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"That boy is a scoundrel through and through. He's no good for you and he'll break your heart, Merlin, you mark my words."
Merlin pauses in the middle of setting out Arthur's breakfast and considers pretending he doesn't know what Arthur's on about. But he knows his scarf is doing a poor job of hiding the love-bite purpling high up on his neck, and the way Arthur's eyes are burning into him is beginning to disconcert him. So he deliberately focuses on the wrong part of Arthur's statement and says, "Hardly a boy, sire. He's older than you."
Arthur huffs. "Exactly. It isn't right, an older man of the world preying on a naïve young servant. Dirty rotten scoundrel."
Merlin's not sure exactly when Arthur stopped seeing him as a chronically incompetent manservant and began seeing him as a sweet blushing maiden of fourteen, but it might have been around the time Gwaine started leaving small bouquets of dried flowers tied with ribbon at Gaius's door for him.
"He's promiscuous and he has no sense of decency," Arthur continues, seating himself at the table. He mutters a steady stream of choice insults about Gwaine's lack of honour and burgeoning alcoholism and ridiculous dedication to his windswept hairstyle.
"But I like his hair," Merlin says mildly.
"His freewheeling hair is emblematic of his freewheeling affections, and when he tires of you, which he'll likely do in a very short while, you'll find out that he knows neither fidelity nor integrity—"
"He's saved your life at least three times and counting, Arthur. Surely you can give him a little credit."
"I gave him a knighthood," Arthur says. "Isn't that enough? What more does he want from me?"
Merlin sticks a fork into Arthur's clenched fist. "Eat your breakfast," he advises.
* * *
Gwaine flirts shamelessly with everybody on feast days. Gwaine flirts shamelessly with everybody on any given day, really, but his generosity with his dazzling smiles and casual touches is especially noticeable on feast days, when there are a great many more people around to be on the receiving end of it.
Merlin, standing next to Arthur's seat at the head of the table, watches Gwaine with an indulgent smile. He keeps Arthur's goblet filled with ruby red wine and doesn't notice the way Arthur's knuckles whiten around its stem when Gwaine makes an exceptionally forward pass at a visiting knight's sister, causing her to flush and slap him on the shoulder in badly feigned affront. Shortly after, Gwaine happens to catch Merlin's eye over the top of a serving girl's head. He bats his eyelashes at Merlin and Merlin's answering laugh sounds more like a giggle than it should. The sound of Arthur grinding his teeth goes entirely unheard by Merlin.
Later that night, as Merlin helps Arthur ready for bed, he gets an earful from the prince.
"Did you see the way he touched those girls? No knight's hand should ever wander that low on the back of a lady who is not his wife. Even if he weren't already attached to someone else, it would still be unacceptable behaviour. The fact that he is only compounds the insult."
Smoothing down Arthur's sheets, Merlin snickers and retorts, "You sound like a crotchety old grandmother, bemoaning the immoral behaviour of kids these days."
"I do not take offence out of prudishness," Arthur says, unconvincingly. "I take offence on your behalf."
"Touching as it is," Merlin says, rolling his eyes as Arthur turns his back to lay his shirt aside, "my honour doesn't require your indignation. I don't mind his conduct at all. Gwaine is friendly by nature, but it is only ever friendliness with anyone other than me."
Arthur climbs into bed and looks deeply sceptical. "I don't like it," he declares. "He is a taken man and should act becoming one, no matter how tolerant you may be."
"He is a lovely, sociable, affectionate man, and I have no desire to ask him to change," Merlin says, partly because it's funny to see Arthur grimace at his soppy words and partly because it's true.
"You shouldn't have to ask. He should want to change for you."
None of this conversation with Arthur bothers Merlin in the slightest, because he's confident that he'll find Gwaine alone in bed when he steals into his chambers before the end of the first guards' watch. He tucks the blankets firmly under Arthur's chin and says, "Goodnight, sire."
* * *
Apropos of nothing, Arthur starts giving a speech on the vast power difference between Sir Gwaine the noble and Merlin the lowly serf, as Merlin is struggling to carry two heavy bucketfuls of water back to Gaius's one morning.
"Did you come all the way out here just to tell me that?" Merlin asks, grunting as he puts his shoulders to work.
"Don't be absurd. I had other business near the well. The world doesn't revolve around you, you know."
