Merlin -- It Started at the Frat Party
Title: It Started at the Frat Party
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,540
Warnings: underage drinking; a mostly off-screen hookup; American college AU-ness; run-on sentences I am too lazy to fix
Summary: When Merlin comes back at six-thirty Saturday morning, he has quite a story for Gwen.
Author's Note: Apparently my farewell to my undergraduate education involves writing fanfiction about all the things I didn't do during my undergraduate education because I was busy writing fanfiction. Ooh, vicious cycles are so tasty. In other news, I'm so sorry/happy horribly late birthday to passthebutter! Now you know never to ask for fluff ever again, because this is what you get! XD
IT STARTED AT THE FRAT PARTY
When Merlin staggered up the hill to their townhouse, fumbled his key out on the second try, and fitted it into the lock on the third, he had an idea what he was in for. His jeans and his diagram of the universe T-shirt were hopelessly wrinkled, his hair was a mess, and he kind of reeked of brandy and Coke. Then again, maybe he just thought he reeked of brandy and Coke, because he could still taste them under the more recent flavors of fitful sleep and sex, and taste and smell were extremely intricately connected, because a lot of taste was scent, which was really kind of fascinating-
He managed to turn the key in the right direction, and the door creaked open, and he lurched forward into the umbrella stand.
Why, he wondered dazedly, cringing as he righted it and scrambled around the foyer collecting scattered rain gear, did they even have that thing?
Just as he bent to retrieve a rather pretty polka-dotted umbrella, a pair of deft hands caught it up and twirled it once.
Merlin squeaked-loudly.
Gwen winced heavily, and his heart-rate stuttered, trying to slow down to a speed that wouldn’t send him into cardiac arrest.
“Sorry,” Gwen whispered, which Merlin realized was probably wise when he glanced up and squinted at the clock on the wall. It informed him, quite unrepentantly, that it was a few minutes shy of six-thirty in the morning. This was all incredibly surreal, and he wasn’t sure what to think. “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself.”
“Thank you,” Merlin said, courtesy of the seventeen years under his mother’s roof that three years of college had failed to erase. And then a terrible thought struck him, and he stared wide-eyed at his best friend and housemate. “You didn’t wait up for me, did you? Tell me you didn’t wait up for me.” He seized Gwen’s hands, which were still around the polka-dotted umbrella. “I’ll cry if you waited up for me.”
Gwen’s smile was a little strained, and she made a vague flapping motion that Merlin interpreted as Volume down.
“I went to bed early after you went out last night,” she said, “and got up so I could be here if you came in.”
Merlin stared at her for a moment, his heart going kind of melty.
“Gwen,” he said, softy without any urging, realizing the truth as he spoke it; “you are the best friend I could ever have.”
Gwen blushed happily and grinned as he threw his arms around her. He only stumbled a little, which was definitely progress.
“Of course,” Gwen said, somewhat drily, “you know what that means.”
Merlin sighed and laid his head down on her shoulder, which was a bit tricky because he was so much taller.
“I have to tell you everything?” he hazarded.
Gwen beamed.
Five minutes later, all the umbrellas were restored to their natural habitat, and Gwen was making Merlin drink a tall glass of water for every portion of the story that he told, in the probably-vain hopes of reducing his hangover.
Swilling the first glass, Merlin tried to think of a way to begin that didn’t sound irredeemably sketchy.
“It started at the frat party,” he attempted.
…wait.
Gwen, who was already filling the next glass from the tap, said something that sounded suspiciously like, “God help us.”
It started at the frat party.
Well, it started before the frat party; the frat party was where it combusted.
Merlin had woken up Friday morning with a strange urge to dance, and by the evening, it was irresistible. He wasn’t a good dancer by any contortionist-worthy stretch of the imagination, but he liked burning off energy by flailing around in a way that had once garnered sixty-five separate “LOL!!!!”s on YouTube, so he figured he might as well allow himself the outlet.
One thing that separated Merlin rather distinctly from most of his peers was that he honestly didn’t care what people thought of him. Partly that was just growing up equal parts geeky, gawky, and accidentally magical, and partly it was the support-Will had both encouraged Merlin to do great things and kept his head out of the clouds in the meantime. When Will’s dad had gotten stationed in Sri Lanka right before high school, where the cliques would solidify into a force to be reckoned with, Merlin had privately begun to worry that his eccentricities would doom him. But then, in homeroom on the first day, he’d met Gwen, and everyone had assumed they were dating, and they hadn’t bothered to try to correct that misconception, because nobody would have believed them anyway.
And really, when your mother had named you “Merlin,” you learned to pick your battles.
Gwen cleared her throat politely and replaced his empty water glass with a new one.
