I don't own Merlin.
"This is Just to Say" is by William Carlos Williams, obviously. As I am not William Carlos Williams, I do not own that either.
/
Merlin can track all of his relationships through the books on his shelves. They're a beautiful set of shelves- oak and unbelievably heavy, and it took him years to get a hold of them, let alone get them through seven different doors unscathed as he's moved to different flats, homes, and dorm rooms. The books on them are varied, ranging from comics to law texts, some in good repair and others falling apart at the seams. Each has its own story, and Merlin never lets any of them slip through the cracks when he moves. He keeps them safe, reads most of them often, and is forever running fond fingers over them. While not as stunning as the shelves, they have their own beauty- partly because of the people who previously owned them.
First, there was Will. Will takes up a sizable chunk of shelving, full of comics, manga, and fantasy stories that have suspiciously scantily clad women, men, and occasionally elves on them. Of course, there are more serious books there as well- the Lord of the Rings trilogy is well worn and comfortably next to the Silmarillion and the Children of Hurin. Harry Potter's place is next to them, two sets, one paperback and so worn there's hardly even covers any more, and a perfect hardback set. Will's books are the link to the childhood they shared in a town so small that the library consisted of one room, and a time when life was idyllic. Their entire world was each other, comfortably sharing the zeal for life that so defined them both. It was only natural, or so they thought, that when it came time for university they became roommates, and after a night of one too many drinks and confessions, lovers.
So they got a flat, and the bookshelves, and life was good- practically perfect.
And then, of course, because life apparently hated him, Will gets shot trying to stop a robbery in their hometown, and Merlin, for the next year, refuses to so much as consider going to anything akin to a place where he could meet people. He takes online courses, he hides in his house, and he mourns for the loss of his loved one.
And then there was Lancelot. Lancelot was, in a word, strange. He liked books on love, the middle ages, chivalry, and weaponry. History and romance, preferably a mixture of both, were the next things to decorate Merlin's shelves, and that was somehow reassuring to him. Lancelot was stable. Lancelot was warm and kind, and never slept with him, and Merlin loved him for it. After Will, he doubts that he could ever bear to be intimate again, but Lance goes a long way toward healing that.
They met when, for the first time in months that Merlin goes out, he gets nearly mugged and is rescued by a wonderful man with warm eyes. They live together for a scant month before Lancelot runs into a beautiful woman in the grocery store arguing with her man and defends her. And Merlin very nearly laughs when they break up, because Lance is heartbroken that he's not gay, and Merlin just thinks that that's one of the most ironic things he's heard in a long time. Lancelot does get him a job though, with his own employers son- cleaning the man's enormously oversized house along with a whole flotilla of maids and pool-boys. Somewhere along the lines, he ends up the man's personal servant and practically his secretary. And then he is his secretary, and things are just weird.
So Lancelot moves out, leaving his books next to Will's, and Merlin goes back to college while working for Mr. Arthur Pendragon, and is surprisingly content with his life. And then he goes on vacation with Arthur to Milan to ensure that the man doesn't get killed somehow, and when he goes out for a walk he meets this girl. She's sitting on the steps of a beautiful Italian house, smoking a cigarette, wearing a slightly torn red dress and heels that could kill a man with one blow, her arms bare and bathed in moonlight. And he's so struck by her, he just stands there stupidly until her cigarette is gone, and she turns to look at him with tired eyes, and asks him what he's doing there, if he wanted to talk to her he may as well come over, shouldn't he? So he does.
Her name is Freya. She's a Romani, her family has just cast her out, she's fantastically beautiful, and she speaks great English. They trade numbers- "Do you have a cell phone?" "What do you think we are, Neanderthals?"- Merlin gives her his address – "In case you ever need a place to stay, you know." – and as the sun rises she smiles, kisses him lightly on the lips, and is gone.
Merlin's mind is blown, and he sits, pole-axed, on the steps of the house until a tiny old Italian woman comes out and scolds him away.
