Fic: Merlin; NC-17; AU; The Pendragon Guide to How Not to Date - Parts 1&2
Title: The Pendragon Guide to How Not to Date
Fandom: Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Pairing/Characters: Merlin/Arthur, Arthur/Lancelot, sort of Arthur/Tristan, Morgana/Owain, Gwen/Lancelot; Arthur, Morgana, Uther, Owain, Merlin, Tristan, Lancelot, Gwen, Nimueh (but only sort of)
Disclaimer: I do not own Arthur or Merlin, but then technically neither do the BBC, but they do own the interpretation of them on which this is based - not me. I’m not getting money from this. Oh, and all and any resemblance to characters/places/situations other than those in the show is purely coincidental, this is completely fictional.
Warnings: Cracktastic, AU, Fluff, Pr0n. Some characters are only in name only, but I’ve tried to get the major ones as IC as I can.
Spoilers: Character spoilers for 1x05, 1x09 and 1x02, no plot spoilers except for the fact that Arthur and Merlin are so shagging
Author’s Note: Many thanks to wrennette for the beta work, any mistakes that are left in are mine alone.
I tend to steer clear of AU and NC-17, so apologies in advance. This was just meant to be an exercise in writing them in character that I did on a train, then it grew, and grew, and I kind of like it in a cracky sort of way, so I figured I’d post it. The universe has sadly expanded in my head as well, though…
Summary: Modern day student AU. Still set in Britain. Morgana sends Arthur on some blind dates that don’t go quite according to plan
The Pendragon Guide to How Not to Date
Part the First - in which Morgana is loud, Arthur has no life and Uther doesn’t know anything.
Sometimes Arthur wondered what had possessed him to live with Morgana. His step-sister had always been irritating and the fact that they had somehow (though through no fault of his own) ended up at the same university was definitely not a good enough reason to live together. But his father had bought the flat for them and insisted that both of them live in it so that his money did not go to waste. It did help that the flat was at least ten times better than any of the student housing in the area, but not much.
If he were completely honest, Morgana was not that bad a flatmate: she picked up after herself, she cleaned the bathroom every other week and took all her hairs out of the plughole, she even washed up her own lunch dishes and made him a cup of tea after he’d finished one of his essay frenzies. It was just that, sometimes - like now, she was a little… loud. There were times when he could swear that the wall between their rooms was made of paper: he could hear everything.
Seven o’clock in the morning was not the optimal time to be woken up, especially when you were an Arts student with a six hour week. Plus, there were some things Arthur could have done with never knowing about, a lot of things actually and his step-sister’s ownership of handcuffs was one of them. When Arthur said loud, he meant loud.
The rhythmic sawing noise from the adjacent room was speeding up and Arthur groaned, folding the pillow over his ears, but, somehow, Morgana’s voice defied muffling and he heard her moans quite clearly through the padding. It did not even manage to drown out Owain’s grunts of pleasure. Really, he decided, he needed to get a new pillow, and possibly a machine gun.
The hearing was not even the worst part, he admitted to himself as blissful silence fell. The worst part of the whole thing was Morgana grinning at him across the breakfast table in the mornings as Owain made bacon and eggs (by far the best boyfriend she had ever had in Arthur’s opinion). Her grins could make him embarrassed even when he had nothing to be embarrassed about.
That morning he glared at her over his coffee mug as Owain whistled to himself while prodding fried eggs. He always whistled after morning sex, Arthur had learnt. Even if he had not heard every sodding thing he would know that by now.
“Did you sleep well?” Morgana asked with a wicked grin. She did not even pretend innocence, and somehow that made it worse.
“Until about seven,” he replied as composedly as he could, “when something woke me up.” He refused to be cowed by her gaze but Owain spluttered a little and Arthur could see that the tips of his ears had turned red. Apparently her boyfriend was not as thick-skinned as Morgana, but Arthur had come to the conclusion from years of experience that there was no one as thick-skinned as Morgana.
“How dreadful,” she said, affecting a look of horrified sympathy. “Do you have any idea what it was?”
“None whatsoever - you weren’t doing anything at seven, were you?” She paused and Arthur made a mental note to mark another one to him on the tally stuck to the kitchen door.
“Sorry, can’t help you…” she said. Then Owain turned around to deposit their breakfast on their plates. The two of them began a discussion about their first lecture of their day, at which Arthur automatically switched off. Scientists, he thought with affectionate venom. He settled for eating his bacon and eggs (and he had to talk to Morgana about keeping this one, because maybe the loud morning sex and the knowing grins over the table were worth it if he got this for his troubles). The sound of his name caught his attention and he looked up to see Morgana grinning mockingly at him.
“But, of course, Arthur doesn’t start until… what time is it, again?” she asked, her voice sugary sweet.
“Three,” he told her with a smug grin.
“By which time I will have had,” she made a point of counting the hours on her fingers, “Five hours.” She sighed heavily. “I hate you, by the way.” He nodded with a smirk and snagged the newspaper as Owain got up.
As Morgana was finishing up her coffee and pulling on her boots, the phone rang. Arthur grabbed it from the cradle and read the caller ID.
“Bugger,” he announced with feeling.
“Uther?” his step-sister asked, looking up at him from beneath the curtain of her hair, where she was crouched in the doorway. He nodded, staring at the phone acidly while his thumb hovered in between the answer and ignore keys. “Remember,” she told him as she and Owain headed for the front door, “Owain went home at half past ten, as he always does, and you were with us all the time.”
“I know, Morgana,” he hissed at her, as though his father could somehow overhear the conversation although he had not answered the phone at the time. “I do know how to keep secrets from my own father.”
“Good - then if he finds out I’ll know you did it on purpose,” she told him before the door banged shut behind her.
He finally gave in and hit the answer button, grimacing as he brought the phone to his ear.
“Hello father,” he said in as upbeat a voice as he could manage, thanking God for the coffee. If he had been any less awake, no doubt his father would have given him the third degree about his drinking habits again.
“Arthur,” his father’s greeting was curt as always. “How are the essays going?”
***
He had cobbled together a meal by the time Morgana got back from her lectures and she smiled gratefully as she shuffled through the door.
“No Owain?” he asked.
“He’s got a lab report due on Wednesday,” she informed him, collapsing into her seat at the small kitchen table.
“All the more for us, then,” he said, grabbing a fork.
“Lasagne?” Morgana asked with a raised eyebrow. “You make lasagne?”
“I found a recipe,” he replied with a shrug but she looked unconvinced and poked at the meal with her fork suspiciously.
“It won’t kill you,” he protested.
“So say you,” she retorted, “I still remember the burgers you made.”
“I was eleven!” Arthur said with annoyance.
“I was sick for a week,” Morgana reminded him. “They were raw.”
“They were brown on the outside. I didn’t know you were supposed to check the middle. Anyway, it’s beef. The French like it best raw.”
“Please tell me you cooked it,” Morgana begged with a horrified expression, staring at her lasagne as though it were about to moo at her.
“Of course I cooked it!” he snapped back, his patience reaching its limit. He stabbed down with his fork angrily. There was a moment of silence while Morgana looked across at him with sympathy.
It was difficult to remember a time when he had not known Morgana. Although his father had only married her mother when they were ten (a short lived affair which had ended abruptly when her mother had run off with Uther’s personal assistant) they had grown up knowing each other, fighting and teasing. It was only ever at moments like this, where Morgana knew what was going through his head without his having to say anything, that he remembered just how well she knew him.
“I take it from your charming manner that your father was having a go at your grades again.” He was always Arthur’s father, never hers, even though Uther had taken care of her after her mother had left for the Canary Islands with half of his money. But Morgana always called him ‘Uther’ or ‘your father’. He had never asked her about it, and he probably never would, but it was something he always noticed.
“I got a 2:1 on my last essay,” Arthur told her with a shrug, looking up at her defiantly. He knew his face had gone blank, as it always did when they discussed his father’s influence in his life.
“That’s good,” she said, her lips quirking into a genuine smile.
“It’s not a first,” corrected Arthur, “and I need to be perfect in everything before I take over the family business.” He took a mouthful of lasagne as an excuse not to continue. The taste was a pleasant surprise: apparently throwing lots of things in at random did sometimes work.
“You really need to tell him that you don’t want to run the family business, Arthur.” She said. Arthur didn’t answer. “And that’s not the only thing you need to tell him.”
“He’s right though,” Arthur said, cutting through her point as fast as he could.
