Fic: Snow

[gnimaerd]

Title: Snow
Rating: PG
Pairing: Gwen/Merlin
Genre: romance, fluff
Summary: Fluffy little piece about Gwen and Merlin walking from the town to the castle on a snowy day.

A/N: Written for the Gwen Battle fic challenge.
 

Snow
 

Gwen is crowned in white pearls – the snow lands on her dark hair like kisses, bright and cool as she shakes them loose, turning her face up to the grey-gold sky, full of wonder. It’s a like a premonition, Merlin thinks.

 

Camelot doesn’t get a lot of snow. When it falls, it falls on the surrounding hillside – the city stays sheltered. But for once a cloud of it has blown in over the hills and now it sugar-dusts the populace, and Gwen is laughing.

 

“I haven’t seen it like this since I was a child!”

 

“Really?” Merlin is clutching a bucket of coal for Arthur’s fireplace in one hand, and has Gwen’s fingers tight in the other, “it snows every year back home – hard. Once it got almost as tall as I am now.”

 

“No it didn’t!”

 

“It did, I swear it did!”

 

Gwen giggles and shakes her head, not really believing him. She’s never been outside of Camelot in winter, of course. She hasn’t seen a lot of things.

 

They are wading, bow-legged, up the main street towards the castle, through the crowds of people slipping and staggering every which way. Hundreds of tramping feet have compacted the snow on the road into thick white ice with precious little purchase to be had for a traveller’s boots. Keeping hold of each other is helping them balance, although Merlin is still struggling to feel securely upright. The huge, swirling flakes – big enough to catch and hold – still falling like goose-down out of the sky are disorientating enough. He can feel the winter singing.

 

Snow brings with it a strange kind of magic. Merlin has always felt it – a softness; a gentleness. It makes everything quieter and crueller and yet somehow more peaceful. He thinks that snow magic is probably more powerful than any other – but also the most dangerous.

 

Gwen is wearing gloves – thick, woollen mittens she says Morgana gave her at Yule. And she has on a cloak, and she had a hat, though she has taken it off, made too hot by the effort needed to keep moving. She’s clutching a bundle of material under her free arm, which she intends to use to line Morgana’s summer cloak, so that she can wear it in the colder months.

“She hates the winter one,” she explained to Merlin, “she says it makes her feel like a sheep.”

 

“Did it really snow up to as tall as you?” She asks, now, looking at him shyly from under eyelashes ribboned with snow crystals.

 

“Yes,” he nods, “promise.”

 

She smiles, sheepishly, and looks away.

 

“I remember when it snowed one winter when I was really small,” she tells him, “my father used to tell me the snowflakes were… the souls of all the fairies coming out to play…”

 

“That’s nice,” Merlin says, feeling inadequate, and she smiles again.

 

They’re both beginning to get out of breath. Walking uphill on a surface that is constantly threatening to yank their feet out from under them is far from an easy task – Merlin inhales a snowflake and begins to cough, tasting ice. Gwen – good and hardy – is doing better, strong sturdy servant’s legs carrying her well. Merlin feels shamefully unfit by comparison.

 

“Gwen – ” he wheezes, eventually, gasping, “can we just – can we – ”

 

“You’re such a girl, Merlin!” She chides, but there’s no malice in it – no real mockery. They slide to inelegant halt and Merlin bends double as he sucks in cold air, quenching the fire in his chest.

 

She pats his back, and Merlin looks up at her for a moment – at the snow-flake crown in her corkscrew curls now unfurling about her head in the breeze like a halo.

 

It occurs to him, for a moment, that he’s not good enough for her. That he’s looking at her the same way he does Morgana – at a heavenly body revolving somewhere far above his head.

 

“You’re so pretty, Gwen,” he says, before he can quite check himself.

 

She flushes, her expression drawing into a fine line of embarrassment even as she averts her gaze around a pleased smile.

 

“I’ll race you,” he says, to distract himself, “to the castle – I’ll race you.”

She laughs, “you’ll fall on your face!”

 

“Me? Nah,” he shakes his head, “I’m like a mountain goat – watch me!”

 

“I thought you wanted me to race you?”

 

But he’s already bounding away (as much as is physically possible, anyway) and she scrambles after him, laughing as he staggers about, ungainly limbs wavering as he struggles not to drop his bucket.

 

Somehow, they both get all the way into the castle courtyard before Merlin finally trips over his own feet and falls flat, bucket flying, coal scattered everywhere and scalding virgin snow black.

 

“Ow,” he manages, as Gwen discards her armful of cloth to run to him.

 

“Oh, Merlin…” she says, too fondly to quite manage the exasperation she would like to express, “sit up – here, there you go.”

 

He is now completely plastered with snow, his hands and nose bright red with cold.

 

“You should get some gloves,” she tells him, dusting him off.

 

Merlin’s smile is sheepish. “I keep losing them.”

 

“Then you should put them on a string or something… oh, and now you’re all wet…” she sighs, sweeping flakes out of his dark hair and his shoulders.

 

He sits in the snow and lets her, enthralled.

 

They gather up the coal and put it back in Merlin’s bucket, leaving dark skid marks to melt in the snow – and Merlin gathers up two handfuls of soft white powdered ice and blows, sending a cloud of it billowing out amongst the drifting snow flakes.

 

“They do look like fairies,” he tells Gwen, sincerely – and she takes his hand and squeezes.

 

Later, under an archway before they go in, she warms his cold mouth with a kiss – because, she says, she wants to – and then hurries away back to Morgana, leaving Merlin to crash into Arthur’s chambers singing gaily of summer days – to which the prince does not take kindly.