A/N at the end!
Previously—
"Let's continue on, shall we?" Lancelot urged his horse forwards, "We'll rent rooms at the tavern in the lower town for the night."
-x-
Arthur woke to find himself in a small room with wooden walls. On the floor. Upside down. In a pile of random men—oh, was that Leon? A pile of random men plus Leon. With a pounding headache. How lovely, were Arthur's first thoughts of the day, however sarcastic.
The blonde prince tried to sit up, but his right arm was pinned under a snoring bearded man's torso. Frowning, Arthur tugged at that arm a few more times. The shirtless bearded man on his arm made a groaning sound of discontent and rolled around away from Arthur, who quickly pulled his arm back. Arthur rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with both hands and sat up, careful not to disrupt Leon, who had apparently used Arthur's thigh as a pillow.
Taking in his surroundings, Arthur squinted at the light that filtered through an odd number of square windows evenly offset from each other. Arthur turned to look at the bearded man to his right once more. The man had rolled onto his back, mouth wide open and snoring louder than he had been before. He looked suspiciously like—
"Gwaine?" Arthur said incredulously.
"You're disrupting my beauty sleep, Princess, knock it off." Gwaine grumbled, throwing an arm over his eyes. Arthur's mouth floundered a bit, trying to think of a comeback, but he blurted out an undignified, "Who are you calling Princess?" His voice might or might not have cracked at the end.
"Can it, Goldie Locks."
Arthur glared at him, knowing full well that the bearded drunkard couldn't see him.
"Ahh, I have a pounding head ache…" Gwaine grumbled under his breath.
"Rise and shine!"
Merlin sang—oh, wait, that wasn't Merlin. Arthur frowned, "Rise and shine?"
Lancelot paused, "Up and at 'em?" He amended, questioning, closing the wooden door behind him with his foot.
"Great, there goes any last hope of shut eye I'll be getting." Gwaine sat up, mouth set in a large yawn.
"What's Gwaine doing in here? More importantly, what am I doing here?" Arthur asked tiredly, massaging his aching scalp with the tips of his fingers.
"Gwaine practically lives in this tavern." Lancelot said airily, waving his hand, "Here, tonic."
Arthur eyed the small cup Lancelot handed him and Gwaine, "This looks like Gaius' tonic." He commented.
Leon, having been awakened by Arthur and Gwaine's bickering, lifted himself off of Arthur's legs, proped himself up on one elbow, took another shot glass of tonic that was offered to him by Lancelot and promptly drank it all.
"Oh, it is! It's his recipe, anyway. Mordred made it." Lancelot said, and stretched his arms above his head.
"Mordred handled his mead a lot better than Golden boy here did, I'll have to give it to him." Gwaine said.
"I dare say Mordred handled himself better than you did." Lancelot gave a pointed stare.
"Really, what will Emrys say when he finds out you started another bar fight?"
"My pride as a dart game fanatic was at stake. And I wager he'd just laugh with me." Gwaine smirked confidently. Lancelot opened his mouth to comment, but Arthur interrupted,
"There was a bar fight? Why don't I remember?"
"Oh…That might be because…ah…" Gwaine trailed off, scratching next to one of his sideburns.
There was the sound of the wooden door opening once more, "You got hit over the head with a tavern stool." Mordred informed him, coming in with a tray of more tonic and a metal pitcher full of water. Gwaine looked sheepish.
"It had absolutely nothing to do with me, mind you."
"Oh yes. You look completely innocent." Arthur mumbled, running a hand over his face tiredly.
"He sees through your act already, Gwaine, better start running." Lancelot teased.
"Okay, your head might have been in the way of the bar stool when I was throwing it at that self-proclaimed dart champion." Gwaine explained, a shit-eating smile on his face.
Arthur looked at him blankly and did not dignify this with a reply. He quickly knocked back the hangover tonic in his hands and his face twisted in disgust.
"That good, huh?" Leon asked with a chuckle and handed his empty glass back to Lancelot, who took it, and made grabby hands at the pitcher Mordred had come in with.
Lancelot flourished his hands to either side, "So how did you like the Gwaine experience, your highness?"
"My head hurts and I remember next to nothing about last night and I can't tell if it's from the hang over or the blunt force trauma, my stomach is in knots-that's definitely from the hangover. Apparently it's not too memorable."
"Excuse me; I'll have you know I'm very memorable!" Gwaine defended, flipping his hair over one shoulder.