A month after he and Arthur return home, Freya shows up on his doorstep, terrified and battered, and for the next year of his life, Merlin puts the girl back together. Freya isn't a big reader- her sole contribution to his shelves is a copy of "L'Mort d'Arthur" that she found on the street one day and felt drawn too. They spend a lot of time in silence, just lying on Merlin's couch in his new flat, being near each other. And he knows. She's The One, and the only woman aside from his mother he's ever loved. They don't sleep together, though he knows Freya half wants too. They decide that they'll wait, and Merlin proposes, sans ring because college sucks money like a black hole. She accepts, crying for joy. The night he goes to get the ring that he scrimps and saves for, Freya goes out for groceries, and her family catches up to her.
He pays for a headstone in a small cemetery. There isn't enough body to bury, though- the family took care of that. Her sole remains are a simple necklace that he got her, sitting in the midst of her burned remains on a boat floating on a small, man-made lake. So what's left of her is cremated, and he scatters her on the lake up North where they spent time having picnics and talking.
Arthur is the only one he tells, and the one who catches him when he lets the ashes go, sobbing at the pain and unfairness of it all. They get closer after that, and Merlin finishes college, just in time to be employed full time by Arthur as a secretary/paralegal and move in to Camelot, Arthur's enormous, sprawling familial estate where he's decided that he's going to conduct business.
Arthur decided to be a lawyer, so most of his books- and there aren't many- are green-bound law texts with too many big words, and philosophical texts that Merlin likes to look at, but is a bit relaxed about actually reading. They have a pretty good life, Arthur giving him the stability he so desperately craves after Freya's death, Merlin ensuring that Arthur doesn't go overboard with his search for justice. They're comfortable together, but Arthur is a bit nervy about sex, even though Merlin's fairly certain that after all this time he should be fine. Life is pretty good until beautiful, sweet, kind Gwen shows up, one of the new paralegals, and Arthur falls head over heels for her. Merlin just sighs, takes his shelves, and finds a flat with wry acceptance that life has decided to screw him over in the love department.
Then comes the night when Gwen calls him, and Arthur hasn't gotten back from the bar yet, and would he please go find him? Because he is who he is, he says yes in a sort of long-suffering way, and goes to hunt down his wayward employer.
He knows he should have just left Arthur be the minute he steps into the bar and realizes he is very out of his element, and this is not a good place for someone as young and thin as him to be. The men are all insanely tall, built twice as broad as any normal creature should be, and so heavily muscled he doesn't even want to consider how they got that way. Some of them are actually drinking and relaxing loudly enough to offend anyone not already smashed, and the others…the others watch. That's infinitely worse, because Merlin knows what eyes like that are like. He's seen those kinds of eyes before, from when he's been in Court with Arthur, helping with a rape case. He's dead terrified, and when a man lazily stands up and steps in front of him, his brain screams at him to run.
The man is huge. 6'9" if he's an inch, the man is three times as broad as he is, and looks like he isn't going to take no for an answer.
Just as Merlin's about to bolt, an arm snakes around his waist and a warm voice says, "There you are, I've been looking all over for you!"
And Merlin looks up into warm, laughing eyes and a face dusted with a scruffy almost-beard before being gently, but firmly, pulled toward the bar.
He manages to breathe out desperate thanks before getting light headed and being forced to lean on his savior for support. A drink is shoved into his shaking hands, and he unconsciously drinks, gasping as the world slams back into focus with the helping burn of whiskey. He sags against the man, taking deep breaths, and slowly becomes aware of a warm hand rubbing soothing circles on his shoulders. A jolt of something- electricity in mental form, perhaps- shudders through them both then, and they just stare at each other for the longest time, each drinking in the other's looks.
"Gwaine."
"Merlin."
The rest of his memory of that night is pretty shabby- he knows he found Arthur, Gwaine in tow, and made him go home. He also knows that he and Gwaine stayed and got drunk enough that when they stumbled back into Merlin's flat, sex wasn't even remotely an option. He knows they fumbled around a bit, and ended up dead asleep, tangled together and oddly content.
Merlin wakes up with a headache and Gwaine trying to find his shirt, and all he can do is just gently reach out and brush his fingertips pleadingly against the back of Gwaine's hand, because he can't bear the thought of this man leaving, for whatever reason.
Gwaine stays for breakfast.
Neither of them have work that day, so breakfast becomes lunch, and lunch becomes a walk in the park with both their hands swinging until they collide, and Gwaine holds on like Merlin's a life raft, and the park becomes dinner, and dinner becomes a late night talk about Gwaine's past as a hooker and present as an alcoholic, and Merlin's dead and endlessly screwed over love life.
