Disclaimer: Nope. Not mine.
Warnings: There aren't particularly any for this chapter, beyond the obvious for bad language and Morgana being a bit of a Bee Eye Tea See Aich. That said, this whole chapter could be seen as a warning for later ones.The pieces are all there, they just need to be put together. I'm not going to put in a warning in the next chapter, despite the fact that it probably requires one, because I don't want to. But that's bad, I suppose, so the last chunk of this one in particular is an alert. If you wish to know what for, please Google it (or whatever search engine you prefer, but Google is obviously the best). This will make sense when you've finished the chapter, I promise. And if not, feel free to ask for details.
Notes: So, I am well aware how long it has been. Apologies and whatnot, but this fic is...difficult, sometimes, and it's sort of fallen by the wayside lately, what with other things I've got going on. Honestly, it was only Sunday evening as I sat not reading the book I was holding that I realised I could actually still write this (yes, I realise that this makes no sense). So, with the exception of the first part, this chapter came into being in under twenty four hours, then a little bit more time to polish it up a bit. More will happen, and the next one is very short so should be about soon.
(A tiny bit of begging: so, Peach likes reviews. Reviews make her happy. A happy Peach writes a little quicker and with a slightly bigger smile than a less-than-happy Peach. And, sure, updates will happen whether you comment or not, but...consider it your good deed for the day?)
We Are Young
Settling In
Morgana nips into the bathroom before leaving the restaurant, because appearances are important, particularly when attempting to get information out of someone. Of course, Will is not a particularly difficult person to get information out of when it comes to most things, but when it's Merlin he's being asked about, he does a reasonably good job of keeping mum, and Morgana is not having it.
Something is going on with Merlin, and she is going to find out what. Bad shit has happened to her boys before, some of it things that she could and should have prevented, and Morgana isn't going to let it happen to Merlin again; if that means she has to paint her lips a shade just shy of whore and unbutton her shirt most of the way to her navel, that's what she's going to do. Merlin is more important than her dignity.
On the other hand, it's cold enough outside to freeze her tits off and there's no point in bringing out the big guns too soon, so when she's done with fluffing her hair she zips her jacket (premium leather, perfectly fitted, complete bargain even if it did cost what most people consider a small fortune) to the neck, rearranges her scarf and heads out to the car. The seat is placed for Leon, a good few inches further back than she needs it, but that's easily remedied and within minutes of leaving the kitchen she's on her way, parking in the tiny employee car park behind Gwen's shop no more than half an hour after she decided to go there.
She gets the hugging and hellos over and done with quickly, placating Gwen with a woman on a mission smile, and instructs her to make sure Will brings her drink over to her table when he has his break.
The look Gwen gives her is kind, with an air of parental indulgence to it, like she doesn't understand that this is (or certainly could be) a matter of life and death, like Merlin doesn't mean the world to her as well as to everyone else. "Play nice," Gwen says softly, not bothering to scrawl anything on her order pad before waving Morgana towards her usual table. "And don't expect me to deny any of this if Merlin asks me what you want with Will. I'm not going down with you."
Morgana smiles, knowing full well that Gwen won't say a thing. Will is another matter, maybe, but Merlin will understand. He won't like it, she knows that much, but he'll get why Morgana can't not interfere.
She can see the second Gwen tells Will she's waiting for him, identifiable by the way his face falls in abject despair. A few frantic sentences are exchanged, Will waving his hands emphatically while Gwen shakes her head in sympathy, and it's equally clear who is going to win.
Morgana almost feels sorry for Will. The poor bastard has never stood a chance.
"Witch," Will mutters, setting Morgana's latte on the table. "Not tellin' you jack."
Morgana smiles, using her toes to push the chair opposite her out from under the table, then stares at him until he sits.
"Where Merlin an' me went is none of your business," he says, when Morgana's smile breaks his first layer of determination.
Morgana raises an eyebrow, then picks up her coffee, sipping at it for precisely ten seconds before putting it down again and unwinding her scarf from her neck.
Will swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, his discomfort clearly visible, but at least he's too smart to try making a run for it. "If he wanted you to know, he'd tell you. He hasn't, so I won't."