“I know this part,” she reminded him gently. “It started at the frat party.”
“Right,” Merlin said.
Was it possible to overdose on water?
After a full day of resisting the urge to dance across campus, Merlin ran into Lancelot on the way home. Lancelot, because he was Lancelot, immediately invited him to the big party one of the frats had been planning all week. Merlin had gone to a few at Lancelot’s frat’s house before, and if Lancelot was going to this one, it would be reasonably decent, at least-Lancelot was the only person Merlin had ever met who had joined a frat for the brotherhood instead of for the booze, and he tended to spend the parties hanging out and taking care of people, helping them find their way to sanitary places to vomit and then usually walking them home afterwards.
“Hey,” Merlin said, because the most brilliant idea in the history of brilliance had occurred to him. “Gwen, Gwen-you and Lancelot should totally date. You could take care of people together.”
Gwen was going pinkish again, and she motioned hastily to Merlin’s half-full glass. “Yes, well, he’s way out of my league.”
“He’s not,” Merlin told her. “And even if he was, he’s not the kind of guy who cares about leagues.”
Gwen pretended not to be thinking it over as she sent pointed looks at Merlin’s water. “Whose love life are we supposed to be talking about, again?”
“Oh, yeah,” Merlin said.
When he arrived, well-fed and hydrated, because he did listen to his uncle Gaius sometimes, there was already a small crowd gathering in the front room, which had been mostly cleared to serve as a dance floor. Bad pop music blared from the stereo, and people were already moving to it, crushing against each other, trying not to spill the contents of their red plastic cups. Merlin sidled into their midst and danced, alone and surrounded, his eyes half-closed so that the faces blurred, leaving just the motion and the body heat. That was all he wanted, all he needed, and all he’d been looking for.
He had sweated himself into a spot of thirst before long, and even though Gaius had told him at least a thousand times that both soda and alcohol were actually dehydrating, the brandy and Coke offered to him by the guy manning the drinks was too good to pass up.
Merlin didn’t trust himself to dance and keep the drink upright at the same time, so he loitered near the kitchen as he sipped it, watching the game of beer pong that was nearing its conclusion now.
He recognized one of the frat guys who was dominating the game-Arthur, Merlin had seen on his midterm; everybody just said “Pendragon.” He always sat in the front row of Merlin’s Greek Myths lecture, accompanied by the gorgeous know-it-all brunette who was either his girlfriend or his sister. Before class, Merlin always heard them talking, and she promised Arthur she was going to kill him just about as often as she asked him how the latest soccer game had gone.
There was a bit of an audience for this round of beer pong, which Merlin gathered was more because Arthur looked fantastic than because it was actually interesting. Then some of the other players started heckling Arthur, who was about to throw one of his last ping-pong balls, and he waved at them impatiently.
“Will you shut up?” he demanded over the music and the chorus of mixed boos and catcalls.
“He can’t make it!” someone shouted.
“Twenty bucks says I can and will,” Arthur shot back calmly.
“I don’t want your filthy money,” the challenger said.
“Take off your shirt!” a girl cried.
Arthur smirked, plucking at his collar. “This shirt says I can and will,” he said. Then he shut the noise out, his eyes focusing intently, and made a smooth toss.
Merlin did not sabotage the shot with magic.
Not even a little bit.
Nope.
Arthur looked disgusted and disbelieving for a moment, and then he sighed deeply and peeled off his T-shirt, and Merlin’s brandy-buoyed heart went very fluttery, and his face went very warm.
A chorus of cheers went up, and Arthur rolled his eyes, balling his shirt in his hands and pitching it at his opponent.
Merlin decided he was going to need a little more alcohol.
Gwen was despairing. At least, Merlin thought that was despairing. It could have been reluctant admiration.
“It gets better,” he promised.
“Better by whose definition?” she asked, though her rueful smile was kind.
Merlin considered.
“Oh,” he said. “Well. Anyway.”
When he’d finished his drink, he’d gone back and danced some more, and the buzz of the alcohol even made it possible to forget about Arthur for long stretches. When Merlin was not forgetting about Arthur, he was extremely aware of the godlike presence lounging, gold and tan, on one of the couches; or gesturing with his red cup, dark-amber liquid sloshing over the edge and making everyone shout and laugh; or leaning in by someone’s ear to speak over the chaos. Merlin decided that it was neither safe nor healthy to obsess about frat boys whom one didn’t even really know, even if they were frat boys who paid attention in class and took notes in a straight, precise little hand and clearly did all the reading and pulled faces when their friend-who-was-a-girl was snarky. Frat boys were still frat boys, and sports players were still sports players, and anyone who looked like Arthur probably had six girlfriends and didn’t even know it, because they’d probably all drugged him on separate occasions and programmed their numbers into his speed-dial.
