merlin_holidays | Happy Merlin Holidays, flypaw! [1/2]

Title: The Archivists: A Third Generation, Vol II: Selected Scenes.
Recipient:

flypaw!!!
Author:

derryere
Rating: R for Rawr, ‘tis a monster!
Pairings: Merlin/Arthur and a grand clever variation on those names
Word Count: ~11,5K
Warnings: There’s a bit of blood here and there, but that’s what happens when you run around with swords. Vague mention of canon death, but nothing graphic.
Summary: “A short selection of ___ ___’s latest instalment of The Archivists series. Magic, patience and friendship are put to the test once again when a mysterious force attacks the city! If you are a fan of adventure, sit tight, because you’re in for a ride!” –Geoffrey M. Moth, LBN Weekly
Author's Notes: Oh man oh man I hope you like this, flypaw. When the mods asked me if I could pinch hit I was like, sure! But then I saw the prompt and got super excited, because folklore? Adventure? Misunderstandings? My favourite things! I tried to incorporate as many of your likes into the story and I hope I didn’t get it completely wrong. Many thanks to Ella, who cheered me on and helped me get this into shape! (Ps, I’m not a genius when it comes to drawing, but E said I should add the doodle, so I did. I am weak. She is strong. The doodle has been added.)
Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to Shine and BBC. I make no profit from this endeavor.

Technically Merlin couldn’t be Arthur’s best friend, because he already had a best friend. That title went to Lee Jameson, who was a half year older and a son of one of a man who often came to see his father. They decided on the matter one chilly afternoon under the staircase, leaning against the hot water pipe and playing Beowulf and the Dalek invasion with a pepper mill and a transformer action figure. Lee, who lived three hours away and also had a private tutor four days in the week, agreed with a shrug and a pieu-pieu! shooting from the pepper mill’s head at the transformer. But Lee Jameson doesn’t get to visit very often, and Arthur isn’t allowed to play ball alone in the gardens (or narrate the match or count the goals because Father says it makes him look rabbit. He isn’t sure of the connection between footie and rabbits, but thinks it’s something to do with grass and running), so until Lee Jameson gets to stay over again he will have to make do with Ines the laundry lady’s kid, Lin Emirs. They come by twice a week to pick up the baskets of dirty clothes and linens the maid leaves in the downstairs kitchens by the back door. Lin Emirs’ mom drives a van that his dad calls That Horrid Hippo Contraption, or something that sounds like hippo because there’s really nothing hippo about it—Arthur had made sure to look. It’s a loud, unwieldy thing, rattling down the mansion pathway and appearing from behind the high hedge with its faded yellows and smoking exhaust. At first Lin would play with him out back while his mom smokes a cigarette with Cook, or more like Lin would whine and say he didn’t like anything they were doing while Arthur ran around him with a ball, pretending the space between the boy’s feet was the goal. He also spent a lot of time talking about Lee Jameson. Lin mostly grumbled in return, made muddy pits in the grass with the toes of his shoes, and occasionally interjected saying that Lee Jameson sounded like a right cabbage and that he’s bored and when were they going home? Mum? . . . Mum! Muuuum!

“In a second, Merlin, I’m right in the middle of a conversation here.”

Arthur stared at him. A beginning of a nasty smile tugged at his lips. “Your mum calls you Merlin? Merlin Emirs. Mer—“

“Shut up,” Lin mumbled, tightly, face heating up a furious red. His frown seemed to shadow, pinch his features as Arthur laughed, pretending to have to hold on to the rain pipe for balance.

“I can’t believe it! I can’t—You’re such a loser! Merlin!”

“Well at least,” was Lin’s start of a reply, voice getting louder with an angry, “At least I have a mum!”

Within a minute of the conversation they had to be pulled apart by Ines and a number of the kitchen staff, a small crowd of tight-bunned women in aprons circled around the fighting children, part wary, part interested. The boys had rolled off the slight incline behind the house and ended up trying to push and punch at each other in a small puddle of yesterday’s showers. They were covered in mud, angry, Arthur bleeding from the lip and Merlin holding on to a sore wrist, both breathing hard, both scowling and proud and teary.

