[fic] 40 Days and 40 Fights, 2/3
Feb. 18th, 2011 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
da_ya_riTitle: 40 Days and 40 Fights
Fandom: Merlin BBC
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~26k
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kura_tan
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur (with background Leon/Morgana)
Warnings: homophobia, elements of bullying, violence & slight gore, maybe underage depending on where you live (Arthur, Merlin & Leon are 17, Morgana is 21)
Summary: High school AU. In which Arthur is (a) the best captain that the volleyball team has seen in ages, (b) too handsome for his own good, and also (c) decidedly not gay; although Merlin agrees with the first two, he's willing to bet that (c) is open for discussion.
Part 1
Fifteen minutes later, Arthur was still at a loss for words, but for entirely different reasons.
"I am not gay," he said at last, slowly, enunciating each word like his entire team was suddenly hard of hearing.
Pellinore shrugged, and scowled down at the ground as though begging it to swallow him up. The rubber of Gareth's shoes squeaked on the floor as he busied himself with stretching his left thigh, as he had been doing for the past minute, and overall, he did quite a good job of pretending not to listen at all. Gawain was still staring at Owain with an expression of utter disbelief, his mouth hanging half open, but nevertheless, Arthur saw the doubtful flicker in his dark eyes when he looked from Owain to him and back again.
Leon was standing a little off to the side, though, his hands balled into fists, and from the way he was glaring at all of them, Arthur suspected that his arrival in the locker room had interrupted a blazing row.
"I don't know, mate," Owain replied, his voice just as even and calm. He had his hands folded across his chest, too tightly to look casual, as though for protection. "Just— y'know, to be sure, yeah?", and he jerked his head in the direction of the showers again.
Arthur was their captain. He knew that he was supposed to yell at all of them and refuse to do this utterly ridiculous thing asked of him. He was the one they had all looked up to ever since he'd joined the team, before he'd even become their leader—for his skill, Arthur knew, and for the way he valued each of them, knew their strengths and weaknesses by heart.
But right now, all he wanted to do was grab his bag from where he'd dropped it to the floor in utter surprise, turn back the way he'd come and run. Owain's face had hardened into a defensive mask, a look Arthur didn't recognize—he was sorely tempted to shatter it with a fist, and he might have done just that if he hadn't been captain, their captain, the one who had led them to winning nearly every game during the last season. He couldn't be seen beating his teammate to a bloody pulp just because he felt like it, just because the hot rush of humiliated anger was already tightening his hands into fists.
In the end, Arthur didn't punch Owain, and he didn't run either. He bent down to retrieve his bag with a wordless snarl, and no one tried to stop him when he walked towards the showers, and it took all of Arthur's strength to level a glare at all of them, to let them know just how out of line this whole thing was. No one stopped him, although he could see a flickering shadow of uncertainty in Owain's eyes when their gazes met. No one spoke, and the echo of his shoes on the tiles of the shower room was the only sound breaking the silence.
Just for that, he slammed the door behind himself as hard as he could.
He stood there for a while, breathing hard, staring sightlessly at the far wall. It was ridiculous. It was beyond outrageous—Arthur probably would have laughed out loud at the sheer absurdity of this situation, if it hadn't been for the solid brick that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his throat. A pulse of reckless, unused energy was traveling through his muscles, making his blood boil and his hands clench into fists on their own accord.
Granted, Owain had shut his mouth rather quickly when Arthur had entered the room, but Arthur had heard the raised voices from the hallway, and had been able to make out his own name amidst the shouting when he'd pressed the door handle. And so he had asked, straight-forwardly, why they weren't warming up yet, and why they were all staring at him like he'd grown a second head.
Owain had looked intimidated for a moment, but spoke up again almost immediately—and the answer had been quite simple, although it had sent Arthur's heart into a furious, frenzied sprint that he refused to let show on his face. Owain had seen him with Merlin in the library, "looking cozy," as he put it (at that, Leon had looked ready to throw something, but a warning glance from Arthur had quieted him again). And now he was concerned exactly which team Arthur played for after all, and then he had asked him, in everyone's best interest, to get changed in the shower room.
Just after Arthur had stubbed his toe by kicking viciously at the nearest sink, the door behind him opened and closed again.
Arthur whirled around, and he had to put a conscious effort into opening his mouth. "Get—," out, he'd wanted to say, but the stubborn, defiant set of Leon's jaw stole the last word from his mouth.
"No," Leon said, quite simply, and bent down to pull his shorts out of his bag.
Arthur made a sound he hadn't known he could make, something between a wordless shout and a snarl, and went back to gritting his teeth until it felt like his molars would crack under the pressure.
He twisted out of his trousers in sullen silence, half daring himself to turn around and ask Leon why he wasn't as scared as the other little cowards next door, but decided against it. None of this was Leon's fault, Arthur sternly reminded himself as he pulled on his shorts and tried to slow his breathing.
Eventually, Leon said, "Owain's a wanker," very casually, as if he was telling Arthur that the earth was round. Arthur snorted, but although he didn't look up from where he was tying his shoelaces, the steel bands around his chest seemed to loosen just a little.
They remained silent while Leon put on his shirt with a rustle of clothes. Arthur stood, stretching slowly and wishing he weren't so tense—warm-up would be hell like this, with his shoulders knotted as tightly as if the muscles had tried to ball into fists too. A strange, unfamiliar ache was lodged deep beneath his ribs, pulling at his lungs, but Arthur didn't allow himself to dwell on it for too long. If he did, he might end up breaking down the door and beating Owain over the head with it for disrupting his team, and no matter how angry and humiliated he felt, Arthur didn't want to kill him.
"You've always had them," Leon said from behind him, carefully. His voice was gentle, of all things, and Arthur growled low in his throat, briefly giving himself over to a fantasy of how good it would feel to break his cheekbone for that, or his nose. Morgana would never forgive him, though, and he knew it would be unfair, since Leon was the only one who had come after him at all.
"Their trust, their admiration," Leon went on after a moment, oblivious to how close Arthur had come to turning around and shoving him into the wall. "You've always had it. You didn't even really need to ask for it. They just threw it at you when you joined the team, because we knew instinctively that you'd make an excellent captain."
Arthur said nothing. He listened to the scuffle of shoes on the other side of the door, the sounds of the rest of his teammates leaving the locker room in what seemed to be tense silence. Good, he thought, darkly, and hated himself for it just a second later.
"You still have mine," Leon stated when Arthur put his hand on the door handle. He looked a little awkward when Arthur turned around to glance at him, but he held his head high under Arthur's silent stare, not taking anything back. "If that helps."
"It doesn't," Arthur said crossly, but then the brick was back in his throat and dust seemed to sting his eyes, and he had to blink and swallow hard to dispel the sensation. Leon smiled at him, hesitantly, and although Arthur couldn't quite smile back, he felt like he might be capable of returning the gesture some time within the next hour.
Leon bumped Arthur's shoulder with his own when he walked past him. Together they headed out for what would most likely be the most awkward volleyball practice of Arthur's life.
***
The essay was returned the next morning, folded neatly and pushed into his locker so that it fell out when Arthur wrenched it open, and his shoulder protested the movement with a twinge of pain. He'd pulled a muscle there yesterday when he'd flung himself to the ground to dig an unfairly low pass from Owain, but he'd shrugged off Mr. Muirden's concern and continued playing, only allowing himself a pained grimace when Owain had turned back to the net.
Arthur left the pages folded as they were, unwilling to put himself through the sight of the F again. But there was an additional scrap of paper that Arthur was sure had not been there before, stuck to his essay with a piece of tape. He pulled it off, frowning—the folds had worn creases into the paper, as though whoever had stuck it there had folded and unfolded it quite a number of times.
He recognized Merlin's handwriting immediately, from numerous times of watching him fumble through his algebra homework with ever-increasing confidence and only a little residual hesitance. Here, it was a hasty scrawl, though, like he had needed to write the message quickly, lest some sort of uncertainty got the better of him and made him toss the paper into the nearest dustbin.
'Your problem is that you don't finish your thoughts. The beginning is average, but the rest doesn't fulfill its promise. You start and then stop, start and stop, throughout the entire essay like your mind couldn't find a path to follow until the end.
Promises are to be
Life doesn't work that way either.
—M.'
If it hadn't been for the memory of yesterday's practice still fresh and cutting in Arthur's mind, he might have smiled at Merlin's words, or at least mulled over the advice for a moment. As it was, he crumpled the paper in his fist with a wordless snarl, startling a group of students into giving him a wary berth as they walked past.
Arthur thought about scaring them even more by slamming his fist into his locker, but decided against it after a moment—his shoulder was enough of a bother already, he didn't need his hand acting up as well. He looked around wildly instead, but of course there was no trashcan in sight, and with another snarl, he stuffed the scrap of paper into his pocket, abruptly deciding to drown it with his next load of laundry.
The time until lunch break passed in a pain-filled haze, his shoulder twinging each time Arthur crooked his arm to write. Lance asked him what was wrong, if he needed to go home, but Arthur deflected his concern with a silent scowl. He knew that his best friend was just worried about him, and that he simply wanted to help, but every single concerned glance from Lance's general direction made Arthur cringe. It felt like everyone was looking at him, imagined gazes burning at the back of his neck like acid on his skin. He tried not to move his arm too much, and gritted his teeth against the gnarled knot of furious humiliation that kept accumulating in his throat, and stormed out of the room as soon as the bell rang, signaling the lunch break.
