paint sounds, in theory, like the worst day ever. But the idea of leaving sounds much worse. “Maybe not all day,” he says finally.

The man grins at him. “All right, but when I get into the zone I’m going to forget you’re standing there.”

Arthur doesn’t know what to say to that. “I’m Arthur, by the way.”

“Merlin.”

“Merlin?”

Merlin rolls his eyes. “Problem?”

“For you, I bet it is.”

“It’s not so bad. There are only so many wizard jokes the average idiot can come up with before he runs out.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

“If you must.”

“You’re a wizard with that paintbrush,” Arthur says sincerely.

Merlin looks up at him. “That’s not really a joke.” After a slight pause in which he examines Arthur closely, he says, “I might be a wizard, but unfortunately my powers don’t extend to painting while holding a conversation. Be quiet now.”

Arthur nearly says something about how he will not be bossed around by wizards, even if they are painting something beautiful, but thinks better of it. Merlin could probably call the docent over and tell her that Arthur is bothering him. Then Arthur wouldn’t be able to watch him paint. Arthur settles on one of the seats in the middle of the gallery quietly.

For the next he’s-not-sure-how-long, Arthur watches Merlin paint. He switches his gaze between watching the painting develop on the canvas and watching Merlin as he creates it. He’s not sure which is more mesmerizing.

Watching the painting deepen each time Merlin makes a stroke, Arthur thinks of his mother. She is the reason that his family has their art collection. Ygraine came from rich stock, like Uther, and she already had a small collection when they married. Uther expanded that collection by six paintings on their wedding day and together they had purchased many more over the years. After she died, Uther obsessed over the collection. Arthur followed his example. He would stare at Titian’s Portrait of a Young Man and try desperately to see what moved his mother so much that she paid 70 million dollars for it.

He almost feels breathless as he watches. He cannot isolate an emotion within himself; he just does not want to look away. He wants to buy this painting. He may well stand in this gallery all day watching the painting grow in its canvas and still not see enough of it. He wants to own it and hang it on his wall and see it every day. He cannot take his eyes off of this painting.

Neither can he stop watching Merlin as he paints. The flick of the brush, the expression on his face. Merlin is a lanky man, and though it’s hard to judge his height properly with him sitting on the stool like that, he’s probably got a good few inches on Arthur. He has wide, blue eyes that drift between very focused and a far-off gaze as he paints, like he’s switching between focusing on his work and imagining his next step. Arthur has dated many an art enthusiast over the years – it’s impossible to avoid them, with his family’s collection being as well-known as it is – but never an artist. Watching Merlin, he thinks that maybe he should start, if they can all be as animated about it as Merlin is.

Some time later, he’s not sure how long, his phone rings. He grunts apologetically at Merlin who jumped at the sound and walks into the next room to answer it.

“Arthur, I’m done looking around now. Are you back at the hotel?” Sophia’s voice comes over the line.

“I’m actually still at the museum,” Arthur says.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I- I got lost,” he says because it’s part of the truth. He’s reluctant to share his artistic epiphany with Sophia. It’s too personal right now. And if he says that he spent all this time watching a stranger paint, she wouldn’t drop it until he explained.

“Look at the signs around you,” Sophia says. “Where are you?”

Arthur describes his location and she tells him how to get to the exit. When they hang up, Arthur goes back to the gallery where Merlin is painting.

“I have to go,” he says reluctantly.

“All right,” Merlin says. He stands up and stretches. “I’m finishing up for the day anyway. If you can wait a minute while I pack up, I’ll walk out with you.”

“I- sorry, I have to go now,” Arthur says.

“Oh, okay,” Merlin says in surprise.

“Are you here every day?”

“No.”

“Will you be here tomorrow?” Arthur asks.

“Maybe,” Merlin says.

Sophia rhapsodizes about various painting on their walk back to the hotel and for once, Arthur doesn’t mind. Every time she compliments another piece, he thinks of Merlin and his painting, and he lets the thought warm him: I can appreciate art too.

“What do you know about David?” he asks her ask they wait for the elevator at the hotel. She shoots him a surprised look.

“David?”

“You know, the painter.”

“Oh I know,” she says. “I’m just surprised to hear you mention him, is all.”

“Do you know his painting with a woman sitting on a long seat? It’s got a lot of yellow in it. She’s wearing white.”

“That sounds like his portrait of Madame Récamier,” Sophia says. The elevator doors open and they get in. “But you should look it up to be sure. Why?”

“I saw it today,” Arthur says simply. He doesn’t let her ask any more questions, crowding her up against the wall and kissing her first on the mouth and then down her neck.

“Mm, finally,” she sighs, “talking about art turns you on as much as it turns me on.”

“Hearing you talk about art turns me on,” he corrects her.

The elevator doors open and give the middle-age couple on the other side of them a bit of a show. Arthur and Sophia laugh and slip past the only vaguely scandalized couple to their hotel room. Arthur makes sure he puts the Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle.

**

A few hours later, Sophia asks him what he wants to do the next day. Arthur thinks of Merlin immediately.

“What do you want to do?” he asks, deflecting.

She shrugs. “We just did what I wanted to do today. Isn’t tomorrow your turn? What do you want to do?”

“You know Paris better than me, you can pick.”

“Arthur,” Sophia sits up on the bed and gives him a stern look. “I’m going to ask you one more time what you want to do tomorrow and if you deflect the question again, I’m going to have to assume that what you really want to do is something illegal or gross.”

Arthur laughs. “What if it is illegal or gross?” he teases. “What if I’m trying to spare you from being involved?”

Sophia shrugs. “If you want the day to yourself tomorrow, that’s fine. But you have to use your words and tell me like an adult.”

Arthur fidgets with the pillow. “You won’t mind? If I want the day to myself?”

“This is a vacation, Arthur. If you want to take some of it to relax on your own, I understand.”

“You know,” Arthur says thoughtfully, “you might just be the best girlfriend ever.”

“The best person ever,” Sophia corrects him with a smile. She stretches so that she can kiss him then she jumps up from the bed. “I’m going to take a shower. Want to join me?”

“I should check my email,” Arthur says regretfully.

“Suit yourself.” Sophia does a little dance on the way to the bathroom and Arthur wonders if he can get away with not checking his email for another day. Probably not. He grabs his laptop out of his suitcase and boots it up. As soon as he connects to the hotel’s WiFi, his inbox starts dinging with new messages. He has 84 new emails, his mail application tells him. Arthur groans.

He took this job at his father’s company immediately after graduation. Uther indulged him by letting him apply officially and do an interview for the job, but it had been earmarked for Arthur since he got accepted to college. Arthur suspects that Uther has probably been planning for Arthur to work for him since Arthur was born. Uther is very much a keep-it-in-the-family sort of man. Arthur had been encouraged down this path his whole life, so he had felt prepared and qualified for the job. But he couldn’t just accept the job without submitting himself to the same process that all of his coworkers went through. For his first month of work, Arthur heard the whispers that the whole application process was a sham that Pendragon’s son did just so that they couldn’t all yell nepotism. Arthur didn’t tell them off, nor did he tattle on them – it would have been so easy to mention it to his father, or even arrange for Uther to overhear the same whispers, but that would be playing right into their expectations. Instead, he just worked his hardest, pulled the longest hours of anyone there, and tried to make connections with his coworkers. By the start of his second month, the whispers had stopped. People came to him with serious matters instead of just passing over him to someone they thought was more qualified. Arthur was proud of it all, a little smug to have proven them all wrong. This newfound respect did come with some downsides though, like getting 84 emails in two days.

Arthur skims the first fifteen or so and jots off quick replies to the ones with more time-sensitive issues. He puts his mouse over the next email, ready to open it, when something else occurs to him. He opens up his internet browser and googles David + Madame Récamier. Sophia was right, that is the painting that Merlin was copying at the Louvre. He clinks on the first link and reads. He closes out of the website before he’s done with the paragraph of description on the painting. It’s just not interesting to him how she is supposedly the ideal of feminine elegance or whatever. And the seeing the picture is just frustrating because it’s not how Merlin’s version looks, how it should look.

Arthur lets his fingers hover above the keyboard for a moment before he gives into the temptation and googles Merlin. Unsurprisingly, he gets a lot of results about the wizard. When he refines his search to Merlin + art he gets a lot of drawings of the wizard. He finally gets a hit when he’s on the ninth page of his Merlin + art + Paris search. Apparently Merlin had an exhibition at the École Nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris about six months ago. The article is in French and Arthur only knows one out of every four or five words. There are no pictures of his works that were on display, but there is a picture of Merlin standing with a few other people, probably professors at the school. Merlin is smiling a bright, happy grin that makes Arthur smile back reflexively. He immediately presses his hand to his mouth to smother the impulse. Arthur reads the picture’s caption and learns Merlin’s last name: Emrys.

“Watching porn again?”

Arthur jumps and Sophia laughs from where she’s toweling her hair dry at the foot of the bed.

“If you call an HR memo porn, then yes,” Arthur says. He closes the window with the picture of Merlin in it and switches back to checking his email.

**

Arthur wakes up at seven in the morning feeling restless. Sophia is, understandably, still sleeping so Arthur dresses quietly and takes his laptop down to the lobby. He answers a few more emails, pretending that he brought his laptop to do work. Before long, he gives up this pretense and opens Google like he’s been wanting to do since the previous night. He types Merlin Emrys into the search bar and tries not to feel like a stalker. It’s worth it, though, because he gets his first look at Merlin’s original work.

He spends five whole minutes looking at the first painting before he remembers that there are others. The paintings are of a variety of subject matters. There’s one of a forest that makes Arthur feel claustrophobic. There’s a woman’s profile with the light coming from behind her and catching in her hair and on her face. There’s one of a misty field with menacing silhouettes that are just barely there. But Arthur’s favorite is the first one he saw, a detailed and realistic painting of a parrot.Arthur checks and sees that the painting was on display at Merlin’s graduation from the California Institute of the Arts a year ago and was sold during that show. The buyer is a man named Gaius. Before he can think it through and talk himself out of it, Arthur emails the link to his secretary and asks her to see what she can do about buying the painting from Gaius.

He shuts his laptop feeling flushed and embarrassed, sure that he just did something very stupid. He lets the color fade from his cheeks before he goes back to his room upstairs.

Sophia is dressed and applying her makeup in front of the mirror. “There you are,” she says over her shoulder. “Do you still want today to yourself?”

Arthur says that he does.

“All right. I’m going to meet up with some friends. You remember Elena and Vivian?”

“Oh god,” Arthur groans. He remembers Sophia’s friends. Remembers being soundly drunk under the table by them four nights in a row when they were all in New York together and waking up with genitalia drawn in surprising detail on his face and chest in bright lipstick. Four nights in a row.

“I’ll probably be out late,” Sophia says. “Or I might just stay at their place. I’ll text you when we decide.”

“Have fun.”

“Stay out of trouble. My French isn’t good enough to bail you out of jail.”

“My money is probably good enough.”

“You are a brat.”

They walk as far as the metro station together then they kiss goodbye.

Arthur stops for breakfast on his walk to the Louvre, trying to waste time. He doesn’t want to get the museum too early. Merlin might not be there yet. He might not be there at all today. Maybe, he had said. Arthur goes home in two days; Merlin had better be there today.

Arthur pays for his ticket and realizes that he has no idea how to get back to the gallery where Merlin was painting. He grabs a map and tries to locate the gallery. He spots it easily enough on the map, but it still takes him almost half an hour to find his way on foot.

Merlin is there in the same place he was yesterday. Today he has earphones in, listening to music on his iPod. He doesn’t hear Arthur approach. Arthur takes his seat from the previous day quietly.

Arthur worried on the walk over that yesterday was a fluke and that when he saw Merlin’s painting today, he would feel nothing. He’s relieved to be wrong. Arthur is still drawn to the glow of the gold in the painting and the way the woman’s hand rests on her leg above her knee. He smiles to himself and leans forward without meaning to.

Like the previous day, Merlin’s gallery is much emptier than the galleries on the lower floors. Still, there’s a fairly constant stream of tourists through the gallery. It makes Arthur uncomfortable whenever someone comes through and watches him watch Merlin paint. No one says anything or seems to notice him at all, but Arthur still feels like he’s being caught out doing something he shouldn’t be doing, or doing something personal– and no, Arthur is going to stop this line of thought before it sounds like he’s comparing watching Merlin paint to masturbating.

Arthur has begun to simply ignore the other people coming through the gallery when man walks into the gallery and makes a beeline for Merlin. He raises his eyebrow at Arthur, who covers up his embarrassment by frowning back at him. The man quirks a smile in response and brushes past him to stand right next to Merlin. When Merlin doesn’t acknowledge him, the man pulls one of his earphones out.

“Hey, Merlin.”

“Gwaine!” Merlin says in surprise. “I thought you weren’t coming for a week!” They hug and Arthur shifts uncomfortably on his bench. He feels like he’s intruding. He fiddles with his phone and  tries to tune them out, but then he hears his own name.

“Arthur?”

Arthur pretends to be surprised as he looks up from his phone. Merlin is looking at him over Gwaine’s shoulder as he hugs him. “When did you get here?”

Arthur looks at the time. “About an hour ago.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Merlin breaks away from the hug but only far enough to sling one arm over Gwaine’s shoulders.

Arthur shrugs. “You were in the zone.”

“You should have said hi.”

Gwaine laughs. “You wouldn’t have noticed if he did. Remember sophomore year when you missed that earthquake because you were focused on your painting?”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“Or what about that time you set off the fire alarm and you didn’t notice?”

“Yes, thank you, Gwaine,” Merlin snaps. Gwaine ruffles his hair affectionately and Merlin doesn’t push him off so Arthur thinks he’s not that mad. Gwaine’s fingers are still in Merlin’s hair and Arthur wonders abruptly if they are dating.

Merlin introduces them. “Arthur, this is Gwaine. Gwaine, Arthur.”

“How do you two know each other?” Arthur asks as they shake hands. Gwaine winces a little at the strength of Arthur’s businessman handshake.

“Kindergarten, summer camp, work, art school,” Gwaine says. “The kid follows me everywhere. It’s kind of sweet.”

“Gwaine means to say that he’s been living in my shadow since we were five years old,” Merlin jumps in. “Ever since Mrs. Davis chose my finger painting as the best one in the class.”

“Are you ever going to let that go, Merlin?” Gwaine groans.

“It was up on the board for a whole month, Gwaine.”

“And it was the single greatest achievement in your art career, I understand, but eventually you’re going to have to move on.”

