Title: I would see you smile again
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Merlin/Arthur (kind of...)
Summary: Arthur would do what it took to make Merlin smile again. What he got was better.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 355
Prompt: Laugh
Author's Note: Completely last minute one here. And yep, the title is from Lord of the Rings.
There it was.
That sound he had been waiting for.
That sound he had been trying everything in his power to hear. It didn’t matter whether he had given Merlin the afternoon off, piled more chores on him, tried talking to him, tried ignoring him… Arthur simply couldn’t work out what it was that made his servant smile these days. Camelot was strong and powerful, more so than ever.
Yet Merlin was looking like someone was slowly driving a dagger into him, inch by painful inch.
The king knew that his efforts had not gone unnoticed, even if the effect had not been what he had been hoping for. Rather than working out that his master was trying to make him smile, Merlin had just looked somewhat alarmed about Arthur being nice. It wasn’t that rare for him!
Was it?
But it seemed that no matter what he tried, nothing worked. Until, of course, he stopped trying. As it happened, it was a complete accident on Arthur’s behalf that he finally got to hear Merlin’s laugh. Well, if anyone was to ask, he would say it was deliberate. After all, what king admitted to getting his foot tangled up in the bedclothes? He was supposed to be the most feared warrior in all of the land, falling out of bed was not something he wanted to be made public knowledge. He hadn’t even realised that Merlin was in the room, still getting used to the way this moody servant seemed to move silently.
But then he heard it.
That clear peal of laughter, so pure and innocent that it tugged a smile from Arthur’s lips even as he pretended to scowl at the fact Merlin had witnessed his moment of clumsiness. The fact that a smile never seemed to be far from Merlin’s eyes for the rest of the day made Arthur’s heart feel lighter than it had in months.
It didn’t matter how many strong knights he had. The future of Camelot seemed to rest on whether Merlin could still be brought from his realm of depression and be made to smile once more.