"Silence," Morgana said warningly when she caught sight of Arthur's expression, but even her authoritative tone couldn't hide the concern in her eyes. "This is a library, not a boxing ring."
Arthur stared at her for a long, silent moment, feeling like he was waking up properly for the first time after yesterday's disaster. Meeting her gaze was like being doused in cold water, although it did nothing to soothe the frustration that was still humming through him like ants crawling under his skin. Somehow, that look reminded him that it was just high school—there were bigger things than this last year he had to spend here, worse things than being shunned by his volleyball team and spraining his shoulder.
And there were certainly things even more terrifying than the primal, frantic rush that pulled through Arthur's gut when he saw Merlin sitting near the back of the room.
The anger that cut through him at the sight felt rotten somehow, like a rusty knife twisting in his gut in search of something ripe and blood-filled to plunge into. He crossed the room with big strides, and by the time he flung himself down into the chair opposite of Merlin's, the heated throb in Arthur's stomach had subsided. Merlin was giving him a slightly puzzled look, the welcoming smile slowly sliding off of his face, but Arthur pulled pen and paper from his bag when he heard Morgana's warning cough behind them.
Merlin watched in confused silence as Arthur wrenched the cap off of his pen with enough force to slightly dent the plastic. The weird haze was back at the corners of his vision, but Arthur ignored it right along with the protesting sting in his abused shoulder. 'If I had wanted your help', he wrote, the scrape of his pen hard enough to indent the paper, 'I would have asked for it.'
He shoved the sheet at Merlin, nearly crumpling it against his elbow when Merlin didn't move his arm fast enough. Merlin had the gall to give him a confused look, but Arthur just glared at him, vaguely feeling like his teeth might disintegrate to dust if he gritted them any harder.
Merlin drew the paper closer to himself, bending over to read the words, and his expression turned from confused to surprised and finally to patient. Arthur was suddenly struck with the overwhelming desire to wipe that look off of his face—his fingers itched, but not with the urge to clench into fists. It wasn't like punching Merlin would make anything right again; if anything, it would just make everything worse, and the whole mess wasn't really Merlin's fault after all.
But Arthur couldn't figure out whose fault it was, and Merlin was already writing, his scrawl looking spindly and artistic under Arthur's angry note.
'You don't seem the type to ask for help.'
Merlin's eyes were calm, inquisitive even, and Arthur thought, suddenly, that he didn't look seventeen. He seemed older somehow, oddly wise in his own quirky kind of way—and something about his patient silence struck Arthur as so profoundly unfair that his breath stuck in his chest for a moment. It wasn't right, that Arthur should feel so unsettled, stumbling around in the dark like an uprooted tree, while Merlin, awkward, bumbling, infuriating Merlin seemed so confident, sure of himself and his footing, and as utterly unselfconscious as he wasn't about so many other things.
'Stop looking so smug', Arthur wrote, with vicious strokes, underlined the words, and got up, shoving back his chair so hard that it clattered to the floor. At the front desk, Morgana cleared her throat again, but she needn't have bothered—Arthur wasn't about to use Merlin as a substitute punching bag just because Owain wasn't around. His entire arm hurt, a white-hot line of pain along his bones, and his heart was making a valiant effort to claw its way out of his chest, and for just a moment, Arthur almost wished it would.
"Arthur," Merlin said from behind him, questioning and a more than a little worried. That single hesitant call of his name nearly undid him, but Arthur found, with a vague sort of surprise, that he couldn't let out the shaky breath he'd just taken, not even to form words, and so he ran.
Well, he didn't quite run, but he didn't stop until he'd found a faraway dusty corner with books on geography that looked like no one had taken them out of their shelves in ages. The single light bulb was flickering erratically, and an absent, unconcerned part of Arthur's brain made a mental note to inform Morgana about it on his way out later.
He stayed there for a while, breathing hard, pressing his forehead to the cool stone wall until he felt a little less like his head would explode any second. Out in the hallway, the bell signaled the end of the lunch break, but Arthur didn't move, just listened to the clatter of a hundred footsteps passing by on the other side of the wall, and concentrated on his breathing. His pulse seemed too loud in his ears, each disquieted thrash of his heart sending a spasm of pain through his shoulder, but he focused on the rise and fall of his chest, the rush of air through his lungs, and after a while he didn't feel quite as nauseous and unsteady anymore.
Merlin was gone when Arthur returned to the table, but the sheet of paper was still there, as well as Arthur's bag. Morgana was pointedly hiding behind another newspaper when he looked at the front desk, but Arthur got the vague feeling that she might have cut tiny holes into the front page to watch him from, and so he turned his back to her before he picked up the sheet.
'I'm not smug, Arthur', Merlin had written. The ink was still shimmering a little, like he'd thought about the words for a long time before finally writing them down. 'I didn't win anything. We were not even fighting.'
***
Arthur doesn't quite know when his hands started to shake, but even now that he's noticed it, he can't seem to get them to stop.
He's digging his fingers into his hair hard enough for spikes of pain to shoot through his temples, but it doesn't help. He still feels the bone-deep tremor winding through his palms, burrowing in between muscles and veins. Blood is leaking sluggishly from where the skin on his knuckles split open with the force of his punch, but that, at least, is a pain Arthur doesn't feel again just yet. Owain is being taken to the hospital right now with what's probably a broken jaw, after all, and the thought is oddly comforting, even though the smell of his own blood makes Arthur's stomach roil.
They both flinched when Arthur's mobile started to ring earlier, but Arthur ignored it. It rang for an irritatingly long time, like whoever was calling him didn't want to give up even after the tenth ring. Merlin's gaze flickered from Arthur's eyes to his pocket and back, as though silently imploring him to at least move to indicate that he hadn't just fainted sitting up. Arthur briefly thought about telling him how stupid that would have been, but in the end he couldn't quite gather enough energy to open his mouth.
Across the room, Merlin is leaning against the wall, and somehow, it's so profoundly odd that his body chooses this situation to betray his nervousness. He's biting his lip and fidgeting absently with the cuffs of his sleeves, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He looks like he's debating whether he should come closer, or maybe even sit down on the other bench opposite of Arthur, and lean down so he could catch his eye. Arthur hopes he won't.
In his pocket, his phone starts to ring and vibrate again, the melody annoyingly cheerful; for just a moment, Arthur contemplates taking it out just to fling it against the wall and stop the sound. Merlin makes a short, abortive movement, a hesitant jerk of his arm that takes him a step forward. His eyes are wide, and very, very blue, and Arthur thinks bitterly that if he can't take a hint and stay the fuck away from him even with that bruise marring his cheek, he only has himself to blame.
***
(8 days earlier)
It was Tuesday when Arthur noticed the bruises for the first time.
He blinked drops of water from his eyes and impatiently brushed back his dripping bangs, all the while not taking his gaze off of the shadow marring the tanned skin of his left forearm. The beat of music was still thumping too loudly, muffled as it was by the wall between the bathroom and Morgana's room. Arthur had been listening to somebody singing weird nonsense about having the same dream every night as he'd rinsed the shampoo from his hair and finally turned off the shower. Practice had been exhausting, and he'd been content to just let his mind drift while the hot water washed the sweat of exertion from his body.
Lance had dropped by unannounced over the weekend, with DVDs and a sixpack, and subtly tried to get Arthur to talk over beer and Welcome to the Jungle. Rationally, Arthur knew that his best friend was worried about him, that he himself had been acting rather odd during the past weeks, and that Lance just wanted to help. But he'd also been very aware of the fact that he was just no good at the whole 'sharing his feelings' thing, especially when he hadn't yet gotten over the realization that there even was something to be shared—a painful knot in his stomach whenever he thought of his team, mingling with the unsettling, irritating pull that plucked at him every time his mind wandered to Merlin.
And so Arthur had just hummed noncommittally whenever Lance tried to engage him in a conversation that went beyond commenting on the movie. Even if he had wanted to talk, he couldn't have put the jumbled mess of thoughts into words anyway, not with the way he felt like something in his head was trying to crack open whenever he tried to catch their trailing ends.
Now, though, Arthur just stared at his wrists for a good long while, feeling the dampness on his body grow cool, and thought about calling his best friend. "Lance," he imagined whispering into his phone, very quietly, lest Uther would hear, "I am losing my fucking mind," and then his mouth would dry up, along with any other pathetic words that might have been hovering on his tongue.
He recognized those bruises. His arms weren't black and blue, they didn't even hurt, but the shadowy patches stretching down his forearm from his wrists were unmistakable. They were the sort of bruises one got from playing volleyball—through digging, or, more specifically, through sloppy digging.
The last time Arthur had seen his wrists look like that had been in his freshman year, when he'd first joined the volleyball team and his technique had still needed a bit of work. The yellow-greenish shadows had faded during the first few weeks, though, as he figured out the right way of stretching his arms just so and avoid the sting of pain that had accompanied each dig at first. After years of training, he barely felt the brief flash of discomfort anymore whenever the ball slapped against his arms.
But now the bruises were back as though they'd never been gone. Which meant that his technique had relapsed into shoddiness some time during the awkward practices of last week, and Arthur even had an inkling who might be responsible for that. For a long, blissful moment, Arthur allowed his imagination to run away with him, and envisioned how good it would feel to ambush Owain just before class tomorrow and take out all his pent-up frustration on his teammate for making Arthur lose his edge.
Next door, Morgana's stereo blared on about perfect matches, the music only interrupted by the slam of the front door that meant that Uther had just come home. Swallowing the black, hopeless anger that swelled in his throat made Arthur feel nauseous, but he did it anyway, and even refrained from throwing a random object across the room just to see something shatter.
