whynot | 'Halcyon Days'. Merlin, Will. PG. Birthday fic for Z.

The mood graphic is appropriate in every way and I <3 it. You know what else I <3?

zempasuchil, whose birthday it is today! This one's for you, girl! You came this close to getting Marx/Engels, but Merlin and Will's bucolic bromance won out in the end. Yay? Take that, commies!

I almost used "or did i hear you sing/that we'll end where we begin" as the cut-text. It's from the song 'I Understand It' by Idlewild (lyrics!, listen/download!), which accidentally became my Merlin&Will song when I was browsing my music library for title inspiration. This song has always been able to do funny things to my heart, but with the added Merlin&Will associations, it's a verklempt party up in here.

Halcyon Days
Merlin. Merlin, Will, Hunith, aaand... Old Man Simmons! PG. Thanks to

stealingpennies for the beta.
Merlin and Will from the past to the beginning.

- 5 -
“That’s stupid,” Will said. “That’s completely fucking stupid.”

Merlin raised his eyebrows. “Are you calling my mother stupid?”

Will threw up his hands. “Sure, why not? It’s better than the other things I could call her.”

“Hey.”

“First of all,” Will said, “I would not tell. I’ve been not telling people about you for how many years now?”

“I know that—”

“Second of all,” Will continued, “Camelot is a terrible place.”

“How do you know?” Merlin challenged. “You’ve never been there.”

“I’m serious! They shit in pots and buckets and empty it out the window when it’s full.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Merlin said, but his tone was dubious.

“Third of all! Who’s going to watch my back when Old Man Simmons comes after me with a pitchfork?”

Merlin grinned. “If you can’t outrun Old Man Simmons, you have a whole set of problems you haven’t even begun to worry about.”

But Will was firm. “You’re a little shit,” he said. “The shittiest shit to ever be shat. Moreover, you are a complete tosser.”

“Is this going somewhere?”

“You can’t just leave!” Will cried out, and there was a strain in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

Merlin looked down, trying to ignore the unspoken ‘me’ at the end of the sentence and the stirrings of guilt that came with it. “Look,” he began, “my mother has essentially thrown me out of the house, and—“

“Live with me.”

“-she says it’s for my own good anyway. I have to go!”

“You don’t have to do anything!”

It was the head-butting of those who knew there was nothing to be done. It was probably still better than just letting things roll over you, though. It wasn’t Will’s fault that Hunith found out he knew about Merlin’s magic, but Will was still acting like maybe if he mustered up enough indignation, he could convince the universe to undo the course of events. Maybe this time, when Hunith turned the corner, Merlin wouldn’t be levitating berries in the air while Will jumped and tried to catch them in his mouth.

What Merlin didn’t want to say was that he sort of wanted to leave. Or rather, he wanted to arrive. It wasn’t that he wanted to leave his mother behind, or Will, or the only home he ever knew. Departure was an ominous prospect, but arrival, on the other hand, sounded pretty promising. He’d like to arrive somewhere, maybe start something. These days Will would ramble on about things like the girl he had been seeing or the best way to set a snare, and Merlin’s mind would wander and wonder if a place existed where he wouldn’t have hide to his magic. Merlin loved his mother and Will, but there can be something exhausting about having only two people know who you really are.

“Poncing off to Camelot because your mother told you to,” Will scoffed. “I’ve never heard of anything more pathetic.”

As invigorating as Will’s shouting was, Merlin decided that enough was enough. Merlin may be thick-skinned, but he wasn’t patient, and he hated seeing Will worked up about something he couldn’t change. “Hey,” Merlin cut in, “want to break into the tavern storeroom and steal some ale?”

Will thought about this for two and a half seconds. “Yeah, okay.”

It was the luxury of the young and impetuous to have most problems solved by massive quantities of beer and cheerful twattery. Okay, maybe not solved per se, more like ‘nicely distracted from’. He was leaving in a few days, so if Will insisted on harassing him until then, then Merlin might as well be drunk for some of it.

Afterwards, when they were stumbling away, Will slung his arm around Merlin’s shoulders with the violent exuberance of the truly sloshed, and said, “I’ll miss you, you fucking bastard.”