"Of course," Morgana agrees, drinking another ten seconds' worth of coffee. "Your loyalty is commendable."
"Witch," Will repeats. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing here. It's not working."
It's working perfectly, Morgana knows, and she was hardly expecting Will to be ignorant of her attempts to get the truth out of him. Still, a little extra persuasion can't hurt. She unzips the first few inches of her jacket.
Will makes a valiant attempt at not looking, he really does; Morgana drinks again, unzips her jacket the rest of the way, and leans forwards.
"Witch," he says a third time, his eyes quite firmly fixed on something just beyond Morgana's right shoulder. "If it were something bad, do you really think I'd have gone along with it? This is something good, Morgana, I promise. It might actually make him happy. You think I'd do anything that might get him hurt?"
"I think you don't know what might get him hurt."
"Yeah, well, I weren't one of the people around the last time, were I?" Will is visibly angry now, a vein twitching in his forehead, which isn't exactly what Morgana was expecting (although, she's pleased to note, his eyes keep flicking towards her cleavage, so she hasn't entirely lost her gifts just yet). "I weren't one of you who thought he could lose Freya and just be fine. I weren't the idiot who let-"
Morgana is on her feet before she realises she intended to move in the first place. "How dare you blame us! How dare you suggest that-that." Her mug is empty before she can find the words to finish that sentence, a way to express the incandescent fury that fills her, tempered only by a pool of guilt that is fathoms deep, because no one has said anything like that to any of them but it doesn't mean they don't all blame themselves anyway. "Go fuck yourself, William," she says, with a level of calm quiet that Arthur has always told her is scarier than her rage. "God knows you're the only person who'd ever want to."
Morgana turns and stalks out, leaving the bastard sitting there at her table, hot coffee running down his face and turning his white t-shirt a soggy brown. Fuck him, she thinks. Fuck Will and his lies and Merlin and his secrets. She doesn't need to know anyway.
Merlin will have way more fun with Gwaine that he will sneaking off for secret lunches and missing pub nights, and the sooner he works that out the better.
X
Gwaine kicked closed the door to the house, shedding his coat and shoes on the floor behind him before flopping onto the sofa, legs dangling over the arm and head resting in the middle of the seat. God, today had been a long day. Not a particularly difficult one, but a long one, and he could think of few things he wanted more than to talk to Merlin.
He dug around in his pockets, managing to retrieve nothing more than a scrap of paper, only then remembering zipping his phone into his coat. "Bollocks," he muttered, really not wanting to stand up to get it, then glanced at the paper in his hand. Merlin's number, which he hadn't quite managed to memorise yet, and if he just stretched a bit further...Gwaine's fingers scrabbled to close on the phone that lived on the table beside the sofa, bringing it close and dialling the number before him.
It rang what had to be most of the way to voicemail, but Merlin picked it up eventually, sounding wary. "Hello?"
"Evening, lover," Gwaine answered. "Good day?"
"Who is this?"
Well, that was flattering. "Sort of under the impression you only had one, Merlin, unless there's something you want to tell me?" And Gwaine was joking, he was, because he did believe Merlin about there not being anyone else. Didn't sound like a joke, maybe, but still.
"Gwaine?"
"Well, at least I was the first name you guessed," Gwaine said, and, again, it didn't sound quite as unserious as he meant it to.
Merlin laughed anyway, still with a slightly confused edge to it. "No, you just threw me a bit. How'd you get this number?"
Gwaine glanced at the paper again, more than a little bit confused himself, because, nope, Morgana definitely hadn't given him a landline number. "You put it in my phone?"
"My other one, yeah," Merlin answered. "I don't use this one."
"Not following, mate."
"Morgana decided I needed a new phone, and that the only reason I hadn't got one was because I couldn't afford it, so she bullied Arthur into buying me one," Merlin said, like it was obvious. "It's stupid and expensive and my other one is perfectly good, but the pair of them insist on calling me on this one so I have to carry it around anyway, and...seriously, Morgana? You told her?"
"If I was going to tell her, I think I'd've done it the first time I realised you knew her," Gwaine pointed out with, he thought, incontrovertible logic (and wasn't that a scary thought). "She did give me it, though. Told me that if I didn't fix things with...well, you, but she didn't know that part, then I should give you a call."
