Kink Meme Fic
So yeah, I went and did a kinkmeme fic and it's rated g. que?
Title: Entropy: The Progression From That Which Is Ordered To Disorder
Rating: G (for loser)
Summary: School is huge and loud and terrifying, because all that any youth has is their potential and ideals and what they’ve made of the world so far.
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Okay. Okay, so. School is huge and loud and terrifying, because all that any youth has is their potential and ideals and what they’ve made of the world so far. And then they’re all together, yeah? They’re all together and told to compete and become something that can be quantified and labelled and then move on and become a shade of grey in some dusty-toned watercolour.
It’s scary and it’s weird and it’s also the life of the privileged. Deal.
-
There’s a suburb, not of any particular merit but for a really nice bar - with what, on a whim, one might term ambiance - and the usual suburban clutter of shops and main roads and houses and a cinema. It’s definitely one of the nicer suburbs in the area ,thanks to some sociological quirk in the late sixties; and there’s a school that’s won several awards for staffing, curriculum and innovation. Private, nice enough cohort and an oval which, despite being choked by the higgledy-piggledy assortment of buildings, retains some variation of green the year round.
It’s the sort of school parents would pay good money for, but with none of the old-blood prestige that whispers siren-like in the ears of the sort of parents that would pay very good money for. It had been close to closing, not seven years ago, for the then scandalous appointment of Dr. J. Skelton, charismatic and popular and Out. It had subsided, other controversies diverting attention in collaboration with a rather pointed lack in any significant changes to the Performing Arts Department; just like all such petty things do. Those that threatened to leave either did or didn’t and time spiralled ever onwards.
This is just a section of it; time that is, not the school nor the suburb. It is a school year, painted with the unsteady strokes common to memory, with emphasis placed not completely on the picture as a whole, but what stuck out within it. It’s a year that lives on etched into a board that hangs on the wall of an ugly assembly hall. The etching states as follows:
Head Prefect: M. Le Fey
Exec. Prefect: G. Reine
M. Emrys
H. of Houses: A. Pendragon
-
A week before first term starts, Merlin joins his fellow members of the Executive Prefecture Council and his Principal and Vice Principal on a camp. He does so with trepidation. The minibus ride there is spent half asleep on Gwen’s shoulder listening Morgan and Arthur argue heatedly who really deserved to be Head Prefect and the teachers discussing last year’s students’ results.
A good deal of the rest of it is left to the haze of severe inebriation. Merlin knows that the whole idea of the camp was more about getting them to a point in which they had passed the most awkward stages of bonding before the school year starts and they have to present a United and Responsible attitude to the rest of the school. He was surprised at how much illegal drinking would be overlooked in order to achieve this.
They’d find themselves, more often than not, huddled in one of the shared bedrooms , it didn’t seem to matter whose, with a bottle of cheap wine, vodka or, memorably once, Malibu. A lot of very private things were said candidly: the horrors of the budding romance, cemented by a recent cruise, between Arthur’s father and Morgan’s mum; the pros and cons of relative poverty; exactly how Merlin had come to the conclusion that he was gay. Things that Merlin wouldn’t have been entirely comfortable thinking about in the safety of his own mind.
-
‘What’s a wank between friends? Eh? Comrade? Merlin?’ demanded Arthur from where he lay sprawled in Morgan’s lap.
‘Catch you with your hand down your pants, sweetheart?’ she murmured, tugging the lock twisted about her finger.
‘Can we not talk about this?’ retorted Merlin, before he took a very large gulp, wrinkling his nose at the alcohol.
‘Is this some guy thing then? You aren’t friends until you, macha-maz’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Merlin miserably. ‘My two best friends are girls and the only guys I know think being out makes me some figure-out-your-’ he paused and rolled the next word in his mouth carefully, ‘sexuality. Toy. Thing.’
