Merlin Headcanons

The Mostly True Confessions

"I have magic."
Arthur looked up from his stack of reports. "If this is some kind of joke - "
"It's not a joke. I was born with it. I've been protecting you with it ever since I met you."
Arthur stared at him. "That's not possible."
"After everything that's happened in this past year alone, are you seriously going to sit here and lecture me on what's possible? This is Camelot. Silly little rules about sanity and rationality don't apply here."
"Magic," Arthur repeated, dazed. A thought occurred to him. "The fire when we were captured by Jarl. That wasn't natural, was it?"
"Nope."
"That explains a lot." He sighed. "Why did you side with me instead of Morgana?"
There was a long pause. "You know, that's a good question. I should have thought of that. I'm going to guess it has something to do with me being a selfless idiot, Morgana being sadistic as the Sarrum, and you having a bit of potential."
" . . . Right."
"I'll get back to you. Assuming you're not going to execute me."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Good. Banishment? Imprisonment? Stocks?"
"No, no, and tempting . . . but no."
"Am I fired?"
"I can't actually fire a knight, and you wouldn't be if I could. Merlin would sulk for weeks, and I need him to write a speech for me. Just . . . give me some time to get used to this alright?"
Gwaine grinned at him. "Don't bother."
A horrible suspicion started forming in Arthur's mind. "Why not?"
"Because I'm about as magical as Uther was."
Arthur resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall. It took a fair bit of effort. "I thought you said this wasn't a joke," he said wearily.
"It wasn't," Gwaine assured him.
"Then what on earth were you doing?!"
"Testing the waters."
"Testing the - what?"
"I don't have magic. A certain someone else who was with us at Jarl's on the other hand . . . "
Merlin poked his head in the door. "Er, Arthur? Can we talk? Oh! Hello, Gwaine. What are you doing here?"
"Oh, just talking to the princess. Had to make sure he wasn't going to throw a tantrum when you told him the big news."
Horror dawned on Arthur's face. "Merlin has magic?"
"Gwaine!"
"He might have mentioned something of the sort, yes. Right about the time he mentioned that he thought it was high time you knew."
"And this led to you confessing because . . . "
Gwaine looked indignant. "You can't honestly think I'd let my best mate confess to something like that without knowing how big a tantrum you were going to throw! I figured if you had too big a problem with it, I could let Merlin know on my way out, and someone else could try again in a couple of years. I'm used to a life on the run. He isn't."
"Right. Right." Okay. He could deal with this, he could deal with this.
Arthur wasn't really sure whether he should be mad at the deception or impressed at the friendship. Plus there was still the whole magic thing to deal with. He should probably do something about that.
He settled for banging his head on his desk.
It seemed easiest.

A/N: So when did you figure out something was up? I was tempted to include the "princess" bit earlier, but I knew it would be a dead give away. Thoughts?