![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
merlin-hols.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
merlin_holidaysTitle: Painting By Numbers
Recipient:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
luisadeza
Author:junkshop_disco
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Merlin/Gwaine (with background Percival/Leon and unrequited Merlin/Arthur)
Word Count: 18k
Warnings: Swearing, sex, and slight age disparity (Merlin is 21, Gwaine 28). References to: alcoholism, grief, and consensual but rubbish underage sex. Also: bad puns.
Summary: Since he fell out with a Painting By Numbers kit at eight, Gwaine has been incapable of painting within other people’s lines. Luckily he’s about to meet Merlin, an art student, who’s equally keen on making a splodgy mess of life.
Author's Notes: Yuletide felicitations,luisadeza - I really wanted to write you Renaissance sculptor Merlin and quarry-worker Gwaine, but alas my knowledge of fifteenth century sculpting techniques and quarrying methods is not what it might be. I hope this suffices as a substitute ♥.
Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to Shine and the BBC. I make no profit from this endeavour.
In 1951, Palmer Paint introduced the first ever Painting By Numbers kit. Each one of the twelve million boxes sold declared: a beautiful oil painting the first time you try!
Gwaine got one for Christmas when he was eight. The little plastic pots filled with colour and a runny, clear liquid which required shaking before use delighted him. The numbers and guidelines did not, and he drove his mother to many a gin and squash by ignoring them and painting whatever he wanted over the top. He neither ended up with what the box said he should nor something his mother wanted to hang on the wall, but he found the resultant splodges beautiful, and since then he’s always steered clear of painting within other people’s lines.
Perhaps that explains why – twenty years later – he’s sitting waiting in an art professor’s office, and instead of reading a book or playing Angry Birds on his phone, he’s spinning round and round on the chair. The bookcase blurs into a Monet of indistinct colour and shape, and just as he lets his head loll to make the most of the dizziness the door opens. He scrabbles for the edge of the filing cabinet to bring himself to a giddy halt, fixing a suitably respectable grin on his face. Where he’s expecting to find a wizened old biddy with a wrinkled neck, pearls, and a hundred borrowed opinions on Bosch there stands a young bloke – mostly hat and coat and curious eyes – a couple of books on the Renaissance clutched to his chest.
“Hi,” the young bloke says, clearly unsure whether he’s allowed to laugh or not, “you’re Professor Armitage?”
“No. Sorry to disappoint,” Gwaine says.
“Damn, I’ve been trying to track her down for weeks.” Cheeks pink with coming in from the cold, he edges in, leans on the desk, and juggles the books against his chest before setting them down, tugging off his hat and ruffling thick, dark hair into his eyes. “I just need a stupid form signed.”
Gwaine’s gaze falls over the Cubist lines of his face and pallid colour of his skin to find itself temporally enraptured by a mouth on loan from the Pre-Raphaelites. The guy glances at him, like he can tell he’s being watched with less than casual eyes, and his lip just twitches into a hint of smile Gwaine’s sure would be lovely in full effect.
“Forge it for you, if you want,” Gwaine says. “In my disreputable youth I had quite a sideline in phony doctor’s and parents’ signatures. I’m sure I haven’t lost my gift.”
The guy laughs and looks away, shaking his head. Then he looks back, one eyebrow lifted in curiosity, eyes lit up with mischief. He unbuttons his coat, revealing a blue jumper to his knees which can’t quite conceal a coat-hanger frame, and produces a folded A4 page from his inside pocket. He meets Gwaine’s eye, and bites his lip in consideration.
“This is probably illegal,” he says.
“There’s no probably about it. You could always try again later, if – ”
“Term’s nearly over. I’m getting pretty desperate,” he says, and holds the sheet out, expression dancing with challenge. “Go on, then.”
Gwaine thumbs his chin, trying to hide a smile at the fuck, you’re cute burgeoning in his head. He takes the form, unfolds it, the warmth from being tucked snug into a body radiating enticingly from the paper to his fingertips. He scans the text, leaning on the desk in some kind of faux professor pose.
“So – it says here that your name is Merlin, and you want to take a mooch through the library’s antiquity stash?”
“Inspiration for my dissertation.”
