Plans For You and Me
Title: Plans For You and Me
Wordcount: ~6,700
Warnings: intoxication, fluff, girls having feelings
Summary: Elena wakes up in Gretna Green, hung over and married to her best friend. This is not how their post-grad road trip was supposed to go.
A/N: This started out as part of the "Weddings" bonus challenge for summerpornathon and I finally made it into a proper fic. The title is from "The Minnow and the Trout," by the band A Fine Frenzy. Third fic posted in under a week, good heavens. I think I need a little break.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
Elena wakes up with a hangover and a wedding ring, abandoned on a hotel bed in Gretna Green, with Morgana hissing into her mobile in the bathroom. “-saw the certificate, Arthur, and yes, we are actually married,” she’s saying when Elena manages to distinguish words.
It takes a minute to separate out what actually happened from Elena's subsequent dream about extending their post-university road trip to Italy. Everything's in a bit of a whiskey-tinged haze, but she knows that she and Morgana are both very good at acting sober when they're drunk, and that somehow at some point there was a conversation about how neither of them will ever have a relationship better than the one they've got with each other. And then Elena was holding a bouquet of heather and Morgana was fussing with their hair and they were standing in front of an anvil in a registrar's office with Alvarr and Enmyria, who they met earlier in the night, standing as witnesses. “Shit,” she says. Her father is going to be heartbroken.
”She’s awake!” says Morgana, and hangs up before her brother can answer her. A second later, she appears with a glass of water and a few white tablets. “Here, have them, you need to not be hungover for this.”
Elena takes them obediently and even manages not to choke. Then, because Morgana is standing there wide-eyed and looking a bit horrified: “So, we got married.”
“Yes. Arthur will look into how to get an annulment and get back to me later.” Morgana sits on the edge of the bed, and Elena makes room for her. She's got used to sharing her bed on the first three weeks of their road trip, since it's cheaper (even though they don't need it cheap). “I’m so sorry. This is not how I imagined our sojourn in Scotland beginning.”
She might be disconcerted, but Elena definitely can’t stand to see Morgana looking this miserable. “Well, on the bright side, we'll get lots of free things for our honeymoon.”
“It's not funny,” wails Morgana.
Elena struggles to sit up properly and gives her a hug, tucking Morgana's head under her chin. “Well, it sort of is,” she says eventually. “And there are worse people to be married to, you know? I mean, imagine if Merlin and Arthur had come along like they'd wanted. I would be Mrs. Pendragon this morning.”
“You're already Mrs. Pendragon this morning,” Morgana mumbles into her collarbone.
“Oi, who ever said I'm changing my name? Now come on, we’re going to have a lie-in and then a good Scottish fry-up and then we're going to deal with our marriage when we're awake and sober. Got it?”
Morgana manages a snort. “Yes, Elena.” They settle on the bed and stop cuddling. Normally they wouldn’t care, both comfortable enough with their respective sexualities and their friendship that it doesn’t matter, but they got married, and snuggling up to sleep suddenly feels a bit awkward. They both lay awkwardly on their backs instead, and Elena thinks, a bit hysterically, that apparently they’ve skipped the newlywed stage. “How are you so calm about this?” Morgana finally bursts out.
Elena would giggle if it wouldn’t make her head hurt. “You got me arrested for public indecency in Paris. Getting married is rather tame in comparison.”
Morgana seems to be trying really hard to continue looking anxious, but Elena knows when she’s holding back a smile. “I suppose this is a lesson that we probably should never get drunk together, isn’t it?”
“Exactly.” Elena smiles and pats her gently on the arm. “You’re my best friend. This is not going to be the sort of acrimonious divorce where we never speak to one another again, it’s just going to be a good story to tell our friends. And hey, at least you broke up with Sophia after graduation, this is the sort of thing she would not take well.”
That does it. Morgana snorts out a giggle, then winces, not over her hangover either. “She would have drowned you in the pool. Or me in the pool. I am honestly not sure which.”
“Probably me, she hates me.”
Morgana finally relaxes and cuddles a bit closer. “No, it’s terribly frustrating. You are impossible to dislike.” Elena yawns, and Morgana follows suit. “Just don’t snore this time.”
*
Arthur, it appears, has a big mouth. (Although Elena already knew that, she’d just hoped he’d have a bit more discretion where his sister’s accidental marriage is concerned.) When they wake up from their nap, at nearly eleven when someone comes to clean the room, both of their phones are bursting with text messages from their gleeful friends. They do the only smart thing and share the best ones over breakfast.
Elena’s personal favorite is Gwaine’s long string of exclamation marks followed by I CALL FIRST THREESOME RIGHTS. Gwen sent a series of at least a dozen worried texts to Morgana, half of which are redactions of previous texts. Will’s wonderfully crass pix or it didn’t happen got sent to both of them, and Merlin’s left a voicemail on Morgana’s phone that’s nine parts hysterical hyena-worthy giggles to one part scolding them for not taking him and Arthur on the road trip so they could be flower girls (followed by several thumps that probably mean Arthur was in the room when he left the message). Even Lancelot chipped in with worryingly sincere congratulations on Elena’s phone.
Everything is increasingly hilarious, especially as they discover that both of them thought to take drunken wedding pictures (including a few presumably taken by Enmyria or Alvarr, since they’re of both of them) on their phones. The girl who serves them their eggs and toast gives them a broad wink when she sees them, so apparently they were noticed, but Elena doesn’t much mind, as it’s not like she’ll see any of them again, and the pictures are rather amazing. She scrolls through the ceremony (she suspects it was Enmyria holding her phone, as she recalls Alvarr was a bit drunk and unlikely to be able to hold a phone steady), looking for any more gems, and finds herself gaping at a picture at the end. She’d assumed they kissed a bit at the end of the ceremony-they’ve done it before, for Truth or Dare and once because Elena was sick of being hit on in a bar and Morgana indulges her more than she admits-but a kiss is one thing, and the picture is quite another, because they are actually snogging. She can’t drudge it up from the hazy memories of everything else, but apparently it happened, because there Morgana’s hands are, right on her arse, and there’s Elena’s tongue in Morgana’s mouth.
Before she can explain to Morgana why she’s stopped giggling, since Morgana’s phone seems to have more pictures of the afterparty, where presumably they weren’t making out, Elena’s phone rings and the display shows Dad. “Oh God, it’s my father,” she whispers, and Morgana goes even paler than usual. “And if he knows, Uther probably knows. Brace yourself.” Elena flips her phone open and chirps out a greeting, just in case he’s calling to check in and not about the wedding. “Hello, Dad!”
He sighs. “Uther Pendragon just called me, Ellie. You’re lucky I convinced him to have a glass or two of scotch before he calls Morgana.”
“Arthur’s sorting it,” Elena offers.
“You got married,” her father reminds her, like she might have forgotten.
“Yes. Sort of.” She squirms in her chair, not that he can see her to look disapproving. “Better Morgana than Arthur?” she offers. “He would probably jilt me at the altar to elope with Merlin or something.”
By some miracle, that makes her father start to laugh. He seems to have some problems stopping, but at least he’s not in one of his stern moods. She generally can’t bear those. “What are you going to do, princess?” he asks when he’s a bit calmer.
“Get annulment paperwork. Arthur’s looking it up for us. We’ve got our bar tab from last night if they want proof we weren’t exactly up for consent at that particular moment.” She winces, and Morgana looks horrified, but her father just chuckles again.
“Are you coming home?”
Elena shrugs even though he can’t see her. “I don’t know, we haven’t talked about it yet. But it will take a few weeks to get through the snarl of paperwork, and anyway, we’re moving in together in three weeks anyway, we can probably sign the divorce paperwork and the apartment lease on the same day. We may as well see Edinburgh in between.”
Her dad lets out another reluctant laugh. “Keep me updated, would you? Itinerary, divorce proceedings, whatever. I’ll try to keep Uther from having a heart attack.”
“Thank you, Dad. I love you.”
“Love you too, Ellie. Tell my daughter-in-law hello for me.” He hangs up before she can get out more than an indignant squeaking noise.
Morgana is biting her lip when Elena looks up at her, fork clutched in her hand. “My phone still isn’t ringing. Why isn’t my phone ringing?”