“How?” Morgana looked horrified at the suggestion.
“I could have got a first on that essay,” he answered. “I should have got a first on that essay. If I hadn’t gone out the night before it was due in I could have looked it over again.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Arthur,” his sister told him in her no nonsense tone. “You spent an entire week on that essay. I barely saw you for days. It counts towards what? One percent of this year?”
“Two percent,” he corrected.
“Wow, that’s going to destroy your whole degree,” She said in sarcastic horror. “So you got a harsh marker - it happens. Uther has no right to tell you that you need to work harder.”
“You tell me I don’t work hard enough all the time,” he pointed out.
“I’m a science student; you’re an Arts student - that’s how it works: I complain that you do nothing, you complain that I can’t string a sentence together with grammatical accuracy. Also, I live with you, I know you do work. Uther doesn’t know shit about it.”
“He’s my father,” Arthur told her firmly.
“That doesn’t mean he’s infallible.”
“He sends his love by the way,” Arthur added, “and he’s pleased that Owain’s being a gentleman.”
“Oh… he’s not that gentle,” Morgana allowed herself to be sidetracked, smirking a little as Arthur gave her his ‘must you?’ face.
“I think I’ll just pretend you didn’t say that,” he said. Morgana’s smile increased and she began to eat her food.
“You,” she said with determination, “need to get laid.”
“We’ve had this discussion,” Arthur said with a sigh.
“And I seem to recall your side of the argument was stupid.”
“I don’t have the time,” he told her, trying to end the conversation there.
“That’s not an excuse.”
“No, it’s a reason. I don’t have time to go out, I don’t have time to find someone and I don’t have time to deal with the fall out…”
“Then make time,” Morgana said, “you’re cooped up in the house all the time and the only people you talk to are Uther and I.”
“I talk to Owain,” he protested, sitting up straighter in his seat.
“He doesn’t count.”
“I’ll tell him you said that, shall I?” He asked, trying to distract her, but that never worked.
“You know what I mean.” She told him, stubbornly refusing to be redirected as he knew she would. “This lasagne is delicious, by the way.”
“Thanks. But what if my father finds out?” he asked.
“Are you planning on telling him?” she asked. He shook his head. “Then how is he going to find out? Not that it would matter if he did.”
“Morgana…”
“You’ll have to tell him sometime,” she said. “So you’re gay…” she paused, probably for dramatic effect, she did like to make a show of these things. “It’s not the end of the world, Arthur.”
“Not yours, maybe. But his?”
“He’ll have to deal with it. One day he’ll notice that you’ve never had a girlfriend.”
Arthur declined to answer and focussed his attention onto his dinner again, glaring at it.
“Come on, Arthur. You haven’t been out with anyone since that guy in first year that used to get drunk and throw up all over your floor.” She told him. “Look. I’ve got a few friends; I’ll set you up with one.”
“No, Morgana,” he said, looking up in alarm. “I am not going on a blind date that you’ve set up for me.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked.
“I’m killed and left in a ditch,” Arthur replied with complete seriousness. He had met some of her friends. They varied between the subnormal and the criminally insane. There was no happy medium and the only thing they ever talked about was physics.
“They’re nice people, look. It’ll just be one date, somewhere you choose, no strings, no pressure. One date with a nice guy, one evening where you get out of the house and you might even get a free meal out of it.”
“I’m not the girl,” Arthur protested.
“Hey, sometimes I pay for Owain’s dinner,” she said.
“That’s because dad gives you shitloads of money.” She shrugged, unabashed at the allegation.
“Look. Just try it. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. If it does, then, great.”
“Morgana.”
“Arthur.” She replied, mimicking his tone exactly. “You can’t live by Uther’s rules your entire life.”
“Because you’re so ready to tell him that you and Owain are sleeping together.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Hypocrite,” Arthur retorted.
“So, are you going to say yes, or are you too much of a coward?” Morgana asked, taunting him.
“I’m not scared!” Arthur protested.
“Then that’s settled. Friday night, that’s after your next deadline, right? Where do you want to go: that place down the road, or somewhere in town?” Arthur gaped at her.
And that was how he found himself not quite agreeing to go on a blind date with some friend of his step-sister, and no matter what he said she would not let him out of it.
***
Part the Second: in which Arthur is definitely not nervous, Merlin provides the alcohol and Tristan may or may not live in an igloo
Friday rolled around all too quickly for Arthur’s taste and no matter how much he glared at Morgana she just laughed. He knew that she had threatened Owain with no sex if her boyfriend told him anything about his date. He still did not know exactly why he was going, but he knew that he could not back out now. It had become an issue of pride, and it was at times like these that he wished Morgana did not know him quite as well.
They were going to The Dragon down the road, because, as Arthur had pointed out to Morgana, this was a date but it was a date between two guys and he wanted to go to a pub not a sodding restaurant. She had shaken her head and asked him where the romance was in that.
“You want me to get laid, Morgana,” he had said, “that doesn’t require romance.”
“It can’t hurt,” she had said, and he had not had a reply to that.
So he was standing in front of his mirror emphatically not doing his hair, nor was he worrying about what to wear. His red shirt would be fine… although the blue one was good too.
There was the sound of a smothered laugh from the doorway and he turned around to glare at Morgana again. She looked suitably contrite for half a second before she could hold in her amusement no longer.
“Honestly, Arthur… you’re such a girl!” she commented.
“If you haven’t got anything constructive to say, then don’t say anything,” he said back, gritting his teeth. He felt enough of an idiot as it was without her laughing at him.
“Wear the red,” she said, “it compliments your hair better… which is fine by the way, so stop fiddling with it.” He brought his hand down from his fringe guiltily. “It’s just a date, not the Spanish inquisition,” she said more gently, coming in to grab a jacket from the pile he had shoved onto the bed. He had a lot of clothes - so many he hadn’t even noticed before. God, he thought within the privacy of his own mind, he was a girl.
“Here,” she handed him something made of brown suede. “You look hot; don’t worry about it.”
“So, what’s this friend of yours like, anyway?” he asked, pulling on the jacket and looking at himself in the mirror again. She was right, he did look hot, not that he ever looked bad. “Morgana, I just want to know what you’ve got me into.” She began to smooth the material over his shoulders, fussing like his mother, or how he imagined his mother would have done had she survived his birth.
“You’ll like him,” she said, giving an encouraging smile.
“I think I’ll decide that for myself,” he retorted and she stuck her tongue out.
“He’s tall, dark and handsome, and he’s not the type to blabber away at you. I know how you hate idiots.” He nodded. All in all, the mystery man did not sound too bad. “He’s got a killer arse as well.”
“And his name? In case I have to ask everyone in the pub who he is,” Arthur prompted. They joined eyes for a second and he raised one eyebrow in a way that never failed to get him his way with his female tutors (and a couple of the male ones).
“Tristan,” she said after a moment. “Tristan Lyons.”
“Tristan?” Arthur asked incredulously, his face screwing up in disbelief. “He sounds like an actor in an Australian soap.”
“Arthur, give him a chance,” she chided, stepping away to glare at him more effectively. “He’s just as nervous as you are.”
“I’m not nervous,” Arthur replied reflexively, and he wasn’t, because this was completely pointless. This was just another one of Morgana’s ridiculous ideas and no doubt it would all go horribly wrong as all her ideas did. You only got nervous when things were important and this, this pseudo date, was not important. Certainly, it was his first date (pseudo or not) in two years, since he had unceremoniously dumped the guy who got drunk and threw up on his floor (Kay, he remembered, and dammit if that did not sound like the name of an actor in an Australian soap as well). There was nothing to be nervous about; he had not even met this Tristan bloke. And if he was a tiny, microscopic bit nervous, it was probably in case this guy drugged and raped him.
God he hoped he wasn’t a chemist - they probably had access to rohypnol, or GHB.
“Why did I agree to this again?” he asked rhetorically, turning his best death glare on his own reflection.
“Because you’re young, single and you want to enjoy yourself.” His eyes slipped to Morgana’s in the reflection as she turned, and he knew that even she did not believe that. She hesitated a second before giving in. “Okay, you’re doing it because I’m a manipulative bitch who wants to see you happy and relaxed and comfortable. Is that such a bad thing?”
When she put it like that he could not really argue so he simply shrugged with a sigh.
“You should get going,” Morgana said, giving him a gentle shove towards the door. “He’ll be wearing black.”
