Merlin Oneshots

you've got a hell of a lot of nerve, pendragon » au

molten eyes and a smile made for war

the literature teacher stared at the line scrawled on her board amongst the other lines. she had asked her students in her third period honors class to write a line describing the lady morgana from their book, king arthur, on the board. the line was written in jagged, black ink, and it was at a left slant.

“who wrote this?”

she pointed to the line and looked to her class. no one moved.

“it's an excellent description, but it seems too personal.”

she erased it from the board without another thought and continued teaching.

merlin huffed silently to himself, rolling his pencil up and down his desk. screw you, he thought bitterly to his teacher as he glared up at her. he had obviously given the best and most accurate description of morgana up there, as many students seemed to write similar things, but oh no, his teacher had to call his bluff that really wasn't a bluff at all.

he lazily flicked his ebony hair out of his face and looked to the front of the class, bored out of his mind.

the book they were reading was supposed to tell them about the arthurian times, the times he was alive, and they got it upside down and backwards. merlin was just about ready to throw the book across the classroom and rant about how the king of camelot did not, in fact, have a beard, and how he called his most faithful servant a clotpole.

clotpole wasn't even socially acceptable now as an insult, but merlin wasn't about to let it go.

the one thousand year old warlock that looked like a teenager was 110% done waiting for arthur. it's been like a thousand years; arthur needed to get his shit together real quick before merlin lost it.

he smirked to himself. arthur wouldn't know anything about this time, so merlin had the power of calling him simple now.

oh how the tables have turned.

the last class of the day finally came to an end, and merlin sauntered out and into the september sun. he dropped his books next to him with a sigh and propped himself against a tree. the warlock stared up to the light blue sky that matched his eyes and hummed softly to himself, wondering when and how arthur would finally come back.

he hoped they would get along just like they used to. it would shatter merlin if they had to restart from scratch. befriending arthur had been hard enough as it was before- he had been a prince, merlin had been a peasant.

now, merlin was stuck in his same teenage body with a mind of an ancient person. he kind of felt like gaius now, but whatever.

his memory was completely flawless. every single event of every single year remained separate, nothing blurred together. and he was fine with that, for the most part. merlin could recall every positive memory with impeccable accuracy, but he could do the same with the negative ones.

but that might not be true now, as he had just gotten hit in the head with a soccer ball.

merlin toppled over, wincing at the sharp pain in the left side of his head. great, now he probably had brain damage, and now he wouldn't be able to make magic butterflies in his free time.

damn the 21st century.

he heard the snickering and the laughing from the boys to his left on the field, probably finding it fucking hilarious that they may have caused merlin some brain damage. he swore that if his memory so much as wavered, he was going to file a lawsuit on that whole team.

“hey, i'm really sorry!”

merlin glanced over, seeing the red cleats of a player jogging towards him, presumably the one who hit him. the warlock muttered something under his breath, which was 11/10 a sarcastic remark about this player's aim, but apparently his ear missed it as he went to retrieve his soccer ball.

“are you alright? i didn't mean to hit you.”

merlin sighed lightly, trying not to lose his marbles on this poor kid who was just apologizing for unintentionally giving him brain damage, or a chronic headache. even after all this time, the warlock still had the patience and heart to treat people like he should.

he tilted his head up to say it was fine, but as soon as his eyes landed on this random dude's face, he realized he wasn't so random anymore.

not at all.

“merlin?”

arthur was first to speak, probably because he hadn't spent the last thousand years fucking waiting. he had lived a relatively normal life up to this point, but merlin? oh boy. he'd done some serious shit.

“i-i know you. i remember.”

the pure shock in his eyes matched the way his voice trembled slightly as he breathed out his statement. and poor merlin was struck completely dumb on the ground, staring up at the friend he had waited so long for. he knew he had been waiting but he really wasn't expecting it to be today, out of all days.

a monday.

merlin did not need this on a monday.

“i waited a thousand years for you, you little shit! and you come to me on a monday? you had a thousand damn years to come back, six different days of the week, and you had to pick a monday!”

arthur looked slightly panicked. he probably remembered the last time merlin got angry.

“i spent a thousand years waiting for your ass to waltz back to me! i did the stupidest shit just waiting for you, and you have the nerve to come back on a monday! oh boy, you wouldn't believe what i've done waiting for you, clotpole! i've been a spy, a prince, a pilot, a soldier, a police officer, a hitman, and a grocery store clerk! you little fucker!”

arthur blinked intelligently at the warlock, making sure he had a slight bit of distance in the case merlin spontaneously combusted.

“and i waited a thousand years to get hit in the head with a soccer ball!”

arthur didn't know what to say, so he carefully watched merlin's emotions flood through his face.

“and i waited a thousand years for you and it was all worth it.”

merlin leapt up and crushed arthur in the tightest hug ever, sobbing like an idiot into his shoulder. arthur returned it just as hard, if not harder, with tears streaming down his own face.

“nice to see you too, dollophead.”

“whatever you say, clotpole.”