It's the first time either of them has really talked to another person about it, and they stay up till three, only to fall asleep on each other on Merlin's couch.
The next morning they both have work, and Merlin drops Gwaine off at a small, simple set of apartment buildings. The man thanks him, makes certain he has Merlin's number, and heads in. As he pulls away from the curb, Merlin glances back to see a mountain of muscle step out of one of the building's doors, and Gwaine seems to shrink as the man crosses his arms, looking tired and a bit annoyed.
Merlin doesn't see or hear from him for the next two weeks.
Then, on a dark and stormy night that seems to have walked straight out of a fairy tale, he gets a knock on his door.
It's Gwaine, of course, carrying a backpack and soaked to the bone, his face decorated with a split lip and two blacked eyes. Merlin stares at him in shock for about a minute, before silently stepping aside and letting the man slink in like a beaten dog.
He patches him up with tender fingers and tests for broken bones as Gwaine explains through numb lips and tears about Percival, who's wonderful and kind most of the time, but finally snapped, because he was done with Gwaine sleeping around and drinking, even though he said it was fine- "Gwaine, it's never fine." "Yeah, I kinda figured that one out..."- and finally he had just let all the rage out. Merlin privately thinks that Gwaine is more hurt that he hadn't realized he'd hurt Percival than the bruises and battery he's gone through.
The backpack ends up being Gwaine's clothing and laptop, a calligraphy pen, five bottles of India ink, a pitifully small amount of curious knickknacks that Merlin doesn't quite dare ask about, and a tall, thick book with a duct-tape covered cover. Gwaine keeps the book out of his sight, always hiding it from him in various places around the flat. Merlin doesn't ask, even though he wants to, and Gwaine seems grateful for that.
The first few nights, Gwaine sleeps on Merlin's couch, despite Merlin's insistence that he take the bed instead. They adjust, working with each other bit by bit until somehow Gwaine is a permanent fixture in the flat and in his bed, warm and comfortable but steady as a rock- "Steel covered with silk, that's what you are." "Aw, you're so sweet, love."- and life is good. Gwaine works as a guard at Arthurs building at night, and Merlin works as Arthur's personal assistant, a step up from secretary, a step down from paralegal, but he really doesn't care about that bit. Gwaine's breakfast is Merlin's dinner on occasion, but sometimes they manage to get days off together. It isn't love, not yet, but they know it's inevitable, so when Merlin wakes up one morning to see Gwaine looking at him, his eyes so tender and soft, Merlin only lays there, stunned by the surge of warmth that flows so easily between them. Gwaine slowly reaches out, and links their pinky fingers together, and Merlin's smile is bright enough to blind the sun itself. All there is left to do, it seems, is to surge forward and kiss Gwaine fiercely.
And then it is love, and then comes the day when Merlin has to stay late, and Gwaine comes in early. They're working on something as a team, no one ever remembers what case it's for when asked later. As he walks through the door Merlin looks up, and the air thrums with the connection. Everyone knows, even though the duo only hold each others eyes for mere seconds, and when Gwaine exits the room everyone explodes into questions about marriage, and Arthur's practically in tears, and Gwen is in tears, and Merlin just can't stop smiling.
Merlin later thanks Arthur for drinking, and Gwen for being such a concerned wife.
Life rolls on.
Slowly but surely, Gwaine's books begin to populate the impatient shelves. They're all refugee books, Merlin notices with some amusement, books liberated from yard sales and library wear-outs, most without covers and some without much in the way of a language he understands. There is one thing that they all have in common, though.
They are poetry.
Merlin is delighted on so many levels he doesn't even try to vocalize it. Gwaine is still becoming accustomed to the fact that he is in love, and Merlin isn't going anywhere, and Merlin has no intention of scaring him off by flailing about ranting about poetry. But it's poetry, and it makes him happy. Gwaine, it seems, is also a helpless romantic, and besides the poetry, one day Wuthering Heights appears as well. This is followed shortly by Emma, Romeo and Juliet, Gone with the Wind, Sense and Sensibility, and, to Merlin's exasperated amusement, Pride and Prejudice. More Shakespearean plays follow, along with the Oedipus Rex Trilogy by Sophocles, which baffles Merlin, but he shrugs it off. The only book that comes from the store, shiny and new, is a collection of poems by William Carlos Williams, and that confuses him more than Sophocles.