Arthur retreated to his room after toweling himself off, changed into his pajamas, and pulled the sleeves over his hands so he wouldn't accidentally catch a glimpse of the bruises again. He briefly contemplated getting started on his Biology homework, but discarded the thought, and somehow ended up sitting on the edge of his bed, staring sightlessly at a mindless sitcom flickering across the TV screen.
He didn't notice his father's presence until he cleared his throat, an unusually tentative sound for Uther Pendragon, who normally just swept in and demanded the entire room's attention, whether its occupants liked it or not. He was still wearing his shoes, a few half-melted snowflakes dusting the collar of his suit; Arthur concluded, foggily, that he might need to get up a bit earlier tomorrow morning to have enough time for driving to school through snowed-in streets.
Uther didn't say anything, and for some reason, Arthur got the feeling that his father had been standing there for a while, just watching him sitting motionless on the bed. The thought made him uncomfortable, and he pulled at his sleeves again just to make sure they covered his wrists, waiting for Uther to break the silence first.
At last, his father sighed, and let his gaze wander to the TV, one hand coming up to absently loosen his tie. "If this is about the essay," he started, sounding just as awkward as Arthur felt—it almost made him smile for a moment, because he knew how much it took for his father's voice to sound anything other than decisive.
"It's not," Arthur replied, for lack of anything else to say, because it wasn't about the most recent fail grade, not really. He even had an inkling that it wasn't about the bruises either, and more about the ugly sneer on Owain's face when he'd seen him and Merlin in the library, and the unshakeable certainty that had lurked in Merlin's eyes even then. All things considered, Arthur didn't even really know what 'it' was.
He had no idea how to say, 'Owain's stupid accusations are destroying our team spirit', or, unrelatedly, 'I miss studying with Merlin', because something had kept Arthur from the library during the entire past week, an invisible force that he refused, refused to believe was anything like fear. The words seemed to clog his airways with a tangled knot of frustration, though, and so Arthur didn't speak again.
Uther sighed again when it became clear that Arthur wouldn't talk to him, and let his gaze travel across the room again. He looked old, suddenly, older than Arthur could ever remember seeing him—his hair looked grayer than usual in the dim light from the hallway. The sight made Arthur feel guilty for some reason, and he quickly averted his gaze back to the TV.
"Take my car to school tomorrow," Uther said abruptly, his posture straightening with the words—only then did Arthur realize how utterly unfamiliar his father had looked in his previous indecision. Arthur gave him a surprised glance, briefly wondering at the leap his father's thoughts had taken from grades to cars. He made the mistake of catching Uther's eye, though, and his father cleared his throat, looking away as he added, "It is better equipped for dealing with snow than yours."
For a moment, Arthur considered informing him that although the days grew colder and colder, there was no sign of snow just yet, not even in the weather forecasts, if he remembered correctly. But then he just shifted his weight on the bed, uncomfortably, mumbling a quick thank you, and Uther gave him a somewhat stiff nod and retreated back into the hallway, the door clicking shut behind him.
The look on his father's face had reminded Arthur of one he often saw in the volleyball court, from opposing teams who were not quite sure whether they could take them on. It made something curl unsettlingly in his stomach now, though, because this wasn't a fight, not even a challenge—okay, his father had obviously caught on to the fact that something was wrong, but he'd backed down surprisingly easily. Which was rather atypical, come to think of it, and Arthur couldn't help but feel like his father's offer of taking his car tomorrow had been little more than a clumsy attempt at appeasement.
He willed the thought away with some difficulty, and let himself slump back into the mattress. Shadows were flickering across the ceiling, spurred on by the blueish light coming from the TV, and next door, Morgana's stereo was still blaring something about never having been under control. The knot in his stomach didn't lessen, but Arthur figured that that was okay—he hadn't really expected it to.
***
By the time his phone rings yet again, Merlin has already sat down on the other bench, opposite of Arthur, and Arthur can feel their knees brush through the fabric of their trousers. All things considered, he suspects that his hands are mutinying against him, because despite his increasingly hopeless mental commands, they have not shoved Merlin away yet.
Although the whole mess started in the showers, they've made it to the locker room eventually, if only because after everything that happened today, Arthur rather felt like he was going to fall over if he didn't sit down. Merlin followed him, of course, once more displaying his startling lack of common sense. The room still smells like sweat from his team's earlier practice session, not the accumulated stink of several weeks' worth of workouts, but the clear, fresh scent of an hour well-spent in the gym.
Merlin moves, very slowly, and pulls the phone from Arthur's pocket, looking down at the name on the display for a moment. He tries to catch Arthur's eye, get his permission somehow, but Arthur refuses to look at him, and so Merlin raises the small black device to his ear after a moment, keeping his gaze on Arthur as he mutters a scratchy hello.
A pause. "No, this is Merlin— um, Merlin Emrys," Merlin says, his voice a little rough with disuse, but he seems to sit up a bit straighter. Then, "Yes," and then a short silence.
Merlin's gaze, which skittered off to the side of Arthur's head, returns to his eyes after a moment. "I'm not sure," he replies hesitantly to whatever his interlocutor has said. Arthur sees his Adam's apple bob as he swallows. "I— could try, though. Um, do you—"
He breaks off and listens, nodding absently although the other person clearly can't see it. Something shifts in his features, though, some nearly untraceable change that Arthur couldn't quite put into words if asked to describe it. Determination settles into Merlin's eyes, chasing the miniscule slump from his shoulders as he straightens up a little, and he doesn't even wince although the movement clearly pulls at his bruises.
"I've had my license for a few months," Merlin says, resolve replacing the previous hesitance in his tone. His eyes are still fixed on Arthur, although Arthur takes great pains to avoid meeting them—he's currently staring at Merlin's left knee, because if he raises his gaze any higher, he'll catch sight of the bruise marring Merlin's cheekbone at the edge of his vision.
Merlin nods again, but this time it looks decisive instead of absentminded. "Yes, sir," he replies to something his interlocutor must have said. "We'll be there in—," pausing for a brief moment, he tries to meet Arthur's gaze once again, hesitating only briefly before finishing, "—half an hour."
Sir? Arthur stares at him wordlessly, his stomach bottoming out for what seems to be the umpteenth time that day. A vague, nagging suspicion is forming in the back of his head, breaking through the numbing layer of apathy—it feels like being poked and prodded awake by the restless squirm of thought at the very edge of his consciousness.
Merlin disconnects the call, and this time he does wince a little when he puts the phone down on the bench. For a brief moment, Arthur thinks that Merlin must have some shred of common sense left, since he doesn't try to hand it back, but that hope is dashed when Merlin looks up, catching him unawares.
"That was your father," Merlin says, softly now. His eyes are dark and very blue, as though their depth was meant to trap Arthur's gaze all along. "He wants me to take you home."
***
(2 days earlier)
Even though Arthur didn't much feel like it, he couldn't help but assume that to an outsider, it must have looked like his life mostly returned to normal during the past week.
He went to his volleyball practices, did his homework, and did his best to ignore everything that had happened. Morgana had taken to shooting him concerned looks over breakfast lately, which was scary and annoying in equal measures, and so Arthur ignored that, too. He drove home early on Friday, as he had been doing ever since Owain had seen him with Merlin, a memory that Arthur didn't allow himself to think about too much because it still made him want to punch something.
He had reached a fragile peace with his team, a truce that he suspected Leon to have hurried along behind his back. Arthur's pride simply did not allow for him to change in the showers, and so he took to arriving early, changing before the rest of the team trickled in, and engaging in random conversations with the coach until the others had left after practice. Nobody ever commented on it, not even Owain, and as the days passed, Arthur allowed himself to relax, if only a little.
The uncomfortable, prickly feeling at the back of his mind never went away, though, but at least the bruises faded from his wrists. Dr. Muirden pulled him aside after practice one day to tell Arthur that apparently the team was going strong again and was once more "running like a well-oiled BMW," as he'd phrased it. Arthur just thanked him, though, and dodged the coach's subtle attempts at finding out what had disrupted them in the first place.
Still, the rush of gratitude when Pellinore invited Arthur to one of their weekly get-togethers was thoroughly unexpected even to Arthur himself. And somehow it still rankled him when they all walked out towards the school's parking lot together, Lance in tow. Sure, Arthur was their captain, but he was also their friend, and he shouldn't need to feel grateful if they decided to graciously allow him to come along. The thought caused a strange itch to form under his skin, an impatience born of the unfamiliar urge to be on his guard around people he was supposed to trust.
Preoccupied as he was, Arthur almost barreled head-first into Leon's back as the other boy suddenly stopped walking. Next to him, Owain broke off mid-sentence in the middle of praising some new bar that had opened near the mall, and Pellinore rubbed a hand across his forehead and heaved a sigh, as though to say, tiredly, not again.
A moment later, Arthur understood why. The yard was mostly deserted save for a few clusters of students still scattered about, and despite the approaching twilight of dusk, Arthur could clearly make out Merlin and Mordred next to a small copse of windswept trees.
He didn't even need to look at Owain to know that he was scowling, but as far as Arthur could see, Merlin and Mordred were just talking. Well, Mordred was talking, mostly, gesturing expansively with the hand not holding his cigarette. Even though he took care not to blow the smoke directly into Merlin's face, Arthur got the distinct impression that they were arguing.
Mordred saw them first. He stilled, suddenly, like a cat right before pouncing on an unsuspecting mouse, and Owain took an involuntary step back when Mordred's bright eyes came to rest on him.
