Yo!Sushi; Merlin Modern AU
Title: Yo!Sushi
Authors: mydoctortennant
Pairings/Characters: Arthur/Gwen, slight Merlin/Morgana, mentions of Lancelot (unrequited G/L)
Warnings: Spouts of bad mouthing. Vomit. Ruining of designer labels...
Disclaimer: Not real. Despite birthday wishes and night time prayers to Santa (all Hail Amy Pond!) Merlin still isn't mine!
Rating: PG13
Summary: Gwen's never eaten in a sushi bar before... something is bound to go wrong...
Author Notes: Written for my Aussie Wifey, mustbethursday3 who actually found our original bet, it's okay, we didn't dream it after all! Yo!sushi is a sushi bar chain in the UK. I've never eaten in one. I'm more of a 'Merlin' when it comes to sushi... our year 8 Geography teacher (awesome though he was) brought some in when we were studying Japan and I had to leave the classroom because it made me feel really sick. Bluh. Why would anybody want to eat seaweed? It's beyond me!
Thank you goes out to sgmajorshipper for her beta skills. Big hugs to her guys 'cause she's putting up with a bombardment of stories at the moment and doing a stellar job at keeping up with and putting up with me. Love you Wifey <3
The random 'gag' about sushi and 'the white one nobody likes' is a joke by Eddie Izzard on his 'Sexie' tour which I was watching whilst writing this so I had to put it in.
My Merlin Prompt Table
Round it went and round again.
For Gwen it was her first time in a sushi bar and she really didn’t know what to pick. Morgana and Arthur swiped what they wanted from the belt and were already tucking in before Gwen had even opened her chopsticks; “It all goes by so fast.”
“Not really,” Arthur shrugged, “Plenty of time to read and grab.”
“But I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I like,” she said frowning at the small plates of foreign, both in origin and to her, food. She looked up and across the small podium they surrounded to Merlin who looked frankly disgusted at the prospect of raw fish. The poor guy was vegetarian and had been as long as Gwen could remember. The stuff he went through because Arthur made him. Even Gwen was dreading the thought of raw fish being in her mouth.
“Then try a bit of everything,” Arthur said flippantly happily stuffing a morsel into his mouth.
“Isn’t that just a little expensive?” That was the primary reason that Gwen had never eaten sushi before. She didn’t know if she would like it for one, but secondarily she hadn’t wanted to blow the expense and spend money she didn’t have on food she might not like.
“That’s why you get a selection,” he grabbed one of the passing plates and ridded it of its lid and placed it in front of her, “That’s salmon. That’s tuna.”
“And the white one?”
“Is the one nobody likes,” he said flippantly as he happily scoffed another piece of sushi into his mouth. He’d not eaten all day having missed his alarm and needing to run out of the door as quickly as possible. Merlin had had to de-scruff him on the way to the morning meeting. He was lucky he carried a comb in his briefcase really otherwise the Vic President of the company would have been turning up to the meeting with a severe case of ‘bed head’.
“So why give it to me?” Gwen poked it with her finger and retreated from it slightly. She didn’t know what to make of raw fish wrapped in seaweed. The whole weedy part of the sea didn’t much appear to her. It didn’t sound, look or smell nice.
“Because you’re different, you always like weird things,” he said pushing the plate closer to her.
“Charming, thanks.”
“It’s a good thing.”
“Of course,” her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled the device from her hoodie and loaded the message. She quickly discarded it. She wasn’t in the mood for his shit today. She was in the mood for trying new things and having a nice lunch with her bosses and Merlin. Not that she’d ever see them as such. They treated her like an equal and she was encouraged to do the same.
“Who was that?” Arthur asked trying to look nonplussed. It was common knowledge to Gwen, and to Merlin, that their superior hadn’t exactly been discreet when it came to the way he favoured Gwen. The coffee he’d bought her that morning had been a nice surprise but it sent the other brunt workers into overdrive. She’d quickly heard a story from Vivian, who’d asked her how her night had been with an added wink. Gwen had responded with a quick ‘quiet’ and carried on with her task.
In truth she’d spent the evening ignoring messages from the very same person she was ignoring now and watching reruns of Doctor Who on BBC Three. It had been a non-event if ever the was one. She didn’t look at Arthur and merely fondled her chopsticks contemplating where to start; “No one.”
“Which means it was someone,” with some reluctance Gwen handed him her phone and warily tore the chopsticks from their packet as he read the text message she had so quickly ignored. He looked amused as he chucked the phone down onto the counter they sat at, “And you dated this guy?”
“Yes.”
“I can see why you split up,” Gwen yanked her phone from the counter and put it back in her pocket. It was alright for him. The last serious relationship he’d had had ended because he’d broken the head off of the girl’s Barbie. She picked up the pair of sticks again and clutched them between her fingers unable to make them move, “Here,” Arthur took them from her and showed her how to hold them, “Like that.”
