Like the summary says, this is a place to collect all TVITD stories that aren't quite important enough to get their own, individual places in my story-list. It's not much, but I hope you like it anyway. What is with Merlin always letting out this goblin...?

Great Merlin, Goblin-Releaser

Initially, after those first few weeks of settling into this new life he'd gained, Arthur was faced with a problem that had nothing to do with Morgana's presence in the modern world, or his duties as CEO of his family's companies, or even how long would be the appropriate time to wait before asking Guinevere to marry him. The problem dawned on him all at once, one morning as he and Merlin stood in the elevator of their apartment building, while the secretary-warlock (he still could hardly believe it) commented in between sips of his hot chocolate that, if sixty was the age when elderly people got discounts just for being elderly, he should get every meal he bought for free, and they should probably even pay him, if he did the math right.

Even all those thirty years in Camelot after Arthur's rise to the throne, he'd never quite slowed down enough—none of them had, he supposed—to stop and consider the manservant always right behind him, and later, the warlock at his side.

It wasn't that Merlin acted as though he expected any special treatment. He woke Arthur up in the mornings with exuberant greetings, made quick work of helping him out when he needed it, huffed sharply and rolled his eyes when he thought no one was looking, and was generally an overall force of nature hidden just in the background. He was everything he had always been, only now he had a history about him.

Even so, Arthur couldn't shake this feeling of sudden confusion and awe over him. Every time the once king laid eyes upon him these days, he saw one-third Merlin, two-thirds Emrys. For every little movement he saw his poorly-dressed secretary make, he saw three flashes of a mighty warlock in an indigo cloak, a thousand years cleverer and stronger than anyone.

Throughout the next week, Arthur thought often that Merlin must surely see this in himself. Surely he must know what sort of debt Arthur owed him, especially now, when it had had thirty years in Camelot and few months in this time to build and grow.

Merlin didn't seem to notice, their lives so busy and work-filled as they were, how that Arthur resisted teasing him so often, nevermore calling him names or messing up his (lengthening) hair or any of those little gestures King Arthur had always been so keen to deliver. Arthur wasn't as sure of himself as his king-self had been, he felt—at least, not with Merlin. King Arthur had known his place, two years older than Merlin, his master and his champion; Arthur now may have been the same man, but he wasn't all of those things. He was just a man—so young and inexperienced and probably foolish compared to Merlin.

Foolish compared to Merlin. No, he was definitely not as sure of himself as he had been. He wanted to be; he wanted to feel as much Merlin's king as he had been before, but how could he, when Merlin was so ancient and wise and full of wonder? How could he ever think himself Merlin's authority now?

Then, one day, he and Leon stood in front of a pile of splintered wood in a council room in London, and he didn't much care how wonderful and honorable Merlin was.

"Thirty minutes," he fumed to his friend, "he is thirty minutes late. I knew I should have kept him with me. There's no telling where he got off to, and he's probably the only one on the planet who can fix this."

He gestured toward the mess of plywood that had been the model for a new medical research facility Leon's company was going to open, and the once-king wondered how on earth he was going to convince his board it was a good investment when he couldn't even convince himself, by the looks of the destroyed scale model.

"How could this have happened, anyway?" Leon was musing, taking the blow considerably better than his new friend. "I thought all the doors were meant to be locked."

There was no accusation there, only sincere curiosity, but Arthur felt a stab of guilt nonetheless for not ensuring the security was better himself.

"I don't know," he answered with much less rage than before. "It doesn't matter now. All I know is that we're not going to get a coin for a pack of chewing gum from my board if a miracle doesn't happen, soon."

As though summoned by the choice of wording, Merlin was at his elbow.

"Oh, no."

Spoken like a man who had been afraid this would happen…like he knew exactly how it had happened.

"Where have you been?" Arthur demanded hotly. "Our DVD player is busted, the scale model is destroyed, and just look at the chairs you ordered to be delivered for the board members."

He held one up for emphasis, and the old warlock winced as various Disney princesses smiled at him from the pink plastic back.

"I need you to fix this, Merlin, please."

The old warlock seemed to snap out of his daze at that, and pulled his eyes away from Princess Ariel's huge blue pair in front of him; he then proceeded to shift from foot to foot, babbling in that suspicious way Arthur was more than used to hearing in his dream-memories from his insane manservant.

"Okay…ah…set out the scale model as best you can and I'll take care of it in just a minute. Promise."

"And the DVD player and chairs?" Leon pushed calmly.

"Yeah, I'll get new ones. I'll be done before they arrive. Don't worry."

He'd skittered two steps before Arthur's voice halted him, for it was in these moments, when the young man least realized it, that he sounded the most like the great King Arthur of Camelot.

"Wait."

Merlin's shoulders were tensed as he turned, slowly.

