Ok, first off I apologise for the delay. Basically, I will attempt to blame this on illness/exams/snow/forcing-my-brother-to-watch-Supernatural-non-stop-with-me, but I think we all know that it is just sheer laziness and procrastination. Whoops. Anyway, like periods, it's better late than never, right?
(Please don't kill me)
"Change it back now"
"No"
"Personally, I think the colour suits you"
"Shut up Gwaine" Arthur growled, running his fingers through his (pink!) hair. Merlin was still snickering immaturely and refusing to turn it back to its normal (and if he did say so himself dashingly handsome) blonde colour. This was going as well as could be expected. Shite.
"The magenta does bring out the colour of your eyes"
"Merlin, you do know that I am currently in possession of a very sharp object"
"Not your brain then" Merlin quipped.
Arthur gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to stab said-sharp object into Merlin.
"Change. It. Back"
"Merlin, maybe you should" Leon said reluctantly "He's not going to stop asking, and I would like to get some sleep"
"It's dawn!"
"Yeah, but Arthur woke us all up when he pitched a hissy fit over his pink hair, didn't he?"
"I did not have a 'hissy fit'!" Arthur said with a scowl, which he directed at the smirking Gwaine "What if Merlin messed with your hair?"
Gwaine lifted his hands protectively towards his hair "It'd be the last thing he ever did" he answered without a trace of humour. Percival rolled his eyes from beside him while Mordred and Merlin made eye contact, Mordred sending Merlin a knowing smirk which Merlin returned with equal fervour, before they both turned to look at Gwaine, equally evil grins plastered on their faces.
'Oh God' Arthur thought wearily 'What are they planning? What if they do something to Gwaine's hair, and then Gwaine kills Mordred, and Merlin kills Gwaine, and then Leon and Percival try to avenge Gwaine. I bet that Gwen would guilt trip me into stopping the fight, and I'd end up getting caught in the middle of the crossfire and (after they accidentally manage to wake Morgana up, again) I accidentally get turned into a pumpkin or something. Crap, Merlin would call me a 'Plumpkin' all the time, and none of my normal clothes would fit – and can pumpkins even be in charge of a stable monarchy anyway? – and then Gaius would find out about it and kill him. Or make him into Sambar or something.
Gwaine's hair was capable of starting a civil war.
"Merlin" Gwen said from Arthur's side, cutting off his slightly hysterical vision of his near future "Gwaine is more than capable of murder"
Merlin shrugged noncommittally, the evil gleam in his and Mordred's eyes did not leave.
"So, will you change my hair back?"
"Nope"
"Merlin, if my hair is still pink in 5 seconds, I'm going to beat you to death with this stick of celery."
"Pretty sure that's impossible."
"Well we'll find out" Arthur replied with a glare "and even if it doesn't work, it'll be fun. 5…4…3…2-"
"Fine!" Merlin said hastily as Arthur reached towards the celery, eyes never breaking contact with his "I'll change it back. Keep that lethal weapon away from me!"
A few quick words and a flash of Golden eyes.
Merlin's eyes widened quite comically.
"What?" Arthur asked. No-one answered him, though Gwaine did seem close to laughter.
"What?" he asked again, turning to Gwen for an answer.
"Well… at least it's not pink anymore" she said tentatively.
"Merlin. What. Did. You. Do?!" Arthur snarled, turning back to the soon-to-be-brutally-murdered-warlock. However, Merlin seemed to have vanished air, thin, fat or otherwise. That was probably a bad sign.
"What did he do?" Arthur asked.
The 5 others exchanged uncertain looks, before Percival eventually spoke up.
"Um… your hair…"
"What about my hair?"
"Well… there isn't any…"
"Wha-MERLIN!"
It took several of Arthur's more creative death threats for Merlin to finally turn visible again ("Give me my hair back Merlin, or I swear to God I'll shove it somewhere even the Once and bloody-Future King can't pull it out!"), and a further 15 more to get him to stop laughing manically at the sight of his bald head ("I really hope you brought money with you, because I'm pretty sure hell asks for rent in advance"). When Merlin had finally calmed down to the point where he could breathe again, it took a couple more to 'convince' Merlin it was in his best interests to un-baldify Arthur ("Do you know how stupid you're going to look with a knife permanently stuck in your arse?"