“You just want me to leave so you can shag Owain on the sofa.” She grinned, and pushed him more firmly towards the door. He thought about what he had just said for a moment and he turned back to her, horrified at the idea. “Oh god! Don’t shag Owain on the sofa.”
“Who says I haven’t already?” She asked and Arthur had time to gape, goldfish like, at her before she pushed him down the corridor and out the front door, closing it behind him.
“I will never be able to sit on that sofa again…” he muttered to no one.
***
The Dragon was full when he turned up and he stood in the doorway for a second, pulling himself together and wondering just what the hell he had got himself into, although the lovely visuals of Morgana and Owain and that sofa (the sofa!?) had distracted him for a minute.
After a couple of seconds of uncharacteristic hesitation, he strode over to the bar. He was Arthur Pendragon, for crying out loud, and no prissy little Soap boy called Tristan was going to cow him. He pulled himself into one of the stools and tried to catch the barman’s eye. He really needed a beer.
The guy behind the bar was rushed off his feet, but he really did not seem all that competent at his job. He ran from one end of the bar to the other, taking orders, which, from the amused comments of the rest of the patrons, seemed never to be quite right, and he poured beer from tap slower than anyone Arthur had ever seen. No one seemed concerned by it, though, all of the regulars, as Arthur presumed they were, took it in their stride, answering his ridiculous grin with matching indulgent smiles.
He was at the end of the bar, serving a group of excited girls with the sort of flirting that was only flirting because he did not know he was doing it, when he noticed Arthur staring at him and tapping impatiently on the counter. There was a quick grin and a slight nod of acknowledgement, but it still took him five minutes to get round to actually taking his order.
“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked, seemingly popping up out of nowhere into Arthur’s line of sight.
“I was beginning to think I was never going to get a drink,” Arthur said with a huff.
“Oh, I get round to everyone sooner or later,” the man said smiling, totally unaffected by Arthur’s glaring. He was thrown a bit by that, no one was completely unaffected by his glares, he was bloody good at them. “Sorry, though. It’s a busy night.”
“And you’ve spent half of it talking,” Arthur pointed out. The bartender was about his own age, but that was where the similarity between them ended. Where Arthur was blond and well-muscled (although Morgana loved to poke him in the stomach and tell him he was getting a spare tyre) the other man was thin, with a mop of dark hair that probably had not seen a brush in the last three years.
“All part of the job,” he replied, and the grin did not fade from his face. “So what can I get you?”
“A pint,” Arthur replied, curtly, turning to survey the clientele for his blind date.
“Any preferences?” the bartender asked. Arthur shook his head before turning back, looking between the tables of people. “Waiting for someone?” he asked grabbing a glass and sticking it under the tap.
“Yes.” Arthur replied before he realised what he was saying.
“Male or Female?” The bartender asked.
“Male,” Arthur shot him a quick look, but the man did not even bat an eyelid. Of course, there was no way he could know that it was a date, not from the limited information Arthur had given him.
“What does he look like?” the man continued, placing the glass on the bar and waiting as Arthur fished in his pocket for his wallet. Arthur avoided his eyes desperately, shrugging. “You don’t know?” Arthur shrugged again, reminding himself that blind dates were nothing to be ashamed of, except they were.
“Here,” Arthur said, holding out the money. The bartender reached out to take it and their hands brushed slightly before Arthur snatched his away.
“Thanks,” the guy said, “I’m Merlin by the way.”
“I didn’t ask,” Arthur replied. Merlin’s grin just grew.
“I know,” he said, with a shrug of his own, “But I thought I’d tell you anyway.”
“Right, thanks,” Arthur said, grabbing his pint and taking a sip.
“What’s your name?” Merlin asked, standing patiently in front of him, although there were several other people who still needed serving. Arthur noticed that a barmaid had come out to join him and she was working far more efficiently that Merlin had been.
“Why do you want to know?” Arthur asked, confused.
“Don’t look so terrified,” Merlin told him with a laugh, “I’m not a crazed stalker, it’s just, if your friend comes in looking for you and asks, I can direct him your way.” Arthur nodded, feeling a little sheepish, although he could not really say why.
“Right… yes, I’m Arthur, Arthur Pendragon,” he replied with a nod. “And his name is Tristan… something.”
“Well, Arthur Pendragon,” Merlin said, giving him a mocking little bow. “If I see a Tristan Something, I’ll be sure to point him your way.” Arthur stared at him, unsure whether he should glare at the obvious teasing, or thank the dark haired man for offering to help.
“Right… well, thanks I suppose.” Merlin just smiled, before disappearing off to serve another customer.
Arthur pulled himself together, taking another sip of his pint, before heading over to a small table in the corner of the main room. He had only been in this pub twice before, and both times he had been terrifically drunk at the end of a lengthy bar crawl, but he really did not remember that bartender. He must have been new, which would explain how crap he was at his job as well. He sighed. Apparently he had been stood up, on a blind date, by a friend of Morgana’s. That was beyond humiliating.
He watched the people coming in and out of the bar with idle curiosity. There were a few couples, a group of students who seemed to be from one of the sports teams, probably rugby given their varying states of dress and the fact that at least half of them were in drag. One of them waved at him and he thought maybe he had seen the guy in a tutorial or a lecture, before realising he had done a presentation with him last year. In Arthur’s defence, the lipstick really did change his entire appearance, as did the long blonde wig.
He had been waiting another five minutes and was just about ready to call the whole thing off, go home to Morgana and give her the required I told you so speech when a tall man, dressed entirely in black, huge buckled boots on his feet that looked as though they might have steel toecaps in and a pair of sunglasses that must have made it impossible to see in the less than brilliantly lit pub, walked in. He crossed over to the bar and leaned over to talk to the barmaid, a smiling young black woman. She looked puzzled for a moment before turning and calling to her right. Arthur could tell that she was asking Merlin something. The male bartender looked the guy up and down before sweeping his eyes round the entire bar, as soon as they landed on Arthur he quirked a grin before pointing over at him.
Great, Arthur thought to himself as the juggernaut of a man turned to walk towards him, this was apparently Tristan and he was going to kill Morgana, or maybe just steal all her condoms.
“Hi,” he said, his smile more than a little forced, he had to admit. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Merlin’s face, full of barely concealed amusement, as he held out his hand. Tristan just looked at it until Arthur let it fall uselessly to his side. “Did you not want a drink?” He tried. There was no response. “So, Tristan… what do you do?”
“Philosophy,” Tristan said, his voice monotone.
“Right… I thought you might be a physicist, what with knowing Morgana and all.” There was an uncomfortably long pause before Tristan managed to bring himself to respond. Arthur wondered whether he was just so slow it took that long for the words to get from his brain to his mouth, or whether he had hoped that Arthur would break first.
“First year,” was the long awaited answer, and Arthur supposed that that would have to do. He took a deep gulp from his pint and looked at the reflection of the bar in the window next to him. Tristan stared at him, at least Arthur thought he was staring at him, with the sunglasses on Arthur was not sure where he was looking. He obviously wasn’t blind: he had managed to find the bar and Arthur, but there did not seem to be any reason for the shades.
Neither of them said anything for a good few minutes. Finally Arthur caved and asked another question. He was not going to have Morgana tell him that it was his fault that the date had failed - if this was even a date, did it count if two people sat at the same table but did not communicate in any way?
“Where do you come from, originally?” he asked, usually he could tell roughly by regional accents, but Tristan had not exactly said much to give him clues.
“North,” was Tristan’s only response. North, very descriptive. So the man came from somewhere between here and the North Pole. Morgana had been right when she said he did not babble. There was definitely no babble here; it was a babble free zone. It was also devoid of any conversation whatsoever. Arthur almost expected to see tumbleweed rolling across the table. He looked over at the bar and caught Merlin’s eye again; honestly, did the man have nothing better to do than spy on his rapidly-turning-into-a-not-date? Talk to him, the bartender was mouthing at him, much to the amusement of his co-worker. Arthur just glared in response, trying to convey that he had tried talking to him, but it was about as effective as holding a conversation with a door, and that Merlin should mind his own bloody business. He was not sure that he got it all across, but Merlin chuckle before returning to work so he counted it as a win.
“Do you like it up there?” Arthur asked. He had a sudden image of Tristan standing in the middle of the North Pole surrounded by polar bears and looking just as apathetic and unimpressed as he did right now. The silence that spread out after his question gave him plenty of time to question whether polar bears lived in the South Pole or the North Pole, and add in details like an igloo in the background, and an assortment of Santa’s elves dancing round him.