“My father advised Uther to get drunk before he tries to process our marriage.”
Morgana’s mouth twists like she isn’t sure whether she wants to laugh or not, and her hand goes to the necklace Elena gave her their first year at uni, rainbow stones hanging off a silver chain, as a seriously-it’s-okay-that-you’re-gay-and-kissed-me-a-bit present because back then Morgana was angry at everything and especially her father and wore rainbow pins and barrettes and headbands made for three-year-olds as some sort of fuck-you even though he couldn’t see her. The sun catches on her wedding ring. “Well,” she says at last.
“I hear Edinburgh is lovely this time of year,” says Elena, and goes back to eating her eggs.
*
Scotland is unexpectedly charming in June. Neither of them have been, which is why they’re on a post-university road trip there, but Elena had expected more mist. And plaid. It certainly rains plenty, and it’s chillier than it would be back at home, but for the most part both of them are content to take the back roads through everywhere and sleep at tiny little inns that probably don’t see much business even in summer.
Neither of them talks about the wedding much, except during Arthur’s daily calls to mock Morgana and tell Elena she could do better while he updates them on working through the snarls of annulling a civil union. Uther is conspicuously silent on the matter, probably because he isn’t nearly drunk enough to deal with it yet, but Elena’s father calls several more times and never stops sounding anything but amused and maybe a little exasperated. They stop by an internet café in a miniscule village with an unpronounceable name and check Facebook to find that someone (smart money is on Merlin and Gwaine) has hacked both of their accounts and changed their relationship status to “married.” The tone of the comments lists alarmingly more towards “what the hell, why weren’t we invited?” than “what the hell, you got MARRIED?!”
Neither of them takes off the rings.
Instead, they mostly continue with their road trip like nothing’s changed. They listen to the same three mix CDs over and over, because getting the radio in Scotland is chancy at best (“Right,” says Morgana the thirty-ninth time they hear ‘Don’t Stop Believing,’ and screeches into a gas station where she buys some folk album off the owner just so they have something else to listen to), and don’t pay much attention to maps because it isn’t like they need to be anywhere fast and it might be worth worrying in America, which stretches on for college-road-trip-movie stretches of highway, but this is Britain and eventually they’ll get home.
Most places, to Elena’s surprise, barely blink an eye at the wedding rings. Sure, they get a few glares and uncomfortable looks, but for the most part people either ignore it or get very excited, like the owner of the second inn they stay in after the wedding, who gives them free dinner and then sends them to bed early with a broad wink that makes them both burst into horrified laughter when they find themselves alone again. It’s the first time things have seemed normal since they woke up married (since Elena got used to people assuming she’s a lesbian nearly two years ago; they generally think she’s the butch one, even, since her hair’s impossible and she likes riding and footie and trips a lot), and Elena tips extravagantly at breakfast in thanks.
Arthur calls Elena’s phone instead of Morgana’s one evening while Morgana is off wailing at her sister, who’s been in Spain and is just now catching up on the news. “How’s she holding up?” he asks in that unbearably stiff way he has. She’d disliked Arthur at first, since he seems like a younger, blonder copy of his father at first meeting, but a few times seeing him bicker with Morgana and act like a seven-year-old with a crush around Merlin she figured out that the formality is just him being shy and worried. Not that he’d ever admit it.
“It’s thrown her for a loop.” Which is an understatement. Mostly Morgana takes things with a disgusting amount of poise and a tendency to go in swinging, but she’ll barely even talk about this latest adventure of theirs except when she’s talking annulments with Arthur. “But she’ll probably be okay. Our friendship survived her trying to cut her losses after I told her I wasn’t gay, it can survive a wedding.”
“Right.” And he really needn’t sound so disbelieving, but that’s Arthur all over again. “And how about you?”
Elena looks down at her ring, which would tip him right off if he were there. He’s got a stick up his arse, but he’s not stupid. Her floundering silence is probably telling him quite enough anyway. “I would probably be able to cope better if it felt odder to be married to her,” she admits at last. “This all feels … disturbingly normal, really. Ring and all.”
“Does it.” Arthur sighs before huffing out a reluctant laugh. “Should I be sabotaging the annulment?”
“No,” says Elena immediately. “Even if it were … anything, which it’s not, but even if it were, this isn’t how either of us would want to get married, without any planning or family or friends or anything.”
There’s another long, uncomfortable silence. “I’m tempted to anyway. You’re a far better sister-in-law than Sophia would have been, that’s for sure. She would have drowned me in the pool.” Elena starts laughing, helpless, and after a second Arthur joins in, and doesn’t try to drag the conversation back around.
*
The two worst phone calls happen on the same day, the day before they get to Edinburgh. Uther calls Morgana before they even get out of bed in the morning, and Morgana disappears into the bathroom before saying a word beyond “hello,” where she pretty quickly starts shouting things like “fuck the family name, I can go back to Lafayette if I want to” and “it’s my own choice, and will be when it’s real as well.”
Elena fidgets around in bed for ten minutes, not wanting to eavesdrop but wanting to be there when Morgana storms out and needs someone to rant at, and she’s so glad for the distraction when her own mobile rings that she doesn’t bother checking the display before pouncing on it. That, of course, means that she gets an earful of Vivian’s shrieking: “I go to Bermuda for one month!”
“Hello, Viv. Do you have a nice tan?”
“You don’t get to distract me! You got married! Without telling me! What sort of best friend are you? What sort of best friend do you think I am? Arthur Pendragon told me, Ellie! Arthur! Why the hell does Arthur know before me? It’s against the rules!”
“He’s Morgana’s brother,” Elena points out.
Vivian keeps going as if she didn’t hear, which is no surprise. Generally it’s just best to let her run herself out. “It’s against all the rules!”
“What rules?” She really needs to learn how to stop herself, but she hasn’t managed it in the twenty years she’s known Viv, so she doubts she ever will.
“The rules of friendship! And girldom! Which should have at least required you to tell me you’re a lesbian the bajillionth time I asked! Because I asked you a bajillion times, O’Shea. I distinctly recall telling you that it’s fine, Morgana Pendragon is fabulous and much more fun than her brother so it’s all right if you want to snog her, but you should have told me! Not to mention let me plan the wedding! Scotland, Elena, you got married in Scotland, do you think you’re in a Regency romance?”
This time, Elena waits five seconds just to make sure, but no, Vivian actually seems to require some sort of response to that tangled mess. “We were drunk! And I’m not a lesbian, I’m just married.” And apparently snogged the hell out of Morgana at the altar, but Morgana hasn’t mentioned it and Elena still doesn’t remember who kissed whom, so it’s just going to be something they don’t talk about. “Also, I didn’t tell you because you yelled at me when I called you early in the month and said to only call if I was dying, stop coming between you and the gorgeous Bermudan men who think your accent is hot.”
“Dying, married, these are equal levels of emergency.”
She’s not going to touch that, so she returns to defending herself. “We were drunk!”
“You didn’t even get a hen party!”
“Morgana and I are both hens, I don’t think we get a party.”
“And you can’t be trusted to pick your own clothes, I bet you got married in jeans or something equally awful.”
That’s actually true, but Elena decides not to give Vivian any more ammunition, especially since Morgana’s conversation with Uther seems to have devolved into shouting. “We were drunk and it was an accident.”
“You are an American road-trip movie cliché,” says Vivian, and hangs up on her. Elena stares at her phone for a few seconds, wondering whether she ought to call her back or wait for her to cool off a bit. As if in answer, her phone buzzes with a text a few seconds later. Am throwing you two biggest belated reception known to man, btw. <3
“We’re getting divorced,” Elena says to no one in particular, and goes about picking up their room and pretending not to listen to the end of Morgana’s conversation.
Morgana comes out of the bathroom a few minutes later, tight-lipped and red-eyed even though she’ll deny it until the end of forever. “Well, that went about as well as I could have expected. He tried to be polite for about five seconds and then accused me of trying to drag down our family name.”
Elena considers the best course of action and finally just holds her arms out. “Do you need a bit of a cuddle?”