‘That’s not a rumour?’ demanded Arthur, who had a brief, flailing attempt at sitting up. ‘I thought that was just because of those weird neckerchiefs from casual clothes days. Ha. I’m the only straight one here. Except my darling Guinevere, of course. I’m so RONEREEEE.’
‘Shut up, wanker,’ snorted Morgan. ‘I’m not gay.’
‘You’re just anything with legs and a pulse.’
-
The first Monday morning of the school year saw Arthur sharing a miserable breakfast with his father, who had returned to work the week before last.
‘This is dreadful,’ he moans pushing disconsolately at his cereal with a dirty spoon.
‘So’re the stocks,’ mutters Uther from behind the paper.
‘I hear that’s commonplace during a recession.’
Uther frowns at him, taking the coffee offered even as he knocks him on the back of the head with the papers. ‘Mouth, boy,’ he growls. There’s the easy silence of a breakfast shared by two people who don’t enjoy mornings. It’s interrupted by the blaring of a horn.
‘Asses,’ mutters Arthur as he scrambles to collect his blazer from the chair its spent the weekend hanging off of and finishes his toast. ‘Where’d I put my shoes again?’
‘Closet. Under the indiscrete bag full of empty beer cans. You are getting a job next year, you hear? I don’t give a rabbit what bollocks you come up with about schooling stressors. I’m not so rich that your casual alcoholism won’t bankrupt us.’
Arthur rolls his eyes as he tugs the greying head closer to plant an affectionate kiss near his father’s cheek. ‘Love you too.’
‘And tell Morgy that her mother-’
‘She prefers Morgan, Dad.’
He escapes the second-hand reprimand with a slam of the door as he jogs up to the car.
‘Morning Starshine.’
‘Arthur.’
‘Dad says hi.’
Morgan snorts and butts out her cigarette on the letterbox as they pull out of the drive. ‘He said a lot of other things last night too.’
Arthur grimaces and guiltily turns to the sidewalk.
‘No details, thanks.’
‘I don’t see why I’m the one that always has to listen to them shag. I don’t give a wank how big his cock is, quite frankly.’
-
The year spreads out wide before them, impossibly long and safe from exams and testing and Growing Up.
-
‘Oi,’ growls Morgana, bumping her shoulder against his. ‘We need to figure out the advertising for the carnival.’
Merlin pulls a face that implied he was not, in fact, incapable of remembering such things for longer than five minutes and returned to Sophie. ‘Look, Soph, I don’t know that I’ve got time just at the minute, but talk to Mr G about it. He’ll give you an extension if you need it, he’s not the sort to mark you down ‘cause of home stuff.’
Sophie pulls an indignant face, ‘I didn’t say this had anything to do with my-Don’t you dare imply that-‘
‘Look, Kid,’ interrupts Morgana, fingers wrapped tight around Merlin’s arm and tugging, ‘Nobody cares about your daddy issues. We all have them here, it’s called being privileged. Just let Emrys go to his arsing meeting and try it on someone whose interested because, trust me, if he was straight I’d’ve had him by now.’
-
‘How’s school?’ Hunith asks as she drives him home, scowling at the temperamental windscreen wiper that’s turned on by itself.
‘Like it always is. Pendragon was a prat all through English though. It’s not like we haven’t all coined on to the fact that he has a massive crush on Wilde.’
‘Picture?’
‘Nah. Earnest.’
‘Well come on, Merlin, he’s always been in want of attention.’
‘He didn’t need to re-enact the song from the movie just to get a rise out of Morgan.’
‘Is she reading Gwendolen?’
‘Cecily. It’s terrifying.’
-
They’re sitting in the classroom they use for their meetings, the chocolates Arthur brought already mostly gone.
‘Can’t believe they bought your tree-hugging wankfest,’ says Arthur, sketching a rude comic on some of the new, requisite recycled paper.
‘At least he’s actually achieved something, Arthur,’ retorts Morgan, ‘Other than encourage repressed boys to have veritable size-contests on the field. I have no idea how people actually cried at that match.’