Unfortunately, Merlin’s brain was not particularly logical even when he was sober, and when he was drunk, it thought it was. Merlin’s brain considered the fact that the effects of drinking made it easier to ignore Arthur, deemed that ignoring Arthur was the best course of action, and concluded that Merlin should drink more.
So he did.
By the time Lancelot was leaving to escort the third totally smashed girl back to her dorm complex, Merlin had drunk enough that, in the process of trying to hurry towards the door to say goodbye, he snagged one foot on a couch leg and slammed face-first into the floor.
That was going to hurt even more when he was properly conscious.
As it was, he kind of drifted, hazily assuring someone quite insistent that he was all right and would be getting up as soon as he’d had a short nap, and then there was a strange period where he couldn’t see and his not-so-logical brain was on fire, and then he found himself curled up on a bed. The coverlet was blue plaid and somewhat fascinating, so he stared at it and started tracing the thin white lines until someone cleared his throat.
Merlin managed to tilt his head enough to discover that Arthur was sitting in a chair at the bedside. This was both amazing and extremely terrifying, so Merlin glanced around the rest of the room, as much as he could without sitting up-there were pictures on the walls of sports teams in red and gold uniforms, and there was a framed photograph on the nightstand, just next to the clock, that showed a young Arthur and a young his-friend-girl. A man in a business suit was ruffling their hair, one child’s with each hand, and grinning a bit.
Merlin’s brain circled around this one. Was he in Arthur Pendragon’s bedroom? And if he was, where was the line of girls waiting outside the door, trying to get in and fling themselves down on Arthur’s bed?
Was he on Arthur’s bed?
He shifted enough to stare at Arthur, hoping that the other young man was both very forgiving and slightly telepathic.
Arthur just cleared his throat again. He hadn’t recovered his shirt.
“I know you,” he said, “don’t I?”
“Er,” Merlin said eloquently. “Um?”
“From Classics,” Arthur persisted. “You’re the one who knows all about all the monsters. It’s Merlin, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” Merlin said.
Arthur blinked. “Are you trying to be ambiguous, or are you so drunk that you’ve forgotten your name?”
“Well,” Merlin said, “it’s just that you’re not supposed to know me. I mean, you-everybody notices you, but I just sort of take notes and mind my own business, and we’ve never even had a conversation. So you’re certainly not supposed to know that I like you.”
He paused. Something had just gone very wrong.
Oh. Shit.
Arthur was looking at him strangely, and Merlin felt his ears go red.
“Merlin,” Arthur said, “how much have you had to drink?”
“I’m not sure,” Merlin answered honestly. “How about you?”
Arthur paused, and then he grinned, and then he climbed up onto the bed, planting a broad, strong hand on Merlin’s shoulder.
“Enough,” he said.
It was even easier than it might have been, because Arthur wasn’t wearing a shirt-though the alcohol had made Merlin’s already unimpressive depth perception so inaccurate that undoing Arthur’s fly was like an obstacle course. Then again, the fact that there was a lot of pressure behind it wasn’t helping Merlin to get a grip, so-
“Merlin!” Gwen wailed-but quietly, because unlike him, she hadn’t forgotten that it was still an unholy hour of the morning on a Saturday. “I don’t need the details!”
“Oops,” Merlin said. “Sorry. Um. Let’s see.”
After the… part with the details, which had been a really good part, Merlin lay blinking for a long moment, tangled in the sheets, distinctly feeling the weight of Arthur’s hand where it was spread on his chest. The intense intoxication had faded a little; maybe he’d metabolized some of the alcohol during the… details.
He chewed on his lip and glanced sideways at Arthur, who had buried his face in the pillow.
“That was a bit… sudden,” Merlin said.
Arthur’s bare shoulders shifted in a way that might have been meant to indicate a shrug. “There’s something about you, Merlin. I can’t quite…” His hand wandered up to Merlin’s collarbones. “…put my finger on it.”
Merlin rolled partway over to face him, raising both eyebrows. “Did you put your finger in it, by any chance?”
The visible portion of Arthur’s face registered something of horrified disgust, and his hand swooped to tickle Merlin’s ribs instead. “You’re sick.”
Merlin squirmed away, giggling. “You’re the one who just hooked up with a drunk classmate.”
Arthur snorted, though his eyes were amused. “So did you.”
“You roguishly seduced me.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You did so. You’re a cad.”
“I’m not listening to this,” Arthur said, and he put his hands over his ears to prove it.
“Neglecting me already,” Merlin remarked, and then he murmured a very quiet spell to lock the door.
Arthur snuffled into his pillow but didn’t otherwise react.