After a second, Morgana shakes her head and picks up her rucksack. “No. Come on, apparently there’s some sort of sheep festival a few villages over, what the fuck, and the man who owns the inn says we aren’t allowed to miss it. We can stay there tonight and get to Edinburgh tomorrow.”
*
Everything goes to shit in Edinburgh.
They’ve scheduled three days for the city, and the first two days are great. Other than Arthur keeping them updated on annulment proceedings, the novelty of them getting married has worn off for most of their friends (except for Vivian’s occasional, terrifying texts; no matter how much Elena explains that this is not an actual marriage even if she and Morgana are moving in together, Vivian continues cheerfully announcing decoration plans for a hotel she’s apparently rented out for them for a “reception”), so they don’t have to deal with Merlin’s giggles and Gwaine and Will’s requests for pictures any longer. Instead, they wander and see all the sights, and Morgana even gets back to normal, or as normal as she ever is. It’s all fine, in fact, until the second night when Morgana suggests they go out clubbing.
Traditionally, when the two of them go out together, they start in a regular club so Elena can dance before she gets so drunk that she really can’t stay upright (even more than usual, at least) and then move to a gay club because of the two of them Morgana is the one more likely to pull. Even though they aren’t at uni anymore and Elena can’t crash on a friend’s floor if Morgana does pull, they plan it like that out of habit. They both make sure they have cab money and the hotel address in case they get separated, and they go out.
The straight club goes like normal. Morgana sits at the bar nursing a drink and glares at any man who comes within five feet of her while Elena drinks three shots in quick succession and goes off to dance. There are a few cute blokes who seem interested, and she dances with cheerful abandon, or as close to cheerful abandon as she can get without doing them serious bodily harm. One of them, wisely, catches her hands so she can’t accidentally flail in his face, and he gives her a weird look once they’re settled and moves away as soon as is polite. Elena blinks and it takes a second through the haze of the music and the alcohol to realize she’s still wearing Morgana’s ring.
She doesn’t even wait out the end of the song before going to find Morgana at the bar. “Hey, I’m ready, want to head over to CC Blooms?”
Morgana blinks at her, barely halfway through her glass. “I thought we’d be here another hour, at least.” Her eyes narrow. “Is someone bothering you?”
Considering the last time Elena complained about a man bothering her Cedric had to go to the campus health center with a broken nose, Elena makes haste to assure Morgana that’s not the case. “No, just more in the mood for drinking than dancing tonight, as it turns out, so I may as well drink where you’ve got a chance at pulling.”
That gets her a suspicious look, but Morgana doesn’t ask any more questions, just chugs the rest of her beer and tips the barman extra before picking up her purse and putting a hand on Elena’s back to guide her through the crowd. That gets them a whistle or two from drunken Scotsmen, but they deal with Gwaine and Will on a regular basis, so even Morgana doesn’t bristle.
The walk over to the gay club is quiet. Elena thinks she probably ought to make conversation so Morgana doesn’t call the evening off early thinking she isn’t having fun (which she isn’t, but Morgana wants to go clubbing and Elena made her stay at the sheep festival for longer than just to mock it so she’s got to make it up somehow), but the shots from the first club have definitely hit in earnest and she isn’t smashed yet but walking definitely takes concentration. Morgana just looks thoughtful, and then relieved when they get in sight of CC Blooms.
Every bouncer in the world lets Morgana jump queue-it’s half the fun of going clubbing with her-and this one is no exception. He doesn’t bother winking, used to the clientele, and Elena gives him an awkward smile before following Morgana inside and walking right into her because Morgana has stopped walking. Since there’s the distinct sound of ABBA coming from the dancefloor, that’s not unexpected (Morgana has an irrational dislike of ABBA and when asked just says something about Arthur and sixth form and the soundtrack to Mamma Mia!). Instead of turning them around and walking out, though, Morgana is staring down at her hand. “Oh,” she says, sounding a bit surprised. “I meant to take the ring off before we left the hotel tonight.”
Elena instantly claps her right hand over her left one but doesn’t make any motion to take the ring off, just like she hasn’t since they woke up in Gretna Green, even in the shower because it’s gold and it won’t rust. She’d thought she and Morgana were on the same odd, fucked-up page with that one, but apparently not. She puts on her brightest smile. “Can’t have them all thinking you’re some sort of hussy, can we?”
“No,” agrees Morgana, and wiggles the ring off to slip it into her pocket. She looks expectantly at Elena, but Elena just gives her brightest, most vacant, smile and pushes her into walking again, since ABBA has melted into something unrecognizable but less likely to scar Morgana.
At the gay club, it’s Elena’s turn to sit at the bar and chat with the flamingly gay barman, who seems to understand that she’s feeling a bit lost and stops by her bit of bar often to refresh her vodka and cranberry and comment on how sick of Prince he is. Elena tries not to fiddle with her wedding ring because it’s just been there since the wedding, she’d even stopped noticing it, but now it’s all she can think about. The barman seems to figure that out after a couple of songs. “Getting divorced?” he asks, all sympathy, patting her hand.
Elena looks out at the dance floor. “Yeah. Yes. I suppose.”
“You’re young for it.”
“It was sort of an accident.”
He refreshes her drink and wisely doesn’t ask. Elena goes back to staring moodily at the dance floor, which would be more effective if she could brood. She broods about as well as Merlin does, though, so she suspects she mostly looks forlorn, if the pitying looks she gets are anything to go by.
It’s a while before she sets eyes on Morgana. When she does, though, it’s a perfect, awful, ridiculous romantic comedy moment. There’s Morgana, in the middle of the dance floor, some green flashing green light that should wash her out just highlighting how unfairly gorgeous she is, head thrown back, hands on the hips of a girl just as dark-haired and pale as she is, but shorter and looking as if she can’t quite believe how lucky she is. And Elena-Elena realizes with a drunken sort of clarity that she’s jealous. Not just the sort of jealous that she got when she was fifteen and Vivian got her first boyfriend and Elena didn’t have constant access to her best friend all the time. No, this is a horrible, stomach-clenching kind of jealous where she wants to be the one dancing out there with Morgana, but they’re married and she told Morgana she wasn’t a lesbian and they moved past all that actual years ago and it isn’t fair, it’s horribly unfair to Morgana, not to mention her.
“Fuck,” says Elena, and fumbles in her purse to pay off her tab because she’s got to get out, she’s too drunk to process this or watch Morgana with whoever this girl is that she’s dancing with when all she can do at the moment is wish desperately that she remembered kissing Morgana at the wedding.
“Hope things get better, love,” the barman calls, and Elena gives him a distracted wave as she flees the club, hoping Morgana doesn’t see her.
too drunk to stay sorry she texts in the cab on the way back to the hotel, and lets her head fall back against the seat.
*
Elena really wishes she were asleep when Morgana comes back to the hotel. Instead, she’s curled up in a ball on the far side of the bed, most of the way back to sober and having a sexuality crisis she should have had three years ago so none of this would be a problem. Now, though, it’s a huge one. Because she and Morgana are married, and she is in love with Morgana in a not-at-all-platonic sort of way even though she doesn’t really know how to do sex that doesn’t involve a cock, and she can’t say it because it would be horribly cruel after all this time.
“Are you okay?” Morgana whispers, because of course they know each other well enough by now to know when they’re faking sleep.
“I’m fine.”
Morgana rolls her over even though Elena tries to bat her hands away. Her eyeliner is smudged all around her eyes, but she looks sober, and now increasingly upset. “You’ve been crying! You should have told me something was wrong, I would have come back with you.”
“No, it’s fine, really.” Morgana sits down on the bed. It’s dark, only the bathroom light that Elena left on so Morgana wouldn’t trip on the clothes that have got tossed around their room in the past forty-eight hours when she returned lighting things up, but Elena still zeroes in on her hands. She’s wearing the ring again. Elena doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean. “Overwhelmed from the trip, I think. It’s all catching up with me. I didn’t want to interrupt your night. You seemed to be getting along well with that girl.”