“On?”
The guy lifts a book from his small stack.
“Giorgio Vasari – ”
“Ah, a devotee of Italian Gothic and frescoes.”
“One who can’t afford a trip to the Santa Maria del Fiore, so a rummage in the basement through his volumes is as close as I’m going to get.”
“Well, then, I’m happy to oblige, Merlin,” Gwaine says, over-stressing his name to lodge it in place in his head. “Just need something to – ”
Gwaine rustles through the papers littering the desk until his fingers fall on an essay with a messy scrawl of a moniker on the top sheet. He reaches for a pen, cradles it loosely to reflect the loopiness of the scrawl, and goes over the movement in his head: the upstroke on the A, the talon-like hook of the g. He rehearses it in the air before he draws the words Professor S Armitage in one flowing line with just a little tick of a flourish to cross the t and the f.
“There you go.”
“That’s – ” Merlin says, taking the paper and staring at it, a crease between his eyebrows. He looks from Gwaine’s signature to Professor Armitage’s side by side and – even if Gwaine does say so himself – it's indistinguishable.
“Delinquent was the word my teachers most often used,” Gwaine says, and Merlin laughs, quick and shy.
“How did you – you didn’t even practice.”
“It’s mostly nerve, forgery. The trick is not to copy the individual letters, but to imagine the motion of the person’s hand as they wrote the whole word.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Merlin says, tucking the form into his pocket. “Chances are in a couple of months I’ll need a second income.”
“Art history student?”
“Worse – I’m doing fine art too. Gave me delusions of having a professional career, so when I graduate I’ll be looking for a garret to starve in and avoiding messages from my mother about how I should have done accountancy.”
“Mothers,” Gwaine says. “Why do they all think being chained to a calculator is the route to happiness?”
“Square root to happiness, surely?”
“Oh, very droll.”
Merlin grins – it is very, very lovely – shifts, glances down at him, eyes lingering on the glimpse of chest the opening of Gwaine’s shirt reveals with a light pricking of interest.
“So – why are you waiting for no-concept-of-time Armitage?” Merlin says, lifting his gaze back slowly. “I’m guessing you’re not a student.”
“I’m Gwaine,” Gwaine says, and he offers his hand. Merlin takes it with a surprisingly strong grasp, his fingers cold, a bit dry, and peppered with rough calluses. “I’m a travelling paint salesman.” Merlin’s eyebrows jump, amused. “I’ll have you know it’s a real thing,” Gwaine says, swinging a little on the chair, giving Merlin his best winning smile. “My friend and I have this whole line of organic eco paints and brush cleaners. He’s more science-y so he makes them, and I charm art departments into buying them. It was only because of the Industrial Revolution paint started being made with petrochemical by-products – for your man Vasari it was all plants and clay, so really what we’re doing is just taking paint back to where it came – ”
“That your entire sales pitch?”
“Pretty much. You want samples? I’ve a very fetching crimson today.”
“No thanks, but sounds cool,” Merlin says, meeting Gwaine’s eye with perfect seriousness. “There’s a cave in Denmark that was painted hundreds of years ago with ox blood and it still looks perfect. I always wanted to go and see.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Too little money, too little time,” Merlin says, and looks down at his feet. “Or maybe I’m just making excuses. I always put off things I’d really like to do in case they don’t measure up to how they are in my head.”
“Oh, well that blights us all if we’re not careful.”
“What’s the answer?”
“Leap of faith every now and then,” Gwaine says, “and trust that wherever your feet land is where they’re supposed to be. Even if they’ve landed in a puddle of disappointment you still jumped, and you can step out of it any time and jump again.”
The corner of Merlin’s mouth hitches into something that’s almost a smile. Gwaine goes to say something else to keep it there and see if he can make it blossom into another grin, but a bell rings.
“Shit,” Merlin says, pushing off the desk as the ceiling vibrates with the weight of dozens of pairs of feet stampeding down the stairs. “I’ve got to go – I’ve got a lecture on Surrealism right on the other side of campus, and last time I tried to make a sorry-I’m-late-melting-clocks joke it didn’t go over as well as I hoped.”