Merlin laughed again, and, honestly, Gwaine couldn't blame him; saying it out loud made the whole thing seem even more ridiculous than it did when it was actually happening. "Morgana told you to call me? Like, as a set up?"
"Yeah. Weird, right?"
The pause from Merlin's end of the call was a long one, and when he answered his voice seemed distant, like wherever his brain was it wasn't quite the same room as the rest of him. "Weird doesn't cover it. You aren't who she usually tries to get me together with."
Gwaine waited an equally long time for elaboration, realised it wasn't going to happen unprompted, and couldn't decide between asking how often Morgana tried to fix Merlin up with people and how Gwaine differed from the others (or, for that matter, whether it was a good difference or a bad one), and then there was Leon's he's not exactly Freya comment that Gwaine was dying to find out more about. Chances were, neither of the questions would get an answer, though, and he wasn't exactly ready to start a conversation about any of the people he'd dated, so asking Merlin about his ex would be just a tad hypocritical.
Instead, Gwaine went with, "What do I tell her? Have I called you, or did I fix things with my bloke?"
Or both, he added in his head, but thought better than saying it. Morgana didn't seem the sort of person who took being lied to all that well, and Gwaine might not want to be Merlin's secret but he wanted Morgana pissed off with the pair of them even less. And, yeah, that was going to be an obstacle they'd have to deal with at some point, assuming the pair of them lasted as long as Gwaine wanted them to, but some problems it was a lot easier to leave for future-Gwaine to deal with.
"You fixed things," Merlin said, after a moment of thinking about it. Gwaine tried not to feel hurt by it, that Merlin didn't even want to be associated with him as Morgana's attempt at matchmaking, but...well, he was. He was definitely hurt, but damn if he was going to let Merlin know it.
"Right," he said, slightly less nonchalantly than he'd wanted it to sound. "No problem."
Merlin huffed a sigh in his ear. "Not like that, Gwaine. I promise, it's them that's the problem, God love them. If I could trust them to act like adults, it'd be fine, but...Seriously, it's not you. And, anyway, you don't want Morgana to think she was right, do you? She'll never stop crowing about it."
Gwaine had to laugh at that, and yeah, Merlin was right. Morgana was far too powerful already without letting her think she was responsible for Merlin and Gwaine's relationship. And, really, it was time for a new subject, one Gwaine wanted to know about almost as much as he wanted the dirt on Merlin's Freya. "So, while we're talking about Morgana not being right, what's the deal with her and Arthur?"
"How long have you got?" Merlin asked, sounding pleased that Gwaine was letting it go.
"A while," Gwaine answered, figuring that the words for you, Merlin, I've got all the time in the world were probably just a bit too sappy, true as they may have been.
X
The morning after the third time Merlin slept over, Gwaine went into the bathroom to clean and found a toothbrush.
Over the course of the day, three different people asked him why he was so cheerful. He just smiled.
X
He'd ummed and ahhed about meeting Merlin, Morgana and Leon's mates at the pub again, even if all three of them had told him to show up. It was different going there on his own, though, not to mention the possible awkwardness of no one being there when he showed up, and...And Gwaine wasn't a fucking coward, however it might have sounded.
No, it was clean jeans, smart shirt, his motorcycle boots and jacket. Wallet in one pocket, phone the other, locked up and gone. Merlin wasn't staying over every night, didn't see him some days, and calling wasn't a definite thing, anyway; if seeing him with everyone at the pub was what Gwaine was going to get tonight, then he was going to be happy with it, even if it meant pretending they weren't a whole lot more than strangers to each other.
The shiny Merc with the personalised plates was there again, already, but this time Gwaine managed to make the link from the plates to Arthur Pendragon, the rich git Merlin wasn't shagging, and at least Gwaine wasn't going to be the first one there. As it happened, he wasn't the second, either; seemed Merlin had got a ride there with his housemate, since his beat-up junker of a car wasn't in the car park but he was sure as shit sitting next to Arthur at the table.
"Well, hello there, gorgeous," Gwaine said, ambling over to them. "How's it going?"