“You’re a terrible liar, and Freya was pretty obviously just underage and wanting to get out and remind herself that there’s life after sixth form.” Morgana stretches out on the bed next to her, still wearing her sparkly dress, although she’s kicked off her heels somewhere. Elena wants to touch her, but she clenches her hands instead. Not fair, not fair. She’s supposed to be straight, but Morgana is the prettiest person she’s ever seen, bar none except for maybe Gwaine, who is probably the reincarnation of a Greek god. “Have I upset you?”
And really, how is that the logical conclusion for anyone to draw? Elena blinks up at her. “Of course you haven’t. I just wasn’t in the mood for clubbing tonight, I guess. We can try again tomorrow night before we start heading south, if you like?”
“You don’t get to do that. You tell me everything. Awful things happen when you don’t.”
“You took your wedding ring off,” says Elena in a very small voice.
Morgana’s anything but stupid, and she knows Elena very well. She doesn’t say it, though, and make Elena’s life any easier. Not that it will be easy to be accused of being a jealous bitch, which she sort of is. “You didn’t,” Morgana says instead.
“We’re still married.”
For whatever reason, that’s what does it. Morgana props herself up on her elbow and raises her voice. “Yes, and you’ve been the one saying it doesn’t mean anything and that we were just drunk and it doesn’t matter ever since it happened!”
Elena rolls back over because she doesn’t think she can have this conversation while actually looking at Morgana. “Of course I said that. You were so upset, and I had to say something. You don’t want to be married to me.”
“And you don’t want to be married to me,” says Morgana, very slowly like Elena is missing some sort of point. “You’re straight. One of my last memories of the night we got married is you explaining that even though you would never date Gwaine because he’s a twat you would still lick chocolate off him.”
“Fuck, I don’t know,” says Elena into her pillow. “I’m sorry.”
Morgana sighs. “I don’t understand what you want.”
What Elena wants is for Morgana to make the first move again like she did years ago so they don’t have to talk about her sexuality, but that’s not going to happen, clearly. “Like I said. I don’t know.”
“You’re straight,” Morgana repeats.
Elena buries her face in her pillow again, then lifts it out and looks over her shoulder because she should at least try to be brave. Morgana is staring at the ceiling. “Maybe … not so much?” That gets Morgana looking at her, startled and angry, and Elena wishes she still had the excuse of being drunk because the only way she can think to explain would be to ramble. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still like men, but I also like you. I don’t really know what I would be doing, but I was so jealous of Freya tonight.” And the way Morgana had been smiling, and the hands splayed at Freya’s hips.
“What is that even supposed to mean?”
“I can’t stop wondering what it was like when I kissed you at the wedding.” Morgana makes a choked sound but Elena keeps talking over it. “And I want to kiss you again, and you’re the most important person in my life, and I might not be gay in general but I’m sort of starting to think I’m gay for you and it’s okay if you don’t want that, it’s fine, I get that I’m being the lesbian equivalent of a cocktease here, but I just. It hurt my feelings when you took the wedding ring off.”
“God, I could kill you,” says Morgana, and kisses her.
This time, Elena thinks she knows what she wants, and neither of them is drunk or putting on a show. So, when Morgana keeps it gentle (Morgana is never gentle, it’s one of the things Elena likes best about her), ready to pull back if Elena says no, all Elena can think about is getting closer. She practically crawls on top of Morgana, and tests herself with every movement of their lips and tongues: the body underneath her is soft all over, she’s got her fingers buried and twined in hair a lot longer than Gwaine’s, but it doesn’t feel odd at all. It just feels sweet and right, and even better when Morgana’s hand comes up and there’s a smooth touch of metal at the back of her neck.
Eventually, Morgana seems to realize that she’s serious, and not hesitating, and pushing closer instead of backwards, and she catches Elena’s hip and flips them over. Elena grins into the kiss, because there’s Morgana, and if she’s getting kissed like that it means that things are probably going to work out. “Okay?” she asks when Morgana pulls away, before interrupting herself with a yawn. Damn it.
“You’re serious,” Morgana says, a smile just starting. “You aren’t going to forget about this in the morning, are you? Because you don’t get another chance, then.”
Elena kisses her again, just quickly, but now that all the tension’s gone out of her all she wants to do is sleep. “Definitely not. You aren’t getting rid of me now. We’re girlfriends.” She manages to blink her eyes open to look at Morgana properly after that. “We are girlfriends, aren’t we? I mean, aside from the whole wife thing, that’s sort of a separate issue.”
“If you want to be girlfriends in the morning, we’re girlfriends,” says Morgana, and rolls off of her, left hand still wrapped round the back of Elena’s neck. “We’re still getting divorced. Just so you know.”
Getting divorced, moving in together, and just becoming girlfriends. Elena can’t help a tired-drunk giggle at that. “How do you think everyone will react when our Facebook statuses go from ‘Married’ to ‘In a Relationship’?”
Morgana curls up properly next to her, getting closer than they ever do when they’re sharing beds and smiling when Elena promptly pillows her head on her chest, which is much more pleasant than doing the same with men. “I suppose we’ll have to see. But can we keep this just between us until we’re home, at least? And maybe after that? I want this to be just us for a while.”
Probably Morgana’s afraid she’s going to change her mind, or worried that Arthur and their other friends are going to mock them half to death, which they are, Gwaine will ask about threesomes constantly even though he never asked either of them out on her own and Merlin will compose epic odes about their true love, but Elena isn’t worried about that. She’s got a week or more left of this road trip to convince Morgana that they’re going to be okay, and for the first time since she woke up in Gretna Green with a fuzzy memory and a ring on her finger it feels like that might actually be true. “Just us it is,” she agrees, and kisses Morgana once more before drifting off to sleep.
*
Vivian’s party actually happens the day after they sign the annulment paperwork. Elena argues long and hard that they should just change the name to a housewarming/divorce party, but Vivian insists on calling it a belated wedding reception anyway. Nobody’s parents are there, at least, although Elena’s dad is one of the few people who know the whole story about her and Morgana.
Instead, it’s a bunch of half-drunk recent university graduates in one of the smaller reception rooms in one of the poshest hotels in town, with more fairy lights than is strictly reasonable and a blown-up picture that Vivian stole off Elena’s phone (luckily Elena deleted the kissing ones before they got back from Scotland) in the place of honor. Merlin is drunk off two glasses of champagne and flirting with Arthur, Arthur is manfully ignoring it but blushing like mad, Vivian is flirting with every single one of their friends (“Why is it,” Vivian asked after visiting their first year, “that you ended up at the university with every gorgeous man on the planet?”), and all the lads seem to be pondering some sort of drinking game that probably should not be played with champagne.
Elena and Morgana are sitting in the places of honor, but they aren’t really paying terribly much attention to their friends. Instead, Elena is trying to figure out how long they can get away with playing footsie under the table before someone notices and asks what the hell’s going on, and Morgana is periodically stifling giggles because her ankles of all things are ticklish and Elena is going to use that as ammunition forever. “Changing the Facebook status tomorrow?” Elena whispers under the cover of Arthur finally breaking and shouting at Merlin when Merlin tries to sit in his lap. She gives it six months before Arthur gives in to the inevitable. Uther is going to have fits. More fits.
“Well, going from ‘Married’ to ‘Single’ would be lying,” Morgana says primly, and Elena wants desperately to kiss her because every time she does Morgana looks just a bit less uncertain.
In answer, Elena clasps her hand around the chain she’s wearing around her neck, which has the wedding ring strung on it, hanging down below her shirt. She’s been wearing it like that ever since they got back, and she doesn’t know where Morgana keeps hers but she knows it’s somewhere on her person. “Vivian is going to have fits,” she says, and releases the ring.
In a few years, they’re going to do it all again, with their friends and family there and Uther twitchy and praying for one of his children to adopt because obviously Arthur and Merlin are going to get it together eventually. Neither of them will wear white, Elena because she doesn’t want to spill anything on it and Morgana because she’s “not a slave to the patriarchy, honestly, Arthur, it’s not like I’m a virgin.” They’ll use the same rings, and it will be for good.
But for now, they’re sleeping in separate rooms because they aren’t stupid enough to move directly to living together like that, and Elena is stifling a laugh as Vivian tries to fend off Will in her quest to make Percival notice her and utter more than two words in a row, and with Morgana looking at her like she can see that bright future too, she’s in no hurry to make it happen. They’ve got time.
