Hey! So, here's a new chapter.
I want to thank everyone who read, reviewed, alerted, and/or favorited last chapter. I'm glad to see a lot of my regular readers reading this along with some new ones, and I hope y'all enjoy this chapter.
I don't own anyone, have a great day, and drop me a comment if you can.
See ya in the next chapter.
Bye!
Gwaine absolutely loves the future. He spends his first week back going clothes shopping at a local thrift store, coming home with several pairs of jeans, a couple of plain t-shirts, a pair of ratty Doc Martens and a brown leather jacket with a faux-fur collar. Lancelot rolls his eyes every time Gwaine comes home with something new to add to his wardrobe, but Merlin merely gives him a fond smile. He likes that his friends are adapting well to this new time period. It's during his second week that Gwaine finds out there are pubs on nearly every street corner.
"So, I can go to whatever pub I want?" the former knight asks, tying his long hair back into a loose ponytail. "And I don't have to take a horse through several miles of woods to get there?"
"That's correct." Merlin nods, holding out Gwaine's jacket.
"Let's go," he says snatching the jacket from the warlock. Lancelot opts out, already having plans with Penny, but Merlin decides to go; never really having the inclination to go before his friend's return. They start off at a small, hole-in-the-wall place that smells like cheap beer and body odor.
Gwaine breaths in deeply and says, "I like this place."
"Sure." Merlin gives him a skeptical look, wrinkling his nose, but still follows the knight to the back of the pub. They commandeer an empty booth, sitting across from one another, and Gwaine leans over the table and asks, "What's that thing?"
"What?"
"That." Gwaine points at something over Merlin's shoulder, and the warlock follows his finger, his eyes falling on the jukebox sitting in the corner.
"That's a jukebox," Merlin replies looking back at his friend. When the former knight gives him a confused look, he explains, "It plays music."
"Like a bard?"
"Sort of." Merlin fishes around in his pocket, pulling out some pocket change, and hands it over to Gwaine. "Go pick a song, I'll order us a couple of pints."
"Alright." Gwaine gets up, wandering over to the jukebox. A waitress approaches their table a few moments later, and Merlin orders a couple of beers. She looks vaguely familiar, like a face from his past, but he can't quite remember who she reminds him of.
"Coming right up," she says walking away, her blond ponytail swinging back and forth with the motion of her body. Merlin leans back in his seat, knocking his knuckles against the table.
Gwaine returns to the booth, sliding into his seat, and says, "Music sure has changed."
"A lot has changed," Merlin reminds his friend just as their waitress comes back.
"Here you are." She puts one pint down, but she accidentally knocks the second over, spilling its contents all over the table. "Crap." She puts a hand to her forehead and says, "I am so sorry."
"Don't worry about it." Gwaine winks at her, flashing a carefree smile, and her cheeks flush red. "It happens."
"Yeah, but it seems to happen to me more than anyone," she states miserably, using her rag to quickly clean up the mess. "I am such a klutz."
Once the mess is cleared, she promises to bring another pint and disappears into the crowd. As Merlin watches her go it clicks where he recognizes her from.
"Elena," he whispers just as a Nicki Minaj song starts playing.
"Is this the song I picked?" Gwaine bobs his head to the music. "I like it."
They have two drinks before they move onto the next pub, Gwaine leaving with the waitress's number in his pocket (her name is Mary). They do a pub crawl, jumping from one bar to the next, and before they know it it's three A.M. and Merlin is standing on the curb, trying to hail a taxi.
"Can't you just magic us home?" Gwaine asks leaning against a post box, clearly trying to keep himself upright. "Or, hey, what about that fancy phone thing? Can't you use that to call Lance?"
"My magic doesn't work well when I'm drunk," Merlin explains, or tries to, but he has a feeling everything comes out as a mess of slurred words spoken too quickly, especially when Gwaine gives him a confused look. "And Lancelot isn't home."
"I guess regular intercourse will do that to ya," Gwaine comments and Merlin feels his face turn red. "Though, I'm surprise Mr. Chivalrous is even sticking it into that Penny girl. You'd think he'd get married first or something."
Merlin's ears are burning now and he's keeping his eyes downcast. He had forgotten how unfiltered Gwaine's words could be, and now he's being reminded in excruciating detail. But, at the same time, he's too drunk to tell his friend to stop, so Gwaine keeps talking.
"Do you think he uses dirty talk? I'd use dirty talk."
"Were you on the internet again?" Gwaine loves the internet more than is probably healthy, and Merlin hopes his friend never, ever discovers porn. He has a feeling Gwaine will never get off the computer.
"There's not much to do at four in the morning, Mer. Last night I read about sexting. Can I borrow your phone so I can sext Mary?"
"Sexting isn't what you think it is, Gwaine," Merlin says waving his hand, but the cabbie drives past without a second glance, and he sighs in irritation.
"It's sending messages via the phone," Gwaine says shrugging his shoulders. "I mean, I might not be Lancelot, who reads all the damn time, but I can read, mate."
"I know, and you're mostly right. You meant texting, Gwaine." Finally, a taxi driver stops for them, parking against the curb.
"Then what's sexting?"
Merlin almost doesn't tell him, but when he does Gwaine gets this mischievous grin on his face and the warlock instantly regrets his decision. He also doesn't see his cell phone for a week, and Lancelot has to change his number six times.
Mary gets Gwaine a job at the same pub she works at, so Merlin finds himself spending a lot of time by himself again. He knows he should probably get another job or something (working five hours at a retail store is just not enough of a distraction), get out of the house, but every time he starts looking in the newspaper he hardly gets through the first sentence before he makes the long walk to the lake.
It's been quiet for a little over six months, no one else has come back, and for a while it seems like Gwaine and Lancelot would be the only ones. It's not so bad, he loves having his friends around, but he longs to see Arthur again.
He sits up suddenly, the water bubbling like the last two times. He scrambles to his knees, watching as a new figure emerges from the lake. He doesn't expect it to be Arthur, and Merlin isn't wrong. While the figure is blond, he's not Arthur Pendragon.
Leon is the third to come back.