“You’re the bastard,” Merlin gurgled fondly, and Will laughed.

The remaining days were stuffed to the brim with activity. His mother busied herself gathering supplies for ten thousand trips to Camelot, sending Merlin hither and thither to get a variety of things. However, she still found the time to catch him unawares and make him recite the directions to her, and this happened often enough that it was a wonder Merlin hadn’t started reciting the directions to Camelot in his sleep. He fielded his mother’s fussing and Will’s vacillation between affection and belligerence with the same accommodation. Merlin just had to keep everything in perspective: soon he would be gone from here.

In the end, his mother gave him a hug and a kiss, and instructions to be good, be careful. Watch out for bandits and stick to the main roads. Find Gaius.

“I will,” Merlin promised.

“And don’t eat too much garlic,” Hunith warned. “You know what it does to your stomach.”

And with that, Merlin was off.

To his relief, Will was waiting over the next hill, watching the sheep from under the shade of an oak. Will usually didn’t take the sheep to graze here. Merlin said, “I thought you weren’t going to show up.”

“Camelot, is it?” Will said as Merlin walked over to him. “What’ve you got that grin on your face for?”

“Because you’re ugly and it makes me laugh.” Merlin opened his arms. “Come here, you idiot. I won’t be able to see you for who knows how long.”

Will rolled his eyes, but he was a little red-faced when he got to his feet. “You’re like an old woman,” he muttered, but embraced Merlin tightly and whole-heartedly. In a muffled voice he added, “I still don’t see why you have to leave.”

“Well, um,” Merlin said, flustered by his tone. “Don’t think about it too hard. You might hurt your brain.”

Will conceded a smile. “Prick. Take care of yourself.”

“You too.”

When Merlin reached the peak of the next hill, he turned around. Will, a tiny silhouette blurring into the oak, waved at him. Merlin waved back.

- 4 -
There was an apple tree by Old Man Simmons's cottage that definitely did not belong to him, although Simmons certainly liked to think it did. His grandfather had planted that tree back in the day (or so he liked to say) for the benefit of his descendants, which did not include Merlin and Will.

It was unfair. The tree should belong to everyone. And it wasn't eight paces from his cottage and therefore his by dint of proximity, as he claimed; it was, in fact, eleven and a half paces by both Will and Merlin's counts. When they brought the matter to his attention, Simmons had retorted, "The Simmons men have always had a large stride!"

Will and Merlin were unmoved.

So, really, they weren't stealing the apples, but liberating them from his tyrannical rule, and Simmons was just overreacting as usual. It was just Will's modus operandi to return overreaction with like overreaction.

"Run!" Will bellowed.

Merlin slung the sack of apples over his shoulder and bolted. Behind him, he heard the rustle of branches and a heavy thump when Will landed on the ground. He ventured a glance over his shoulder and saw Will quickly catching up, grinning triumphantly, and Old Man Simmons further behind them, waving his fists and yelling obscenities.

"Hurry up!" Merlin yelled at Will, as threats of hell and damnation carried to them upon the wind.

"He's going to tell my mother again," Merlin panted when they reached the copse by the pond. “She’s going to kill me.”

The copse was a predictable hideaway, but the boys had concocted elaborate schemes to camouflage themselves with magic and strategically placed foliage in case someone should ever come here looking for them. To their disappointment, no one ever had.

"We better eat the evidence." Will shrugged, reaching into the sack and tossing an apple to Merlin.

"We should hide some of them. Store them away or something."

“No, animals’d get them. We worked hard for these apples.”

They weighed the relative merits and faults of hiding them, conversing around mouthfuls of apple until all the apples were gone and there was a small mountain of cores between them. Although Will effectually won the conversation, Merlin still thought they should’ve stored some apples, or at least waited until the apples were riper before stealing them. Merlin’s stomach was beginning to feel the unfortunate effects of unripe fruit. It was just that there was just no stopping Will once he started planning a righteous heist.

"What should we do now?" Will asked.

"Maybe take a shit," Merlin murmured, rubbing his belly.

“That can wait,” Will said, pushing himself to his feet. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Dunno. We’ll see.”