“No worries,” Gwaine says, and adopts a melodramatically put-upon tone. “I’ll just go back to dejectedly spinning on the chair.”
Merlin tugs his hat on and peers at Gwaine from under it, gesturing to the door with a breathy laugh at nothing.
“I – er – I hope Armitage shows up to hear your pitch – it’s a good one. And thanks for the forgery. It’s going to save my life.”
“Any time, Merlin.”
Merlin pauses on the threshold, fingering his book, lips switching from side to side.
“You know I could steal anything from the library’s collection, now,” he says, head cocked.
“Yeah, but – you seem trustworthy.”
“Do I?”
“Your face is honest. Amongst other things.”
Merlin sniffs a laugh, and on the back of another smile he’s gone. Gwaine waits until the door at the end of the corridor swings closed before digging his heel into the carpet and spinning round on the chair again. The blur changes, no longer a mishmash of books and office but all Merlin – a cobbled guess at how he might look really, really laughing, all fogged and soft-lit like something from a daytime soap.
Fuck, Gwaine thinks. That’ll be a sketch of crush on some art student, then, on the previously blank pages of my heart.
He lasts ten more minutes, and then – a bit too dizzy – he gets up and flirts with the woman on reception until she tells him where he might find a lecture on Surrealism.
*
Gwaine peers into the amphitheatre of a lecture hall through the window in the door. Most of the students tap away on laptops, barely listening behind their designer specs and studiedly off-centre haircuts, but Merlin’s at the back with a notebook, bouncing the end of a pencil off his lip. Gwaine squeezes in with a squeak of hinge, and drops down the stairs to his row.
“This seat taken?” he whispers, and Merlin looks up, startled.
“Oh – hi. No.”
He moves his bag onto the floor, smiling and sneaking little glances from underneath eyebrows high with surprise. Gwaine slides in next to him, sinking back on the seat and pretending to be listening as a woman at the front with a piercing voice and knee-high red leather boots jabbers about Dali’s dead brother. Gwaine hooks his elbow onto the arm rest, nestles it just against Merlin’s, pulse hitching when Merlin doesn’t move away. He glances at Merlin’s notes. Instead of writing there’s a drawing of a wall where the words this is bullshit rain down in faux-graffiti script while a Banksy-esque doodle of Merlin hangs himself from the t.
Gwaine rubs his chin to keep from laughing, and after a tedious bunch of waffle about self-fashioning, the lecturer flicks off the lights. The projector whirls, clicking through some obligatory and unnecessarily pixelated examples of Dali’s work (Alice in Wonderland, wrong order), and as the professor starts wittering about dualism Merlin leans in.
“I thought you said you were a paint salesman?” he whispers.
“I am. I was just thinking about what you said about never doing what you want and – well, I’d always really wanted to know more about Surrealism so I decided to take my own advice.”
Merlin’s eyes glint, unconvinced, but he leans in closer, turning and rearranging his Bambi legs so his knees brush Gwaine’s thigh.
“There are better people than her to fill you in,” Merlin whispers, shooting a conspiratorial glance at the stage. “There’s this guy in my other class who actually met Dali.” His breath flutters against Gwaine’s hair, and Gwaine watches his fingers toy with his pencil, stomach coiling at the thought of what they might do with him. “He’s, like, ninety, and he has this story about one time, in return for an interview, Dali made Brian Sewell get on his knees and wank until he cried. Only time Brian Sewell ever did anything I thought was interesting.”
Gwaine sniffs a laugh, and they watch a couple of slides whizz by, staying close. A loose, hazy fantasy – this one distinctly less daytime and more like grainy porn – flickers in Gwaine’s head: running his hand up Merlin’s leg, him squirming in response and trying to stay quiet as Gwaine teases him to the point of madness through his jeans. He eases in to Merlin’s ear, catching a whiff of his shampoo – woody and fresh like a forest in the rain.
“This is a flimsy façade,” he says, and lightly taps Merlin’s knee.
“You didn’t come for the Dali?” Merlin says, and Gwaine can’t tell if he’s a really good actor in the name of a flirt or he’s genuinely surprised.
“Truth is you were just a bit persistent in my memory.”
“For all of half an hour?”