Arthur is getting tired of this quick back-and-forth that Merlin and Gwaine have going on. Yes, he gets it, the two of them are the finish-each-other’s-sentences kind of boyfriends. Fucking adorable, whatever. He wants them to stop flirting; he wants Merlin to get back to painting.

But Merlin is not painting and Gwaine is blocking Arthur’s view of the painting. Arthur pulls his phone out of his pocket and wanders into the next gallery, dialing his voicemail to give himself something to do. There are several messages from coworkers, a terse message from Uther requesting that Arthur stop by his office when he gets back from Paris – Arthur always gets nervous when Uther requests instead of orders – and one from Gwen, his secretary, asking him to call her back concerning the Emrys painting. Arthur is dialing her cellphone number before the message is over. She picks up on the first ring like the perfect employee she is.

“Hello, Arthur.” She sounds professional as usual, but some of her customary cheeriness is absent, possibly because it is buttcrack in the morning back home and Arthur has likely woken her up. He feels a twinge of guilt, but since she is already awake now, he doesn’t hang up.

“Hi, Gwen. I checked my messages and you called.”

“Yes,” she says, already sounding more awake. “I spoke to Mr. Gaius about the painting you asked me to look into. Apparently he knows the artist, so he’s reluctant to sell. He said that he would consider it if he could speak to you himself.”

“Did you give him my number?”

“I have his. I’ll text it to you.”

“Thanks, Gwen, you’re a star.” He really can’t tell her that enough.

“Thank you, Arthur. I hope you don’t mind, but I looked up the painting. Are you sure…I don’t think it’s what Sophia would prefer. Not that I’m questioning your taste, sir,” she adds hastily.

“What?”

“She was telling me about the Hayes show she went to a few weeks ago. Maybe you should look at those paintings if you want to buy her art.”

“Gwen, the painting is for me.”

“Really?”

Arthur grits his teeth at the tone of absolute surprise. “Yes.”

“Oh,” Gwen says. “Oh.”

“I’ll call Gaius.“

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend you. It’s just-“

“I know, Gwen, It’s fine. I really do like this painting. Thank you for getting in touch with Gaius for me.”

“Absolutely. No problem, it’s what I’m here for, sir.”

“I’ll talk to you when I’m state-side again.”

“Goodbye, Arthur.”

A few seconds after he hangs up, Arthur’s phone buzzes with an incoming text. It’s Gaius’ number from Gwen. Arthur saves the number in his phone. His finger hovers over the call button, but before he can make a decision, Merlin peeks into the gallery.

“It’s very rude to make phone calls in a museum, you know. People are here to enjoy art in reverent silence.”

“The kind of silence you and Gwaine were demonstrating?” Arthur shoots back.

Merlin puts his hand over his heart like Arthur’s retort has physically wounded him. “We are artists. We have nothing but the greatest respect for the sanctity of the museum.”

“Whatever, Merlin.”

Merlin nods at Arthur’s phone, which is still in his hand. “Important call?”

“Yes,” Arthur says. He reddens a little because the call was about acquiring Merlin’s painting and Merlin has no idea.

“Are you done? Gwaine and I are going to grab lunch. You should come with us.”

“I don’t want to intrude,” Arthur says politely, then frowns at himself. Whenever he is caught off guard he reverts back to the polite formality that Uther has been drilling into him since he was a child. He usually tries to suppress the instinct.

Merlin looks amused. “Generally I only invite people to do things when I actually want them to be there.”

“Gwaine-“

“Gwaine agrees, you should come. His exact words were, Merlin, you should invite him to get to know him and make sure that he’s actually interested in your art and isn’t a serial killer staking you out as his next victim.” Merlin does an abominable impression of Gwaine as he relays his words. He flips his hair dramatically at the end and Arthur can’t stop his smile.

“All right, lunch.”

“Good, you can buy.”

“What? Why?”

“Let’s see, possibly because Gwaine and I are starving artists and you are Arthur Pendragon, proud owner of Matisse’s Femme au fauteuil and several hundred other priceless works.”

“Several hundred is an exaggeration. And none of them are priceless, they definitely each had a price. How did you know my last name?”

“Gwaine recognized you. He followed art auctions pretty closely for a while.”

“And he thinks I might be a serial killer?” Arthur asks, his eyebrow arching. “And that I select my victims from within the art world? Wouldn’t it be smarter for me to pick a victim from somewhere my family didn’t have such a prominent presence?”

“No one said that you’re an intelligent serial killer.”

“I’m not a serial killer,” Arthur says.

“That’s exactly what a serial killer would say,” Gwaine says, coming up next to them. To Merlin, he says, “I put your shit in the storage room. Can we get food now?”

Merlin looks at Arthur who says, “I’m ready.”

“All right, let’s go.”

Gwaine and Merlin both roll their eyes when Arthur suggests that they eat at one of the museum cafes – “If I had twenty-five euros to spend on lunch, I’d go to Angelina’s and spend it all on macaroons” – and Merlin leads them to a small shop a few streets away.

“Bagelstein?” Arthur reads. “That doesn’t sound very French.”

“Eet iz vury French,” Gwaine says with an over-the-top French accent. A passing pedestrian gives him a withering look of disdain.

“And cheap,” Merlin chimes in, holding the door open for them. When they order, Arthur is confused by the rapid French of the man taking their orders and ends up agreeing to all sorts of toppings on his bagel that he doesn’t actually want.

“I love this place,” Gwaine says through a mouthful of his Hypolite bagel. “Great location, delicious food.”

“Free WiFi,” Merlin adds.

“You don’t have a device capable of connecting to WiFi,” Gwaine says.

“But the fact that it offers WiFi speaks well for its character.”

“You don’t have a smart phone?” Arthur asks. “Or a laptop?”

Merlin shrugs. “I’ve tried to save up a few times and buy a computer, but I always blow it all in art supplies stores before I can save enough.”

Arthur shakes his head in disbelief. “Don’t you need one to sell your art online?”

“The library has computers.”

Arthur looks at Gwaine who rolls his eyes. “I’ve been trying to make him get a laptop since we were in college. Good luck convincing him.”

“You can have one of my old laptops,” Arthur offers, then immediately wishes he hadn’t said anything. He barely knows Merlin, and he’s offering him an expensive electronic. Merlin must think it’s strange too because he frowns. Arthur quickly continues to say, “We get mandatory upgrades through the company. I really don’t need my old laptop.”

“What company?”

“Pendragon Ltd,” Arthur says. “Where I work.”

“Huh,” Merlin says.

Arthur raises his eyebrows at Merlin. “What, did you think that I just sat around all day ordering art like Lorenzo de Medici?”

“I- maybe.” Merlin reddens slightly and Gwaine laughs. Merlin says, “It’s not that far-fetched! The artist-patron relationship was a vital part of the artistic-“

“Merlin wants you to be his patron,” Gwaine cuts in, teasing Merlin. “He’s devastated to learn that that’s not what you do.”

Arthur brushes away the appealing thought of Merlin creating art for his approval alone. “Sorry to disappoint, but I do have a job.”

“It is not a disappointment. You’d be a nightmare to work for.”

“I am not,” Arthur says, offended.

“You own masterpieces, Arthur. Imagine trying to live up to that whenever you commissioned anything from me. Nightmare.”

Gwaine gives Merlin a thoughtful look. Arthur realizes that he hasn’t finished his bagel yet and stuffs a big piece of it into his mouth. A silence falls over the three of them.

“So, serial killer,” Gwaine says after a pause. “Why are you in Paris? Apart from picking your next artist victim, of course.”

“My girlfriend and I decided to have an impromptu vacation.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Yeah, girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend,” Gwaine tells Merlin.

“Girlfriend,” Merlin confirms. He sighs. “Girlfriend.”

“Uh, yeah. Girlfriend,” Arthur says.

“Yes, Arthur. It’s been well established that you have a girlfriend. No need to rub it in to us poor, single folk,” Gwaine says.

“What just happened?” Arthur mutters. Then his brain catches up with Gwaine’s words. “Wait, hold on. Did you say single?”

Nods from both of his lunch companions.

“I thought you two were dating.”

Gwaine cackles and Merlin rolls his eyes. “We’re not dating,” he says. “We have never dated, we will never date, I hate Gwaine with all my being.”

“I did not have sexual relations with that man,” Gwaine says. He throws an arm around Merlin’s shoulders. “I did not have romantic relations with that man either.”

“You get this a lot, then?” Arthur asks.

“Constantly. But only because we have undeniable sexual chemistry and would be adorable together. Everyone says we would be adorable together,” Gwaine says.

“You’d be adorable together,” Arthur says, deadpan.

After lunch, Gwaine parts ways. He makes plans to meet up with Merlin for dinner and heads back to his hostel to get his beauty sleep. Arthur has never heard anyone, man, woman, or child say the phrase beauty sleep with as little irony and as much earnestness as Gwaine. Arthur wonders if he really does wake up beautiful after a good night’s rest, that’s how sincere Gwaine sounds.

“Now what?” Merlin asks. They’re standing in front of the Louvre. Tourist don’t bustle around them so much as they either walk briskly and determinedly toward the entrance or gaze around helplessly, snapping pictures. Arthur doesn’t like the tourist atmosphere. He doesn’t like art museums and he doesn’t like artists. Yet here he is. There’s something wrong with him.

“Are you going to paint again?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll come with you and watch.”

The corners of Merlin’s mouth quirk up, but he doesn’t move. “Why?”

Yeah, why, Arthur? Why not just buy his paintings? Why do you have to watch him paint? Why do you even like his art? You’ve never liked art, so why now, why him? Why, Arthur?

“I want to,” Arthur says after a pause that is a moment too long. He does want to. But he doesn’t want to think about why and he’s annoyed with Merlin for asking.

“But,” Arthur says, letting the irritation hiding his embarrassment speak for him, “maybe I should get going.” He swings his arms around him in a overly casual manner. “Yeah, I should head back to the hotel.”

Merlin stares at him, says nothing. Arthur doesn’t blame him, but he feels his irritation grow anyway. More with himself than with Merlin.

Arthur nods awkwardly in goodbye, ready to go. He is distressingly conscious of the fact that he will probably never see this man again. He has one more day in Paris and then he goes home.

Merlin twists his hands together. “Your girlfriend is probably missing you.”

Maybe. Probably not. “Yeah.”

“Well,” Merlin says slowly. “This was weird.”

“Not until you said that and made it weird,” Arthur sighs. Merlin cracks a smile and Arthur smiles back. This is probably the best goodbye he can hope for.

He sticks his hand out to Merlin. Merlin slides his palm against Arthur’s. They clasp hands without shaking. Arthur is surprised that Merlin’s grip is as firm as his own.

“Goodbye, Merlin. Buy a laptop.”

“Bye, Arthur. It’s never going to happen.”

With those words still in the air between them, Arthur heel-turns and walks away. He resolves to come back to the Louvre tomorrow to see Merlin paint again. As soon as he makes this resolution, he decides that he won’t come back to the Louvre. Except maybe he will.

Arthur slows his stride and runs his hands through his hair. He wishes he knew what was bothering him so he could fix it.

“Arthur!” someone calls behind him.

Arthur turns. Merlin is jogging down the sidewalk toward him. His jacket flaps open and closed, making him look like he has small blue wings. Arthur walks back down the sidewalk toward him. Merlin is slightly out of breath. His cheeks are pink with either the exercise or the cold wind on his face.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again,” Merlin says, “and I have to know.” He pauses for breath, leaving Arthur in suspense. His mind whirls as it tries to complete the thought- what Merlin has to know about him.

“You own Guigou’s The Olive Trees, right? I have to know, is it in storage somewhere? Or do you have it hanging on a wall?”

Arthur is a disappointment: “I don’t know that painting.”

Merlin frowns. Then he pats his pockets, looking for something. He pulls out a pen. “Give me your hand.”

Arthur doesn’t move, just arches an eyebrow. Merlin snaps the fingers on his extended hand until Arthur holds out his hand. Merlin pushes the sleeve up his arm and scribbles on the exposed forearm. A phone number.

“If you ever find out about that painting…”

And he’s gone again, reabsorbed into the pedestrian tide. Arthur memorizes the number on his arm.

**

Uther’s door is closed. Arthur is grateful that his father demanded that the glass door to his office be replaced with an overly-splendid oak door. It lets Arthur linger in purgatory outside his father’s office without Uther seeing. Knowing Uther, being summoned here means that on the other side of that door could be either Heaven or Hell. Arthur is not ready for either. He’s too jet-lagged for Judgement.

When he begins to feel like a coward and a child, he forces himself to knock on the door. Uther calls for him to enter.

The handle slips out from between his fingers as Arthur closes the door behind him and the door slams shut with a thud. Uther winces, passes his hand over his eyes. Ah, Arthur thinks, my father is hungover. Arthur, with his jet-lag, feels sympathy.

“You wanted to see me, Father?”

Uther nods. “Did you propose?”

“What, to Sophia?”

“Who else?”

“I- no.”

Uther frowns. “And why not? I thought that was why you took her to Paris.”

“I don’t want to marry her.”

It’s the old argument between the two of them. Uther wants Arthur to marry. He wants stability in his company and in his family. Marriage provides that. Arthur says his father is old-fashioned, that he can’t just tell his children to get married and expect it to happen. Uther takes this very personally. The argument gets worse with repetition. Arthur does not want to start it again, here at work.

“For god’s sake, Arthur. You are twenty-five years old.”

“Practically an old maid,” Arthur mutters before he can stop himself. He immediately wishes he could take back his flippant remark when he sees how his father’s face clenches. He knows how important his marriage is to Uther. It’s in his mouth, I’m sorry, but he knows that apologizing now will seem insincere to Uther and just make him angrier.

He pauses, gives his father a chance to get the last word in. When Uther is silent, Arthur pulls a binder from his bag.

“I took a look at the Burnett files on the plane. I have some concerns. If you have a minute…”

Uther gestures at the empty chair in front of his desk and Arthur sits down.

An hour or so later, when Arthur is packing the freshly annotated binder back into his bag, Uther say, “Before I forget, you should clear your schedule the night of the twenty-fifth.”

“Why?”

“Nimueh is putting her new artwork on display. We will attend her show.” Uther doesn’t meet Arthur’s eye as he speaks. He shuffles some papers around his desk.

Arthur can’t find any words for a moment. When he does find them, he decides it would be better not to ask that question. He just nods and mumbles something about clearing his schedule as he leaves.

On his way back to his own office, he collides with Morgana in the hall.

“My god, Arthur,” she says and he picks up the papers their collision made her drop. “One would think that as a grown man you would not still be literally running away from your father.”

“I wasn’t running, Morgana,” he says.

“How was Paris?” she asks.