“Should I go now?” Merlin asked, wondering how long he could procrastinate trying to undo a mysteriously sticking lock. “I mean, to get out of your way. In case somebody comes. Or just. In general.”
“No,” Arthur said, and the simple finality of it made Merlin’s heart do wild, happy acrobatics.
“Okay,” he said.
“C’mere,” Arthur said, and a warm, heavy arm encircled Merlin’s waist and hauled him in against Arthur’s chest.
“Yes, sir,” Merlin mumbled contentedly into the nearest shoulder.
Gwen blinked.
“And…?” she managed.
“And he didn’t let me leave until the sun was up,” Merlin told her, gazing into his water with a soppy grin, “because it ‘wouldn’t be safe.’ He’s a gentleman. I always thought ‘gentlemanly frat boy’ was an oxymoron.”
Gwen was still looking at him like he’d turned into a pile of mush, which perhaps he had by now. “But… I mean, is he going to call you tomorrow? Or is it just going to be unbearably awkward when you’re both in class come Monday?”
“Oh,” Merlin said, his heart sinking a little from where it had been floating aimlessly around the upper regions of his ribcage. “I don’t know. We didn’t exactly think to exchange phone numbers. And… hang on, where is my phone?” Bewilderedly, he patted down his pockets to no avail. “Where the hell did I leave that thing?” And then it dawned on him: “Oh, my God, it must’ve been when I kicked my pants off, because they sort of flew a little, but luckily he didn’t notice, because I had my hand on his-”
“Don’t need the details,” Gwen cut in, cringing.
“Sorry,” Merlin said. “But… Arthur has my phone. Well, Arthur’s bedroom floor does, at the moment.” He thought through his options. “He can probably find me on Facebook. I mean, if there’s another Merlin Emrys out there, I’ll die of shock.”
“Please don’t do that,” Gwen said. “My life would be extremely boring, to say the least.”
“Yeah.” Merlin nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll try to keep the death to a minimum.” He flashed a cheesy grin. “Except for the little deaths, if you know what I mean.”
Gwen sighed, struggling to hide her grin. “Drink your water, Merlin.”
Merlin passed most of Saturday alternately sleeping and suffering from his hangover, although by the afternoon he felt well enough to pretend to do homework while reconstructing the previous night’s events in his head. Gwen, in turn, pretended not to see right through his thin pretenses, and things were pretty much back to normal by the time Sunday rolled around.
And then, at eleven-thirty in the morning, the doorbell rang.
Merlin was sprawled on the floor of the communal living room, his pencil in his mouth, his fingers in his hair, and his astronomy textbook open to the most incomprehensible problem set he had ever seen in his life, so Gwen got up from the table and went to answer.
“Hello,” she said, and Merlin started to turn at the strange tone to her words. “What can I do for you…?”
“I’m looking for Merlin,” a familiar voice answered, slightly hesitantly. “Lancelot said he lives here, so I just wanted to drop off his phone and…”
Merlin was halfway to his feet when his socks slipped on the carpet, and then he was back to the drawing board as far as getting up.
“You brought flowers?” Gwen was asking, sounding more delighted than accusatory.
“Oh,” Arthur said. “Well, I-well. I thought… I mean, it was all a bit-rushed, so I thought they’d be a nice gesture. Look, I’m sorry, but is Merlin in, or-?”
“Right here!” Merlin yelped, besting the carpet this time and scrambling over to the door. He pointedly disregarded Gwen’s very knowing smile, which was easier once he was being distracted by the blush overtaking his face. “Thank you,” he managed. “I was worried about the phone.”
Arthur nodded, coughed, cleared his throat, and then pushed the bouquet of gerbera daisies at Merlin, mumbling something completely inaudible.
Merlin’s face almost cracked in half with grinning as he took the flowers, though Gwen snatched them out of his hands immediately.
“Let me just go put these in some water,” she said, beaming, and then she absconded with them.
Arthur cleared his throat again, which either meant that he was allergic to the flowers he had bought or that he was at just as much of a loss for words as Merlin was. He fished in his pocket, produced Merlin’s phone, and handed it over.
“So,” he said. “Ah. My cousin Morgana and I always have lunch on campus after class. It’s be really great if you wanted to join us.”
“Really?” Merlin asked, hugging his phone to his chest.
“Yeah,” Arthur said, and Merlin considered it an accomplishment that he didn’t faint from joy.
He did, however, briefly close his eyes and let the aforementioned joy overwhelm him a bit.
Which was not a good idea.
“Merlin!” Gwen cried from the kitchen. “The cookie jar just exploded!”
“Are you all right?” Arthur asked nervously. “Your eyes did this-thing.”