Soon a veritable outpouring of poetry, classics, and romance dot the shelves, and Merlin can trace all of his relationships through it. Sometimes, when they're bored, Merlin will pluck one off the shelf, bully Gwaine onto the couch, and they'll just sit, curled under blankets, and read for veritable hours.
Then, one day, The Book, the one that has been steadily driving Merlin crazy because it's been seven months and Gwaine hasn't let him even open the bloody thing, is revealed and set reverently on the shelves.
He waits until Gwaine is out of the flat to seize it with greedy hands, and is utterly astonished.
The Book is handwritten. And on the title page in a fantastically beautiful script, still drying, is the name Gwaine Noble. The title is, very simply, Life.
Merlin sits down, and begins to read.
At 3:00 AM, when Gwaine comes home, he's met by a teary eyed Merlin, who has read the book and sits clutching it to his chest. He just smiles, drops his things, sits on the couch and gently kisses him. Then he gently pries the book out of his hands, opens it, and begins quietly to read aloud.
The book is unlined, but full of handwritten poems that have been divided into sections. There are three- Child, The Mistakes of Youth, and Growth. Written in prose, odes, sonnets, couplets, and any other form he thought of at the time, they talk about the life he wanted, and the life he hasn't had. They talk about his love and his loss, his joy and his pain, his lovers and his enemies, but most importantly, toward the end, it talks about Merlin.
The last poem is entitled "42", and is a sonnet to Merlin about the morning he woke up and realized he loved him. His voice chokes up a few times when he does so, but makes his way through just in time for Merlin to pull him into the tightest hug he'd ever been in, and pull him into a passionate kiss that gets steadily dirtier. That night, Gwaine is the one who breaks a streak of non-intimacy since Will, and dear heavens above, it is glorious to see Merlin's face. After, Gwaine just sits and strokes Merlin's hair, marveling that he's found someone this wonderful.
Life is good.
They eat, they occasionally drink, they make love early in the morning, late at night, and wherever possible, and most importantly, they love.
They have a good time of things, and, eventually, they learn more about each other. Gwaine discovers that Merlin is a great Star Wars geek. Merlin discovers that Gwaine is addicted to plums. They both hate peaches,
Unfortunately, one day Merlin craves plums and buys them for his breakfast the next day. When he gets up, though, the plums are only mournful pits, and sitting guiltily on a small plate. Beside them is a piece of paper.
THIS IS JUST TO SAY, the paper states in bold capitals, and continued in Gwaine's impossibly beautiful calligraphy-
i have eaten
the plums
that were in the icebox
and which
you were probably saving
for breakfast
forgive me.
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Merlin can't help but smile at that- and the tiny, apologetic stick figure under it.
It becomes the defining point in their relationship. Soon, Gwaine is leaving little stick figures all over the place, accompanied by poems. More often than not, when they have an argument, two plum pits on a plate, and the poem, are left on the table for Merlin, along with a simple apology for whatever has happened. Merlin tends to go for the quiet touches, and slow whispers of apologies. It works for them.
On the day of their year anniversary, and because Gwaine makes morbid paranoia into a personal hobby, they buy a headstone. The poem is put on the back, and they add a simple set of hugging stick figures under it. Merlin doesn't like that they're buying it so early, but he can't help but agree that it's a good idea. They also buy a plot next to the Pendragon plot, and the stone is put there early. Arthur thinks it's quite funny, but Gwaine takes it seriously, and for good reason, it turns out.
They have a fight one night, and sleep with their backs to each other, only to turn over in their sleep and cling.
Merlin wakes up the next day to find out that his man has gone to get groceries, according to the note on the pillow. He rises, goes about his business. The shower has gotten obscenely cold, so he calls the landlord to fix things quickly. When he enters the kitchen, he finds a "This is Just to Say" on a plate, with a plum pit and a stick figure holding a heart. All is immediately forgiven. He then has breakfast, which consists of oatmeal that got a bit burned, and a plum that he filches from Gwaine's horde of them in the icebox. He dresses normally, a suit, blue tie, ties his shoes on, and grabs his briefcase. He's about to head out the door, when at 7:37 on the dot, he gets a phone call that stops his heart dead and sends him running for the hospital, hands shaking as he shoves the key in the ignition and he babbles an explanation to Arthur through his phone.
