AN - Last night, my brain would not stop singing "That Don't Impress Me Much" by Shania Twain at me. It was a horrible night. Especially the realization that I know all the words. Good grief.

This piece of cruff (crack + fluff), or, possibly more accurately, guff, is inspired by it, and kept me awake demanding I do something with it. Like write it. It is a Nanowrimo month, so sleepless nights were to be expected. But I am supposed to be writing something else. Self-discipline? Out of stock, not available for order until September :-(.

This is almost entirely clean. Oh well, hope you aren't disappointed. Young Malahad love... Or something.

Merlin had given up the title of Gareth over a year ago and had been running the support department on his own, without the former Merlin's beady eyes constantly looking over his shoulder, for a month when Percival asked him out. Merlin was flattered. It had been a long time since anyone had wanted to date him, and he had never exactly been considered a catch. Too Scottish, nose too big, too intelligent, hair too thin. It all counted against him. He had not dated at all since joining Kingsman. Civilians were just too complicated a prospect, other agents were taboo under anti-fraternisation rules for the field, and he didn't know any of the other staff well enough yet to have considered them as options. He hadn't had so much as a sniff of a scented neck since his last (ever) honeypot mission, a night he was beginning to look back on with rather more longing than it deserved.

Apparently Percival had come to similarly logical conclusions about their dating situation.

Actually, the date had not started off all that badly. They both looked sharp (of course), but not fussy or formal. The restaurant had a decent selection of local craft beers on tap and a menu that was not pompous or over-priced for a first date (considering it was still London). Their waiter had seated them at a nice table, one where Percival could watch the front entrance and Merlin could watch the back and they both had the window in view from the corner of their eyes.

They had managed some casual chit-chat and moved on to discussing various papers Merlin had written and projects he was working on (without mentioning anything in public that would raise questions if they were being bugged, or just had nosey table neighbours, obviously). Percival however took that as a cue to talk about his own research and papers. Merlin had nothing against that, it was refreshing to talk to someone who knew what he was on about. There were definitely too many people at Kingsman who had gotten into Cambridge or Oxford on the strength of their name and their school, rather than the strength of their grades, and then scraped a 2.2 in English Lit (Something Merlin intended to change now he could). Percival was definitely by no means stupid. Unfortunately, that did not make him interesting.

Where it all went downhill, or possibly down the valley, was that he could not stop talking about himself and how annoying it was that he had had to leave his beloved Wales in search of ways to satisfy his thirst for practical chances to apply Theoretical Physics. Mostly, his problem, described at length in his lilting, lullaby-like Welsh accent, seemed to be that Wales should have a Large Hardon Collider and inexplicably, undoubtedly due to some bureaucratic oversight, it didn't. Which meant that every time Percival wanted to use the thing, he had to go to Switzerland to break in and it was very time intensive. It would all have been much more convenient if he could just go home for the weekend, do the necessary breaking and entering on his own patch and then get straight on with the important bit. Science!

In principle, Merlin was prepared to agree with him. Wales and Switzerland had many things in common that would have made Wales equally as good a location. Mountains, for example. Judging by how green Switzerland always looked, probably also rain. Accents so thick they often needed subtitles for other native speakers also came to mind. He was willing to guess there were also sheep in Switzerland, there were certainly cows. Where else did all that Milka come from if not the famous purple cows of Switzerland ...

Merlin's glasses beeped, jolting him awake just in time to avoid face-planting into his soup.

"Merlin here." He said quietly.

"Lovely, just the man I wanted to talk to." Galahad's voice was clear in his ear.

Percival looked at him questioningly.

"Go ahead." Merlin replied. Galahad was in the field, that definitely had priority over his snooze-worthy date.

"You know that thing you gave me and told me 'Whatever you do, do not shake it'?"

"Yeeeees." Merlin had a horrible feeling he knew where this was going.

"Well, of course, after being warned, I never would have intentionally done anything so stupid, but heat of the moment and all that. Let us just say 'it has become shaken'. It is hissing quite loudly. Please advise?"

And Merlin threw his napkin on the chair, grabbed his coat and legged it from the restaurant. Leaving Percival to pick up the tab.

Merlin wasn't much impressed by theoretical scientists anyway. He was much more of a hands-on person.

They didn't reschedule.

Although Merlin suspected it to be part of some competition with Percival (why else would the insanely attractive man be interested except to prove he could succeed where the slightly older agent had failed? The pigtail pulling between the pair was becoming legendary), when Lancelot asked him out, he said 'yes'. It may also have had something to do with Lancelot's reputation as a 'sure thing'.

