Arthur and Merlin on the Cliff by the Sea - Epilogue
It wasn't happily ever after, much to Hunith and Balinor's chagrin.
The door slammed shut violently after their son, a storm whipping up a frenzy outside their house on the cliff, and his face three times as thunderous as the weather he was inflicting on the whole island.
Hunith and Balinor, not even bothering to do much else besides sip their tea in the front room, asked their boy together, in bored tones, "You hate him?"
"I hate him!" Merlin yelled, storming past and slamming the door to his and Arthur's room shut. Obviously deciding that did not properly express his rage, he made all the other doors in the house slam shut too, including the cupboard doors in the kitchen. Hunith's tea sloshed out onto the carpet, and she sighed long sufferingly.
"Fight you for it." She declared. Balinor raised his fist challengingly.
He rose begrudgingly (because his tea hadn't spilt and he was rather comfortable draped all over Hunith on the couch) and went, while Hunith smirked after him, victory held in her flat, paper palm. He didn't bother knocking on the door as he manoeuvred into The Den of Adolescent Suffering, sitting heavily on his son's bed. He put his hand gently on his Merlin's soft hair, and waited.
Not a minute later, Merlin snuffled and threw himself into his father's lap, curling his body tight and resting his head on Balinor's knee.
"What's Arthur done this time?"
"What did you do this time?" Hunith asked idly, watching Arthur struggle through the kitchen window, as Merlin had, per usual, barred the doors from letting Arthur through them.
"Why is it always my fault?" Arthur huffed indignantly, squeezing himself through the small opening. The windows of the house were quite large, but Merlin covered all his bases. Arthur wasn't getting back in without knowing Merlin was seriously pissed. "It might be Merlin overreacting, as usual! You always take his side." He grumbled, not really putting much fire into it.
"Sweetheart. Do you really want me to take out Merlin's list again?"
Merlin had, one extremely memorable day, brought out his file of Arthur's transgressions, complete with witness reports, testimonies, photographs, and even store receipts. It was extremely impressive, and Hunith is saying this after seeing Merlin raise up their house three metres off the ground for half an hour so he and Arthur could see a litter of kittens and their mother. Arthur had been adamant about rescuing the kittens, as he had learned, horrifyingly, that the mothers had a tendency to eat them. "Land dwellers are barbaric! Oh my god, I voluntarily joined a barbaric race!"
"Arthur, sweetheart, we descend from monkeys. Not cats." Hunith had told him from the front door, feeling it quite a novel sensation for her home to basically be floating on air.
Arthur wouldn't let Merlin be in the same room with Hunith alone for months after. The culmination of that of course being the first time Merlin and Arthur realized that Merlin could spell the doors to not let him in, much to the blond boy's agony. Hunith, being the upstanding adult that she was, promptly pretended to gnaw on Merlin's head like she was a lion.
She could see why Balinor told her she cruel and horrible. Of course, she had shot right back that he couldn't be a sterling character then, having begged a cruel, horrible creature on one knee to "marry me, please, please, please marry me."
Balinor had scowled at her, and went out to sea for half a year after that. Hunith did not see the point of it, as she promptly spoiled the children rotten and had a jolly good time while he was cold, wet, and smelt like fish. She in fact, gloated about this every night until Merlin took the lamp away from her. He was much too kind and sweet natured to be her ally in mischief.
Which of course was why she loved Arthur best. (Not that her love for Merlin wasn't all encompassing and all consuming of course, just that pranking him was especially not fun and generally very guilt inducing, whilst pranking Arthur made her whole day brighter. She was such an awesome parent.)
"Please don't take out the list Hunith. Merlin will know, and then he will cry his tear ducts dry because his little girl heart regrets compiling mean things about me."
"I don't think you can get away with calling Merlin a girl Arthur, you used to be a fairy princess."
"I was a sea princess!" He corrected. And then thunked his head when he realised Hunith had succeeded in getting him to call himself a girl. Then he let the rest of his body go lax, and stretched out his arms, throwing her some serious cow eyes. "Hunith, please help?"
She put her hand on the window sill and it grew to the correct size, allowing Arthur to slide through easily. He rose to his feet and pat the dust off his clothes. She looked up at him expectantly. "Well?"