Later, at Lin Emir’s place, showered and wearing a pyjama that smelled like old and the inside of a cupboard, Arthur quietly told Lin that he thought his bunk bed was cool. Lin Emirs shrugged, scratching his nail into the wood of the ladder, hanging upside down from the side of the mattress. Suddenly, he flipped around, propped himself up on his elbows and quickly asked whether Arthur wanted to—“see my dragon costume? Mum made it for me last year it’s pretty wicked d’you wanna see it?”

Lin’s house was small and funny smelling, there was clutter everywhere and not enough cool toys but he had to stay there until his clothes dried and he could go back home looking presentable and not, as Ines Emirs had said, like a drowned hedgehog. Arthur didn’t really like playing dragons and kind of wanted to read Lin Emirs’ comic book pile he saw on the dresser, but crying had made him tired and humble so instead he said yeah and okay then, and watched as Lin Emirs wriggled under his bed, in his star-patterned pants and one red sock, voice muffled as he called up that he sees it, it’s just wedged between the wall—but he’s almost got it, wait, hold on!

Next time Arthur saw Lee Jameson, about a half year later, he asked him if he thought it was okay for someone to have two best friends. Lee Jameson shrugged, and then, a heavy pause later, in a rare display of wordiness, said that his dad told him that there was really no such thing as best friends, and that everyone knows people they think are friends and that most of them aren’t real anyway. Or something. Later that day Arthur told Lin Emirs what Lee Jameson had said. He did this as they were making two slices of bread fight each other over a piece of cheese.

“That’s stupid,” Lin had said, punching a hole in his bread with his finger.

“Right?” Arthur agreed, and made his bread fall on the cheese with a quiet, raaaw!

On the lower bunk of Lin Emirs’ bed, knees drawn up and staring at the glow in the dark stars on the wooden battens, they’re quiet and can hear the conversation downstairs muffled but clear. At first it’s a low-voiced disagreement, Arthur’s dad’s voice rumbling paced and strict in contrast to Ines Emirs’ quicker, disbelieving tone.

“Lin Emirs,” Arthur whispers.

“Yes?” he whispers back.

“I don’t think Beowulf should have a cape next time.”

“Okay.”

Downstairs Ines raises her voice, saying that “—kids, sir, it’s what they do—they play, they make a mess, you can’t—!”

“Oh, I can! I can and I will! Perhaps you can have the luxury of merely having ‘kids’, Miss Emirs, but I unfortunately cannot. My child will be and therefore must be, at all times, a direct reflection of me. I cannot have him—floundering about, roaring through the hallways, making those—those—noises! When I’m entertaining important—“

“—Noises! Noises! You, sir, are mad. You are mad. I can’t think of any other explanation, you must be—noises! Ha! What next, would you like him to breathe less, quieter, not move quite with as many limbs?”

“Who do you think you are, Miss Emirs? Who are you to lecture me about my—! No. Need I remind you that you work for me, that your—“

Lin nudges Arthur with an elbow, whispers, “Arthur. Look.”

“What?”

“Look. I can pick it up with my toes.” Lin Emirs has a pencil wedged between his big toe and smaller one, and he’s lifting it up for Arthur to see in the faint light that’s coming in from under the door.

“—is it. I am done here. And you, Emirs, can consider yourself done as well. Arthur!” his father calls up the stairwell, and he sounds angry. “Arthur! We’re going. Come down at once.”

“I have to go,” Arthur says, not moving.

Lin pushes the pencil against one of the bed posts. “I know.”

Arthur slides off the mattress. He pauses to look from the door to Lin, his dad calling him again in the background. He feels lost and panicky for a moment, but swallows it down, smiles instead—a mean-like smile. He lightly shoves at Lin’s shoulder. “See you later, Lin Emirs.”