Merlin had agreed to meet Lancelot in the tailor's shop, so that they could go to the 'surprise location' James had picked for their date together.

Merlin did not class what happened next as a date. The date never had a chance to begin. For which Merlin is truely grateful because it means he can deny the very existence of the 'almost date' that certainly never actually took place. It would have been a total disaster and how he didn't see that beforehand ... Too many long nights watching sexy men doing stupid (dangerous) things, not enough (or any, damnit) actual sex. Merlin was considering buying shares in Vaseline as a way of getting at least some of his money back.

Anyway, Merlin had cleaned himself up at the manor before taking the tube to the shop. James had not told him to wear anything specific, so he was dressed smart-casual and he thought he looked none too shabby, thank you very much.

James was stood in front of the mirror in dressing room two, wearing a leather jacket, a white t-shirt and tight jeans. Not, of itself, a bad thing as the view was spectacular, but he had slicked his hair back and was giving himself winning smiles. His teeth flashed so brightly, Merlin could almost hear the 'ping' sound from a hundred toothpaste ads and he could clearly imagine the white 'starburst' effect. James winked at himself, gave himself a thumbs up and said.

"Aaaay."

That was all bad enough, but then he deployed the armbrace that Merlin had specifically developed for knives and a comb shot out of his sleeve into his hand. He held the comb up to his full head of hair, turned his head this way and that in front of the mirror and threw up his hands in mock despair.

"You just can't improve on perfection." He said to himself.

Merlin, who had not long before admitted defeat and shaved his head, was staring in horror, unable to remove himself from the scene. Then his glasses beeped and he gave himself a shake. That alerted James to his presence and he turned with a smile just as Merlin answered the call.

"Merlin here."

"How fortunate for me, as you are just the person who can help."

"Go ahead, Galahad." Merlin said. He gave James an apologetic smile and, pointing at his glasses, shrugged.

"It would seem that since the blueprints for this building were lodged, it has undergone some quite extensive renovations. I am completely turned around with no idea of where the objective is."

"Hang on, let me get to a screen." Merlin said.

He mouthed 'What can you do?' at James, and got an understanding thumbs up in reply, before quickly extracting himself from the scene.

A pretty face (or body, fuck!) had never been enough to impress Merlin before, and he was damned if he was going to let his hormones get the better of him now.

He organized for James to go into deep cover in Russia for a few months, to give himself time to convince himself of the wisdom of passing up on that chance.

Bors had just gotten back from Peru and they had finished his debrief on the successful mission. He was looking tanned and ridiculously handsome with his melted chocolate eyes and deep brown hair, relaxed in his linen suit that was definitely too cold for London. That was a fact that Merlin had visual confirmation of. He could see that the other man's nipples were peaked under his shirt. He felt his own tighten in response. Damn it all! Was he fourteen again or what?

Bors gave Merlin a packet of coffee that smelt as if the aroma alone was going to be enough to have him vibrating. Then he asked him out. There was no way Merlin could resist stiff nipples and coffee, so he said yes.

Bors collected Merlin from his flat in Hampstead Heath in a shiny red Alfa Spider and roared with him up the M1 to Silverstone to watch the F1. Merlin was glad the trip was relatively short (especially the way Bors drove) because the car, beautiful as it was, was not built for people with legs the length of Merlin's. F1 was not really Merlin's cup of tea, too much of it was decided beforehand by which team had the best technology that season. The rest was just men driving laps, unless something happened to shake things up. Luckily it rained, which brought some excitement into the proceedings. Bors had packed a picnic, which they ate in very British fashion huddled under an umbrella, shoulders pressed together causing warmth to spread in other areas too.

All in all, not too bad of an afternoon.

They squelched back to the car together, the carpark having reverted to its natural state of muddy field.

"Take off your shoes Merlin, if you wouldn't mind." Bors said, retrieving a plastic sheet from the boot as he stowed the picnic things away. He sat himself on the driver's seat and set an example. He lay the plastic sheet on the floor of the passenger footwell and put his shoes on it. Merlin, slightly disbelieving, copied him. The trip back to London was even more uncomfortable than the trip out, with no space to put his feet.

Bors took them back to his place.

"Nightcap?" He asked, clearly meaning something else entirely because it was still early, as he tied his shoes, both firmly on the garage floor outside of the car. Merlin's legs protested as the blood began to return to everything south of his knees.

"Thank you." He said and tied his own shoes to walk to the house.

Bors pressed a kiss to his first two fingers and put the fingers to the car's soft top.