“Yes.” Tristan answered, and Arthur was rapidly coming round to the idea that the man’s brain was just not large enough for anything more than monosyllabic answers. What Morgana had thought he would see in him was anyone’s guess.
“Good,” he said with a sigh, lapsing into silence again. Maybe Tristan was some sort of robot Morgana had created with her science geek friends in order to torture him. His face did not twitch a muscle, he did not seem to want to drink and his voice was not dissimilar to that of Arthur’s father’s sat nav. They sat again, for a good few minutes and Arthur was pretty much ready to declare the date the worst one ever in the history of all dates, well, at least in his experience. However, since his experience included people throwing up all over his floor, and his bed (though Morgana did not know about that part) and his date snogging random guys who weren’t him in toilets (another thing he had not told Morgana) then he felt that he was a fairly decent authority on the subject.
He might not have been on many dates, at least not since secondary school where he was reliably informed he had overcompensated by going out with as many girls as possible, but those he had been on had been bad.
“Look,” he said after another two minutes of silence. “Anyone can see that you don’t want to be here, to be honest, I don’t want to be here. I’m really just here to prove a point. So, why don’t we agree that this is going terribly and get completely plastered?”
As soon as the words left his mouth Tristan stood up, and Arthur was once again reminded of how tall the guy was. He towered over the smaller man, and he was completely shadowed by him. Tristan’s face remained impassive as he turned on his heel and walked out of the door.
“Right,” Arthur said to the empty seat across from him, “bye then.” He downed the dregs of his pint and stood up himself, but rather than walking to the door he strode back to the bar.
This time Merlin went to him as soon as he caught his eye.
“You ballsed that up, didn’t you,” the barman said, with a frown, handing Arthur a pint before the words had barely had time to leave his lips. “Do you enjoy being an enormous prat, or what?” He asked as he snatched the money out of Arthur’s hand and walked quickly down to the other end of the bar.
“I…” Arthur started, but there was no one to listen to him.
He drank his pint slowly, trying and failing to catch Merlin’s eye repeatedly. For some reason the young man seemed to be avoiding him, but Arthur could not, for the life of him, imagine why.
Gradually the night slowed down, and Arthur ordered another pint from the barmaid, whose name, he learned from the badge on her chest, was Gwen. She smiled at him serenely as she pulled his pint, but hurried off again to collect empties from the now almost deserted tables.
“I thought this was a busy night,” he commented as Merlin passed him by again, looking busy although now there was next to no one to serve, just a couple of older men down at the end of the bar and the group of giggly girls in the corner, all of which had drinks already. Merlin ignored him. “Look… what’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Earlier you were falling over yourself to be friendly, now it’s like you’re your own evil twin or something.”
Merlin turned to him, eyeing the half finished pint in his hand warily.
“How much have you had?” he asked with a small smile. Arthur looked down.
“Not that much,” he said with a shrug. “I’m not drunk.” Merlin nodded. “So, tell me why you’ve decided you hate me.”
“I should…” Merlin gestured to the men at the other end of the bar. Arthur followed his wave, but there did not seem to be any pressing matter down there.
“Merlin,” he said, glaring.
“Look, I just don’t see why you had to be so rude to the guy,” Merlin said, finally snapping. His eyes flashed and Arthur drew back, surprised.
“I wasn’t rude,” he said.
“You don’t want to be here, you’re just here to prove a point?” Merlin said, parroting his own words back to him, and when he re-examined them they did seem a little… harsh.
“He wasn’t even talking to me,” Arthur pointed out, defending himself, and wondering why he had even been worried about the opinion of some idiot bartender who had no impact on his life whatsoever apart from to provide him with much needed alcohol.
“Maybe he was nervous,” Merlin replied. “I mean, it was a blind date. Everybody’s nervous on a blind date, except Mr I’m so bloody perfect, apparently.” Arthur gaped at him, before remembering to keep his mouth closed.
“He barely spoke five words to me from when he came in the door,” Arthur continued.
“He could have been shy,” Merlin said, “maybe he would have opened up if you gave him a chance.”
“He didn’t look shy,” said the blond, and even he knew that response was stupid.
“And you can tell everything from appearances,” Merlin said sarcastically. “I mean, you’re not exactly hard on the eyes, but you aren’t half a prat.”
“I thought he didn’t want to be there,” Arthur protested.
“You thought you didn’t want to be there,” Merlin replied, but he did not move away again, just stood, his hands braced on the counter, wide apart, watching Arthur watching him.
“And those sunglasses,” Arthur said after a moment. Merlin paused, and opened his mouth.
“They might have...” he began, but half way through his sentence he broke into a reluctant grin. “Okay, so those were stupid.” Arthur grinned back, feeling a small swell of triumph at the back of his brain. This conversation, this whole situation, was bizarre, but somehow he was okay with that. He should have been back in the flat trying to finish off his work, but he did not even feel the slightest guilt.
“Thank you…”
“It still doesn’t mean you should have chucked him out like that,” Merlin added, lifting one hand to wag a finger under Arthur’s nose like. “So, why were you out on a blind date anyway?” He asked, falling back into the easy conversation spiel of earlier. “You don’t exactly look like you need to hide your appearance from people.”
“How did you know it was a blind date?” Arthur asked. The question had been niggling at the back of his mind for the past few minutes, throughout their conversation. “I can’t imagine Mr Monosyllable told you.”
“You did,” Merlin replied with a sly smile. While Arthur stared at him in befuddlement, Gwen plonked a tray of glasses down on the counter and Merlin began to gather them up without missing a beat.
“I did not.” He said, quickly retracing their conversation in his mind although he was sure he had not said anything of the sort.
“Yes, you did.” Merlin said, his back to Arthur as he transferred the glasses to the back of the bar. “It was pretty obvious. I mean - the way you’re dressed, the way you were looking round the bar when you got here, but you didn’t know who you were looking for.”
“What’s wrong with the way I dress?” Arthur asked, a little affronted by them comment, and Merlin laughed.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he assured the customer. He paused to look down at Arthur’s body. “Nothing at all. You look great, but… it’s clear that you’re dressed up for someone, and adding that to the rest, it wasn’t exactly a study date with someone you’ve only contacted by email.” Arthur frowned, but had to concede the point. Looking down at his clothes he supposed he was dressed a little better than other people in the bar. Merlin himself was only wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans.
“I should be going,” he said, although he felt a little disappointed. Merlin nodded, smiling slightly. He had only stayed to tell the bartender that he was being a bastard, and apparently, that was unnecessary, he sighed and put a fiver down on the bar. Merlin’s eyebrows shot up his forehead.
“What’s that for?” he asked. Arthur just shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed.
“Being an idiot,” he said, “and stopping this night from being a complete disaster.” Merlin grinned at him then, and Arthur shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. That had not been the kind of thing he did usually. He tended to just go into bars, drink and then leave, he did not have conversations with the people who served his alcohol and he definitely did not tip them more than the price of a drink, especially when they were annoying opinionated arseholes who called him a prat.
He turned to go before he could make a bigger fool of himself, and hurried out of the door. It was later than he had thought, and when he got back into the flat, Owain and Morgana were curled up on the sofa in one of their hideously saccharine moments (but at least they weren’t defiling the furniture) watching some brainless action film.
“How did it go?” Owain asked him, and he noticed that Morgana was asleep. After a moment of silent thanks to God that he would not have to put up with her questions, he rolled his eyes.
“About as well as I expected,” he replied with a shrug. He and Owain had a curious half friendship. He was never certain whether his sister’s boyfriend actually liked him, or just put up with him because of Morgana; they seemed to get on well enough, but it was always a little strained when it was just the two of them.
“Did you kill him?” the man on the sofa asked, and Arthur smirked a little.
“No, just bruised his ego a little, I think.” He sighed and leant back against the wall. “Did you know he didn’t talk?” he asked. Owain shrugged, careful not to wake Morgana who was beginning to drool on his shirt a little. It was nice to see that she was still human.
“I haven’t really spoken to him much; he just tends to hang around at the back of the room.” Arthur nodded. Morgana probably didn’t know him very well either; she had probably just been around her entire group of friends and inquired as to who was gay or bi and single. He sighed.
“I’ll keep her off your back,” Owain promised and Arthur nodded gratefully.
“Thanks,” Arthur replied, “I’m going to bed.” He headed for the door, but paused as he pushed it open. “Try to be a little quieter in the morning, okay?” Owain just chuckled.
