I. I am at a loss for words. I went into this expecting...no I don't even know what I was expecting. Feels of a sort. Likely a happy sort. This. This is not at all what I was expecting. And it is beautiful.

"Oh, fuck no," he says aloud, startled by the sudden clarity of the recognition. It's a horrible idea on so many levels, Merlin can't even begin to count them, but that doesn't change the fact that the thought of Arthur makes him feel giddy and sick and utterly, soppily in love. He wants to wake up next to Arthur and engage in gross displays of public indecency with him and force him to eat vegetables.

The feels in this one though. I was utterly unprepared for the onslaught of emotion. This is romantic and heartfelt and achingly sad in moments. I tried so hard not to cry and for the most part I held the tears at bay but that is only because the authors must have been feeling generous and kind enough not to dwell on the angst as they easily could have.

Arthur swallows hard and turns his face away from Merlin's, heart threatening to beat right off his chest. The terror of Merlin saying no has been replaced by the terror of him actually saying yes. And Arthur can't remember the last time he fucked someone just because he wanted to. This is uncharted, uncertain. He's used to a set of preordained rules that keep him boxed in and keep everyone else out. But Merlin... Arthur has the unsettling feeling that Merlin could peel off all his layers and put them back on in the right order.

And it's 5am and I'm really not feeling coherent enough to string together intelligible sentences in the hopes of conveying how amazing I feel this story is, how much I love it, everything about it, how much it made me feel. If it wasn't so lateearly, fucking hell the sun is coming up soon I might seriously consider rereading this story immediately. Forever on my 'a thousand hearts' shelf this goes!

Facta non Verba - dimeliora

4.25 stars

Well done and quite enjoyable but I would have liked for