“Yeah,” Lin says, one arm around the post, frowning unhappily at his lap. He glances up, his sweaty mat of black hair over his forehead. “Later, Artie.”

When he gets downstairs, his father yanks his wrist with a rough, gloved hand, barking out a quick, “Come.” Arthur gives a quiet whine of, “Ow dad!”, weakly pushing at his dad’s arm. He gets a fast shake in return, and settles for walking with toward the door, pouting angrily. He turns around, once, just at the door, to give Lin’s mum a small wave. She waves back, sadly, giving him a thin smile. Arthur has a something in his stomach that could be sadness as well as a bad bug. Outside it’s quiet with snow, nothing but a pat pat of falling flakes and the creaking of faraway branches—the quick flight of winter birds, flocking out of a tree. Arthur’s coat is in his father’s grip.

“I’m cold, Dad,” Arthur tells him. His father doesn’t appear to hear. He’s staring at something that isn’t there, snowflakes stuck in his eyebrows.

He’d walked by there again, once, when the reports started. Just to get a feel of the place. The street was cast in a low shadow by the early evening sun inching down behind the building, the end of winter noon coming to a close. Aside from a restless kid in a hoodie, mulling by an old telephone booth, there seemed to be no one around—a small pocket of silence in the grand hubbub of the city, an eerie cloud of still hanging air. At the time he figured the chilly feel of the place had to mean something, but in retrospect it couldn’t have been more than the play of scenery, of light and the ongoing reports from the paper in the back of his mind—headlines exclaiming the slow but sure increase of freak accidents in and around the building, followed by its eventual (and inevitable) evacuation. They’d stayed at the grand hotel for a short while when he was nine, when they’d just moved to the city and his father was still looking for a suitable house and working during the day. It couldn’t have been more than a month or two, in the end, but in his memory the days spent running down endless hallways of brown patterned carpets and having long conversations with doormen on the merits of different power rangers and the antics of his best friend back at home, eating candy, trying to pronounce the French on the menu cards of room service—seemed to have lasted forever. These days, with its golden entrance boarded up and the framed windows lining all its twenty floors dark and reflecting the buildings opposite, it looks nothing like it used to. It looks sad, a void nostalgia of the early twentieth century—the revival of the Gothic and a French entrepreneur’s stubborn wish to create the heart of the city, Grand Hotel Le Coeur.

A year or two ago, when the hotel was still open and doing rather well, Arthur had worked on their case—an issue concerning an unknown water source that had been found some levels below the basement, when the city was working on relaying electricity lines. It wasn’t a very exciting case, one that ended up in an easy settlement and a plan to revisit the blueprints for future excavation. No one had thought at the time that it would close down so soon, or at all, let alone because of an odd ghost story that had gotten out of hand.

At his apartment, Arthur turns on the music first and the heater second. The television third, set to mute, and shrugs off his coat wherever it is he’s standing. While the coffee machine is crunching and creaking away in the kitchen, he pages through the today’s paper on the counter. When he finds a small blurb in the economy section about the city still debating what to do about the Coeur building, he carefully rips it out and magnets it to the fridge next to the others—not sure why, still, but calling it a habit now. Outside the wind whistles and pushes at the windows, setting a whirl of leaves flying by, picked up from the sidewalk and blown up to the other side of the street.

He’s sure of it when he rounds a corner and there’s still a shadow in the corner of his eye—just a few steps behind, just a few paces slower. He pulls his jacket against the stormy weather and walks faster still, thinking of the few times he’s gotten into fights in his life—the blue eye after a drunken disagreement at a bar, something he couldn’t shut up about for weeks, never quite believing the guy punched him, and vaguer memories that seem hilarious now, a muddy wrestle when he was a kid and a shoving about at thirteen, on his way back from school. Nothing seems to compare to the fright this gives him, the seriousness of the moment when he glances sideways and still sees someone nearing closer behind him, and his heart beats higher and higher in his throat, rushing his mind through a million scenarios of film-like montages of kicking and knives and sad news reports.