Wordcount: ~6,700
Warnings: intoxication, fluff, girls having feelings
Summary: Elena wakes up in Gretna Green, hung over and married to her best friend. This is not how their post-grad road trip was supposed to go.
A/N: This started out as part of the "Weddings" bonus challenge for summerpornathon and I finally made it into a proper fic. The title is from "The Minnow and the Trout," by the band A Fine Frenzy. Third fic posted in under a week, good heavens. I think I need a little break.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
Elena wakes up with a hangover and a wedding ring, abandoned on a hotel bed in Gretna Green, with Morgana hissing into her mobile in the bathroom. “-saw the certificate, Arthur, and yes, we are actually married,” she’s saying when Elena manages to distinguish words.
It takes a minute to separate out what actually happened from Elena's subsequent dream about extending their post-university road trip to Italy. Everything's in a bit of a whiskey-tinged haze, but she knows that she and Morgana are both very good at acting sober when they're drunk, and that somehow at some point there was a conversation about how neither of them will ever have a relationship better than the one they've got with each other. And then Elena was holding a bouquet of heather and Morgana was fussing with their hair and they were standing in front of an anvil in a registrar's office with Alvarr and Enmyria, who they met earlier in the night, standing as witnesses. “Shit,” she says. Her father is going to be heartbroken.
”She’s awake!” says Morgana, and hangs up before her brother can answer her. A second later, she appears with a glass of water and a few white tablets. “Here, have them, you need to not be hungover for this.”
Elena takes them obediently and even manages not to choke. Then, because Morgana is standing there wide-eyed and looking a bit horrified: “So, we got married.”
“Yes. Arthur will look into how to get an annulment and get back to me later.” Morgana sits on the edge of the bed, and Elena makes room for her. She's got used to sharing her bed on the first three weeks of their road trip, since it's cheaper (even though they don't need it cheap). “I’m so sorry. This is not how I imagined our sojourn in Scotland beginning.”
She might be disconcerted, but Elena definitely can’t stand to see Morgana looking this miserable. “Well, on the bright side, we'll get lots of free things for our honeymoon.”
“It's not funny,” wails Morgana.
Elena struggles to sit up properly and gives her a hug, tucking Morgana's head under her chin. “Well, it sort of is,” she says eventually. “And there are worse people to be married to, you know? I mean, imagine if Merlin and Arthur had come along like they'd wanted. I would be Mrs. Pendragon this morning.”
“You're already Mrs. Pendragon this morning,” Morgana mumbles into her collarbone.
“Oi, who ever said I'm changing my name? Now come on, we’re going to have a lie-in and then a good Scottish fry-up and then we're going to deal with our marriage when we're awake and sober. Got it?”
Morgana manages a snort. “Yes, Elena.” They settle on the bed and stop cuddling. Normally they wouldn’t care, both comfortable enough with their respective sexualities and their friendship that it doesn’t matter, but they got married, and snuggling up to sleep suddenly feels a bit awkward. They both lay awkwardly on their backs instead, and Elena thinks, a bit hysterically, that apparently they’ve skipped the newlywed stage. “How are you so calm about this?” Morgana finally bursts out.
Elena would giggle if it wouldn’t make her head hurt. “You got me arrested for public indecency in Paris. Getting married is rather tame in comparison.”
Morgana seems to be trying really hard to continue looking anxious, but Elena knows when she’s holding back a smile. “I suppose this is a lesson that we probably should never get drunk together, isn’t it?”
“Exactly.” Elena smiles and pats her gently on the arm. “You’re my best friend. This is not going to be the sort of acrimonious divorce where we never speak to one another again, it’s just going to be a good story to tell our friends. And hey, at least you broke up with Sophia after graduation, this is the sort of thing she would not take well.”
That does it. Morgana snorts out a giggle, then winces, not over her hangover either. “She would have drowned you in the pool. Or me in the pool. I am honestly not sure which.”
“Probably me, she hates me.”
Morgana finally relaxes and cuddles a bit closer. “No, it’s terribly frustrating. You are impossible to dislike.” Elena yawns, and Morgana follows suit. “Just don’t snore this time.”
*
Arthur, it appears, has a big mouth. (Although Elena already knew that, she’d just hoped he’d have a bit more discretion where his sister’s accidental marriage is concerned.) When they wake up from their nap, at nearly eleven when someone comes to clean the room, both of their phones are bursting with text messages from their gleeful friends. They do the only smart thing and share the best ones over breakfast.
Elena’s personal favorite is Gwaine’s long string of exclamation marks followed by I CALL FIRST THREESOME RIGHTS. Gwen sent a series of at least a dozen worried texts to Morgana, half of which are redactions of previous texts. Will’s wonderfully crass pix or it didn’t happen got sent to both of them, and Merlin’s left a voicemail on Morgana’s phone that’s nine parts hysterical hyena-worthy giggles to one part scolding them for not taking him and Arthur on the road trip so they could be flower girls (followed by several thumps that probably mean Arthur was in the room when he left the message). Even Lancelot chipped in with worryingly sincere congratulations on Elena’s phone.
Everything is increasingly hilarious, especially as they discover that both of them thought to take drunken wedding pictures (including a few presumably taken by Enmyria or Alvarr, since they’re of both of them) on their phones. The girl who serves them their eggs and toast gives them a broad wink when she sees them, so apparently they were noticed, but Elena doesn’t much mind, as it’s not like she’ll see any of them again, and the pictures are rather amazing. She scrolls through the ceremony (she suspects it was Enmyria holding her phone, as she recalls Alvarr was a bit drunk and unlikely to be able to hold a phone steady), looking for any more gems, and finds herself gaping at a picture at the end. She’d assumed they kissed a bit at the end of the ceremony-they’ve done it before, for Truth or Dare and once because Elena was sick of being hit on in a bar and Morgana indulges her more than she admits-but a kiss is one thing, and the picture is quite another, because they are actually snogging. She can’t drudge it up from the hazy memories of everything else, but apparently it happened, because there Morgana’s hands are, right on her arse, and there’s Elena’s tongue in Morgana’s mouth.
Before she can explain to Morgana why she’s stopped giggling, since Morgana’s phone seems to have more pictures of the afterparty, where presumably they weren’t making out, Elena’s phone rings and the display shows Dad. “Oh God, it’s my father,” she whispers, and Morgana goes even paler than usual. “And if he knows, Uther probably knows. Brace yourself.” Elena flips her phone open and chirps out a greeting, just in case he’s calling to check in and not about the wedding. “Hello, Dad!”
He sighs. “Uther Pendragon just called me, Ellie. You’re lucky I convinced him to have a glass or two of scotch before he calls Morgana.”
“Arthur’s sorting it,” Elena offers.
“You got married,” her father reminds her, like she might have forgotten.
“Yes. Sort of.” She squirms in her chair, not that he can see her to look disapproving. “Better Morgana than Arthur?” she offers. “He would probably jilt me at the altar to elope with Merlin or something.”
By some miracle, that makes her father start to laugh. He seems to have some problems stopping, but at least he’s not in one of his stern moods. She generally can’t bear those. “What are you going to do, princess?” he asks when he’s a bit calmer.
“Get annulment paperwork. Arthur’s looking it up for us. We’ve got our bar tab from last night if they want proof we weren’t exactly up for consent at that particular moment.” She winces, and Morgana looks horrified, but her father just chuckles again.
“Are you coming home?”
Elena shrugs even though he can’t see her. “I don’t know, we haven’t talked about it yet. But it will take a few weeks to get through the snarl of paperwork, and anyway, we’re moving in together in three weeks anyway, we can probably sign the divorce paperwork and the apartment lease on the same day. We may as well see Edinburgh in between.”
Her dad lets out another reluctant laugh. “Keep me updated, would you? Itinerary, divorce proceedings, whatever. I’ll try to keep Uther from having a heart attack.”
“Thank you, Dad. I love you.”
“Love you too, Ellie. Tell my daughter-in-law hello for me.” He hangs up before she can get out more than an indignant squeaking noise.
Morgana is biting her lip when Elena looks up at her, fork clutched in her hand. “My phone still isn’t ringing. Why isn’t my phone ringing?”
