The first time Merlin Emrys hears the voice, it's crying. Not soft crying, like his mum does sometimes when she thinks he's not looking, but sobbing, sobbing like Will had the time he'd fallen out of their tree house and broken his leg. He's alone in his room, reading his spelling list like he was told to, and for all he looks, he can't find who it is that is crying.

"Hello?" he asks, pushing past his clothes in the closet, pint-sized clothes for a pint-sized six year old. There's no one there, or in the cupboard, or hiding in the curtains.

He slides down and looks under the bed, where the monsters are. "Hello?" he asks again, but the crying doesn't stop.

Thinking perhaps it's invisible, Merlin says, "It's okay, Monster, you don't have to cry," and tries to project warm, happy feelings like he feels when mum hugs him, underneath the bed.

The crying stops.

The second time he hears it, Merlin is ten, and has a broken wrist from crashing his bike into a telephone pole. It hurts and he's crying and his mum is crying and everything is more awful than it has been in his whole life, and he wants it to stop.

'Stop being a baby!' the voice says.

Merlin just cries harder.

'Come on, s'not so bad,' the voice wheedles. It's soothing, the voice, like his mum when she's not crying and when she's reading him stories. It makes the pain less sharp.

'There,' the voice says, a bit smugly, 'now you're tough, like a soldier!'

"I don't want to be a soldier," Merlin sniffles. His mum looks at him strangely and assures him that he doesn't have to be, and by the time the cast is on, the awareness of the voice is gone again.

The third time, Merlin is thirteen, and he comes home with bruises stark on his skin and memories of being called names that are even starker. He looks at his gangly, too thin, shaggy-haired frame in the mirror and says, very quietly, "Fag, you're a fag."

And, sharp like a knife through his mind, it comes: 'Don't say that!'

Merlin startles, but despite how long he stays there thinking up increasingly silly derogatory words (like clotpole and cabbagehead), it doesn't say anything else.

The fourth time, Merlin is sixteen, and he knows what the voices are, now. His voice is crying again, differently than it did a decade ago. Quietly, held in.

"What's wrong?" He asks his ceiling, trying not to think about what it means.

'Piss off,' the voice says, harsh, cutting. 'This is all your bloody fault.'

The awareness cuts off abruptly, and Merlin thinks that, if this is his soulmate, the world got it all horribly wrong.

Merlin doesn't hear the voice again for eight years, by which time he's graduated high school, finished a degree in Uni, and is working as an architect for his Uncle Gaius's construction company. Most of his friends have found their soulmates already. Gwen and Lance are married and expecting a baby. Percival and Elyan have found each other. Leon and Mithian are engaged. Even bloody Gwaine has been matched up, the bastard, with the equally wild Elena.

But Merlin's all alone with his blueprints and his dingy, barely lived-in flat, eating takeaway and binge watching Netflix. Most of his friends are under the impression he doesn't have a voice. It's rare, but not impossible.

And, given that his voice sounded like it hated him last time he heard it, it's almost preferable to pretend he doesn't have one at all. After five years of not hearing a word, he'd let Gwen set him up on some dates with 'other' non-voicers, and some lost-voicers, whose voices died. They never make it past a first date; he feels too guilty.

But, after eight years of nothing, he's actually considering letting the last date have a second try.

So when, halfway through a presentation on the benefits of self-cooling building techniques to a new client, he gets a singular word in his head, loud and sharp as a cannon shot, he isn't shy about repeating just what his soulmate has to say.

"Fuck!"

Needless to say, they don't keep the client.

His soulmate doesn't say anything else.

It's two days later when he hears it again, another swear. He startles so badly that he drops his favourite Darth Vader coffee cup and it smashes on the floor.

'Sorry,' says the voice, and then the awareness is gone.

Merlin uses many and varied swears, including the one his stupid voice had said, while he picks up the shards of porcelain.

The next day, it's back, a bit tired: 'Goddamnit, couldn't you have waited five minutes!'

"What?" Merlin asks thin air.

'Not you,' the voice says, and it's gone again.

'I hate him,' says the voice, when Merlin's brushing his teeth for the night.

Merlin rolls his eyes and spits his toothpaste into the sink. "Eight years," he grumbles at the mirror, picking up his floss. "Eight bloody years, and now you're all chatty."

The voice doesn't answer him.

The next time, it's his turn to swear loudly, having just accidentally cut his finger with an exacto knife he'd been using to open up a box. How he'd been conned into helping Elena move in with Gwaine he'd never know.

'Jesus, mate,' the voice grumbles, 'Some of us are trying to sleep.'

"It's 3 in the afternoon," Merlin says without thinking.

'Maybe where you are,' the voice grumps.

"Yeah it is," Gwaine tells him, raising an eyebrow. "Why, is there somewhere you need to be?"

"What?" Merlin asks him, confused, and then blushes bright red. "Sorry, talking to myself."

Gwaine stares at him. Merlin tries to smile innocently and ruins the effect by bleeding all over their new drapes.

It's inevitable that people start to notice. With eight years of no voice turned to random words and phrases popping up sometimes every few hours, he's not accustomed to keeping his reactions to himself.

It's been a particularly horrible week. He's worked nearly fifty hours in overtime finishing a rush project for Gaius that his uncle had accidentally put in the finished box when it wasn't finished, and he missed his normal bus home and had to walk the twenty blocks instead. He hasn't slept more than four hours a night for days, and he's got a killer headache drumming at his temples. All he wants to do is collapse into bed and not move for a good twelve hours, but he's supposed to go over to Gwen and Lance's and see the new baby.