“That’s what I was doing!” she took her chopsticks from him and held them as she had before, “See!”
“No, no, no, here,” he moved one of her fingers, his bigger hand cloaked hers easily, moving about the sticks as hers should, “And you move, see?”
“No,” she laughed. She tried to pick up one of the pieces of salmon sushi and successfully managed to drop it everywhere, “I’m so rubbish at this.”
“You’ll get the hang of it,” he was used to the quietly confident woman of the office. She didn’t seem to be able to have a defeatist attitude if she tried. She’d just pin up her unruly curls with a pencil and get to it.
“I doubt it. Why can’t they give us forks?” she looked around hopefully but soon resolved that they were actually trying to torture the general public by not giving them western cutlery.
“Because traditionally-“
“Tradition is wank,” Gwen said bluntly, cutting him off. She poked the side of the sushi with the end of the sticks and contemplated stabbing it brutally and just eating it that way. It would be a damn sight easier. It briefly crossed her mind whether chopsticks would be a good murder weapon but she left it at that when Arthur seemed to be giving her the eye.
“Somebody’s bitter.”
“I’m not bitter,” she said frankly. What would he know anyway? He didn’t know the reasons behind her current textual torment. He didn’t know that the messenger was a particular breed of arsehole that they only seemed to reproduce in the West End of London.
“No? Then what’s got your panties in a twist?”
“Leave my panties out of this,” she said jabbing him in the arm with her chopsticks.
X
Merlin sat with his hands between his knees. He would happily come to the sushi bar with Morgana whenever it was that she decided she wanted it. He wasn’t against her having a lunch that she liked and she wanted. He was, however, against the annoying fact that she more than wanted him to eat it too; “It’s only fish,” she said for the fifth time.
“Raw fish for a vegetarian?” Merlin said, raising his eyebrows. She really did surprise him sometimes.
“The fad won’t last.”
“I’ve been a vegetarian for twelve years, Morgana. If the fad isn’t over yet I doubt it ever will be.”
“Just try it,” she pushed, “Become a pesco-vegetarian!”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Sod off Morgana, I can’t eat that. I won’t.”
“Then why do you come?”
He didn’t need a moment to think about, not really. He liked to get out of the office and he liked to spend time with his friends and more importantly he didn’t like to be completely hypocritical. “Because when I suggest Wagamamas you come. It’s only fair.”
“But we can eat things there.”
“True, but I pre-eat on days like today,” he took his tea break an hour later than usual and headed to the bakery down the road to grab a sufficient amount of food to get him through the day.
“Not even going to try seaweed?”
“Put that near me and I will be sick.”
“Not on my new Prada handbag you won’t.”
“Because I’ll aim my projectile vomit just to spite you,” he said looking at her as if she were insane. He didn’t understand her sometimes. Her thought process confused him.
“You dare and I’ll put you on end of the month reports.”
“Only Arthur’s got the power to give me work.”
“Care to test that theory?” She said with a flash of power in her eyes. It wasn’t like Merlin had a valid argument. Morgana could just tell Arthur to do it and he would just to spite Merlin to amuse himself at causing his assistant further pain. It wasn’t fair, Merlin thought, Gwen was always favoured by both of them. The worse job she had to do was go down to Costa to grab a round when they had late meetings and didn’t want to make it.
“Not really, no.”
“Good,” she smiled smugly and turned her attention to her food, happily eating a small morsel of salmon.
“Which means I win because you won’t be feeding me any of that crap,” she stopped chewing, swallowed and looked at him.
If looks could kill.
X
Gwen’s phone vibrated in her pocket and she threw it down onto the table. It kept lighting up and flashing. She ignored it as she persevered with her chopsticks. She failed every time to get the food anywhere near her mouth. It all fell apart landing back on her plate and in her lap. At least Arthur found it amusing, “I’m impressed. My first time I gave up after a minute and used my fingers.”
“Yeah but I have more manners.”
“So many you’re ignoring your phone?” he said pointing at it as it buzzed on the table again. Gwen groaned. When would he learn to leave her alone? She’d not answered his calls or any of his messages - text, email or IM - for the last week and he’d broken up with her three weeks ago.
“One of four people text me; you, Morgana, Merlin and him. As the three of you are here I assume it’s him wasting his time.”
“Tell him to stop,” he said as if it were that simple. If she told him to stop she’d give him the time of day and that was exactly what he wanted. If she ignored him that that gave him the message loud and clear that his attentions were unwelcome and not affecting her in any way.
“And waste my time on him?” she shook her head and tried again with the chopsticks, sighing heavily when the food fell straight from them.
