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From the day he’s born, Merlin has the question “What?” emblazoned on his heart in bold lettering.
There are so many ways to ask, “What?” and Merlin spends much of his childhood imagining how his soulmate will say it to him.
His soulmate might be hard of hearing.
Might be stunned at how gorgeous (or hideous) Merlin grows up to be.
Might be amazed by Merlin’s magic, used heroically to save his soulmate from evildoers - well, probably not, but it’s nice to dream, isn’t it?
Might be angry, curious, or anywhere in between.
...Might, just possibly, be the crown prince of Camelot, now painfully twisting Merlin’s arm up behind him.
*
Uther sits Arthur down when the words appear over his heart, and tells him he’s never to reveal them to anyone.
“Yes, Father,” Arthur says dutifully. He asks, “What does it mean?”
“Someone will say these words to you, someday,” Uther says. “You’re to say nothing back.”
Arthur finds out on his own what the mark truly means, and what Uther’s plan for him is. He holds out hope for years that the disrespectful tone of his soulmate’s first words to him means that she’s a princess, or at least a noble - someone who could speak to him that way, and someone whom his father might let him marry.
When he’s confronted by a big-eared peasant boy, he can’t help blurting out, “What?”
*
Arthur isn’t the only one whose first word to Merlin has been “what”, so when Arthur hides his reaction Merlin dismisses it as a coincidence, until later when Arthur reveals his own mark, and swears his new manservant to secrecy.
From there, their story unfolds very similarly to the one you already know, because being told they’re in love by the words on their skin is entirely superfluous.
It does add insult to injury when the letters fade from Merlin’s skin as Arthur floats away.
*
On a nondescript day centuries later, a brief pain flares on Merlin’s old, wrinkled skin. He thinks nothing of it - he’s really old; random pains aren’t uncommon - until that night, when he takes off his shirt and reads, “You’re the clotpole,” in handwriting he almost thought he’d never see again.
*
There's a whole (pseudo)science devoted to analyzing soulmate marks, as if there's really anything to learn from whether your soulmate's first word to you will be "hi" or "hello", and where the mark appears on your body. Arthur doesn’t believe in any of that, but from his mark, he knows three things about his soulmate:
1) They're going to meet late in life.
2) Arthur’s going to speak first.
3) His soulmate is a bit of an ass.
On Arthur’s first day of university, Arthur is forced to revise the first two of his three assumptions when a guy he's never seen before (who nonetheless seems oddly familiar) out of nowhere yells across the quad at him, "You clotpole, I've been waiting for you forever!”