He hands her the stack of her papers and walks toward his office, Morgana keeping pace beside him. “It was nice.”

“No need to go into such detail, Arthur. We’ve all been to Paris, after all. Did you get that shampoo and conditioner I asked you to pick up for me?”

Arthur stops at the door to his office to turn to her, chagrined. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“I see.” She shoves him gently through the door into his office and pulls the door shut behind her. “Take a seat.”

“This is my office.”

“So make yourself comfortable.” Morgana makes herself comfortable in one of the two soft chairs in the room. Arthur sits behind his desk.

“So,” Morgana says.

“So.”

“Did you propose?”

Arthur throws his hands in the air. “Why does everyone think I planned to propose?”

Morgana presses her lipsticked lips together, fighting her smile. She likes to keep her face austere when she teases Arthur about things like this. She thinks it reminds him of Uther.

“You took her to Paris. Anyway, isn’t it about time? You two have been dating for five months,” she says.

“I’m not going to marry her.”

“You’re breaking our father’s heart.”

“Morgana.”

She leans back in her chair. A strand of her dark hair falls into her eyes and she pushes it behind her ear with the heel of her hand. It is an old gesture that Morgana has mostly trained herself out of, thinking it makes her look awkward. It doesn’t, it makes her look sweet and it makes Arthur a little nostalgic.

“To tell you the truth, Arthur,” she says, “if you had proposed to her it would have broken my heart.”

“Morgana-“

“I’m serious, Arthur,” she says. “It would crush me to see you marry that girl. You’d be miserable. I hate to see you miserable.”

Arthur leans toward her and holds out his hand, genuinely touched. Morgana places her fingers in his and gives them a little squeeze.

“Whenever you’re sad you go out of your way to make the rest of us sad,” she says sweetly.

Arthur rolls his eyes and draws his hand back. “Beautifully put, Morgana. Really, I’ve been moved to tears. Listen, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.” He pauses, not sure how to ask this. He doesn’t want her on the defensive. “Did you find something to blackmail our father with?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why are we going to Nimueh’s art show?”

When Arthur was a young child, he had a wild theory that Morgana was a witch. Arthur half-believes that wild childhood theory again now, with the way that Morgana somehow makes the air between them grow cold as he asks his stupid question.

“Why shouldn’t we go to her show?” Morgana asks angrily.

“The last time she and Uther-“

“This is her first art show in almost twenty years, Arthur. Of course we’re going to see her show.”

“The last time she and Uther were in the same room-“

“She was your mother’s best friend, if any one should be encouraging Uther to go to her show it should be you. And so you know, Uther came to me with the idea of having Pendragon Ltd sponsor the show.”

“We’re sponsoring the show?” Arthur shouts.

Morgana blanches. “You didn’t know?”

“No,” Arthur grits out. No wonder Uther hadn’t met his eye when he told him about the show. “I don’t suppose we could back out of it now, could we?”

Morgana lifts her head and squares her shoulders. “We’re all going to that show, Arthur. If you’re so worried about Uther, you can babysit him all night. But you will be polite and you will look at the art and you will congratulate Nimueh.”

“Anything else?”

“Smile in pictures, say nice things to anyone who asks for your opinion, stay for at least an hour, and I think that’s all.” When Arthur doesn’t say anything, she softens a little, but it’s more from pity than sympathy. “This is your job, Arthur. Suck it up.”

“Have you seen any of her work?” Arthur says.

Morgana shakes her head. “She’s being very secretive. I know her medium is paint, and nothing else.” Morgana stands and smooths her skirt. “You are coming, don’t bother trying to find a way out of it.” She pulls the door closed behind her on her way out.

Arthur waits for the door to click shut before he drops his head onto his desk and groans. That’s how Gwen finds him a couple minutes later when she comes in to deliver his messages.

“Good morning, Arthur,” she says to the top of his head because his face is pressed into his desk. “Welcome back. While you were in Paris, you got about thirty or forty calls from the Jameson group, and another fifty from DST. Leon was hoping he could push the Timothy Galt thing over to you because he’s swamped with all the work that Winters woman is giving him. I told him you’d be happy to, but if you say don’t want to, I guess I could always tell him you said no and ruin his day and watch his puppy dog eyes get all sad.”

“Is that all?”

“Morgana and Mr. Pendragon have both asked me to make sure you know about Nimueh’s art show in a few weeks.”

“I’ve heard about it.”

“That’s all, then. Please tell me I don’t have to ruin Leon’s day. He brought me expensive coffee this morning and told me I looked nice.”

“You do look nice,” Arthur says.

“Why, thank you, Arthur, that really means a lot coming from someone facedown on their desk. Oh, there are a few more things. I have some documents here you need to look over. Did you call Alaqai Beki back last week?”

“Yes.”

“What about Mr. Gaius? Did you get in contact with him?”

Arthur picks his head up off his desk. “Not yet.”

“Are you going to?”

“Give me those,” Arthur says, pointing at the papers in her hands. “Tell Leon I’ll take on the Galt case. Give me twenty minutes and then get the Jameson group on the phone. DST can wait another day, they’re getting on my nerves.”

“Yes, sir.” Gwen leaves his door open because she always does. She is in and out of his office all day and gave up opening and closing his door every single time in her third week.

Arthur waits until she is out of sight, then he pulls out his phone and thumbs over to Gaius’ number, still saved in his phone. He hasn’t put Merlin’s number in his phone yet, even though he started to about twelve times that day in Paris.

God, Paris seems so far away today, here in Pendragon Ltd headquarters. He puts his phone away.

**

He sits on his couch, thinking. He has his own apartment, much to Uther’s dismay. As often as he can, Uther comes by Arthur’s office at the end of the day and gets him talking. He walks out with Arthur, still talking. They get to the garage and Uther shepherds him to Uther’s car. If they’re talking about something that Arthur is enthusiastic about – which they always were – Arthur gets in the car without thinking about it and the next thing he knows, he’s back at Uther’s home.

Not tonight, though. When Uther came by, Arthur was in the middle of catching up on reading, trying to get a grasp on the the Galt thing that Leon pushed off on him. He wasn’t ready to leave yet. Uther left and then Gwen and Morgana and soon Arthur was alone at the office.

About a hundred and fifty pages into the second binder on Galt, Arthur’s eyes were crossing and his vision blurred. He rubbed them until those little green sparks started flying.

He thought again of the phone number saved on his iPhone, and the other one saved in his brain. Then he remembered something else.

Arthur searched for the document on his computer for about ten minutes; he had never looked for it before, so he wasn’t sure where it was saved. He finally found it, buried four folders deep. It took much less time to locate what he was looking for in the document. There it was.

Guigou, Paul-Camille. The Olive Trees,1860. Oil on canvas, 68.20 x 104.10 cm. (Storage: Chicago.)

So he sits on his couch now and he thinks.

**

Uther blows his nose loudly then reminds Arthur that he isn’t sick. He flicks the used tissue onto the floor of the car with the six others he has discarded during the eight minute drive. Uther sneezes and Arthur holds out another tissue.

“I’m fine,” Uther says. He takes the tissue.

Arthur doesn’t argue. He checks his pocket for the small box of ibuprofen he tucked in there earlier. It’s still there. He had made Uther take a few before they left.

“You shouldn’t drink anything tonight,” he says.

“I’m fine,” Uther says.

“You-“

“I’m your father, you don’t tell me what to do.”

Arthur presses his lips together and breaths out calmly and quietly through his nose. He has been dreading this night for weeks, since he first heard about it, and Uther being sick is nearly comical in its bad timing.

The car stops. Arthur looks out the window. The gallery is lit brightly. The building is one of those buildings that couldn’t hold anything but art. Frosted floor to ceiling windows cover the front of the building and unnecessary white arches curve along the façade of the upper floors. Arthur cranes his neck to follow the arches as he and Uther pass through the large double-door entrance.

The art show is well underway. The Pendragons are fashionably late. The Pendragon men are, anyway. Morgana has been at the gallery all day, helping Nimueh set up. Arthur looks around for her, but can’t pick her out of the crowd of elegantly dressed women and men. Uther is hailed immediately by a vaguely familiar-looking man and Arthur is adrift in the crowd. He doesn’t see anyone he knows – Morgana must be hiding somewhere – so he grabs a glass of champagne and turns his eye to the art.

The closest wall is covered in small canvas paintings, little seascapes and docks and boats and Arthur is bored. He moves around the room too quickly. He promised Morgana he would stay for at least an hour; it has been five minutes and he is nearly out of art to look at.

He turns a corner into the next room over. Three walls are blank and a single painting hangs on the fourth wall. Arthur drops his glass and it shatters on the floor beside him.

His mother looks down on him from within the ornate frame two-thirds of the way up the wall. She is outside, but she could be anywhere, it’s just her and the sky. She looks like she’s in love. Her eyes are soft and bright, so lively that Arthur swears he sees them move. The promise of a smile tugs at her lips. That’s all Arthur sees before tears fill his eyes and blur the painting.

A hand on his shoulder. “Arthur.”

He recognizes Morgana’s voice and just like that the tears are gone and he is angry. He spins to face her. “You knew. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Uther is going to-“ Arthur stops short because he isn’t sure what his father will do. He just knows that he won’t want to be around to see it.

“I swear, I didn’t know until a few hours ago,” Morgana says.

Arthur stares at the portrait. His heart shudders in his chest. “Just- just go away, Morgana,” he says quietly.

She hesitates for only a moment. She touches his arm lightly, comfortingly before she moves across the gallery.

Arthur tries to swallow the lump in his throat. He wants to walk away from this painting himself, but he can’t manage to do so. His mother – his beautiful, dead mother – the woman he has longed to know all his life looks at him. And he can only think that this painting is not nearly as lovely as the one he saw Merlin painting at the Louvre. It makes him a little sick to realize it. This is his mother, it should be the most beautiful painting he has ever seen. His mother deserves nothing less.

“Arthur!” The voice is loud and boisterous and carries from across the gallery.

Arthur is jarred out of his thoughts. He finds the source of the voice; a brown-haired man in a gray suit and bright blue tie is waving at him from the other corner of the room. It’s Gwaine.

Arthur is surprised to see him, surprised enough that he waves back without thinking. He looks around to see if anyone noticed him doing so. When his gaze circles back around to Gwaine, he sees that Gwaine is coming his way with two drinks. Arthur holds in his groan; now he will have to socialize with Gwaine until he finishes the drink Gwaine brings him, politeness mandates it.

“Arthur, imagine seeing you here,” Gwaine says happily.

“You don’t have to imagine,” Arthur says.

“No, guess not.” Gwaine holds one of the drinks out to Arthur, who takes it. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too,” Arthur says, not sure if he means it or not. It’s unnerving to see him. He had just been thinking about Merlin, wondering what it would look like if Merlin painted this portrait of his mother, and suddenly Gwaine appears in the gallery.

Gwaine follows Arthur’s gaze to the portrait. He cocks his head to the side as he looks at it. “Good composition,” he says after a moment. “Good placement on the canvas, but I’m not a fan of the whole sitting-in-the void thing that she has going on here. Her landscapes are so strong, I don’t understand why she doesn’t have something in the background here. I do like the color choice, though,” he adds thoughtfully after a moment. “The shading in particular. Very melancholy.”

While Gwaine is talking, Arthur steadily downs his drink. There is only a mouthful left at the bottom of the glass. “Is Merlin here?” he asks.

“No,” Gwaine says. Arthur fights the sinking feeling of disappointment. Gwaine adds, “Not yet.”

“He’s coming?”

“He should be on his way soon,” Gwaine says. He checks his watch. “His train got in half an hour ago. He’s just dropping off his stuff at the apartment.” He pauses. “My phone is dead, but if you let me use yours, I can ask him how long it will be before he gets here.”

Arthur doesn’t even hesitate, just pulls out his phone and hands it to Gwaine.

Gwaine frowns at the screen. “No service. I’ll try outside.”

He heads to the front of the gallery. It vaguely occurs to Arthur that Gwaine could steal his phone, but Arthur doesn’t care. He’d give up his phone to get another minute alone with this painting.

He doesn’t get a full minute. A middle-aged couple comes up beside him to look at his mother’s portrait.

“Is that Ygraine?” the woman asks.

“Who?” the man asks.

“Ygraine Pendragon. You know, Uther Pendragon’s dead wife.”

“Oh. Yes, it does look like her.”

“What an intimate portrait. You don’t think that she and the artist…”

Arthur can’t stand there for a moment longer. He moves on to the next gallery, looking at the paintings on those walls, but not really seeing them. Thoughts crowd his mind, pushing each other aside to try to claim his attention. Merlin, the portrait, his father, Merlin, the portrait, his father, Merlin–

“Here you go.” Gwaine holds out his phone. “Merlin says he should be here pretty soon.”

Arthur nods toward the paintings on the wall in front of them. “Does Merlin like this stuff?”

“Art?”

“Art like this.”

Gwaine looks at the paintings for a minute, then shrugs. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’ll be here soon.” Someone waves at Gwaine from across the room and Gwaine waves back. “If you’ll excuse me, serial killer…”

Arthur gives Gwaine a mock-salute, which delights him. Arthur hands off his empty glass to a passing waiter – half-expecting to recognize the waiter as an old classmate; it’s that kind of night – and looks around for Uther. His father is easy enough to find. It is not possible to become the CEO of an international company netting over $116 billion without an eye-catching presence. Uther is still standing where Arthur last saw him last near the door, a small group gathered around him and listening eagerly to whatever he is saying. He is smiling, so he can’t have seen Ygraine’s picture yet. Arthur wonders if he can keep Uther from seeing the portrait at all. No one will bring it up in front of Uther, no one would be that stupid, so as long as Arthur can keep him away from the gallery, everything should be fine. There is a rush of anger in him whose source Arthur can’t quite pinpoint, and he hopes in that moment that Uther will see the portrait. At least then Arthur can look his father in the eye and see his own feelings reflected. The moment passes and Arthur is ashamed.

There is movement at this elbow, a woman with very short brown hair and a modest black suit. She makes a trite remark about the painting, and Arthur lets himself be drawn into conversation with her, more out of boredom and a desire to distract himself than interest in discussing art.

“Oh, you’re Arthur Pendragon, aren’t you?” she says. Arthur smiles his professional smile and nods. “My dear, it is very nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you over the years.”

“You know my father?” Arthur assumes.

“A little. But I’ve mostly heard about you from your godmother, from Nimueh.”

“All good things I hope,” Arthur says blandly.

“She showed me that macaroni portrait you made of her when you were six,” the woman says fondly. “Darling piece of work.”