Arthur sat in silence for a contemplative moment. He didn’t know if it was too much of him to ask, if asking her would be crossing some sort of line within their professional/personal relationship. But he also knew that really he didn’t care much for office politics; “What did he do to make you so bitter?”
“Nothing.”
In other words, mind your own damned business, He got the message. Loud and clear.
Her phone buzzed again. Apparently somebody didn’t, “May I?” he asked.
“Be my guest,” he picked up the device and flicked through the messages that she’d gotten and had left unread.
“I can’t see why you won’t take him back,” Arthur said with a faint smile on his face. This guy, Lance, had sent her a constant stream of messages all similarly inclined. Some were poems, others were song lyrics, some he had made up and others were quotes from Shakespeare as well as truly cringe-worthy cheese; “’Without you I am nothing. With you I am something. Together we are everything,’” Arthur read out with no hint of remorse, “Well, give him some credit,” he laughed, “He’s trying.”
“A bit too hard.”
“What, you’d rather; ‘are your legs tired because you’ve been running through my head all night?’ or ‘Heaven called, it’s missing its angel’ or; I know-“
Her hand on his arm silenced him, “Please stop.”
“Not a fan of the chat up line?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Shame. I could come up with so many,” he said with his sleaziest grin. He cocked his head and gave her what could have been an award winning smile (if they lived in a world of witches and wizards and Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award.)
She could do with a laugh; “Go on,” she probed.
“Oh no, you said they wouldn’t work. What’s the point?” on watching Gwen successfully drop the same piece of sushi for the twenty-sixth time he sighed, “Here,” he skilfully tweezered the still-whole white piece between his chopsticks and placed it in her mouth.
It didn’t take more than a second for her face to contort and her to swallow; “That’s disgusting.”
“I told you nobody likes the white,” he moved to pick up the piece of salmon but she pushed the plate away from her.
“I’m sorry just no. It’s horrible,” she grabbed her water and took several long swigs from it trying to rid her mouth of the taste.
“Note to self: Don’t take Gwen to a sushi bar,” he said taking the plate and finishing it himself.
“Why would you need to remember that?”
He shrugged; “Might be important one day.”
“Vital information that: Gwen likes her fish cooked.”
“Duly noted.”
X
Not taking no for an answer might have worked in the boardroom or when making important business deals but it didn’t work when trying to get your strictly no-animal-flesh-of-any-kind friend to eat sushi, “Get it away from me, Morgana.”
“You might like it,” she argued. Merlin gave her a stony glare; it was more than enough to give her his answer but she didn’t relent from waving the piece of seaweed in his face.
“No. Fuck off,” he said harshly making the sardonic smile immediately drop from her face.
“You spoil my fun.”
“Sorry for sticking to my morals,” he said sarcastically.
“You are no longer my friend.”
“That’s mature,” he shook his head at her and started to rock on his stool. He watched her grab a second small plate and start to devour what was on it. Whatever it was it looked repulsive; “God what is that?”
“Crab...”
Merlin turned a pale shade of green. He put his hand in front of his mouth and shook it. He heaved but didn’t throw up. The smell of it was enough to send even the most iron-stomached of men to the toilets vomiting.
“It’s dead,” she aid as if that would make it any better.
For Merlin that was the last straw, he grabbed the nearest container to him and emptied his stomach. He couldn’t deal with the smell anymore.
“Merlin!” Morgana exclaimed with the deepest look of disgust on her face, “That cost me £4000!”
X
Gwen was laughing now. Arthur was busy mocking her ex in the best way possible. He’d been reading out the text messages that she’d received and replying with a higher pitched voice than was natural to him, pretending to be Gwen; “Can I please text him that?”
“Nooooo! As funny as it is, I don’t need him thinking I’m fucking around in the office. There’s already rumours,” she finished quietly.
“If anybody could sleep their way to the top it’s you,” Gwen looked at him blankly, “I mean that in the nicest way possible.”
“I’m not sure there is a nice way about that.”
“If I was going to choose anyone out of the people who worked there-“
“I can see where this is going, you can stop-“
“Merlin!”
They both looked to see Merlin hunched over Morgana’s purse. She hit him upside the head repeatedly, “Not helping,” he managed, still looking peaky. He had his hand over his mouth and he heaved again but stopped himself from throwing up.
“Are you okay?” Gwen asked clambering from her stool to help her friend.
“Never better.”
“Come on,” Gwen led Merlin into the disabled toilet, handing him a wad of tissues and standing next to where he threw up the remainder of his gut into the toilet basin.
She ran her hand over his back and flushed away the contents of his stomach.
“What did you have for lunch?” she asked him, she could have sworn she saw something along the times of carrots in the toilet basin. Why were there always carrot chunks?
“Veggie pasty.”
“Nice, well I’ll never eat from Greggs again.”
“I’m never coming here again,” he said with a hand to his forehead fighting off the urge to be sick again.