"I might have... embarrassed him a bit."
"Sweetie, that you harassed him is a given. What was it about?"
He shuffled his feet, huffing. He crossed his arms and said sullenly, "We were playing volleyball on the beach, and he kept getting hit with the ball! I was just hitting them so he wouldn't get hurt, that's all."
Using her ultra refined Mum Bullshit Extractor, Hunith scoffed and translated. "So what you mean to say, is that you showed off and didn't let him hit the ball, probably while calling him a rubbish athlete and particularly useless? And perhaps made snide remarks about how his performance on the sand was about on par to his performance in the bedroom?"
The blond teen cringed every time she made a correct guess, staring at the floor. He raised his eyes at the end of her speech and bit his lip, imploring and exuding innocence. Hunith had a lot of practice dealing with Merlin however, and his techniques were five times as effective.
"I... might have done?"
"Arthur, please. I taught you everything you know, of course you did." She crossed her arms and scolded him. "You'll never get him to sleep with you at this rate you know."
Arthur flushed, his voice tight. "I would prefer not to discuss this with you, if that's all right."
"Just saying." She shrugged, relaxing her stance again as she continued to wash her and Balinor's mugs in the sink. As Arthur slunk away, she delivered a parting shot over the sound of the tap running. "Better buy another condom princess, the one you have now is probably no good since you've had it for over a year!"
"It was from a sex ed class that you signed off on and you bloody well know it and also I don't like you very much!" Came his muffled squeak behind the bathroom door. He would probably have an hour long sulk in the bath and refuse to come out until he was wrinkled and prune-y, at which point Hunith would then delight in calling him awful names.
"I love you too Arthur!" She called back.
She was such an awesome parent.
Balinor was so not an awesome parent.
He was an awesome captain, and sometimes he and the crew played at being awesome pirates at sea, but on the whole this child rearing business was not really his forte. Still, he persevered and suffered for his children, because god knows what would happen if he left it up to Hunith to raise by herself. They might all have become nudists, or monks, or be known as those crazy nudist monks on the cliff by the sea. At the end of his admittedly juvenile six month sulk he had come home, blessedly relieved to find it still standing (if weirdly adopted by a family of cats who still yowl at him from their territories on the foot of both Merlin and Arthur's beds. It didn't stop him from trying to pet them).
"I don't get it, Bally." Merlin pitifully sniffed into the fabric of his jeans. "It's like he hates me. And he wants everyone to know he hates me and have them point and laugh at me too." He curled tighter around Balinor's knee. "I wish we were still kids."
"Merlin, that's not true. Of course Arthur likes you," he said soothingly, cradling his son's head protectively.
Arthur, that mysterious and mischievous blond child. When he'd come home after that freak storm at sea when Merlin was five, he was shocked to be greeted with two rambunctious children and Hunith's pointed, "I get to name all the children, so that one's Arthur."
Merlin's protests that he was the one who named Arthur were drowned out by the fact that his wife and son had gone a bit mental and adopted a (ridiculously cute, but still) child from god knows where.
Then again, he also had a vivid hallucination where the Goddess of Mercy had saved the Ealdor and her crew from being shipwrecked while out at sea. Adopting a flesh and blood child? Not as crazy in comparison.
Plus, Hunith had been truly against the idea of another pregnancy, which he completely understood, because after her first trimester he'd been more than ready to don his hat and be on the next boat out (the next two trimesters he was so completely wiped out that he knew nothing but love for this crazy, crazy woman and their unborn child got him up in the morning, and then Merlin was born and he was so beautiful so he sort of forgets about that dark nine month period of his marriage). Having another child whose laughter and footfalls filled up their house was an unprecedented, but entirely welcome surprise.
They made too many sea princess jokes that he didn't get though. Hunith just stuck out her tongue and told him to suck it up.
"I wish we were kids again." Merlin mumbled, sitting up. "We used to talk and have fun and be the same fucking size."
"Language!" he scolded. Merlin snorted.
"Bally, you're a sailor. You'll live."