“I could tell you were a sticker,” Gwaine says, and Merlin dips his head, bites his lip and makes it flood white. “You want to get out of here and do something?”
“I’d blow this off in a heartbeat, but I’m working after. I won’t be done until late.”
“How late?”
“Half eleven.”
“That’s not late,” Gwaine says. “How about I pick you up and take you to some seedy bar after you finish?”
Merlin swallows, gaze flitting over Gwaine’s face as he considers it, all breath and warmth and huge, curious eyes. He fidgets with his note book, scrawling on the bottom of the page and slowly tearing the strip off. He winces comically at the noise, and pins the scrap to the armrest with his finger. With a deliberate brush Gwaine takes it, and reads the words call me later? and a number. By way of reply Gwaine squeezes Merlin’s arm.
“If you get some inappropriately flirty text while you’re at work, don’t worry. That's just the pervert poltergeist in my phone,” he whispers.
Merlin laughs, low and hushed, and Gwaine backs away, grinning at him in the dark.
*
There’s no reply, and Gwaine sets his phone down on the counter, looking at their conversation for a second while Jon Snow drones in the background about fuel poverty. Leon ambles over with a bowl of noodles and leans on the worktop, poking at them with a fork.
“How’d it go today?”
“Estimable Professor Armitage never showed,” Gwaine says, disentangling the end of a noodle, drawing it out, and dropping it into his mouth.
“Then why are you smiling? This morning you were sulking like a sitcom teenager when the gas bill arrived.”
“What can I say? I’m mercurial.”
“I’ll give you that on occasion I want to cover you in sawdust because there’s something toxic about you.”
Gwaine goes in for another noodle, and quick as a viper Leon smacks his knuckles with his fork, making pain ping along the bone. Gwaine tuts and shakes his hand, and Leon glares, his frayed cardigan and fuzzy hair – which spills out from underneath a fairly ludicrous stripy hat – only denting its efficacy slightly.
“Forecast says snow’s on the way tonight,” Leon says.
“We agreed, no heating until Christmas,” Gwaine says. “Although – I was going to say – if tonight you fancied staying at Percy’s on account of this place rivalling Greenland for the lowest recorded temperature that might fit with my plans.”
“I knew it. You’re not mercurial, you met someone.”
“Either way my thermometer’s on the way up.”
Leon starts twirling up a fresh knot of noodle, and while his fork’s occupied Gwaine grabs the end of one and sucks it up – at least until the other end reveals itself to be wrapped around a prong and catches. Gwaine grins, and Leon rolls his eyes.
“This isn’t Lady and the Tramp,” he says, but he lets Gwaine have the noodle, anyway. “Who is he?”
“His name’s Merlin. He’s very lovely.”
“Well as long as he buys you dinner so you keep your mitts out of mine.”
“He’s an art student, so – ”
Gwaine’s phone buzzes and lights up, the little window declaring:
Gwaine smiles, fingers hesitating over the reply button.
“How many times do you have to text someone in one night to appear needy and over-eager?” he says.
“Depends how good-looking you are. Neediness can be off-set by a spectacularly good nose,” Leon says. “I’d say in your case fourteen’s your limit.”
“Really? You can calculate – ”
Leon raises an eyebrow in a clear: no, of course not.
“So what’s it worth?” Leon says. “Me making myself scarce tonight so you can be needy and over-eager with your art student?”
“My undying love and gratitude?” Gwaine says.
“Sorry, that’s not the answer I have on the card.”
“Next time Percy stays over I won’t shout helpful instructions through the wall.”
“Done. You want the rest of these?” he says, pushing the bowl towards Gwaine.
“Thank you kindly.”
“Well, younger man and everything,” Leon says, “you’ll need to keep your strength up.”
*
The Wounded Unicorn turns out to be a grove of a place. Students litter the tables, groaning under the weight of cheap cocktails named after mythological fairies, and hundreds of fake plastic plants fail to conceal the rough, concrete ceiling and the bare brick walls. Gwaine picks his way to the bar, feeling a bit like a cracked oil in a sea of fresh new watercolours, but he forgets it instantly when Merlin looks up from the pint he’s pouring and brightens with a grin.
