Merlin -- It Started at the Frat Party

[tierfal]

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

Comments

[callowyn]

This was deliciously perfect for a quick pick-me-up at two in the morning. You managed to hit all of the characters perfectly!

Gwen, who was already filling the next glass from the tap, said something that sounded suspiciously like, “God help us.”

SO GWEN.

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.

SO LANCELOT.

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.

SO MERLIN. (I pictured his particular conjunction of knees and elbows flailing about to Daft Punk and I think LOL is an understatement.)

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.

SO ARTHUR. And, relatedly, SO MORGANA.

And Merlin being benignly lecherous, and Gwen getting squicked when he goes into detail, and Arthur returning his phone in the most awkward manner possible...so, so true. WAY TO BLOW UP THE COOKIE JAR WITH YOUR UNBRIDLED PASSION, MERLIN.

In short, this fic is hilarious and it really cheered me up. Thanks! :D

[tierfal]

Aww, I'm so glad to hear it! :D Not that you needed a pick-me-up at two in the morning, of course, but that this helped make life suck less, which I tend to view as my mission in the larger universe. XD

Unbridled passion is so inconvenient. :D I can just imagine what'll happen when Arthur discovers that half of the clothes in his closet have giant hearts with "A+M" drawn on them with magic paint.

Thank you for reading! ♥

[callowyn]

♥ Directive achieved. *salutes*

I imagine he'll be even more thrilled when he discovers that no force on God's green earth can remove the pink sparkles that now festoon his every belonging. Not to mention the cloud of rose petals that trails behind him as he walks, or the way he now appears to glow.

[tierfal]

\o/ :D

Haha!! Yes, exactly that! XD And birds will spontaneously start singing when he walks past, and the flurries of butterflies, and the way it stops raining above him and keeps on everywhere else...

[callowyn]

The worst part is the swelling violin music, though. It gives Arthur flashbacks to when he had to take lessons and he was so bad at it that Morgana threatened to shove the violin down his throat and put them both out of their misery.

[tierfal]

She hit him with her flute more than once. Uther was not pleased when it eventually broke, and he blamed the whole incident on Arthur, which was clearly unfair.

[callowyn]

Arthur was so traumatized that for years afterward, all Morgana had to do when he was being obnoxious was threaten to shove piccolos where piccolos should never go. To this day, symphony orchestra music makes him twitchy.

And it wasn't his fault he'd thought "flautist" was some kind of euphemism.

[tierfal]

Arthur sort-of-regrets not mentioning it to Merlin earlier, as the whole screaming bloody murder and running out into the street episode when Merlin put his iPod on shuffle was... well, would have been embarrassing, if Arthur Pendragon was capable of embarrassment. Fortunately, he's evolved past such primitive emotions. Obviously.

You mean it's NOT?

[callowyn]

Which is good, because it would have been even more injurious to his masculine pride if, say, Merlin had spent the next several days humming Vivaldi and snickering when Arthur flinched. If Arthur was the kind of person to flinch, that is. Hypothetically. (Arthur couldn't even bring himself to make fun of Merlin for listening to classical music until the flute trills stopped jackhammering his mind.)

Just look at how flutes are shaped! You can't tell me that's not suspicious!