"Good night, Babe." He said.

Merlin had a sinking feeling in his stomach, but he started to follow Bors anyway.

He had made it all the way to the threshold and was wondering about taking his shoes off again, while Bors unlocked the door and disarmed the security, when his glasses beeped. Merlin let out a breathe he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Merlin here." He said with a sigh, not sure how he felt about being cockblocked this time.

"Excellent." Galahad's voice was hushed. "I seem to have run into a spot of local resistance. Entirely my own fault, I got distracted and missed my window."

"Status Galahad?" Merlin demanded firmly.

"I would say yellow, certainly not more than a light sort of amber." There was a gunshot in the background. "Maybe more of a sort of sunset orange." Galahad corrected himself.

"Right, keep your head down and I will get on it." Merlin said.

"Do you want me to give you a lift?" Bors asked.

"No thanks, I'll be quicker walking." Merlin said, and then headed off towards the shop at a jog, ignoring the pins and needles in his legs.

Merlin had control of a whole hangar full of supercars, and not one of them was the slightest bit of use in central London.

Penis extentions had never impressed Merlin in the slightest, regardless of what form they came in. It was better just to learn to use what you had well.

He was however beginning to despair of ever getting his hands on an actual penis (that was not his own) ever again.

Merlin had used up all of the coffee Bors had given him and he was damned if he was going to drink the swill in the shop's breakroom just because Arthur had demanded his presence in town that afternoon. So he took himself out for a sandwich and a decent cup of coffee from the place around the corner.

The fact that he had one hand full of coffee and one hand full of sandwich, and did not wish to be parted from either of them, largely explains what happened next. He was attempting not to let the coleslaw drop out of his very nice ham baguette and land on his clothes, when someone hit him on the back of the head. Hard. Not hard enough, so not a professional and not too hard, so not someone who really wanted to hurt him either.

"Oi!" Said Merlin, dazed, confused and quite understandably upset about the direction his lunchbreak was taking.

All he got for his protests however, was a bag over the head and denuded of both his coffee and his sandwich. And now he was angry. Somewhat too late as it turned out. He had quickly been attached to the chair he had been sat on with plastic ties and the whole thing was hefted into the back of a van. Or at least so Merlin guessed from the noise of a sliding van door he heard.

So now he was unimpressed, embarrassed - and had a bag over his sore head, but neither his coffee nor his sandwich. And he was going to miss his meeting with his boss.

"Shite!" He roared, because really it was. The van was already moving off to who knew where.

Merlin did vaguely wonder if the hit to the head had been harder than he had first thought. His vision was blurry, but they had taken his glasses so that did not necessarily mean anything.

They did seem to be talking the most amazing amount of guff however, which made him wonder if his language processing center had been damaged.

They, wearing a uniform of ski-masks and motorcycle balaclavas with black polonecks, were trying to convince him he should be ashamed of coming to England and taking a job that could have gone to an English person. Except that was utter rubbish, because Merlin had a very particular set of skills and there wasn't an English person who could his job anything like as well as him, or Arthur would absolutely not have allowed an uncivilized scholarship Scot to become his de-facto second in command.

Merlin ignored them and focused on their trousers. They were not uniform. No, not at all. They were not off the peg either. Merlin could tailor a pair of trousers, he knew that someone had tailored these. In fact, he knew that Andrew had tailored these, Merlin recognized his trademarks. Which meant these utter idiots were customers and he had been intentionally targetted. Bollocks, that was going to go down well with precisely nobody.

Merlin concentrated on trying to accurately guess measurements and memorize fabrics with a pounding head and blurred vision, so as to narrow down the list of suspects when he got himself out/was rescued. The rant had moved on to something that sounded like a general complaint against the Barnett formula and more specifically how his skills were ill-gotten because he had had an unfairly high amount of money (subsidized by hardworking English people) spent on his education.

It made no sense and told him absolutely nothing about what he was doing there, tied uncomfortably to a stolen cafe chair.

"You are talking absolute pish." He informed them as clearly as he could. "And I would appreciate it greatly if you would stop, because I have an absolute bugger of a headache and no braincells free to deal with wankers."

Whether what actually came out of his mouth was what he had intended or not was unclear to him, however his captors were clearly not impressed. They started threatening to dump him across the border.

Merlin told them to do their worst, he hadn't had a haggis supper in ages and as they'd interrupted his lunch, he was feeling a bit peckish.

They clearly didn't know what to make of that statement, so they put the bag back on his head and went off to regroup.

