Merthur Oneshots

Prime Minister

3621 words

Arthur had been Prime Minister for little more than a day when he finally saw his office. He had a hangover, which he had been assured was normal for his first day on the job, but really that was no excuse for hallucinating. His office was much as he had expected, dark wood panelled walls, a large and imposing desk and an even larger fireplace behind it (it couldn't be real, he supposed, not in this day and age), but the untidy haired man in the painting holding a balloon and wearing a lob-sided party hat was rather a shock. And if Arthur didn't know it was insane, he would have sworn the man had been singing when he came in. Arthur stared, and stared, and then stared some more. And then the man's right eye twitched and Arthur leapt backwards in shock, tripped over his executive chair and knocked himself unconscious on the edge of the desk.

...

Two days later Arthur was back in his office, sporting an impressive dressing on his forehead and tasked with not, under any circumstances, killing himself with an antique desk before his newly appointed Chancellor, Gwen, had had chance to complete her first budget. That sounded simple enough, hallucinations tended to be more difficult without a conspicuous amount of alcohol in his system and after a day's enforced bedrest. With that in mind, Arthur pushed open the door with the sort of confidence expected of the Youngest Prime Minster Since Pitt The Younger, and strode into his new domain, All was as he remembered it, except the desk which was now sporting a large DANGER sign, no doubt courtesy of Morgana, the harpy.

"You're not funny!" he said loudly, since she could be relied upon to be hovering outside the door, waiting to hear the result of her handiwork.

"I've hidden the whisky," she called back, because that's what happened when you let nepotism run rampant and made your sister your PA.

Arthur pulled a face at the closed door, because he couldn't think of a better comeback, and then stalked over to his chair. He should have been here three days ago, lord knows how much extra work he had made for himself and his new government now. "This is all your fault!" He spun round in his chair, the better to direct a finely honed glare at the man with the balloon (and who paints 'Man With Balloon' anyway? And then thinks it would look good in the Prime Minister's private office?). "I hope you..." He stopped, and gaped. The man, and it was still the same man which rather ruled out a new painting, had somehow lost his balloon, and his party hat, and was instead looking deeply and rather pathetically sad. His hair was the same, he was still wearing what appeared to be a ridiculous scarf tied round his neck and he was still standing against the same background, a field with a castle in the distance and... Arthur stood up and then blinked several times, but no, the clouds did still appear to spell out the word SORRY.

What the hell?

He was going mad. That was the only explanation. All the pressure of the campaign, the late nights, the celebratory drinks, bloody Morgana nagging at him 24/7, it had all been too much. The Right Honourable Leader of the Opposition was never going to let him hear the end of it.

He slumped back down, resisting the urge to bang his head against the polished surface of his desk and give himself another concussion. It was no good, there was only one thing for it.

Gaius arrived not ten minutes after Arthur had given him a vague and not terribly reassuring account of how he was having a nervous breakdown and being haunted by strange men with balloons and apologetic clouds. But to his shock, Gaius's first act was not to ask what substances he'd been taking, or even to give him the Eyebrow of Doom (he'd been the Pendragon personal physician since Arthur's birth, and Arthur was well used to the Eyebrow) of doom, but rather to march over to the painting and demand that someone called "Merlin" stop being so "utterly ridiculous and a disgrace to the Ministry" and appear immediately.