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Merlin simply doesn't know better.
He doesn't know he's only meant to place Arthur's shirts over his head, not fondly adjust collars and straighten seams. He doesn't know how much he'd be able to delegate to grooms and seamstresses and laundresses and kitchen girls if only he tried, instead of doing every possible task himself. And he doesn't know that it is utterly unprecedented for a manservant to own a horse.
Well, perhaps he does suspect something is off, but he takes the reins from Arthur after only a few sideways glances.
Arthur hadn't told Merlin the horse was a birthday gift, of course, or even a gift. He'd just heard it was about to be Merlin's birthday, when he was listening to—no, overhearing—Gwen and Morgana, and decided Merlin needed a horse. For reasons of practicality. And anyway, he'd given Merlin the horse three days before his actual birthday, which would put him above suspicion.
Besides, Arthur goes out hunting things (for both pleasure and necessity) far more often than anyone else, so of course it makes sense for Arthur's servant to have his own horse. Taking whichever the head groom can spare is unpredictable, and Merlin is enough of a variable as is. Arthur has horses to spare anyway - coursers for the jousts, palfreys for travel, a pack horse for lugging the tents and armor - he's nearly swimming in them, really.
The one he's given Merlin is certainly as fine as any of the others, a pretty mare that a Lord had gifted him in the year previous. This spontaneous generosity was almost certainly meant to begin negotiations for the hand of his daughter, but she'd caught Sir Tor's eye instead, so Arthur didn't need to feel guilty about keeping it—her? The horse.
The horse likes Merlin already, apparently. She's nosing into his hand like she thinks he's got a fistful of oats.
"I'm afraid I'm not much of a rider, lass," Merlin coos, "but I'll take care of you."
Arthur knew it was a good tempered horse, but it's still a little odd. Just like Merlin, though, to take things that are supposed to facilitate violence and ruin them. He's very inconvenient. Arthur had never used to lie awake in bed pondering words spoken in haste and actions thoughtlessly taken, picturing Merlin's disappointed face.
It's a few weeks before Arthur realizes the horse was a terrible not-birthday-gift. Firstly, because the contrast is frustrating. Merlin lacks in many vital skills and is resolute never to improve at them (swordplay comes to mind). But at horsemanship he is apparently determined to succeed. It's impossible to understand.
Although, Arthur supposes, perhaps it's simply that Merlin has never in his life possessed anything so valuable, and is trying to make the most of it. He follows that train of thought for a while, until examining his privilege gets too uncomfortable and he decides Merlin's just like every other girl who's dreamed of having a pony.
Another problem is that once Arthur had heard from the head groom that Merlin was riding every morning, he'd gotten curious and watched it. He'd only meant to do it the one time—it's cold on the battlements before sunrise—but it becomes a habit. One likes to see one's gifts appreciated, he supposes.
At first Merlin had made mistakes, losing his balance on lead changes and nearly falling off when the horse shied at the disturbing flutter of a bird or banner. But he was always smiling (Arthur had imagined, anyway—he was too far away to see) and the horse would flicker her ears back amiably, attentive to his careful hands and soft voice. In only a few weeks, he'd left the pens and corrals and begun riding out into the woods on errands for Gaius.
Arthur misses watching him.
So there it is. A terrible gift idea.
Merlin finds himself suddenly welcome on any patrol Arthur goes out with (to his delight) as well as all hunting trips (to his dismay). Arthur likes to have him, of course, but also his horsemanship is an instructive example for the knights. Gwaine's horse, Satan, is still frequently permitted to kick, bite, and commit other petty violence.
Arthur doesn't even know if Merlin's horse has a name. He's sure Merlin's renamed it after a type of flower or an old goddess or something else girlish. Since he's so protective of the damn thing that he doesn't trust the grooms. When the others have gone to the taverns to drink the soreness out of their legs, Merlin stays behind in the stables.
Eventually, Arthur stays too (after all, everything's easier if his horses actually like him). He hears Merlin whispering at his horse that she's very good, that he prefers her to any of the others, that he is proud of her for not shying at the pheasant in the hedge, and for not killing Satan when Satan deserved it.
The horse's name is Buttercup, apparently. Ridiculous.
Stupid name aside, Buttercup proves her mettle soon enough. There's a boar incident at the Beltane hunt; one of the horses is gored, and two of the dogs killed. It doesn't escape Arthur's notice that Merlin keeps her in hand through the whole episode, and has fewer scratches than any of them when it's over.