Merlin had a (possibly ill-advised) nap.

Merlin jolted awake at the sound of gunfire. Not a reassuring noise when you are tied to a chair with a bag over your head. All he could do was hope it was his rescue party. He didn't have to wait long before the telltale tap tap of oxfords approached him.

"Hello Merlin." Galahad's voice penetrated the darkness. "If your eyes aren't closed, you might want to remedy that. I am going to take the bag off."

Merlin blinked his eyes slowly open as Galahad freed his limbs and began to gently rub some life back into them. Merlin was aware he was going to be in agony any second. "Suprisingly good quality, considering a potato sack would have done the job just well." Galahad commented, his hands working more firmly on Merlin's right hand now.

"And Kingsman trousers. They are known men, Galahad. Assuming I managed to make halfway accurate measurement estimates, I can make up a suspect list."

"I trust you to take the measure of a man even under less than ideal circumstances." Galahad replied. Merlin flexed his hand and Galahad moved on to his left hand.

"Oh good, I am making sense. I wondered after the knock on the head."

"Your voice is, as ever, the very epitome of Scottish good sense Merlin, despite the egg on the back of your head. Which I definitely would not advise touching." Galahad said, as Merlin raised a hand to do exactly that. "I really do think we should be leaving."

"Yes." Merlin agreed. "Do you have my glasses?"

Galahad produced them from his jacket pocket, gave them a quick wipe with his handkerchief and handed them over. Merlin switched them on.

"Nimue?" He asked.

"Loud and clear Merlin." Nimue replied.

"You should take this." Galahad passed him the gun from his ankle holster. "I think I scared everyone off though. Can you walk yet?"

"Slowly, with a great deal of teeth gnashing."

"I could carry you." Galahad offered and, catching the stink-eye he received, back-pedaled. "But perhaps you would like to try hobbling first?"

Nimue laughed in both their ears.

"Cute, but do get moving, everything seems clear at the moment."

Galahad helped him to his feet and kept a warm arm wrapped around his waist. Merlin wrapped one of his around the agent's shoulders. They set off at a relatively fast hobble. The house appeared to be deserted and Galahad lead them confidently, but careful of ambush, out of it, Merlin pushing himself to speed up as they went.

"Well done." Galahad whispered softly in his ear as they stood on the doorstep, peering out into the garden looking for signs of movement. "Their vehicles are all gone. Umm. Further more, that" he pointed at a timer attached to the gas "looks like the place is rigged to explode. Run?" Galahad suggested.

Merlin did not need to be told twice, he put his head down and headed for the treeline, long legs stretching, arms pumping at his sides. Suddenly, there was a weight on his back and the impact took him to the ground just before the explosion blew out in a wave behind him. The pressure covering the length of his body eased and Galahad stood up and offered Merlin his hand. His ears rang but he allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

Galahad, suit smoldering slightly, hair wildly disarranged and brown eyes alight, had just calculated the blast radius in his head, decided they weren't going to make it and had taken him down to protect him and take the brunt of the explosion with his suit. It was all just sickeningly arousing.

"We are going to have a discussion about passing on all pertinent data in a timely fashion." Merlin shouted over the ringing in his ears and the noise of the flames.

"Perhaps," Galahad shouted back "at a location that is not going to be quite so lively in a very short while? Nimue, we could use a clean-up team out here if you would be so good. We should be fine from here, but I will check in later."

Whatever her reply was, they didn't hear it over the ringing but Merlin nodded at the sensible suggestions, and followed the agent through the trees and over a drystone wall to where a Landrover was sat in a passing point. Galahad unlocked the car, climbed in and unlocked the passenger side, pushing the door open for Merlin. He climbed gratefully in and sprawled, trying to get his various bodily functions back under control, his heart, his lungs, the shaking from adrenaline, the ringing, the badly timed arousal ... Galahad was already driving sedately off along the country road, looking flushed and disheveled, unfairly attractive and completely calm. Bastard.

"This is Miss Sophie." Galahad said when it looked like Merlin was more or less back to himself, stroking the gearstick - the gesture looked quite odd, but Merlin couldn't say why. It did draw his attention to the fact that the agent was actually wearing driving gloves though. He suppressed a shiver.

"God bless her and all who sail in her?" He said, uncertain what the correct response was to being introduced to someone's car.

"What I particularly like about her out here," Galahad continued unphased, "is that I could pull her off the road and park her behind a hedgerow and no one would bat an eyelid."

Merlin blinked.