He goes from feeling helpless, to tough, to reckless in a flash—emotion flicking back and forth with no apparent inclination, and turns around without much of a thought. Turns around quickly, angrily, wondering who the hell has the right, and over the bellowing wind shouts the question of—

“What the fuck are you doing?”

He’s addressing a young man who stumbles back instantly—hands up in a ‘whoa!’ gesture. Arthur’s fantasy goes from dramatic to unsure. The guy looks harmless, scruffy, wiry or hungry at best.

“Do you want money? Is that it? You want—“

“No I don’t—!” He lowers his hands in a frustrated yank when Arthur starts taking out his wallet, finishes with a, “I don’t want your money! God. No.”

Arthur stops in movement. He’s irritated, adrenaline still high in his system. He’s trying to calm down, runs a scratching hand though his hair, breathes out with a, “Why are you following me? Why would you—have you any idea how creepy that is? Jesus that was . . . why would you do that!”

“I just—I wasn’t sure where you lived, so I—“

“Excuse me?”

“No—it’s—Bloody hell. Arthur. Right? Arthur?”

Arthur blinks at him. Flares his nostrils.

“We need your help.”

Arthur hears him. He instinctively glances over the man’s shoulder, but there’s no one who’d seem to be a part of that ‘we’—just the distant crowd of the city, crossing roads, getting coffee at vendors. Then the words seem to sink in a little, and his attention snaps back. The man has a look about him, angrily uncertain, like he’s older than he looks and unhappy about it, sharp features under a heavy stubble and sharp shoulder in a leather jacket, eyes red-rimmed like he needs sleep, like he’s—

“Wait.” Arthur briefly closes his eyes. Frowns. “What? I mean—What? How do you know my name? I’m walking from my office to the—and then you’re—what help? Who is we there’s only you and—what?”

The man nods, slowly, says, “Okay. Um. I’m not quite sure if that was a question, but, let’s . . . “ He holds out a hand, bending sideways a bit from his distance. “Rees,” he says. “Em Rees.”

Arthur stares at the hand. The man, Rees, wriggles his fingers a bit. Arthur scowls as he shakes it, quickly, and when they let go he says, “Arthur. But you already knew that, it seems.”

Rees uses his freed hand to fish a cigarette from a carton of smokes flattened into his chest pocket. He has problems lighting it in the wind, and trying different angles to shield his mouth and lighter he mumbles, “I wouldn’t sound so unhappy about that,” around his cigarette. “There’s loads of people who’d kill to be what you are.”

Arthur huffs, shakes his head a little as he stares off to the left, at a broken umbrella stuffed into a bin on the other side of the road. “Oh yeah?” he says. “And what would that be.”

Rees manages, somehow, and emerges from behind his hands with a lit smoke and a wide smile. Arthur is suddenly overwhelmed by an odd sense of familiarity. And Rees, breathing it out on a puff of smoke, answers,

“Prophesized.”

The room smells like old fabric. The door to the outside world seems to have closed somewhere around the sixties and never quite opened again, locking in aged patchouli and dark corduroy curtains. It’s a cramped apartment that’s mostly its main area, whatever other rooms it has it hides behind several doors that could be kitchens or cupboards. There’s books strewn around, stacked up against walls to make new walls, newspapers hanging off chairs and pasted against the window glasses to soften the light. A number of towels hangs from a line that runs the length of the mouldy ceiling. Most of the space, however, is taken by the room’s centrepiece—the bulky round table in its middle, archaic and out of place, carved out of rough wood fit for a different century rather than this mouse hole of an Edwardian remainder.

Arthur looks up from the rolled out blueprints, from the scattering of articles ranging all the way back to the mid nineteenth century—from the strangely illustrated books open at a certain page, curious languages framing pictures of monsters, beasts, winged things of nightmares—looks up at the six odd people filling the room, most of them with no place to sit and so leaning against a lamp or propped up on the table, lounging against a windowsill.

