Merlin knows he is still asleep because of the way he can’t smell anything. Reality is rarely ever so odourless, and Merlin’s early morning reality always includes the smell of every medicine Gaius left cooking the night before.
After another moment, he comes to the realization that he is being pressed lightly into the mattress beneath him. Someone must have put a heavy winter blanket over him while he slept. His muscles are relaxed and he dreads moving them to get out of this rare state of comfort. He mourns a few minutes longer and pretends to be still asleep and dreaming. He grasps with all his might at the shredded, wispy edges of the dream he just left and tries to block out the knowledge that the backs of his eyelids are red instead of black or invisible. It isn’t working.
He spares one last, immeasurable moment for a pipe dream of a lazier life that will never come to be. He sighs as he rolls to his right to get up, dressed, and down to the kitchens for Arthur’s breakfast, but he finds he can’t roll very far. Finally, finally he opens his eyes to see just how his legs and arms have become so very tangled in his bed sheets. Instead of what he expects, he finds himself in an unfamiliar guest room of the castle with his legs and arms bound together and the bindings tied to the bed. It’s no wonder he was so comfortable: this is one of the rooms reserved for visiting nobility and royalty! What in the name of the gods is he doing in here?! It’s not the straps or the room that bring about the rush of adrenaline from panic and the heightened awareness of his surroundings; it’s the fact that he went to sleep in his own bed last night and whatever brought him to this one didn’t wake him. He cranes his head around but doesn’t see anyone else in the room with him. The door to the hallway has been left open about half a foot by someone. Maybe whoever put him here will be back soon, or maybe there is a guard outside that door. He starts to try to free himself from his bonds without using magic, just in case.
His wrists rub against the leather straps holding them in place near his hips. His left wrist slips a little more easily in the strap, but does not slide out like he wishes it would. He keeps flipping his hands over and over and back and forth in their bindings to try to loosen them. It would probably be easier somehow if he could see what he was doing, but the heavy, large, and elaborate bedcovers on top of him make that extremely difficult. He can’t see through solid objects, after all. He lifts his head anyway to look down the bed as he struggles, and that’s when he first feels something else. One tug around his neck. One more binding, light and snug enough in its place around his neck that he hasn’t felt it until now. One more part of him held down.
