Cures for a Broken Heart

[ifeelbetter]

Title: Cures for a Broken Heart
Author: ifeelbetter
Rating: G
Warnings: Torte will not solve all problems, kids. Only the important ones.
Disclaimers: I don't own anything of value. You laugh, but it's so true.
Author's Notes: Written for merlinxarthur's Fanfic Challenge #2. In case you're wondering, Gwen and Merlin bake this torte.





Merlin had been sleeping on Gwen's couch for over a week.

He'd shown up one afternoon looking like someone had kicked his puppy but worse, more like someone had rounded up all the puppies in all the world and then systematically kicked each and every one of them. Then had done the same with kittens. Rinse and repeat with bunnies, for good measure.

Gwen had pulled him in for a hug, one of her tightest, and put the kettle on. He told her that she was mistaking him for a giant fucking girl because guys do not commiserate over tea and she'd patted his head, nodding sagely. Then she'd made the tea anyway and she was right, damn her, because it was tea he wanted most anyway.

She didn't push. Merlin and Arthur had more rough patches than un-rough patches but it seemed to work for them in the long run. She had long ago made a habit of distinctly Not Asking. So a week passed without her learning what had happened other than the casual observance that Arthur didn't call and didn't show up.

That was odd for them because Arthur always caved. They had once had a giant row in Harrod's about gloves where Merlin had drove off at the end in a huff and Arthur had done this hyperbolically romantic search in a taxi, finally finding Merlin in a Starbucks that Arthur only knew to look in because he knew that Merlin thought they had better whipped cream than the other Starbucks. On another occasion, Gwen had seen Arthur try to storm off in a similar bout of angst but cave before he even had his keys in his hand.

Arthur always at least called. They could really pack the sturm und drang into their day but Merlin and Arthur always ended alright because ... well. They just did.

Mostly because Arthur always called.

Arthur not calling for a week was big. Gwen decided it was time to move to emergency status on the Not Asking policy.

"You could call him, you know," Gwen pointed out. She poked the mound of blankets that was Merlin with her toe.

The blankets shifted slightly and Gwen inferred that Merlin was shrugging somewhere underneath them.

"I'd like my couch back at some point," she added, poking again.

He unearthed a hand from the mound only far enough to swat away her foot. "I'm so sorry to be inconveniencing you with my horrible life," he said. "I'll just move my heartbreak to Morganna's sofa, shall I?"

"Please. Like you'd be on my couch if you could bum a week off hers," Gwen said.

"Damn you and your cleverness."

"Plus you'd run into Arthur eventually."

"Not necessarily. It's a big house." He maneuvered some of the blankets so that his face emerged. "Lots of wings."

She poked him again and sipped her tea. He swatted at her foot again halfheartedly. She poked again with more vehemence.

"So...heartbreak, hmm?" she said in what she hoped with a casual tone.

Merlin rolled his eyes and covered his face again. "Leave me to my agonizing death in peace, will you?"

"A bit of an oxymoron, that," she said, blowing on her tea. "Agonizing death and peace. You'd hardly be in peace if I left you to an agonizing death."

"If I was dying of a stab wound, you wouldn't be pouring salt on it, right?" he said, moving the blankets away from his face again. "Stop with the salt and my pain."

Gwen reached over and patted his ankle comfortingly. "Poor dear," she said. "I'll get you some tea." She moved towards the kitchenette to put the kettle on.

"I don't want tea, Gwen. I want manly comforting beverages. Like whiskey."

She didn't even have whiskey in the house. She was an expert in dealing with girls post-breakup. She knew tons of girls who automatically turned up at her door, mascara-streaked and sniffling, who hardly spoke to her the rest of the time. She was an automatic comforter to girls with Relationship Woes. She had a system, centering on the stockpile of ice cream she always kept, her epic collection of cheesy romantic comedies and sappy eighties tearjerkers, and she had boxes of tissues all over her house in various pre-planned and easy access hideaways.

But she didn't know how the system was supposed to handle a boy. Especially one who refused to leave.

"Honestly, Merlin, if you come to me for Relationship Woes, you have to be prepared to be handled like one of the many girls who come to me for the relationship woes," she said. Merlin blinked at her. "And you'll drink your tea and like it."