"Yeah no, the experience is usually like that." Lancelot said mock-gravely while Gwiane sputtered indigently.
"Who... are all of these men?" Arthur interrupted between the responsible and irresponsible knights.
"There's a few woman over here." Gwaine pointed out helpfully and gestured to a corner.
Arthur squinted at a couple androgynous helmeted figures slumped over each other in the corner decked out in knight's armour similar, but not the same, to the armour Lancelot and Gwaine wore. "Ah. I didn't realise. I suppose I amend my statement to who are these...people?"
"Thooooose lovely ladies snoring in the corner over there are the castle guards! Very menacing. No one can flirt their way through whatever they're guarding, sadly." Gwaine pouted, "In fact the male guards are much more lenient. Probably why there's more female guardsman than male, come to think of it..."
"Aren't you a knight? Shouldn't you be allowed where you wish?" Arthur asked, pushing back his confusion of lady guards and knights to deal with at a later date.
"You would think. Sometimes the King likes to keep me out of the courtyard because-"
"Because he distracts the maid servants and is a general nuisance when you're trying to get anything done around here." A new voiced popped up.
Arthur turned to look at the speaker. The young man grinned cheekily and waved at him. He had sandy blonde hair reminiscent of a bowl cut and was wearing a nicer variation of peasant clothes.
"Hiyya, I'm William. Em's manservant. But that's just a front. Really I'm his childhood best friend. I used to follow him around as he completed his princely duties for free but the council complained about a dirty farmer's boy tailing him. Now I'm paid to follow him around and bug him and be a friend in general but it looks," Will raised his hands and made air quotes, "professional because I wear this garb now." He plucked at the collar of his shirt.
"Fashion." He said dramatically. He then perked up, "Oh! 'Dred, ya mind handing me a tonic? My brain is soup. Painful soup."
The quiet druid boy walked over to the chatty servant and complied with his request.
"You know each other?" Arthur asked. "From the way Mordred's mother was acting it sounded like he hadn't strayed far from the encampment before."
"Oh, he hasn't!" William piped up when Mordred's face flushed. "Em and I go down to the encampment quite often. He and Mordred hit it off very well! And Mordred had wanted to get out of the encampment and live independently for a while now, add in Em needing someone to talk to and tutor in in magic and poof. There you have it." William patted Mordred's arm and leaned over him to stage whisper, "Most magic users are too intimidated or embarrassed to practice magic with Emrys given the all-powerful-ness and yada yada."
"Aren't you a sorcerer?" Arthur asked, remembering the very same boy's dying words to him before in the small town of Ealdor.
William snorted loudly. "Me? A-a-HA" his own laughter cut him off. Mordred looked amused, himself. "Boy howdy I-whew. Uh. No. I'm Horrible. Capital H. I have diddly squat in the magical capabilities department. Em keeps me around because of my dashing good looks and my amazing sense of humour."
Mordred snorted here but by the time Will's head snapped around to glare at him, the druid was looking elsewhere and whistling innocently.
Arthur started at them, eyebrows furrowed. He shook his head. More and more about certain events that happened around Merlin have been starting to make less and less sense to him since he got here.
"What-what happened last night, anyway?" Arthur finally gave into the temptation to ask.
"Long story short, we all stumbled into the tavern for rooms, got coerced by Gwaine-who was already here-to drink with him. He started a bar fight-"
"I honestly think he can't go more than a fortnight without starting one, myself." Will interjected.
"...true. Then you got hit over the head with a chair after-stupidly-engaging in a mead drinking contest with Gwaine and the guards over there," Lancelot continued waving his hands around to indicate who he was talking to and about, "and then you got knocked unconscious by a bar stool." Here Arthur shot a glare towards the roguish knight who smiled sweetly, "This one over here," a flourish towards Mordred who grinned sheepishly, "We found is killer at poker, so he made good coin-"
"I had to beat someone up for suggesting that he cheated." Gwaine interjected, clapping the druid on the shoulder. William mouthed and made air quotes around the words "had to" from behind Gwaine's back.
"Defending everyone's honour, that's me. Defender of honour. Gwaine. The Knight. The Knight Ser Gwaine."
"Oh, hush now. Anyway, Leon and some of our knights dragged you into the room we bought and we all just kinda passed out for the night." Lancelot finished.
William laughed, "We had a wang dang doodle of a time, I gotta tell you."
