Work Text:
Camelot at night was a truly beautiful thing. It wasn’t something that many saw, truly saw. True the townspeople often roamed the streets after dark visiting friends, running last minute errands, doing the normal things people did, but they never noticed their home. They never took the time to watch the way the moonlight coated the rooftops and fell like shining fabric between the buildings. Of course the guards patrolled the thoroughfares and had their stations to be kept, watching the shadows for trouble and troublemakers, but they never saw the way the shadows flowed into one another giving form and substance to the very air and creating beauty with delicate strands of darkness crossing across lit windows and doors. Visiting Lords and Ladies could not be bothered with the trivialities of their surroundings at night, in the dark where there was naught to see, but solid walls and cobbled stone. They never saw the graceful curves of those very stones as the darkness turned them into a soothing sea of ripples and waves, or the walls become as firm as the cliff faces those waters lapped against.
But up in the castle, in the open window of the Prince’s chambers, eyes the colour of the night sky saw, they saw the lower town swathed in silver, the web-like lace of shadow, the sea thrumming gently below.
Merlin propped himself up on his elbow as he stretched out on the bed, watching his lover intently. “What are you looking at?”
Turning, a softly quirked smile on his face, Arthur answered, “Magic.”