Merlin grinned up at him from his seat, while Arthur did something halfway between a wince and a flinch. "Erm," he said, meeting Gwaine's eyes but looking like it was seriously uncomfortable for him to do so. "You might have been misled slightly the last time you were here. I'm not actually..."
He trailed off, waving his hand in a way that was probably supposed to communicate an absence of interest in blokes; Gwaine wasn't quite sure how it meant that, but he figured he had a better ending to the sentence anyway. "Not actually all that modest, yes. I see that," he said, filling the silence as he circled the table to sit next to Merlin. "You aren't the only person here, blondie."
That got a spluttered laugh from Merlin, as well as a quick squeeze to Gwaine's knee under the table. "Thanks," Merlin murmured, turning the back of his head to Arthur in order to wink at Gwaine, nodding in gratitude for more than just the flirting. "How's life?"
"You're in Morgana's seat," Arthur cut in abruptly, before Gwaine could say anything. "Move."
Okay, right, seemed flirting with Merlin did not go down well with Arthur, even if things were purely platonic between them. Still, the git was just going to have to get used to it; Gwaine flirted with everyone, and he was damn well going to flirt with his (secret) boyfriend if he wanted to. "But it's clearly the best seat in the place," he drawled, seriously tempted to put an arm around Merlin's shoulder. "Besides, don't see her here, do you?"
"Down, boys," Merlin instructed, still grinning even as he placed a calming hand on Arthur's forearm. "Play nicely. We don't want the whole Will thing to happen over again, Arthur."
Arthur smirked in a way that suggested that, whatever the whole Will thing may have been, he actually found it pretty funny, perhaps wouldn't be opposed to a repeat of it. Gwaine, as fun as mocking Arthur might have been, wasn't quite sure enough of his place with Merlin and his friends to risk it, and from what he'd seen, Will wasn't as much a part of the group as the rest of them. "Do my best," he promised, only slightly grudgingly, feeling Merlin's hand flutter against his knee again. He returned the gesture, then sat further back in his seat, increasing the distance between the pair of them slightly; Leon was holding the door open, and God knew Morgana saw absolutely everything, which meant sitting a wee bit close to Merlin after telling her he'd fixed things with his bloke (she'd looked particularly unhappy about that) was probably a bad idea.
She sauntered over to them, smiling in a mildly shark-like way. "Gwaine, dear," she said, softly but just a little threatening. "You're in my seat."
"Told you so," Arthur muttered, smugger than a...very smug thing.
Morgana's eyes flicked between the two of them, assessing and cool. Arthur held her gaze throughout, but then growing up together probably gave him plenty of time to get used to Morgana's ice, time that Gwaine hadn't yet had. "On the other hand," she said, and when Gwaine looked up at her again her eyes were kinder, encouraging, and apparently Gwaine not being single made very little difference to her plans for him and Merlin. "This once, I think you can stay. You don't mind, do you, Merlin?"
"Do you have to drag me into this, 'Gana?" Merlin moaned, standing up and hugging her. "Bad enough that you encourage Arthur and Will. There's no need for you to start another feud."
"Gwaine's far too sensible to let this turn into a war," she answered, clutching at Merlin tightly then shoving him gently towards his seat. "He knows enough to do what I want him to," and that sounded threatening again, and far too pointed for Gwaine not to realise exactly what she was talking about, even as he pulled a face that he hoped suggested he didn't, trying not to meet Leon's eyes. She ruffled Arthur's hair (he immediately combed through it with his fingers in an attempt to fix it, glaring at Gwaine for laughing at him), patted Gwaine's shoulder, and settled into the chair beside him without another word on their seating arrangements, pulling Leon down next to her.
"Who're we waiting for?" she asked, sliding her bag under the table. "I'm gagging for a drink."
X
The week after Merlin's toothbrush appeared in his bathroom, Gwaine found a pair of jeans in his wash basket, legs a couple of inches too long and waist a couple of inches too narrow for them to be his. He bundled them into the machine with his own clothes, figuring Merlin had left them by accident and would remember to take them when he was next there. Then he found a shirt that quite clearly wasn't his either, and the chances of Merlin leaving behind everything but his underwear were pretty minimal. In an uncommon display of concern for the washing, he checked the instructions on the labels in both items of clothing, then chucked them in the machine with the rest of his stuff (what, like he was supposed to know what all the symbols on those things meant?).