Merlin started to turn around to follow Mordred's gaze, but Mordred grabbed the front of his coat and hauled him close, his grin suddenly malicious as he tugged Merlin down, stood on his tiptoes and kissed him.
"Gross!" Owain exclaimed, predictably like clockwork. His hands had clenched into fists, and Pellinore was rolling his eyes even as he put a restraining hand on his teammate's arm. Owain shrugged him off just when Merlin wrenched himself free of Mordred's grip, and elbowed his way through all of them and back into the building.
There was a strange rush in Arthur's stomach at the furious disbelief on Merlin's face, but Arthur didn't feel like waiting to see what it would unfold into if he gave it time. He followed the others back inside, led by Pellinore's slightly exasperated calls for Owain to wait up, mate, come on, don't be so—, and couldn't help the small measure of relief that bubbled up in his chest when Pellinore didn't elaborate on what exactly he wanted Owain to stop being.
He felt Lance's gaze on him when they caught up with Owain in the assembly hall, as steady as it was unsettling, but Arthur didn't turn to acknowledge him. He just stuffed his hands in his pockets, listened to Owain's half-furious, half-offended rant about fags, and wondered why he felt vaguely nauseous. It was the same sensation that had curled into his stomach at the sight of the bruises just a week ago, the sort of slow, sickening feeling of an impending failure that he couldn't stop from happening even if he knew what to watch out for.
As close to the door as he was, Arthur heard them walk past in the hallway a minute later—Mordred's normally clear, cutting voice, now lowered to a timbre that was probably meant to be soothing as he said something about jokes to provoke certain idiots. Merlin's voice, louder than Mordred's—angry, indignant, confused—hacking Mordred's placating murmurs to pieces, not listening.
Arthur could think of a million reasons why that shouldn't make the knot in his stomach loosen ever-so-slightly, but it still did.
***
"It was not what it looked like," was the first thing Merlin said to him the next day, the words tumbling hastily from his mouth, shivery with cold and possibly something else. He was breathing hard enough to almost bend in half, steadying himself with a hand pressed to the wall.
Arthur didn't reply at first, just looked down at him from his position at the top of the stairwell. He had heard Merlin call his name at the bus stop, of course; Merlin had been shouting loudly enough to turn quite a lot of confused heads, after all. But Arthur hadn't stopped, just shouldered his way through the crowded snowy yard, dodged a random snowball hurled his way, and ducked into the nearest stairwell.
Well, fled into the nearest stairwell, more like. And Merlin had caught up with him anyway—given how much of a couch potato he seemed to be, it was no surprise to see him almost collapse on the stairs now, panting as if he'd run a marathon. Arthur folded his arms across his chest, and watched the clouds of condensation puffing out from Merlin's mouth in time with his breathing.
When he finally found his voice from wherever it had run off to, Arthur said, very evenly, "As much as I enjoy your inane chatter, Merlin, I have no idea what you're talking about."
Merlin just gave him a disbelieving look, straightening up a little, and fought to control his spasming lungs. His face was flushed from the cold, and he had snow in his hair—Arthur suspected that one of the stray snowballs might have hit him.
"I mean," Merlin finally elaborated, gesturing vaguely with a cold-reddened hand, "with Mordred. That was not—"
"I do not care what that was," Arthur said, and he knew that the cutting anger that suddenly rushed through him was misplaced, but he couldn't have stopped it even if he had tried. "I only care to never see it again."
Merlin's expression twitched, just for a second, but the moment lasted long enough for Arthur to see. The snow was melting slowly, plastering curling clumps of Merlin's hair to his temples, and somehow he looked wary under his veneer. It made words hover on Arthur's tongue, but they fled before he could decipher their meaning, and so he didn't say anything.
"He just wanted to annoy Owain," Merlin said at last, although his voice was quiet this time, perhaps quieter than Arthur had ever heard him sound. Something twisted in his chest, curling up protectively around a small fissure of hurt that he had not anticipated.
He choked it back down with difficulty, though, and remained silent. Merlin was looking up at him, his eyes clear and very blue, strangely unaffected by the defensive set of his shoulders. His gaze made Arthur feel like something was expected of him, something big and far-off and frightening, although to Merlin, it didn't appear to be all that big of a challenge, if the untroubled calm in his eyes was anything to go by.
"Are you finished?" Arthur asked, after the silence had stretched for long enough to grow uncomfortable. Merlin's steady gaze unnerved him, made him feel like Merlin was utterly sure that Arthur would pass this... test, or whatever it was. It itched beneath his skin, dropping a strange, unsteady weight into his chest. Oddly enough, the sensation reminded him of how he'd felt when Merlin's mother had smiled at him in the parking lot, although this time it was sharper, deeper, unfurling low in his belly and cresting up like a tidal wave.
"I—," Merlin started, and deflated visibly at the aloofness in Arthur's tone. He still managed to look stubborn, though, and didn't even blink when the door on the ground floor burst open with a bang.
Laughing chatter suddenly filled the stairwell, peppered with exclamations as some of the younger students never stopped pelting each other with dripping snowballs even after the door had swung shut behind them. Merlin never broke Arthur's gaze, though, not even as the rising tide of students pushed past them—there was just the tiniest fissure of disappointment in his eyes, as though he knew that Arthur could have done better than that, but he didn't speak.
When Arthur's eyes instinctively started to search for Owain in the crowd, the familiar, worried thought of whether he'd seen him with Merlin unfurling slowly at the very edge of his consciousness, Arthur gritted his teeth so hard they hurt. But as always, he didn't allow the frustrated anger to explode outwards, just swallowed it down right along with the knot that had formed in his throat. He turned around and bounded up the rest of the stairs, Merlin's gaze like a physical touch on his back, and the burn in his chest followed him all along the still-empty hallway, an useless simmering in the back of his mind.
***
At Merlin's third mumbled apology for crashing the wheel rims into the curb, Arthur comes to the unsurprising conclusion that Merlin is not a very good driver.
Which makes sense, Arthur thinks, considering the fact that he's only had a few months' worth of experience, and has probably never driven a car even half as expensive as Arthur's. He keeps killing the engine at every intersection simply because he doesn't quite dare to accelerate enough, he's switched on the headlights although dusk is barely beginning to darken the horizon, but no matter how carefully he steers, he still manages to collide with the curb every so often.
It's sort of ridiculous that after everything that happened today, it's the possibility of crashing Arthur's car that finally makes Merlin nervous. The thought doesn't exactly make Arthur laugh or even smile, but he feels like he might in retrospect, in about a week's time.
"Your father said that Leon called him," Merlin finally speaks up next to him, sounding a bit like he's been mulling over the words for a while in his mind, "after they'd taken Owain to the hospital. He thought you might have gone home."
Arthur doesn't reply. They haven't been talking much ever since Merlin shouldered past Arthur to the driver's side and held out an expectant hand for the keys, which Arthur gave to him without even protesting. He knows he should have felt affronted at the notion that Merlin doesn't think him capable of driving; but then again, Leon probably exaggerated the details of his fight with Owain when he'd called Uther, because his father didn't seem too keen on the idea of Arthur driving home by himself either.
From then on, it was only the occasional exchange of short words as Arthur gave him directions, staring out at the familiar scenery passing by at an unfamiliarly slow pace. He still has the feeling that Merlin is driving far more slowly than Arthur usually does, but a glance at the speed-o-meter confirmed that Merlin is simply obeying the speed limit around three miles ago.
Uther's house (well, mansion, as Morgana insists on calling it) is at the very edge of town, reachable only by way of a winding, tree-lined road that makes Merlin gape a little even as he struggles to navigate smoothly through the bends and turns. Arthur never really thought to pay attention to anyone's first reaction upon seeing the house's looming shadow through the trees—he doesn't take just anyone home with him, and he's known most of his friends since kindergarten, and they've had time to grow accustomed to it. Merlin's wide-eyed wonder would probably be amusing in any other situation, even slightly endearing, but right now, Arthur can't bring himself to even look at it for too long.
Merlin lets the car roll to a slow stop when the road forks out in front of them—the right-hand road, Arthur knows, leads down to a small hunting lodge at the edge of the forest, a remnant of the long-passed time the mansion was built in. He's already opened his mouth to direct Merlin towards the house when Merlin sighs, long and low, and braces his hands against the steering wheel.
"I haven't gotten the chance to thank you yet," he says, quietly, although he's wise enough not to turn to look at Arthur. The hesitance is back in his tone, but he still sounds self-assured underneath—like he's sure that it's the right thing to say, although he doesn't know if it's the right time.
"Left," Arthur says by way of reply, his voice suddenly coming out scratchy and unused. For the first time, it occurs to him to wonder where his anger has gone, the prickling itch under his skin that almost made him want Merlin to misstep just so it could explode into sudden, meaningless violence. Maybe he's left it in the locker room, maybe he shut it away when he closed the door and Merlin didn't say a word although it had taken Arthur an embarrassingly long time to stay his shaking hands enough to fit the key into the lock.
Next to him, Merlin sighs. The clicking of the signal sounds loud in the hush until he carefully releases the clutch and lets the car roll down the left road. Arthur opens his mouth again, a scathing comment about how it's not necessary to signal in the middle of a private road leading up to an old country mansion already perched on his tongue. But then he thinks, just briefly, that Merlin probably found the sudden silence just as unbearable as he did, and Arthur thinks better of speaking, settling back into the passenger seat instead.