“Hi.”
He’s not actually wearing a tail, but his t-shirt is at least two sizes too small and clings to a narrow chest and a dip of waist so enticing it takes Gwaine a second to realise on the front there’s a severed unicorn’s head. Merlin turns to clatter coins into the till, and emblazoned across his shoulders streak the words: at the Wounded Unicorn we’re always horny. Gwaine stifles a laugh and leans on the wood, four dozen texts neither of them really has the nose to offset softening his thoughts when Merlin ambles over.
“You’re doing well,” he says, waving over his t-shirt. “I expected hysterics.”
“I never joke about a decapitated unicorn, Merlin. It’s bad luck, I’m sure of it.”
Merlin fingers the tap in front of him which declares Hobgoblin Best Better above a picture of a pissed witch, eying him with a wry smile.
“What can I get you?” he says.
“Whatever you recommend.”
“I recommend going somewhere else, frankly.”
“Hey! Merlin, do you want the sack?”
The voice comes from the end of the bar, where a blond guy with a stiff shirt and a stiffer upper lip looks up from surveying a spreadsheet with an affronted glare. Merlin raises his hands in apology, but rather ruins it with a smirk.
“That’s Arthur,” Merlin says, with a jerk of his head. “Owns the place. And the entire chain, actually.”
“There’s a chain? You mean there are Wounded Unicorns all over the country and I never noticed?”
“They’re not all unicorns – there’s Squiffy Griffins and Merry Mermen and Get Your Drag-On cabaret bars. It’s student places, mostly.”
“Quite an empire, then.”
“Yeah. Hey, Arthur, this is Gwaine. Guy I told you about?”
Arthur quirks an eyebrow by way of greeting and goes back to scribbling on his notes.
“Friendly,” Gwaine says.
“There’s no room for hospitality in the hospitality industry these days,” Merlin says, low and private. “Just a lot of plastic plants and awful puns.”
Merlin turns away and grabs a couple of bottles from the display on the back of the bar. From a squat, round one he pours a generous measure of red-ish liquid, then adds a splash from frosted glass, topping it up with a spritz of lemonade from a gun under the bar and finishing it with a bright green straw.
“Fancy a Puck?” Merlin says, with a sly raise of eyebrow as he sets some pink fizzing thing on the bar in front of Gwaine. Obligingly Gwaine mouths the straw, and sickly lemonade and schnapps wash on his tongue, followed by a fierce aftertaste of raspberries and a slight burning sensation.
“That’s – ” He loses whatever adjective he was going to ascribe it to a cough. “This is payback for my pony jokes, isn’t it?”
Merlin grins and backs away down the bar to serve a clutch of girls wearing baby-blue rugby tops. Cross-eyed, the first one tells Merlin she wants three Feel My Titanias and a Tinkerbell End, and Gwaine watches him move between the optics, the ice bucket, and the taps with little spins, all angles and yet somehow graceful as he tosses jokes at them while they wait, utterly charming and yet apparently unconscious about the effect he has.
While he works they chat about the jukebox’s affection for Bruno Mars and the variously slaughtered state of the customers, and at half eleven Merlin herds the last of the patrons – one of the girls who got separated from the pack and is crying her mascara into a proper Alice Cooper face – out of the door and into a taxi Arthur paid for on the quiet to get rid of her. He buzzes about collecting the remaining glasses and loading them into the mouth of the washer, and that done he sidles over to Arthur, who’s frowning at the optics. A hand on his arm and a hushed conversation – Merlin tilting his head and Arthur gurning a grimace, then relenting – and Merlin grins.
“I’ll just get changed and then I’m all yours,” he says, and bounces off the door frame and into the office.
The tune on the jukebox dies as Arthur hits a switch behind the bar, and in the quiet Gwaine fiddles with a flyer for burger and beer night declaring: dinner needn’t be a pickle, why not get your hands on our baps?
“Merlin designed that.”
“Oh, really?” Gwaine says. “He’s multi-talented, then.”
“It’s rather more he’s so desperate for money he’ll do anything, even pen pickle puns.”