When the load was washed and dried, he hung the jeans up and folded the shirt to stick it in his drawers, because why not?
X
"Seriously, Gwaine," Morgana whined, perching on Gwaine's desk rather than the chair that as good as had her name on it these days, what with how long she spent in his office having just this conversation (although she had given up on having it in front of Leon, at least, having worked out she didn't have an ally in him, poor bloke). "Call Merlin."
"I have a boyfriend, Morgana," Gwaine answered, as he usually did.
"Pish," she said, kicking her legs absently and waving a dismissive hand at him. "Break up with him."
"You're psychotic, aren't you? Not everyone has to do what you want them to."
Morgana sniffed at this, like it wasn't worth the effort to give a properly worded response to it, then said, in a somewhat wistful way, "When I rule the world, though..."
Gwaine laughed, then shuddered. "Yeah, well, for the sake of the rest of us, that day's hopefully a long way off."
Morgana sighed, glanced at her watch, then stood up. "I'm going to win this one," she promised, halfway out of the door. "It'd be easier in the long run if you just give in and shag him now."
That, Gwaine didn't quite know how to respond to, but then she was already out the room, so it probably didn't matter too much.
X
The cake batter became something of a tradition on a Friday morning; God knew what Morgana did for a living, but it certainly didn't seem to involve actually doing any work, based on the amount of time she spent at the restaurant. It wasn't unpleasant, of course, because God knew Gwaine loved having the excuse not to do any work himself, but he did have to wonder, given that he knew he didn't pay Leon anywhere near enough to support a woman with Morgana's spending habits.
Still, he became more and more accustomed to seeing her there, and she took to wearing slightly more sensible shoes when she was planning on sticking around to chat, so, really, all was well, apart from her tendency to answer the phone mid-conversation, often mid-sentence.
Leon seemed remarkably unperturbed by this character flaw (not, Gwaine supposed, that he was particularly in a position to comment on other's flaws), even going so far as to point out to her when her phone was ringing on the rare occasions she didn't seem to have noticed it. This was a process that was equal parts baffling and entertaining, and by the fourth week Gwaine had started taking a mental note of the most interesting ones to ask Merlin about later in the day, his favourites being along the lines of, "That's the third time Arthur's called in ten minutes, do you think you should see what he wants?" (No, Morgana had responded. I'm not talking to him until he apologises, and then had glared at Leon for deigning to suggest that that may have been the purpose of the multiple calls) and, "Work, again, Morgana. Deal with it, please; I would like to see you at some point over the weekend," (a laugh, nothing more, and it took a certain level of gorgeous to manage something that intriguing without it being annoying).
Today, though, things seemed a little not good; Gwaine watched from his mildly rickety stool (how was it that this was his place, and Morgana still got the better seat?) as Leon cocked his head to one side and frowned, visibly listening to something (if it weren't for that fact that he could squish him like a bug, Gwaine would have told him he looked like a golden retriever doing that).
"Isn't Gwen at work this morning?" he asked, and only then did Gwaine pick up on the noise Morgana's bag was making. "What's she doing ringing you?"
Morgana frowned, hopping down from her seat to dig around in her bag. "She is," Morgana answered, "I don't know." The ringing got briefly louder as she pulled her horrendously expensive mobile free, then silenced all together. "Gwen, what's up?"
Through the thirty seconds of conversation that followed, Morgana's face grew increasingly pale; Gwaine had no doubt that had the call gone on any longer, she would have resorted to pacing. "Right," she said, when Gwen seemed to be done. "I'm on it. Thanks, Gwen. See you later."
There was a long moment of silence after she hung up, during which Gwaine looked from her to Leon and back again, desperately fighting the urge to ask what was going down; he might be new to their little group, but he had kind of thought they were friends, and if they're worried, he's worried. He didn't ask, though; Morgana was on the phone again, trailing one hand through her hair as she muttered to herself. "Pick up, pick up, pick up, let this be nothing, please, things have been going so well lately." The phone clearly went right through to voicemail, because she made a noise that was half-groan, half-snarl (disturbingly hot, too, Gwaine thought), and immediately hung up, only to start the whole process again.
