#merlin stopping time to steal arthur's socks and get out of an uncomfortable conversation you will always be famous to me

[adhd-merlin]

“Merlin… Does it even occur to you that what you just did is not mortal magic?”

“Of course, it’s mortal magic. I’m doing it.”

Carefully – slowly – Arthur told him, “I have read almost every book on magic in Geoffrey’s vaults over the past year, and not a single one of them mentioned what you just did. The only other time I saw that was in the cave of the disir. And I’m pretty sure that those senile women weren't the ones that did it.”

Merlin drew back on his feet. “What are you accusing me of?”

“I’m not accusing,” Arthur placated. “I’m…suggesting.”

“Suggesting,” Merlin sneered. “Suggesting what?”

Arthur realized too late, the conversation he’d led them into, but he couldn’t backtrack now. Merlin would only hound him, either verbally or with glares across rooms for the next fortnight, or for however long it took Arthur to capitulate. “You implied it before, yourself. At the wellspring. You don’t die mortal deaths. It took an enchanted blade to stop your heart. Dorocha can touch you, and not kill you. Mortal poisons didn’t kill you. You’re not even the only person who's said it. Even Hubert suggested it.”

Merlin’s face wasn’t really doing anything, and neither was the rest of him. He could have been blank parchment, or an unused wax tablet. “I’m not human? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur admitted. The cold nothing of Merlin’s voice disturbed him, but not as much as the glint in his eye that spoke of smothered storms and affront. Arthur felt as if saying the idea out loud were unwise, or perhaps it was only unkind. Forbidden words best left in the dark reaches of the mind where inconvenient suspicions lay fallow, unspoken for the good of all. “Are you?”

The only indication of something amiss was that Merlin tried to hide the amber glow of his eyes by lowering them and letting his hair obscure part of his face. Arthur blinked, felt a lightening-tinted brush of air past his ear, and then he was standing alone in an empty hall.

“What – Merlin?” Arthur went to uncross his arms, but they seemed stuck. When he fumbled his cuffs around, he found them buttoned together. “That…sneaky little – childish – Merlin!” He had every intention of pursuing Merlin through the castle somehow, never mind that he hadn’t the slightest idea where to start looking, but the moment he tried to take a step, he came to his second realization. He tripped and pitched forward, thankfully not near the stairs, caught himself on his tangled hands, and rolled up against the wall. “He tied my bootlaces together, the poxy – ”

“Sire?”

Great. Yes. Witnesses to his embarrassment. That was all Arthur needed. He shoved himself to sit upright as two of his castle guards ran over to him in alarm, and grabbed at his boot laces. There were at least a dozen knots in them, which…yes. Wonderful. Point taken. 

— from The Dust of Hope, Chapter 5 by fourleggedfish