Battle Wounds 1/1

[mangacat201]

Title: Battle wounds

Author: Mangacat(201)
Pairing/Characters: implied!Arthur/Merlin,

Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~500

Disclaimer: I don’t own them because I’m neither the BBC nor Shine and this is all fabricated and completely profitless.

Warnings/Spoilers: Series 4

Summary: There’s only one who tends to the King in the aftermath.

A/N: Another last minute fill for the ‘fighting’ square on my hc_bingo. I give no guarantees for sense and coherency, but I just HAD to finish this fricking bingo in time. 

There’s a victory and a feast.

And a wedding of course, well a coronation really, but it’s more of an afterthought in the middle of the people rejoicing as the forces of good prevail once more.

Before that can happen though, there’s tending to the wounded and the bereft that once again paid the price for the powers in the land clashing and fighting each other with all their might. Merlin though has only got eyes for one of them, his King, who fights and suffers for his people with no regard for what his body can bear. He had observed Arthur‘s posture and stance, the careful way with which he held himself and the tender skin stretching bruised and battered on his cheekbone every time he moved a muscle in his face with great stoicism. But enough is enough and when the King drags in another tortured breath into his lungs, grabbing the edge of the council table in a white-knuckled grip to conceal his weakness in front of his floundering subjects, Merlin puts his foot down and shuffles everyone out to get a good night’s sleep and to be rested and ready in the morning.

Arthur looks for a moment like he wants to protest and go ahead with their plans to rebuild the city, but then he takes another breath and closes his mouth with a grateful sigh on his lips and lets his shoulders slump from the sting of pain that Merlin knows too well is attacking his sides. He lets himself be ushered back to halfway decent quarters without much more protest and as Merlin delicately undresses his king, he takes careful stock of what he’ll need to do to relieve his pain and ease him to sleep.

Arthur has long since stopped asking about the conspicuous heat of his bath and just relishes peacefully in the water as the fragrant oils sooth the tension out of his body. Merlin has always cherished these rare times when he can just tend to Arthur with quiet whispers and familiar motions, washing, drying and bandaging his bruised skin. Many words pass between them in these times that are never spoken, but still understood and Merlin coaxes his king into bed with the firm knowledge that he is the only one to take this place in Arthur’s life.

No matter what happens next with the kingdom and which way their path takes them in the future that is what Merlin is holding onto.

That will have to be enough.