"Who's...?" Gwaine started to ask Leon, only to stop when he saw the concern on the other man's face, staring at Morgana like she was the only thing in the world. Right then, Gwaine would just call Merlin later and ask him.
"Oh, shit fuck bugger," Morgana announced, the phone shoved back into the depths of her handbag. "I need to go, love," she continued, breaking from her pacing to close in on Leon. "It's a bad day today, I think. It has to just be a bad day."
There was some kind of telepathic field between them, Gwaine was sure, that allowed sentences like that to be perfectly understood. Rather than asking what the bad day was, why Gwen had called, who it was Morgana had been trying to get hold of, Leon just hugged her with a force that must have been crushing on her slender frame. "I'll see you there later," he promised, pulling back. "Let me know what...how bad it is, okay?"
Morgana nodded, stared up at him like letting go hurt, then turned on her heel and left so quickly that she might as well have vanished in a puff of smoke.
"What's the-" problem, Gwaine began, shutting up sharpish when Leon spoke over him.
"I think I'll need to leave early tonight, please," he said, and no sentence containing the words I think and please should be able to sound like a demand, but this one did. "I'll make sure everything's taken care of, and the guys should be able to handle everything."
"Right," Gwaine agreed, reluctant, a little bit confused. "Sure, that's fine. Hope whatever it is is okay." And he wasn't going to ask again, wasn't going to feel hurt by the fact that Morgana and Leon were clearly worried (Gwen, too, given that she'd called Morgana and started all this) and weren't going to tell him why.
Besides, he thought, heading out of the kitchen and to his office (whatever it was, the party was definitely over; no one could have fun when Leon was looming over them all thunderous with concern), he could always ask Merlin, anyway.
X
Thing was, Merlin wasn't answering his phone, not either of them. The Morgana-phone was turned off, the other ringing through to voicemail over and over, no matter how often Gwaine tried it.
He explained it the following day, when Gwaine finally managed to get hold of him, as Morgana having a family emergency that he was somehow part of, nothing more than that, everything was fine, which was no kind of answer at all. Gwaine didn't push it, but that sure as shit didn't mean he was okay with it.
One day, he promised himself, waiting for Merlin to be done in the shower so he could take his (after the first time, they hadn't shared again, and Gwaine was still pretending he hadn't noticed that he'd never seen Merlin with his shirt off, still not asking about it, spent far too much time wondering what Merlin was hiding from him, terrible scarring or embarrassing tattoo or something else entirely). One day he was going to know all of Merlin's secrets, and their whole gang was going to know who Gwaine was and that he was there for the long haul.
X
A month and a half after the first time, a month and a half of having Merlin stay in his bed, two weeks after the radio silence and Gwaine feeling shut out and unwanted, a pack of tablets appeared on the ledge under his bathroom mirror. No box with prescription info, no handy advice leaflet that told Gwaine what they were for, just the pills. Green and yellow capsules, clear plastic, shiny silver foil on the top of it.
Fluoxetine, Gwaine read, toothbrush hanging out the side of his mouth, examining it from all sides, like the answer to what it was doing in his house would suddenly become apparent. Merlin had to know he'd left it there, even if he didn't mention it at all; the tablets kept disappearing from it, one each morning Merlin stayed over.
He got as far as typing it into Google, not quite brave enough to hit search. If Merlin wanted Gwaine to know why he was taking them, he'd have told him, half of Gwaine's brain said, while the other half insisted that Merlin leaving them there, where Gwaine was definitely going to see them, was invitation to look. He could have hidden them if he didn't want him to know, presumably had been hiding them, and...but maybe it was a test of Gwaine's trust, maybe it was Merlin wanting to find out if Gwaine believed in him, them, enough to wait for Merlin to say. Maybe...
Gwaine shut the lid to his laptop, turned on the radio Merlin had magically repaired, and grabbed a beer from the fridge, deciding yet again to ignore the arguments in his brain and the desire to find out, to know Merlin.
Things were good between them, after all, and, much as it bugged him, Gwaine would rather Merlin kept his secrets if him knowing them was going to change that.