Even now, Arthur was still glaring at Merlin, wondering exactly why he had forgiven him for any of the other crap Merlin had done to him over the years.
'Sometime, somewhere, Merlin must have done something that I'm legally allowed to kill him for' Arthur thought 'Could I claim self-defence if I murdered him out of sheer irritation?'
Sadly, the answer was probably no. Bloody red-tape.
He was being driven up the wall by the combined efforts of Merlin, Mordred and Gwaine.
Actually, no, if he was being driven up the wall, there would at least be a chance that he'd be driven so far up it that he'd eventually get to the top of the cliff and be able to run away as fast as humanly possible.
'Kill me' Arthur thought dully, as Gwaine pulled out what seemed to be a deck of cards 'Kill me now, before I beat Gwaine to death with the Ace of Clubs. Or maybe just a club. Either way is fine by me'
"So" Gwaine said brightly "Who's up for strip poker?"
Arthur wondered what was a quicker mode of murder, poison or massive exsanguination.
"Merlin, can you turn people into pumpkins?"
"Um… no, Arthur"
"Thank goodness"
"Urrrggg…"
Once again, it was this sound that alerted Arthur to the fact that his evil half-sister-slash-nemesis-slash-magnet for unconsciousness was once again waking up. He wondered whether it was too much to hope for that another passing knight would conveniently fall off the cliff and knock her out while plummeting to their death. He wasn't sure if he could cope with having to deal with Morgana right now, on top of the events of the last two hours. He never again wanted to see Gwaine's pe-
Well… let's just say that it had been a very stressful day.
And it was still morning.
He could practically feel his heart leaping for joy in his chest.
"Want me to deal with her?" Merlin asked absently, piling sand and rocks onto a sleeping Gwaine's head (Well, by sleeping, this author means 'violently-knocked-unconscious-by-Arthur-by-a-large-stick-of-celery-about-half-an-hour-ago-after-revealing-the-whole-McMeal-to-the-group-at-large', but hey! The two phrases were more or less synonymous, weren't they?)
Arthur opened his mouth to reply that, No, he obviously would much rather be monologued to death all over again, but a weird whooshing noise interrupted him before he could do anything more than sigh in exasperation.
WHOOOOO0OoooO00000o0oooo000o O0OoooS5S55H-CRUNCH
Arthur looked from the newly re-unconsciousified Morgana to the large bullfrog that had apparently created a small landslide before landing on Morgana's head, covering the ground around her with dust, dirt and bits of frog.
"Now this is just getting ridiculous…"
"I spy-"
"Gwaine, don't make me tie you up and gag you"
"Ooh, kinky"
"Before you make another sound, you should know that I will not hesitate to sacrifice you to the Sun God Ra"
"WHAT!?"
"So, I released the Great Dragon Kilgarrah from the vaults under Camelot, indirectly leading to the deaths of at least one hundred people, and you're angry over the fact that some girl kissed me!?"
"Some girl?!" Arthur repeated, glaring at Merlin (this was becoming such a regular occurrence that it would probably be easier to point out when Arthur wasn't glaring at Merlin). Right now, the glare had moved up from 'Please shut up before I shove this Octopus so far down your throat you'll be shitting Calamari for weeks', passing right by 'Good God Gwaine, if you say anything like that ever again, I'm going to take this celery, and-' and was currently residing just below 'Sadly, looks can't kill, so I'll have to beat you to death instead'.
"She wasn't married to you at this point!" Merlin pointed out hurriedly as Arthur's glare increased further, rising up to 'Do you want me to forcibly remove your reproductive organs from your body?'.
"Arthur, calm down" Gwen said soothingly "I just had a little crush on Merlin when he first came to Camelot, it's gone now, so stop glaring at him."
Arthur continued to glare at Merlin.
But to be honest, that wasn't particularly surprising.