Apparently it was impossible for Merlin’s life to be boring.
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,540
Warnings: underage drinking; a mostly off-screen hookup; American college AU-ness; run-on sentences I am too lazy to fix
Summary: When Merlin comes back at six-thirty Saturday morning, he has quite a story for Gwen.
Author's Note: Apparently my farewell to my undergraduate education involves writing fanfiction about all the things I didn't do during my undergraduate education because I was busy writing fanfiction. Ooh, vicious cycles are so tasty. In other news, I'm so sorry/happy horribly late birthday to passthebutter! Now you know never to ask for fluff ever again, because this is what you get! XD
IT STARTED AT THE FRAT PARTY
When Merlin staggered up the hill to their townhouse, fumbled his key out on the second try, and fitted it into the lock on the third, he had an idea what he was in for. His jeans and his diagram of the universe T-shirt were hopelessly wrinkled, his hair was a mess, and he kind of reeked of brandy and Coke. Then again, maybe he just thought he reeked of brandy and Coke, because he could still taste them under the more recent flavors of fitful sleep and sex, and taste and smell were extremely intricately connected, because a lot of taste was scent, which was really kind of fascinating-
He managed to turn the key in the right direction, and the door creaked open, and he lurched forward into the umbrella stand.
Why, he wondered dazedly, cringing as he righted it and scrambled around the foyer collecting scattered rain gear, did they even have that thing?
Just as he bent to retrieve a rather pretty polka-dotted umbrella, a pair of deft hands caught it up and twirled it once.
Merlin squeaked-loudly.
Gwen winced heavily, and his heart-rate stuttered, trying to slow down to a speed that wouldn’t send him into cardiac arrest.
“Sorry,” Gwen whispered, which Merlin realized was probably wise when he glanced up and squinted at the clock on the wall. It informed him, quite unrepentantly, that it was a few minutes shy of six-thirty in the morning. This was all incredibly surreal, and he wasn’t sure what to think. “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself.”
“Thank you,” Merlin said, courtesy of the seventeen years under his mother’s roof that three years of college had failed to erase. And then a terrible thought struck him, and he stared wide-eyed at his best friend and housemate. “You didn’t wait up for me, did you? Tell me you didn’t wait up for me.” He seized Gwen’s hands, which were still around the polka-dotted umbrella. “I’ll cry if you waited up for me.”
Gwen’s smile was a little strained, and she made a vague flapping motion that Merlin interpreted as Volume down.
“I went to bed early after you went out last night,” she said, “and got up so I could be here if you came in.”
Merlin stared at her for a moment, his heart going kind of melty.
“Gwen,” he said, softy without any urging, realizing the truth as he spoke it; “you are the best friend I could ever have.”
Gwen blushed happily and grinned as he threw his arms around her. He only stumbled a little, which was definitely progress.
“Of course,” Gwen said, somewhat drily, “you know what that means.”
Merlin sighed and laid his head down on her shoulder, which was a bit tricky because he was so much taller.
“I have to tell you everything?” he hazarded.
Gwen beamed.
Five minutes later, all the umbrellas were restored to their natural habitat, and Gwen was making Merlin drink a tall glass of water for every portion of the story that he told, in the probably-vain hopes of reducing his hangover.
Swilling the first glass, Merlin tried to think of a way to begin that didn’t sound irredeemably sketchy.
“It started at the frat party,” he attempted.
…wait.
Gwen, who was already filling the next glass from the tap, said something that sounded suspiciously like, “God help us.”
It started at the frat party.
Well, it started before the frat party; the frat party was where it combusted.
Merlin had woken up Friday morning with a strange urge to dance, and by the evening, it was irresistible. He wasn’t a good dancer by any contortionist-worthy stretch of the imagination, but he liked burning off energy by flailing around in a way that had once garnered sixty-five separate “LOL!!!!”s on YouTube, so he figured he might as well allow himself the outlet.
One thing that separated Merlin rather distinctly from most of his peers was that he honestly didn’t care what people thought of him. Partly that was just growing up equal parts geeky, gawky, and accidentally magical, and partly it was the support-Will had both encouraged Merlin to do great things and kept his head out of the clouds in the meantime. When Will’s dad had gotten stationed in Sri Lanka right before high school, where the cliques would solidify into a force to be reckoned with, Merlin had privately begun to worry that his eccentricities would doom him. But then, in homeroom on the first day, he’d met Gwen, and everyone had assumed they were dating, and they hadn’t bothered to try to correct that misconception, because nobody would have believed them anyway.
And really, when your mother had named you “Merlin,” you learned to pick your battles.
Gwen cleared her throat politely and replaced his empty water glass with a new one.
“I know this part,” she reminded him gently. “It started at the frat party.”
