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“I can’t just… not use it.” Merlin tips his head at the closed door, the workroom beyond. “Gaius won’t hear it, but I can’t… it’s like… it’s like asking me to walk around holding my breath.”
At some point, he’d sat on the edge of Merlin’s bed beside him, and at some point after that Merlin had stretched out on it, and now Lancelot could no longer resist the urge to stretch out beside him. They barely fit, even turned on their sides so they were lying almost nose to nose.
“I try to let it out discreetly,” Merlin says quietly. “I don’t even need spells for most things. Gaius doesn’t understand that either.”
This close, Lancelot can see that the blue of his eyes is deeper than it seems at first glance, the color of the sky just before dawn.
“Okay,” he says. “Show me.”
“What?”
“Show me your magic, Merlin,” he murmurs. “Breathe it out.”
Merlin stiffens, and for a moment Lancelot thinks he might sit up, turn away, and that would be the end of their night. But then a small smile blooms on his face and he closes his eyes.
Lancelot watches intently as Merlin cups his hands over his mouth, breathes into them. Light flares between his fingers, and when he opens his eyes the deep blue has turned to gold.
“Beautiful,” he whispers, and Merlin grins and spreads his fingers.
Butterflies, crystal-blue and just as delicate, flutter around their heads. Merlin sighs, pure relief, and they flit higher, casting dancing shadows on the ceiling, before all at once streaming out of the open window and into the twilight.
Lancelot looks back to Merlin and he looks lighter, somehow, less solid. Almost unreal. But only for a moment. He blinks and there are laugh lines around Merlin’s eyes again, dimples around his smiling mouth. Lancelot breathes deep and smells rich earth, the green scent of the forest at dawn, and something else, reminiscent of a thunderstorm.
“Beautiful,” he says again. Merlin ducks his head, and Lancelot holds himself back from wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “Your magic. It is… it is so essentially you. And it’s beautiful, and…” And it grieves him to think of how he must dim his brightness to survive. But he doesn’t say that, fearing Merlin will take it as pity.
“I’m glad you think so,” Merlin mutters, and now Lancelot can’t resist brushing a thumb across his cheekbone, turning his face back up towards him.
“Whatever else has befallen me, whatever else I have done,” he says, holding Merlin’s gaze, “I am deeply fortunate to have spent the last few days with you.”
Merlin’s lips part, and Lancelot is suddenly aware of the heat beneath his hand on Merlin’s cheek. He pulls it away, but Merlin’s hand comes up to hold it fast, twine their fingers together.
“Lancelot. Listen.” Merlin’s throat bobs. “This isn’t the end. You are as much a knight as I am my magic.”
“Merlin —”
“No, really,” Merlin insists, “you are. Your courage, and your strength and your loyalty and — and your heart — they are as essential to you as magic is to me. You will be a knight of Camelot,” he says, and his voice, though quiet, is resonant, as though drawn from great depths within him. “You will. I know it.”
“But I would not serve Uther,” Lancelot says firmly. “Not knowing how cruel he is to you and your kind.”
Merlin softens. “I know. I know that, too. But one day…” his gaze drifts away, and for a moment, he looks unreal again, and ancient.
Lancelot blinks, and Merlin is looking at him again, only himself once more. “We will make a better future. You and me.”
“I believe you,” Lancelot says, and he does, somehow, deep in his heart of hearts. He will leave at the break of dawn, but somehow, some day, he will come back. There is a story at work in these lands, he can sense it — vast and complex, and his part in it is humble. But not yet done.