‘Guys, we have to do this uniform proposal.’
-
‘Morgan,’ sighs Gwen, squeezed in the cubicle beside her and nose scrunched, sweat-damp tendrils of dark hair caught in her hands. ‘Come on darling, it isn’t worth it.’
‘She’s a bitch, I-god sorry,’ another dry retch, ‘fucking hate her. Fucking slut. Can’t-’ another pause and a shuddering sob follows after.
Gwen presses her head to the girl’s back, ignoring the stench of alcohol and vomit.
‘Families are always fucked up. It’s probably fucked up not to have a fucked up family.’
That garners a watery smile and she bunches a bit of toilet paper and wipes at Morgan’s eyes and mouth, cups her cheek warmly.
‘Just wished I was,’ she smiles and sniffs, pressing beringed knuckles to her forehead, ‘dunno. Wished I was enough for her, instead of the stupid reporting and fucking Uther. I’m her. Her daughter. Bitch threw a glass at me yesterday.’
-
‘What’re you planning on doing, next year?’ Arthur asks, legs kicked up cockily on the desk even though he’s spending lunch studying with a scholarship kid.
‘Don’t know,’ murmurs Merlin, watching his companion idly shade the shoddy picture he’d drawn of an erythrocyte. Double concave like a donut with the middle not quite pushed out. No nucleus. Interesting buggers.
‘Yeah. Neither.’
‘Would’ve thought the great Arthur Pendragon was going to be the next David Bekham. Or Da Vinci. Or you know, Prime minister.’
Arthur snorts, and the shading becomes a slightly viciously vigorous act, as if the boy were trying to erase something, instead.
‘My father wants me to go into the business. You know. Oxford for three years and then the office and desk and comfortable leather chair.
‘You don’t?’
‘Would you?’
Merlin shrugs, hugs himself and watches someone kick a goal out the window.
‘Sounds kind of nice, in a way. You know. Easy or whatever. Definite.’
‘Sounds boring,’ Arthur corrects bluntly, brow raised in a challenge.
‘That too.’
-
‘Merlin,’ mutters Arthur, sprawled spreadeagled and drunk on Merlin’s rickety old bed, ‘How do you know?’
‘Know what?’
‘That, you know. Y’like shirtlifting and shit.’
Merlin barks a laugh and kicks a leg out vaguely.
‘History Boys. Bloody love the arsing teacher bloke.’
Arthur snorts.
‘Seriously?’
-
The school holds a dance, which is called anything from a prom, to a disco, to a formal depending on who is talking about it. The tables hold six, and Morgan decides that Merlin is to join her and Gwen and the dates she’s decided they will bring. Gwen likely had very little say in this, but by the jaunty sway of Morgan’s hips it seems likely that she’ll be pleased regardless. Somewhere along the way Arthur decides he will take their last seat, due to seating with his normal sporting crowd. Merlin decides that such an arrangement is much nicer than having to find a date for himself and even sits quietly through Arthur’s rant about how Morgana should’ve bloody given him time to ask Gwen and how Sophie is clearly a very big slut that not only kiss and tells but then dates your mate.
Or something.
-
Merlin, who is more distracted by studying by that time in the year, lets Morgan take him shopping. He makes all the required token arguments about being perfectly capable of looking after himself and not needing her charity thank-you-very-much, but she remains determined to waste as much of mother’s money as she can, in some sort of retaliation; and really, the Le Fays would’ve been wealthy on the divorce settlements and he knows that the sort of reporting her mum does brings in a lot more than double Hunith’s naturopathy.
Also he sort of really would like a suit that fits.