“My father advised Uther to get drunk before he tries to process our marriage.”
Morgana’s mouth twists like she isn’t sure whether she wants to laugh or not, and her hand goes to the necklace Elena gave her their first year at uni, rainbow stones hanging off a silver chain, as a seriously-it’s-okay-that-you’re-gay-and-kissed-me-a-bit present because back then Morgana was angry at everything and especially her father and wore rainbow pins and barrettes and headbands made for three-year-olds as some sort of fuck-you even though he couldn’t see her. The sun catches on her wedding ring. “Well,” she says at last.
“I hear Edinburgh is lovely this time of year,” says Elena, and goes back to eating her eggs.
*
Scotland is unexpectedly charming in June. Neither of them have been, which is why they’re on a post-university road trip there, but Elena had expected more mist. And plaid. It certainly rains plenty, and it’s chillier than it would be back at home, but for the most part both of them are content to take the back roads through everywhere and sleep at tiny little inns that probably don’t see much business even in summer.
Neither of them talks about the wedding much, except during Arthur’s daily calls to mock Morgana and tell Elena she could do better while he updates them on working through the snarls of annulling a civil union. Uther is conspicuously silent on the matter, probably because he isn’t nearly drunk enough to deal with it yet, but Elena’s father calls several more times and never stops sounding anything but amused and maybe a little exasperated. They stop by an internet café in a miniscule village with an unpronounceable name and check Facebook to find that someone (smart money is on Merlin and Gwaine) has hacked both of their accounts and changed their relationship status to “married.” The tone of the comments lists alarmingly more towards “what the hell, why weren’t we invited?” than “what the hell, you got MARRIED?!”
Neither of them takes off the rings.
Instead, they mostly continue with their road trip like nothing’s changed. They listen to the same three mix CDs over and over, because getting the radio in Scotland is chancy at best (“Right,” says Morgana the thirty-ninth time they hear ‘Don’t Stop Believing,’ and screeches into a gas station where she buys some folk album off the owner just so they have something else to listen to), and don’t pay much attention to maps because it isn’t like they need to be anywhere fast and it might be worth worrying in America, which stretches on for college-road-trip-movie stretches of highway, but this is Britain and eventually they’ll get home.
Most places, to Elena’s surprise, barely blink an eye at the wedding rings. Sure, they get a few glares and uncomfortable looks, but for the most part people either ignore it or get very excited, like the owner of the second inn they stay in after the wedding, who gives them free dinner and then sends them to bed early with a broad wink that makes them both burst into horrified laughter when they find themselves alone again. It’s the first time things have seemed normal since they woke up married (since Elena got used to people assuming she’s a lesbian nearly two years ago; they generally think she’s the butch one, even, since her hair’s impossible and she likes riding and footie and trips a lot), and Elena tips extravagantly at breakfast in thanks.
Arthur calls Elena’s phone instead of Morgana’s one evening while Morgana is off wailing at her sister, who’s been in Spain and is just now catching up on the news. “How’s she holding up?” he asks in that unbearably stiff way he has. She’d disliked Arthur at first, since he seems like a younger, blonder copy of his father at first meeting, but a few times seeing him bicker with Morgana and act like a seven-year-old with a crush around Merlin she figured out that the formality is just him being shy and worried. Not that he’d ever admit it.
“It’s thrown her for a loop.” Which is an understatement. Mostly Morgana takes things with a disgusting amount of poise and a tendency to go in swinging, but she’ll barely even talk about this latest adventure of theirs except when she’s talking annulments with Arthur. “But she’ll probably be okay. Our friendship survived her trying to cut her losses after I told her I wasn’t gay, it can survive a wedding.”
“Right.” And he really needn’t sound so disbelieving, but that’s Arthur all over again. “And how about you?”
Elena looks down at her ring, which would tip him right off if he were there. He’s got a stick up his arse, but he’s not stupid. Her floundering silence is probably telling him quite enough anyway. “I would probably be able to cope better if it felt odder to be married to her,” she admits at last. “This all feels … disturbingly normal, really. Ring and all.”
“Does it.” Arthur sighs before huffing out a reluctant laugh. “Should I be sabotaging the annulment?”
“No,” says Elena immediately. “Even if it were … anything, which it’s not, but even if it were, this isn’t how either of us would want to get married, without any planning or family or friends or anything.”
There’s another long, uncomfortable silence. “I’m tempted to anyway. You’re a far better sister-in-law than Sophia would have been, that’s for sure. She would have drowned me in the pool.” Elena starts laughing, helpless, and after a second Arthur joins in, and doesn’t try to drag the conversation back around.
*
The two worst phone calls happen on the same day, the day before they get to Edinburgh. Uther calls Morgana before they even get out of bed in the morning, and Morgana disappears into the bathroom before saying a word beyond “hello,” where she pretty quickly starts shouting things like “fuck the family name, I can go back to Lafayette if I want to” and “it’s my own choice, and will be when it’s real as well.”
Elena fidgets around in bed for ten minutes, not wanting to eavesdrop but wanting to be there when Morgana storms out and needs someone to rant at, and she’s so glad for the distraction when her own mobile rings that she doesn’t bother checking the display before pouncing on it. That, of course, means that she gets an earful of Vivian’s shrieking: “I go to Bermuda for one month!”
“Hello, Viv. Do you have a nice tan?”
“You don’t get to distract me! You got married! Without telling me! What sort of best friend are you? What sort of best friend do you think I am? Arthur Pendragon told me, Ellie! Arthur! Why the hell does Arthur know before me? It’s against the rules!”
“He’s Morgana’s brother,” Elena points out.
Vivian keeps going as if she didn’t hear, which is no surprise. Generally it’s just best to let her run herself out. “It’s against all the rules!”
“What rules?” She really needs to learn how to stop herself, but she hasn’t managed it in the twenty years she’s known Viv, so she doubts she ever will.
“The rules of friendship! And girldom! Which should have at least required you to tell me you’re a lesbian the bajillionth time I asked! Because I asked you a bajillion times, O’Shea. I distinctly recall telling you that it’s fine, Morgana Pendragon is fabulous and much more fun than her brother so it’s all right if you want to snog her, but you should have told me! Not to mention let me plan the wedding! Scotland, Elena, you got married in Scotland, do you think you’re in a Regency romance?”
This time, Elena waits five seconds just to make sure, but no, Vivian actually seems to require some sort of response to that tangled mess. “We were drunk! And I’m not a lesbian, I’m just married.” And apparently snogged the hell out of Morgana at the altar, but Morgana hasn’t mentioned it and Elena still doesn’t remember who kissed whom, so it’s just going to be something they don’t talk about. “Also, I didn’t tell you because you yelled at me when I called you early in the month and said to only call if I was dying, stop coming between you and the gorgeous Bermudan men who think your accent is hot.”
“Dying, married, these are equal levels of emergency.”
She’s not going to touch that, so she returns to defending herself. “We were drunk!”
“You didn’t even get a hen party!”
“Morgana and I are both hens, I don’t think we get a party.”
“And you can’t be trusted to pick your own clothes, I bet you got married in jeans or something equally awful.”
That’s actually true, but Elena decides not to give Vivian any more ammunition, especially since Morgana’s conversation with Uther seems to have devolved into shouting. “We were drunk and it was an accident.”
“You are an American road-trip movie cliché,” says Vivian, and hangs up on her. Elena stares at her phone for a few seconds, wondering whether she ought to call her back or wait for her to cool off a bit. As if in answer, her phone buzzes with a text a few seconds later. Am throwing you two biggest belated reception known to man, btw. <3
“We’re getting divorced,” Elena says to no one in particular, and goes about picking up their room and pretending not to listen to the end of Morgana’s conversation.
Morgana comes out of the bathroom a few minutes later, tight-lipped and red-eyed even though she’ll deny it until the end of forever. “Well, that went about as well as I could have expected. He tried to be polite for about five seconds and then accused me of trying to drag down our family name.”
Elena considers the best course of action and finally just holds her arms out. “Do you need a bit of a cuddle?”