“Why did you?”
“Normally I can cope. Just today the smell really got to me,” he probably didn’t help that Morgana had practically thrust the seaweed up his left nostril further the more he refused her.
“If you weren’t a man I’d say you were pregnant,” she said grabbing her bottle of water from her bag and offering it out to him. He thanked her as he took it, still sat next to the toilet just in case of emergent vomiting.
“If either of us is, Gwen, it’s you. Especially from all the ‘sex’ Arthur is feeding your way,” he poked. He’d heard the rumours. He’d fed some of them when he was bored. Mainly he’d joined in the speculation that the Vice President of the company and his sister’s assistant were not-so-secretly at it like rabbits in the boardroom after every late night meeting. He didn’t care to stop it. He didn’t even know if it was all pure speculation.
Especially now his closest friend was single again.
“Harmless flirting doesn’t lead to babies.”
“Stone cold sex does, though.”
“I’d rather it was hellishly hot, actually.”
“Whatever you two get up to in your free time, I don’t need to know,” he said covering his ears feeling much better already now he had gotten it all out of his system.
“I’ve never spent time with him outside of the office,” Merlin raised an eyebrow at her, the colour slowly returning to his face, “Apart from lunch.”
“At which you seem awful cosy, I might add.”
“Don’t make me pull the Morgana card on you,” Merlin promptly closed his open mouth, “Ah there we go,” Merlin’s crush on his boss’s sister wasn’t something he publically shared. Gwen had only figured it out because she spent a lot of her free time with him and once he’d mentioned Morgana five times a conversation she was certain he wasn’t telling her the whole truth, “Silence.”
X
The restaurant was busy. There were extra tables set up away from the revolving belt to house the extra people; they were waited on by the staff. The door of the disabled toilet opened into the restaurant, a table just behind it had four people sat around speaking in fluent German with a large map of the west end in front of them.
A waiter walked by them and smiled; he didn’t understand a word. He had a tray in his hand of drinks for another table. He navigated his way past them without being stopped and passed the toilet.
Like the foreign language, he didn’t understand the heavy wood in his face either, knocking him back a step and down to the floor.
The first thing Gwen heard as she came out of the toilets was a smash followed by a collective gasp. It took her a moment to compute before she saw the waiter sprawled on the floor; “I’m so sorry!”
She heard one laugh. One she would recognise anywhere. She turned around and glared at Merlin who immediately clamped his lips together but was visibly struggling to keep his laughter under wraps.
Gwen scrambled to help the guy up, uttering her apologies repeatedly. The waiter looked more embarrassed than annoyed which she was thankful for, “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said reassuringly, “Not your fault the design of the toilet is crap.”
“You are okay, aren’t you?” Arthur and Morgana appeared beside her then.
“We’ll pay for any damages.”
“It’s cool. Doesn’t come out of my wages. Accidents happen,” he said sheepishly, brushing himself off, “Sorry, I’m going to have to change,” he said skirting away from them as quickly as he could.
“Can we please leave?” Gwen asked. She could feel her cheeks heating up, “Everybody is staring.”
“That’s because they’ve just been alerted to your beauty,” Arthur said without faltering. Gwen heard Merlin snort slightly before controlling himself, “We’ve got a meeting to get to anyway.”
Gwen had never been more thankful to be hurriedly ushered out of a restaurant in her entire life. She heaved a sigh of relief once they hit the fresh air of the street and walked back towards the office.
“Quite an entertaining lunch,” Arthur concluded as he pushed through the revolving door of the office block.
“For you, deadly embarrassing for us.”
“On that note, Merlin, go home. I don’t need your sickly germs in my office all afternoon. Gwen can take the minutes on the meeting instead,” Merlin didn’t even waste time making a wise-innuendo-ridden crack about the pair of them, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him move so fast.”
“Me either,” Gwen agreed as they came to the lift, “You do realise I have more than enough work to be doing this afternoon without taking minutes on your meeting as well?”
“I do. But I’ve got to stay by late tonight and I could do with the company. It always looks a bit sad when it’s me, my laptop and Chinese late at night with one solo light on. Plus,” he started before she could complain, “I thought you could do with the distraction.”
“You assume I don’t have plans.”
“You don’t. I checked,” Gwen chuckled and shook her head at him; no wonder he had her phone for so long, “So you’ll stay?”
“Chinese you say?” Arthur nodded, “Okay.”
Morgana cleared her throat, “Don’t mind me.”
END NOTE: I'm trying to regulate my sleeping patterns. I really am. It's currently 5am and I'm not tired. I was at midnight, I fell asleep in my desk chair, and when I got woken up by an email I decided bed was the best option. 3 hours later I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep again. As Catherine Tate's 'Nan' would say; "What a load of old shit!" so I'm a bit messed up in the head at the moment. So please excuse the madness. x
Authors: mydoctortennant
Pairings/Characters: Arthur/Gwen, slight Merlin/Morgana, mentions of Lancelot (unrequited G/L)
Warnings: Spouts of bad mouthing. Vomit. Ruining of designer labels...