“Yes, strange that I don’t have art shows of my own these days,” Arthur says.

Her smile gets a little forced. “Have you seen her yet? She said that she was looking forward to seeing you here tonight.”

“I’ll be sure to look for her. If you’ll excuse me…”

“Of course,” she says. “Be sure to say hello to her.”

Nimueh is as easy to spot in the gallery as Uther is. She too has a small crowd clustered around her, but hers is mobile, trailing after her as she flits around the gallery like a tour guide. Her long blue dress slinks down her body and ripples around her ankles. Arthur doesn’t approach her, he doesn’t like the idea of an audience for their reunion. He drifts around from gallery to gallery to gallery, boredom weighing down his steps. He can’t focus on the art. Every time he passes through the main gallery, he glances over at his father and at Nimueh, not sure what he could do about it if these two start going at it like last time, but not willing to be taken by surprise when it happens. He is staring unseeingly at a painting of a dock when someone steps up next to him. Arthur glances over and does a double take when he sees the familiar dark hair and big smile. He pivots so that he is facing Merlin face to face.

“So,” he says after a moment. “Have you bought a laptop yet?”

Merlin rolls his eyes, though his smile remains. “Yeah, six or seven of them. Do you have one? Because I have plenty if you need to borrow one.”

Arthur fights off the urge to grab Merlin and hug him. All night long he has been floundering for an ally and he feels like he has finally found one.

“Did you just get here? Come on, let’s see the art.”

Arthur must have walked the gallery ten times already tonight, but this is the first time that he actually sees any of it. He lets Merlin set the pace, only partially because he doubts whether Merlin would go at any other pace. Merlin doesn’t stop at each painting. Arthur gets a little thrill each time they pass a painting by with only a glance, like the two of them are breaking the rules together. And when Merlin does stop at a painting, Arthur tries, really tries to see what makes it special.

He can’t, though, he just doesn’t see it. It’s paint, it’s shapes. It’s nothing to him.

“Are you done yet?” he asks brusquely, his frustration and his embarrassment speaking for him as Merlin lingers over an unremarkable painting of a tree with sunlight filtering down through its leaves.

“No,” Merlin says simply.

“What- what’s so great about this?” Arthur says quietly. Merlin doesn’t say anything and Arthur wonders if he didn’t hear the question. Arthur’s embarrassment burns and he makes to move away from the painting when Merlin speaks.

“Look at the lines in this one,” he says. He traces an arc in the air with his finger, following a tree branch. “Look at the top of the tree in the light. It reminds me of this tree I used to climb when I was a kid.”

“I didn’t know that purple trees existed in the real world.”

“Gwaine and I used to climb all the way to the top and then get too scared to climb down. So we’d just sit in the tallest branches and talk about all the ways we could get down, if we weren’t too chicken-shit to actually do it.” Merlin smiles at Arthur. There it is again, that reflexive impulse to smile back at a smile so warm as Merlin’s. The impulse he felt that day in Paris when he found Merlin’s picture on the internet. This time he’s ready for it, and he keeps a straight face, with not so much as a twitch of his lips.

“But why is it a good painting?” Arthur says.

“That is why it’s a good painting,” Merlin says patiently, with a touch of amusement. “It made me think of something about myself and feel a feeling.”

“That’s it?”

“Oh, I could tell you about form and shape and line, but that’s only part of what makes a painting powerful.” Merlin cocks his head to the side. “You know what I’m talking about.”

He does? “I do?”

“Why else would you sit and watch me paint in Paris?”

Arthur shrugs carelessly. “Boredom?”

“Yeah, Paris is a dull city.”

“It’s not like it was my first time there,” Arthur says snobbishly.

Merlin raises his eyebrows and widens his eyes like well, aren’t we important. If Arthur were four, he would stick his tongue out at Merlin. Instead he looks at the painting and searches for a feeling. A feeling doesn’t come to him, but a sudden thought does.

“Hey, come on.”

Arthur pulls the sleeve of Merlin’s suit jacket to get him to follow along across the gallery into the next room. He casts a glance over toward where Uther is standing as they cross the main gallery. He stops in his tracks when he sees Nimueh approaching Uther. He hesitates and Merlin follows his gaze.

“Did you want to say hello to the artist?”

“No,” Arthur says quickly. “Come on, almost there.”

Arthur pulls him directly in front of his mother’s portrait. “What do you think?”

Merlin looks from Arthur to the painting, which he studies in silence. His face is completely neutral. Arthur watches Merlin look at the portrait. Merlin opens his mouth to say something, but at that moment, a clatter and a shout from the main gallery cuts him off.

Arthur rushes toward the noise. Uther and Nimueh stand in the center of a circle of people. A painting lies on the floor between them, like one of them knocked it over.

“What do I have to do to be rid of you?” Uther is shouting. Nimueh is stony, fury emanating coldly off of her. Uther is red-faced and panting. Arthur can’t decide which of them he is more afraid of in that moment.

He moves toward them.

“Arthur,” Merlin hisses behind him, but Arthur has momentum and can’t let himself stop now. He pushes his way through the circle of people, walks past Nimueh with only a quick look that he hopes isn’t too apologetic. He throws an arm around Uther’s shoulders.

“Come on, Dad. Let’s go home.”

“I’m not done here,” Uther says, wiggling around to get out of Arthur’s grasp. He is easy enough to shepherd toward the exit, and Arthur maneuvers him out the door. He throws one glance back, looking over and around all the gaping and gossiping people to catch Merlin’s eye. It’s only a fleeting look and mostly obscured when Uther puts his arm around Arthur’s shoulders for balance.

**

Arthur gets to pick where they get lunch the next day. Morgana looks a little hungover and Arthur enjoys her look of disdain when the waiter hands her a laminated menu.

“Did you have a good time last night?” Arthur says, a little loudly. To her credit, Morgana does not even flinch a little. She was alway much better at bearing a hangover than Arthur. College was two very different experiences for the Pendragon kids.

“It was a lovely show,” Morgana says. “Didn’t you think?”

“Oh, yes. The paintings were so…painted. The colors were very colorful. I love art.”

“One day you will develop taste.”

“Gosh, do you really think so?”

“And on that day I will acknowledge you as my brother.”

They order. Morgana ponders thoughtfully over the specials, then orders a breakfast dish that could feed four easily. She is a terrible cook and relies on to-go boxes and leftovers to stock her fridge.

“I suppose you want to say I told you so,” Morgana says after the waiter brings their coffees.

“I told you what?”

“Uther and Nimueh in the same room– not a good idea.”

“Oh. I told you so.”

She nods her concession.

“Do you know what they were arguing about this time?” Arthur asks.

She shrugs. “Same thing as always. The art collection.”

“Uther’s collection? I thought she had given that up.”

“Would you? No,” she holds up her hand as he opens his mouth. “Don’t answer that. Of course you would.”

“After losing it officially in court, yeah, I would,” Arthur says. A few years after Ygraine’s death, Nimueh had sued for ownership of all the artwork that Ygraine had brought into her marriage with Uther. Their prenuptial agreement had been vague about the art and given Nimueh just enough of a claim to drag the case out for almost a year. But ultimately, the judge had ruled in favor of Uther. After the delivery of the verdict, Arthur had left his jacket in the courtroom and when he went back to find it a couple hours later, Nimueh was still sitting there at the prosecution table. She had turned around at the sound of the door opening, and Arthur saw the tear tracks on her cheeks.

“Arthur,” she had said in a wavering voice. “What is it?”

“I- I forgot my jacket,” Arthur said uncertainly. He was uncomfortable and turned to leave. He paused. “I’m sorry, Aunt Nimueh. You can have my paintings.”

Nimueh had laughed. “You’re a good boy, Arthur. Give me a hug and then run along back to your father.”

Their food arrives. Morgana takes on the burden of conversation, chatting easily and entertainingly about a project she’s doing for work. When lunch is over, Arthur is in a good mood. He waves off Morgana’s offer of a ride, deciding to walk home instead. As he walks, he pulls his phone out and thumbs over to that number he saved in his phone about a month ago.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Gauis?”

“Yes, this is Gaius.”

“Hi, I’m Arthur Pendragon. My secretary called you a few weeks ago about-“

“You’re the one who wants to buy Merlin’s painting, right?”

Arthur nods, even though Gaius can’t see him. “Yeah.”

“Of course you do.” Gaius sounds delighted. “Merlin is a brilliant artist.”

“He is,” Arthur agrees sincerely. “My secretary said that you wanted to talk to me before you sold me the painting.”

“Yes, Gwen and I were wondering if you’d ever get around to calling.” Gaius sounds amused.

“Sorry it’s taken so long. Did you have a price in mind for the painting?”

“Are you going to hang it?”

“What?”

“Are you going to hang it somewhere or is it going into storage?”

Merlin’s question about the Guigou painting echoes in Arthur’s mind. “I’m going to hang it in my apartment. It’s gorgeous. It will never go into storage as long as I own it,” Arthur says, surprising himself a little.

He must surprise Gaius too because there is a short pause on the other end of the line.

“How much do you want for it?” Arthur asks again after a minute.

“Tell you what,” Gaius says, “why don’t you just pay for shipping and that will be that.”

“You’re- giving it to me? For free?”

“Not for free, you’re paying for shipping.”

“Are you sure-“

“I am sure. It was a gift to me and now it’s a gift to you. Plus shipping and handling.”

Arthur laughs. “Thank you, Gaius,” he says. “I’ll have Gwen get in touch with you to arrange the details.” He pauses. A question has been bothering him for a while, and he might as well ask. “Gwen said you bought this painting at Merlin’s first show. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” Gaius says, “his mother and I are old friends. Merlin used to spend summers with me when he was a young boy.”

“Were you the one who taught him to paint?”

“No,” Gaius says, sounding amused. “Artistic talent like Merlin’s is something you’re born with. Though I was the one who bought him his first set of paints and brushes. His seventh birthday. He used them to paint Gwaine’s face like a dragon.” He laughs again. It must have been nice for Merlin, Arthur thinks, to have someone like Gaius around when he was growing up. Some who laughed with him when he painted his friend’s face to make him look like a dragon.

“Gwaine loved it,” Gaius continues. “Even more than Merlin. He wouldn’t wash it off for almost two days.”

Arthur is back at his apartment building, pacing back and forth in front of it as he listens to Gaius.

“Then Merlin started painting on the sidewalk in front of the house. I thought Hunith – that’s his mother – I thought she was was going to take away his art supplies the same day I gave them to him.” He goes on in this way for a few more minutes. Then he says, “I’m glad, Arthur. I’m very glad that you want to buy his painting. To have his work hanging among the masterpieces you own…I’m very glad.”

Arthur thinks of this as he makes his dinner later that night. What power he has. He hadn’t ever really thought about it. He can just pick a painting he likes and put it up on his wall and suddenly that painting is important because its hanging alongside paintings that had cost his parents millions of dollars. Arthur knows nothing about art and he still has this power.

So it is. So, why not use it to make Merlin’s art famous and expensive.

**

Gwen pokes her head around his office door. “Arthur, do you want me to grab you some lunch?”

“Are you headed out now?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll come with you then,”

They only make it as far as the company cafeteria. They sometimes talk about going out to a real restaurant, or at least a Panera, for lunch, but they never do manage to walk past the cafeteria without saying fuck it, let’s just eat here.

“I wish I had gone,” Gwen laughs when Arthur tells her about Nimueh’s art show and the various disasters of the night.

“I wish you had too,” Arthur says. “You could have kept an eye on Uther for me, kept him in line. He listens to you.”

“And I’m sure that you would have been glad for the opportunity to look at the art,” she teases him.

“Hey, I looked at the art.”

“You did not.”

“Did too.” Talking to Gwen is like being in elementary school again. She is sweetly stubborn in that way that only children usually are. Also, she rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out at him a lot.

“Really? Describe one painting you saw there.”

Ygraine’s portrait. No, he can’t, not here and not when Gwen is putting him in a good mood. What else was there?

“There was a painting of a purple tree with big leaves. It was like this.” He traces in the air with a finger to show her the curving twisting branches. “It’s sunny and you can’t see the whole tree, just the branches. Merlin says that it reminds him of a tree he used to climb with a kid. He’d climb up and then get stuck.” He bites his lip. He hadn’t meant to say that last part. But somehow it was vital to his description of the painting.

Of course Gwen quickly understands the important part. “Merlin?” she asks. “Merlin Emrys? That artist whose painting you’re trying to buy?”

“That reminds me,” Arthur says. “ Can you get in touch with Gaius and organize shipping the painting to my apartment?”

She waves her hand, yeah sure boss. “You saw Merlin at Nimueh’s art show? Tell me about him.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Gwen says slowly, like she can’t quite believe she has to explain it to him. It’s a tone he’s familiar with. “Because you’ve never even liked a painting before and now you’re hanging out with the only artist whose work you’ve ever purchased. Arthur, you better tell me about him.” She pops a bite of food into her mouth and gives him a go on, start talking look.

“What do you want to know? I met him when I was in Paris. He was copying a painting at the Louvre and we got to talking. I didn’t know he was going to be at Nimueh’s show, he just showed up there. I talked to him for a couple minutes and then I had to leave with Uther.”

Gwen raises her eyebrows.

“What?”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah.”

“Arthur.”

“That’s it.”

“Arthur.”

“I tried to give him my laptop in Paris. He said he doesn’t have one and I offered him one of mine.” Gwen bursts out laughing and Arthur cracks a smile too. “He asked me about a painting that Uther owns, asked whether it was in storage or if it was hanging. I checked and it’s in storage, so I had it shipped to my apartment. It’s sitting on my dining room table, because I don’t know how to hang a painting.”

Gwen isn’t laughing anymore, but she’s still smiling at him and he’s still smiling back at her.

“It was nice to see him at Nimueh’s. I was surprised.”

“Does he know Nimueh? Is that why he was there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think he just likes art.”

“He sounds lovely.”

“He is. He really is,” Arthur says. It feels nice to say so out loud, like it was bruising him on the inside to hold it in. It makes him want to go on, but he is too conscious of where he is, in his workplace, and his father’s workplace.

Arthur shrugs. “Anyway, I’ll probably never see him again. Running into him over the weekend was just luck.” He doesn’t say anything about Merlin’s phone number, now saved in his cell phone. “What did you do over the weekend?”

Gwen frowns at the abrupt change of topic. “I’m sure you can see him again if you try. He has an email address on his website. I could email him for you-“

“No,” Arthur cuts in quickly. “Don’t- it’s fine. I’ll email him if I want to.”

“All right,” Gwen says. She takes pity on him and changes the topic. “How are things with Sophia?”

