Tally [2/?]
Title: Tally [2/?]
Author: somerdaye
Pairings: Arthur/Merlin, some Gwaine/Merlin and Lancelot/Gwen
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When Gwaine Stanford is your only friend, you know it's time to switch things up a little. Old and new and more-thans.
Word Count: 2300+
---
It takes half an hour and some very good dodging skills for Merlin to finally get Gwaine to lie down - "Without me, you twat." "Yer eyes...'re so..." "Blue like sapphires? Deep as a Smurf's vagina? Gwaine, go to bed. I heard all this last week." - and fall asleep.
Now, he isn't really extraordinarily happy about a snoring, piss-drunk lunatic taking over his bedroom, but at least he can watch Doctor Who in peace. He's starting to think Will lied when he said David Tennant had a gratuitous shirtless scene.
He gets about halfway through an episode before pausing it and holding the remote to his lips contemplatively. He really should just press play. Or go to sleep. Either would be a better idea than attempting to procure a top-secret and dangerously guarded item from under his pillow - pillow that now smells like Gwaine, he reminds himself with a grimace.
But now that the idea has creeped into his brain, he can't force it out. Even with his voice of reason flailing and shrieking at the top of its lungs. So, knowing already it's a bad idea, he stands up, stretches, and tries to keep as quiet as possible opening his bedroom door.
Peeking in, all he can see is a mess of blankets under which his best friend might suffocate. He raises an eyebrow and continues to tiptoe closer to the bed.
The corner of his little blue book is showing, close enough to the lump of sheets that it makes him wary. He reaches for it eagerly.
"Mmm." Gwaine makes a strange noise, like a child after a nightmare, and closes his hand over the book. Merlin is this close to holding a pillow to the man's mouth when his eyes follow Gwaine's arm, back up to a tangle of at least three different blankets - "'m free'shin." "It's May." - all the way to his roguish face.
"Gwaine," he says, surprised to find the man awake. He's rewarded with a small grin, but he knows his friend is in a lot of pain if he isn't singing something about sunshine in pockets after all that alcohol. Merlin gingerly sits next to Gwaine, leaning against his makeshift, scrap-metal headboard.
Gwaine gazes up at him with something kind of like wisdom in his eyes, but Merlin knows better. More than likely, his sobering friend is about to puke all over his bed. Lovely.
"Why d'you...put up with me?" he asks, his voice hoarse. Merlin gives him a strained smile.
"Haven't I been asking you that question for -"
"Yeah, two thousand, a hunny and sixty-two days, wunnit?"
Merlin's breath catches.
He stares down at his sometimes possibly on-occasion best friend and barks out a laugh. "How in the name of all that isn't holy did you -?"
Gwaine smiles, and he's still drunk, but he's always been kind of irresistible when he's all disheveled and scruffy and spouting what he would claim in the morning was 'pure shite' but comes across as philosophical genius.
"I keep my own ta-hic-lly," he says, gesturing in the general direction of his own head, and Merlin can't help but laugh, because only Gwaine would be crazy enough to remember shit like that off the top of his head.
"You've got, like, selective intelligence, don't you?" Merlin smiles, playfully pushing Gwaine's shoulder so he rolls onto his back.
Gwaine doesn't answer, he just chuckles, and Merlin feels his anger and irritation slip away the longer he looks at his friend.
It's always been like this. Gwaine's all "Come on, it'll be fun!" and then it blows and Merlin wonders why the fuck he's still friends with this psycho. Then, Gwaine will stagger over to where he's sitting, bored, at the bar, and start making comments about Merlin's eyes and they have to go home and Gwaine never falls asleep for long.
They sit up and talk. It doesn't matter that Merlin usually needs two days of sleep after their escapades, or that the alcohol is still strong in Gwaine's system. They just talk.
"I take care of you," Merlin says suddenly. Gwaine raises his eyebrows, still looking up at the ceiling. "I've been taking care of you since we were juniors and you ran away from that group home and needed a place to stay. I told you to stay in the guest room, but you snuck into my bed anyway."
"An' the bed was bloody small," Gwaine chimes in.