***
Part 3
Fandom: Merlin BBC
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~26k
Beta:
kura_tanPairing: Merlin/Arthur (with background Leon/Morgana)
Warnings: homophobia, elements of bullying, violence & slight gore, maybe underage depending on where you live (Arthur, Merlin & Leon are 17, Morgana is 21)
Summary: High school AU. In which Arthur is (a) the best captain that the volleyball team has seen in ages, (b) too handsome for his own good, and also (c) decidedly not gay; although Merlin agrees with the first two, he's willing to bet that (c) is open for discussion.
Part 1
Fifteen minutes later, Arthur was still at a loss for words, but for entirely different reasons.
"I am not gay," he said at last, slowly, enunciating each word like his entire team was suddenly hard of hearing.
Pellinore shrugged, and scowled down at the ground as though begging it to swallow him up. The rubber of Gareth's shoes squeaked on the floor as he busied himself with stretching his left thigh, as he had been doing for the past minute, and overall, he did quite a good job of pretending not to listen at all. Gawain was still staring at Owain with an expression of utter disbelief, his mouth hanging half open, but nevertheless, Arthur saw the doubtful flicker in his dark eyes when he looked from Owain to him and back again.
Leon was standing a little off to the side, though, his hands balled into fists, and from the way he was glaring at all of them, Arthur suspected that his arrival in the locker room had interrupted a blazing row.
"I don't know, mate," Owain replied, his voice just as even and calm. He had his hands folded across his chest, too tightly to look casual, as though for protection. "Just— y'know, to be sure, yeah?", and he jerked his head in the direction of the showers again.
Arthur was their captain. He knew that he was supposed to yell at all of them and refuse to do this utterly ridiculous thing asked of him. He was the one they had all looked up to ever since he'd joined the team, before he'd even become their leader—for his skill, Arthur knew, and for the way he valued each of them, knew their strengths and weaknesses by heart.
But right now, all he wanted to do was grab his bag from where he'd dropped it to the floor in utter surprise, turn back the way he'd come and run. Owain's face had hardened into a defensive mask, a look Arthur didn't recognize—he was sorely tempted to shatter it with a fist, and he might have done just that if he hadn't been captain, their captain, the one who had led them to winning nearly every game during the last season. He couldn't be seen beating his teammate to a bloody pulp just because he felt like it, just because the hot rush of humiliated anger was already tightening his hands into fists.
In the end, Arthur didn't punch Owain, and he didn't run either. He bent down to retrieve his bag with a wordless snarl, and no one tried to stop him when he walked towards the showers, and it took all of Arthur's strength to level a glare at all of them, to let them know just how out of line this whole thing was. No one stopped him, although he could see a flickering shadow of uncertainty in Owain's eyes when their gazes met. No one spoke, and the echo of his shoes on the tiles of the shower room was the only sound breaking the silence.
Just for that, he slammed the door behind himself as hard as he could.
He stood there for a while, breathing hard, staring sightlessly at the far wall. It was ridiculous. It was beyond outrageous—Arthur probably would have laughed out loud at the sheer absurdity of this situation, if it hadn't been for the solid brick that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his throat. A pulse of reckless, unused energy was traveling through his muscles, making his blood boil and his hands clench into fists on their own accord.
Granted, Owain had shut his mouth rather quickly when Arthur had entered the room, but Arthur had heard the raised voices from the hallway, and had been able to make out his own name amidst the shouting when he'd pressed the door handle. And so he had asked, straight-forwardly, why they weren't warming up yet, and why they were all staring at him like he'd grown a second head.
Owain had looked intimidated for a moment, but spoke up again almost immediately—and the answer had been quite simple, although it had sent Arthur's heart into a furious, frenzied sprint that he refused to let show on his face. Owain had seen him with Merlin in the library, "looking cozy," as he put it (at that, Leon had looked ready to throw something, but a warning glance from Arthur had quieted him again). And now he was concerned exactly which team Arthur played for after all, and then he had asked him, in everyone's best interest, to get changed in the shower room.
Just after Arthur had stubbed his toe by kicking viciously at the nearest sink, the door behind him opened and closed again.
Arthur whirled around, and he had to put a conscious effort into opening his mouth. "Get—," out, he'd wanted to say, but the stubborn, defiant set of Leon's jaw stole the last word from his mouth.
"No," Leon said, quite simply, and bent down to pull his shorts out of his bag.
Arthur made a sound he hadn't known he could make, something between a wordless shout and a snarl, and went back to gritting his teeth until it felt like his molars would crack under the pressure.
He twisted out of his trousers in sullen silence, half daring himself to turn around and ask Leon why he wasn't as scared as the other little cowards next door, but decided against it. None of this was Leon's fault, Arthur sternly reminded himself as he pulled on his shorts and tried to slow his breathing.
Eventually, Leon said, "Owain's a wanker," very casually, as if he was telling Arthur that the earth was round. Arthur snorted, but although he didn't look up from where he was tying his shoelaces, the steel bands around his chest seemed to loosen just a little.
They remained silent while Leon put on his shirt with a rustle of clothes. Arthur stood, stretching slowly and wishing he weren't so tense—warm-up would be hell like this, with his shoulders knotted as tightly as if the muscles had tried to ball into fists too. A strange, unfamiliar ache was lodged deep beneath his ribs, pulling at his lungs, but Arthur didn't allow himself to dwell on it for too long. If he did, he might end up breaking down the door and beating Owain over the head with it for disrupting his team, and no matter how angry and humiliated he felt, Arthur didn't want to kill him.
"You've always had them," Leon said from behind him, carefully. His voice was gentle, of all things, and Arthur growled low in his throat, briefly giving himself over to a fantasy of how good it would feel to break his cheekbone for that, or his nose. Morgana would never forgive him, though, and he knew it would be unfair, since Leon was the only one who had come after him at all.
"Their trust, their admiration," Leon went on after a moment, oblivious to how close Arthur had come to turning around and shoving him into the wall. "You've always had it. You didn't even really need to ask for it. They just threw it at you when you joined the team, because we knew instinctively that you'd make an excellent captain."
Arthur said nothing. He listened to the scuffle of shoes on the other side of the door, the sounds of the rest of his teammates leaving the locker room in what seemed to be tense silence. Good, he thought, darkly, and hated himself for it just a second later.
"You still have mine," Leon stated when Arthur put his hand on the door handle. He looked a little awkward when Arthur turned around to glance at him, but he held his head high under Arthur's silent stare, not taking anything back. "If that helps."
"It doesn't," Arthur said crossly, but then the brick was back in his throat and dust seemed to sting his eyes, and he had to blink and swallow hard to dispel the sensation. Leon smiled at him, hesitantly, and although Arthur couldn't quite smile back, he felt like he might be capable of returning the gesture some time within the next hour.
Leon bumped Arthur's shoulder with his own when he walked past him. Together they headed out for what would most likely be the most awkward volleyball practice of Arthur's life.
The essay was returned the next morning, folded neatly and pushed into his locker so that it fell out when Arthur wrenched it open, and his shoulder protested the movement with a twinge of pain. He'd pulled a muscle there yesterday when he'd flung himself to the ground to dig an unfairly low pass from Owain, but he'd shrugged off Mr. Muirden's concern and continued playing, only allowing himself a pained grimace when Owain had turned back to the net.
Arthur left the pages folded as they were, unwilling to put himself through the sight of the F again. But there was an additional scrap of paper that Arthur was sure had not been there before, stuck to his essay with a piece of tape. He pulled it off, frowning—the folds had worn creases into the paper, as though whoever had stuck it there had folded and unfolded it quite a number of times.
He recognized Merlin's handwriting immediately, from numerous times of watching him fumble through his algebra homework with ever-increasing confidence and only a little residual hesitance. Here, it was a hasty scrawl, though, like he had needed to write the message quickly, lest some sort of uncertainty got the better of him and made him toss the paper into the nearest dustbin.
'Your problem is that you don't finish your thoughts. The beginning is average, but the rest doesn't fulfill its promise. You start and then stop, start and stop, throughout the entire essay like your mind couldn't find a path to follow until the end.
Life doesn't work that way either.
—M.'
If it hadn't been for the memory of yesterday's practice still fresh and cutting in Arthur's mind, he might have smiled at Merlin's words, or at least mulled over the advice for a moment. As it was, he crumpled the paper in his fist with a wordless snarl, startling a group of students into giving him a wary berth as they walked past.
Arthur thought about scaring them even more by slamming his fist into his locker, but decided against it after a moment—his shoulder was enough of a bother already, he didn't need his hand acting up as well. He looked around wildly instead, but of course there was no trashcan in sight, and with another snarl, he stuffed the scrap of paper into his pocket, abruptly deciding to drown it with his next load of laundry.
The time until lunch break passed in a pain-filled haze, his shoulder twinging each time Arthur crooked his arm to write. Lance asked him what was wrong, if he needed to go home, but Arthur deflected his concern with a silent scowl. He knew that his best friend was just worried about him, and that he simply wanted to help, but every single concerned glance from Lance's general direction made Arthur cringe. It felt like everyone was looking at him, imagined gazes burning at the back of his neck like acid on his skin. He tried not to move his arm too much, and gritted his teeth against the gnarled knot of furious humiliation that kept accumulating in his throat, and stormed out of the room as soon as the bell rang, signaling the lunch break.
"Silence," Morgana said warningly when she caught sight of Arthur's expression, but even her authoritative tone couldn't hide the concern in her eyes. "This is a library, not a boxing ring."
