Merthur One-Shots

Best Invention Ever

By far one of the best inventions, in Arthurs opinion, is the camera. He loves that a moment can be captured and preserved in real time. Far better than paintings that took hours, days, sometimes years. Video is also amazing, being able to relive moments over not only by seeing it frozen in time but be able to hear and watch it over and over again. Merlin and Arthur had spent most of the time right after Arthur's return looking through the thousands of photos Merlin had taken throughout his life since the invention of the very first camera. At first they talked about Camelot but then they still had to get Arthur caught up on current times and so they would look through the photos and Merlin would explain them. It was a very affective teaching method. Now, Merlin had gotten Arthur a phone and he was most ecstatic that a camera was a feature. At first he had taken pictures of everything. Their dinner, the trees, the couch, the sunset, the nightsky, the dresser, a dog on the street, and so on and so on. Then Merlin had told him to delete a lot of them because he does not need a picture of it and he will run out of room if he keeps all of the useless photos. He had allowed Arthur to keep pictures of the scenery and animals but the dinner, couch, dresser, and other meaningless things had to go. He thought he would be more upset about it but he had found something else he was addicted to photographing; Merlin.

--

The first time he had caught himself doing it was when they were on the couch sitting cross legged and looking at each other while trying to catch popcorn in their mouth that the other throws to them. Merlin was laughing hystarically and Arthur had found himself slipping his phone out and sneaking pictures of him. Later when he was lying in bed he went to look at the pictures and realized he had taken a lot more photos than he had thought. Not only did he take pictures of Merlin laughing, but Merlin getting ready to throw, smiling at him, attempting to catch the popcorn into his mouth, and yet they all looked so good that either Arthur was an expert in the art of sneak pictures or the camera really loved Merlin.

--

More than half of Arthur's camera roll consisted of Merlin doing meaningless things, like cooking, cleaning, dancing, sitting on the couch, eating.
Merlin had also introduced him to 'selfies' Arthur probably had one selfie of himself but really he always saved the selfies Merlin sent him. They were him making weird faces and calling him a clotpole yet they still made Arthur's heart flutter. He also would come up next to Merlin randomly, wrap his arm around his shoulders while he looked at the camera and Merlin didn't even question it anymore, he just looked up with a smile at the camera then rolled his eyes and called him a dork. His favorite is the one where he had made Merlin take another picture for the fifteenth time and Merlin was just looking at him with a small exasperated smile and didn't even bother looking at the camera.

--

They always sat a little too close together on the couch. There was plenty of room, Merlin had made sure he had gotten a spacious couch so that he could sleep on it comfortably, yet they were always right next to each other. Their thighs would basically be touching, they almost appeared to be trying to share the same cushion. But it wasn't clausterphobic to them, it didn't seem like they were squeezed together, they just were sitting, together...closely. Arthur supposes he started it because whenever he went to go sit on the couch with Merlin he made sure he was close to him, every single time, until eventually Merlin started sitting close to Arthur every time too. They had the lights off and are watching the movie 'Mulan'. Merlin said Arthur would like it, even though there is singing, and surprisingly he does. The movie isn't even half way through yet and Arthur feels the pressure of Merlin's head on his shoulder.

"Merlin?"

"Hm?"

"What're you doing?" Arthur asked with a chuckle.