Merlin was looking for something uncomplicated. Arthur was just looking to get paid. Neither of them expected to find the other.

“You don’t appreciate my natural-born talent,” Arthur said mournfully. “I suppose I will just have to remind you of how spectacular I really am.”

In which Arthur tries his hardest to make Merlin scream, and Merlin tries his hardest to make Arthur realize that he is, in fact, a giant princely prat.

Arthur knows exactly where they are, even with the snow landing fast and thick around them. He knows the woods they’re in better than anyone in the kingdom, recognises every laden bough as he would a brother, and all Merlin’s talk about being lost is just wasted air. Arthur could never be lost in Camelot, not on these lands he’s ranged over since boyhood, this soil he’s fought and lost and bled for.

“...where we’re going, Arthur,” Merlin is saying, and Arthur turns to him with a sigh, because apparently ignoring Merlin isn’t going to make him stop talking. “We’ve passed that stump four times now.”

Betrayal is one thing Arthur cannot live with.

There is a small lake near Camelot which will one day become quite a famous park, and the ducks living there will grow fat and canny off of the bread tossed to them by undercover operatives and ex-KGB agents during secret meetings.

As it turns out, the "citizen" is one Merlin Emrys, a former Lance Corporal for the Independents and a wanted criminal.

Arthur has never really understood birthdays; why should people celebrate them when they bring nothing but sullen, angry fathers and a lingering sense of uncomfortable guilt? It doesn’t help that his birthday is in November and the weather is inevitably foul and cold, freezing grey rain sleeting down outside.

This is the punishment Arthur devised for him, he realizes; betrayal and disloyalty repaid with unforgiving, implacable forgetfulness.

Written and originally posted for this kinkmeme prompt: "The reason Colin is so defensive about slashing Arthur and Merlin is that he secretly reads and/or writes A/M slash and is terrified of anyone finding out. Bonus points if the discovery of Colin reading/writing stash leads to some Bradley/Colin action." The title is from a Conrad Aiken poem with the same title.

They’re somewhere over Greenland and the dark cabin is finally, blessedly quiet – God, Merlin thought the woman in 32A was never going to stop pressing her fucking call button – when the lavatory door opens suddenly in front of him and he’s yanked inside.

When Harry finds out that the manager of James's Quidditch team is none other than Draco Malfoy, old memories begin to surface, threatening to take his attention away from the things that are supposed to matter.

Harry’s trying to get over the animosities of the past, but Draco wants nothing to do with it.