Arthur stared at her for a long, silent moment, feeling like he was waking up properly for the first time after yesterday's disaster. Meeting her gaze was like being doused in cold water, although it did nothing to soothe the frustration that was still humming through him like ants crawling under his skin. Somehow, that look reminded him that it was just high school—there were bigger things than this last year he had to spend here, worse things than being shunned by his volleyball team and spraining his shoulder.
And there were certainly things even more terrifying than the primal, frantic rush that pulled through Arthur's gut when he saw Merlin sitting near the back of the room.
The anger that cut through him at the sight felt rotten somehow, like a rusty knife twisting in his gut in search of something ripe and blood-filled to plunge into. He crossed the room with big strides, and by the time he flung himself down into the chair opposite of Merlin's, the heated throb in Arthur's stomach had subsided. Merlin was giving him a slightly puzzled look, the welcoming smile slowly sliding off of his face, but Arthur pulled pen and paper from his bag when he heard Morgana's warning cough behind them.
Merlin watched in confused silence as Arthur wrenched the cap off of his pen with enough force to slightly dent the plastic. The weird haze was back at the corners of his vision, but Arthur ignored it right along with the protesting sting in his abused shoulder. 'If I had wanted your help', he wrote, the scrape of his pen hard enough to indent the paper, 'I would have asked for it.'
He shoved the sheet at Merlin, nearly crumpling it against his elbow when Merlin didn't move his arm fast enough. Merlin had the gall to give him a confused look, but Arthur just glared at him, vaguely feeling like his teeth might disintegrate to dust if he gritted them any harder.
Merlin drew the paper closer to himself, bending over to read the words, and his expression turned from confused to surprised and finally to patient. Arthur was suddenly struck with the overwhelming desire to wipe that look off of his face—his fingers itched, but not with the urge to clench into fists. It wasn't like punching Merlin would make anything right again; if anything, it would just make everything worse, and the whole mess wasn't really Merlin's fault after all.
But Arthur couldn't figure out whose fault it was, and Merlin was already writing, his scrawl looking spindly and artistic under Arthur's angry note.
'You don't seem the type to ask for help.'
Merlin's eyes were calm, inquisitive even, and Arthur thought, suddenly, that he didn't look seventeen. He seemed older somehow, oddly wise in his own quirky kind of way—and something about his patient silence struck Arthur as so profoundly unfair that his breath stuck in his chest for a moment. It wasn't right, that Arthur should feel so unsettled, stumbling around in the dark like an uprooted tree, while Merlin, awkward, bumbling, infuriating Merlin seemed so confident, sure of himself and his footing, and as utterly unselfconscious as he wasn't about so many other things.
'Stop looking so smug', Arthur wrote, with vicious strokes, underlined the words, and got up, shoving back his chair so hard that it clattered to the floor. At the front desk, Morgana cleared her throat again, but she needn't have bothered—Arthur wasn't about to use Merlin as a substitute punching bag just because Owain wasn't around. His entire arm hurt, a white-hot line of pain along his bones, and his heart was making a valiant effort to claw its way out of his chest, and for just a moment, Arthur almost wished it would.
"Arthur," Merlin said from behind him, questioning and a more than a little worried. That single hesitant call of his name nearly undid him, but Arthur found, with a vague sort of surprise, that he couldn't let out the shaky breath he'd just taken, not even to form words, and so he ran.
Well, he didn't quite run, but he didn't stop until he'd found a faraway dusty corner with books on geography that looked like no one had taken them out of their shelves in ages. The single light bulb was flickering erratically, and an absent, unconcerned part of Arthur's brain made a mental note to inform Morgana about it on his way out later.
He stayed there for a while, breathing hard, pressing his forehead to the cool stone wall until he felt a little less like his head would explode any second. Out in the hallway, the bell signaled the end of the lunch break, but Arthur didn't move, just listened to the clatter of a hundred footsteps passing by on the other side of the wall, and concentrated on his breathing. His pulse seemed too loud in his ears, each disquieted thrash of his heart sending a spasm of pain through his shoulder, but he focused on the rise and fall of his chest, the rush of air through his lungs, and after a while he didn't feel quite as nauseous and unsteady anymore.
Merlin was gone when Arthur returned to the table, but the sheet of paper was still there, as well as Arthur's bag. Morgana was pointedly hiding behind another newspaper when he looked at the front desk, but Arthur got the vague feeling that she might have cut tiny holes into the front page to watch him from, and so he turned his back to her before he picked up the sheet.
'I'm not smug, Arthur', Merlin had written. The ink was still shimmering a little, like he'd thought about the words for a long time before finally writing them down. 'I didn't win anything. We were not even fighting.'
Arthur doesn't quite know when his hands started to shake, but even now that he's noticed it, he can't seem to get them to stop.
He's digging his fingers into his hair hard enough for spikes of pain to shoot through his temples, but it doesn't help. He still feels the bone-deep tremor winding through his palms, burrowing in between muscles and veins. Blood is leaking sluggishly from where the skin on his knuckles split open with the force of his punch, but that, at least, is a pain Arthur doesn't feel again just yet. Owain is being taken to the hospital right now with what's probably a broken jaw, after all, and the thought is oddly comforting, even though the smell of his own blood makes Arthur's stomach roil.
They both flinched when Arthur's mobile started to ring earlier, but Arthur ignored it. It rang for an irritatingly long time, like whoever was calling him didn't want to give up even after the tenth ring. Merlin's gaze flickered from Arthur's eyes to his pocket and back, as though silently imploring him to at least move to indicate that he hadn't just fainted sitting up. Arthur briefly thought about telling him how stupid that would have been, but in the end he couldn't quite gather enough energy to open his mouth.
Across the room, Merlin is leaning against the wall, and somehow, it's so profoundly odd that his body chooses this situation to betray his nervousness. He's biting his lip and fidgeting absently with the cuffs of his sleeves, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He looks like he's debating whether he should come closer, or maybe even sit down on the other bench opposite of Arthur, and lean down so he could catch his eye. Arthur hopes he won't.
In his pocket, his phone starts to ring and vibrate again, the melody annoyingly cheerful; for just a moment, Arthur contemplates taking it out just to fling it against the wall and stop the sound. Merlin makes a short, abortive movement, a hesitant jerk of his arm that takes him a step forward. His eyes are wide, and very, very blue, and Arthur thinks bitterly that if he can't take a hint and stay the fuck away from him even with that bruise marring his cheek, he only has himself to blame.
(8 days earlier)
It was Tuesday when Arthur noticed the bruises for the first time.
He blinked drops of water from his eyes and impatiently brushed back his dripping bangs, all the while not taking his gaze off of the shadow marring the tanned skin of his left forearm. The beat of music was still thumping too loudly, muffled as it was by the wall between the bathroom and Morgana's room. Arthur had been listening to somebody singing weird nonsense about having the same dream every night as he'd rinsed the shampoo from his hair and finally turned off the shower. Practice had been exhausting, and he'd been content to just let his mind drift while the hot water washed the sweat of exertion from his body.
Lance had dropped by unannounced over the weekend, with DVDs and a sixpack, and subtly tried to get Arthur to talk over beer and Welcome to the Jungle. Rationally, Arthur knew that his best friend was worried about him, that he himself had been acting rather odd during the past weeks, and that Lance just wanted to help. But he'd also been very aware of the fact that he was just no good at the whole 'sharing his feelings' thing, especially when he hadn't yet gotten over the realization that there even was something to be shared—a painful knot in his stomach whenever he thought of his team, mingling with the unsettling, irritating pull that plucked at him every time his mind wandered to Merlin.
And so Arthur had just hummed noncommittally whenever Lance tried to engage him in a conversation that went beyond commenting on the movie. Even if he had wanted to talk, he couldn't have put the jumbled mess of thoughts into words anyway, not with the way he felt like something in his head was trying to crack open whenever he tried to catch their trailing ends.
Now, though, Arthur just stared at his wrists for a good long while, feeling the dampness on his body grow cool, and thought about calling his best friend. "Lance," he imagined whispering into his phone, very quietly, lest Uther would hear, "I am losing my fucking mind," and then his mouth would dry up, along with any other pathetic words that might have been hovering on his tongue.
He recognized those bruises. His arms weren't black and blue, they didn't even hurt, but the shadowy patches stretching down his forearm from his wrists were unmistakable. They were the sort of bruises one got from playing volleyball—through digging, or, more specifically, through sloppy digging.
The last time Arthur had seen his wrists look like that had been in his freshman year, when he'd first joined the volleyball team and his technique had still needed a bit of work. The yellow-greenish shadows had faded during the first few weeks, though, as he figured out the right way of stretching his arms just so and avoid the sting of pain that had accompanied each dig at first. After years of training, he barely felt the brief flash of discomfort anymore whenever the ball slapped against his arms.
But now the bruises were back as though they'd never been gone. Which meant that his technique had relapsed into shoddiness some time during the awkward practices of last week, and Arthur even had an inkling who might be responsible for that. For a long, blissful moment, Arthur allowed his imagination to run away with him, and envisioned how good it would feel to ambush Owain just before class tomorrow and take out all his pent-up frustration on his teammate for making Arthur lose his edge.
Next door, Morgana's stereo blared on about perfect matches, the music only interrupted by the slam of the front door that meant that Uther had just come home. Swallowing the black, hopeless anger that swelled in his throat made Arthur feel nauseous, but he did it anyway, and even refrained from throwing a random object across the room just to see something shatter.