“Right,” Merlin said.
Was it possible to overdose on water?
After a full day of resisting the urge to dance across campus, Merlin ran into Lancelot on the way home. Lancelot, because he was Lancelot, immediately invited him to the big party one of the frats had been planning all week. Merlin had gone to a few at Lancelot’s frat’s house before, and if Lancelot was going to this one, it would be reasonably decent, at least-Lancelot was the only person Merlin had ever met who had joined a frat for the brotherhood instead of for the booze, and he tended to spend the parties hanging out and taking care of people, helping them find their way to sanitary places to vomit and then usually walking them home afterwards.
“Hey,” Merlin said, because the most brilliant idea in the history of brilliance had occurred to him. “Gwen, Gwen-you and Lancelot should totally date. You could take care of people together.”
Gwen was going pinkish again, and she motioned hastily to Merlin’s half-full glass. “Yes, well, he’s way out of my league.”
“He’s not,” Merlin told her. “And even if he was, he’s not the kind of guy who cares about leagues.”
Gwen pretended not to be thinking it over as she sent pointed looks at Merlin’s water. “Whose love life are we supposed to be talking about, again?”
“Oh, yeah,” Merlin said.
When he arrived, well-fed and hydrated, because he did listen to his uncle Gaius sometimes, there was already a small crowd gathering in the front room, which had been mostly cleared to serve as a dance floor. Bad pop music blared from the stereo, and people were already moving to it, crushing against each other, trying not to spill the contents of their red plastic cups. Merlin sidled into their midst and danced, alone and surrounded, his eyes half-closed so that the faces blurred, leaving just the motion and the body heat. That was all he wanted, all he needed, and all he’d been looking for.
He had sweated himself into a spot of thirst before long, and even though Gaius had told him at least a thousand times that both soda and alcohol were actually dehydrating, the brandy and Coke offered to him by the guy manning the drinks was too good to pass up.
Merlin didn’t trust himself to dance and keep the drink upright at the same time, so he loitered near the kitchen as he sipped it, watching the game of beer pong that was nearing its conclusion now.
He recognized one of the frat guys who was dominating the game-Arthur, Merlin had seen on his midterm; everybody just said “Pendragon.” He always sat in the front row of Merlin’s Greek Myths lecture, accompanied by the gorgeous know-it-all brunette who was either his girlfriend or his sister. Before class, Merlin always heard them talking, and she promised Arthur she was going to kill him just about as often as she asked him how the latest soccer game had gone.
There was a bit of an audience for this round of beer pong, which Merlin gathered was more because Arthur looked fantastic than because it was actually interesting. Then some of the other players started heckling Arthur, who was about to throw one of his last ping-pong balls, and he waved at them impatiently.
“Will you shut up?” he demanded over the music and the chorus of mixed boos and catcalls.
“He can’t make it!” someone shouted.
“Twenty bucks says I can and will,” Arthur shot back calmly.
“I don’t want your filthy money,” the challenger said.
“Take off your shirt!” a girl cried.
Arthur smirked, plucking at his collar. “This shirt says I can and will,” he said. Then he shut the noise out, his eyes focusing intently, and made a smooth toss.
Merlin did not sabotage the shot with magic.
Not even a little bit.
Nope.
Arthur looked disgusted and disbelieving for a moment, and then he sighed deeply and peeled off his T-shirt, and Merlin’s brandy-buoyed heart went very fluttery, and his face went very warm.
A chorus of cheers went up, and Arthur rolled his eyes, balling his shirt in his hands and pitching it at his opponent.
Merlin decided he was going to need a little more alcohol.
Gwen was despairing. At least, Merlin thought that was despairing. It could have been reluctant admiration.
“It gets better,” he promised.
“Better by whose definition?” she asked, though her rueful smile was kind.
Merlin considered.
“Oh,” he said. “Well. Anyway.”
When he’d finished his drink, he’d gone back and danced some more, and the buzz of the alcohol even made it possible to forget about Arthur for long stretches. When Merlin was not forgetting about Arthur, he was extremely aware of the godlike presence lounging, gold and tan, on one of the couches; or gesturing with his red cup, dark-amber liquid sloshing over the edge and making everyone shout and laugh; or leaning in by someone’s ear to speak over the chaos. Merlin decided that it was neither safe nor healthy to obsess about frat boys whom one didn’t even really know, even if they were frat boys who paid attention in class and took notes in a straight, precise little hand and clearly did all the reading and pulled faces when their friend-who-was-a-girl was snarky. Frat boys were still frat boys, and sports players were still sports players, and anyone who looked like Arthur probably had six girlfriends and didn’t even know it, because they’d probably all drugged him on separate occasions and programmed their numbers into his speed-dial.