Disclaimer: Not real. Despite birthday wishes and night time prayers to Santa (all Hail Amy Pond!) Merlin still isn't mine!
Rating: PG13
Summary: Gwen's never eaten in a sushi bar before... something is bound to go wrong...
Author Notes: Written for my Aussie Wifey, mustbethursday3 who actually found our original bet, it's okay, we didn't dream it after all! Yo!sushi is a sushi bar chain in the UK. I've never eaten in one. I'm more of a 'Merlin' when it comes to sushi... our year 8 Geography teacher (awesome though he was) brought some in when we were studying Japan and I had to leave the classroom because it made me feel really sick. Bluh. Why would anybody want to eat seaweed? It's beyond me!
Thank you goes out to sgmajorshipper for her beta skills. Big hugs to her guys 'cause she's putting up with a bombardment of stories at the moment and doing a stellar job at keeping up with and putting up with me. Love you Wifey <3
The random 'gag' about sushi and 'the white one nobody likes' is a joke by Eddie Izzard on his 'Sexie' tour which I was watching whilst writing this so I had to put it in.
My Merlin Prompt Table
Round it went and round again.
For Gwen it was her first time in a sushi bar and she really didn’t know what to pick. Morgana and Arthur swiped what they wanted from the belt and were already tucking in before Gwen had even opened her chopsticks; “It all goes by so fast.”
“Not really,” Arthur shrugged, “Plenty of time to read and grab.”
“But I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I like,” she said frowning at the small plates of foreign, both in origin and to her, food. She looked up and across the small podium they surrounded to Merlin who looked frankly disgusted at the prospect of raw fish. The poor guy was vegetarian and had been as long as Gwen could remember. The stuff he went through because Arthur made him. Even Gwen was dreading the thought of raw fish being in her mouth.
“Then try a bit of everything,” Arthur said flippantly happily stuffing a morsel into his mouth.
“Isn’t that just a little expensive?” That was the primary reason that Gwen had never eaten sushi before. She didn’t know if she would like it for one, but secondarily she hadn’t wanted to blow the expense and spend money she didn’t have on food she might not like.
“That’s why you get a selection,” he grabbed one of the passing plates and ridded it of its lid and placed it in front of her, “That’s salmon. That’s tuna.”
“And the white one?”
“Is the one nobody likes,” he said flippantly as he happily scoffed another piece of sushi into his mouth. He’d not eaten all day having missed his alarm and needing to run out of the door as quickly as possible. Merlin had had to de-scruff him on the way to the morning meeting. He was lucky he carried a comb in his briefcase really otherwise the Vic President of the company would have been turning up to the meeting with a severe case of ‘bed head’.
“So why give it to me?” Gwen poked it with her finger and retreated from it slightly. She didn’t know what to make of raw fish wrapped in seaweed. The whole weedy part of the sea didn’t much appear to her. It didn’t sound, look or smell nice.
“Because you’re different, you always like weird things,” he said pushing the plate closer to her.
“Charming, thanks.”
“It’s a good thing.”
“Of course,” her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled the device from her hoodie and loaded the message. She quickly discarded it. She wasn’t in the mood for his shit today. She was in the mood for trying new things and having a nice lunch with her bosses and Merlin. Not that she’d ever see them as such. They treated her like an equal and she was encouraged to do the same.
“Who was that?” Arthur asked trying to look nonplussed. It was common knowledge to Gwen, and to Merlin, that their superior hadn’t exactly been discreet when it came to the way he favoured Gwen. The coffee he’d bought her that morning had been a nice surprise but it sent the other brunt workers into overdrive. She’d quickly heard a story from Vivian, who’d asked her how her night had been with an added wink. Gwen had responded with a quick ‘quiet’ and carried on with her task.
In truth she’d spent the evening ignoring messages from the very same person she was ignoring now and watching reruns of Doctor Who on BBC Three. It had been a non-event if ever the was one. She didn’t look at Arthur and merely fondled her chopsticks contemplating where to start; “No one.”
“Which means it was someone,” with some reluctance Gwen handed him her phone and warily tore the chopsticks from their packet as he read the text message she had so quickly ignored. He looked amused as he chucked the phone down onto the counter they sat at, “And you dated this guy?”
“Yes.”
“I can see why you split up,” Gwen yanked her phone from the counter and put it back in her pocket. It was alright for him. The last serious relationship he’d had had ended because he’d broken the head off of the girl’s Barbie. She picked up the pair of sticks again and clutched them between her fingers unable to make them move, “Here,” Arthur took them from her and showed her how to hold them, “Like that.”
