I'm sooooo sorry this took so long to post! There were editing problems, then scheduling problems and then tech. problems, but to make it up to you, I'm posting 2 chapters at once yaaaaaay! enjoy :)


Merlin left Mr. Leon's office after another grueling tutoring session with Arthur. Mr. Leon allowed Merlin and Arthur to use his office for their tutoring sessions because trying to do them in study halls had been too distracting. Merlin was glad they had their sessions in a teacher's office; he was pretty sure Arthur would have beaten him up several times if there wasn't a teacher nearby. It's not like Merlin tried to get smart with Arthur, but sometimes things just slipped out before he could stop them.

Although Arthur didn't need to beat up Merlin himself, no he had a whole football team to do that. Merlin noticed that since he started tutoring Arthur the football practices have gotten harder and much more painful, at least for Merlin. Arthur made Merlin play the position of goalkeeper once, (which didn't even make sense since Percival was a great goalkeeper) and Merlin still had bruises.

Tutoring sessions and football practices aside, Merlin thought things were going fairly well. He was getting to be good friends with Gwen and Freya, although he was having trouble keeping them from coming to the flat. It's not that he was ashamed of Sherlock, but really, who dissects cow toughs on the kitchen table? His grades were also good. According to Mr. Gaius- if Merlin kept his grades this good he could go to nearly any university he wanted to, within reason of course, and definitely be granted a scholarship or two. Merlin didn't mention that with a brother like Mycroft he could bully Cambridge into accepting him and pay his way through any university.

Merlin entered Mrs. Hunith's classroom for biology class and took his seat. This had to be one of his favorite classes, not just because he liked biology and Mrs. Hunith was a great teacher but his seat was also next to Freya's. He slid into his seat and turned towards her. He thought he really had a connection with Freya, although she seemed shy to begin with she had really opened up. Merlin found that they shared a similar sense of humor and that Freya read nearly as much as he did and probably loved to talk about what she had read even more than he did. He had just opened his mouth to say something to her when Arthur he sat diagonally behind him on his other side leaned over and stage whispered something so Merlin and everyone in the vicinity could hear him.

"Why are you even trying Merlin, she's way out of your league… On the other hand maybe not. You're kind of both losers." Arthur clearly expected some sort of reaction from the nearby football teammates but didn't get one; he obviously forgot that Lance and Ellian where the only football players in the class besides him and Merlin. Ellian was Gwen's brother and was probably too afraid of his sister to laugh at Freya, and Lance was too nice to laugh at anyone.

But Merlin wasn't paying attention to anyone's reaction but Freya's. She had turned bright red when Arthur had said that she was out of Merlin's league but then Arthur said they were losers and now she wouldn't look at Merlin and her eyes were getting shiny. Before Merlin could decide whether to comfort her or to punch Arthur in the face Mrs. Hunith entered the room and the bell rang for class to start. He really didn't care about Arthur teasing him, Arthur did it all the time and Merlin was good with comebacks, but this was too far.

Freya didn't talk to Merlin for the rest of the day. Gwen, who Merlin was pretty sure found out from Ellian, assured him that it was because she was embarrassed and not because she was mad at Merlin, why would she be anyway? Gwen raised her eyebrows as Merlin asked more questions about Freya and Merlin knew he was having a hard time convincing her that he was just checking on a friend. He was having trouble convincing himself.

By the end of the day Merlin was glaring at daggers at Arthur, imaging all the creative ways that he could maim him at football practice without anyone noticing. Although the rest of team wasn't happy with what Arthur said to Freya either. Everyone liked Gwen- she was funny, at least three of the players had crushes on her, and she was around the team a lot because of her brother, so they were nice to Freya by association. But Merlin doubted they would help him hurt Arthur, at least not too badly. Besides Mr. Leon was running practice today, at least it wouldn't be a how-painful-can-I-make-this-for-Merlin practice.

Merlin changed into his football uniform and debated for a few minutes deciding if he should text Freya or not. He decided not to, she'll probably want to come back tomorrow and pretend that nothing happened. Merlin hurried onto the field with the rest of the team; the last thing he needed was for coach to make him do extra push-ups for being late.