“So when you say prophesized . . . “

One of the girls, a clean-cut blonde who looks skilled in standing without touching anything, makes a derisive noise, a huffy laugh like reaction. “For fuck’s sake, why are we—“

“Viv,” Rees cuts her off, shaking his head.

“What? I’m just saying. Everybody’s thinking it, he doesn’t look like our guy, he doesn’t even know what—“

“Since when do you know what our guy looks like?” someone else interrupts, he can’t even make out who because the next moment the room’s erupted into a collective argument, everyone talking at the same time, and Arthur only barely catches tail ends of not your department! and should’ve tried the one in Wales!, feeling like his mind is only sinking deeper into the muddle of confusion. Rees is smoking in a corner by a window with an open transom, infuriatingly calm and silent.

“So you guys are like . . . “Arthur starts, and as though they’d been waiting for it—as though naturally—the room falls quiet. He didn’t expect it and it makes him stumble over his words, makes him clear his throat before he tries again with a, “Like a . . . magical circle? Or something? Because that’s what I’m getting here and frankly it’s a bit—“

“Oi!” One of the men cuts him off, a big, bulky guy with a nose that’s been broken one time too many. “Don’t appreciate your tone there, mate.”

Arthur laughs incredulously, lifting his hands with a, “Tone? What tone?”

“Magic circle or summin, as if we’re fuckin’ around with voodoo here or some—“

“Geoff,” it’s Rees’ turn to interrupt, again, quickly and with practiced ease, not looking away from the covered window, peering outside through a thin slit between the papers. Geoff quiets though, clenching his jaw with a breath through his nose. Arthur has a hard time understanding why the scrawny kid seems to be the one in charge. He stares at him, annoyed with the lack of acknowledgement, while the tall woman leaning against the table explains that they’re not a magic circle, thank you, not nutters or scammers but merely—

“—archivists. Every single person in this room has been chosen, for one reason or another, to . . . “ She thinks of the next word, goes with, “Protect. Protect certain information, make sure it pans out as it should, gets to the right people at the right time.” She smiles, humourlessly, an unsettling show of white teeth and blood red lipstick. “People not unlike yourself, Arthur.”

“You do understand how crazy this sounds, right? I mean. This is . . . “

“Naturally,” she says. “Yet. You are here, are you not? You came. Even though you had every right to refuse. It’s as though there is something oddly . . . right about this. Or not?”

Arthur scrubs at his face. First with a hand, digging the heel to his eye, then with two palms trying to uselessly rub the headache out. He pauses, sighs into his hands, then drops them. The room falls into a tense silence. The overhead light buzzes.

“Fine. Whatever. I guess,” he says. Then, “So a winged panther monster is attacking the city and I’m supposed to kill it. That’s what we’re saying here. Me. Arthur. Just Arthur.”

The woman runs her fingers over her hair, over the comb lines to the tight bun at the back of her head. “Well. You and . . . “

“The mystical magic person who may or may not show up at any one time, yeah, thanks. That bit too.”

“Gee, boy,” Geoff speaks up. “One might think you’re very thrilled to find out you’re special.”

“Not when special means being clawed to death by a bat cat!” He sighs out a nervous laugh. Looking at the books again, running his fingers over a page and feeling the shivers up the back of his neck, he asks, “So how come you found me and not this other magic person?”

No one answers at first. Arthur looks up, and briefly thinks back to instances in his life where he thought magic was real, where he thought the shadows might be more than just shadows. The light flickers, and he tries to work out how likely it is this is all a joke. But everyone seems so earnest, such an odd collection of people who shouldn’t be together—business people and students and Geoff, with his working gloves and paint speckled trousers. And Rees, the most inexplicable in his presence, breaking the silence with a,

“They’ll show up. Don’t worry about that. They have to.”