It’s not the most merciful of new topics. Things with Sophia are fine, and that’s what he tells Gwen, but Gwen is never satisfied with fine and she always talks him to the center of his problems with a relationship. He usually realizes that she’s right and he’s not happy and then he breaks up with whatever girl he is dating. Arthur doesn’t want to recognize the problems in his relationship with Sophia. Being with Sophia is fine and it’s no trouble and doesn’t make him feel anything he does not have control over. And if he is single again, Uther will set him up on date after date until Arthur yields and asks one of those girls out.

He dodges Gwen’s probing questions until their lunch break is over. He lets her go home early. When Uther stops by Arthur’s office at the end of the day, Arthur agrees to grab dinner with his father. It does not surprise him when Uther drives them home rather than to a restaurant.

Arthur hasn’t been back to his childhood home for a few months. For the first time since meeting Merlin, he walks through his family’s art collection. As an adult, he still doesn’t know the names of many of the paintings. He is following Uther to the kitchen, so he can’t linger, but he tries to find something to connect to in the paintings he passes. He tries to find a memory. A feeling.

**

The holidays come out of nowhere, the way they always do. One moment it is Halloween and the next Arthur is frantically scrambling to get presents for everyone. He gets Uther, Gwen, and Morgana the same things every year, so they are easy. He gets Leon and Elyan and a couple of the other guys good seats to games of whatever teams they’re diehards for. He picks up little stuff for the people in the office. As he is putting together some boxes of presents to ship to old family friends in different states, he thinks of Merlin. He hasn’t actually spoken to Merlin for weeks now, not since Nimueh’s show. There are plenty of excuses and explanations; he has gone over and over them in his mind, organized them and sorted them by importance and believability.

From one of the cabinets in his home office pulls out a laptop, a MacBook Pro that Pendragon Ltd had given to some of its top-level employees a few months ago before upgrading. He had never even used it because it would have been a pointless pain in the ass to transfer all of his files onto the laptop. It is still in the box. He wraps it messily and sticks it in a FedEx box, when it occurs to him that he doesn’t actually know Merlin’s address. He does know Gaius’ address, and it seems to him that Gaius and Merlin probably exchange presents during the holidays. Arthur finds a book in his father’s library on kinetic art – whatever the fuck that is – and wraps it for Gaius. He puts both presents in the box and ships it out. It isn’t until the next day that he realizes that he had forgotten to include a card, or any indication of who the present is from.

Arthur spends Christmas Eve with Sophia and her family, and they drive to Uther’s together on Christmas morning. Morgana is already there. Things go well – well enough, anyway – until dinner when Uther practically proposes to Sophia on Arthur’s behalf. It is almost cliché to let the holidays and spending time with their families tear them apart, but that is what happens. By New Year’s Eve, Arthur has no girlfriend. Sophia is very kind and very determined in the way she breaks up with him, and Arthur wonders how long she had been waiting to do it. It is the first New Year’s Eve in a while that Arthur has been single. He lets Elyan, Leon, Lance, and Gwen drag him out to a club. He has more fun than he expects to. He dances with all of them, letting his enthusiasm cover the fact that he’s the worst dancer in the group. He mostly tries to mimic what the other guys are doing. They are taking a drinking-break when Arthur feels his phone vibrating in his pocket. He steps outside to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Arthur, you arrogant idiot.”

“Yes, this is Arthur.”

“You got me a laptop.”

“Merlin!” Arthur practically sings. “Happy New Year!”

“Yeah, happy New Year, Arthur,” Merlin says. “I can’t believe you got me a laptop.”

“How do you know it’s from me?” Arthur asks. “Maybe it’s from Santa.”

“I know it’s from you.”

“Are you- angry?”

Merlin laughs. “I don’t think I’m allowed to be angry, you just got me an expensive Christmas present.”

Arthur still thinks that Merlin sounds angry, and he tells Merlin so.

“I’m not angry,” Merlin says, “but I don’t want your charity.”

“It’s not charity,” Arthur insists, wishing he was more sober for this conversation. He doesn’t want Merlin to be angry with him. “It’s actually very selfish. I don’t really care about you wanting a laptop, I just want a way of communicating with you that suits the century we live in.”

“We are talking on cell phones right now. Is that not twenty-first century enough for you?”

“No.” The doors to the club swing open behind Arthur and the music drowns him out for a moment. He isn’t sure if Merlin hears him when he says, “I want us to Skype.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m out,” Arthur says. “It’s New Year’s.” He lets out a puff of hot breath and watches it turn into a little white cloud under the orange light of the streetlight.

“I should let you get back to it then,” Merlin says. “I just called to-“

“Yell at me for giving you a present.”

“I wasn’t- I just feel bad. I didn’t get you anything.”

Yes, you did, Arthur thinks. You got me a painting, you just don’t know it.

He says, “It’s fine. You can get me something next time.”

“Bye, Arthur.”

“Bye, Merlin.”

The next morning, Arthur wakes up to a text from Merlin: his Skype name and Merry Christmas.

**

Arthur almost fucks up, but he just manages to tilt the laptop screen away from the door and press the mute button on Skype before Merlin can see who – and what – is at the door. The delivery man raises his eyebrows a little, but shrugs it off. He has probably seen stranger things when people answer the door.

Arthur points to his dining room area and the delivery man obligingly rolls the boxed painting – Merlin’s painting, it’s finally, finally here – over to the table. The delivery man holds out the clipboard and Arthur has to put the laptop down to sign the necessary paperwork. The whole time, Merlin loudly demands to know what’s going on and why he can’t hear or see it.

The delivery man cocks his head toward the box and then Arthur’s laptop. “Is it a present for your boyfriend?”

“No,” Arthur says. He realizes that the truth would take too long to explain. “Yes.”

The delivery man nods as he takes his clipboard back. “Cool. Have a good day.”

Arthur moves back into the living room, but Merlin would still be able see into the dining room and the painting, so he goes to his bedroom and shuts the door for good measure.

“I’m back.”

“Where did you go?”

“Someone was at the door.”

“Who was it?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you are very nosy?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you are very secretive?” Merlin asks. He is sitting in his own bedroom, where he usually sits as they Skype. Merlin has two roommates, and his bedroom is the only private place in the apartment. His room is packed with art. Most of the canvases are covered and the ones that aren’t are facing away from the camera on Merlin’s new laptop. Arthur thinks about pointing out who, between the two of them, is really the secretive one.

“Anyway, I should probably go,” Merlin says. “If I don’t finish this fucking piece by the end of the day, I’m going to run away to the fucking mountains and live in a fucking cave for the rest of my life.”

Merlin swearing is new to Arthur, something he only heard when they started Skyping a couple weeks ago. It’s a little bit thrilling each time Merlin swears. Hearing it is a bit like being a kid again, and hearing his friends try out expletives for the first time. There’s something magnetic about innocent-looking Merlin saying fuck. There is something sly and comfortable in his voice when he swears that makes Arthur think that maybe Merlin is not as innocent as his wide, clear eyes make him look.

“You’ll finish,” Arthur assures him. “Or you’ll find a nice cave. Either way, it’ll be fine.”

“Arthur,” Merlin says. “Arthur.”

“You’ll finish it.”

Merlin smiles at him. “I should go.”

“When are you going to let me see it?” Arthur asks, not for the first time.

“When it’s done,” Merlin answers, not for the first time. All of Merlin’s art is clustered around him, teasing Arthur, just in view and still hidden from him.

“When is it going to be done?”

“By the third, I hope.”

“Why the third?”

Merlin hesitates. “Because that’s when my show is.”

“Oh.” Arthur suddenly feels uncomfortable and embarrassed at the apologetic tone in Merlin’s voice. He leans back in his seat. Merlin hadn’t mentioned a show before; he probably wasn’t planning on telling Arthur about it at all.

“I was going to invite you,” Merlin says hurriedly. He fiddles with a paintbrush as he speaks. He is almost always holding one when they talk. Sometimes he absentmindedly waves it around like a wand, and Arthur laughs because he is the wizard Merlin. “I was just going to do it with, you know, a card or something. In the mail.”

Arthur immediately mentally clears his calendar for the third. Of which month? Doesn’t matter. Every month. He is embarrassed by this leap into mental action. Maybe embarrassed is the wrong word for it; he is confused by it. He can’t think about it right now though, Merlin is waiting on him to say something.

“Send me the invitation,” he says.

“Will you come?” Merlin asks, foolishly in Arthur’s opinion.

He flips through his calendar later and sees that there is already an event in his calendar for the third. And it’s in fucking Los Angeles. Uther’s annual charity dinner and auction. Arthur should not miss that. He can’t miss it. He’s going to miss it.

So he stares at the two paintings on his dining room table.

He needs to hang them up. He has been eating standing up in his kitchen since the Guigou painting arrived and he’s getting tired of it.

Arthur examines the back of Merlin’s painting. There is a metal wire strung along the back. That should be easy enough to hang. The Guigou painting has nothing on the back. Okay, that one might be a little harder.

He walks around his apartment to decide where to hang Merlin’s piece. The process involves holding the painting up to every blank wall to see if it looks good there. He likes the way it looks on the wall across from his bed, but he wants to hang it in a public room where everyone will see it. He ends up deciding to hang it in the dining room.

He digs out a hammer and a nail from the toolbox Leon got him when he first moved into his own place, insisting that Arthur would use it all the time. He holds the nail up to the dining room wall. He can’t decide where on the wall to hang it. He gets out a measuring tape and measures the wall horizontally, marking in pencil the absolute middle. Then he measures the height and again marks the middle. When he steps back, it looks a little low on the wall. He gets the measuring tape again and makes little marks at the five-foot and five-and-a-half foot measurements. He steps back again, stares at the wall. He frowns in concentration as he tries to decide between these two very similar heights. Eventually he erases the five-foot marker and puts the nail on the five-and-a-half foot one.

As soon as he swings the hammer to pound the nail in he knows that something is wrong. The nail doesn’t go into the wall even a little. He tries a couple more times, but nothing happens. Arthur taps the wall near his pencil mark and taps it further out near the edge. The sounds are different, like there’s something in the wall right where Arthur wants to hang his painting. Probably a two-by-four or a stud. Well, shit.

He tries to hammer in the nail at the five-foot mark that he measures out again and, to his relief, the nail actually goes into the wall. Tremendously pleased with himself, Arthur hangs the painting by its wire on the nail. He straightens it out and moves back to admire his work. He gets a quick glimpse and then the painting trembles and falls as the nail is pulled from the wall. Arthur surges forward and just barely manages to catch it before it crashes to the ground. There is a little hole in the plaster where the nail was yanked out.

Fuck it, Arthur thinks.Time to call some professionals.

The professionals do a wonderful job. Arthur sits down to dinner at his dining room table, a Guigou on one side of him and an Emrys on the other. He swivels his head to look at first the one and then the other. He thinks, is this how his father feels when he sits in his personal gallery, surrounded by his acquisitions? Is this feeling why he buys art, why he has a collection? Arthur realizes with a jolt that he has begun his own collection.

He surveys that collection: Merlin’s parrot cocks its head, its beady black eye focused on the dining room table. The color in his feathers is vibrant, giving life to the small room.

A good painting, Arthur thinks, to begin a collection with.

**

“Uther, are you home?”

Arthur knocks on the front door, even though he has already unlocked it with the spare key that Uther hides poorly in the fake rock near the door. As insistent as Uther is that Arthur continue to spend time in his childhood home, he is equally insistent that Arthur not have his own key to that home.

Uther does not answer, so Arthur makes his way to the gallery in the back of the house. That room holds the majority of the paintings that Uther keeps on display. There are paintings throughout the house, but most are in the gallery room under lock and key. And a laser grid security system, Arthur has been told. Uther panicked after Nimueh’s latest attempt to make a claim on the collection. None of these security measures are in effect at the moment as Arthur simply opens the door and enters. The paintings crowd together on the walls, covering almost every last inch of them. Chairs and benches are scattered throughout the room, pointing in every direction so that anyone could sit and admire any of the paintings for a lengthy period. Well, perhaps not anyone. Arthur has only seen a handful of people in the gallery. But he goes there so rarely, he probably just doesn’t see it when it is full of people.

Uther is in one of the seats, angled slightly away from the door as Arthur walks in.

“Da- Father?”

Uther jumps. “Arthur!” He stares at him for a moment, as though unsure of what he is supposed to do with him. Then he pats the open seat next to him on the bench. Arthur joins him.

The painting most directly in front of them is only vaguely familiar to Arthur, like most of the paintings in this gallery. Uther changes out the paintings in the gallery frequently, always moving older acquisitions into storage. Arthur remembers the promise he made to Gaius when he purchased Merlin’s painting: I’m going to hang it in my apartment. It’s gorgeous. It will never go into storage as long as I own it.

This painting, the one Uther has been looking at, looks Russian. An old man with a long white beard hunches over to lean on his cane. He stands alone on the bank of a lake. Arthur has a brief angry moment where he sees Uther as the old man. It startles him because he doesn’t know why it makes him angry.

“When did you get this one?” Arthur asks.

“April, I think,” Uther says. “In Minsk.”

“Why?”

“That’s where it was on display,” Uther says.

“Why did you buy it?” Arthur clarifies.

Uther gives his son a wry, confiding smile. “Nimueh had put in a bid.”

“And so you outbid her?”

Uther shrugs. “It was easy. She doesn’t have the funds that she used to.”

Arthur is uncomfortable. Shame mixes with his discomfort. He can’t help but think of the artist of the piece learning that their art was purchased to spite. He looks around at the other paintings. How many of these does Uther actually like, and how many is he hoarding from others? He doesn’t ask.

Uther sees the look on Arthur’s face and he laughs. “You think that Nimueh does not do the same to me? She has her little friends go out and buy paintings I want.”

The way Uther says it makes it sound like a game. Arthur isn’t sure if he likes that more or less than the spite. To play such a game with priceless art– it is careless in a way that makes Arthur ashamed.

He can’t tell Merlin about it when they Skype later that day. Mostly, he doesn’t say anything at all. Merlin is frantically trying to finish his collection before his show and Arthur is buried in work of his own. They mostly sit quietly absorbed in their tasks. The quiet companionship makes Arthur inexplicably happy and he does not want to pollute it by talking about Uther’s collection.

Arthur works diligently, but every so often he catches himself staring at his computer screen, captivated by the way Merlin looks as he paints.

**

Gwen has always been susceptible to his begging, so Arthur had not expected such resistance from her when he asked her to cover for him at the charity dinner.

“What do you mean you’re not in Los Angeles?” she hisses over the phone.