Unfortunately, Merlin’s brain was not particularly logical even when he was sober, and when he was drunk, it thought it was. Merlin’s brain considered the fact that the effects of drinking made it easier to ignore Arthur, deemed that ignoring Arthur was the best course of action, and concluded that Merlin should drink more.
So he did.
By the time Lancelot was leaving to escort the third totally smashed girl back to her dorm complex, Merlin had drunk enough that, in the process of trying to hurry towards the door to say goodbye, he snagged one foot on a couch leg and slammed face-first into the floor.
That was going to hurt even more when he was properly conscious.
As it was, he kind of drifted, hazily assuring someone quite insistent that he was all right and would be getting up as soon as he’d had a short nap, and then there was a strange period where he couldn’t see and his not-so-logical brain was on fire, and then he found himself curled up on a bed. The coverlet was blue plaid and somewhat fascinating, so he stared at it and started tracing the thin white lines until someone cleared his throat.
Merlin managed to tilt his head enough to discover that Arthur was sitting in a chair at the bedside. This was both amazing and extremely terrifying, so Merlin glanced around the rest of the room, as much as he could without sitting up-there were pictures on the walls of sports teams in red and gold uniforms, and there was a framed photograph on the nightstand, just next to the clock, that showed a young Arthur and a young his-friend-girl. A man in a business suit was ruffling their hair, one child’s with each hand, and grinning a bit.
Merlin’s brain circled around this one. Was he in Arthur Pendragon’s bedroom? And if he was, where was the line of girls waiting outside the door, trying to get in and fling themselves down on Arthur’s bed?
Was he on Arthur’s bed?
He shifted enough to stare at Arthur, hoping that the other young man was both very forgiving and slightly telepathic.
Arthur just cleared his throat again. He hadn’t recovered his shirt.
“I know you,” he said, “don’t I?”
“Er,” Merlin said eloquently. “Um?”
“From Classics,” Arthur persisted. “You’re the one who knows all about all the monsters. It’s Merlin, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” Merlin said.
Arthur blinked. “Are you trying to be ambiguous, or are you so drunk that you’ve forgotten your name?”
“Well,” Merlin said, “it’s just that you’re not supposed to know me. I mean, you-everybody notices you, but I just sort of take notes and mind my own business, and we’ve never even had a conversation. So you’re certainly not supposed to know that I like you.”
He paused. Something had just gone very wrong.
Oh. Shit.
Arthur was looking at him strangely, and Merlin felt his ears go red.
“Merlin,” Arthur said, “how much have you had to drink?”
“I’m not sure,” Merlin answered honestly. “How about you?”
Arthur paused, and then he grinned, and then he climbed up onto the bed, planting a broad, strong hand on Merlin’s shoulder.
“Enough,” he said.
It was even easier than it might have been, because Arthur wasn’t wearing a shirt-though the alcohol had made Merlin’s already unimpressive depth perception so inaccurate that undoing Arthur’s fly was like an obstacle course. Then again, the fact that there was a lot of pressure behind it wasn’t helping Merlin to get a grip, so-
“Merlin!” Gwen wailed-but quietly, because unlike him, she hadn’t forgotten that it was still an unholy hour of the morning on a Saturday. “I don’t need the details!”
“Oops,” Merlin said. “Sorry. Um. Let’s see.”
After the… part with the details, which had been a really good part, Merlin lay blinking for a long moment, tangled in the sheets, distinctly feeling the weight of Arthur’s hand where it was spread on his chest. The intense intoxication had faded a little; maybe he’d metabolized some of the alcohol during the… details.
He chewed on his lip and glanced sideways at Arthur, who had buried his face in the pillow.
“That was a bit… sudden,” Merlin said.
Arthur’s bare shoulders shifted in a way that might have been meant to indicate a shrug. “There’s something about you, Merlin. I can’t quite…” His hand wandered up to Merlin’s collarbones. “…put my finger on it.”
Merlin rolled partway over to face him, raising both eyebrows. “Did you put your finger in it, by any chance?”
The visible portion of Arthur’s face registered something of horrified disgust, and his hand swooped to tickle Merlin’s ribs instead. “You’re sick.”
Merlin squirmed away, giggling. “You’re the one who just hooked up with a drunk classmate.”
Arthur snorted, though his eyes were amused. “So did you.”
“You roguishly seduced me.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You did so. You’re a cad.”
“I’m not listening to this,” Arthur said, and he put his hands over his ears to prove it.
“Neglecting me already,” Merlin remarked, and then he murmured a very quiet spell to lock the door.
Arthur snuffled into his pillow but didn’t otherwise react.