"Let's play spot the farmer's boy." Gwaine said, teasingly.
"What was that?"
"Nothin'."
-x-
A couple of hours later they found themselves all dressed properly, fed, washed, and acquainted with each other and it was only noon.
"See ya later!" Gwaine chirped to the bar keep who responded by waving her dish towel at him with a "Auugh get outta here already! Don't let me see your mug again today, pretty boy!"
Lancelot, William, and Leon had started ahead of Arthur and Gwaine (who had offered out of the goodness in his own heart to guide Arthur to the court yard) to the castle, and the guards and other knights and their squires dispersed quickly after breakfast.
Arthur turned back to face the tavern to ask Gwaine something, but found him not to be there. Arthur irritably tapped his fingers to the hilt of his peace wrapped sword. Letting out a sigh, he turned about face and started walking through the lower town. He quickly forgot his irritation at Gwaine because of the beautiful and intricacy of the shopping stalls around him. Many of the small stalls had little magic tricks and gimmicks to catch the eye and there was art, finery, fabrics, food, and much of what he would find in the lower town back in Camelot, but magic made it fundamentally different.
The lower town held a lot of the warmth and magic that the encampment had, and Arthur found himself smiling despite his unease of the blatant show of sorcery. A familiar older woman smiled at him and held out her palm. In it, a blank piece of paper sat in all its blank glory. Arthur stepped towards her, head tilted in question. He took a step back with a gasp as her hand was enshrouded by flame and smoke. She chuckled and fixed her grip on the still intact card until it was held in between her pointer and middle finger, outstretched towards him.
"It's...not going to catch on fire again, is it?" Arthur asked, cautiously taking the card from her and very glad he was wearing his leather riding gloves just in case it did.
"No, dear boy," The older woman replied, amused.
Arthur turned over the card a couple of times, in amazement: where the card had been blank before, it was now adorned with tidy cursive script.
"Thomas James Collins-magical carpenter" it read on the front.
"Mary Collins-charms specialist" it read on the back.
"Ah. Thank you." Arthur flipped open the flap on a leather bag that was attached to his belt and tucked the card into it. He gave the woman a wobbly smile and walked forward quickly, now knowing why he found her familiar. She was the mother of that boy that was put to death. And she was the one who tried to kill me and was crushed with a chandelier after Merlin pulled me out of the way. Arthur's eyebrows furrowed. How awkward.
Not looking where he was going, Arthur bumped into a tall man in the crowd.
"Ah, sorry I wasn't watching where I was..." Arthur looked up at the man he had bumped into, "Merlin?" He asked incredulously.
His manservant was dressed in casual commoner clothing-as he normally was, Arthur's brain supplied-additionally, he had a blue hanker chief covered in what looked to be oil adorning his neck instead of a red one, and his pants were rolled up to his knees and covered in dirt and more oil.
Merlin's eyebrows shot up as his blue eyes met Arthur's, highlighting the black grease paint on his high cheek bones. Not a few seconds after, the dark haired man schooled his features into more of an amused smile, "I'm afraid I don't have the honour of knowing your name, although you seem quite familiar with mine."
Arthur took him in some more, noticing his hands were covered in oil and there were streaks and finger prints on his shirt and his pants, like he wiped his hands off a few times. Instead of answering Merlin's indirect question, the blond shot a few of his own, teasingly, "What were you doing? Wrestling a can of grease paint?"
The lanky boy leaned back, resting his back on a wooden pole. Arthur followed the line of the pole upwards until it ended in the ceiling support for the porch of the shop he had exited from. "Seamstress, tailoring to your yarn's desire," a cursive script read along the store front.
"Helping fix some of the machines in here. Magic only does so much, and sometimes it's good to get more hands on and use a little elbow grease." Merlin's sleeves were rolled up to his forearms and his regular tan coat was slung over his shoulder, the collar lazily hooked over his pointer and middle fingers.
He actually has grease on his elbows, Arthur thought, amused.
"...ong way from Camelot."
Arthur snapped back to attention, "Excuse me?"
Merlin looked slightly exasperated. He gestured to the crest on Arthur's chest, "I said, it's a long way from Camelot, and before I asked if you were lost and I explained could point you to the court yard if needed." Merlin paused in his retelling to give Arthur an inquisitive stare, "Got quite the attention span there, I must say."
Here Arthur blinked at him. Had he really zoned out that much?