Arthur bounces on the balls of his feet. He is standing outside the modest gallery housing Merlin’s show and it’s so cold that his balls have retreated into his body. “Gwen, just tell Uther that I’m sick or- or whatever. Please, Gwen. Please please please.”

“Why aren’t you here? Really?”

“Merlin. His art show, it’s right now.”

There is a pause from Gwen’s end of the call. Then she laughs. “You’re at an art show? You rebel.”

“But you have to tell Uther that I’m sick.” Arthur does not truthfully think that Uther would be very angry with him for going to an unknown artist’s show, or even for missing the charity event. But he still can’t stomach the thought of Uther knowing about Merlin, for whatever reason he just can’t even think about it. “Please, Gwen.”

“Of course,” she says. “You are my boss, I kind of have to do what you tell me to.”

“You go above and beyond,” Arthur says. “I’m asking you a favor. Don’t do it if you don’t want to.”

“Of course I will,” Gwen says.

“You’re a star.”

“On the condition,” she warns, “that you tell me everything next time I see you.”

“Fine.”

Arthur is late and slightly overdressed. He is wearing his favorite business suit, which stands out among the jeans and sweaters worn by the majority of the guests. At least he can pass it off as just having come from work.

He means to look for Merlin immediately, but he gets drawn into looking at the paintings. Merlin’s pieces are not the only ones on display, but Arthur can pick them out easily, even without looking at the identifying cards. There are not nearly as many of Merlin’s paintings as Arthur expected to see. Merlin had at least eight canvases in his room the last time he and Arthur Skyped, and there are only two paintings on the wall. Arthur cranes his neck to look around the gallery for others – maybe they’re scattered around the room – but sees none.

The two paintings depict a storm. The first – at least, the painting Arthur sees first – shows the dark chaos of the clouds and the sea. The second painting is nearly the same, but the view includes a sliver of shoreline. The clouds in this painting are just as ominous as the first, except that one is tinted gold around the edges, like the sun is about to break through.

A thrum of excitement travels though Arthur.

After a while, Arthur becomes aware of another person standing near him, looking at the paintings. He expects it to be Merlin, but it is a small dark-haired girl dressed in a skirt suit with a name tag dangling around her neck. She must be an employee of the gallery. Their eyes meet and she smiles at Arthur.

“Beautiful piece, isn’t it?”

Arthur doesn’t know which one she is referring to, but it doesn’t matter. He nods.

“Were you thinking about purchasing this painting, sir?”

“How much is the artist asking for it?”

She names a price that makes Arthur a little embarrassed. How could Merlin possibly survive on his art if these are the prices he asks for?

Arthur offers nearly double and asks to buy the other painting as well for the same price. The girl’s surprise is evident, but she simply takes him to a back office to complete the paper work. When that is done, she gives him two small red circle stickers.

“Put them next to the name cards of the paintings to indicate that they are sold,” she instructs. Arthur stares at the proffered stickers and she hesitates. “I could put the stickers up for you,” she says. “Some patrons like to do it themselves. You of course do not have to.”

Arthur opts to let the girl put the stickers up for him. He wanders through the other areas of the gallery, glancing over the other artists’ work. He notices with pride that Merlin’s art is the best art displayed there by a wide margin. Most everything else had the same effect that art generally has on Arthur, namely it does not affect him. But there is one piece that Arthur sees and immediately loathes. It’s mostly composed of aggressively orange blobs, with some green splotches dotting the canvas. Arthur stops in his tracks to stare at the monstrosity and wonder who could possibly hate people so much to want to assault their eyes with this painting.

“Arthur?”

Struck with déja-vu, Arthur turns and there is Gwaine. Gwaine’s face splits with his friendly grin.

“Hey, Gwaine. How’re you doing?” Arthur punches him lightly in the shoulder, the way he would greet Leon or Elyan.

Gwaine punches him back as he says, “I’m good, how are you? Merlin said you might stop by.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of regretting it,” Arthur says, turning back to the monstrosity.

Gwaine laughs. “Which came first, the vomit or the painting?” he queries philosophically, making Arthur laugh too.

“Excuse me,” the voice comes from behind them, “why are you laughing at my painting?”

Arthur and Gwaine turn around, chagrined at being caught out. It’s just Merlin though, and he is grinning at them. He starts laughing when Gwaine playfully pokes him several times in the stomach. Arthur is abruptly irritated with Gwaine. He wants Merlin to himself tonight. Gwaine lives with Merlin, he sees him everyday. Arthur wants to walk around the gallery with Merlin like they walked around the other one. He wants to see Merlin’s face when he sees those two red stickers next to his paintings.

He can hear Morgana’s voice in his head: Use your words, Arthur. No one can read your mind. But he can’t think of how to ask Gwaine to leave without sounding as selfish as he is. Uther’s example is fresh in his mind, and the comparison this would make is unflattering.

So the three of them traverse the gallery together. Gwaine starts a game where he analyzes a painting and then Merlin argues every point he makes about it. It’s funny, and no doubt extremely clever, but it is in a language that Arthur doesn’t know. It’s not the way that Merlin talked about paintings in Nimueh’s gallery. Eventually, he just tunes most of it out.

He watches Merlin look at the art. If he were playing Gwaine’s observation game he would note these things about Merlin: dark hair, round blue eyes, an easy smile – it’s a contagious smile – an ill-fitting suit that Arthur is itching to adjust, at least fix the collar. Hands that won’t stay still, especially when he is talking. Arthur has found that restlessness creeping into this own gestures. It’s contagious, like Merlin’s smile. If Merlin was a painting and if Arthur was playing Gwaine’s game, Arthur would say he is a beautiful painting. What would Merlin say?

“Arthur?”

Arthur starts, pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of his name. Both Merlin and Gwaine are staring at him.

“We lost you for a minute,” Gwaine says.

“Sorry,” Arthur says, “I was…”

“Bored,” Merlin fills in. He wears his customary smile, but beneath it he looks hurt.

“No, no,” Arthur says quickly. “I was just- just thinking about this piece of art.” He nods at one of the paintings.

“Want to share with the class?” Gwaine asks, smiling slyly like he can see past Arthur’s lie and finds the truth amusing. Arthur’s cheeks heat a little and he quickly turns to face the painting. Fuck, it’s one of those abstract ones.

“It’s…there is…there’s a lot of green in it,” he says finally.

Merlin and Gwaine exchange a look and then burst out laughing. It isn’t mocking laughter and Arthur is laughing too. The absurdity of it all catches up with him.

“Well,” Gwaine says. “You’re not wrong.”

Arthur looks to Merlin for his judgment.

Merlin grins at him. “I don’t know if I would say there’s a lot of green in it…”

And that sets them off again, laughing as Merlin gaspingly adds more complaints about how much green is in the painting.

“All right, all right, that’s enough,” Gwaine says. “I’m going to get a drink. Either of you want anything?

They don’t and Gwaine traipses off toward the refreshments table.

“And that’s the last we’ll see of Gwaine tonight,” Merlin says, resuming their walk around the gallery.

“What do you mean?”

“Gwaine knows everyone and he sees everyone everywhere. And he always stops to talk when he sees someone he knows.”

Arthur laughs. He’s doing a lot of that tonight. His face is starting to hurt from so much smiling. “Uther, my father, he does that too. Even in the office.”

“You work for your father?”

Arthur nods.

Merlin glances over at him. “You know, you never did tell me what you do for a living.”

“Weird.”

“Arthur.”

“What?”

“What do you do for a living?”

Arthur thinks about teasing Merlin some more, but he just tells him what his job is.

“Oh,” Merlin says. “I’ve heard of that. I was googling ‘world’s most boring jobs’ the other day and that was top of the list.”

“That is hilarious, Merlin. You know, if this whole artist thing doesn’t work out for you, you should go into comedy.”

“Hang on, I thought you believed in me as an artist! Or at least that you’d be willing to support me as one by single-handedly buying all my paintings. Even the ones I’ve already sold.”

Arthur’s smile slips off his face. They both stop walking and face each other.

“Gaius told me,” Merlin elaborates. “And the gallery informs the artist every time one of their paintings sells.”

“I was…going to tell you,” Arthur says. He is lying, of course.

Merlin rolls his eyes; he can probably easily see through the lie. “Arthur,” he says in an oddly patient voice, “you don’t have to buy my paintings because we’re friends. Believe it or not, you’re not the only one who likes them. I could make a living selling art to people besides you. You don’t have to buy my paintings out of- out of pity.”

“Pity? You think…” Arthur shakes his head in disbelief. “Merlin, I’m buying your paintings because, get this, I want them. I don’t want those other people to have your art because I want to be the one who has it.” There is an echo of Uther in there, but Arthur doesn’t recognize it in time to keep it out.

It’s on the tip of Merlin’s tongue to ask him why, Arthur can see that. It is like that last day in Paris when Merlin had asked Arthur why he wanted to watch Merlin paint. Arthur is certain that the answer to these two questions is the same, but he doesn’t know what that answer could be. He silently pleads with Merlin not to ask him again.

Merlin doesn’t. After a long moment, he looks around the gallery. “I still haven’t seen everything. Come on, let’s keep going.”

They circle the gallery, with Merlin setting the pace and choosing the paintings and Arthur walking next to him gratefully.

As the gallery empties out a few hours later, Arthur waits by the doors for Merlin, who is running around trying to find his coat. Gwaine sidles up to Arthur.

“So. I hear you bought all of Merlin’s art,” he says casually. “Did you?”

“I did,” Arthur says.

“Are you going to give them to your girlfriend?” Gwaine asks even more casually.

“Probably not,” Arthur says. “That would be pretty weird, seeing as how we broke up.”

“Oh really?” Gwaine says eagerly. His eyes light up with amusement. He looks like he might want to ask another question, but Merlin rejoins them at that moment, tugging on his errant coat.

“Gwaine, they wanted you to stay behind and help clean stuff up,” he says.

“You mean they wanted you to stay behind, but you’re too lazy,” Gwaine translates. Merlin shrugs, not bothered by Gwaine seeing through his lie. Gwaine sighs. He mock-bows to Merlin, then to Arthur. “Goodnight, gentlemen,” he says.

Arthur and Merlin wander down the street together, walking toward the metro station that Merlin needs. Snow drifts down around them so lazily and aimlessly that Arthur wouldn’t say that it is actually snowing. Cars fly past them, but they are the only pedestrians in sight.

Half a block ahead of them a streetlight is out, casting a small pool of darkness beneath it. Arthur stops in the darkness as they reach it, reaching out to grab Merlin’s sleeve and make him stop walking too.

Merlin looks at him questioningly, but he doesn’t break the spell of silence that had settled between them as they walked.

Arthur rubs the fabric of Merlin’s sleeve between his fingers. He glances up at Merlin who is still watching him with the question on his face: Why are you doing this?

Arthur still doesn’t know the answer, but he knows an answer and it is time that he gives it to Merlin.

He lets go of Merlin’s sleeve so he can slide his hand up Merlin’s arm. His fingers are on Merlin’s collar now. It is easy to slide them around the back of Merlin’s neck, Merlin’s hair tickling them. It is easy to gently tug Merlin forward.

Their lips meet softly at first– too softly. Arthur impatiently presses harder and Merlin answers his impatience. Arthur pulls his other hand out of his pocket and places it lightly on Merlin’s waist. Merlin’s hands are restless as ever: they are on Arthur’s shoulders, his back, his neck, always quick and gentle touches.

They kiss and they kiss. Sometimes their bodies rock forward toward each other, but they never quite touch, only with their hands and lips.

When Arthur finally breaks away, the question is gone from Merlin’s face, a smile left in its place.

A new question starts repeating itself in Arthur’s mind, running around in circles: What the fuck was that?

**

Come Monday morning, the question has run itself ragged in Arthur’s mind. He needs fresh eyes on the problem. He is too intimidated to bring this to Morgana, not until he figures it out a little better. And really, that just leaves Gwen. Leon and Elyan are great, they really are, but they are just as clueless as Arthur is. He needs Gwen.

He finds her in the office, halfway beneath a large wooden crate that she is trying to drag down the hall.

“Here, do you want a hand with that?” He offers, dropping his stuff on her desk and rushing over.

“Yeah, if you could just grab that side…”

Together they slowly shift the crate all the way into Uther’s office.

“My god, what’s in here, bricks?” Arthur grumbles as they finally get it into the office.

“No idea,” Gwen says. She looks at the shipping label. “It says its from a gallery, so probably art.”

“Speaking of galleries,” Arthur says, unable to stop a smile from spreading across his face.

He tells her the whole story right there in Uther’s office, the wooden crate still between them. He tells her about seeing and buying Merlin’s storm paintings – he already knows where he wants to hang them and he tells her that too – and about the rest of the show. He tells her about the kissing.

“Oh, Arthur,” Gwen says happily. “When do I get to meet this Merlin?”

Arthur doesn’t get a chance to tell her whenever you want. Uther opens his door and stops in surprise at how crowded it is in his office.

“Mr. Pendragon,” Gwen says quickly. “Arthur was giving me a hand moving your box in here.”

“Thank you, Guinevere. You may go.” Uther says, settling down at his desk. Arthur resist the urge to ask if he is dismissed too. He nods at the box.

“What’s in there?”

Uther shakes his head. “I am not sure. Perhaps that little piece I purchased a month ago, you remember the one I’m talking about.”

Arthur does not.

“Go ahead and open it. If it’s the one I am thinking of, I will want to hang it in here.”

Arthur works the lid off of the crate.

“I’m glad you’re here, I wanted to talk to you. Do you remember my friend Olaf? His daughter Vivian has recently moved here to work at- oh, I can’t remember, some law firm. And I thought perhaps you should take her out to dinner, welcome her to the city,” Uther says.

The painting is wrapped in brown paper which Arthur peels gently away. His heart thuds unevenly in his chest when he sees that it is Nimueh’s portrait of Ygraine. What he feels must show on his face because Uther stops describing Vivian and asks Arthur what’s wrong.

“Nothing,” Arthur says quickly and unconvincingly.

“Is it damaged?” Uther asks in alarm, getting up from his desk to come look at the painting. “Did you and Guinevere do something when you moved it? Because you don’t-“

Uther stops as he sees the canvas. Arthur watches him anxiously as his face works through surprise to grief and then anger. Arthur looks away, digs through the box to see if there is anything else in there. There is an envelope with Uther’s name written on the outside. He holds it out to Uther wordlessly, but Uther waves it off.

“You read it,” he says. His eyes are fixed on Ygraine’s face.

Arthur opens it and reads, “Uther, add this to your collection. Yours, Nimueh.”