“That’s what I was doing!” she took her chopsticks from him and held them as she had before, “See!”
“No, no, no, here,” he moved one of her fingers, his bigger hand cloaked hers easily, moving about the sticks as hers should, “And you move, see?”
“No,” she laughed. She tried to pick up one of the pieces of salmon sushi and successfully managed to drop it everywhere, “I’m so rubbish at this.”
“You’ll get the hang of it,” he was used to the quietly confident woman of the office. She didn’t seem to be able to have a defeatist attitude if she tried. She’d just pin up her unruly curls with a pencil and get to it.
“I doubt it. Why can’t they give us forks?” she looked around hopefully but soon resolved that they were actually trying to torture the general public by not giving them western cutlery.
“Because traditionally-“
“Tradition is wank,” Gwen said bluntly, cutting him off. She poked the side of the sushi with the end of the sticks and contemplated stabbing it brutally and just eating it that way. It would be a damn sight easier. It briefly crossed her mind whether chopsticks would be a good murder weapon but she left it at that when Arthur seemed to be giving her the eye.
“Somebody’s bitter.”
“I’m not bitter,” she said frankly. What would he know anyway? He didn’t know the reasons behind her current textual torment. He didn’t know that the messenger was a particular breed of arsehole that they only seemed to reproduce in the West End of London.
“No? Then what’s got your panties in a twist?”
“Leave my panties out of this,” she said jabbing him in the arm with her chopsticks.
X
Merlin sat with his hands between his knees. He would happily come to the sushi bar with Morgana whenever it was that she decided she wanted it. He wasn’t against her having a lunch that she liked and she wanted. He was, however, against the annoying fact that she more than wanted him to eat it too; “It’s only fish,” she said for the fifth time.
“Raw fish for a vegetarian?” Merlin said, raising his eyebrows. She really did surprise him sometimes.
“The fad won’t last.”
“I’ve been a vegetarian for twelve years, Morgana. If the fad isn’t over yet I doubt it ever will be.”
“Just try it,” she pushed, “Become a pesco-vegetarian!”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Sod off Morgana, I can’t eat that. I won’t.”
“Then why do you come?”
He didn’t need a moment to think about, not really. He liked to get out of the office and he liked to spend time with his friends and more importantly he didn’t like to be completely hypocritical. “Because when I suggest Wagamamas you come. It’s only fair.”
“But we can eat things there.”
“True, but I pre-eat on days like today,” he took his tea break an hour later than usual and headed to the bakery down the road to grab a sufficient amount of food to get him through the day.
“Not even going to try seaweed?”
“Put that near me and I will be sick.”
“Not on my new Prada handbag you won’t.”
“Because I’ll aim my projectile vomit just to spite you,” he said looking at her as if she were insane. He didn’t understand her sometimes. Her thought process confused him.
“You dare and I’ll put you on end of the month reports.”
“Only Arthur’s got the power to give me work.”
“Care to test that theory?” She said with a flash of power in her eyes. It wasn’t like Merlin had a valid argument. Morgana could just tell Arthur to do it and he would just to spite Merlin to amuse himself at causing his assistant further pain. It wasn’t fair, Merlin thought, Gwen was always favoured by both of them. The worse job she had to do was go down to Costa to grab a round when they had late meetings and didn’t want to make it.
“Not really, no.”
“Good,” she smiled smugly and turned her attention to her food, happily eating a small morsel of salmon.
“Which means I win because you won’t be feeding me any of that crap,” she stopped chewing, swallowed and looked at him.
If looks could kill.
X
Gwen’s phone vibrated in her pocket and she threw it down onto the table. It kept lighting up and flashing. She ignored it as she persevered with her chopsticks. She failed every time to get the food anywhere near her mouth. It all fell apart landing back on her plate and in her lap. At least Arthur found it amusing, “I’m impressed. My first time I gave up after a minute and used my fingers.”
“Yeah but I have more manners.”
“So many you’re ignoring your phone?” he said pointing at it as it buzzed on the table again. Gwen groaned. When would he learn to leave her alone? She’d not answered his calls or any of his messages - text, email or IM - for the last week and he’d broken up with her three weeks ago.
“One of four people text me; you, Morgana, Merlin and him. As the three of you are here I assume it’s him wasting his time.”
“Tell him to stop,” he said as if it were that simple. If she told him to stop she’d give him the time of day and that was exactly what he wanted. If she ignored him that that gave him the message loud and clear that his attentions were unwelcome and not affecting her in any way.
“And waste my time on him?” she shook her head and tried again with the chopsticks, sighing heavily when the food fell straight from them.
Arthur sat in silence for a contemplative moment. He didn’t know if it was too much of him to ask, if asking her would be crossing some sort of line within their professional/personal relationship. But he also knew that really he didn’t care much for office politics; “What did he do to make you so bitter?”