They tell the same story every weekend. It calms Merlin down and makes Gwaine laugh, so it's the best story they've got. (Besides that time when they should've been at senior prom but Gwaine got him so drunk he couldn't even blink without wanting to throw up and ended up trying to sleep with Freya Maledizione despite the fact that she had a boyfriend who Merlin would've much preferred shagging.)
(Or the time Gwaine tried to cook dinner for Merlin and Hunith and their microwave exploded, even though Gwaine wasn't using it nor was he anywhere near it.)
(Or when they first kissed, sober and stupid in the loo at Percy Armstrong's house, rifling through his medicine cabinets and laughing hysterically when they found rash cream for 'embarrassing problems'.)
They have a lot of stories, but this one is their favorite.
"I woke up and couldn't breathe for the life of me, since someone decided the only way to fit both of us in my bed was to smother me."
"Yer bloody uncomfortable, ya twig."
"My mom came in and wondered who you were."
"'Cause I showed up'n the middle of the nigh'."
"She let you live with us."
"Mm, nice woman, she were."
"And you inexplicably became my best friend."
Gwaine grinned crookedly, glancing at Merlin. "Yer my only friend, Mer. You know tha'."
Feeling his throat constrict, Merlin nods. And because the story is over and Gwaine knows him better than anybody, Gwaine grabs the blue book from under his head and hands it over.
Merlin smiles and flips it open. He only has to flip two pages - Will and Elyan - before he finds her name. He reaches into his jacket pocket, searching for the pen he always keeps there.
When he finds it, he makes a strong black line under Gwen, different from the other, rushed tallies, as though he thought he had all the time in the world with her.
---
He calls her in the morning, but there's either a blender or a jackhammer in the background and he knows she can't hear a word he's saying. He can probably recite the story of Will trying to go down on Gwaine when they were eighteen and high without her noticing or caring.
"Meet me at that restaurant over on Fifth," she yells, not bothering to explain why there's so much noise around her. "Bring Gwaine if you'd like, or someone else! I'd like to meet your friends!"
"I don't have any other friends," he says conversationally.
Of course, she still can't hear him, so she just says, "See you at six!" and hangs up.
Merlin stares at the kitchen wall for another moment before hanging up. He considers whether or not he should bring Gwaine. Surely the git would scare off any potential friends or more-thans. Still, if the people Gwen brought weren't interesting, at least he'd have some entertainment.
He's still debating when Gwaine stumbles out of the bedroom, groaning about a bleeding headache and how he'd like to curl up into a ball in his closet and sleep for weeks.
Grinning, Merlin says, "Up and at 'em, Gwainey. We're going out to dinner in a few hours."
Gwaine gapes at him. Really, Merlin doesn't blame the guy - he's never the one to make plans for the two of them.
"I'd really rather not," Gwaine says carefully, wincing at the sound of his own voice.
"Come on," Merlin coaxes, his mouth twisting into a Cheshire Cat Grin. "It'll be fun."
His best friend looks like he heartily disagrees, but they both know he doesn't have a damn choice.
---
"I don't want to be here," Gwaine whines as they lean up against the brick wall of the restaurant. "Sure, yeah, Gwen's hot and all, but I had a, erm, appointment with Ele-"
"If you say Elena I will personally rip your tongue out of your mouth," Merlin snaps. It's really quite cold out for a May evening, and he's wishing he'd brought a jacket. "You were supposed to stop shagging her months ago."
Gwaine shrugs, his leg bouncing erratically. "You know I can't resist a woman who can kick my ass. They're few and far between, them."
"Should've stuck with Morgause, then," he mutters in reply. Gwaine slaps the back of his head rather painfully at the mention of his college girlfriend.
"You know full well that -"
"Merlin! Gwaine!"
They both turn, temporarily letting the matter of a sexy blonde with a killer smirk rest. Gwen waves to them as she steps out of a - a -
"Holy shit." Gwaine's eyebrows disappear into his hairline as he voices exactly what Merlin's thinking.
Merlin whistles under his breath. "Damn, Gwen."
Gwen's never been rich. If anything, she was worse off than Merlin's family was. But she must have gotten a bloody good career to pull up in the passenger's seat of a cherry-red Maserati. She runs over and Merlin finally gets his hug.