"The perfect countryside camouflage." Galahad waved his hand vaguely about, indicating the abundance of countryside surrounding them. Rich in fine examples of hedgerows. "Another useful aspect of Landrovers, that I find entirely under-utilized, is that you can fit a decent sized inflatable mattress in the back."

Merlin blinked again. Were they having the conversation he thought they were having?

"I thought as you were desperate enough to go on a date with the man who is in love with his own cleverness, the man who is in love with his looks and even the man who is in love with his car, you might consider going on one with me." Galahad concluded.

"How is being rescued and then shagged in the back of a Landrover 'going on a date' Galahad?" Merlin asked, quite peeved at his assumptiveness.

"Get your mind out of the gutter. Who said anything about shagging?" Galahad asked.

Oooops, thought Merlin, who is making assumptions?

"I thought, as we are outside of London's light pollution, we could haul the mattress out and do some stargazing. I've got blankets. And I packed a hamper." His brow wrinkled. "Although now I think about it, I do see where you got the shagging from. It was the hedgerows, wasn't it? Sorry."

"And the mattress Galahad. What about mentioning mattresses to the newly rescued does not say 'I require payment for my bravery in the form of carnal knowledge of your body'?"

"I suppose one could see it like that." Galahad responded slightly glumly. "I did not mean to imply that. You save my arse all the damned time and have never indicated the slightest interest in getting to know me better, carnally or otherwise."

And Merlin found himself stumbling mentally again. Was the agent expressing disappointment at that being the case? He could have just asked, like any normal person would have. As Galahad apparently thought he was desperate (not entirely inaccurate, Merlin admitted), why was he worried he'd get turned down?

What actually came out of his mouth was;

"You took time out before rescuing me to pack a hamper?"

"Well, I got Fortnum and Mason to do it, I just picked it up on the way past. You like picnics."

Merlin did like picnics, but the question definitely arose of how Galahad knew that.

"That hardly improves the matter Galahad."

"Oh really, Merlin? It added an extra 6 minutes to the journey time and I thought you were hungry after your lunch was interrupted." Galahad sounded slightly put out. "Are you that shaken up? Have you gone completely soft since you took the deskjob? If I had been looking for nicer bunch of misguided idiots to kidnap you, I would have been hard-pressed to find one. The worst they would have done to you is attempted to force you to use RP and renounce your allegiance to Glasgow Celtic on pain of being dumped on the wrong side of Hadrian's Wall."

"But how did you know that?" Merlin demanded, his brain finally catching up on what had been bothering him for the whole of the conversation. Namely the amount of things Galahad knew that he had no way of knowing. "And if you did know that, was it entirely necessary to let the place blow up like that?"

"Not necessary, no. I thought it might impress you a bit."

And it had, Merlin had to admit.

"Also, they were lowering the tone of the whole neighbourhood and I read that adrenaline is supposed to be a good thing on dates. It has to do with the link between arousal and fear ..."

"Galahad." Merlin used his firmest handler's voice. "You are avoiding the question. How do you know the things you know?"

"I've had you under observation for a while now." Galahad replied.

"Me?" Merlin said. "How?"

"I bugged out your glasses. They send a feed to my private file storage."

And that also impressed Merlin. And freaked him the fuck out.

"How long?" He asked, firmly again but in fact barely keeping it together.

"Since you left the field and became fair game."

So, over a year then. Certainly long enough to witness all the disastrous dates. And interfere in them too.

"Galahad, have you been rescuing me from ill-advised romantic adventures with our colleagues as well?"

The agent beamed.

"Yes."

And Merlin could have had a rant about how it was all a terrible invasion of his privacy, but really? Also he was hungry. And impressed. Who thought to bring a hamper to a rescuing?

"I should thank you for that." He said instead, because if Galahad thought he was worth a date with a huge lump on his head, wearing slightly sweaty work clothes and covered in coleslaw who was Merlin to argue? "Did you have any particular hedgerow in mind for your impromptu star-lit picnic?"

"I thought I would just pick a nice looking one that wasn't already occupied by people shagging."

"All the good bushes taken?"

"Well, we have passed three suspiciously dark cars so far." Galahad replied, proving why he was the better field agent. Merlin had been too busy concentrating on their conversation, too focused on one thing rather than their surroundings.

"Did you get the hamper with the oatcakes?" Merlin asked rather than worrying about it.

"Of course." Galahad smiled.

Galahad's idea of a date may not have started out in a conventional manner, but it certainly ended ... satisfyingly ... for all concerned.

AN2 - I may have taken some liberties with science. CERN has not been around that long.