One moment Merlin was absorbing the landscape and the next they were hurriedly wiping away tears that trickled down their face like lazy forks of lightning. There was a reason that they’d started wearing headphones when going out for walks – the reason being that they could escape the vast majority of their thoughts – but, in their haste to leave the house, Merlin had left the headphones at home.
What made it all the worse was their complete inability to trace the trail of their tears. Things had been simmering away for several days, but that didn’t call for them to start crying in a graveyard before lunchtime. Perhaps it would do them good to get whatever it was out of their system. Exhaling quietly, Merlin turned their head and skimmed the headstones ahead of them with blurred vision. It was on days like this, days when the whole word was trapped in the greying clouds, with little sign of life, that Merlin could almost fool themself that they had slowed down time. It was on day like this that it felt alright to move a little more lethargically than usual.
But it was also on days like this that eternity stretched out before them, jaws extending to catch them with its tongue. And it was on days like this that Merlin could no longer ignore the cuts from being grazed by immortality’s barbed teeth.
It was ironic, then, that they had chosen to begin an existential crisis in a graveyard of all places. If Merlin stood up and moved away from the rotting wooden bench, if they passed a quivering hand over each stone, then they might be able to snatch flashes of the lives crumbling away in the earth. They might be able to find an answer to their question of whether the bones had had a purpose. Or they might have been greeted with simply a stirring of dust beneath the grass.
For years, Merlin had been jumping from one thing to the next, crying out for a break from the intense pace of life but, now that they had it, they’d give anything to once again be on the verge of cracking under the pressure. Of course, they’d had it again during the two world wars that they and Leon had been involved in, but that had been different. Merlin had no desire to be involved in conflict again. They just wanted a goal, a drive, anything that would drag them from the burrow they’d made in the vast expanse of time.
Their days held peace, but no purpose.
Merlin knew it would pass, knew that one day in the coming weeks they’d wake up with a flare of panic at something they’d overlooked and would fly back into speedrunning life, but they hated how untethered they seemed to be from existence itself. After all, what was it all for? They read books, went out for coffee, took walks through the woods, but what mark did that leave? No mark but an indentation in a seat in the corner of a quiet café, or grease marks on the corners of pages in classical novels, or footprints that were washed away by the rain. Not that having a purpose necessarily meant a mark was left. Merlin had been a part of one of the most legendary kingdoms, but their name was buried somewhere amongst the concealed rubble of Camelot.
Leon would tell them that living wasn’t about leaving a mark, but Leon was currently getting coffee.
Falling further back against the bench, Merlin closed their eyes against the tears dripping into their lap. It was ridiculous to feel as they did; nothing was expected of them, there was no need to have a purpose, they still had all the time in the world to achieve something great if that was what they desired… Yet, still, they couldn’t quite shake the idea of needing to use their hands to steer the boat they were adrift in back to shore.
Perhaps a change in routine would help—
‘Coffee?’ Leon’s voice was too bright, too weightless, for the dreary world. As Merlin looked up, his smile faltered. ‘Merlin? What’s wrong?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Leon sat beside them on the bench, gently balancing the cups on one beam of the seat. ‘It always matters to me.’
Merlin shook their head. ‘No. It’s stupid. And it’ll pass, I just need to suck it up.’
Leon’s hand brushed against their thigh, voice scarcely a murmur. ‘Tell me.’
Tilting back their head to look up at the sky, Merlin slowly exhaled. ‘I’m just feeling stagnant. Like I’m doing nothing with my life, it’s just existing, and I don’t know. I hate it. It feels like there’s no real point to anything.’
The hand that had been on Merlin’s thigh moved to wipe away their tears and, as it fell on their shoulder, Merlin could feel the steely band of Leon’s wedding ring pushing gently into their collarbone. ‘It’s alright to just exist for a little while. You need time to take a breath.’
‘It doesn’t feel like taking a breath,’ Merlin whispered. ‘It feels like suffocating. Like all these things I could be doing are slowly advancing and penning me in and I’m, for some reason, doing my best to push them all away.’ They bowed their head, burying it in their hands. ‘I’m sorry. This was supposed to be a nice morning.’
‘Hey,’ Leon sharply said. ‘No apologising for what you feel. That was one of the marriage vows.’
Merlin laughed weakly. ‘It was not one of the marriage vows.’
‘Yes it was; I muttered it under my breath at the altar and you agreed to it.’
‘I did no such thing.’
‘When I said “to have and to hold from this day forward with no apologising for feelings”, you nodded firmly and then we moved on. So, you’re breaking one of our marriage vows, which I will be taking personally.’
A ghost of a smile etched on their lips, Merlin twisted and wrapped their arms around Leon, who held them fiercely in return. ‘I just hate feeling like this. And I can’t do anything but wait for it to pass…’
‘Your life doesn’t need a purpose to have value. It doesn’t need to be this grand adventure with high stakes and battles. Some days it’s okay for the goal to be to have a shower. And when you’ve done that, you don’t have to push yourself to do anything else. It’s okay to stagnate for a bit.’ Leon’s breath was warm against Merlin’s hair. ‘You can’t devote all your energy to something all the time. You’re allowed to drift for a while.’
‘It feels wrong though,’ whispered Merlin.
‘I know. I know. But let yourself feel it, yeah? If anything, it proves that you’re not simply existing. Does that make sense?’
Merlin clutched him tighter. ‘I think so. I probably just need a change; I’ve been sitting in the same four places for the past week.’
‘We can go out for the day, if you like?’
‘Not today. Tomorrow, though?’
‘Course.’ Leon’s hands were moving up and down Merlin’s back. ‘We can take flowers to Gwen and Percival, if you wanted?’
‘I’d like that. Wasn’t there a secondhand bookshop that you wanted to investigate near them?’
‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten about that.’ Leon hesitated, words becoming more muffled, but Merlin could interpret them through the movement of his lips against their head. ‘Let yourself stagnate, Merlin. Conserve all your passion and all your energy for the next thing that comes along. Because there will be a next thing. But don’t spend all your time waiting for it to hit. Enjoy not having the screaming panic of fulfilling a purpose.’
Merlin buried their face in Leon’s shoulder. ‘Thank you. I love you, you know that, right?’
‘Love you too, Merlin. There’s no friend I would rather be married to.’
A pause, then: ‘You don’t have any other friends, Leon.’
‘Not yet. There’s that party conference I was thinking that we could crash—’
‘Are you saying that you’re going to leave me for a Tory?’
‘No, not that party conference. The one in the town hall.’
‘That’s not a party conference,’ Merlin mumbled. ‘That’s a charity event. And we don’t need to crash it; we’ve got invitations.’
Merlin could feel the grin on Leon’s face. ‘Even better.’
Shaking their head gently, Merlin closed their eyes, still determinedly clinging to Leon. They had to take joy in the small things, that was what Gwen had always said, and tether themselves to the world around them. And Merlin was tied to the yew trees lining the graveyard, now bearing fruit, their breaths extending with the roots embedded in the earth. Merlin was tied to the birdsong emitting timidly from the hedge, their heartbeat entwined with the melody. Merlin was tied to hazy clouds promising rain overhead, their touch caught in the endless smoke. And they were tied to the man tightly embracing them and that was all that mattered.