***
Next Part
-
Fandom: Merlin
Rating: NC-17
Pairing/Characters: Merlin/Arthur, Arthur/Lancelot, sort of Arthur/Tristan, Morgana/Owain, Gwen/Lancelot; Arthur, Morgana, Uther, Owain, Merlin, Tristan, Lancelot, Gwen, Nimueh (but only sort of)
Disclaimer: I do not own Arthur or Merlin, but then technically neither do the BBC, but they do own the interpretation of them on which this is based - not me. I’m not getting money from this. Oh, and all and any resemblance to characters/places/situations other than those in the show is purely coincidental, this is completely fictional.
Warnings: Cracktastic, AU, Fluff, Pr0n. Some characters are only in name only, but I’ve tried to get the major ones as IC as I can.
Spoilers: Character spoilers for 1x05, 1x09 and 1x02, no plot spoilers except for the fact that Arthur and Merlin are so shagging
Author’s Note: Many thanks to wrennette for the beta work, any mistakes that are left in are mine alone.
I tend to steer clear of AU and NC-17, so apologies in advance. This was just meant to be an exercise in writing them in character that I did on a train, then it grew, and grew, and I kind of like it in a cracky sort of way, so I figured I’d post it. The universe has sadly expanded in my head as well, though…
Summary: Modern day student AU. Still set in Britain. Morgana sends Arthur on some blind dates that don’t go quite according to plan
The Pendragon Guide to How Not to Date
Part the First - in which Morgana is loud, Arthur has no life and Uther doesn’t know anything.
Sometimes Arthur wondered what had possessed him to live with Morgana. His step-sister had always been irritating and the fact that they had somehow (though through no fault of his own) ended up at the same university was definitely not a good enough reason to live together. But his father had bought the flat for them and insisted that both of them live in it so that his money did not go to waste. It did help that the flat was at least ten times better than any of the student housing in the area, but not much.
If he were completely honest, Morgana was not that bad a flatmate: she picked up after herself, she cleaned the bathroom every other week and took all her hairs out of the plughole, she even washed up her own lunch dishes and made him a cup of tea after he’d finished one of his essay frenzies. It was just that, sometimes - like now, she was a little… loud. There were times when he could swear that the wall between their rooms was made of paper: he could hear everything.
Seven o’clock in the morning was not the optimal time to be woken up, especially when you were an Arts student with a six hour week. Plus, there were some things Arthur could have done with never knowing about, a lot of things actually and his step-sister’s ownership of handcuffs was one of them. When Arthur said loud, he meant loud.
The rhythmic sawing noise from the adjacent room was speeding up and Arthur groaned, folding the pillow over his ears, but, somehow, Morgana’s voice defied muffling and he heard her moans quite clearly through the padding. It did not even manage to drown out Owain’s grunts of pleasure. Really, he decided, he needed to get a new pillow, and possibly a machine gun.
The hearing was not even the worst part, he admitted to himself as blissful silence fell. The worst part of the whole thing was Morgana grinning at him across the breakfast table in the mornings as Owain made bacon and eggs (by far the best boyfriend she had ever had in Arthur’s opinion). Her grins could make him embarrassed even when he had nothing to be embarrassed about.
That morning he glared at her over his coffee mug as Owain whistled to himself while prodding fried eggs. He always whistled after morning sex, Arthur had learnt. Even if he had not heard every sodding thing he would know that by now.
“Did you sleep well?” Morgana asked with a wicked grin. She did not even pretend innocence, and somehow that made it worse.
“Until about seven,” he replied as composedly as he could, “when something woke me up.” He refused to be cowed by her gaze but Owain spluttered a little and Arthur could see that the tips of his ears had turned red. Apparently her boyfriend was not as thick-skinned as Morgana, but Arthur had come to the conclusion from years of experience that there was no one as thick-skinned as Morgana.
“How dreadful,” she said, affecting a look of horrified sympathy. “Do you have any idea what it was?”
“None whatsoever - you weren’t doing anything at seven, were you?” She paused and Arthur made a mental note to mark another one to him on the tally stuck to the kitchen door.
“Sorry, can’t help you…” she said. Then Owain turned around to deposit their breakfast on their plates. The two of them began a discussion about their first lecture of their day, at which Arthur automatically switched off. Scientists, he thought with affectionate venom. He settled for eating his bacon and eggs (and he had to talk to Morgana about keeping this one, because maybe the loud morning sex and the knowing grins over the table were worth it if he got this for his troubles). The sound of his name caught his attention and he looked up to see Morgana grinning mockingly at him.
“But, of course, Arthur doesn’t start until… what time is it, again?” she asked, her voice sugary sweet.
“Three,” he told her with a smug grin.
“By which time I will have had,” she made a point of counting the hours on her fingers, “Five hours.” She sighed heavily. “I hate you, by the way.” He nodded with a smirk and snagged the newspaper as Owain got up.
As Morgana was finishing up her coffee and pulling on her boots, the phone rang. Arthur grabbed it from the cradle and read the caller ID.
“Bugger,” he announced with feeling.
“Uther?” his step-sister asked, looking up at him from beneath the curtain of her hair, where she was crouched in the doorway. He nodded, staring at the phone acidly while his thumb hovered in between the answer and ignore keys. “Remember,” she told him as she and Owain headed for the front door, “Owain went home at half past ten, as he always does, and you were with us all the time.”
“I know, Morgana,” he hissed at her, as though his father could somehow overhear the conversation although he had not answered the phone at the time. “I do know how to keep secrets from my own father.”
“Good - then if he finds out I’ll know you did it on purpose,” she told him before the door banged shut behind her.
He finally gave in and hit the answer button, grimacing as he brought the phone to his ear.
“Hello father,” he said in as upbeat a voice as he could manage, thanking God for the coffee. If he had been any less awake, no doubt his father would have given him the third degree about his drinking habits again.
“Arthur,” his father’s greeting was curt as always. “How are the essays going?”
***
He had cobbled together a meal by the time Morgana got back from her lectures and she smiled gratefully as she shuffled through the door.
“No Owain?” he asked.
“He’s got a lab report due on Wednesday,” she informed him, collapsing into her seat at the small kitchen table.
“All the more for us, then,” he said, grabbing a fork.
“Lasagne?” Morgana asked with a raised eyebrow. “You make lasagne?”
“I found a recipe,” he replied with a shrug but she looked unconvinced and poked at the meal with her fork suspiciously.
“It won’t kill you,” he protested.
“So say you,” she retorted, “I still remember the burgers you made.”
“I was eleven!” Arthur said with annoyance.
“I was sick for a week,” Morgana reminded him. “They were raw.”
“They were brown on the outside. I didn’t know you were supposed to check the middle. Anyway, it’s beef. The French like it best raw.”
“Please tell me you cooked it,” Morgana begged with a horrified expression, staring at her lasagne as though it were about to moo at her.
“Of course I cooked it!” he snapped back, his patience reaching its limit. He stabbed down with his fork angrily. There was a moment of silence while Morgana looked across at him with sympathy.
It was difficult to remember a time when he had not known Morgana. Although his father had only married her mother when they were ten (a short lived affair which had ended abruptly when her mother had run off with Uther’s personal assistant) they had grown up knowing each other, fighting and teasing. It was only ever at moments like this, where Morgana knew what was going through his head without his having to say anything, that he remembered just how well she knew him.
“I take it from your charming manner that your father was having a go at your grades again.” He was always Arthur’s father, never hers, even though Uther had taken care of her after her mother had left for the Canary Islands with half of his money. But Morgana always called him ‘Uther’ or ‘your father’. He had never asked her about it, and he probably never would, but it was something he always noticed.
“I got a 2:1 on my last essay,” Arthur told her with a shrug, looking up at her defiantly. He knew his face had gone blank, as it always did when they discussed his father’s influence in his life.
“That’s good,” she said, her lips quirking into a genuine smile.
“It’s not a first,” corrected Arthur, “and I need to be perfect in everything before I take over the family business.” He took a mouthful of lasagne as an excuse not to continue. The taste was a pleasant surprise: apparently throwing lots of things in at random did sometimes work.
“You really need to tell him that you don’t want to run the family business, Arthur.” She said. Arthur didn’t answer. “And that’s not the only thing you need to tell him.”
“He’s right though,” Arthur said, cutting through her point as fast as he could.
“How?” Morgana looked horrified at the suggestion.
