Not my best work, I'm afraid. But I said I'd get a oneshot up soon, so here it is.

Don't own Merlin

It was strange to live in a quiet house.

Merlin had always been a noisy child. Even as a baby, he'd gurgled and giggled all the time. Sometimes, when he had cried (a thankfully infrequent occurrence), Hunith thought that the rafters were trembling. Perhaps they had trembled; she really didn't know. If they had, though, it would have been from magic, not the strength of his voice… well, probably. She thought sometimes that both possibilities were equally likely.

But even the baby had been quieter than the boy. Merlin learned to talk by practicing, and practicing, and practicing some more. He hadn't really shut up since learning his first word. He'd even been known to mumble in his sleep.

Hunith told herself that it really wasn't that quiet, that she would grow accustomed to the lack of noise soon enough. She told herself that she should be, would be grateful, to escape her son's constant prattling. The gods knew his chatter had driven her almost to madness on more than one occasion. So really, the woman assured herself, she should be grateful for the hush.

(She wasn't. She didn't get used to it either.)

It was strange to live in such a noisy suite.

Before Merlin had moved in, Gaius's life had been relatively free of noise. He was blessed to have only a few patients, and only rarely did he tend someone crying out or sobbing with pain. Even then, those louder patients were often women in labor who wanted the court physician nearby in case something happened that the midwife could not handle. So his chambers had been a quiet place.

Then Merlin moved in, and suddenly Gaius had to deal with a lot more noise.

It was not an easy adjustment to make. He'd always been a quieter person, and having a young man rushing to and fro talking a mile a minute was quite jarring, especially in the beginning. He didn't regret taking in Hunith's boy, but he did wish that Merlin wouldn't talk so much.

(He got used to it, though.)

None of Arthur's other manservants had been overly talkative. "Yes, sire," "no, sire," "right away, sire," was pretty much the sum of their vocabulary, at least in their master's presence. Then he met Merlin, with his sharp wit and shaper tongue, who talked from morning to evening. He started each day with a soliloquy on the weather, or on what he'd dreamed of the night before, or whatever took his fancy.

It was extremely annoying, especially when they went on hunting trips. Arthur was quite convinced that his softhearted manservant was deliberately trying to frighten away the fluffy little animals of the forest.

At first, the chatter made him want to throttle the fool, or at least throw him into the stocks. Later, he only wanted to throttle and/or stockade Merlin occasionally, not all the time.

(But for the most part, he rather liked it.)