“Not sure where I planned to take him is up to scratch. ”
“He holds his drink like a fourteen-year-old girl, so he’s unlikely to care,” Arthur says, getting his foot caught on the mop bucket Merlin abandoned and swearing at the door. From beyond it Merlin tells him he should have looked where he was going and that he can hold his drink perfectly well, thank you very much, and if Arthur remembers he’s not the one who fell over and skidded face-first down a bowling lane at the Christmas party because they’d had too much mulled wine. Arthur huffs and shoves the mop onto the wall, doing a little dance with it until it stays put. “Good luck with him. You’re a braver man than I.”
Arthur meets his eye with a forced smile which prickles the back of Gwaine’s neck. He opens one of the tills and starts counting the notes with a look that suggests if Gwaine interrupts he’ll lose a bollock.
Gwaine rests on the bar, one foot lifted up behind him like a stork, and when Merlin reappears he’s pulling his coat on over a checked shirt – not as tight as his work t-shirt but enough to denote effort and thought.
“Ready?”
“More than,” Merlin says, digging his hat out of his pocket and tugging it onto his head. “ ‘Night, Arthur.”
They slip out of the door, and wind races up off the pavement to meet them.
“Wow, that’s – ” The cold knocks the words out of Merlin’s mouth, and he hugs his sides, grimacing, and glances up at the sky. “You think it’s going to snow?”
“My flatmate seemed to think so,” Gwaine says, smiling as Merlin turns round, walking backwards to look at him with no concern about whether a manhole or the kerb lies behind him. “Maybe I’ll buy you something on fire to warm you up.”
“Oh, we do these Breathe The Dragon cocktails,” Merlin says, every word packed with the same enthusiasm a six-year-old might have for a new toy, “black Sambuca on fire – every time someone orders one there’s at least one minor singeing.”
“Lucky for you I know the trick,” Gwaine says, and makes a grab for the front of Merlin’s coat to steer him out of the way of a woman walking her dog. Merlin spins, dodges her and her yapping terrier, muttering apologies and hopping out of the way of the lead. Gwaine laughs and turns him the right way, hooking a hand under his elbow to keep him there. “Eyes front, Merlin.”
Merlin bumps Gwaine’s chest with his arm and doesn’t move away again, grins at himself, and Gwaine wonders what Merlin would do if he just grabbed him and shoved him against a wall because hell, that’s what he wants to do – what he’s wanted to do all evening.
“As I was saying,” Gwaine says, “and pay attention because this is vital safety information – you have to put your hand over the glass until it sticks to your palm. Creates a vacuum, and that puts the fire out, because – well, I think it has something to do with a triangle but I can’t remember what. I mastered the technique but not the theory.”
“That how you do everything?”
“Pretty much.”
“Bodes well,” Merlin says, and meets his eye askance before scanning the star-splattered sky and the streets washed with people on their way home. “I always liked this, going out when everyone else is limping to bed.”
“That how you ended up working in a unicorn pub?” Gwaine says, and pulls Merlin closer, rubbing his arm a little to keep him warm.
“Just needed a job, only I wasn’t qualified for anything. I was in there arguing with Arthur about what kind of qualifications does a person need to wash up and a fight broke out between rival rugby teams. I helped him separate them – or tried to – mostly I got elbowed in the face, and after he stopped shouting at me for bleeding on the floor he took pity on me.”
“I don’t think he likes me much.”
“It’s not personal. He’s having a rough time.” Gwaine waits for him to go on, and Merlin buries his hands in his pockets and his chin in the collar of his coat. “His dad’s ill. When we met, Arthur was just assistant manager – now he’s running the whole chain.”
“He’s pretty young for that kind of responsibility.”
“Yeah, he is,” Merlin says, with a sad little smile.
Down the street a siren blares, and a fresh whip of wind makes Merlin shiver theatrically and say maybe something's on fire after all.
*
Inside the bar’s rough, red walls they make their way to where the surly girl who owns the place skulks, rearranging the shot glasses into a castle. Merlin’s eyes widen as he takes in the furniture – all eclectic styles like it’s been stolen from a dozen different skips – and the irregular-haired regulars sitting in small clusters, talking animatedly above the psychedelic soundtrack, swapping anecdotes from rock’n’roll and performance poetry. A couple of them call out hellos and beckon him over, but Gwaine waves them off and leads Merlin to the bar.