He gets exactly that, in the best way imaginable and the cut makes him feel like he ought to be on a magazine cover with a topless bird draped around him. The price is several hundred quid more than he’s comfortable with, but Morgan sets her shoulders, determined, and insists on shoes and a tie and then buys a handbag that cost more than his entire outfit put together. It makes him feel strangely relieved, which was probably her intention
The night itself is mostly blurred: Gwen’s date sending a blinding, perfect grin at him; Morgan’s spectacular dress and predatory grin, champagne casual in her hands as she poses for a photo; Gwen’s dopey smile as he shakes the proffered hand warmly (‘Lancelot, it’s lovely to meet you.’); Arthur’s wolf whistle when he duck’s out of the car with the press of his mum’s lips against his cheek still fresh in his mind; bad music; worse food; speeches; kissing Morgan messily on the stage to catcalls as they get dubbed Best Dressed of the respective genders; laughing and whooping as he stands squashed with Arthur with their heads out the limo’s sunroof.
Falling asleep with pop music still blaring loud enough to drown out certain noises coming from the direction Morgan and her date disappeared earlier, his face pressed in the crook of Gwen’s neck from where he’s curled in Arthur’s lap for a reason he will never remember.
-
Graduation comes not too long after, though the dread of exams is already thick in the air. Gwen tapes her French vocab to corresponding furniture and objects. Morgan approaches it with the ease of the gifted and not terribly ambitious. Arthur disappears into the art department, along with the rest of the art students and regularly has smudges of oil paint on his cheek in their classes. Merlin asks more and more questions in class, biting back panic as he sifts through everything he’s learnt and makes sure it fits.
They pass their positions on, uniform heavy and feeling oddly cold beneath the heavy heat of stage lighting, on the evening. Gwen cries a bit, which is awful because it makes Merlin blink back the burn of his own odd grief. Arthur gets the Sportsperson of the Year and the Nimueh Memorial Prize for a Budding Member of the Art Community. Merlin gets five distinctions and the’ Greeny’ which was really just a nod at his hippie upbringing and was awarded with equal parts laughter and applause. Gwen get’s her several scholarship offers noted and Morgan gives the sort of speech which was both inappropriate but exactly what everyone needed and wanted to hear.
-
Arthur takes to studying with Merlin in his house, once his art portfolio is officially in. He spends a lot of it fiddling with the glasses he finally got the month before, which leave him looking older and different in some undiscernible way.
‘Merlin,’ he says, ‘what does Thymine get replaced with in translation?’
‘Uracil. What’s meiosis for eggs called?’
‘Oogenesis.’
‘Merlin, what’s the difference between a gene and an allele?’
‘An allele is one of the different forms of a gene which remains in the same locus for homologous chromosomes. Name the elements of the system used to identify different species.’
‘Kings play chess on fat green stools. Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. Merlin, how do you find any of this interesting?’
-
Exams are strangely anticlimactic.
-
They all go to Arthur’s house, because he is the last to finish and it’s the biggest and most convenient. They farewell the school year in much the same way they greeted it: bunched together and inebriated, earnest and scared about what the future will bring for them. More so, now, without the buffer of school to keep them safe.
-
That night Arthur slumps next to Merlin and holds his hand, thumb brushing back and forth idly.
‘’M gonna do Arts, too,’ he says, breath muggy with the rum they probably shouldn’t have nicked from the cabinet downstairs. ‘Cause. You know. Fucked if I go to Oxford or whatever. ‘sides. M’not any good at scholarly shit. Wanna be Monet. Fucking rock this eyesight shit and all. You know? I’ll transfer or whatever. Or just. Yeah.’
‘Okay Arthur,’ says Merlin and rests his chin on his forehead.
‘You’re a mate. Keep a secret?’
‘It’s debateable if I’ll even remember there was a secret to be kept tomorrow morning.’
Merlin huffs a breath and presses the bridge of his nose against the boy’s brow instead.
‘I,’ this was said with muffled grandiose, ‘lift shirts also. In the most homosexual of senses. Because I am a faggot.’
Merlin pauses, uncertain.
‘Yeah,’ he says at last, presses his lips to the brow instead. ‘Been there, done that.’
‘Arsing bought the t-shirt?’
‘Something like.’
-
.fin.