"Colin, what is going on?"

Merlin was more than aware—as all of them who knew the pair were—that when Arthur called him that, he was one wrong word away from being in trouble. Nevertheless, he flashed his easiest, most sparkly smile.

"Nothing."

Like Arthur was the one acting funny.

Leon watched in wise silence.

"Merlin."

And now he was really in trouble.

The warlock's mouth tightened at one side and he took two hasty steps back to Arthur, as though afraid someone was eavesdropping through the walls of the private room.

"It's a goblin," he murmured lowly, staring straight into his king's eyes so that Arthur would recognize how serious he was.

"A goblin."

He thought in a flash of his beloved Camelot, of Gaius being possessed and of baldness and stolen gold and donkey ears.

"Yeah, that one," Merlin confirmed his worst horror, flinching a bit as he read the way the old king's face had paled.

It took Arthur a moment to get his words untangled, as Leon began to look around the floor, as if expecting (or fearing) the snarky little creature to be at his ankles.

"What's it doing here?" the king all but hissed.

"Well," Merlin's tone was slightly defensive and even more so chagrined, familiar in so many of Arthur's most ridiculous memories, "I didn't want anyone releasing him, so I hid him in Avalon Haven. I thought maybe he could help me—you know—find out if there were more goblins around."

"Why would you possibly want more like it?" he barely quieted his outburst, as a pair of secretaries passed the open doorway.

"It's not that I want more," he returned. "I just thought…goblins are the simplest type of magical creature. If what we've talked about—if magic really is returning to the world—there will start to be more of them around. I thought he could sense them out for me, that's all. I thought I could keep hold of him, this time."

"That's all?" he actually did hiss this time, unable to believe his ears. "You released a goblin from over a thousand years ago into the streets of London. How could you be so stupid?"

He really did want to know. Shouldn't a warlock of one thousand, five hundred something know better than this by now? Shouldn't Merlin, the Great, be a bit wiser than that?

"We had a deal," Merlin offered weakly, sounding less and less Great and more and more Not-so-great.

Arthur threw his hands up in a partly-enraged, partly-helpless gesture.

"Oh, well, then," he fumed boisterously, "we can all see how fantastic that turned out."

He tossed one arm in an angry movement toward the shattered scale model, exploded DVD player, and pink, sparkly chairs.

Merlin gave him a desperate, guilty, slightly wounded look, but then it all dropped away from his young face at Leon's shout,

"There it goes!"

And the three of them bolted from the room, chasing the little, green figure with the pierced ear and obnoxious laugh, trying to maneuver themselves between it and unaware passersby while keeping it out of any unwilling host body.

In the end, they caught the little troublemaker and returned it straight to Avalon Haven—along with a new lady-friend goblin (if female goblins could be considered "ladies"), which was enough to make the entire situation almost seem worth it, since Merlin was so thrilled that he almost started to cry when they finally caught up with the goblin and his newfound mate mixing up envelopes in all the wrong bins in the mailroom. The warlock spent the whole rest of the afternoon babbling about how It's true, Arthur! Magic really is alive again! This proves it. The world is changing; it's becoming like Old Albion—like Camelot!

Arthur wasn't sure Leon quite understood Merlin's excitement, the way the quiet young man just smiled amusedly as the old warlock went on and on (without pausing to breathe). Arthur didn't quite understand it himself, but later that night, when he was alone in his flat, he found that Merlin's joyfulness had spread. He tried so hard to keep himself cool and objective about all of this (as cool and objective as it was possible to be when one finds out he was once King Arthur), but those words, "like Camelot!", rung in his mind and fanned a flame that he'd always had when he thought of his beloved kingdom. The people of the land were so different from the old world, but he knew, deep down inside his soul, that they were still his people.

There was more than just that, though. As it turned out, Merlin wasn't the otherworldly, all-powerful being from another world that young, modern Arthur had been assuming he was. He was just Merlin—trouble-prone, scarf-wearing, blue-eyed idiot Merlin. If anything, his years of wandering Earth by himself had made him a little more reckless and ridiculous. It was no wonder the gods had designed his immortal body to resist injury; who knows what horrors he would have brought down on himself by now.

Arthur was King. Merlin was Warlock. Neither was stronger or better than the other. Arthur needed Merlin to help and guide him in all areas of his life, just as he always had in Camelot. Merlin needed Arthur to channel his magic, to give him something solid and purposeful to put his mind on.

Arthur felt a jolt of surprise at that revelation. Merlin needed him. He needed their friendship the way it worked—the way it had always worked. They both did. So why was he worrying about it so much? Nothing had changed. Merlin had only become more Merlin. He needed someone to keep him in line even more than ever.

The next day, Arthur teased him a little more loudly and rudely, just to make up for the past week.