“I could have got a first on that essay,” he answered. “I should have got a first on that essay. If I hadn’t gone out the night before it was due in I could have looked it over again.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Arthur,” his sister told him in her no nonsense tone. “You spent an entire week on that essay. I barely saw you for days. It counts towards what? One percent of this year?”
“Two percent,” he corrected.
“Wow, that’s going to destroy your whole degree,” She said in sarcastic horror. “So you got a harsh marker - it happens. Uther has no right to tell you that you need to work harder.”
“You tell me I don’t work hard enough all the time,” he pointed out.
“I’m a science student; you’re an Arts student - that’s how it works: I complain that you do nothing, you complain that I can’t string a sentence together with grammatical accuracy. Also, I live with you, I know you do work. Uther doesn’t know shit about it.”
“He’s my father,” Arthur told her firmly.
“That doesn’t mean he’s infallible.”
“He sends his love by the way,” Arthur added, “and he’s pleased that Owain’s being a gentleman.”
“Oh… he’s not that gentle,” Morgana allowed herself to be sidetracked, smirking a little as Arthur gave her his ‘must you?’ face.
“I think I’ll just pretend you didn’t say that,” he said. Morgana’s smile increased and she began to eat her food.
“You,” she said with determination, “need to get laid.”
“We’ve had this discussion,” Arthur said with a sigh.
“And I seem to recall your side of the argument was stupid.”
“I don’t have the time,” he told her, trying to end the conversation there.
“That’s not an excuse.”
“No, it’s a reason. I don’t have time to go out, I don’t have time to find someone and I don’t have time to deal with the fall out…”
“Then make time,” Morgana said, “you’re cooped up in the house all the time and the only people you talk to are Uther and I.”
“I talk to Owain,” he protested, sitting up straighter in his seat.
“He doesn’t count.”
“I’ll tell him you said that, shall I?” He asked, trying to distract her, but that never worked.
“You know what I mean.” She told him, stubbornly refusing to be redirected as he knew she would. “This lasagne is delicious, by the way.”
“Thanks. But what if my father finds out?” he asked.
“Are you planning on telling him?” she asked. He shook his head. “Then how is he going to find out? Not that it would matter if he did.”
“Morgana…”
“You’ll have to tell him sometime,” she said. “So you’re gay…” she paused, probably for dramatic effect, she did like to make a show of these things. “It’s not the end of the world, Arthur.”
“Not yours, maybe. But his?”
“He’ll have to deal with it. One day he’ll notice that you’ve never had a girlfriend.”
Arthur declined to answer and focussed his attention onto his dinner again, glaring at it.
“Come on, Arthur. You haven’t been out with anyone since that guy in first year that used to get drunk and throw up all over your floor.” She told him. “Look. I’ve got a few friends; I’ll set you up with one.”
“No, Morgana,” he said, looking up in alarm. “I am not going on a blind date that you’ve set up for me.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked.
“I’m killed and left in a ditch,” Arthur replied with complete seriousness. He had met some of her friends. They varied between the subnormal and the criminally insane. There was no happy medium and the only thing they ever talked about was physics.
“They’re nice people, look. It’ll just be one date, somewhere you choose, no strings, no pressure. One date with a nice guy, one evening where you get out of the house and you might even get a free meal out of it.”
“I’m not the girl,” Arthur protested.
“Hey, sometimes I pay for Owain’s dinner,” she said.
“That’s because dad gives you shitloads of money.” She shrugged, unabashed at the allegation.
“Look. Just try it. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. If it does, then, great.”
“Morgana.”
“Arthur.” She replied, mimicking his tone exactly. “You can’t live by Uther’s rules your entire life.”
“Because you’re so ready to tell him that you and Owain are sleeping together.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Hypocrite,” Arthur retorted.
“So, are you going to say yes, or are you too much of a coward?” Morgana asked, taunting him.
“I’m not scared!” Arthur protested.
“Then that’s settled. Friday night, that’s after your next deadline, right? Where do you want to go: that place down the road, or somewhere in town?” Arthur gaped at her.
And that was how he found himself not quite agreeing to go on a blind date with some friend of his step-sister, and no matter what he said she would not let him out of it.
***
Part the Second: in which Arthur is definitely not nervous, Merlin provides the alcohol and Tristan may or may not live in an igloo
Friday rolled around all too quickly for Arthur’s taste and no matter how much he glared at Morgana she just laughed. He knew that she had threatened Owain with no sex if her boyfriend told him anything about his date. He still did not know exactly why he was going, but he knew that he could not back out now. It had become an issue of pride, and it was at times like these that he wished Morgana did not know him quite as well.
They were going to The Dragon down the road, because, as Arthur had pointed out to Morgana, this was a date but it was a date between two guys and he wanted to go to a pub not a sodding restaurant. She had shaken her head and asked him where the romance was in that.
“You want me to get laid, Morgana,” he had said, “that doesn’t require romance.”
“It can’t hurt,” she had said, and he had not had a reply to that.
So he was standing in front of his mirror emphatically not doing his hair, nor was he worrying about what to wear. His red shirt would be fine… although the blue one was good too.
There was the sound of a smothered laugh from the doorway and he turned around to glare at Morgana again. She looked suitably contrite for half a second before she could hold in her amusement no longer.
“Honestly, Arthur… you’re such a girl!” she commented.
“If you haven’t got anything constructive to say, then don’t say anything,” he said back, gritting his teeth. He felt enough of an idiot as it was without her laughing at him.
“Wear the red,” she said, “it compliments your hair better… which is fine by the way, so stop fiddling with it.” He brought his hand down from his fringe guiltily. “It’s just a date, not the Spanish inquisition,” she said more gently, coming in to grab a jacket from the pile he had shoved onto the bed. He had a lot of clothes - so many he hadn’t even noticed before. God, he thought within the privacy of his own mind, he was a girl.
“Here,” she handed him something made of brown suede. “You look hot; don’t worry about it.”
“So, what’s this friend of yours like, anyway?” he asked, pulling on the jacket and looking at himself in the mirror again. She was right, he did look hot, not that he ever looked bad. “Morgana, I just want to know what you’ve got me into.” She began to smooth the material over his shoulders, fussing like his mother, or how he imagined his mother would have done had she survived his birth.
“You’ll like him,” she said, giving an encouraging smile.
“I think I’ll decide that for myself,” he retorted and she stuck her tongue out.
“He’s tall, dark and handsome, and he’s not the type to blabber away at you. I know how you hate idiots.” He nodded. All in all, the mystery man did not sound too bad. “He’s got a killer arse as well.”
“And his name? In case I have to ask everyone in the pub who he is,” Arthur prompted. They joined eyes for a second and he raised one eyebrow in a way that never failed to get him his way with his female tutors (and a couple of the male ones).
“Tristan,” she said after a moment. “Tristan Lyons.”
“Tristan?” Arthur asked incredulously, his face screwing up in disbelief. “He sounds like an actor in an Australian soap.”
“Arthur, give him a chance,” she chided, stepping away to glare at him more effectively. “He’s just as nervous as you are.”
“I’m not nervous,” Arthur replied reflexively, and he wasn’t, because this was completely pointless. This was just another one of Morgana’s ridiculous ideas and no doubt it would all go horribly wrong as all her ideas did. You only got nervous when things were important and this, this pseudo date, was not important. Certainly, it was his first date (pseudo or not) in two years, since he had unceremoniously dumped the guy who got drunk and threw up on his floor (Kay, he remembered, and dammit if that did not sound like the name of an actor in an Australian soap as well). There was nothing to be nervous about; he had not even met this Tristan bloke. And if he was a tiny, microscopic bit nervous, it was probably in case this guy drugged and raped him.
God he hoped he wasn’t a chemist - they probably had access to rohypnol, or GHB.
“Why did I agree to this again?” he asked rhetorically, turning his best death glare on his own reflection.
“Because you’re young, single and you want to enjoy yourself.” His eyes slipped to Morgana’s in the reflection as she turned, and he knew that even she did not believe that. She hesitated a second before giving in. “Okay, you’re doing it because I’m a manipulative bitch who wants to see you happy and relaxed and comfortable. Is that such a bad thing?”
When she put it like that he could not really argue so he simply shrugged with a sigh.
“You should get going,” Morgana said, giving him a gentle shove towards the door. “He’ll be wearing black.”
“You just want me to leave so you can shag Owain on the sofa.” She grinned, and pushed him more firmly towards the door. He thought about what he had just said for a moment and he turned back to her, horrified at the idea. “Oh god! Don’t shag Owain on the sofa.”