“Nothing.”
In other words, mind your own damned business, He got the message. Loud and clear.
Her phone buzzed again. Apparently somebody didn’t, “May I?” he asked.
“Be my guest,” he picked up the device and flicked through the messages that she’d gotten and had left unread.
“I can’t see why you won’t take him back,” Arthur said with a faint smile on his face. This guy, Lance, had sent her a constant stream of messages all similarly inclined. Some were poems, others were song lyrics, some he had made up and others were quotes from Shakespeare as well as truly cringe-worthy cheese; “’Without you I am nothing. With you I am something. Together we are everything,’” Arthur read out with no hint of remorse, “Well, give him some credit,” he laughed, “He’s trying.”
“A bit too hard.”
“What, you’d rather; ‘are your legs tired because you’ve been running through my head all night?’ or ‘Heaven called, it’s missing its angel’ or; I know-“
Her hand on his arm silenced him, “Please stop.”
“Not a fan of the chat up line?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Shame. I could come up with so many,” he said with his sleaziest grin. He cocked his head and gave her what could have been an award winning smile (if they lived in a world of witches and wizards and Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award.)
She could do with a laugh; “Go on,” she probed.
“Oh no, you said they wouldn’t work. What’s the point?” on watching Gwen successfully drop the same piece of sushi for the twenty-sixth time he sighed, “Here,” he skilfully tweezered the still-whole white piece between his chopsticks and placed it in her mouth.
It didn’t take more than a second for her face to contort and her to swallow; “That’s disgusting.”
“I told you nobody likes the white,” he moved to pick up the piece of salmon but she pushed the plate away from her.
“I’m sorry just no. It’s horrible,” she grabbed her water and took several long swigs from it trying to rid her mouth of the taste.
“Note to self: Don’t take Gwen to a sushi bar,” he said taking the plate and finishing it himself.
“Why would you need to remember that?”
He shrugged; “Might be important one day.”
“Vital information that: Gwen likes her fish cooked.”
“Duly noted.”
X
Not taking no for an answer might have worked in the boardroom or when making important business deals but it didn’t work when trying to get your strictly no-animal-flesh-of-any-kind friend to eat sushi, “Get it away from me, Morgana.”
“You might like it,” she argued. Merlin gave her a stony glare; it was more than enough to give her his answer but she didn’t relent from waving the piece of seaweed in his face.
“No. Fuck off,” he said harshly making the sardonic smile immediately drop from her face.
“You spoil my fun.”
“Sorry for sticking to my morals,” he said sarcastically.
“You are no longer my friend.”
“That’s mature,” he shook his head at her and started to rock on his stool. He watched her grab a second small plate and start to devour what was on it. Whatever it was it looked repulsive; “God what is that?”
“Crab...”
Merlin turned a pale shade of green. He put his hand in front of his mouth and shook it. He heaved but didn’t throw up. The smell of it was enough to send even the most iron-stomached of men to the toilets vomiting.
“It’s dead,” she aid as if that would make it any better.
For Merlin that was the last straw, he grabbed the nearest container to him and emptied his stomach. He couldn’t deal with the smell anymore.
“Merlin!” Morgana exclaimed with the deepest look of disgust on her face, “That cost me £4000!”
X
Gwen was laughing now. Arthur was busy mocking her ex in the best way possible. He’d been reading out the text messages that she’d received and replying with a higher pitched voice than was natural to him, pretending to be Gwen; “Can I please text him that?”
“Nooooo! As funny as it is, I don’t need him thinking I’m fucking around in the office. There’s already rumours,” she finished quietly.
“If anybody could sleep their way to the top it’s you,” Gwen looked at him blankly, “I mean that in the nicest way possible.”
“I’m not sure there is a nice way about that.”
“If I was going to choose anyone out of the people who worked there-“
“I can see where this is going, you can stop-“
“Merlin!”
They both looked to see Merlin hunched over Morgana’s purse. She hit him upside the head repeatedly, “Not helping,” he managed, still looking peaky. He had his hand over his mouth and he heaved again but stopped himself from throwing up.
“Are you okay?” Gwen asked clambering from her stool to help her friend.
“Never better.”
“Come on,” Gwen led Merlin into the disabled toilet, handing him a wad of tissues and standing next to where he threw up the remainder of his gut into the toilet basin.
She ran her hand over his back and flushed away the contents of his stomach.
“What did you have for lunch?” she asked him, she could have sworn she saw something along the times of carrots in the toilet basin. Why were there always carrot chunks?
“Veggie pasty.”
“Nice, well I’ll never eat from Greggs again.”
“I’m never coming here again,” he said with a hand to his forehead fighting off the urge to be sick again.
“Why did you?”