"Ohh, I've missed you," she says into his shirt. It disarms him how short she is - they used to be the same height. Now he towers over her and his hands seem gigantic around her waist.
"Nice car," Gwaine comments, on the brink of drooling all over the shiny metal. "Where's my hug?"
Gwen giggles, something she seems to be doing it a lot in Gwaine's presence. That definitely worries Merlin.
"Oh, come here, you lug," she says, pulling him to her with a tight squeeze around his midsection. He laughs, a bit nervously.
"Hey, there, I was just kidding. Though I won't say no to a joyride..."
She steps back from the two of them and glances towards the car. "Oh, no, that's certainly not mine. That's Arthur's."
"Arthur's?" Gwaine and Merlin chorus. Merlin sounds politely confused to his own ears - Gwaine sounds like he's already formulating a plan to knock 'Arthur' out and steal the car, whisking Merlin away to Belfast or a local brothel. Or a brothel in Belfast.
"Irish women are hot," Gwaine says so that Gwen doesn't hear.
"Oh my God, even my mind isn't safe anymore. Leave. Immediately. Hey, twat, get out of my brain this instant."
Gwen frowns in concern as two figures finally step out of the sexy sexy car and move to join the trio. "Are you okay, Merlin? Have you, like, gone mad while I've been gone?"
"Pretty much," he says, eying Gwaine and wondering if he can hear Merlin's thoughts or if their friendship is just that predictable. "It's kind of a side effect to having Gwaine around all the time. I'm not entirely sure how he got a key to my apartment, but I didn't bother asking."
She laughs as though he's kidding - he's seriously not, he's just walked into his apartment and found Gwaine chilling on the couch in his pants too many times to count - and turns to greet the men she's decided will become friends with Merlin. Whether any of them like it or not.
"Merlin, Gwaine, meet Lance and Arthur," she says with a bright smile, gesturing to each of the tall guys in turn: 'Lance' has a gentle face and eyes so like melted chocolate that Merlin could quite possibly get hungry just by staring into them and 'Arthur' has broad shoulders and sun-streaked blond hair curling around his ears. They're both so goddamn attractive that even Gwaine takes his eyes off of the Maserati.
"You look like porn stars," Gwaine says bluntly. Then, to make his first impression even better, he narrows his eyes at Arthur and says, "If you're missing your car within the week, don't bother searching for it in England."
Merlin groans, raising his eyes to the heavens and wondering if God gets a sadistic kick out of his misery.
"I beg your pardon?" Lance asks, sounding taken aback but not offended.
"Annnd that is the prime example as to why I am and have always been Gwaine Stanford's only friend," Merlin forces himself to laugh, even though all that's running through his head is whyyyy, God, whyyyyyy? and Gwaine when we get home I am going to disembowel you with your precious stainless-steel spatula and then I am going to shove your innards down your throat and then I am going to watch David Tennant be sexy while your corpse is rotting beside me so shutting up might be a good idea.
Arthur raises his eyebrow. "Gwen?" he says, completely ignoring the guy with a red face and big ears and stupid scarf around his neck. (Merlin reminds himself not to pick on himself anymore or he'll have to put himself in a corner with no black licorice or David Tennant.)
Gwen's trying way too hard not to burst out laughing. Her face is turning a strange purple colour as she shakes her head at Gwaine, who is still sizing Arthur up like he's wondering how many whacks with a baseball bat it's going to take to get him on the ground. And Merlin knows he almost definitely is.
Someone clears their throat. Merlin glances frantically over at Lance, who gives him a warm smile. "Let's go inside, shall we?" he says, voice quiet but compelling. Merlin finds himself willing to do whatever that voice tells him to.
"This should be fun," he says, his voice far too high. Lance smiles again, Gwen hiccups a laugh, Gwaine continues to challenge Arthur with his eyes, and Arthur, well, he just looks...imposing.
He wonders if he'll even get a chance to write Lance or Arthur in the book currently residing in his sweater pocket, or if he should just give up now.
"Are you sure you're not a porn star? I swear I've seen you in something. With animals and rope. And Sophia Suckitt."