“Who says I haven’t already?” She asked and Arthur had time to gape, goldfish like, at her before she pushed him down the corridor and out the front door, closing it behind him.
“I will never be able to sit on that sofa again…” he muttered to no one.
***
The Dragon was full when he turned up and he stood in the doorway for a second, pulling himself together and wondering just what the hell he had got himself into, although the lovely visuals of Morgana and Owain and that sofa (the sofa!?) had distracted him for a minute.
After a couple of seconds of uncharacteristic hesitation, he strode over to the bar. He was Arthur Pendragon, for crying out loud, and no prissy little Soap boy called Tristan was going to cow him. He pulled himself into one of the stools and tried to catch the barman’s eye. He really needed a beer.
The guy behind the bar was rushed off his feet, but he really did not seem all that competent at his job. He ran from one end of the bar to the other, taking orders, which, from the amused comments of the rest of the patrons, seemed never to be quite right, and he poured beer from tap slower than anyone Arthur had ever seen. No one seemed concerned by it, though, all of the regulars, as Arthur presumed they were, took it in their stride, answering his ridiculous grin with matching indulgent smiles.
He was at the end of the bar, serving a group of excited girls with the sort of flirting that was only flirting because he did not know he was doing it, when he noticed Arthur staring at him and tapping impatiently on the counter. There was a quick grin and a slight nod of acknowledgement, but it still took him five minutes to get round to actually taking his order.
“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked, seemingly popping up out of nowhere into Arthur’s line of sight.
“I was beginning to think I was never going to get a drink,” Arthur said with a huff.
“Oh, I get round to everyone sooner or later,” the man said smiling, totally unaffected by Arthur’s glaring. He was thrown a bit by that, no one was completely unaffected by his glares, he was bloody good at them. “Sorry, though. It’s a busy night.”
“And you’ve spent half of it talking,” Arthur pointed out. The bartender was about his own age, but that was where the similarity between them ended. Where Arthur was blond and well-muscled (although Morgana loved to poke him in the stomach and tell him he was getting a spare tyre) the other man was thin, with a mop of dark hair that probably had not seen a brush in the last three years.
“All part of the job,” he replied, and the grin did not fade from his face. “So what can I get you?”
“A pint,” Arthur replied, curtly, turning to survey the clientele for his blind date.
“Any preferences?” the bartender asked. Arthur shook his head before turning back, looking between the tables of people. “Waiting for someone?” he asked grabbing a glass and sticking it under the tap.
“Yes.” Arthur replied before he realised what he was saying.
“Male or Female?” The bartender asked.
“Male,” Arthur shot him a quick look, but the man did not even bat an eyelid. Of course, there was no way he could know that it was a date, not from the limited information Arthur had given him.
“What does he look like?” the man continued, placing the glass on the bar and waiting as Arthur fished in his pocket for his wallet. Arthur avoided his eyes desperately, shrugging. “You don’t know?” Arthur shrugged again, reminding himself that blind dates were nothing to be ashamed of, except they were.
“Here,” Arthur said, holding out the money. The bartender reached out to take it and their hands brushed slightly before Arthur snatched his away.
“Thanks,” the guy said, “I’m Merlin by the way.”
“I didn’t ask,” Arthur replied. Merlin’s grin just grew.
“I know,” he said, with a shrug of his own, “But I thought I’d tell you anyway.”
“Right, thanks,” Arthur said, grabbing his pint and taking a sip.
“What’s your name?” Merlin asked, standing patiently in front of him, although there were several other people who still needed serving. Arthur noticed that a barmaid had come out to join him and she was working far more efficiently that Merlin had been.
“Why do you want to know?” Arthur asked, confused.
“Don’t look so terrified,” Merlin told him with a laugh, “I’m not a crazed stalker, it’s just, if your friend comes in looking for you and asks, I can direct him your way.” Arthur nodded, feeling a little sheepish, although he could not really say why.
“Right… yes, I’m Arthur, Arthur Pendragon,” he replied with a nod. “And his name is Tristan… something.”
“Well, Arthur Pendragon,” Merlin said, giving him a mocking little bow. “If I see a Tristan Something, I’ll be sure to point him your way.” Arthur stared at him, unsure whether he should glare at the obvious teasing, or thank the dark haired man for offering to help.
“Right… well, thanks I suppose.” Merlin just smiled, before disappearing off to serve another customer.
Arthur pulled himself together, taking another sip of his pint, before heading over to a small table in the corner of the main room. He had only been in this pub twice before, and both times he had been terrifically drunk at the end of a lengthy bar crawl, but he really did not remember that bartender. He must have been new, which would explain how crap he was at his job as well. He sighed. Apparently he had been stood up, on a blind date, by a friend of Morgana’s. That was beyond humiliating.
He watched the people coming in and out of the bar with idle curiosity. There were a few couples, a group of students who seemed to be from one of the sports teams, probably rugby given their varying states of dress and the fact that at least half of them were in drag. One of them waved at him and he thought maybe he had seen the guy in a tutorial or a lecture, before realising he had done a presentation with him last year. In Arthur’s defence, the lipstick really did change his entire appearance, as did the long blonde wig.
He had been waiting another five minutes and was just about ready to call the whole thing off, go home to Morgana and give her the required I told you so speech when a tall man, dressed entirely in black, huge buckled boots on his feet that looked as though they might have steel toecaps in and a pair of sunglasses that must have made it impossible to see in the less than brilliantly lit pub, walked in. He crossed over to the bar and leaned over to talk to the barmaid, a smiling young black woman. She looked puzzled for a moment before turning and calling to her right. Arthur could tell that she was asking Merlin something. The male bartender looked the guy up and down before sweeping his eyes round the entire bar, as soon as they landed on Arthur he quirked a grin before pointing over at him.
Great, Arthur thought to himself as the juggernaut of a man turned to walk towards him, this was apparently Tristan and he was going to kill Morgana, or maybe just steal all her condoms.
“Hi,” he said, his smile more than a little forced, he had to admit. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Merlin’s face, full of barely concealed amusement, as he held out his hand. Tristan just looked at it until Arthur let it fall uselessly to his side. “Did you not want a drink?” He tried. There was no response. “So, Tristan… what do you do?”
“Philosophy,” Tristan said, his voice monotone.
“Right… I thought you might be a physicist, what with knowing Morgana and all.” There was an uncomfortably long pause before Tristan managed to bring himself to respond. Arthur wondered whether he was just so slow it took that long for the words to get from his brain to his mouth, or whether he had hoped that Arthur would break first.
“First year,” was the long awaited answer, and Arthur supposed that that would have to do. He took a deep gulp from his pint and looked at the reflection of the bar in the window next to him. Tristan stared at him, at least Arthur thought he was staring at him, with the sunglasses on Arthur was not sure where he was looking. He obviously wasn’t blind: he had managed to find the bar and Arthur, but there did not seem to be any reason for the shades.
Neither of them said anything for a good few minutes. Finally Arthur caved and asked another question. He was not going to have Morgana tell him that it was his fault that the date had failed - if this was even a date, did it count if two people sat at the same table but did not communicate in any way?
“Where do you come from, originally?” he asked, usually he could tell roughly by regional accents, but Tristan had not exactly said much to give him clues.
“North,” was Tristan’s only response. North, very descriptive. So the man came from somewhere between here and the North Pole. Morgana had been right when she said he did not babble. There was definitely no babble here; it was a babble free zone. It was also devoid of any conversation whatsoever. Arthur almost expected to see tumbleweed rolling across the table. He looked over at the bar and caught Merlin’s eye again; honestly, did the man have nothing better to do than spy on his rapidly-turning-into-a-not-date? Talk to him, the bartender was mouthing at him, much to the amusement of his co-worker. Arthur just glared in response, trying to convey that he had tried talking to him, but it was about as effective as holding a conversation with a door, and that Merlin should mind his own bloody business. He was not sure that he got it all across, but Merlin chuckle before returning to work so he counted it as a win.
“Do you like it up there?” Arthur asked. He had a sudden image of Tristan standing in the middle of the North Pole surrounded by polar bears and looking just as apathetic and unimpressed as he did right now. The silence that spread out after his question gave him plenty of time to question whether polar bears lived in the South Pole or the North Pole, and add in details like an igloo in the background, and an assortment of Santa’s elves dancing round him.
