AN: Thank you everyone for all your reviews – I'm sorry I haven't yet replied; this is the first chance I've had since Monday to get online! I will reply to everyone, probably this weekend. :)
Chapter Three: In which Merlin is a place-filler and Arthur (thinks he) is the hero of the match.
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Oh, The Shenanigans
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"So... what's the point of the game?" Merlin asked, more than a little hesitantly.
Arthur huffed at having to repeat himself. Again.
"The point, Merlin, is to get this, " –he held up a roughly hewn leather ball which had been stuffed with scraps of wool– "through those posts at the end, while the other team," –he gestured to the various knights scattered about– "try to stop you getting it through your posts and try to get it through theirs."
Merlin looked around at the knights, some of whom were wearing white shirts and some wearing red.
"And I have to play because...?" the warlock near-whined.
"Because otherwise the teams are uneven."
Merlin scowled, then looked down at the oversized white shirt he was wearing before gesturing vaguely to Arthur's red one.
"And I'm not on your team because...?"
Arthur grinned.
"Because I want to win," he said cheerfully.
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Twenty minutes later, all Merlin had to show for his efforts at the blasted game were seriously muddied clothes and a whole lot of sore spots that – by tomorrow – would be rather bright purple bruises.
He'd spent the first ten minutes of the game just trying to stay out of the knights' way. They were taking the whole thing way too seriously, and Merlin hardly fancied putting himself between them and the ball.
But then Arthur had spotted him and called him on his lacklustre participation, threatening, "If you don't join in – properly – then I'll have you clean my entire chambers with nothing but one of your own socks."
Now, Merlin quite liked his socks, and he didn't wish to ruin them by using one to clean the Prince's far-messier-than-a-Prince-should-be-able-get-it-in-just-a-single-morning chambers.
So, against all his instincts and senses of self-preservation, Merlin threw him into the fray.
And he hadn't even gotten close to the ball. How's that for disheartening.
So now, Merlin was standing a little back from the main crowd, trying to catch his breath after a particularly brutal encounter with the mass of knights, when someone kicked the ball wide and it flew into an open, unguarded patch of muddied grass.
Seeing his chance (and remembering the threat to his socks), Merlin made a break for it.
Just as Merlin started running, Arthur shoved his way free of the mêlée and launched himself off in pursuit of the ball as well, so that he and Merlin were running parallel to each other like two edges of a triangle with the ball at the point.
They reached it at nearly the same time and – with perhaps a little more enthusiasm than the situation called for – Merlin threw himself forwards.
Exactly how it happened, Merlin wasn't quite sure, but somehow he ended up sprawled on his back in the mud, the ball sitting quite cheerfully on his stomach and his legs tangled with Arthur's (who had somehow ended up flat on his back in the mud as well).
The Prince pulled himself into a half-raised position with a squelch of mud and stared at Merlin with a slightly stunned expression.
"You tripped me!" he accused, shocked.
"No I didn't," Merlin denied. "You just didn't see my leg there."
Arthur narrowed his eyes in a manner that Merlin had long ago learnt to associate with danger.
"Give me the ball, Merlin," the Prince said, his tone broking no argument as he held one mud-coated hand out for the item in question.
Merlin looked down at the innocent looking ball sitting on his stomach that had caused all this drama.
Whether it was the adrenaline still coursing through his veins from his wild dive that made him do it, or the fact that he hadn't actually had a proper go yet, or perhaps sheer stupidity, Merlin didn't know.
"No," he said impishly, and then he scooped up the ball and started running.
It was sheer stupidity, he decided quickly.
It took less than half a second after his departure for Arthur to roar his hunting-roar before he leapt to his feet and launched himself after Merlin, who was now running – ball tucked under one arm – for his life, the Prince of Camelot and an entire contingent of knights on his tail.
And there was definitely something wrong with him, he decided. Because, despite having a bunch of men at least twice his size and with cheerful dispositions similar to that of a pack of rabid wolves chasing after him... this was fun.
They'd been at the wrong end of the field (Merlin's team had been losing quite spectacularly), so it was a stellar effort on Merlin's part that he managed to stay ahead of the pack for long enough that he (and the ball) made it to his team's end.
Launching himself over the line, Merlin slammed the ball to the ground and raised his arms above his head in victory.
"GOAL!" he hollered at the top of his lungs, grinning wildly.
And then Arthur slammed into him.
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"I still don't know how you managed to injure both of us," Merlin grumbled as the two of them limped their way down the hallway.
"It's because you're so bloody bony," Arthur groused in response, cringing as he put too much weight on his leg.
It had looked spectacular, apparently.
Arthur had grabbed Merlin around the waist in some kind of over-exuberant full-body tackle, sending them both into a wild, spinning tumble.
They'd both gone crashing to the ground in a very dramatic fashion and – thanks in kind to Arthur's application of brute strength, Merlin's near weightlessness, and the fact that the ground was made up more of mud puddles than actual solid ground – they'd skidded a considerable distance before finally coming to a stop, winded, wheezing, and tangled (again).
And now they were dripping mud all over the place as they limped painfully along, looking more like half-dead shipwreck survivors than a pair of perfectly respectable humans.
So it was kind of bad timing for them that Morgana chose that moment to walk down that particular hallway to get to wherever she was going.
"What on earth happened to you two?" she asked in shock, drawing to a halt in surprise.
By way of response, both boys scowled and pointed balefully at the other.
Morgana stared at them for a long moment, her eyes flicking from one to the other of their mud-caked faces before finally shaking her head a little.
"You know... I don't think I want to know," she said, and swept gracefully away, stepping daintily over the mud patches all the way down the hall.
Both boys watched her go, and then Merlin groaned dramatically.
"The cleaners are going to hate us..." he said.
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I've not got the next chapter prewritten, so I can't say when I'll next update. Any requests are welcome!
Bundi