Uther sits heavily at the edge of his desk. “Fuck,” he says. “Fuck her.” Then he stands and begins pacing his office. “This is because of the Rathje painting that I bought last year, I know it. She- she- that little bitch. Oh, next time I am in Germany I am going to snag that Hofmann that she has wanted for so long…” He breaks into mumbling as he paces.

“What are you going to do with it?” Arthur asks.

Uther snaps his head up like he had forgotten that Arthur is there.

“With the painting,” Arthur clarifies. He points at it.

“Go back to work,” Uther says. When Arthur doesn’t move immediately, Uther stands abruptly, almost threateningly, and Arthur hurries out.

He passes Gwen’s desk on the way back to his office.

“Hey, wait,” she calls after him. “You never answered my question.”

“What question?”

“When do I get to meet Merlin?”

Arthur pauses at the door to his office. “Sorry, Gwen, I don’t know.”

**

Arthur texts Merlin Skype tonight? almost as soon as he sits down in his office. Merlin responds around lunchtime with 8 okay?

Arthur sets up his computer in his dining room around seven in anticipation. He is sitting under the Guigou so that it’s clearly visible in the background, and he is facing Merlin’s parrot. He kills time by answering emails until it is finally eight o’clock.

Merlin calls right on time for once.

“You’re joking, right?”

“What?”

“You just had your show and you’re already painting again? Can I see it?”

Merlin turns the computer so Arthur can see a blank canvas covered with pencil marks.

“I have a commission that I’ve been putting off for a while,” Merlin says. He gestures at the canvas like and now I’m not.

“You take commissions?”

“Not from you,” Merlin says sternly.

Arthur is hurt and doesn’t say anything in reply. He looks back down at his work, flipping through some paperwork.

“Oh, stop pouting,” Merlin says.

“I’m not pouting,” Arthur says. He is, and he can’t stop it.

“You are pouting,” Merlin laughs. Arthur doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look up from his work. “Oh, come on, it’s not because I don’t like you,” Merlin says, still with the laugh in his voice. “But if I start taking commissions from you, I’ll never paint for anyone else ever again.”

Arthur laughs, pleased with the idea even if it is just a joke.

For the next twenty minutes, Merlin puts Arthur in a trance. Arthur can’t see the canvas, so he can’t even pretend that it is the painting that is captivating him; it’s Merlin. He watches Merlin paint and he wants to shout look at you, look at you. He is bursting with an emotion that needs to be shared. Pride, maybe. Admiration. Affection. Something else, something more frustrating too. He abruptly wants to get out of his own head. He wants to know what Merlin is thinking.

He fumbles with the wording and it comes out a lot more rudely than he had intended it to, but it doesn’t matter because Merlin doesn’t seem to hear him. He is lost in his work with total focus. Arthur doesn’t think he has ever been so engaged in a task. Except for sleeping. And, of course, sex.

“Merlin,” Arthur says, a little roughly because thinking about sex right now is a little rough.

Merlin’s head snaps up. “What?”

Arthur can’t remember what he wanted to ask. “What are you doing this weekend?”

**

Merlin is Merlin and Arthur is Arthur so they fight for almost an hour before deciding on going to a museum, just like Merlin wanted to do.

Merlin laughs when Arthur asks him if he ever gets tired of art and museums. “This would be a pretty poor career choice for me if I did,” he says. After a pause he says, “Maybe sometimes. But not right now.”

Arthur buys both of their tickets because he can’t ask if this is a date or not, but he can spend money like it is one. He puts one of the little stickers they get in place of a ticket on his own shirt and then puts the other one on Merlin’s. He doesn’t look Merlin in the face as he does this.

Insecurities have been dogging him since the night of their kiss, almost a week ago now. He has not had time to talk to Gwen about it since their interrupted talk in Uther’s office, and he has been playing the memory over and again in his mind at any idle moment he has. His hands on Merlin – lips pressing against Merlin’s – Merlin’s smile. It is a pleasant memory, but it is also terrifying. It was Arthur who stopped them under the darkened street lamp, Arthur who pulled Merlin toward him and pressed their lips together. All Merlin did was smile. And that could mean anything.

So now Arthur can’t look Merlin in the face as he puts the museum sticker on his chest. He is afraid that his face will give him away: I like you more than you like me. I can’t stop thinking about your lips touching mine and you are unmoved by all of this. I am touching you and my heart is beating so fast and you are impassive.

He doesn’t look at Merlin as he steps away quickly. “All right,” he says. “Lead on.”

“No, you should lead today,” Merlin says, probably just to be contrary.

Arthur can be difficult too. He takes them straight to the gift shop.

“My favorite exhibit.”

Merlin follows him through the shop, looking around him with a stony expression on his face. Arthur worries that Merlin is angry or offended. Arthur tries to salvage the situation by thumbing through a rack of bright blue shirts with the museum’s logo printed on them and pretending he came here to shop.

Merlin grabs his wrist and pulls his hand away. “Arthur, what are you doing? You can’t touch the art.” They grin at each other and Arthur can just tell that this is going to end with them getting kicked out of the museum.

He’s close. They get kicked out of the gift shop, but not the museum. They get away with speculating loudly about the keychains, the postcards, and the dumb little candy bags. They get kicked out when Merlin gets into an argument with a tourist, insisting that the Van Gogh print she was trying to purchase was the original and telling her to put it back where she found it. Arthur laughs so hard that he tears up.

“Okay, my turn,” Merlin says when they get kicked out.

He takes them upstairs, to a gallery brightly lit by the sunlight streaming in through the large windows. It strikes Arthur was very familiar, though it takes him a moment to place it. Nimueh brought him and Morgana here one day after school when they were very young, before any of the fighting over the collection had started. This gallery was special, she had told them, because every single piece of art in it had been loaned to the museum from private collections. Arthur can see on the name cards that this is still the case. He glances at Merlin out of the corner of his eye.

Merlin doesn’t say anything, just steps up to the first painting and examines it. He spends more time than usual reading the name card, Arthur thinks. He doesn’t stop until Arthur begins to read it too. Sure enough, at the bottom of the card it notes the generosity of the Alvarez family in loaning this masterpiece back in 1993. Arthur follows Merlin’s lead in reading every name card in the gallery. Very subtle, Merlin, he thinks.

His irritation gets worse when he realizes that a small part of him thinks that Merlin’s point – because he is clearly making a point here – is probably a good one. Here is a resolution to Uther and Nimueh’s hateful game of hoarding. Still, he is irritated with Merlin and his presumption.

This is forgotten by the next gallery. In the next gallery, Merlin is dazzling. He flits around from painting to painting, snarking here, praising there like he had practiced it until it became an art form itself. Arthur trails after him in a daze. He wishes he could bury himself in his earlier irritation because it is the best armor he knows against his fascination with Merlin. It staves off the insecurity that creeps back in now, the imbalance of I like you more than you like me. Beautiful Merlin, smart Merlin. Irritation would be so much easier.

The last thing they look at in the museum is a small painting of an empty room. Merlin stops them before it and looks with distant eyes. Merlin looking quietly at art is inaccessible. Arthur can’t read his face any more than he can understand the painting itself. He uncrosses his arms – somehow Arthur always finds his arms crossed when he tries to figure out art – and lets the back of his hand graze the back of Merlin’s. The shooting spark that travels up his arm is frightening for such a little touch. Again, he can’t look at Merlin in the face.

Merlin shifts a little. He rings one of his fingers around one of Arthur’s. Arthur wants to look around the gallery for other people – surely, there must be someone here to witness this, the artist’s finger tangled up with Arthur's – but he is afraid to move, to do anything to end this moment prematurely.

Outside the museum, Arthur offers to walk Merlin back to his apartment. Merlin turns his face into the wind and zips up his jacket. “If you’d like,” he says.

After the quiet of the museum, conversation is difficult. Both of them are quietly in their own thoughts. Arthur’s thoughts are worried and analytical. Merlin is the first boy he has ever kissed. Not the first he has wanted to, no not by a long shot. But he is the first boy who he has ever kissed. And now Arthur needs to know that it is okay, that is all this thing with Merlin is right now. Nothing more than simple reassurance.

His neat reasoning has no impact.

“Hey, come here,” Arthur says. He tugs on Merlin’s sleeve to pull him into an alleyway.

He crowds Merlin until his back is pressed up against the brick wall. His head is tilted so that he is looking at Arthur through his lashes. He is so beautiful and Arthur wants him so much that his nerves fail him.

“You’re not going to mug me, are you?” Merlin says with a nervous laugh. His eyes dart back and forth between Arthur’s eyes and his lips. The snap of Merlin’s gaze brings Arthur’s nerves back. “Because you should know that I’m broke-“

Arthur kisses him. His hands are flat on the wall on either side of Merlin’s head as he brings his lips to meet Merlin’s. Merlin opens his mouth agreeably and Arthur eagerly parts his own lips as well. Their chests bump as they turn their heads to find a better angle. Merlin’s hands rest low on Arthur’s hips, his fingers under Arthur’s shirt so they press gently on his stomach. Arthur’s hips twitch forward, which makes Merlin tighten his grip.

They give each other these small challenges, moving, gripping, daring the other one to do a little more, escalating until Arthur breaks away, breathless, before they end up striping naked in an alleyway.

He presses his forehead happily against Merlin’s cheek. Merlin’s skin is smooth and warm. He steps back and dusts his hands off on his pants. Merlin stays where he is, leaning against the wall. He touches his bottom lip with his thumb, his eyes locked onto Arthur’s.

“How far is it to your apartment?” Arthur asks.

They jog most of the way there. Inside the building, they race up the stairs, pausing on the landings to kiss. Arthur is giddy from all the kissing and he leans in for one more as Merlin unlocks his apartment door.

**

“His roommates were home?” Gwen asks in a tone that is equal parts amused glee and sympathy. She has finished her own fries and is beginning to pilfer Arthur’s.

“Yeah.” It had been like a bucket of cold water. Merlin had awkwardly introduced Arthur to the group of roommates and friends of roommates in the living room – besides Gwaine, Arthur can’t remember any of their names now, and he probably wouldn’t recognize them if he saw them again – and Arthur had awkwardly invented an appointment he had to rush off to.

“Did you ask him out again? Or say you would call?”

No, he had just run out.

Gwen’s phone buzzes, sparing Arthur a chastisement. Or at least postponing one.

“Hello?” Gwen says. “Elyan!” Her face brightens. Almost immediately, it darkens. “What?” After a pause, in which Elyan speaks, her eyes cut over to Arthur. “Thanks, I’ll let him know,” she says and hangs up.

“What is it?” Arthur asks as she puts down the phone.

“That was Elyan. He said his friend at the Times called him.” She hesitates.

“What?”

“Nimueh is calling into question the authenticity of six pieces in Uther’s collection. Publicly.”

“Which ones? No, it doesn’t matter,” Arthur says. “She can’t do this.”

Gwen watches him with worried eyes. “She is, Arthur.”

Arthur rubs his eyes. “She can’t. We’ve already been here. The collection was authenticated when she sued for ownership.”

“Uther has added to his collection since then and all of the paintings she named were purchased in the last four months,” Gwen says. “But this is bullshit, I had most of those pieces authenticated myself.” She reaches again for her cell phone. “I’ll call the auction houses and get the number of their experts and talk to them about this.”

And she’s already dialing, already demanding to speak with whoever is in charge. Arthur picks up his own phone. First he calls Uther. It goes straight to voicemail. HIs next call rings only once.

“Hello?”

“Merlin? What are you doing today?”

Merlin is at the curb when Arthur pulls up. He gets in the car and Arthur tosses him a map. “You navigate.”

“Where are we going again?”

“It’s marked on the map.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Arthur?” Merlin asks, unfolding the map.

“We’re just going to talk to her. It isn’t like we’re going to burn her house down.” He glances over to the passenger seat as he says this; Merlin looks disappointed. Still, he opens the map and narrates their way to Nimueh’s house buried in the forest several hours away from the city.

Arthur lets his rage unspool within him as they drive. He doesn’t speak, instead letting Merlin chatter or putter into silence as he likes. Arthur tugs at the threads of all his resentments until he is tangled in anger at Nimueh and his father.

“Um, Arthur?” Merlin says, breaking into Arthur’s thoughts.

“What?” Arthur looks at the speedometer and realizes that he is pushing 95 mph. He pulls back a little.

“I can drive, if you want,” Merlin offers.

“It’s fine.”

Merlin shrugs. After a minute he says, “Do you know what you’re going to do when we get there? Do you have a plan?”

“I’m going to make her stop,” Arthur grits out through his teeth.

“I can talk to her, if you want,” Merlin offers.

“It’s fine, Merlin.”

They don’t speak much for the remainder of the drive. Merlin falls asleep for a while, but Arthur wakes him up in time to get the directions he needs from him.

Nimueh’s house is tucked into a grove of fir trees that huddle around the house claustrophobically. The bright windows stand out in the dark silhouette of the house at night. Arthur looks at the house through the car window, gathering himself. He almost tells Merlin to wait in the car, but he knows why he asked Merlin to come with him, and it wasn’t to wait outside and keep the car running.

Merlin stretches as he gets out of the car. He lifts his arms straight above his head and arches his back as he leans into the stretch. A sliver of skin between the waistband of his pants and the hem of his sweater appears. Arthur pauses to look at it. Looking at that patch of skin is like a burst of inspiration because Arthur’s head is suddenly full of ideas. He can see himself running his fingers, his tongue along that stretch of skin, can imagine soaping it up as he showers with Merlin, can see Merlin scratching it absentmindedly as he talks. Arthur is abruptly apprehensive about bringing Merlin along, unwilling to expose him to Arthur’s family’s rapacity.

They knock on Nimueh’s door. It is no time at all before Nimueh is opening the door and claiming happily over her unexpected visitors.

“So nice to see two of my favorite young men,” she says. Merlin had said on the drive up here that he knows Nimueh, that she had often worked in the studios at his art school, but it is still uncomfortable to hear Nimueh say it. “Please, come in.”

She leads them to the living room, a large but somehow still cozy room, packed with wooden furniture that matches the walls of her house and covered with big wool blankets. Arthur remembers playing in this room with Morgana. They used to build forts in here from the couches and chairs and blankets.

“Nimueh,” he says, speaking over her offer of food, “are you challenging the authenticity of my father’s collection?”

She says wistfully, “You used to call me Aunt Nimueh.”

“I also used to sleep with a nightlight. And you used to not bring legal action against my family,” he says.

Nimueh cuts her eyes over to Merlin, so Arthur looks at him too. He wears that impenetrable expression that he has when he looks at art, tinged with seriousness.