Why.
---
chapter three here
Author: somerdaye
Pairings: Arthur/Merlin, some Gwaine/Merlin and Lancelot/Gwen
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When Gwaine Stanford is your only friend, you know it's time to switch things up a little. Old and new and more-thans.
Word Count: 2300+
---
It takes half an hour and some very good dodging skills for Merlin to finally get Gwaine to lie down - "Without me, you twat." "Yer eyes...'re so..." "Blue like sapphires? Deep as a Smurf's vagina? Gwaine, go to bed. I heard all this last week." - and fall asleep.
Now, he isn't really extraordinarily happy about a snoring, piss-drunk lunatic taking over his bedroom, but at least he can watch Doctor Who in peace. He's starting to think Will lied when he said David Tennant had a gratuitous shirtless scene.
He gets about halfway through an episode before pausing it and holding the remote to his lips contemplatively. He really should just press play. Or go to sleep. Either would be a better idea than attempting to procure a top-secret and dangerously guarded item from under his pillow - pillow that now smells like Gwaine, he reminds himself with a grimace.
But now that the idea has creeped into his brain, he can't force it out. Even with his voice of reason flailing and shrieking at the top of its lungs. So, knowing already it's a bad idea, he stands up, stretches, and tries to keep as quiet as possible opening his bedroom door.
Peeking in, all he can see is a mess of blankets under which his best friend might suffocate. He raises an eyebrow and continues to tiptoe closer to the bed.
The corner of his little blue book is showing, close enough to the lump of sheets that it makes him wary. He reaches for it eagerly.
"Mmm." Gwaine makes a strange noise, like a child after a nightmare, and closes his hand over the book. Merlin is this close to holding a pillow to the man's mouth when his eyes follow Gwaine's arm, back up to a tangle of at least three different blankets - "'m free'shin." "It's May." - all the way to his roguish face.
"Gwaine," he says, surprised to find the man awake. He's rewarded with a small grin, but he knows his friend is in a lot of pain if he isn't singing something about sunshine in pockets after all that alcohol. Merlin gingerly sits next to Gwaine, leaning against his makeshift, scrap-metal headboard.
Gwaine gazes up at him with something kind of like wisdom in his eyes, but Merlin knows better. More than likely, his sobering friend is about to puke all over his bed. Lovely.
"Why d'you...put up with me?" he asks, his voice hoarse. Merlin gives him a strained smile.
"Haven't I been asking you that question for -"
"Yeah, two thousand, a hunny and sixty-two days, wunnit?"
Merlin's breath catches.
He stares down at his sometimes possibly on-occasion best friend and barks out a laugh. "How in the name of all that isn't holy did you -?"
Gwaine smiles, and he's still drunk, but he's always been kind of irresistible when he's all disheveled and scruffy and spouting what he would claim in the morning was 'pure shite' but comes across as philosophical genius.
"I keep my own ta-hic-lly," he says, gesturing in the general direction of his own head, and Merlin can't help but laugh, because only Gwaine would be crazy enough to remember shit like that off the top of his head.
"You've got, like, selective intelligence, don't you?" Merlin smiles, playfully pushing Gwaine's shoulder so he rolls onto his back.
Gwaine doesn't answer, he just chuckles, and Merlin feels his anger and irritation slip away the longer he looks at his friend.
It's always been like this. Gwaine's all "Come on, it'll be fun!" and then it blows and Merlin wonders why the fuck he's still friends with this psycho. Then, Gwaine will stagger over to where he's sitting, bored, at the bar, and start making comments about Merlin's eyes and they have to go home and Gwaine never falls asleep for long.
They sit up and talk. It doesn't matter that Merlin usually needs two days of sleep after their escapades, or that the alcohol is still strong in Gwaine's system. They just talk.
"I take care of you," Merlin says suddenly. Gwaine raises his eyebrows, still looking up at the ceiling. "I've been taking care of you since we were juniors and you ran away from that group home and needed a place to stay. I told you to stay in the guest room, but you snuck into my bed anyway."
"An' the bed was bloody small," Gwaine chimes in.
