The Boy and the Beast: A Merthur Beauty and the Beast AU

Because of You

A/N-Ok, so I mailed in my video, I'm getting back into managing my time for school and activities and such, and I have returned to the story! And this one has a little surprise!☺

Arthur's POV

Arthur remained in the tiny room where the magical globe sat on the even tinier table long after Merlin retired for bed. Everything was smaller to him ever since he became this beast and it still shocks him when his shoulder bumps a doorframe or when he almost knocks something off of a table. Seeing Merlin, he realized just how much he'd changed, just how much smaller the boy was than him. 

That is why he couldn't wrap his mind around why Merlin seemed so much bigger at the same time.

When Merlin entered a room he didn't simply stand in one spot. He somehow stretched out to fill up the entire space. Hearing his footsteps echo in the hall? They didn't just echo softly off the walls, they poured through them. Merlin was able to sit across from him at a dinner table only occupying the chair but filling up the entire castle. 

Scared was a bit too strong of a word to describe how he felt. It more like...startled him. 

Over an hour before Merlin came down to have dinner with him, Gwen, Gaius and Gwaine tried to teach him how to hold a fork and a spoon and a knife because he had had no need for them before Merlin showed up. Before Arthur so desperately wanted him to like him. No one told him about the weird feeling he would get sitting across from a boy who had changed his view on the world, just a little, and after he dropped a spoon he knew there was no way he could have prepared for that. When he began to realize just how much Merlin meant to him, when he didn't want to lose him, when he saved his life that day he almost ran way. He didn't want Merlin to not be with him. He likes Merlin.

He loves Merlin.

Sure, maybe he was a little...overwhelmed. When Merlin started to give him speeches about how he stood for hope, about how he could make his life better, about how Arthur could become a better person.

Because he called him Arthur, didn't he?

Not a beast. Not a monster. His name. A person.

It had happened so suddenly, caught him so off guard that he was surprised he didn't fall over. He had ran his claw through the portrait on his wall in shame the very day he was transformed. He spent over two years trying to forget about that prince and succeeded. So when Merlin said it and the fact that he said it so hopefully...

Alright, maybe he was a little scared. 

Because no one had been so determined to make him see the light or be so sure that he could be a better a person that he wanted no part of it. 

He had lived in solitude for a long time. He had trained himslef to forget about his days before the enchantress came. He had gotten used to believing he was nothing.

So when someone came along and told him he was something...well he might as well have had the ground disappear from under him.

As the days went on, as his feelings for Merlin only grew, the happier Arthur became. 

But also the sadder Arthur became. 

Because he knew there was no way they could be together.

Arthur was still cursed no matter what Merlin said. 

He knew that at least a small part of Merlin wanted to return home to be with his mother. 

But he kept Merlin in the castle anyway.