“Why don’t we sit down,” Nimueh says. She and Merlin find seats on the couches, but Arthur is too wired to sit. He paces behind Merlin’s couch. “Why are you doing this? You know it’s all authentic. You were there when he bought most of those paintings.”

“I was,” Nimueh says. “That’s how I know that they are fake.”

Arthur shakes his head; none of this makes sense to him. But her comment must mean something to Merlin because he stiffens. Nimueh shoots him a look that looks to Arthur almost like curiosity or anticipation, like she wants to know what he is going to do. Arthur gives him a moment, but when Merlin does nothing, he tries again.

“But why,” he repeats. He hears his father shouting at Nimueh at her show: What do I have to do to be rid of you? “Why are you doing this?”

Nimueh looks concerned. “Arthur, I swear I am not trying to hurt you with any of this. You know how I love you and your sister.”

Arthur sputters, unsure what to do with the unsatisfactory answers his godmother is giving him. Merlin was right, he should have had a plan.

“Please, Aunt Nimueh,” he says. “Really, I don’t understand what you’re doing.”

He doesn’t understand any of this; the art show sponsored by Pendragon Ltd, the portrait of Ygraine sent to his father, this accusation. Uther and Nimueh trying to exert control where they have none: each other.

Nimueh looks at him kindly, and he knows that he won’t get her to stop this because he won’t even be able to get an answer from her. She still sees a child when she looks at him and she would never tell a child why she is waging a small war against his father.

Arthur stomps out of the room, out of the house. He slams the car door shut and clenches the steering wheel to steady his shaking hands. He breathes deeply in and out until he calms down. It is not until his breathing evens out that he realizes that Merlin didn’t follow him out of the house. Arthur looks up the long driveway. The front door is still hanging open as Arthur left it. He can’t go back up to the house to fetch Merlin, so he waits.

A few minutes later, Merlin emerges, also leaving the door open behind him as he jogs down the driveway to Arthur’s car. He slides in.

“Sorry, let’s go.”

“Hold on. I want to call Uther.”

It goes straight to voicemail. Arthur calls Morgana, who hasn’t heard from Uther either. She offers to go to his place and check up on him. Arthur says that he can do that himself.

He starts up the car.

“We’re not driving all the way back tonight, are we?” Merlin asks.

“Why not?”

“It’s after ten. We won’t get back until tomorrow morning anyway. Might as well get a little bit of sleep tonight.”

Arthur grumbles, but Merlin has a point. He drives them to a motel and they check in.

“Two twin beds?” the front desk clerk asks.

“One queen,” Arthur says without thinking. He glances over at Merlin out of the corner of his eye. Merlin looks pleased. The clerk hands them their key and they trudge to their room.

Arthur kicks off his shoes and undresses down to this underwear and t-shirt. He turns down the covers and crawls in. His is glad that Merlin suggested getting a hotel room instead of driving back home tonight, he is tired.

The bed dips as Merlin gets into bed too, also down to his underwear and shirt. He lays on his back and brings his hands up to rest under his head. That sliver of skin at the bottom of his stomach that Arthur saw earlier is visible again.

With two fingers, Arthur traces over the stretch of skin, first in the air just above it and then over the skin itself. Merlin shivers under the touch. Arthur does it again. Slowly, inch by inch, he lets his hand wander so that he can explore the entire plane of Merlin’s stomach and chest. As he runs his rubs his thumb over Merlin’s nipple and he hears the gasping breath this draws out of Merlin, Arthur abruptly becomes less patient and more urgent.

He rolls over and swings a leg over Merlin so that he is straddling him. Merlin pulls Arthur’s face down to kiss him. Arthur presses deep into Merlin’s mouth, his hips grinding down in rhythm with their frantic kissing. He is hard, just as hard as Merlin is beneath him. He kisses Merlin until he starts to get light headed from not breathing. He draws back. His eyes meet Merlin’s. Merlin is wonderfully, beautifully flushed. His hair is a mess from where Arthur has been grabbing at it. Merlin, in a quick movement, rolls them over so that Arthur is now beneath him.

He tugs Arthur’s shirt up and scatters kisses across Arthur’s chest. He pays special attention to Arthur’s nipples. He licks and sucks and bites at them, making Arthur arch up helplessly, harsh breaths and soft whimpers escaping his lips. This is perfect, he finds himself thinking. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

Them Merlin moves his mouth lower down Arthur’s body and Arthur has to recalculate because this is perfect.

Merlin mouths teasingly along the waistband of Arthur’s underwear. He slips his thumbs under the elastic, and looks to Arthur with his wordless question. Arthur nods, his whole body hot. Merlin slips the underwear down. They get caught up awkwardly around Arthur’s ankles and they both laugh as Merlin works them off.

Merlin slides his hands up to Arthur’s hips. He places a soft kiss near Arthur’s knee. He places another slightly higher. He kisses his way up the inside of Arthur’s thigh. He glances up at Arthur as he takes the head of Arthur’s cock into his mouth. Arthur’s eyes nearly roll back into his head.

Merlin sucks at the head of Arthur’s cock and works the rest of it with his hand. Arthur’s hips twitch up as Merlin’s tongue passes over the slit at the top of his dick. His hands move without his permission toward Merlin’s head. He catches himself, unsure of what is allowed. Merlin sees his hesitation and makes and encouraging noise that sends nearly unbearable vibrations down Arthur’s cock. Arthur grabs Merlin’s head in his hands and strokes his fingers through Merlin’s hair.

It doesn’t take long for Arthur to come. The wet heat of Merlin’s mouth and the steady rhythm of his hand brings Arthur tumbling over the edge in only a few minutes. He can’t even bring himself to be embarrassed about it. He doesn’t have time to be embarrassed because Merlin is climbing up his body to kiss him deeply. Arthur can taste himself on Merlin’s tongue which sends a thrum of desire through his body. He reaches down between Merlin’s legs and begins to inelegantly jerk him off. Merlin rolls onto his back, so Arthur is sitting over him and looking down into his face. It is slack with pleasure, his eyes closed. Merlin rubs his hand over his own chest, pinching and rubbing at his nipples. He lasts a little longer than Arthur, but soon enough he too is spilling out, covering Arthur’s hand. Arthur licks his hand clean as best he can, not wanting to get out of bed to wash it in the sink. Merlin groans as he watches. Arthur grins at him.

Arthur lays back down and Merlin cuddles up to him, resting his head on Arthur’s shoulder.

“Finally.”

“Finally?”

“I’ve been waiting since that first day in the Louvre. I thought we were going to go back to your hotel when I was done painting for the day.”

“Do you do that a lot with people who watch you paint in museums?”

“All the time,” Merlin says sarcastically. When Arthur pokes him, he laughs. “No, but I wanted to with you.”

Arthur kisses the top of Merlin’s head. He laces their fingers together. When he wakes up the next morning, they are still holding hands.

**

It isn’t until he sees the skyline rise up in the distance that Arthur thinks to ask Merlin about what he and Nimueh talked about after Arthur went back to the car.

“I asked what she meant when she said she knew that the paintings were fakes,” Merlin says.

“Did she tell you?”

“She said that she had them swapped out for fakes after Uther bought them and before they shipped them to him.”

“What?” Arthur shouts. “She what?”

“She’s lying,” Merlin is quick to add. “The paintings are real, I promise, Arthur.”

Arthur pulls over to the shoulder so he can face Merlin and not worry about crashing the car. “Are you sure? Are you positive?”

“I promise they’re real. I authenticated some of them and I know who authenticated the others.” He shrugs. “When money is tight I sometimes do work for auction houses. Especially after Paris, I was interested in the Pendragon collection.”

Arthur stares at him, unsure what he is supposed to say to all of this.

“They’re real, Arthur. This is just Nimueh trying to mess with you.”

Arthur knew all along that this was the logical explanation, that Uther couldn’t have been swindled. It isn’t until right now when he hears Merlin say it that he can really believe it.

He starts the car and pulls back into traffic.

“Uther will be pleased to hear it,” is all he says.

Arthur parks the car on his father’s driveway. “Maybe you should wait in the car this time,” he says to Merlin.

Merlin rolls his eyes and gets out of the car. Arthur presses his lips together to stop a smile as he follows Merlin.

Uther doesn’t answer when they knock, so Arthur lets them in with the spare key.

“Uther?” he calls. “Dad?”

No answer. No lights are on in the house, as far as Arthur can tell. He looks at Merlin and they shrug at each other. Arthur leads them through the house. Merlin trails behind him slowly, admiring the art on the walls.

Arthur laughs softly. “If you think this is good…” he says, leading them to the gallery in the back of the house.

He pushes the door open, careful to keep his eyes on Merlin’s face so that he can see his reaction when he sees the collection for the first time. It is not the reaction he expects; Merlin’s face crumples and he looks horrified. Arthur peers into the room to see what could merit such a reaction.

It is Uther, surrounded by the tattered canvas of paintings and the splintered wood of frames.

“What have you done?” Arthur cries, rushing to his father.

Uther looks around in surprise. “Arthur?”

“What the fuck- what the fuck is all of this?” He gets no answer. Uther turns away and looks at a painting that Arthur barely recognizes as Nimueh’s portrait of Ygraine. It is soaked and dented, like someone threw a drink at it.

Arthur picks another painting gingerly off of the back of a chair over which Uther had smashed it. The canvas is torn almost entirely out of its frame. Arthur looks at it helplessly, then up at Merlin. Merlin’s face is twisted with anger and Arthur finds he can’t look at him for long. He holds the painting out to Merlin, who takes it in his hands.

“This was an Ivanov,” Merlin says in a furious, shaking voice. “This was a masterpiece.”

Uther stands abruptly, and Arthur takes a hasty step back. “And I paid for it,” Uther says in a voice every bit as angry as Merlin’s, “which means it’s mine.” And I can do what I want with things that are mine, his expression says.

“That’s one of the paintings that Nimueh discredited, isn’t it?” Arthur says. He looks around at the ruined paintings littering the floor. “Are these all the paintings she mentioned?”

“They’re fakes,” Uther shouts. “Nimueh called here yesterday, said that she had changed out all these originals for these worthless copies.”

“She was lying,” Arthur yells back. “She just said that to fuck with you. Christ, Uther, did you really think she could do that?”

Uther whitens; he clearly hadn’t thought that Nimueh could be lying. He looks down at the torn paintings around his feet. Like Nimueh said, these paintings are worthless to him now.

Arthur sees the realization dawn on him and sees him switch from disbelief to anger, already formulating his next play in this wasteful game.

“Stop, whatever you’re thinking, just stop,” Arthur says. Merlin shifts in his peripheral vision. Arthur looks at him quickly and Merlin gives him a small nod.

Uther gestures at the ruined art around him. “Arthur…” he says.

“No, you can’t, I won’t let you two keep going like this,” Arthur says. Uther opens his mouth to argue, but Arthur can’t be stopped. “This is art, it’s history, it’s so beyond whatever you and Nimueh are doing with it. You don’t deserve this collection, neither of you.” He needs Uther to understand. It isn’t enough to have him listen, he needs to know that his words are cutting his father to his core and really reaching him. “Mom would hate this.”

Uther points a shaking, accusing finger at Arthur. “Don’t- you never knew her- never knew what she wanted.”

“I can’t believe that she would want any of this,” Arthur shouts, gesturing around. He looks back to Merlin again. Merlin is holding the Ivanov, holding the canvas delicately back in its place in the frame.

When he looks back at Uther, Uther has drawn himself to his full height and is looking flintily down at his son. “Like it or not, Arthur, this is my collection. Conjuring your mother’s memory doesn’t change that.” He cracks a cold smile. “It’s my collection,” he repeats.

“No,” Arthur says slowly. “I don’t think it is.” He takes in everything around him in a quick moment: the ruined paintings, the ones still hanging on the wall and waiting for Uther to ruin them too, Uther with his red and white face, Merlin alternating his gaze between Arthur and the art. He thinks about the paintings hanging in his apartment. “Right,” Arthur says, making his decision. “I’m taking the collection off your hands, Father.”

Uther laughs. “You can’t.”

“I guess we can test that in court,” Arthur says wearied by the very idea of it. “But come on, Uther. Look at all of this.” He pauses to let Uther examine his handiwork. Merlin helpfully holds up the Ivanov. “Give me the collection.”

Uther sways. He sits down heavily. Merlin comes up next to Arthur. He brushes the back of Arthur’s hand with his own, the way Arthur did to him at the museum. Arthur doesn’t hesitate to thread his fingers together with Merlin’s, pulling him close enough that their shoulders bump. Uther is oblivious to it; he stares at Ygraine's damaged image, tears in his eyes. Arthur thinks that if he pushes now, Uther will crumble and give him the collection. He will also never speak to Arthur again. So Arthur tries for patience, to let Uther get there on his own.

“All right,” Uther says, breaking the long silence. “Just get it all out of here.”

**

Arthur would have been lost without Merlin and Gwen over the next four months, would have given up and returned it all to Uther’s ownership. Then again, without Merlin he would have never claimed the collection in the first place.

He took a leave of absence from Pendragon Ltd the first month when he had the most work to do with the collection. Opening a public gallery was a lot more work that he could have predicted. Uther didn’t meet his eye when he went into his office to request the leave. Arthur still isn’t sure if that was more because he took ownership of the collection, or because he walked out of his father’s house holding hands with Merlin. Either way, Arthur avoided him for a while afterwards.

He did send him an invitation to the gallery opening, though. He didn’t expected Uther to accept, but there he is across the room, looking at a piece that used to hang in his house. Arthur should go talk to him. Perhaps in a little while.

Gwen refused to leave her work at Pendragon Ltd even for the month when they were first getting the public gallery set up. Incredibly, she divided her time between those two jobs. She looks so proud. She isn’t even looking at any of the art, just standing in the midst of it all, beaming like a proud mother. Arthur catches her eye and raises his glass to her in a toast. She doesn’t have a drink, so he raises an imaginary one back. Arthur grins at her.

“You look happy,” comes a voice to his right. He turns to see Morgana beside him, stunning in her long black gown. She takes her gallery openings very seriously, even when it is just her brother’s gallery.

“I am,” he says. He catches himself about to look over to where Merlin is talking to Gwaine. Although Merlin has spent a third of a year working with these paintings as they set up the gallery, he insisted on walking around like a tourist to take it all in tonight.

Morgana smirks at him. She saw him nearly-look at Merlin. “How is that going?” she asks.

This time Arthur does look across the room at Merlin. Merlin glances up at that moment from his conversation with Gwaine. Their eyes meet and it is suddenly a private moment, their moment. The buzz of voices fades away, the gallery softens in focus and the two of them exist with only each other in that glance.