"You want me to sneak into where?" Merlin's voice had reached an alarming pitch.
"Look," Lancelot tried to sound reasonable. "We've got to deal with this dragon."
At the word dragon Merlin flinched, sending the fetching ruby red kerchief he was wearing askew.
Lancelot narrowed his eyes. "I'd almost forgotten about your fishy behavior. Are you the reason we just happened to have a dragon fly into our bakery?"
Merlin looked at the floor.
"Oh my god!" Lancelot felt the blood rising to his cheeks, and he did 10 deep breaths. By the time he had opened his eyes, Merlin had vanished.
"MERLIN!" he cried, feeling remarkably like Arthur.
"Coming, coming, just had to use the loo." In a flash of gold Merlin had appeared back at Lancelot's side.
"You can teleport!" Lancelot felt suddenly gleeful.
"Yes, but not very well. Not very well at all."
"Nonsense. Meet me at Elana's Unusual Brews tomorrow morning, promptly at 7:15, and we'll solve this dragon problem!" Usually Lancelot's luck was downright terrible, but it seemed like the tides were finally turning in his direction. Who knew Merlin could teleport? What a wonderful discovery!
So the thing was that when Merlin said he could teleport but "not very well" he was actually telling the truth and not, as Lancelot suspected, trying to be lazy.
It was too bad that Lancelot hadn't known that before, if he had, he wouldn't have even bothered coming. As it was, he showed up bright and early at Merlin's favorite coffee shop, along with his trusty red backpack chock full of apples, granola bars, and a couple heavy lead pipes just in case.
Mordred was already there looking small in a coat so large that it almost completely swallowed his hands. Lancelot had to bite his lip to refrain from asking if he could roll up Mordred's sleeves.
"So Mordred have you been here before?" Lancelot asked.
"Er yes," Modred said looking as though he were trying very hard to forget the last time he'd been there.
Lancelot persisted anyway. "Have you tried their cilantro scones then?" They were nowhere near as good as any of the scones Lancelot made, but they weren't terrible.
"No, no I have not." Modred pulled his sleeves down even further.
"Right," Lancelot said, "Well, I have." And then he began staring very hard at the paintings on the wall. There was a rather fetching one of an octopus combing seaweed out of its tentacles or was it a cat tangled up in a green scarf? Lancelot wasn't sure which it was, but he was sure that he would positively murder Merlin when he finally showed up. Well, he wouldn't murder him exactly, maybe he would just give him the apple with the mushy spot. That would show him!
It was another fifteen minutes before Merlin arrived and by that time Lancelot wholly considered himself an art connoisseur and Mordred-well, Lancelot wasn't quite sure what Modred had been doing, but he was still there.
The first thing Merlin said was not "Sorry I'm late. Thank you Lancelot, you magnificent human, for waiting so long. I'll make it up to you. Here's that copy of The Expert Guide to Gardening you wanted." No, the first thing that Merlin said was, "Why is he here? I'm not teleporting him!"
Lancelot sighed.
It took another fifteen minutes and four chocolate croissants before they were finally on their way.
"So," Lancelot said, "Let's go over it one more time. All we need to do is teleport to Prowling Lion Trailhead in the forest of Dunkeroo. There should be plenty of dancing daisies there."
Modred nodded sending his curls bouncing while Merlin, ever polite, simply rolled his eyes.
"You sound like Gaius, Lancelot," Merlin said huffily. Then he grabbed Lancelot, quite abruptly, and teleported the three of them away.
The first thing Lancelot saw, once the world had stopped spinning, was a large stack of sweaters. They were cozy looking sweaters, the color of mustard, but they certainly did not belong in a forest
"Right," Lancelot heard Merlin say. "This can sometimes happen."
Lancelot felt a headache coming on. They were not in the forest of Dunkeroo. They were not in a forest at all. In fact, Lancelot was fairly certain they were in a department store.
Brightly dressed people meandered around. Lancelot couldn't help noticing that one of them looked an awful lot like Gwen, they even had that lovely pink skirt that Gwen was always wearing and- oh my god it was Gwen! Lancelot ducked behind a shelf of tank tops. He was wearing a shirt that had a hole in it. A hole! He wasn't prepared to see Gwen!
"Merlin." It was Arthur that had just spoken. So clearly Gwen was not alone. Wait, did that mean Arthur and Gwen went shopping together?
"Merlin!" This was Morgana, sounding much more enthusiastic than Arthur. Lancelot grinned even though his legs were starting to cramp up: this meant that Gwen and Arthur didn't go shopping together alone!
"What are you doing lazing around here- wait is that Mordred? I thought you two . . ." Arthur trailed off, sounding confused and, if Lancelot wasn't mistaken, scared as well.
"Mordred had a wardrobe emergency," Merlin improvised, "And he called me because . . . we're friends now!"
"Merlin, we have to talk-but not now, just come see me alone." Was it just Lancelot or was Arthur's voice shaking?
He heard a squeak that sounded suspiciously like goodbye, and he peeped over the shelf to see Arthur making a hasty retreat, dragging Gwen and Morgana behind him.
Merlin raised his eyebrows at Lancelot. "See! Try telling Arthur that Mordred's not a murder."
"I would never kill anyone, especially not Arthur! I know how much he means to you." Mordred looked upset.
Lancelot felt rather queasy, and he made his way back to Merlin without saying a word.
Looking far too satisfied for someone who had just messed up teleporting so wildly, Merlin grabbed Lancelot and Mordred and, once again, all three of them disappeared.
Lancelot opened his eyes and stifled a groan. They were still not in the forest. Instead, they seemed to be in a bookshop?
"Merlin! Mordred! Where have you been?"
In unison the blood drained from both of their faces. Lancelot suddenly felt like he was traveling with a pair of vampires.
"N-nowhere?"
"We were beginning to worry you'd finally moved to New Zealand." The speaker was an old woman. Her thinning hair was twisted into a braid the color of cement but she stood tall as an oak.
"Er hello Alice." Modred looked quite unhappy.
"Did you two finally get the apartment you were hoping for?" The old woman, whose name must've been Alice, smiled happily.
"Not yet, we're still working on it." Merlin sent Lancelot a look of utter desperation.
"Sorry," he interjected trying to look apologetic instead of hopelessly confused. "But we've got to go. We're on a time sensitive errand."
"Oh of course," the old woman said. "But stop by soon you two." She gave a last smile and returned to organizing the bookshelves.
Both Merlin and Mordred booked it out of the book store, Lancelot half-jogging to keep up.
By the time he stepped out into the fading sunlight, Mordred was already stepping into an uber.
"What was that about, Merlin?" he asked, but Merlin was lying on the pavement.
"I'm such an idiot. He's going to think that I still like him which I don't. I definitely don't. Ughhh," he moaned into the ground.
"Get up and explain what's going on," Lancelot barked suddenly remembering that they had achieved exactly zero percent of their goal.
"I'm never teleporting again."
Lancelot turned Merlin over with his foot and narrowed his eyes.
"That's where we met, and we used to go there all the time. Ughh," Merlin rolled back over.
Lancelot wrinkled his nose. "Well," he said briskly, "Meet me tomorrow at exactly- and I mean exactly- seven a.m." He turned to leave muttering under his breath.
It only took Merlin 30 seconds to leap up and follow him, and it only took 32 for him to widen his eyes indignantly and yell "What exactly did you call me?"