Merlin is pretty sure he saw Arthur come straight from the castle without stopping for any other "business," but he wisely keeps this observation to himself. So his lord wants to harass him at his chores and tell him something he's already aware of. So what? Arthur has acted on stranger impulses.
"The thing about Gwaine's status as a noble," Arthur resumes as though Merlin hadn't interrupted, "is that it puts him in a position of dominance in your relationship. It may be hard to tell where the line is drawn between consent and coercion."
"Oh, for—coercion, Arthur? Really?"
"I am not accusing anyone of anything, but who's to say Gwaine isn't taking advantage?"
Exasperation overwhelms Merlin's already feeble ability to hold his tongue. "As though you and Gwen aren't separated by an even larger class divide."
"That's different," Arthur says archly. "My love for Gwen is pure and chaste as the untouched dew at dawn."
Merlin's lips twitch in amusement, casting Arthur a sidelong glance. "My lord, are you implying that…are you acting this way because you're tired of being 'untouched'?"
"…No."
"Are you jealous that I don't spend my nights alone? Tell me, are you actually concerned for me, or are you just envious that the dew on my grass gets thoroughly trampled every dawn?" Merlin is having a hard time keeping his buckets from spilling, shaking as he is from suppressed laughter.
Arthur stops short. They're still a few dozen yards from the castle, but he turns on his heels. "No. No. Let us drop this subject forever," he says imperiously, before walking quickly away.
"Gladly," Merlin calls after him. He hauls the water to Gaius's room whistling a cheery tune.
* * *
"Do you at least have plans to marry?" Arthur asks.
Merlin pushes back from the window, out of which he had been leaning to wave at Gwaine in the courtyard below, and groans. "Didn't you just leave?"
"I forgot this," Arthur says, grabbing a piece of parchment from his table. "Stop avoiding my question."
"It is not the custom in Camelot for a man to marry another man. Why are we even talking about this?"
"It's a disgrace to carry on this way with someone you don't even intend to marry. He'll leave your reputation in ruins."
Despite agreeing to never speak of it again, Merlin still suspects that Arthur's main problem with Gwaine is his openness to premarital sex. He has to duck his head to hide his grin at the hilarity of Arthur being a gigantic prude. "Alright, but why are you talking to me about this? You're not my mother, Arthur."
"No, I'm not. But your mother lives so very far away and Gwaine's hair is so very shiny. Somebody has to look out for your interests."
"Gaius—"
"Gaius is old, and doesn't know anything about the new fashions of courting."
"With all due respect, sire, I don't think you do either."
Arthur's nostrils flare in annoyance and he storms out of his room, crumpling his no doubt important parchment in his fist.
Merlin watches him go, and then leans back out of the window. Gwaine, who is still standing in the courtyard waiting for Merlin's reappearance, blows him a kiss. Merlin pretends to reach out and catch it. Somewhere in the castle, Arthur develops a headache.
* * *
Helmets and shields fall from Merlin's arms with a loud clang. Merlin winces. He braces himself for a lecture about treating the accoutrements of knighthood with due reverence, because Arthur's just in that pissy kind of mood today, but none comes. Arthur doesn't even look like he noticed how Merlin's dropped all the armour onto the floor.
"Was it really necessary to make me carry everything to the armoury all at once?" Merlin hazards to complain.
"Gwaine did not defend you," Arthur says.
"What?"
"When I heaped verbal abuse on you after practice, and kicked you in the rear, and commanded you to carry an unreasonably heavy load back to the castle, he stood by and did nothing but frown."
"You did all that just to test Gwaine?" Merlin strains to remind himself that commanding the great dragon to eat the crown prince of Camelot would be a bad idea, no matter how enticing it may currently seem. "I think I have bruises from your boot."
"And whose fault is that?"
What Merlin wants to say is yours, obviously, you inconsiderate, unreasonable, utterly delusional bastard, but he had heard some farmers say it would be an early frost tonight and he doesn't fancy spending a night in the stocks if it's going to be nippy out, so what he says instead is, "But Arthur, the last time Gwaine stood up for me, you told him never to flout your authority like that again or he would be exiled once more, this time not just from the kingdom but from human society itself."