After a second, Morgana shakes her head and picks up her rucksack. “No. Come on, apparently there’s some sort of sheep festival a few villages over, what the fuck, and the man who owns the inn says we aren’t allowed to miss it. We can stay there tonight and get to Edinburgh tomorrow.”
*
Everything goes to shit in Edinburgh.
They’ve scheduled three days for the city, and the first two days are great. Other than Arthur keeping them updated on annulment proceedings, the novelty of them getting married has worn off for most of their friends (except for Vivian’s occasional, terrifying texts; no matter how much Elena explains that this is not an actual marriage even if she and Morgana are moving in together, Vivian continues cheerfully announcing decoration plans for a hotel she’s apparently rented out for them for a “reception”), so they don’t have to deal with Merlin’s giggles and Gwaine and Will’s requests for pictures any longer. Instead, they wander and see all the sights, and Morgana even gets back to normal, or as normal as she ever is. It’s all fine, in fact, until the second night when Morgana suggests they go out clubbing.
Traditionally, when the two of them go out together, they start in a regular club so Elena can dance before she gets so drunk that she really can’t stay upright (even more than usual, at least) and then move to a gay club because of the two of them Morgana is the one more likely to pull. Even though they aren’t at uni anymore and Elena can’t crash on a friend’s floor if Morgana does pull, they plan it like that out of habit. They both make sure they have cab money and the hotel address in case they get separated, and they go out.
The straight club goes like normal. Morgana sits at the bar nursing a drink and glares at any man who comes within five feet of her while Elena drinks three shots in quick succession and goes off to dance. There are a few cute blokes who seem interested, and she dances with cheerful abandon, or as close to cheerful abandon as she can get without doing them serious bodily harm. One of them, wisely, catches her hands so she can’t accidentally flail in his face, and he gives her a weird look once they’re settled and moves away as soon as is polite. Elena blinks and it takes a second through the haze of the music and the alcohol to realize she’s still wearing Morgana’s ring.
She doesn’t even wait out the end of the song before going to find Morgana at the bar. “Hey, I’m ready, want to head over to CC Blooms?”
Morgana blinks at her, barely halfway through her glass. “I thought we’d be here another hour, at least.” Her eyes narrow. “Is someone bothering you?”
Considering the last time Elena complained about a man bothering her Cedric had to go to the campus health center with a broken nose, Elena makes haste to assure Morgana that’s not the case. “No, just more in the mood for drinking than dancing tonight, as it turns out, so I may as well drink where you’ve got a chance at pulling.”
That gets her a suspicious look, but Morgana doesn’t ask any more questions, just chugs the rest of her beer and tips the barman extra before picking up her purse and putting a hand on Elena’s back to guide her through the crowd. That gets them a whistle or two from drunken Scotsmen, but they deal with Gwaine and Will on a regular basis, so even Morgana doesn’t bristle.
The walk over to the gay club is quiet. Elena thinks she probably ought to make conversation so Morgana doesn’t call the evening off early thinking she isn’t having fun (which she isn’t, but Morgana wants to go clubbing and Elena made her stay at the sheep festival for longer than just to mock it so she’s got to make it up somehow), but the shots from the first club have definitely hit in earnest and she isn’t smashed yet but walking definitely takes concentration. Morgana just looks thoughtful, and then relieved when they get in sight of CC Blooms.
Every bouncer in the world lets Morgana jump queue-it’s half the fun of going clubbing with her-and this one is no exception. He doesn’t bother winking, used to the clientele, and Elena gives him an awkward smile before following Morgana inside and walking right into her because Morgana has stopped walking. Since there’s the distinct sound of ABBA coming from the dancefloor, that’s not unexpected (Morgana has an irrational dislike of ABBA and when asked just says something about Arthur and sixth form and the soundtrack to Mamma Mia!). Instead of turning them around and walking out, though, Morgana is staring down at her hand. “Oh,” she says, sounding a bit surprised. “I meant to take the ring off before we left the hotel tonight.”
Elena instantly claps her right hand over her left one but doesn’t make any motion to take the ring off, just like she hasn’t since they woke up in Gretna Green, even in the shower because it’s gold and it won’t rust. She’d thought she and Morgana were on the same odd, fucked-up page with that one, but apparently not. She puts on her brightest smile. “Can’t have them all thinking you’re some sort of hussy, can we?”
“No,” agrees Morgana, and wiggles the ring off to slip it into her pocket. She looks expectantly at Elena, but Elena just gives her brightest, most vacant, smile and pushes her into walking again, since ABBA has melted into something unrecognizable but less likely to scar Morgana.
At the gay club, it’s Elena’s turn to sit at the bar and chat with the flamingly gay barman, who seems to understand that she’s feeling a bit lost and stops by her bit of bar often to refresh her vodka and cranberry and comment on how sick of Prince he is. Elena tries not to fiddle with her wedding ring because it’s just been there since the wedding, she’d even stopped noticing it, but now it’s all she can think about. The barman seems to figure that out after a couple of songs. “Getting divorced?” he asks, all sympathy, patting her hand.
Elena looks out at the dance floor. “Yeah. Yes. I suppose.”
“You’re young for it.”
“It was sort of an accident.”
He refreshes her drink and wisely doesn’t ask. Elena goes back to staring moodily at the dance floor, which would be more effective if she could brood. She broods about as well as Merlin does, though, so she suspects she mostly looks forlorn, if the pitying looks she gets are anything to go by.
It’s a while before she sets eyes on Morgana. When she does, though, it’s a perfect, awful, ridiculous romantic comedy moment. There’s Morgana, in the middle of the dance floor, some green flashing green light that should wash her out just highlighting how unfairly gorgeous she is, head thrown back, hands on the hips of a girl just as dark-haired and pale as she is, but shorter and looking as if she can’t quite believe how lucky she is. And Elena-Elena realizes with a drunken sort of clarity that she’s jealous. Not just the sort of jealous that she got when she was fifteen and Vivian got her first boyfriend and Elena didn’t have constant access to her best friend all the time. No, this is a horrible, stomach-clenching kind of jealous where she wants to be the one dancing out there with Morgana, but they’re married and she told Morgana she wasn’t a lesbian and they moved past all that actual years ago and it isn’t fair, it’s horribly unfair to Morgana, not to mention her.
“Fuck,” says Elena, and fumbles in her purse to pay off her tab because she’s got to get out, she’s too drunk to process this or watch Morgana with whoever this girl is that she’s dancing with when all she can do at the moment is wish desperately that she remembered kissing Morgana at the wedding.
“Hope things get better, love,” the barman calls, and Elena gives him a distracted wave as she flees the club, hoping Morgana doesn’t see her.
too drunk to stay sorry she texts in the cab on the way back to the hotel, and lets her head fall back against the seat.
*
Elena really wishes she were asleep when Morgana comes back to the hotel. Instead, she’s curled up in a ball on the far side of the bed, most of the way back to sober and having a sexuality crisis she should have had three years ago so none of this would be a problem. Now, though, it’s a huge one. Because she and Morgana are married, and she is in love with Morgana in a not-at-all-platonic sort of way even though she doesn’t really know how to do sex that doesn’t involve a cock, and she can’t say it because it would be horribly cruel after all this time.
“Are you okay?” Morgana whispers, because of course they know each other well enough by now to know when they’re faking sleep.
“I’m fine.”
Morgana rolls her over even though Elena tries to bat her hands away. Her eyeliner is smudged all around her eyes, but she looks sober, and now increasingly upset. “You’ve been crying! You should have told me something was wrong, I would have come back with you.”
“No, it’s fine, really.” Morgana sits down on the bed. It’s dark, only the bathroom light that Elena left on so Morgana wouldn’t trip on the clothes that have got tossed around their room in the past forty-eight hours when she returned lighting things up, but Elena still zeroes in on her hands. She’s wearing the ring again. Elena doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean. “Overwhelmed from the trip, I think. It’s all catching up with me. I didn’t want to interrupt your night. You seemed to be getting along well with that girl.”
“You’re a terrible liar, and Freya was pretty obviously just underage and wanting to get out and remind herself that there’s life after sixth form.” Morgana stretches out on the bed next to her, still wearing her sparkly dress, although she’s kicked off her heels somewhere. Elena wants to touch her, but she clenches her hands instead. Not fair, not fair. She’s supposed to be straight, but Morgana is the prettiest person she’s ever seen, bar none except for maybe Gwaine, who is probably the reincarnation of a Greek god. “Have I upset you?”