He wanted to say he was a captain, Merlin, but that probably wouldn't help matters. Their difference in physical appearance was a particular sore point for Merlin that Arthur kept prodding. When they were young, there was no way of knowing Merlin would shoot up and be all graceless limbs and frighteningly thin gangly frame. Not at all like Arthur, who simply grew into his confidence and his broader build. Merlin still tripped over stone steps he had jumped down a million times when he was a kid.
God, how he wished they were still kids. They had been so freaking cute then.
"You're still growing son, you'll take him down one day and he will rue messing with you." He tousled Merlin's dark hair fondly, already fairly mussed from before. Merlin mustered up a tenuous smile for him, so he decided to get serious. "You're young kiddo, and so is he. You guys will fight, and things won't always be perfect, but you'll get through it." Balinor couldn't help a disturbing flashback to Aldred's pep talk whenever he and Hunith had a fight while he was cheering Merlin on. He shafted it out of his mind.
"Thanks Bally," Merlin's smile was still a bit wobbly, but Balinor counted it as a parenting success. "I guess I'll go talk to Arthur."
Balinor nodded. "You'll patch things up." He slapped his son lightly on his back, pulling a resigned smile when it made Merlin stumble out the door.
"Yeah. We're pretty much stuck with each other. Damn you, five year old self." He heard Merlin mutter.
Stuck with each other?
That was sort of true, because they were family but — but it wasn't like the had to be stuck together all the time. They'd eventually get girlfriends and marry and have kids that Balinor could spoil rotten. When they were ready of course. Fifteen was still way, way too young for his kids to even think about dating.
But, hadn't he dated a slew of girls at seventeen? And, their reliance on each other was a little weird wasn't it? Balinor had two brothers, and while they were all close in age he didn't remember sticking to them as closely as Merlin and Arthur did. Balinor heard the door across the hall open without so much as a knock on the door as a warning.
Right, he definitely didn't remember walking into the bathroom that casually when he knew his brother would be in the bath.Naked in the bath.
He tipped his head back and to the side. He could just make out Merlin kneeling next to the bath talking to Arthur. Well, that's good then. They're just close. Totally nothing weird about that.
Then Arthur learned forward to lick Merlin's face and Merlin let him. Balinor saved himself from falling off the bed by turning his momentum into a side roll, coming out of the tuck on his feet to the applause of absolutely no one.
Well.
Right.
That was fine. He was cool with gays. He had heard enough jokes about the YMCA to last him two lifetimes. And he still loved his kids, their sexuality didn't change who they were. He didn't care about what society would think either. For goodness' sake he had married Hunith after all, if that didn't send out a giant bat signal about how liberal he was he didn't know what would.
There was no way in hell he was going to let them keep sharing a room though.
He quietly slunk into the kitchen, collapsing into the nearest chair at the dining table. His beautiful wife was drying the dishes and stacking them away. And Hunith being Hunith would of course be alright with Merlin and Arthur having an epic gay romance with each other (it was sort of like a story line from those daytime soaps she swore she never watched but Balinor knew she did and— and did he just compare his life to a soap opera? Christ) but there was no reason to bash her over the head with a two by four of tactlessness.
He cleared his throat. "Hunith, do you think adopted siblings can get married?" he asked, trying for causal. He could do this. It was fine. No pressure. Hunith looked up from her dishes and gave a disgusted scoff and an eye roll, stacking a dish and shutting the door loudly.
Maybe this wouldn't go down as well as he had imagined.
She threw her hands up in the air and lay into him. "There is nothing wrong with cohabiting, you antiquated gobshite! For gods' sake Balinor, Arthur hasn't even hit a home run yet because our son is as dense as a brick wall so bloody well stop pushing your soul crushing social constructivist agenda!"
Balinor could only gape after her as his wife flounced off to collect the laundry.
Well.
Hunith very obviously was slaughtering him in parenting points, as she had clearly figured out what was going on with their kids a long, long time before he even got a clue. But he had already said he wasn't very good at this child rearing business, hadn't he?
He probably wasn't going to get backup on that whole room separation thing though.
And he was probably sleeping on the couch. Again.
-And so they lived, sort of happily ever after, in a house on the cliff by the sea-
The End.
C&C, if you please.