What had happened was, Merlin had been called out of bed in the wee hours of the morn to help Arthur sand down a rough spot on his new bench because he couldn't sleep and suddenly remembered it needed doing. Gwaine had accompanied him to Arthur's room, because when Merlin was awoken then so, naturally, was his bedmate. When Merlin, clumsy in his groggy state, pricked his finger on splinter and got a miniscule smear of blood on Arthur's bench, Arthur had cursed him soundly and cuffed him upside the head. All Gwaine had done was politely suggest that they finish the job in the morning, when the prince was in a better mood and Merlin was more awake, so that they would both be better suited to completing the task without violence. It had been smooth and it had been tactful, Gwaine at his charming finest. It had hardly warranted Arthur's overdramatic and most likely hollow threat, because even Arthur doesn't have the power to guarantee that someone is exiled from humanity itself. Unless he'd meant that he would stuff Gwaine into a box and throw to the bottom of the ocean, which frankly Merlin wouldn't put past him sometimes, irrationally ill-tempered as he can be about Gwaine.
* * *
A week after Arthur gets angry at Gwaine for not defending Merlin (which corresponds to about three weeks after Arthur gets angry at Gwaine for defending Merlin), Arthur gets angry at Gwaine again. This time, it's for the extra flourish Gwaine performs with his sword when he notices Merlin watching the drills from the sidelines.
Merlin is usually busy with a million other chores during Arthur's sword practice, but he finishes his inventory of Gaius's wild herb supply unexpectedly early one afternoon and goes to watch the knights doing what they do best. They're repeating the same set of steps in perfect harmony, while Arthur calls out instructions. Merlin leans against a wall and observes their unison, the clarity of their movements, the strength of their intent, and the really rather delicious way their sweat slides down the backs of their necks.
Gwaine, sensing Merlin's presence the way he does, pulls off his helmet to give Merlin a wink. He tosses his head and shakes out his lovely mane, then, as Sir Leon lunges, Gwaine adds in an agile and very impressive double feint before he too lunges.
"Gwaine!" Arthur barks. He pulls him aside and Gwaine unsurprisingly gets a stern talking-to for not respecting the sanctity of military synchronicity or somesuch nonsense.
Merlin rolls his eyes and decides he would make it up to Gwaine later that night.
"If you're going to allow distractions to waver your commitment to the hallowed traditions of the sword, then you may as well not even bother being a Knight of Camelot at all," Arthur concludes.
Merlin decides he would make it up to Gwaine twice that night, because he's had plenty of experience with having to pretend to listen when Arthur waxes rhapsodic about the sanctity of knighthood and takes himself way too seriously, and it's sweet of Gwaine to endure that pain just to impress Merlin.
As soon as Arthur turns his head to say something to Sir Leon, Gwaine sneaks another wink at Merlin. Arthur would've been livid if he had seen.
Sweet and daring. How could Merlin possibly resist?
* * *
Arthur calmly strides into Gwaine's room one day, sword drawn, and without preamble says, "If you ever do wrong by Merlin, a prized servant by royal appointment and my ward besides, you will answer to the point of my sword." And then, before Gwaine even has time to fully detach his mouth from Merlin's to respond, Arthur turns around and walks right back out again.
Gwaine frowns. "I thought I locked the door?"
Merlin, partially under Gwaine's gloriously sculpted chest and fully surrounded by his manful arms, says "Locks don't stop him. He has the keys to every room. It's his castle."
"Right." Gwaine frowns for a few seconds more, then shrugs it off. He leans down to resume his previous activities with Merlin's tongue but stops when Merlin pulls his head slightly back.
"Gwaine. Thank you."
"For what?"
"For putting up with Arthur's ludicrous behaviour. We've been together for more than a year now, and he still does horrendously inappropriate things like that. If my destiny weren't entwined with his I'd be tempted to drown him in the moat for you."
"To be honest, I don't really mind that much," Gwaine says, and laughs at Merlin's incredulous look. "I think his overprotectiveness of you is commendable. The interruptions, inconveniences, and embarrassing public scoldings are but a small price to pay for the peace of mind that comes with knowing there is another person in the world who values your safety almost as highly as I do."
Merlin melts, into Gwaine's arms, into his bed, into the warm glow of his smile. They stare for so long and with so much sincerity into each other's eyes that somewhere in the castle, Arthur begins to develop an ulcer.
* end.