Merthur One-shots

The Favor

Summary: Apparently, the council has nothing better to do than constantly hound Arthur about his love life. When they bring up the topic of finding a queen, Arthur desperately compromises...a compromise that still requires him to accept a lady's favor so that he can fight for her in the tournament. The only problem is the only person whose favor he would accept is Merlin's, but that would be impossible... right?

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King Arthur Pendragon was, without a doubt, the best fighter in all of Camelot. Nay, maybe all of Albion.

He’d rarely faced an opponent he could not beat in a fair fight and even then, it only took a few more turns against him before he could figure out the man’s weakness and win. He was far from ever needing any sort of luck or incentive during tournaments, so the idea of a favor was beyond him. He’d seen knights parading around favors from their ladies but he’d beaten all of them at some point. What use could it have?

After all, he was content to stay a lonely king if it meant he didn’t have to deal with a prissy queen whose only redeeming feature was the fact he could stand to look at her. There were quite a few people he could bear to be around, but none of them were fit to rule. Well, maybe one.

When Arthur really thought about it, he didn’t know how he could rule without Merlin. The man had revealed his magic a little over a year ago – simply burst into Arthur’s chambers the day after the ban was lifted and blurted, “I have magic and you can’t kill me for it.” They’d had a long discussion afterward about how his endearingly clumsy and witty manservant could possibly be Emrys and how he’d kept it hidden all these years (Arthur numbly remembered the time he accused Merlin of being unable to keep a secret and promptly stopped talking). Now, Merlin sat on the same board as his council members as his Court Sorceror and highest council. They’d always worked well together, and considering Merlin’s deep understanding of, well, everything, he made a perfect candidate for the job.

But the year following had prompted a lot of deep thinking, particularly about what Arthur wanted in a partner. Whenever he pictured someone standing at his side, it was Merlin. Whenever he imagined waking up in bed next to someone, it was Merlin. Whenever he needed to rant out his stress over a drink, he ran to Merlin. Whenever there was an unsolvable problem, Merlin was by his side with ten different solutions. Merlin was the missing piece to his puzzle; the other side of his coin. No one else could be that for him.

It was because of this that he refused to take any favors during the spring tournaments: no man or woman in the entire world could measure up to what Merlin had to offer him. He’d seen his fair share of handkerchiefs, gloves, sigils, scarves, rings, and even had to avoid one particularly insistent noble lady who was set on giving him her underwear. The favors, as flattering as others might find them, were insults to his ability to choose his own wife (or husband, his brain argued) and were likely only the result of others wanting a chance at the throne. So every year he sent out rather miffed council members to intercept the eager ladies before they could drown him in favors.

Well, almost every year.

An issue had come up with the King of Elmet and Arthur had spent the better part of the winter trying to figure out if he was going to war or not and wasn’t at all concerned with the spring tournament….until his council breached the subject out of the blue.

“You want me to fight...for what?” he’d asked and the old stuffy men had exchanged glances while Merlin snickered in his chair next to Arthur.