There is a sprig of leaves in his hair, which Arthur does not mention, since it's slightly charming. Merlin finds it late in the evening, after the entire boar has been eaten, and throws it at him, and delivers a passionate monologue about the cruelty and wastefulness of hunting as a sport.
Arthur calls him a girl, which is a small comfort when he's lying awake, again, wondering if Sir Bedevere was very fond of the horse he'd had to put down (it was a bloody affair, with only a hunting knife). Merlin, Merlin, Merlin, Merlin. A pain in the arse, and clearly a natural at horsemanship.
Arthur feels something about that—not jealousy, which would be ridiculous, but guilt. Merlin is blunt, graceless, disrespectful, stubborn, and a moron, but no one quite measures up to him in Arthur's esteem all the same. All the good horsemen Arthur has ever known are clever and good-hearted, and Merlin is possibly too clever and good-hearted to be wasted as a servant.
It takes him four days to ask. The weather's gone back to being cool, and Merlin had had to bring extra brace of firewood up to his room after dark. Arthur's sitting cross-legged at the end of his bed, fervently wishing the fire was closer to his feet. He can't get the words out till Merlin's nearly out the door.
"Merlin." Merlin looks back over his shoulder, brows raised. When Arthur doesn't continue, he takes a few steps back into the room, closer to the fire. Arthur presses a thumb to his lower lip, distracted by the way the glow highlights the planes of Merlin's face.
"If you could have" Arthur opens his hand in a blooming motion in front of his face "anything. A position, a title, land. Wh-"
"I like where I am," Merlin interrupts, before he can finish. "I serve you well here." It's what Arthur expected.
"And yet despite this claim, my blue cloak has been torn on the hem for three weeks now."
Merlin snorts. It's graceful of him not to mention that if Arthur truly thought him incompetent, he wouldn't be offering anything. Instead, he just fixes his gaze on Arthur, blue eyes reflecting the firelight. Arthur gazes back until it's too much, until things start to feel dangerously possible and he looks down into his lap. Merlin is gone without a word.
Arthur doesn't take no for an answer, of course - it's beneath him to. He gives Merlin another horse, a dapple-grey that is as temperamental as it is lovely. He tells Merlin that training it is part of his duties, a stroke of genius that forces Merlin to delegate more of his midday tasks. He comes back for the evening meal with wind-flushed cheeks and bright eyes.
Since he's out going riding in the cold every day, he needs better, warmer clothes; Arthur orders them himself, makes sure the fabrics are high in quality, not so fine as to cause talk. It's well that he does it, because Merlin becomes a permanent fixture at the stables. Arthur catches more of more frequent glances of him at the training grounds, exercising horses that aren't either of his. He's hardly surprised when the head groom asks for an audience with him right after he's told Merlin he's needed in the castle all day. The problem with competence is that there's not enough of it to go around.
"I want Merlin today." Eldred is one of the only castle staff who dares to speak so freely with Arthur. He's a stout, gruff man with white hair, and can probably remember leading Arthur around in circles on a pony when he was six years old. Arthur's eclipsed the grizzled knights who trained him, but he suspects he's never surpassed Eldred.
"I require his services at the council meeting," Arthur responds, as regally as he can. Of course, that doesn't sound as important as it is. While technically, Merlin is there to attend Arthur and not the meetings, he can't help but pay attention to them, and mocks the schemiest of the advisers, and preserve Arthur's sanity by accident.
Also, Arthur likes to offer Merlin's services to visiting nobility - it's more like deploying him, really. While Merlin might grumble about heavy luggage and the number of stairs to the guest rooms, he can't help but observe things he isn't meant to notice, much less keep those things to himself. His nosiness is disturbingly effective, in a security sense.
"Let me rephrase, my liege. I need Merlin. He's better at handling the studs than Alf or Cuthbert and they're a headache on the best of days, nevermind when there's mares in heat across the aisle. Lord Orvyn is paying too good a fee not to get his foals next spring, but I'd rather not trade a stable boy's skull for it."
"Very well," Arthur says, which he's learned from Uther is the closest a royal may get to admitting he's wrong. "I'll send him down after noon meal."
Arthur goes down to the stables to check on Merlin once the meeting is done. It's already dusk, the last streaks of sunset smeared low on the horizon. He sees Merlin in one of the stalls, rubbing down Buttercup, who's obviously been taken for a good run. Merlin's sweaty too - the nice wool shirt Arthur had given him is damp down the spine, and stuck to him. Arthur lets himself admire the sight a moment before going into the stall. The dapple-grey tries to nip him from the stall beside, and he shoves its nose away with his fist.