"I never said I had," Merlin looked like he hated the taste of the words on his tongue, "Relationship Woes."

"No, dear, but look at you. If you were a girl, I'd have pulled out Beaches days ago."

"What the hell is Beaches?"

"It's the movie a certain type of girl watches a thousand times when she's having boy troubles," Gwen said, speaking slowly as if he was a half-wit. "It has Bette Midler in it. Something about letters and a wasting disease. You watch it until you cry into your ice cream when you're feeling blue. It's what girls do."

"Oh god," Merlin said, looking horrified, "That sounds awful."

"I know. But as the poet says, 'Ours not to wonder why, ours but to do and die.'"

"You know Tennyson means that as tragic heroism, right? It's not a life motto."

Gwenn shrugged. "If the shoe fits..."

Merlin craned his neck to see her from his refuge on her sofa. "Does Morganna ever come to you with her relationship woes?"

Gwen froze for maybe half of a mili-second. It was too fast to even be classified as a freeze. It was more like a hiccup, a full body hiccup. Something in the back of her jaw clenched.

"She has," she said simply, trying not to think about some of the nights when Morganna had arrived, sometimes already drunk and sometimes already crying, and how much her heart had clenched even while it soared with hopefulness. She especially tried not to think about one night in particular when Morganna had run her thumb down Gwen's cheekbone during the credits for The Ramen Girl and ended just at the corner of Gwen's lip.

"Poor, sweet Gwen," said Merlin, too wisely and not jokingly at all.

"Come over here," she commanded, to discharge the air. "We're going to bake now."

"Why do I have to keep reminding you that I'm a boy?" he whined but he did as he was told.

"Real men bake tortes." She was sure of this.

Merlin crumbled amaretti biscuits while Gwen hunted down her stash of dark chocolate. She was doing the most ridiculously chocolate recipe she knew, one that she had found on a recipe blog ages ago and had serendipitously just finished baking when Freya had turned up weeping on her doorstep about her epic and tragic unrequited passion for Merlin. Gwen sympathized, put the kettle on, and handed her a slice of the torte. She hadn't even needed to watch Beaches that night; the torte did all the reconstructive work for her.

Merlin was a mess with the egg whites. He dropped nearly the entire shell in and had to fish the individual pieces out of the bowl. He was positively dripping with egg within minutes and begin to show the warning signs of a smile. Then he managed to get the chocolate all over himself and the kitchen in the few seconds Gwen allowed him to interact with other ingredients. He was relegated to Observer status eventually, despite his good intentions.

Gwen let him lick the spoon when she was done mixing. His eyes nearly rolled back in his head, it was that good. She smirked a little at that.

There would be a good deal of time in the oven, even considering the time needed for the frosting. Gwen was about to tell Merlin off for licking everything that had been touch by the chocolate and composing spontaneous odes when her doorbell rang.

The room went completely silent and any hint of enjoyment on Merlin's face faded. He actually looked terrified. It surprised her.

"I'll go see who it is," she said, patting his arm.

"Gwen, if he's--" Merlin started but obviously didn't know whether he was going to finish with an instruction to decapitate Arthur or welcome him back.

"I'll just see, alright?" she said.

Of course it was Arthur. She'd been waiting for Arthur to show up for a week and a half now. She knew it would be Arthur.

"Gwen," Arthur said when she opened the door, not looking her in the face. "Alright?"

"Hello, Arthur. What a lovely surprise," she said. "I'm just baking right now, why don't you come in?"

He shrugged, trying to look nonchalant despite the twitchiness apparent in the tapping of his forefinger on his leg. "You haven't, you know, happened to see..." He followed her inside.

Gwen saw Merlin, in his best deer-in-headlights mode, duck behind the counter.

"Are you looking for Merlin?" she asked because, honestly, enough was really goddamned enough, "Because he's just over there in the kitchen." She pointed. "Under the counter."

Merlin bounced up, his face flickering between the pretense of calm for Arthur and the glare of death for Gwen.