“Normally I can cope. Just today the smell really got to me,” he probably didn’t help that Morgana had practically thrust the seaweed up his left nostril further the more he refused her.
“If you weren’t a man I’d say you were pregnant,” she said grabbing her bottle of water from her bag and offering it out to him. He thanked her as he took it, still sat next to the toilet just in case of emergent vomiting.
“If either of us is, Gwen, it’s you. Especially from all the ‘sex’ Arthur is feeding your way,” he poked. He’d heard the rumours. He’d fed some of them when he was bored. Mainly he’d joined in the speculation that the Vice President of the company and his sister’s assistant were not-so-secretly at it like rabbits in the boardroom after every late night meeting. He didn’t care to stop it. He didn’t even know if it was all pure speculation.
Especially now his closest friend was single again.
“Harmless flirting doesn’t lead to babies.”
“Stone cold sex does, though.”
“I’d rather it was hellishly hot, actually.”
“Whatever you two get up to in your free time, I don’t need to know,” he said covering his ears feeling much better already now he had gotten it all out of his system.
“I’ve never spent time with him outside of the office,” Merlin raised an eyebrow at her, the colour slowly returning to his face, “Apart from lunch.”
“At which you seem awful cosy, I might add.”
“Don’t make me pull the Morgana card on you,” Merlin promptly closed his open mouth, “Ah there we go,” Merlin’s crush on his boss’s sister wasn’t something he publically shared. Gwen had only figured it out because she spent a lot of her free time with him and once he’d mentioned Morgana five times a conversation she was certain he wasn’t telling her the whole truth, “Silence.”
X
The restaurant was busy. There were extra tables set up away from the revolving belt to house the extra people; they were waited on by the staff. The door of the disabled toilet opened into the restaurant, a table just behind it had four people sat around speaking in fluent German with a large map of the west end in front of them.
A waiter walked by them and smiled; he didn’t understand a word. He had a tray in his hand of drinks for another table. He navigated his way past them without being stopped and passed the toilet.
Like the foreign language, he didn’t understand the heavy wood in his face either, knocking him back a step and down to the floor.
The first thing Gwen heard as she came out of the toilets was a smash followed by a collective gasp. It took her a moment to compute before she saw the waiter sprawled on the floor; “I’m so sorry!”
She heard one laugh. One she would recognise anywhere. She turned around and glared at Merlin who immediately clamped his lips together but was visibly struggling to keep his laughter under wraps.
Gwen scrambled to help the guy up, uttering her apologies repeatedly. The waiter looked more embarrassed than annoyed which she was thankful for, “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said reassuringly, “Not your fault the design of the toilet is crap.”
“You are okay, aren’t you?” Arthur and Morgana appeared beside her then.
“We’ll pay for any damages.”
“It’s cool. Doesn’t come out of my wages. Accidents happen,” he said sheepishly, brushing himself off, “Sorry, I’m going to have to change,” he said skirting away from them as quickly as he could.
“Can we please leave?” Gwen asked. She could feel her cheeks heating up, “Everybody is staring.”
“That’s because they’ve just been alerted to your beauty,” Arthur said without faltering. Gwen heard Merlin snort slightly before controlling himself, “We’ve got a meeting to get to anyway.”
Gwen had never been more thankful to be hurriedly ushered out of a restaurant in her entire life. She heaved a sigh of relief once they hit the fresh air of the street and walked back towards the office.
“Quite an entertaining lunch,” Arthur concluded as he pushed through the revolving door of the office block.
“For you, deadly embarrassing for us.”
“On that note, Merlin, go home. I don’t need your sickly germs in my office all afternoon. Gwen can take the minutes on the meeting instead,” Merlin didn’t even waste time making a wise-innuendo-ridden crack about the pair of them, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him move so fast.”
“Me either,” Gwen agreed as they came to the lift, “You do realise I have more than enough work to be doing this afternoon without taking minutes on your meeting as well?”
“I do. But I’ve got to stay by late tonight and I could do with the company. It always looks a bit sad when it’s me, my laptop and Chinese late at night with one solo light on. Plus,” he started before she could complain, “I thought you could do with the distraction.”
“You assume I don’t have plans.”
“You don’t. I checked,” Gwen chuckled and shook her head at him; no wonder he had her phone for so long, “So you’ll stay?”
“Chinese you say?” Arthur nodded, “Okay.”
Morgana cleared her throat, “Don’t mind me.”
END NOTE: I'm trying to regulate my sleeping patterns. I really am. It's currently 5am and I'm not tired. I was at midnight, I fell asleep in my desk chair, and when I got woken up by an email I decided bed was the best option. 3 hours later I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep again. As Catherine Tate's 'Nan' would say; "What a load of old shit!" so I'm a bit messed up in the head at the moment. So please excuse the madness. x