And really, how is that the logical conclusion for anyone to draw? Elena blinks up at her. “Of course you haven’t. I just wasn’t in the mood for clubbing tonight, I guess. We can try again tomorrow night before we start heading south, if you like?”
“You don’t get to do that. You tell me everything. Awful things happen when you don’t.”
“You took your wedding ring off,” says Elena in a very small voice.
Morgana’s anything but stupid, and she knows Elena very well. She doesn’t say it, though, and make Elena’s life any easier. Not that it will be easy to be accused of being a jealous bitch, which she sort of is. “You didn’t,” Morgana says instead.
“We’re still married.”
For whatever reason, that’s what does it. Morgana props herself up on her elbow and raises her voice. “Yes, and you’ve been the one saying it doesn’t mean anything and that we were just drunk and it doesn’t matter ever since it happened!”
Elena rolls back over because she doesn’t think she can have this conversation while actually looking at Morgana. “Of course I said that. You were so upset, and I had to say something. You don’t want to be married to me.”
“And you don’t want to be married to me,” says Morgana, very slowly like Elena is missing some sort of point. “You’re straight. One of my last memories of the night we got married is you explaining that even though you would never date Gwaine because he’s a twat you would still lick chocolate off him.”
“Fuck, I don’t know,” says Elena into her pillow. “I’m sorry.”
Morgana sighs. “I don’t understand what you want.”
What Elena wants is for Morgana to make the first move again like she did years ago so they don’t have to talk about her sexuality, but that’s not going to happen, clearly. “Like I said. I don’t know.”
“You’re straight,” Morgana repeats.
Elena buries her face in her pillow again, then lifts it out and looks over her shoulder because she should at least try to be brave. Morgana is staring at the ceiling. “Maybe … not so much?” That gets Morgana looking at her, startled and angry, and Elena wishes she still had the excuse of being drunk because the only way she can think to explain would be to ramble. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still like men, but I also like you. I don’t really know what I would be doing, but I was so jealous of Freya tonight.” And the way Morgana had been smiling, and the hands splayed at Freya’s hips.
“What is that even supposed to mean?”
“I can’t stop wondering what it was like when I kissed you at the wedding.” Morgana makes a choked sound but Elena keeps talking over it. “And I want to kiss you again, and you’re the most important person in my life, and I might not be gay in general but I’m sort of starting to think I’m gay for you and it’s okay if you don’t want that, it’s fine, I get that I’m being the lesbian equivalent of a cocktease here, but I just. It hurt my feelings when you took the wedding ring off.”
“God, I could kill you,” says Morgana, and kisses her.
This time, Elena thinks she knows what she wants, and neither of them is drunk or putting on a show. So, when Morgana keeps it gentle (Morgana is never gentle, it’s one of the things Elena likes best about her), ready to pull back if Elena says no, all Elena can think about is getting closer. She practically crawls on top of Morgana, and tests herself with every movement of their lips and tongues: the body underneath her is soft all over, she’s got her fingers buried and twined in hair a lot longer than Gwaine’s, but it doesn’t feel odd at all. It just feels sweet and right, and even better when Morgana’s hand comes up and there’s a smooth touch of metal at the back of her neck.
Eventually, Morgana seems to realize that she’s serious, and not hesitating, and pushing closer instead of backwards, and she catches Elena’s hip and flips them over. Elena grins into the kiss, because there’s Morgana, and if she’s getting kissed like that it means that things are probably going to work out. “Okay?” she asks when Morgana pulls away, before interrupting herself with a yawn. Damn it.
“You’re serious,” Morgana says, a smile just starting. “You aren’t going to forget about this in the morning, are you? Because you don’t get another chance, then.”
Elena kisses her again, just quickly, but now that all the tension’s gone out of her all she wants to do is sleep. “Definitely not. You aren’t getting rid of me now. We’re girlfriends.” She manages to blink her eyes open to look at Morgana properly after that. “We are girlfriends, aren’t we? I mean, aside from the whole wife thing, that’s sort of a separate issue.”
“If you want to be girlfriends in the morning, we’re girlfriends,” says Morgana, and rolls off of her, left hand still wrapped round the back of Elena’s neck. “We’re still getting divorced. Just so you know.”
Getting divorced, moving in together, and just becoming girlfriends. Elena can’t help a tired-drunk giggle at that. “How do you think everyone will react when our Facebook statuses go from ‘Married’ to ‘In a Relationship’?”
Morgana curls up properly next to her, getting closer than they ever do when they’re sharing beds and smiling when Elena promptly pillows her head on her chest, which is much more pleasant than doing the same with men. “I suppose we’ll have to see. But can we keep this just between us until we’re home, at least? And maybe after that? I want this to be just us for a while.”
Probably Morgana’s afraid she’s going to change her mind, or worried that Arthur and their other friends are going to mock them half to death, which they are, Gwaine will ask about threesomes constantly even though he never asked either of them out on her own and Merlin will compose epic odes about their true love, but Elena isn’t worried about that. She’s got a week or more left of this road trip to convince Morgana that they’re going to be okay, and for the first time since she woke up in Gretna Green with a fuzzy memory and a ring on her finger it feels like that might actually be true. “Just us it is,” she agrees, and kisses Morgana once more before drifting off to sleep.
*
Vivian’s party actually happens the day after they sign the annulment paperwork. Elena argues long and hard that they should just change the name to a housewarming/divorce party, but Vivian insists on calling it a belated wedding reception anyway. Nobody’s parents are there, at least, although Elena’s dad is one of the few people who know the whole story about her and Morgana.
Instead, it’s a bunch of half-drunk recent university graduates in one of the smaller reception rooms in one of the poshest hotels in town, with more fairy lights than is strictly reasonable and a blown-up picture that Vivian stole off Elena’s phone (luckily Elena deleted the kissing ones before they got back from Scotland) in the place of honor. Merlin is drunk off two glasses of champagne and flirting with Arthur, Arthur is manfully ignoring it but blushing like mad, Vivian is flirting with every single one of their friends (“Why is it,” Vivian asked after visiting their first year, “that you ended up at the university with every gorgeous man on the planet?”), and all the lads seem to be pondering some sort of drinking game that probably should not be played with champagne.
Elena and Morgana are sitting in the places of honor, but they aren’t really paying terribly much attention to their friends. Instead, Elena is trying to figure out how long they can get away with playing footsie under the table before someone notices and asks what the hell’s going on, and Morgana is periodically stifling giggles because her ankles of all things are ticklish and Elena is going to use that as ammunition forever. “Changing the Facebook status tomorrow?” Elena whispers under the cover of Arthur finally breaking and shouting at Merlin when Merlin tries to sit in his lap. She gives it six months before Arthur gives in to the inevitable. Uther is going to have fits. More fits.
“Well, going from ‘Married’ to ‘Single’ would be lying,” Morgana says primly, and Elena wants desperately to kiss her because every time she does Morgana looks just a bit less uncertain.
In answer, Elena clasps her hand around the chain she’s wearing around her neck, which has the wedding ring strung on it, hanging down below her shirt. She’s been wearing it like that ever since they got back, and she doesn’t know where Morgana keeps hers but she knows it’s somewhere on her person. “Vivian is going to have fits,” she says, and releases the ring.
In a few years, they’re going to do it all again, with their friends and family there and Uther twitchy and praying for one of his children to adopt because obviously Arthur and Merlin are going to get it together eventually. Neither of them will wear white, Elena because she doesn’t want to spill anything on it and Morgana because she’s “not a slave to the patriarchy, honestly, Arthur, it’s not like I’m a virgin.” They’ll use the same rings, and it will be for good.
But for now, they’re sleeping in separate rooms because they aren’t stupid enough to move directly to living together like that, and Elena is stifling a laugh as Vivian tries to fend off Will in her quest to make Percival notice her and utter more than two words in a row, and with Morgana looking at her like she can see that bright future too, she’s in no hurry to make it happen. They’ve got time.