“Should I go now?” Merlin asked, wondering how long he could procrastinate trying to undo a mysteriously sticking lock. “I mean, to get out of your way. In case somebody comes. Or just. In general.”
“No,” Arthur said, and the simple finality of it made Merlin’s heart do wild, happy acrobatics.
“Okay,” he said.
“C’mere,” Arthur said, and a warm, heavy arm encircled Merlin’s waist and hauled him in against Arthur’s chest.
“Yes, sir,” Merlin mumbled contentedly into the nearest shoulder.
Gwen blinked.
“And…?” she managed.
“And he didn’t let me leave until the sun was up,” Merlin told her, gazing into his water with a soppy grin, “because it ‘wouldn’t be safe.’ He’s a gentleman. I always thought ‘gentlemanly frat boy’ was an oxymoron.”
Gwen was still looking at him like he’d turned into a pile of mush, which perhaps he had by now. “But… I mean, is he going to call you tomorrow? Or is it just going to be unbearably awkward when you’re both in class come Monday?”
“Oh,” Merlin said, his heart sinking a little from where it had been floating aimlessly around the upper regions of his ribcage. “I don’t know. We didn’t exactly think to exchange phone numbers. And… hang on, where is my phone?” Bewilderedly, he patted down his pockets to no avail. “Where the hell did I leave that thing?” And then it dawned on him: “Oh, my God, it must’ve been when I kicked my pants off, because they sort of flew a little, but luckily he didn’t notice, because I had my hand on his-”
“Don’t need the details,” Gwen cut in, cringing.
“Sorry,” Merlin said. “But… Arthur has my phone. Well, Arthur’s bedroom floor does, at the moment.” He thought through his options. “He can probably find me on Facebook. I mean, if there’s another Merlin Emrys out there, I’ll die of shock.”
“Please don’t do that,” Gwen said. “My life would be extremely boring, to say the least.”
“Yeah.” Merlin nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll try to keep the death to a minimum.” He flashed a cheesy grin. “Except for the little deaths, if you know what I mean.”
Gwen sighed, struggling to hide her grin. “Drink your water, Merlin.”
Merlin passed most of Saturday alternately sleeping and suffering from his hangover, although by the afternoon he felt well enough to pretend to do homework while reconstructing the previous night’s events in his head. Gwen, in turn, pretended not to see right through his thin pretenses, and things were pretty much back to normal by the time Sunday rolled around.
And then, at eleven-thirty in the morning, the doorbell rang.
Merlin was sprawled on the floor of the communal living room, his pencil in his mouth, his fingers in his hair, and his astronomy textbook open to the most incomprehensible problem set he had ever seen in his life, so Gwen got up from the table and went to answer.
“Hello,” she said, and Merlin started to turn at the strange tone to her words. “What can I do for you…?”
“I’m looking for Merlin,” a familiar voice answered, slightly hesitantly. “Lancelot said he lives here, so I just wanted to drop off his phone and…”
Merlin was halfway to his feet when his socks slipped on the carpet, and then he was back to the drawing board as far as getting up.
“You brought flowers?” Gwen was asking, sounding more delighted than accusatory.
“Oh,” Arthur said. “Well, I-well. I thought… I mean, it was all a bit-rushed, so I thought they’d be a nice gesture. Look, I’m sorry, but is Merlin in, or-?”
“Right here!” Merlin yelped, besting the carpet this time and scrambling over to the door. He pointedly disregarded Gwen’s very knowing smile, which was easier once he was being distracted by the blush overtaking his face. “Thank you,” he managed. “I was worried about the phone.”
Arthur nodded, coughed, cleared his throat, and then pushed the bouquet of gerbera daisies at Merlin, mumbling something completely inaudible.
Merlin’s face almost cracked in half with grinning as he took the flowers, though Gwen snatched them out of his hands immediately.
“Let me just go put these in some water,” she said, beaming, and then she absconded with them.
Arthur cleared his throat again, which either meant that he was allergic to the flowers he had bought or that he was at just as much of a loss for words as Merlin was. He fished in his pocket, produced Merlin’s phone, and handed it over.
“So,” he said. “Ah. My cousin Morgana and I always have lunch on campus after class. It’s be really great if you wanted to join us.”
“Really?” Merlin asked, hugging his phone to his chest.
“Yeah,” Arthur said, and Merlin considered it an accomplishment that he didn’t faint from joy.
He did, however, briefly close his eyes and let the aforementioned joy overwhelm him a bit.
Which was not a good idea.
“Merlin!” Gwen cried from the kitchen. “The cookie jar just exploded!”
“Are you all right?” Arthur asked nervously. “Your eyes did this-thing.”
Apparently it was impossible for Merlin’s life to be boring.