Arthur retreated to his room after toweling himself off, changed into his pajamas, and pulled the sleeves over his hands so he wouldn't accidentally catch a glimpse of the bruises again. He briefly contemplated getting started on his Biology homework, but discarded the thought, and somehow ended up sitting on the edge of his bed, staring sightlessly at a mindless sitcom flickering across the TV screen.
He didn't notice his father's presence until he cleared his throat, an unusually tentative sound for Uther Pendragon, who normally just swept in and demanded the entire room's attention, whether its occupants liked it or not. He was still wearing his shoes, a few half-melted snowflakes dusting the collar of his suit; Arthur concluded, foggily, that he might need to get up a bit earlier tomorrow morning to have enough time for driving to school through snowed-in streets.
Uther didn't say anything, and for some reason, Arthur got the feeling that his father had been standing there for a while, just watching him sitting motionless on the bed. The thought made him uncomfortable, and he pulled at his sleeves again just to make sure they covered his wrists, waiting for Uther to break the silence first.
At last, his father sighed, and let his gaze wander to the TV, one hand coming up to absently loosen his tie. "If this is about the essay," he started, sounding just as awkward as Arthur felt—it almost made him smile for a moment, because he knew how much it took for his father's voice to sound anything other than decisive.
"It's not," Arthur replied, for lack of anything else to say, because it wasn't about the most recent fail grade, not really. He even had an inkling that it wasn't about the bruises either, and more about the ugly sneer on Owain's face when he'd seen him and Merlin in the library, and the unshakeable certainty that had lurked in Merlin's eyes even then. All things considered, Arthur didn't even really know what 'it' was.
He had no idea how to say, 'Owain's stupid accusations are destroying our team spirit', or, unrelatedly, 'I miss studying with Merlin', because something had kept Arthur from the library during the entire past week, an invisible force that he refused, refused to believe was anything like fear. The words seemed to clog his airways with a tangled knot of frustration, though, and so Arthur didn't speak again.
Uther sighed again when it became clear that Arthur wouldn't talk to him, and let his gaze travel across the room again. He looked old, suddenly, older than Arthur could ever remember seeing him—his hair looked grayer than usual in the dim light from the hallway. The sight made Arthur feel guilty for some reason, and he quickly averted his gaze back to the TV.
"Take my car to school tomorrow," Uther said abruptly, his posture straightening with the words—only then did Arthur realize how utterly unfamiliar his father had looked in his previous indecision. Arthur gave him a surprised glance, briefly wondering at the leap his father's thoughts had taken from grades to cars. He made the mistake of catching Uther's eye, though, and his father cleared his throat, looking away as he added, "It is better equipped for dealing with snow than yours."
For a moment, Arthur considered informing him that although the days grew colder and colder, there was no sign of snow just yet, not even in the weather forecasts, if he remembered correctly. But then he just shifted his weight on the bed, uncomfortably, mumbling a quick thank you, and Uther gave him a somewhat stiff nod and retreated back into the hallway, the door clicking shut behind him.
The look on his father's face had reminded Arthur of one he often saw in the volleyball court, from opposing teams who were not quite sure whether they could take them on. It made something curl unsettlingly in his stomach now, though, because this wasn't a fight, not even a challenge—okay, his father had obviously caught on to the fact that something was wrong, but he'd backed down surprisingly easily. Which was rather atypical, come to think of it, and Arthur couldn't help but feel like his father's offer of taking his car tomorrow had been little more than a clumsy attempt at appeasement.
He willed the thought away with some difficulty, and let himself slump back into the mattress. Shadows were flickering across the ceiling, spurred on by the blueish light coming from the TV, and next door, Morgana's stereo was still blaring something about never having been under control. The knot in his stomach didn't lessen, but Arthur figured that that was okay—he hadn't really expected it to.
By the time his phone rings yet again, Merlin has already sat down on the other bench, opposite of Arthur, and Arthur can feel their knees brush through the fabric of their trousers. All things considered, he suspects that his hands are mutinying against him, because despite his increasingly hopeless mental commands, they have not shoved Merlin away yet.
Although the whole mess started in the showers, they've made it to the locker room eventually, if only because after everything that happened today, Arthur rather felt like he was going to fall over if he didn't sit down. Merlin followed him, of course, once more displaying his startling lack of common sense. The room still smells like sweat from his team's earlier practice session, not the accumulated stink of several weeks' worth of workouts, but the clear, fresh scent of an hour well-spent in the gym.
Merlin moves, very slowly, and pulls the phone from Arthur's pocket, looking down at the name on the display for a moment. He tries to catch Arthur's eye, get his permission somehow, but Arthur refuses to look at him, and so Merlin raises the small black device to his ear after a moment, keeping his gaze on Arthur as he mutters a scratchy hello.
A pause. "No, this is Merlin— um, Merlin Emrys," Merlin says, his voice a little rough with disuse, but he seems to sit up a bit straighter. Then, "Yes," and then a short silence.
Merlin's gaze, which skittered off to the side of Arthur's head, returns to his eyes after a moment. "I'm not sure," he replies hesitantly to whatever his interlocutor has said. Arthur sees his Adam's apple bob as he swallows. "I— could try, though. Um, do you—"
He breaks off and listens, nodding absently although the other person clearly can't see it. Something shifts in his features, though, some nearly untraceable change that Arthur couldn't quite put into words if asked to describe it. Determination settles into Merlin's eyes, chasing the miniscule slump from his shoulders as he straightens up a little, and he doesn't even wince although the movement clearly pulls at his bruises.
"I've had my license for a few months," Merlin says, resolve replacing the previous hesitance in his tone. His eyes are still fixed on Arthur, although Arthur takes great pains to avoid meeting them—he's currently staring at Merlin's left knee, because if he raises his gaze any higher, he'll catch sight of the bruise marring Merlin's cheekbone at the edge of his vision.
Merlin nods again, but this time it looks decisive instead of absentminded. "Yes, sir," he replies to something his interlocutor must have said. "We'll be there in—," pausing for a brief moment, he tries to meet Arthur's gaze once again, hesitating only briefly before finishing, "—half an hour."
Sir? Arthur stares at him wordlessly, his stomach bottoming out for what seems to be the umpteenth time that day. A vague, nagging suspicion is forming in the back of his head, breaking through the numbing layer of apathy—it feels like being poked and prodded awake by the restless squirm of thought at the very edge of his consciousness.
Merlin disconnects the call, and this time he does wince a little when he puts the phone down on the bench. For a brief moment, Arthur thinks that Merlin must have some shred of common sense left, since he doesn't try to hand it back, but that hope is dashed when Merlin looks up, catching him unawares.
"That was your father," Merlin says, softly now. His eyes are dark and very blue, as though their depth was meant to trap Arthur's gaze all along. "He wants me to take you home."
(2 days earlier)
Even though Arthur didn't much feel like it, he couldn't help but assume that to an outsider, it must have looked like his life mostly returned to normal during the past week.
He went to his volleyball practices, did his homework, and did his best to ignore everything that had happened. Morgana had taken to shooting him concerned looks over breakfast lately, which was scary and annoying in equal measures, and so Arthur ignored that, too. He drove home early on Friday, as he had been doing ever since Owain had seen him with Merlin, a memory that Arthur didn't allow himself to think about too much because it still made him want to punch something.
He had reached a fragile peace with his team, a truce that he suspected Leon to have hurried along behind his back. Arthur's pride simply did not allow for him to change in the showers, and so he took to arriving early, changing before the rest of the team trickled in, and engaging in random conversations with the coach until the others had left after practice. Nobody ever commented on it, not even Owain, and as the days passed, Arthur allowed himself to relax, if only a little.
The uncomfortable, prickly feeling at the back of his mind never went away, though, but at least the bruises faded from his wrists. Dr. Muirden pulled him aside after practice one day to tell Arthur that apparently the team was going strong again and was once more "running like a well-oiled BMW," as he'd phrased it. Arthur just thanked him, though, and dodged the coach's subtle attempts at finding out what had disrupted them in the first place.
Still, the rush of gratitude when Pellinore invited Arthur to one of their weekly get-togethers was thoroughly unexpected even to Arthur himself. And somehow it still rankled him when they all walked out towards the school's parking lot together, Lance in tow. Sure, Arthur was their captain, but he was also their friend, and he shouldn't need to feel grateful if they decided to graciously allow him to come along. The thought caused a strange itch to form under his skin, an impatience born of the unfamiliar urge to be on his guard around people he was supposed to trust.
Preoccupied as he was, Arthur almost barreled head-first into Leon's back as the other boy suddenly stopped walking. Next to him, Owain broke off mid-sentence in the middle of praising some new bar that had opened near the mall, and Pellinore rubbed a hand across his forehead and heaved a sigh, as though to say, tiredly, not again.
A moment later, Arthur understood why. The yard was mostly deserted save for a few clusters of students still scattered about, and despite the approaching twilight of dusk, Arthur could clearly make out Merlin and Mordred next to a small copse of windswept trees.
He didn't even need to look at Owain to know that he was scowling, but as far as Arthur could see, Merlin and Mordred were just talking. Well, Mordred was talking, mostly, gesturing expansively with the hand not holding his cigarette. Even though he took care not to blow the smoke directly into Merlin's face, Arthur got the distinct impression that they were arguing.
Mordred saw them first. He stilled, suddenly, like a cat right before pouncing on an unsuspecting mouse, and Owain took an involuntary step back when Mordred's bright eyes came to rest on him.
Merlin started to turn around to follow Mordred's gaze, but Mordred grabbed the front of his coat and hauled him close, his grin suddenly malicious as he tugged Merlin down, stood on his tiptoes and kissed him.