"You had a crush… on Merlin" he said slowly "How?"
Gwen gave Arthur a disapproving look, which he had the sense to look mildly abashed over.
"It's just… Merlin flirting with women? Women flirting with Merlin?"
Merlin muttered something that sounded ominously like 'turn you into a woman'.
Arthur wisely decided to shut the hell up before he could be savagely separated from his man-vegetables.
"No, Arthur, don't try to think of a witty response to that, I don't want you to strain something."
"Are you incinerating that I'm not clever Merlin?"
"Insinuating"
"I meant to say that"
"Mordred, why the hell are you building a scale model of Camelot out of rotten tomatoes and celery?"
"Hmm? Oh, we ran out of carrots so I had to improvise and use celery instead"
"And why exactly are you building a scale model of Camelot out of vegetables?"
"Fruit"
"What did you say Leon?"
"Tomatoes are fruit, not vegetables."
"Yeah, but celery's a vegetable, so the point still stands, why the Lucifer-in-a-fire-and-brimstone-cage hell is Mordred-"
"Hang on, I thought celery was a fruit!"
"No, it's a vegetable, it isn't sweet or juicy like fruit is"
"Yeah, Mordred's right, it's a vegetable"
"But it grows above ground… and… how can that… what… so…"
"I think you broke him Percival"
"How can anyone be that passionate over a type of fruit?"
"Vegetable"
Arthur sighed in exasperation as Leon began to argue why celery was a fruit, while Merlin stared blankly into the fire with the air of a man who had realised that his whole life was a lie. Arthur repeated his earlier sigh of exasperation as Gwaine stopped all chances of an intelligent discussion by attempting to ram a stick of celery up Leon's nose. Fruit/vegetable/whatever it was, Leon didn't appreciate having it inserted into his nostril, and maturely retaliated by chucking a nearby jar at him, which promptly shattered, showering Gwaine with gherkins. Gwaine seemed to be in a pickle.
Or was covered with them…or whatever.
And Arthur still didn't know why there was a animal/vegetable/mineral replica of his castle standing in the corner.
Arthur was not glaring at Merlin.
Yes, this was now an important enough event in Arthur's life that not only did it require to be pointed out, but it also managed to earn itself its own separate paragraph, where it could rest, feeling smug about its choices in life. For a short little sentence doing nothing more than pointing out what Arthur actually wasn't doing, it had done remarkably well or itself, even gaining a little mini-paragraph afterwards celebrating its achievements in life. Maybe it'd even win the sentence-equivalent of an Oscar, perhaps nicking the one Leonardo Dicaprio really deserv- OK, I think we're getting bogged down by this metaphor – forget the fact that Arthur wasn't glaring. No, wait, that's the whole point I had that sentence, isn't it? Cock. Ok, I'll just start again, and we'll all pretend this lengthy paragraph didn't happen. Deal?
Deal.
Arthur was not glaring at Merlin.
He wasn't entirely sure why he wasn't glaring at Merlin at the moment, ad he was pretty sure that he should be glaring at Merlin for some reason, which would eventually come to him, given time. Maybe it was because Merlin had magic'd up several piles of Apples and Arthur was currently surrounded by about 40 apple cores and the remnants of what was once his dignity.
Though it was probably Arthur's fault for eating 43 apples at once (43 apples that Merlin had said that he couldn't magic up when they were all starving to death, oddly enough), Arthur still felt that he could blame Merlin for his current situation.
He glared at Merlin.
"Merlin" he whined "Your apples made me ill"
"You didn't have to eat them all"
"Gwaine dared me to"
"And of course you had to do what Gwaine told you to do, didn't you?"
"Well… yeah, actually"
Merlin gave him a 'you Knights are crazy' look, before returning to his conversation with Percival. Gwaine (a.k.a, the devil incarnate) gave Arthur an evil smile that made Arthur momentarily forget his apple-induced stomach ache. What was Gwaine planning to do-?
"I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with 'C'"
Fuck.
Urge to kill, rising. Expected Lundy 964 by 0700 tomorrow.
Oh wait, that was the shipping forecast.