It was a good answer as any. Merlin wiped his sticky hands on his shirt and took Will’s proffered hand, pulling himself upright. They started walking, leaving the apple cores as offerings for whatever scavenger happened to be scavenging by. Will pondered aloud the possibilities of finding berries the next hill over, and Merlin suspected they would both come down with a wicked stomachache later. Well, Merlin reckoned he wasn’t going to let that stop him. After all, summer was ending, and they should take advantage of the long days while they could.

- 3 -
"What do you mean he's dead?" Will demanded. "He can’t be dead! What do you mean he's dead?"

Over and over and over again, like Will truly had no idea what the word meant. He let loose a tirade of accusations and curses that continued long after the soldiers had left, so it was Merlin who listened to him, even when some of the abuse was directed at Merlin himself. Will's abuse was directed at everything right now, even at his father, for being stupid enough to trust powerful men, for being an ignorant bootlicker, for not being better with a sword. Merlin didn't really know what to say, and so felt awkward when Will finally exhausted his anger and just knelt silently by his father's body, his fists clenched white and his expression openly broken in a way Merlin had never seen before.

"Do you, um," Merlin said. "Do you want me to go?"

"I don't care," Will rasped.

So Merlin stayed.

Hunith came over with soup and warm embraces for all. "I'm not hungry," Will muttered, but she paid him no mind. If there was anything that Hunith was good at, it was being everyone’s mother, and she refilled their bowls without even asking.

"Really, I'm f--" Will began, but she silenced him with a look that managed to be stern and loving at the same time. A specialty of mothers.

"You stay with him tonight, Merlin," Hunith ordered, when all the soup was gone.

"He doesn't need to," Will said.

"He'll be doing it as a favor to me," she clarified, and wagged her finger at Will. "Don't go around denying old women their favors, William, it's impolite."

Will stared at her, then looked down and mumbled, "Sorry."

Hunith took his face in both her hands, and Will bent down so she could kiss his forehead. She pulled him into one more crushing hug. "William, my dear boy," she murmured, "if you ever need anything, you know you just have to ask."

When Hunith left, Merlin asked if Will needed help putting his father’s armor away. Will said no, picked up the chain mail, and just stood there. He stared at it, looking lost, and Merlin - once more feeling like an intruder - mumbled something about taking a piss and went outside. When he came back, the armor was still in a heap on the table, and Will was back in his chair by his father’s body, looking off into the distance, arms crossed and face drawn. Merlin took his seat beside him, and together they waited for the morning.

That week, the air was heavy with the smell of the dead burning on their pyres. When Merlin wasn't with Will, he was helping his mother cook food that she would then take to grieving households. There were a lot.

Merlin spent time with Will when he could, though it wasn’t always easy. Understanding why Will was sullen and irritable didn’t make his sullenness and irritability any easier to deal with, but his mother always insisted. “You’re all he’s got now,” she would say to Merlin, and the words weighed heavily on Merlin’s shoulders. Will may be his best friend, but it was too daunting to be someone’s everything.

“It’s like he doesn’t see what’s there,” Merlin said, peeling potatoes with his mother one night. “He just sees what isn’t. You can’t compete with that.”

“Then don’t,” Hunith replied. “Just do what you do. For such a troublemaker, you’ve always been good at taking care of people. It’s a strange combination, but it seems to work for you, so don’t think about it too much.”

Through trial and error, grousing and sniping, Merlin and Will eventually established the routine of going to the river to fish. There was no pressure to talk or remain engaged then. Will would often spend the time napping, having figured out how to rig his pole to a tree so the current wouldn’t drag it from his hands as he slept. Although Merlin would tease him about being a layabout, he would be quiet once Will closed his eyes. There were dark circles under his eyes that bespoke of sleepless nights, but during these afternoons of doing fuck-all on the riverbank, Will slept soundly.

At sundown, Merlin shook Will’s shoulders. “Hey. It’s time to go.”

“Mmmph.” Will rubbed his eyes. “Did I catch anything?”

“Yeah, right.”

He sighed. “Well. I hear the fish are pretty feisty in these parts.”

