Knowing and feeling are two different things, and feeling is what counts.

François Lelord, "Hector and the Search for Happiness"

April 5, 2003
Arthur is 17, Merlin is 22

He wonders if it one day it will feel easier when he arrives somewhere he does not know, but at least today he is not stealing clothes or evading police who want to arrest him for indecency, battery, theft, or worse. Today he is away from the city, fallen upon lush grass from which he doesn't move. It is a rare thing to be safe like this, to not have to flee.

The air is cleaner, here—wherever here is—and spring has brought out the big guns; the trees are taller, displaying their waves of greens and yellows and pinks in the crisp breeze. Merlin lies on his back for some time, wishing his headache away, basking in the sun and counting the colours. He waits for the onset of dizziness that will lead him back to Arthur.

Merlin wonders whether Morgana has noticed he has disappeared, and what Arthur might be telling her to explain it. He wonders whether Arthur has kicked the abandoned pile of clothes underneath the kitchen table, or if he is pretending to put on a wash. He hopes that dinner doesn't burn while he is gone because the most complicated thing that Arthur has ever cooked is cheese on toast.

Arthur, Arthur. Merlin has come to hate to be where Arthur is not, in the year since they have been together. He hates to leave him just as much, and he hates not being able to promise when he will come back, just that he will.

But Merlin always comes home, and Arthur welcomes him with open arms, always, because he knows how Merlin is feeling. Merlin just hasn't caught up yet, although he is learning. He has learnt that sometimes, while Arthur waits for him, to see whether he will come home or not, sometimes Arthur likes to be alone. Sometimes Arthur welcomes solitude, because he has spent many years without Merlin already; he knows how to be away from Merlin, how to be in his own company, while Merlin is still making sense of it all. To have Arthur and his love and then to suddenly be without it, in a different time and clueless, is crippling and lonely.

Merlin watches the clouds and settles in for the long haul. His headache is gone and he feels perfectly fine, so he's probably not travelling anywhere any time soon and neither has he any inclination to get up and find out where he is.

"There you are," a voice says, but whether it's minutes or hours later Merlin cannot tell.

He opens his eyes and remembers that he is naked.

"You said that I had to come and get you because you wouldn't come otherwise," Arthur says. Slight annoyance laces his tone as he stares down at Merlin. "But you didn't say where. I've been looking for ages."

Arthur is blocking the glare of the sun, and the light crowns his blonde hair. He looks young, Merlin decides. His face is not as defined as he is used to and his hair is longer, but those are Arthur's eyes and that is Arthur's smile which tugs at his mouth. Arthur is here, which means that Merlin is closer to catching up; he is in The Field for the first time.

"What's the date?"

"Saturday, April 5, 2003."

Merlin thinks. Somewhere there is a fifteen-year-old Merlin navigating his hormones and his time lines, and here is seventeen-year-old Arthur preparing to apply to university. Soon Arthur's favourite football team will be bought out for the first time in two decades, the fifth Harry Potter book will be released and England will become rugby world champions. There are so many things happening in the world right now that (at least, according to Arthur) a new Harry Potter book is probably the best thing to happen.

"When are you coming from?"

"2010. It's August."

Merlin is twenty-two, and Arthur is twenty-four. Since this day, they have seen two Prime Ministers and Arthur's beloved football team have secured the double. He's barely stopped talking about it since, and from the kitchen Merlin had been listening to Morgana suffer her brother's latest bout of triumph. It was four months ago, Arthur, Morgana had said with great pain in her voice. Three, Arthur had said, and Merlin knew that he'd been grinning.

"Am I there?" this Arthur asks.

"Can't get rid of you," Merlin says, and whatever Arthur seems to have been worrying about disappears from his face. The smile which has been threatening appears. "Do you have any clothes?"

Arthur shows Merlin the box underneath the stone nearby, and says that it has been there for ten years already. Nowadays it mostly hides Arthur's clothes rather than his father's, but the trousers are always a bit too short. Arthur says that the box will never move, so if it's not there it means that Merlin has probably arrived in a time where Arthur is not.

"This is weird," Arthur says when Merlin has finally moved and is shrugging into the baggy red t-shirt which has been left for him. There is an imprint where Merlin has been laying for so long, waiting, and Arthur is staring down at it with an odd expression. "I guess I've never really thought about you coming here for the first time."

"Well, I'm glad you were here," Merlin tells him as he pulls at his borrowed clothes.

"Normally I meet you in The Field," Arthur says, gesturing lamely behind him, "but before you left last time, you told me to come and get you. I had to look for the date on the list."

"The list?" Arthur has never mentioned a list.

