1

«Ow!» Merlin yelped as he yet again crashed his hip against the finely polished wooden table in Arthur's chambers. Arthur rolled his eyes.

«Really, Merlin? Again? Shouldn't you have learned that there is a table there by now?»

Merlin ignored Arthur's comment in favor of grumbling incomprehensibly as he picked up the socks he'd dropped when he collided. Arthur rolled his eyes again and returned to his report.

2

«OU – ch…» Merlin caught himself, barely avoiding being loud enough to catch Uther's attention as he quickly lowered his voice. Arthur, however, turned (discreetly, so Merlin wouldn't be noticed by Uther because of anything Arthur did) to see what the problem was. He was exasperated, but not surprised to see that Merlin had managed to run into the corner of the council table. Sending Merlin a look that quite clearly read seriously?, he returned to focus on what Balder was saying about the «grave needs» of the Nobles from his «incredibly vital» patch of land not being fulfilled.

3

Merlin grunted as he bumped into Arthur's finely polished wooden table that Arthur swore was becoming less and less fine with every day that passed with Merlin still in his service, dropping things on it and crashing into it and just generally abusing it as he was. Arthur threw his hands up above his head and closed his eyes.

«One day, Merlin…» As his eyes were closed, Arthur couldn't strictly speaking truthfully say he could see the look on Merlin's face, but he didn't need to in order to know he was grinning. Arthur decided not to comment on it, as he supposed it was better than laughter.

After all, they both knew that there would be no day where Merlin would actually remember to avoid that table.

4

Arthur threw open the door to Gaius' chambers, not even bothering to knock. «Merlin!» he yelled impatiently. He didn't really have a particular reason to be impatient at the moment, but he didn't feel like waiting, and it always got him things faster when he acted like this. Probably because most people didn't want to accidentally piss off a Prince. This meant that in theory, Merlin would come immediately and efficiently to Arthur's side, taking maximum ten seconds.

Merlin, of course, didn't. When he finally dragged his lazy backside down from his room, probably having stayed there for a little while extra just to annoy Arthur, he even managed to stumble on air and go crashing into the wooden floorboards. Arthur tapped his foot impatiently. He was relatively certain this was just Merlin going to extreme lengths to bother Arthur – even risking hurting himself in order to achieve his mission.

«Having fun down there, are you, Merlin?» he asked, as Merlin got to his feet again and quickly continued towards Arthur. Merlin opened his mouth to answer, but before he'd managed as much as forming a word, he fell right back on the floor, this time from hitting Gaius' workbench. He even managed to drag one of the bottles on it down with him, though by some stroke of luck Merlin caught it before it hit the floor.

Seriously, what was it with Merlin and tables?

5

It was morning, and Merlin had just finished dressing him. He was moving Arthur's breakfast over to where he usually ate whenever he had a meal in his chambers, when Merlin once again managed to slam his hip against the corner of Arthur's finely polished wooden table, and in doing so lost his grip on the plate of food, tipping it over. To Arthur's frustration, it landed with a loud clang on said finely polished wooden table (which was especially regrettable considering that Arthur actually kind of liked that table and had taken to calling it his finely polished wooden table in his head – not that he'd ever tell Merlin). Arthur's breakfast quickly introduced itself to the meticulous work of some probably rather famous furniture maker, the various stains wasting no time sinking into the wood and becoming harder and harder to completely remove with every passing second.

As Merlin hurried to find something to clean up with, Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved a deep sigh. He was starting to worry about this habit of Merlin's of crashing into things (mostly tables). Though he would never admit it to anyone anywhere ever, Arthur's finely polished wooden table wasn't the only thing he cared about that had gotten harmed in the collision that had just taken place, and though he wasn't going to say what that other thing was, it certainly wasn't his breakfast.

The problem was, Arthur had no idea how to stop… the thing he was worried about… from bumping into everything both in and out of sight. He frowned, but let it go. Hopefully, a solution would come to him in time.

And…

Arthur watched as the ones who had stood by him loyally when Morgana revealed her true colours sat down around the round table. It was truly a remarkable discovery, he thought, looking it over again with admiring eyes. The idea of using a round table back in Camelot when he himself became King had always intrigued him, but every time he thought about it seriously he'd thrown the thought away again. It wouldn't have worked, not properly. In order to make a round table big enough to include everyone he wanted to join him there, they'd end up with an awkward giant empty space in the middle that no one would know what to do with. It was a shame, but a round table was simply too unpractical. Once again, Arthur let the idea go.

It was in this moment he realized that Merlin had already sat down by the table, and had done so smoothly and quietly. Merlin never sat down by tables smoothly and quietly, and especially not when said table was a new one that he had yet to become acquainted with. He always managed to in some way knock into them, snag his jacket on them, or (on one particularly memorable occasion,) knock himself out on one while simultaneously getting his shoe stuck under one of the table legs.

But Merlin hadn't even bumped into the table. Why not? Was this some kind of random freak… accident, if you could call it that, or maybe it somehow had something to do with the great history of the table they were gathered around? Maybe someone had spelled it to make people be less likely to bump into it? Doing so would certainly help make the people gathering around it look cooler. Or maybe there was something done to the corners of the tab –

Oh. Of course. Merlin didn't bump into one of the corners of the table, because the table had no corners. Obviously. Arthur took a moment to appreciate the fact that no one knew what he had just been thinking, because reaching the conclusion he had had taken him an embarrassingly long amount of time.

But anyway. Arthur started reconsidering his previous dismissal of using a round table. His internal argument went something like this:

Merlin would hurt himself a little less.

A round table would be awkward and impractical and somewhat stupid.

Merlin would hurt himself a little less.

A round table would be a bold, radical move, and not necessarily a good one.

Merlin would hurt himself a little less.

Hmm…