“I hear the fishermen are lazy sods in these parts,” Merlin smiled, and together they untied Will’s fishing pole from the tree.

- 2 -
After making sure no one was around, they shed their clothes and slipped into the water. Once the compulsory splashing war was out of the way, Merlin said, "Hey, I figured out how to magic things bigger."

"Yeah?” Will said, nonchalant. “Make me taller."

Merlin rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to make you taller.”

“Give me bigger muscles.”

“No! What if I end up making your arms fall off or something.”

Will snorted. "I bet you use magic to make yourself taller."

"Do not."

"Yeah, well, you're definitely not using it on your muscles."

Merlin splashed him. "Fuck off."

"Oy," Will sputtered. "Careful there, I don't think you'll win a rematch. I'm full of splashy vengeance."

"Yeah, you're full of something." Merlin pushed himself onto a rock and said, "Hand me a bulrush."

Will paddled over to the bank and snapped off a plant as long as his arm, then swam on his back to Merlin, holding the bulrush aloft. Merlin took it and looked at his own reflection in the water's surface. He gathered the magic inside him: a vague prickly sensation that traveled from somewhere indefinable to along his veins and across his skin, into his hand.

The bulrush grew and grew, and his reflection’s eyes glowed with unearthly light. He never really thought about what he looked like when he did magic. He usually didn't have time to think about it anyway; he may have better control over his powers now, but the magic used to go from within him to outside of him without bothering to consult his brain. This had resulted in things like The Potato Incident and That One Time With The Geese, but it also saved Will's life once, so Merlin reckoned it wasn’t all bad. Yet, as Merlin stared at his reflection’s eyes, he was reminded of the first time he really understood why he needed to hide what he really was, how diminished the world suddenly felt.

"Um," Will said. "Merlin."

Merlin looked up. In his navel-gazing, he had completely lost track of his bulrush. It was now as tall as a man, with a stalk as thick as a spear and a pulpy head as big as his forearm. Merlin had this to say: “…Woah.”

He shook it around experimentally, and bits of bulrush seed fell around him like snow.

"Magical ability beyond our wildest imaginings," Will said, "and you use it to make giant bulrushes."

Merlin inspected the plant. "I dunno. It's not bad."

"What are you going to do with a giant bulrush?"

"This," Merlin replied, and smacked Will's face with it.

Merlin may have won the splashing war, but Will proved himself quite handy with a giant bulrush. They were Sirs Merlin and Will of Ealdor, dueling each other for honor and glory, even if the glory was somewhat dampened by the fact that, in lieu of armor, they were naked and, in lieu of swords, they were armed only with marshland vegetation. They went through multiple giant bulrushes, smacking each other up and down the banks until the air was thick with the downy flakes of bulrush seeds that settled in their hair and clung to their bodies. Merlin told Will he looked like a chicken, so Will flapped his elbows and buckawed loudly, to which Merlin said that the resemblance was now truly uncanny. Will just hit him with the bulrush again.

"Hey," Merlin said when they washed themselves off in the pond afterward. "Will."

"What?" Will said, combing plant matter out of his hair with his fingers.

Merlin hesitated. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to ask the question. Maybe he needed to. Or, maybe he didn’t, but just wanted to. Spit it out, you idiot. "Do you think I'm even human?" he asked.

Will looked up, frowning. “What?”

“You know.” Merlin grabbed a fistful of damp bulrush seeds and made them levitate, hovering above his palm. He looked into Will’s eyes, which had never once glowed gold. Will had never made things move without touching them, had never heated water with just a touch. Merlin had never met anyone else who had done these things. Of magical kinship, he had nothing but the fairy tales his mother used to tell him when he was younger. He only had legends and their intangible but trenchant power.

Understanding dawned on Will’s face, and he said, “Oh. Well, yeah. Of course.” He shrugged, and his smile was genuine. “I mean, a human who's not very good at bulrush jousting, but no one’s perfect.”

Merlin smiled back, but splashed Will for good measure anyway.

- 1 -
In the end, what else could Merlin have done? If your friend was halfway up a tree and the branch broke under him, and you could do something to stop him from falling to his death, then you would do it, right? It was just the thing to do.

