A/N: Okay, boys and girls! I'm gonna be super-busy tomorrow so may not have time to post, so you get an update early! :) And am blitzed out of my mind finishing a Beowulf paper and so my inhibitions are low.
Disclaimer: Didn't do this earlier, but it should be obvious that I do not own Merlin or Gwaine or any of the rest of the guys.
…
Fifth problem: Gwaine was usually right, especially when he didn't want to be.
Merlin was crouched down somewhere around his navel, and Leon and Percival had gripped him by the arms. All this attention was making him more than uncomfortable, and he gave a cursory struggle.
"Gwaine, don't move!" Merlin cried, so loud and so urgent that it actually surprised Gwaine a bit, and it made a thin sheen of sweaty terror spring up along his back. Or maybe that was because he was impaled on four enormous tusks and the damn thing wasn't letting him go!
"We've got to lift him up, they're hooked into him," Merlin explained, putting a hand on his back to steady him.
"You with us, Gwaine?" Arthur asked, grabbing his shoulder.
"Oh, God, don't touch me," Gwaine ground out. Any pressure anywhere only made it worse. If a fly landed on him he felt like it might drive him down on the tusks until they pierced his heart. "Hurts. Jesus, ow."
"Okay," Leon said, "one, two—"
Up he went, sliding free with another sickening wet sound, followed by a wave of warmth all down his front. For a brief horrifying moment Gwaine thought he had wet himself, but, looking down, "Oh, thank God, it's blood," he gasped. Arthur looked at him like he was simple. Merlin looked ready to cry. Percy and Leon hadn't yet let go of his arms but Lancelot had stepped in and was holding a wad of cloth—someone's shirt?—to his belly.
"Great, belly wound. That's new," Gwaine tried to make small talk, frustrated that no one was letting him grab his middle and roll over and die, which was what he wanted more than anything in the world to do. A knife flashed, and someone had cut his tunic down the middle. And, okay, even Gwaine didn't like this much attention…
"Merlin. Merlin?"
"I'm here, Gwaine, what is it?"
"Too many people, Merlin, make them go away."
"Gwaine, they're trying to—" But Merlin could see the trouble too, and nodded. "Okay, guys, give us some room, here. We'll need water and—and bandages. Make some bandages." As a few of the knights backed up into his line of sight—Percival and Elyan and Leon—Gwaine was startled by how much blood was on their hands and clothes. And how…stricken they looked. Here, this wasn't fair! It wasn't like they had been gored by a boar now, had they?
"Merlin," Gwaine gasped.
"Gwaine, shush, you've—"
"I'm not bleeding black or yellow, am I?"
"What?"
"Bile, I'm not bleeding—"
"No, just—just blood. A lot of—" Merlin looked like he might be sick.
"Okay. Okay, good. We need it clean." It was apparently making Merlin uncomfortable that Gwaine was giving him triage orders, so Merlin attempted to reclaim his rightful place as assistant court physician, and his voice became marginally sterner:
"I know, water's on the way."
Gwaine was shaking his head. "Need something stronger. Did we save any of the ale from lunch? Whiskey'd be better, though—"
"No, Gwaine, we haven't anything like that," now Arthur snapped, apparently in worried-irritable mode. "How do you know this stuff, anyway?"
"Happened before," Gwaine said, with a grimace that was more memory than current pain, and he patted his right leg absently. Then, with a jab that was meant to be less accusing and more joking than it came out, "With another hunting party too cheap to invest in crossguards." Instead of rolling his eyes or blushing, however, Arthur paled, and if Gwaine hadn't already regretted it before it got out of his mouth, he regretted it now.
"I—I'm sorry, Gwaine," Arthur said, quietly.
"Whoa, now, wait a minute, Princess. You take that back!" Gwaine demanded, desperate to find a joke if it, well, if it killed him. "The only time you ever apologize is when someone's dying, and you, sire, are most certainly not jinxing me into dying!"
That got half a smile, at least, and a soggy grin from Merlin.
"I'm afraid water and bandages are all we can do for you until we get you back to the castle, Sir Gwaine," Lancelot said, coming into view to assist Merlin, who began flushing out the wound.
"Ah—ahhrgh!" Gwaine grimaced. "Come on, there's got to be something sterile around here."
"Urine," Merlin suggested.
"You're what?"
Merlin blushed as red as his handkerchief. "No, I mean, well—we're desperate enough. Urine is sterile. You know. Um. Pee."
Gwaine guffawed loudly, mostly at the look on his face, until he realized it hurt and it sent another wave of warm blood out over Lancelot's fingers. "You're not pissing on me!"
Lancelot and Arthur frowned.
"You're not going to listen to him, are you?" Gwaine tried to sit up—another wash of blood—he was beginning to feel dizzy—until Merlin snapped at him to lie still. "Okay, okay, fine!" he gasped, "there's a flask of Northumbrian moonshine in my saddlebag, all right? But I was saving that for a special occasion."
"Like the day you make it back to Camelot alive?" Arthur challenged.
Gwaine wrinkled up his nose. "I dunno. Was kinda trying to hold out till Midsummer."
…
A/N: Also, and I don't normally ask this, but please do leave a note if you liked it—or even if you didn't! I normally I get my kicks just looking at hits and visitors (and really, if I have to beg you to leave a review, I don't need a review from you!), but I think the stats feature has been broken the past few days—thanks, FanFiction, super—so I only know you've been here if you favorite or alert or review or something. As always, special thanks go to those reviewers who leave con-crit, suggestions and/or requests. Also, I am still in the market for a title that sucks less.