"I just have some laundry to fold. Upstairs," Gwen said, ignoring the urgent and incomprehensible signals coming from Merlin's eyebrows and their rapid movement. She retreated.

Merlin and Arthur looked at each other. They looked away. Then they both tried to sneak a glance at the other, were caught, and looked away again.

"Look, Merlin, you--" Arthur started to say but Merlin was speaking in the same moment.

"Arthur, you've just--"

They both stopped.

Merlin ran a hand down his face and sighed. "You go first," he said.

Arthur opened his mouth and closed it. Then he furrowed his brow. "You've got...on your face.." he said, pointing to his own forehead. Merlin's hand flew up to his own face and found a smear of chocolate. He wiped it away.

"It's gone now?" he asked.

"No, it's just--" Arthur said, fixated by the smear and reaching forward without really thinking. He wiped it away with his thumb but that left his hand somewhere in Merlin's fringe and he was pushing that back too without really thinking about it.

His eyes finally dropped to Merlin's.

"I am sorry," he said quietly.

"I don't mind," Merlin said, just as quietly. He had minded, quite a lot, but it had curled up and died when Arthur walked in the room.

"But I was just surprised, is all," Arthur continued, still playing with Merlin's fringe.

"It's a surprising thing," Merlin agreed.

"I'm getting a degree in science, you know. We don't believe in hocus pocus. We laugh over drinks about people who've seen aliens or cast spells."

"Do you really?" Merlin asked with a smile. "That sounds deathly dull."

"You know what I mean." Arthur's hand dropped back to his side. "It's just a bit much to take in, alright?"

"Absolutely." Merlin tried to be resigned about it all, he really did. But he couldn't really stop the girl inside him, who obviously had control over his mouth at that particular moment, from asking, "It's not...too much, is it?" He would have gone on to say something about how he would understand if it was too much because Arthur was all about fact and Merlin did magic and this was such a good fit for the expression 'never the twain shall meet' that it had twisted up Merlin's insides for months before he'd actually said something. He would have told Arthur he'd understand that this had to be It, really and truly the end of the line, because that's the sort of thing that people can't wish away, right?

He would have said something like that if the damn girl inside him hadn't insisted on making him sound like a total and complete fucking girl.

Arthur reached into his pocket and put something down on the counter next to Merlin's hand.

Merlin glanced down. It was the least ostentatious and tiniest crystal ball he had ever seen, a simple bauble of glass sitting on a simple hoop of silver.

He looked at Arthur's face, trying to read something between the lines. Arthur hated being direct about his emotions so this was the best Merlin was going to get, he just had to interpret it correctly.

He stared at the crystal ball, his brow furrowing.

"Are you saying," he said slowly because he had always been the type to wheedle answers out of his teachers, "you want me to... figure out what you want to say by casting a spell on this crystal ball?"

Arthur rolled his eyes. "No, you idiot. It's a symbolic gesture. It just means...it means I'm alright if," and he suddenly seemed completely unsure of himself, "if you are."

"Do I have to respond symbolically or am I allowed language?" Merlin asked. He grinned.

"I made the effort, damn you, you had better come up with some sort of metaphor," Arthur said, grinning back and so completely relieved. "I demand a symbolic gest--"

Merlin pulled him forward and kissed him deeply.

"Need help with the interpretation?" he asked when they parted a moment later.

"No, I think I got it," Arthur said, pulling Merlin towards him again.

"There were shades of meaning in there. Are you sure you got all the nuances and everything?" Merlin teased, pressing butterfly kisses into the corners of Arthur's mouth between words.

"Just...just come home," Arthur said and Merlin had to pull back a little because he said it too honestly and Merlin had to see it in his eyes just for a second.

"Yeah," he said and then he could see the relief there too and that felt amazing, to see the rolling emotions in Arthur's blue eyes. "Yeah," he repeated, "After the torte's done."

"What?"

"The torte. It has half an hour still."

"You're spoiling our big romantic reunion for a cake?"

"No."

"No?" Arthur looked confused.

"It's a torte."

Comments

[cutiewitchgirl.livejournal.com]

mmmm torte...

[ifeelbetter.livejournal.com]

I think your icon demands the response of "mmmmm castle"