"Of dates, when you are coming. You dictated it to me after memorising it, and told me that I was to give it back to you when you start coming for the first time. You're meant to ask me for it when you get home. So, I don't really know how it exists. Maybe it's like a Mobius strip."

"Or a Klein bottle," Merlin says, and Arthur finally looks at him. "It has no boundary."

"Maybe," Arthur replies. He sits on the ground underneath the trees, disturbing Merlin's impression on the grass, making his own so that they are one and the same. It will say we were here for a time after Merlin has left him again. This is us, it will say.

Merlin lies beside him and wonders if Arthur is often this unsure. This Arthur is half-way to becoming a man, not yet the person Merlin knows, and likewise this Merlin is not the one Arthur is used to these days. This is unfamiliar territory for them both.

Arthur spreads out, filling the space next to Merlin's body. "Are you scared?"

"Why would I be scared?"

"This is the beginning, for you. It's nearly the end for me. There's only seven dates left after this."

"You'll find me soon and then it will begin again."

Arthur is quiet for some time as he considers this. He closes the gap between their bodies and rests his head on Merlin's shoulder, his breathing deep and his fingers mournful as they clutch at the red shirt.

"What are you scared of?" he asks eventually.

"Winter. Your father. That you will be too far, or too young to come and get me, or that I will appear in front of a car or a train and you won't know where I have died. I'm scared that you will think enough is enough and leave."

"Why would I leave?" Arthur arches his neck to see what he will find on Merlin's face. "Are we fighting?"

"No, no." Merlin rolls on his side and brings Arthur with him, his arms tight and unforgiving. "But I am unpredictable and you are always waiting. Even now, you're waiting, because I am younger and new and it has already taken me a year to catch up. Maybe one day you'll stop waiting."

"I won't leave," Arthur says. "Even though you're always leaving me."

"I don't want to. If I could stop, I would."

"If you stopped now then you wouldn't visit me." Arthur shifts in Merlin's arms, pulling himself up so they face each other. "I wouldn't know you."

"You'd still find me. It would all work out, I know it. It would just happen a little differently."

"I wouldn't want it to be different," Arthur says, and Merlin can't help but agree.

August 21, 2010
Arthur is 24, Merlin is 22

Merlin materialises in the kitchen and knocks his head against an open cupboard door as he stumbles, some meters from the place where he disappeared. Dinner is simmering quietly, unburnt, and his clothes are still on the floor. Morgana's laugh floats down the hall. The clock reads 6:49pm and Merlin realises that he has only been gone a matter of minutes. He shuffles back into his clothes, cold and sweaty like he sometimes is after travelling, and he resumes dinner.

He hears Arthur, who comes up behind him, his arms snaking over Merlin's shoulders, pulling him away from the stove and into him, pulling backwards, down, down, until he is the only thing keeping Merlin from falling and he is looking into his smiling face.

"You feel cold. You okay?"

"Popped out," Merlin says, still smiling, because he is home and because he knows something Arthur does not.

"Where did you go?"

"To you," he replies, and Arthur nearly drops him. It is a few second before he recovers and set them both back upright. "I think you're meant to give me a list, or something."

Arthur has not said so, but Merlin knows that he has been waiting for him to come home and tell him stories of The Field, waiting for Merlin to join the pieces of the puzzle, to experience for himself everything that Arthur already has. There is a sense of irony that today is a year to the date since Arthur found him in the present.

"It'll be nice," Arthur says eventually. "To not be the one who knows everything. Now it's not just my past."

Merlin understands that this is how seventeen-year-old Arthur from half an hour ago felt, after having to show Merlin the box underneath the stone and how far he could go until he'd risk being seen by somebody up in the house. Usually you are the one who tells me stuff, he'd said, looking a little out of his depth. Usually your hair is a little more grey.

Arthur kisses him. He tells Arthur that dinner won't be long, and to go and keep Morgana company.

Later, Arthur gives Merlin the list. There are 173 dates spread over eighteen pages of a Power Rangers notebook, which looks like something that might have been a part of a child's stationery set. Arthur's hand from many years before has printed the first date in block letters: OCTOBER 20, 1993, and the last date stretches all the way until AUGUST 28, 2005.

Twelve years. There are 173 days of Arthur's life in this pad, days spent with Merlin, who has only seen one of them for himself. Merlin turns the pages carefully, frightfully, as if they hold more clues to his life than he necessarily wants to know, but it is silent, daring him to enter its world.

"They're accurate," Arthur says as Merlin closes the notebook and holds it in both hands. "I liked 2005 the best."

"I think I'm liking 2003," Merlin tells him, remembering the way they had been wrapped around one another beneath the trees, hidden and secret and together. Merlin had stayed for hours.

"I remember," Arthur says, and Merlin knows that he will, too.