Merlin and The Knights of the Round Table

Little Man

{This will probably be a Two-Shot}

Merlin woke up to the feeling of warmth close to his chest, sitting up, his eyes landed on a curly, brown haired child of around 3 years. Merlin didn't know who this little one was or he got into his room, but he decided he would let him sleep, while he got Arthur's breakfast.

This didn't work though seeing that as soon as Merlin got up, the boy woke, and with that came tears, and with the tears came screams, which, of course, woke Gaius.

"Merlin? Is everything alright in there?" Came the worried voice of the elderly physician in the outer room.

"Everything's fine, don't worry Gaius." The younger man replied, before sitting next to the still crying but no longer screaming, child on his bed and picking him up, rocking him back and forth. "Shh, shh, it's alright, don't cry...I've got to get ready for work and you need to sit here quietly, so Gaius can sleep, can you do that?"

A small nod from the little one was all it took for the manservant to jump up and get ready to go, grabbing some food, he knelt next to the wide-eyed toddler.

"Are you hungry?" Merlin asked, holding his breakfast, to his new friend, who grabbed it eagerly, with a grateful smile. "Now, we need to get you home to your parents, okay?"

The manservant was probably going to be late for work, which meant another visit to the stocks, but for now, he wasn't worried about it, instead he was thinking about the curly haired child quietly eating next to him. Merlin theorized that he was either new to Camelot or a run away, since he hadn't seen the boy before, this led into another spiral of possibilities on the identity of the child. The warlock sighed, making the eyes of the toddler sitting next to him look up, as much as he needed to find the little one's home, he also had work to do, and he had missed the last couple of days, because of the latest assassination attempts in Arthur.

"Look, I need to get to work, you need to stay here, can you do that for me?" Merlin asked, watching the boy, as he nodded again, with a glance back at the toddler, Merlin headed out the door and towards the kitchens, finally, making his way to Arthur's chambers, earning curious stares from everyone along the way, much to his confusion. Shaking off his confused thoughts he put the King's food down on the table and pulled open the curtains, before walking towards the bed.

"Rise and Shine, Sire!" The manservant greeted as cheerfully as he could with his thoughts elsewhere, he stared out the window, ignoring Arthur.

"Merlin?!" The King's voice finally broke through the manservant's thoughts, "What is this?" Turning around Merlin noticed the reason behind all the stares he kept getting, he sighed.

"That, clotpole, is a toddler," at Arthur's slight eyebrow lift Merlin continued. "He's been following me all day, maybe you could help, I am trying to find his parents, have you seen him before?" Arthur just scrunched up his nose and shook his head, which was met with a fit of giggles, causing Arthur's head to whip around and watched the child, a smile playing on his lips.

"You think this is funny?" He asked as he started tickling the squirming boy, "Huh? Is this funny?"

~~~

They finally made it to the training grounds, about an hour late, the little helper was more of a distraction, and a hindrance, then anything else.

"What took you so long, princess? Merlin late again?" Gwaine called out to them from the field, breaking from his training.

"Not this time, Gwaine, not everything is my fault you know." The manservant began, with a roll of his eyes, as they got closer.

"We had an unexpected distraction." This was met with an unroyal short from the King, this in turn was met with several pairs of eyes shifting to look at him and the toddler, who had started giggling again.

"And who might you be, Little Man?" Gwaine asked, kneeling down to his level, the boy just shrugged "Want to sit on my shoulders?" At this however the toddler squealed and nodded his head vigorously, after he got situated on Gwaine's shoulders, the drunkard stood up with a grin.

"I assume this is your 'unexpected distraction'." Leon said with a small chuckle, gesturing to the Little Man.

"Yeah," Merlin said with a sigh,"He's been following me since I got up this morning. We have no idea who he is or where he came from." The knights nodded.

"So, you don't know his name?" Mordred asked, to which they shook their head, "So what have you been calling him?" Merlin and Arthur glanced at each other, and shrugged. "Okay... so should we start calling him Little Man? OR... ?"

"Lance, we should call him, Lance." The voice of Percival caused all the heads to whip towards him. 

{A/N: I don't know where this came from, sorry, it's kind of weird.}