The ceiling of the entrance hall is too high to see in the dark. Arthur can’t help but look up, though, walking across the empty foyer with his head tilted back, not watching where he’s going—steps loud on the marble, echoing up the shadowed walls. He knows there’s supposed to be a chandelier up there, large and heavy with glass, and the gold painted railings of the landings between the two first floors. He can’t see further than the first flight of the grand stairway, a half-moon circling up and over the foyer. He remembers precisely how he used to run and slide on his knees in the less busy corner of the marble hall, on boring afternoons avoiding homework, remembers not being quite tall enough to reach the hand railing when he ran up the stairs two-by-two, remembers the clean crisp smell of the place—the brightly lit rooms and faint classical music—remembers quite so different to what it is now: empty and archaic, a sad space of history covered in white sheets and dust.

“Do what d’you think?” Rees asks, half jogging to join him—chewing on something, mouth full and voice muffled.

Arthur stops in his step. Blinks for a moment, thinking, then—

“I think I’m rather tired. Also I’m dying for a piss, could use a nice cup of tea, and I was also just thinking about whether or not I left the coffee machine on and what’s the difference between an oi with an I and an oy with a y? Also, have a bit of an ache in my left pinkie.” He shows him the finger, crooks it a few times as if to demonstrate. “See?”

Rees looks at him. He’s still chewing. He gives him a quick, closed-mouth smile that is anything but amused.

“I think I’m kind of fucked, Rees, is what I think. Wonderful inquiries, by the way.” Arthur starts walking away. “You must be a great hit at parties.”

“You’re the one to talk!” Rees calls, taking a moment before following him. “Mister too cynical to have a proper conversation for more than three seconds!”

Arthur nods, smiling. “That’s me,” he says. Then, as an afterthought, “Makes you wonder how they fit that on my passport.”

“Hey!”

Arthur turns just in time to react, catching what Rees throws his way with a movement that should’ve been awkward but works out unexpectedly smooth. It’s long and cold and—

He stares at it. Checks the weight.

“A sword?”

“They told me to give it to you.”

“Who? Your troop of sunglasses-at-night suits out there?”

“You should be grateful. You know valuable that thing is? How old?”

“I’d actually rather something more modern, if you know what I mean.” He hooks the sword into belt, a movement natural from a childhood of television and nineties adventure movies. Looks at Rees with a smile, and adds for unnecessary clarification, “I mean a gun.”

“Yeah I got that.”

Arthur waits a moment, glancing up. “I’m not getting a gun am I?” he asks, at almost the same time as Rees answers a, “Not a chance, no.”

There’s another pause, the both of them smiling distractedly at their surroundings, before Rees speaks again.

“You’ll be fine, you know. You’re going to be brilliant. Don’t worry.”

“I took karate for two months in elementary. I quit because the floor was too dirty. I really don’t see how everyone thinks I’m qualified to do this.”

“History rarely lies, Arthur.”

“I’m not history yet, though.”

“Maybe not from where you’re standing.” He looks a bit sad for a moment, that way people do when they talk about something only they know, but the next moment his eyes crinkle and his smile seems more honest than before. “I’ve got to leave now, before they close the place for the night.” He’s walking backwards, saying, “Good luck, yeah!” before turning around, Arthur shouting after him that he needs to—

“Wait up! What—what does that even mean!” He laughs, once and loud, echoing through the hall. “From where I’m standing! That doesn’t mean anything!”

Rees just raises a hand in lieu of a wave. He doesn’t turn around.

“When’s the magic person gonna show up then!”

Rees is barely visible now, too far away, replying with a, “Later, Artie!” the smile clear in his voice.

Arthur freezes. His heart gives a heavy thud in his chest. He stares at the dark cast of shadows where the man just disappeared, mind racing, reaching for what he thinks is a memory. The sword pokes under his sweater, cold on his skin, and he listens to the sound of the entrance doors slamming shut—locking him in, as promised, for a duration of one night.

The sound never comes. A few moments later, Rees reappears, hands balled in the pockets of his jacket. Arthur raises his eyebrows.

“It, um . . . “ Rees frowns. “Would seem that, um. The doors have disappeared.”

“Ah.” Arthur nods. “Does this happen often? Doors disappearing?”