So when, while he's handing his present for little baby Amelia to Lance, his voice suddenly says, 'I can't do this anymore,' he feels his reaction is entirely warranted.

"Will you SHUT UP!"

The house goes entirely silent, even the tiny little baby. Lance stares at him, baby pink present dangling from his fingers.

Alright, so maybe not totally warranted. Baby Amelia starts crying.

"Sorry," he says, squeezing his eyes shut. "Not you."

'Are you alright?' "Are you alright?" The voice and Lance overlap. Gwen cradles the little baby and it stops crying and starts giggling almost immediately.

"… I've just… got a headache," Merlin mutters.

'I'm sorry,' says the voice.

"Don't be sorry," Merlin grumbles, just as Lance starts to ask, "Do you want –"

Gwen, very slowly, very concernedly, asks, "Merlin, who are you talking to?"

'I'll find you,' says the voice.

"Because you've done such a fine job of that so far," Merlin mutters.

'I'll find you,' the voice says firmly, and the awareness fades.

"Merlin?" Lance asks.

"Yes, hi." He looks away and stares up at the ceiling. "Any chance we can just pass that off as a temporary psychotic break from a long work week?"

"No."

"Fuck," says Merlin.

Gwen doesn't set him up on any more dates.

The random phrases and words and mental interruptions into his everyday life don't stop, but his voice seems to be making a conscious effort to communicate.

'Good morning,' he'll get, while showering.

'Have a good day,' while on the bus.

Swear words and angry phrases don't stop, still like loud, unexpected gun shots through his brain.

But, constantly: 'I'm sorry.' 'I'll find you.' 'Where are you?' 'I'm so sorry.'

They're never able to have a real conversation; one of them always fades out before they can. But, for the first time, Merlin doesn't think having a voice is so bad.

He's on his way to Amelia's first birthday when he runs into a tall, muscular blond on the subway.

"Sorry," the man mutters, and it's more familiar than a word from a literal stranger should ever be.

"My fault," Merlin says, automatically.

The figure whips around, blue eyes wide. "What?"

Merlin stares at him, tongue tying into a knot. The man is ridiculously gorgeous, an honest-to-God blond Adonis with a jawline that could cut glass.

The man grabs his wrist, eyes wide. "Say something. Anything."

"Hi," Merlin manages.

He lets out a breathless laugh. "It's you." He tugs on Merlin's arm, pulls him closer. "Fuck." (And the swear is far more familiar than it really should be). "It's you. I found you."

The last time he hears the voice inside his head, and not outside it, it says, 'Fuck, he's gorgeous.'

It's later, when he's entirely missed his god-daughter's birthday and his lips are chapped from kissing his Arthur, his gorgeous, Canadian Arthur Pendragon (and doesn't that explain the time difference), and he's exhausted and elated and draped over his soulmate's naked chest, that he finally asks.

"Eight years. Why?"

Arthur's wince is full-body, and he reaches up to thread his fingers through Merlin's still-shaggy hair.

"I'm sorry."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"I know," he sighs. "I… my father is a traditional man. He's stubborn and ruthless and –" His voice rises and he cuts himself off. "I didn't realize until I was thirteen that you weren't a girl. That time… the time when you called yourself some horrible name in the mirror, I figured it out."

"I remember," Merlin says quietly, sensing where this was going.

"I didn't tell my father, not for years, but he found out, and… it was… it was horrible. He threatened to disown me. Said terrible things. Hit me. I thought, that if I could keep out the voice, it'd be alright, that I wouldn't be a … well, all the horrible things he called me. It worked."

"For eight years."

"Yes, but, as I got older, I just couldn't do it. My friends have their soulmates. Some of them are same-sex, as well, and I couldn't do it anymore. Couldn't pretend, not when I knew that you were out there." Arthur cupped Merlin's jaw in his hand, ran his thumb across his cheekbone. "I'm sorry."

Merlin kissed him, and Arthur kissed back, hungry, desperate, before flipping him onto his back and straddling his thighs. He pressed their foreheads together, breath mingling.

"I found you."

"You did," the brunet whispered.

"I'm sorry it took so long."

"At least it wasn't eight bloody years."

"Nearly was," Arthur said, kissing him again, short kisses against his cheekbone, jaw, eyelids, nose, before finally settling on his lips. "Do you have any idea how many places are at 3 in the afternoon when it's 7 in the morning in Vancouver?"

"A lot?" Merlin guessed, breathless.

"Way. Too. Many," Arthur growled, kissing him aggressively between each word. "It's lucky you were thinking about Big Ben that once."

"But you're staying now?" Merlin managed, as his soulmate's hands started straying into less neutral territory and his phone buzzed, forgotten, with the twenty sixth missed text from Lance and Gwen.

"Yes. I've got years of waiting to make up for."

"And the swearing. You need to – God, that feels good – make up for that."

"Like you were any – fuck, Merlin – better."

"You made me break my – Don't stop! – favourite Darth Vader mug!"

"It wasn't intentional. And – Ah! - this is my sixth trip to London. You didn't make it easy on me either."

"My favourite Darth Vader mug."

"For fuck's sake, Merlin, shut up."

And then he made him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AN: I have no idea where that came from. The characters belong to BBC Merlin. Hope you enjoyed!