“Yes.” Tristan answered, and Arthur was rapidly coming round to the idea that the man’s brain was just not large enough for anything more than monosyllabic answers. What Morgana had thought he would see in him was anyone’s guess.
“Good,” he said with a sigh, lapsing into silence again. Maybe Tristan was some sort of robot Morgana had created with her science geek friends in order to torture him. His face did not twitch a muscle, he did not seem to want to drink and his voice was not dissimilar to that of Arthur’s father’s sat nav. They sat again, for a good few minutes and Arthur was pretty much ready to declare the date the worst one ever in the history of all dates, well, at least in his experience. However, since his experience included people throwing up all over his floor, and his bed (though Morgana did not know about that part) and his date snogging random guys who weren’t him in toilets (another thing he had not told Morgana) then he felt that he was a fairly decent authority on the subject.
He might not have been on many dates, at least not since secondary school where he was reliably informed he had overcompensated by going out with as many girls as possible, but those he had been on had been bad.
“Look,” he said after another two minutes of silence. “Anyone can see that you don’t want to be here, to be honest, I don’t want to be here. I’m really just here to prove a point. So, why don’t we agree that this is going terribly and get completely plastered?”
As soon as the words left his mouth Tristan stood up, and Arthur was once again reminded of how tall the guy was. He towered over the smaller man, and he was completely shadowed by him. Tristan’s face remained impassive as he turned on his heel and walked out of the door.
“Right,” Arthur said to the empty seat across from him, “bye then.” He downed the dregs of his pint and stood up himself, but rather than walking to the door he strode back to the bar.
This time Merlin went to him as soon as he caught his eye.
“You ballsed that up, didn’t you,” the barman said, with a frown, handing Arthur a pint before the words had barely had time to leave his lips. “Do you enjoy being an enormous prat, or what?” He asked as he snatched the money out of Arthur’s hand and walked quickly down to the other end of the bar.
“I…” Arthur started, but there was no one to listen to him.
He drank his pint slowly, trying and failing to catch Merlin’s eye repeatedly. For some reason the young man seemed to be avoiding him, but Arthur could not, for the life of him, imagine why.
Gradually the night slowed down, and Arthur ordered another pint from the barmaid, whose name, he learned from the badge on her chest, was Gwen. She smiled at him serenely as she pulled his pint, but hurried off again to collect empties from the now almost deserted tables.
“I thought this was a busy night,” he commented as Merlin passed him by again, looking busy although now there was next to no one to serve, just a couple of older men down at the end of the bar and the group of giggly girls in the corner, all of which had drinks already. Merlin ignored him. “Look… what’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Earlier you were falling over yourself to be friendly, now it’s like you’re your own evil twin or something.”
Merlin turned to him, eyeing the half finished pint in his hand warily.
“How much have you had?” he asked with a small smile. Arthur looked down.
“Not that much,” he said with a shrug. “I’m not drunk.” Merlin nodded. “So, tell me why you’ve decided you hate me.”
“I should…” Merlin gestured to the men at the other end of the bar. Arthur followed his wave, but there did not seem to be any pressing matter down there.
“Merlin,” he said, glaring.
“Look, I just don’t see why you had to be so rude to the guy,” Merlin said, finally snapping. His eyes flashed and Arthur drew back, surprised.
“I wasn’t rude,” he said.
“You don’t want to be here, you’re just here to prove a point?” Merlin said, parroting his own words back to him, and when he re-examined them they did seem a little… harsh.
“He wasn’t even talking to me,” Arthur pointed out, defending himself, and wondering why he had even been worried about the opinion of some idiot bartender who had no impact on his life whatsoever apart from to provide him with much needed alcohol.
“Maybe he was nervous,” Merlin replied. “I mean, it was a blind date. Everybody’s nervous on a blind date, except Mr I’m so bloody perfect, apparently.” Arthur gaped at him, before remembering to keep his mouth closed.
“He barely spoke five words to me from when he came in the door,” Arthur continued.
“He could have been shy,” Merlin said, “maybe he would have opened up if you gave him a chance.”
“He didn’t look shy,” said the blond, and even he knew that response was stupid.
“And you can tell everything from appearances,” Merlin said sarcastically. “I mean, you’re not exactly hard on the eyes, but you aren’t half a prat.”
“I thought he didn’t want to be there,” Arthur protested.
“You thought you didn’t want to be there,” Merlin replied, but he did not move away again, just stood, his hands braced on the counter, wide apart, watching Arthur watching him.
“And those sunglasses,” Arthur said after a moment. Merlin paused, and opened his mouth.
“They might have...” he began, but half way through his sentence he broke into a reluctant grin. “Okay, so those were stupid.” Arthur grinned back, feeling a small swell of triumph at the back of his brain. This conversation, this whole situation, was bizarre, but somehow he was okay with that. He should have been back in the flat trying to finish off his work, but he did not even feel the slightest guilt.
“Thank you…”
“It still doesn’t mean you should have chucked him out like that,” Merlin added, lifting one hand to wag a finger under Arthur’s nose like. “So, why were you out on a blind date anyway?” He asked, falling back into the easy conversation spiel of earlier. “You don’t exactly look like you need to hide your appearance from people.”
“How did you know it was a blind date?” Arthur asked. The question had been niggling at the back of his mind for the past few minutes, throughout their conversation. “I can’t imagine Mr Monosyllable told you.”
“You did,” Merlin replied with a sly smile. While Arthur stared at him in befuddlement, Gwen plonked a tray of glasses down on the counter and Merlin began to gather them up without missing a beat.
“I did not.” He said, quickly retracing their conversation in his mind although he was sure he had not said anything of the sort.
“Yes, you did.” Merlin said, his back to Arthur as he transferred the glasses to the back of the bar. “It was pretty obvious. I mean - the way you’re dressed, the way you were looking round the bar when you got here, but you didn’t know who you were looking for.”
“What’s wrong with the way I dress?” Arthur asked, a little affronted by them comment, and Merlin laughed.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he assured the customer. He paused to look down at Arthur’s body. “Nothing at all. You look great, but… it’s clear that you’re dressed up for someone, and adding that to the rest, it wasn’t exactly a study date with someone you’ve only contacted by email.” Arthur frowned, but had to concede the point. Looking down at his clothes he supposed he was dressed a little better than other people in the bar. Merlin himself was only wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans.
“I should be going,” he said, although he felt a little disappointed. Merlin nodded, smiling slightly. He had only stayed to tell the bartender that he was being a bastard, and apparently, that was unnecessary, he sighed and put a fiver down on the bar. Merlin’s eyebrows shot up his forehead.
“What’s that for?” he asked. Arthur just shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed.
“Being an idiot,” he said, “and stopping this night from being a complete disaster.” Merlin grinned at him then, and Arthur shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. That had not been the kind of thing he did usually. He tended to just go into bars, drink and then leave, he did not have conversations with the people who served his alcohol and he definitely did not tip them more than the price of a drink, especially when they were annoying opinionated arseholes who called him a prat.
He turned to go before he could make a bigger fool of himself, and hurried out of the door. It was later than he had thought, and when he got back into the flat, Owain and Morgana were curled up on the sofa in one of their hideously saccharine moments (but at least they weren’t defiling the furniture) watching some brainless action film.
“How did it go?” Owain asked him, and he noticed that Morgana was asleep. After a moment of silent thanks to God that he would not have to put up with her questions, he rolled his eyes.
“About as well as I expected,” he replied with a shrug. He and Owain had a curious half friendship. He was never certain whether his sister’s boyfriend actually liked him, or just put up with him because of Morgana; they seemed to get on well enough, but it was always a little strained when it was just the two of them.
“Did you kill him?” the man on the sofa asked, and Arthur smirked a little.
“No, just bruised his ego a little, I think.” He sighed and leant back against the wall. “Did you know he didn’t talk?” he asked. Owain shrugged, careful not to wake Morgana who was beginning to drool on his shirt a little. It was nice to see that she was still human.
“I haven’t really spoken to him much; he just tends to hang around at the back of the room.” Arthur nodded. Morgana probably didn’t know him very well either; she had probably just been around her entire group of friends and inquired as to who was gay or bi and single. He sighed.
“I’ll keep her off your back,” Owain promised and Arthur nodded gratefully.
“Thanks,” Arthur replied, “I’m going to bed.” He headed for the door, but paused as he pushed it open. “Try to be a little quieter in the morning, okay?” Owain just chuckled.
***
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