They tell the same story every weekend. It calms Merlin down and makes Gwaine laugh, so it's the best story they've got. (Besides that time when they should've been at senior prom but Gwaine got him so drunk he couldn't even blink without wanting to throw up and ended up trying to sleep with Freya Maledizione despite the fact that she had a boyfriend who Merlin would've much preferred shagging.)
(Or the time Gwaine tried to cook dinner for Merlin and Hunith and their microwave exploded, even though Gwaine wasn't using it nor was he anywhere near it.)
(Or when they first kissed, sober and stupid in the loo at Percy Armstrong's house, rifling through his medicine cabinets and laughing hysterically when they found rash cream for 'embarrassing problems'.)
They have a lot of stories, but this one is their favorite.
"I woke up and couldn't breathe for the life of me, since someone decided the only way to fit both of us in my bed was to smother me."
"Yer bloody uncomfortable, ya twig."
"My mom came in and wondered who you were."
"'Cause I showed up'n the middle of the nigh'."
"She let you live with us."
"Mm, nice woman, she were."
"And you inexplicably became my best friend."
Gwaine grinned crookedly, glancing at Merlin. "Yer my only friend, Mer. You know tha'."
Feeling his throat constrict, Merlin nods. And because the story is over and Gwaine knows him better than anybody, Gwaine grabs the blue book from under his head and hands it over.
Merlin smiles and flips it open. He only has to flip two pages - Will and Elyan - before he finds her name. He reaches into his jacket pocket, searching for the pen he always keeps there.
When he finds it, he makes a strong black line under Gwen, different from the other, rushed tallies, as though he thought he had all the time in the world with her.
---
He calls her in the morning, but there's either a blender or a jackhammer in the background and he knows she can't hear a word he's saying. He can probably recite the story of Will trying to go down on Gwaine when they were eighteen and high without her noticing or caring.
"Meet me at that restaurant over on Fifth," she yells, not bothering to explain why there's so much noise around her. "Bring Gwaine if you'd like, or someone else! I'd like to meet your friends!"
"I don't have any other friends," he says conversationally.
Of course, she still can't hear him, so she just says, "See you at six!" and hangs up.
Merlin stares at the kitchen wall for another moment before hanging up. He considers whether or not he should bring Gwaine. Surely the git would scare off any potential friends or more-thans. Still, if the people Gwen brought weren't interesting, at least he'd have some entertainment.
He's still debating when Gwaine stumbles out of the bedroom, groaning about a bleeding headache and how he'd like to curl up into a ball in his closet and sleep for weeks.
Grinning, Merlin says, "Up and at 'em, Gwainey. We're going out to dinner in a few hours."
Gwaine gapes at him. Really, Merlin doesn't blame the guy - he's never the one to make plans for the two of them.
"I'd really rather not," Gwaine says carefully, wincing at the sound of his own voice.
"Come on," Merlin coaxes, his mouth twisting into a Cheshire Cat Grin. "It'll be fun."
His best friend looks like he heartily disagrees, but they both know he doesn't have a damn choice.
---
"I don't want to be here," Gwaine whines as they lean up against the brick wall of the restaurant. "Sure, yeah, Gwen's hot and all, but I had a, erm, appointment with Ele-"
"If you say Elena I will personally rip your tongue out of your mouth," Merlin snaps. It's really quite cold out for a May evening, and he's wishing he'd brought a jacket. "You were supposed to stop shagging her months ago."
Gwaine shrugs, his leg bouncing erratically. "You know I can't resist a woman who can kick my ass. They're few and far between, them."
"Should've stuck with Morgause, then," he mutters in reply. Gwaine slaps the back of his head rather painfully at the mention of his college girlfriend.
"You know full well that -"
"Merlin! Gwaine!"
They both turn, temporarily letting the matter of a sexy blonde with a killer smirk rest. Gwen waves to them as she steps out of a - a -
"Holy shit." Gwaine's eyebrows disappear into his hairline as he voices exactly what Merlin's thinking.
Merlin whistles under his breath. "Damn, Gwen."
Gwen's never been rich. If anything, she was worse off than Merlin's family was. But she must have gotten a bloody good career to pull up in the passenger's seat of a cherry-red Maserati. She runs over and Merlin finally gets his hug.