"Gross!" Owain exclaimed, predictably like clockwork. His hands had clenched into fists, and Pellinore was rolling his eyes even as he put a restraining hand on his teammate's arm. Owain shrugged him off just when Merlin wrenched himself free of Mordred's grip, and elbowed his way through all of them and back into the building.
There was a strange rush in Arthur's stomach at the furious disbelief on Merlin's face, but Arthur didn't feel like waiting to see what it would unfold into if he gave it time. He followed the others back inside, led by Pellinore's slightly exasperated calls for Owain to wait up, mate, come on, don't be so—, and couldn't help the small measure of relief that bubbled up in his chest when Pellinore didn't elaborate on what exactly he wanted Owain to stop being.
He felt Lance's gaze on him when they caught up with Owain in the assembly hall, as steady as it was unsettling, but Arthur didn't turn to acknowledge him. He just stuffed his hands in his pockets, listened to Owain's half-furious, half-offended rant about fags, and wondered why he felt vaguely nauseous. It was the same sensation that had curled into his stomach at the sight of the bruises just a week ago, the sort of slow, sickening feeling of an impending failure that he couldn't stop from happening even if he knew what to watch out for.
As close to the door as he was, Arthur heard them walk past in the hallway a minute later—Mordred's normally clear, cutting voice, now lowered to a timbre that was probably meant to be soothing as he said something about jokes to provoke certain idiots. Merlin's voice, louder than Mordred's—angry, indignant, confused—hacking Mordred's placating murmurs to pieces, not listening.
Arthur could think of a million reasons why that shouldn't make the knot in his stomach loosen ever-so-slightly, but it still did.
"It was not what it looked like," was the first thing Merlin said to him the next day, the words tumbling hastily from his mouth, shivery with cold and possibly something else. He was breathing hard enough to almost bend in half, steadying himself with a hand pressed to the wall.
Arthur didn't reply at first, just looked down at him from his position at the top of the stairwell. He had heard Merlin call his name at the bus stop, of course; Merlin had been shouting loudly enough to turn quite a lot of confused heads, after all. But Arthur hadn't stopped, just shouldered his way through the crowded snowy yard, dodged a random snowball hurled his way, and ducked into the nearest stairwell.
Well, fled into the nearest stairwell, more like. And Merlin had caught up with him anyway—given how much of a couch potato he seemed to be, it was no surprise to see him almost collapse on the stairs now, panting as if he'd run a marathon. Arthur folded his arms across his chest, and watched the clouds of condensation puffing out from Merlin's mouth in time with his breathing.
When he finally found his voice from wherever it had run off to, Arthur said, very evenly, "As much as I enjoy your inane chatter, Merlin, I have no idea what you're talking about."
Merlin just gave him a disbelieving look, straightening up a little, and fought to control his spasming lungs. His face was flushed from the cold, and he had snow in his hair—Arthur suspected that one of the stray snowballs might have hit him.
"I mean," Merlin finally elaborated, gesturing vaguely with a cold-reddened hand, "with Mordred. That was not—"
"I do not care what that was," Arthur said, and he knew that the cutting anger that suddenly rushed through him was misplaced, but he couldn't have stopped it even if he had tried. "I only care to never see it again."
Merlin's expression twitched, just for a second, but the moment lasted long enough for Arthur to see. The snow was melting slowly, plastering curling clumps of Merlin's hair to his temples, and somehow he looked wary under his veneer. It made words hover on Arthur's tongue, but they fled before he could decipher their meaning, and so he didn't say anything.
"He just wanted to annoy Owain," Merlin said at last, although his voice was quiet this time, perhaps quieter than Arthur had ever heard him sound. Something twisted in his chest, curling up protectively around a small fissure of hurt that he had not anticipated.
He choked it back down with difficulty, though, and remained silent. Merlin was looking up at him, his eyes clear and very blue, strangely unaffected by the defensive set of his shoulders. His gaze made Arthur feel like something was expected of him, something big and far-off and frightening, although to Merlin, it didn't appear to be all that big of a challenge, if the untroubled calm in his eyes was anything to go by.
"Are you finished?" Arthur asked, after the silence had stretched for long enough to grow uncomfortable. Merlin's steady gaze unnerved him, made him feel like Merlin was utterly sure that Arthur would pass this... test, or whatever it was. It itched beneath his skin, dropping a strange, unsteady weight into his chest. Oddly enough, the sensation reminded him of how he'd felt when Merlin's mother had smiled at him in the parking lot, although this time it was sharper, deeper, unfurling low in his belly and cresting up like a tidal wave.
"I—," Merlin started, and deflated visibly at the aloofness in Arthur's tone. He still managed to look stubborn, though, and didn't even blink when the door on the ground floor burst open with a bang.
Laughing chatter suddenly filled the stairwell, peppered with exclamations as some of the younger students never stopped pelting each other with dripping snowballs even after the door had swung shut behind them. Merlin never broke Arthur's gaze, though, not even as the rising tide of students pushed past them—there was just the tiniest fissure of disappointment in his eyes, as though he knew that Arthur could have done better than that, but he didn't speak.
When Arthur's eyes instinctively started to search for Owain in the crowd, the familiar, worried thought of whether he'd seen him with Merlin unfurling slowly at the very edge of his consciousness, Arthur gritted his teeth so hard they hurt. But as always, he didn't allow the frustrated anger to explode outwards, just swallowed it down right along with the knot that had formed in his throat. He turned around and bounded up the rest of the stairs, Merlin's gaze like a physical touch on his back, and the burn in his chest followed him all along the still-empty hallway, an useless simmering in the back of his mind.
At Merlin's third mumbled apology for crashing the wheel rims into the curb, Arthur comes to the unsurprising conclusion that Merlin is not a very good driver.
Which makes sense, Arthur thinks, considering the fact that he's only had a few months' worth of experience, and has probably never driven a car even half as expensive as Arthur's. He keeps killing the engine at every intersection simply because he doesn't quite dare to accelerate enough, he's switched on the headlights although dusk is barely beginning to darken the horizon, but no matter how carefully he steers, he still manages to collide with the curb every so often.
It's sort of ridiculous that after everything that happened today, it's the possibility of crashing Arthur's car that finally makes Merlin nervous. The thought doesn't exactly make Arthur laugh or even smile, but he feels like he might in retrospect, in about a week's time.
"Your father said that Leon called him," Merlin finally speaks up next to him, sounding a bit like he's been mulling over the words for a while in his mind, "after they'd taken Owain to the hospital. He thought you might have gone home."
Arthur doesn't reply. They haven't been talking much ever since Merlin shouldered past Arthur to the driver's side and held out an expectant hand for the keys, which Arthur gave to him without even protesting. He knows he should have felt affronted at the notion that Merlin doesn't think him capable of driving; but then again, Leon probably exaggerated the details of his fight with Owain when he'd called Uther, because his father didn't seem too keen on the idea of Arthur driving home by himself either.
From then on, it was only the occasional exchange of short words as Arthur gave him directions, staring out at the familiar scenery passing by at an unfamiliarly slow pace. He still has the feeling that Merlin is driving far more slowly than Arthur usually does, but a glance at the speed-o-meter confirmed that Merlin is simply obeying the speed limit around three miles ago.
Uther's house (well, mansion, as Morgana insists on calling it) is at the very edge of town, reachable only by way of a winding, tree-lined road that makes Merlin gape a little even as he struggles to navigate smoothly through the bends and turns. Arthur never really thought to pay attention to anyone's first reaction upon seeing the house's looming shadow through the trees—he doesn't take just anyone home with him, and he's known most of his friends since kindergarten, and they've had time to grow accustomed to it. Merlin's wide-eyed wonder would probably be amusing in any other situation, even slightly endearing, but right now, Arthur can't bring himself to even look at it for too long.
Merlin lets the car roll to a slow stop when the road forks out in front of them—the right-hand road, Arthur knows, leads down to a small hunting lodge at the edge of the forest, a remnant of the long-passed time the mansion was built in. He's already opened his mouth to direct Merlin towards the house when Merlin sighs, long and low, and braces his hands against the steering wheel.
"I haven't gotten the chance to thank you yet," he says, quietly, although he's wise enough not to turn to look at Arthur. The hesitance is back in his tone, but he still sounds self-assured underneath—like he's sure that it's the right thing to say, although he doesn't know if it's the right time.
"Left," Arthur says by way of reply, his voice suddenly coming out scratchy and unused. For the first time, it occurs to him to wonder where his anger has gone, the prickling itch under his skin that almost made him want Merlin to misstep just so it could explode into sudden, meaningless violence. Maybe he's left it in the locker room, maybe he shut it away when he closed the door and Merlin didn't say a word although it had taken Arthur an embarrassingly long time to stay his shaking hands enough to fit the key into the lock.
Next to him, Merlin sighs. The clicking of the signal sounds loud in the hush until he carefully releases the clutch and lets the car roll down the left road. Arthur opens his mouth again, a scathing comment about how it's not necessary to signal in the middle of a private road leading up to an old country mansion already perched on his tongue. But then he thinks, just briefly, that Merlin probably found the sudden silence just as unbearable as he did, and Arthur thinks better of speaking, settling back into the passenger seat instead.
Part 3
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Date: 2011-06-17 05:49 pm (UTC)This is so true: ...it was just high school... Too bad it's impossible to keep that advice at the forefront of your mind when you're a confused adolescent being confronted by feelings you have no idea how to handle. It's beautifully written.
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Date: 2011-12-19 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-02 09:16 am (UTC)