"I think you like the horses better than people, sometimes, Merlin." It's meant to be a jibe, but it comes out sounding serious.
"I do like them better than most people." Merlin sets his brush down to focus on Arthur, grins wide, "So what did Lord Edric have to say today about the corn tax?"
Arthur stretches a hand across his eyes to rub his temples and hears Merlin laugh. The afternoon had been more wretched than he'd ever admit.
Maybe Merlin knows what he's thinking (it seems unnervingly like that, these days), because when Arthur takes his hand away from his face, Merlin's looking back with a small, secretive smile.
He takes the headstall off the his horse, and Arthur follows him to the room where all the tack and weaponry is hung and piled and stacked. Saddle girths jangle as Merlin pushes gracefully past them in an uncommon display of physical coordination. He stretches a little to hang up the halter and Arthur looks at the exposed skin where his shirt lifts off his waist.
He doesn't look away soon enough, because Merlin gives him a dark, knowing look.
"Sire?" It's never really a title when Merlin says it - effortlessly tossing Arthur's station aside is his particular specialty.
"It's a nice shirt", Arthur says. "I've good taste."
"Have you?" Merlin says, too meaningfully not to be insinuating something.
"And just what do you mean by that?"
"Well I've heard some choice bits of information about Lady El-"
"All of them lies." Arthur says (a bit too loudly, because a horse snorts, startled).
"One can't be sure!" Merlin raises his brows, "she's certainly got quite the pair of... territories."
"Merlin!" Arthur makes to cuff him across the shoulder and Merlin ducks away before he can make contact.
"So you're fully immune to her gravity defying bosom?"
"Yes- no- you're an idiot, Merlin. Do you really think I should be marrying myself off already?"
"No." Merlin says, fast. It's gratifying to Arthur but he tries not to think about why, tries to clear his head.
Merlin is too close for him to really succeed. He smells like horses, but his hair is damp and curling at the edges of his face, and he has sweat shining in the hollow of his neck. The overall effect is distressingly attractive.
Part of Arthur wants to do something differently this time, to say something gentle. But he's never had any practice saying gentle things and cannot bring any to mind, when Merlin is being handsome in close proximity.
"Why did you give me the horse, Sire?"
Arthur has to think, because he won't- can't- answer truthfully.
"You're a good servant."
It's a cowardly answer. It doesn't remotely describe what's between them, or why Arthur's heart is pounding in his ears.
Merlin gives a bitter little laugh.
"Right. Well, thank you, Arthur." He walks away, back down the aisle, and it's like a thousand other moments that have passed between them, gently brushed aside and carefully forgotten. Arthur's not sure he can forget it quickly enough, so when Merlin comes in to his room that night, he pretends he's already asleep.
The next day, he goes to Gwen's house before morning drills. She's a smith's daughter, not a saddlemaker's, but she knows who the best of them are and where to find them. He leaves her with a note, crumpled from being crushed in his palm, and a sincere thanks.
She comes up to his rooms in the evening with a bridle. It's made of a dark reddish leather, and there are flowers tooled into the browband. Arthur hangs it on a chair, admiring the glint of the buckles and rings. He spends a tense hour trying to be useful, to read ledgers and accounts, but he forgets the numbers as soon as he reads them. Not long after the room grows dim enough for him to light a candle, he hears someone open the door. It's Merlin, almost certainly, but Arthur is suddenly too busy with important trade documents to look up.
"What's this?"
"What's what?" Arthur pretends not to see Merlin's hand skimming over the bridle. "Oh, that. It's for you." Arthur looks back down. There's a jingling sound (Merlin must have picked it up) and Arthur imagines him examining the neat stitching, the running long, pale fingers over the designs.
"Arthur," he says, and the voice sounds closer. "Are these... buttercups?" Merlin's standing in front of the desk, bridle clasped in front of him with the reins looped so they won't touch the floor. He's smiling, and he's so beautiful that Arthur can't stand it.
"It's a stupid name," Arthur states. For once, Merlin (may his Goddess bless him) is too incandescent to care that this is the wrong thing to say. He grips the nape of Arthur's neck and bends over the desk to press his mouth to Arthur's cheek.
Arthur is helpless with words, but he manages to catch a handful of Merlin's jacket and slant their mouths together all the same.