"I was just thinking-"
"Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself, your highness." Merlin remarked dryly.
Arthur huffed out, disbelieving. It's official, he thought, Merlin's attitude was a universal constant.
"Speaking of, I had an escort but they seem to have left..." Arthur squinted through the crowd, finally just barely making Gwaine's figure in between two or three well-dressed ladies, skirts puffed out around themselves all giggling over what the long haired rogue had to say.
"Oh, Gwaine, huh?" Merlin asked, after following Arthur's gaze, "Yeeeah—that's a lost cause. He's probably forgotten all about you, you poor thing." Merlin gave a wry smile at Arthur's befuddled expression.
Arthur sputtered a bit. Then he asked weakly, "Is this a part of the Gwaine experience?"
Merlin gave him a wide eyed look before barking out a loud laugh. "Oh goodness, got it right on the nose, ahh..." He brought up an oiled hand and rubbed his index finger under his nose, unknowingly smearing oil there.
Arthur preened over the praise, while simultaneously being amused at the oil moustache Merlin now sported. Merlin's laughter trailed off and he cocked his head to one side, as if listening to something in the distance.
"Hm, I'm going to be a bit late it seems..." Merlin frowned, staring ahead. His blue eyes snapped to Arthur, "But I'll see you again at the ceremony. If you follow this road down here and turn left at the apothecary, the path to the court yard becomes more or less obvious."
"You're going to be serving at the..." Arthur made a vague hand gesture, searching for his next words. The blond's eyes flickered up and over to the castle towers. Golden eyes seemed to bore into him.
"Something like that." Merlin gave him a mischievous smirk that Arthur didn't see, "Best be going, yeah?"
The copper scaled dragon who had been sitting wrapped around one of the castle's towers looked away from Arthur then, and stretched his large wings and made to take off into the sky. His wings beat once, twice, the ground around him rumbling in faint vibrations that Arthur could feel from where he stood in the crowded market stalls, before he disappeared in the clouds.
Brows furrowed, Arthur looked around him. A few others had watched curiously as the dragon took off but there was not a sense of panic like there would have been in Camelot. In fact, most of the commoners bustling around the shopping district paid the majestic beast no mind, as if his comings and goings were frequent and not something to speculate over.
Arthur looked back over to where Merlin was leaning against the wooden support beams only to find he wasn't there. The prince's eyebrows climbed into his hair line.
"Heeeeeeya Princess." Gwaine sautered over to him. He flourished three different embroidered handkerchiefs to Arthur, wiggling his eyebrows, "Eyy? Ey? Am I good, or am I good." The man asked, shoving the cloth into a leather pouch on his hip. He unhooked a flask from his belt and took a quick gulp, tilting his head back as he did so.
"Wanta sip?"
Arthur paled, remembering just how much he threw up this morning mid-hangover.
"I'll...have to pass."
Gwaine tossed his dark locks over one shoulder and succured the flash back into his belt.
"Your loss." He offered the crook of his elbow to Arthur with a wolfish grin, "Shall we get going, Princess?"
Arthur promptly punched him in the arm and started walking ahead to the directions Merlin had given him prior to his sudden disappearance. Gwaine's laughter followed him all the way past the turn by the apothecary's and down the road.
Gwaine, it seemed, was another universal constant.
-x-
A/N: Well, at the rate I'm going apparently this is going to be updated yearly. …haha? (I actually have a couple hundred words already written out for a next chapter, I'm proud of myself lmao. And I found notes from back in 2013 in the void of my phone notes, which, coincidentally, I typed this all up on.)
I really really want to thank those who have followed and reviewed this fic in the past year or so! Y'all are the ones who've given me the motivation to crank this out! (For a while I had given up on this story.) So this is the new content I was talking about in the previous chapter (or author's note, as it was). I'm a bit nervous to see how my writing has changed since… wow, since 2013 when I wrote the first, what, five chapters?
Oh well. I can't get any worse, can I?
I've been informed that I don't need a beta by nice readers (lol y'all crack me up). I had one or two people I was in contact with for it! But then! I never…actually wrote… so they probably gave up on me. *nervous laughter*
I'm pretty sure I've personally PMed those who have reviewed on this story!
Amazinggirl55—here it is! An update! …a year later…
Guest—I LOVE YOU
GeekyRosie—oh man your email got cut off, sorry.
Until next time, cheers! xx