He gets to the hospital just as Gwaine gets into surgery. He sees him on the gurney as they wheel him in, and it takes two nurses to keep him from going after Gwaine's bloodied body-redredred his stomach torn open oh no not today no I didn't say I love you before you left GWAINE-, and another to get him to lower his voice and stop screaming. When it sinks in that they won't let him go in, he flings away from them in terrified misery. He begins to frantically pace the too-small room like a caged tiger, ignoring the other haggard families. As Arthur and Gwen arrive, and come towards him, trying to comfort him, he snarls and won't let them near. He needs to be alone with his terror, he needs to wrestle it down and keep it away from the world, but it fights back. Finally he just walks outside and flops on the ground, his heart shattering as sobs wrack his body so badly he can't move to stop. Arthur is the one to come out and lift him up, making the appropriate soothing noises, and just being a rock.
Finally, he lets the man take him back in, and Gwen just holds him close, and Arthur's hand rests on his knee as he goes numb, finally going into the shock that has been waiting to meet him.
When a doctor in bloodied scrubs finally comes out, his heart is in his throat. He watches as the man comes over, asks if he's Merlin Emrys. They all stand, and he can only nod as Arthur puts a strong arm around his shoulder, bracing him. His heart pounds in his ears, a point of life in the midst of a possible death.
For a second, his brain refuses to compute what the man has said, and then he sags against Arthur, gasping as he sobs in relief.
He'll live… with complications.
The complications are a leg that'll never be truly right again, three broken fingers scattered across both hands, scars running along his face, nearly a foot of missing intestine, and a slightly mangled section of his back. But Gwaine is alive and he doesn't care. They can live with complications.
When he's allowed into the hospital room, he just sits hand holds the bandaged hands, lightly pressing kisses against his cheeks and exposed skin, just being relieved at the fact his love is alive. Gwaine's chest rises and falls slowly, but steadily, and Merlin presses his ear to his chest, just listening to the steady throb of his heart. The nurses come in and out, rearrange things, but say nothing, just watch with tender eyes as Merlin clutches Gwaine's hand. When his eyes finally slit open, sleepy and tired, Merlin whispers, "I have eaten the plums which were in the icebox, and which you were probably saving for breakfast." His voice catches, and he says with a faint sob, "Forgive me-"
He can go no further, but it's unnecessary. Slowly, with his unbroken index finger, Gwaine draws a heart on his palm, and that promptly sends Merlin into a wave of tears. The two are sitting there, just relishing being alive, a man in a tuxedo bursts in, babbling about the man he nearly killed and he's so sorry and he was supposed to be married today and he was speeding and is he alive? The man pauses for breath, and Merlin realizes that he can't hate him, much as he wants to. The man's face is splotched with tears, and the tux is in terrible shape. Once he has the man calmed down a bit, he finds out that not only did the man run into Gwaine and nearly kill him, he's the reason he's alive, having shoved his hands in to keep the internal bleeding down- oh, and that when he finally got to the wedding, the girl had stormed off because he was late. This brings on a fresh wave of hysteria, and Merlin has to calm the man again, but really can't hate him. Gwaine watches, and already a bit of a smile works onto his face before he slips back into drug induced sleep.
When they get home, Gwaine is slow to walk around the house, shaky on his still battered and bandaged leg. He'll walk with a cane for most of the rest of his life, the doctors figure, but Merlin doesn't mind. Gwaine has already begged and pleaded him into buying one with a sword hidden in it. After making his rounds through the whole place, he spots the pits, now shriveled and stuck together and smiles, pulling Merlin to him and kissing him, long and slow. They end up on the couch, just clutching each other, and Merlin's eyes stray to the shelves, where Life is sitting comfortably. Already, Gwaine has been dictating poems to him for the next volume, which he tells him will be called "Love", quietly and softly when he's tired, enthusiastically when he's awake.
He traces his relationships by the books on his shelves, and smiles when he sees that there's plenty more room for where Gwaine will fill the shelves of his life.