"Ohh, I've missed you," she says into his shirt. It disarms him how short she is - they used to be the same height. Now he towers over her and his hands seem gigantic around her waist.
"Nice car," Gwaine comments, on the brink of drooling all over the shiny metal. "Where's my hug?"
Gwen giggles, something she seems to be doing it a lot in Gwaine's presence. That definitely worries Merlin.
"Oh, come here, you lug," she says, pulling him to her with a tight squeeze around his midsection. He laughs, a bit nervously.
"Hey, there, I was just kidding. Though I won't say no to a joyride..."
She steps back from the two of them and glances towards the car. "Oh, no, that's certainly not mine. That's Arthur's."
"Arthur's?" Gwaine and Merlin chorus. Merlin sounds politely confused to his own ears - Gwaine sounds like he's already formulating a plan to knock 'Arthur' out and steal the car, whisking Merlin away to Belfast or a local brothel. Or a brothel in Belfast.
"Irish women are hot," Gwaine says so that Gwen doesn't hear.
"Oh my God, even my mind isn't safe anymore. Leave. Immediately. Hey, twat, get out of my brain this instant."
Gwen frowns in concern as two figures finally step out of the sexy sexy car and move to join the trio. "Are you okay, Merlin? Have you, like, gone mad while I've been gone?"
"Pretty much," he says, eying Gwaine and wondering if he can hear Merlin's thoughts or if their friendship is just that predictable. "It's kind of a side effect to having Gwaine around all the time. I'm not entirely sure how he got a key to my apartment, but I didn't bother asking."
She laughs as though he's kidding - he's seriously not, he's just walked into his apartment and found Gwaine chilling on the couch in his pants too many times to count - and turns to greet the men she's decided will become friends with Merlin. Whether any of them like it or not.
"Merlin, Gwaine, meet Lance and Arthur," she says with a bright smile, gesturing to each of the tall guys in turn: 'Lance' has a gentle face and eyes so like melted chocolate that Merlin could quite possibly get hungry just by staring into them and 'Arthur' has broad shoulders and sun-streaked blond hair curling around his ears. They're both so goddamn attractive that even Gwaine takes his eyes off of the Maserati.
"You look like porn stars," Gwaine says bluntly. Then, to make his first impression even better, he narrows his eyes at Arthur and says, "If you're missing your car within the week, don't bother searching for it in England."
Merlin groans, raising his eyes to the heavens and wondering if God gets a sadistic kick out of his misery.
"I beg your pardon?" Lance asks, sounding taken aback but not offended.
"Annnd that is the prime example as to why I am and have always been Gwaine Stanford's only friend," Merlin forces himself to laugh, even though all that's running through his head is whyyyy, God, whyyyyyy? and Gwaine when we get home I am going to disembowel you with your precious stainless-steel spatula and then I am going to shove your innards down your throat and then I am going to watch David Tennant be sexy while your corpse is rotting beside me so shutting up might be a good idea.
Arthur raises his eyebrow. "Gwen?" he says, completely ignoring the guy with a red face and big ears and stupid scarf around his neck. (Merlin reminds himself not to pick on himself anymore or he'll have to put himself in a corner with no black licorice or David Tennant.)
Gwen's trying way too hard not to burst out laughing. Her face is turning a strange purple colour as she shakes her head at Gwaine, who is still sizing Arthur up like he's wondering how many whacks with a baseball bat it's going to take to get him on the ground. And Merlin knows he almost definitely is.
Someone clears their throat. Merlin glances frantically over at Lance, who gives him a warm smile. "Let's go inside, shall we?" he says, voice quiet but compelling. Merlin finds himself willing to do whatever that voice tells him to.
"This should be fun," he says, his voice far too high. Lance smiles again, Gwen hiccups a laugh, Gwaine continues to challenge Arthur with his eyes, and Arthur, well, he just looks...imposing.
He wonders if he'll even get a chance to write Lance or Arthur in the book currently residing in his sweater pocket, or if he should just give up now.
"Are you sure you're not a porn star? I swear I've seen you in something. With animals and rope. And Sophia Suckitt."
Why.
---
chapter three here