Rees replies with a noise that starts in his throat, a considering pitch that ends on a doubtful, “Yes?”

Arthur rubs at the space between his brows, digs a finger into the corner of an eye. Breathes in, exhales with a high and wonky, “You need to work on your credibility.”

“So how does the bat cat—“

“—the bastet.”

“The bastet, whatever, how does it even get in? Or is it—Jesus, is it inside right now? Is it here?”

Rees emerges from under the bar with a, a-ha!, one dusty bottle of some drink in hand. He inspects the label, cleans it with a loving gesture, answers Arthur’s question with a clearly disinterested, “Don’t really know.”

Arthur stops in inspecting the shelved mirror-wall of the old cocktail lounge, giving the back of Rees’ head a disdainful look in the reflection. “When is it going to show up? Do you know that? What time of the night can we expect it, exactly?”

“Doooon’t—“ Rees strains to screw open the cap—“know.”

“So we basically just wait for it to show up and eat us?”

“Yep. Basically.” He takes a swig from the bottle. Grimaces.

“You’re drinking. That can’t be a good sign. Oh, fuck me. Hasn’t anyone tried to kill it before? I mean—you guys have the government or some shit on your side! And magic! And guns! Why am I—“

“You really think we’d pluck some random bloke off the street if we could’ve handled this ourselves?” Rees glances at him, over his shoulder. “Believe me. If we would’ve had even the slightest possibility of choice, we would’ve gone with someone a lot less prone to whining.”

Arthur turns around. “Whining!”

“Did I say whining?” Rees stuffs the bottom of the bottle into a pocket inside the lining of his jacket, trying to take it with. He adds a mumbled, “Clearly I meant squawking,” and moves to walk off, rounding the bar, but Arthur stops him with a quick hand—grabbing his arm. Rees freezes, attention snapping—a dangerous edge to his glare when he glances to Arthur’s grip.

Arthur loosens his hold a bit. There’s something sharp between them, and he can’t quite figure it out. “What kind of a name is Rees, anyway?”

“The kind with letters? I don’t know,” he pulls out of Arthur’s grip.

“I know you from somewhere.”

“Don’t be stupid,” is his answer, delivered with a scowl and a huff and a move away, walking off again but something in the fold of his cheek before he turns—in the tired-red edges of his eyes—something gets at Arthur with an odd angle and he reaches out to grab him once more, this time just his wrist. It’s a quick gesture, pulling a little to turn the hand around—roughly pushing his fingers open with a thumb. A scar, faint but visible, is scratched diagonally over his palm.

Arthur opens his own hand next to Rees’. Compares their marks with a short flicker of a look. They’d done it with a Swiss army knife on the night of Lin’s eighth birthday, sleeping in the shed behind the Emirs’ house, earnest about their friendship in a way only eight year olds can be—excited about adventures and the night-time itself, certain that something thrilling would happen sooner or later, as long as they stayed awake.

“. . . Rees,” he whispers, mostly to himself. “Em. Rees. Emirs.” The hand is wrenched from his easy hold.

Rees takes a step a step back, folding his fingers to the side of his leg, into a fist. The vague sarcasm from before has darkened, pinched into an edged expression. “That was a long time ago,” he says. “Has nothing to do with this.”

“You disappeared,” Arthur admonishes, not really hearing him. “There was no trace of you.”

An unkind smile twists at his lips at that. “How would you know?” he says, really walking away this time—too far out of Arthur’s reach, and Arthur doesn’t make a move at all. Rees, a grown up Lin—Merlin Emirs, a face he’d given up on centuries ago, holy shit—adds a wry, “You moved away.”

“I wrote you letters!” Arthur calls at his retreating back. Sees him taking out the bottle again for a swig. “I called your number all the time! No one even knew your name, it was like you never even existed!”

“I didn’t,” he says, half over his shoulder, cocking his bottle a little in a flourish gesture of deprecation.

Arthur grunts out his frustration, loudly, shouting another, “What does that even mean!” with no answer given.

Part 2