Merlin had one hand out as if reaching for Will, who seemed to be reaching back. He hovered in midair below Merlin and far above the ground, an expression of absolute terror on his face. The forest floor seemed impossibly far away.

"Grab a branch, you stupid bastard," Merlin croaked. "I can't do this forever."

But Will just gaped like all self-preservation instincts had deserted him. Merlin supposed someone with self-preservation instincts wouldn't race you to the top of the tallest tree in the forest in the first place, but that didn't speak well for Merlin. It had been Will's idea, but Merlin was the one who started climbing before Will finished counting to three.

"Will!" Merlin shouted. "Come on!"

That seemed to pull Will out of whatever trance he was in. He started flailing first for one branch then another, but to no avail. "Move me closer!” Will shouted. “Agh!" he added when he crashed into the trunk.

"Sorry. You all right?"

"You did that on purpose!" he shrilled.

"I didn't!" Merlin checked to see that Will was safely back on the tree before relaxing the magic. He pretended his heart wasn’t pounding in his chest, and said, "I didn’t. You're just clumsy. Don’t deny it, you just fell out of a tree. "

"If you hadn't cheated, then I wouldn't have been rushing," Will grumbled, unable to keep the quaver from his voice. "I would have been more careful and I wouldn't have fallen."

"No one wants your excuses, Will."

Will sat on a nearby branch and looked at Merlin with an expression he didn't know how to interpret, and usually he could read Will like a book. Merlin heard that great sorcerers could read minds sometimes, and he wished he could do that now. This wasn’t just anyone discovering his secret: this was Will. This was Merlin’s oldest friend, and that gave him the fiercest of hope and the heaviest dread. What was Will going to do? Might Merlin have to… neutralize him somehow? Why was Merlin even in a position where he needed to think that? He just wanted Will to not hate him or kill him, or run him out of Ealdor, or any of the other things his mother had warned him people would do if they found out.

“Surprise,” Merlin said weakly, and grinned in a hopeful sort of way.

Will made a noise halfway between a grunt and a sigh, accompanied by a shrug – Merlin didn’t even know where to begin figuring that combination out. Will ran his hand through his hair and looked heavenward as if silently asking, “Really? Really?” And finally, Will said, “Yeah, surprise. That’s one way of putting it.” Then he smiled, and Merlin exhaled the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Merlin said, boisterous with relief. “You know, for saving your life.”

Will nodded a little detachedly, still taking it in. “Right, thanks. I mean, it goes without saying that I appreciate it.”

“Do you never thank the ones who save you from certain death?”

“We’ll have to see. That was the first time it ever happened.”

“Fair enough,” Merlin said. “I think.”

“Would’ve been better if you hadn’t made me crash into the tree,” Will shrugged.

It finally happened: someone who wasn’t his mother finally found out about the magic, and the world didn’t end. Will wasn’t running away or declaring him an enemy; he was just sitting on a branch, looking overcome and slightly sheepish, far from hostile. Merlin couldn’t manage a more scathing reply than: “Oh, shut up.”

"So,” Will said, “can you turn people into frogs?"

There was that familiar contemplativeness in Will’s eyes that usually led to a lot of angry yelling and being chased off someone else’s property. "I've never tried," Merlin replied carefully.

"We should try it on Old Man Simmons,” Will decided. “No test subject more deserving."

"I wouldn't want to inflict Old Man Simmons on frog-kind. I don't think they'd be able to handle him."

"Humankind can barely handle him."

"You're still just sore he made you build him a new hen house after your egg-stealing scheme went awry,” Merlin said, amused.

"It was the middle of summer!” Will protested. “I had better things to do than sweat buckets building some coop."

"Will, you hold a grudge like no one else."

"He held it first," he insisted, but Merlin just gave him a critical look. “Fine,” Will sighed. “No frogs.”

“No,” Merlin agreed.

“I suppose we’ll think of something else,” Will mused.

“Yeah,” Merlin grinned. “I guess we will.”

And the world opened up with possibility.

'Halcyon Days'. Merlin, Will. PG. Birthday fic for Z.

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