“It’s like a speakeasy,” Merlin says, leaning in.
“That’s why I like it. What’ll you have?” Gwaine says, pointing to the chalkboard where the words Today’s Specials have been struck through and replaced with the words: Ask for whatever the fuck you want. You’re a grown-up.
“Surprise me. Nothing with cherries.”
A couple covered in tattoos and piercings who were canoodling in one of the alcoves gets up, and Merlin taps Gwaine’s arm and gestures to it before going over to claim it by chucking his coat over the back of the sofa. He piles the glasses strewing the wrought iron garden table into a neat stack, and Gwaine eyes his arse and the way it sits snug against his back pockets before Merlin turns and brings the glasses to the bar.
“Looking for another job?”
“Habit,” he says, with a little mutter of a laugh, and goes back over to the tiny squashy settee.
He pulls off his hat, and curls one leg half under himself, fingers tapping along to The Sonics on his knee. Gwaine orders, and after a brief conversation of eyebrow raises with the girl behind the bar while she mixes – not like you to bring someone here – mind your own business, you – goes over clutching two different cocktails.
“You looked like a man in need of a Smokey Margarita.”
Gwaine places a tall glass full of lime and tequila on the table, and throws himself down next to him. Merlin pushes at the mist on the glass from the ice, prodding it until his finger squeaks, his lip caught between his teeth. Up close the sparse light from the candle shoved into a gin bottle on the table makes deep relief of Merlin’s cheekbones, transforming him from cute to downright exquisite. Gwaine pictures himself tasting the shadows, and then realises he’s probably staring with a tinge of what Leon calls his Afghan puppy with a cartoon steak expression. He gestures to Merlin’s glass.
“No measures here so don’t drink it too quick or you’ll be on your arse.”
“I’m already on my arse. I’m sitting down,” Merlin says, with a sly grin, and he lifts his drink and slurps, wincing a bit at the noise he makes and then making a wide-eyed face.
“Better than the Fancy a Puck?”
“You want to try?”
He offers Gwaine the glass and they swap and sip and swap back, and Merlin laughs at nothing, like he did in Armitage’s office. Gwaine suppresses the word adorable and rubs at his jaw, then runs a hand through his hair, leaning back on the sofa so he doesn’t drag Merlin into his lap and scare him off with an overly-familiar grope.
“So,” he says, “we need something to talk about. I think you should tell me about your work.”
“You saw,” Merlin says, with a little confused huff. “I make cocktails, I wash glasses, I pour drunk girls into taxis – ”
“I meant your real work – your art.”
“Nothing much to say there.”
“Must be nice to be so casually brilliant.”
“Who says I’m – ”
“Me.”
“You haven’t seen – ”
“Yes I have. On my quest for Armitage as a last ditch I stopped by the studio.” Merlin tilts his head and mugs a non-verbal question, befuddled. “I couldn’t resist a nose around and there were three pieces in there with real flair – an oil painting, some metalwork, and in the corner someone had worked magic with stone,” Gwaine says. “If I were a betting man, my money would be on you being the promising sculptor.”
“How on earth did you work that out?”
“Power of deduction. It’s a week to Christmas and everyone else is counting down the days like they’re already in a turkey coma, but you were fresh from the library with a bunch of really dull books and desperate to find a way to break in for a peek at some even duller ones. So desperate, in fact, you let a stranger – who by anybody’s definition is dodgy – talk you into criminal activity and then let him take you out. If that doesn’t say crazy but brilliant artist I don’t know what does.” Merlin laughs, a faint waft of pink high on his cheeks. “So that just left narrowing down which stuff was yours. You don’t have any burns so you don’t weld – I’m intimately familiar with the smell of turps and you, thank god, don’t have it – and then there’s this.”
Gwaine reaches for Merlin’s hand and slips their fingers into a loose twine. His pulse quickens at the first real touch of skin on skin, and he runs his thumb up to Merlin’s nail, picturing the sculpture – this intricate, twisting, spiral of a thing – jagged at the bottom before smoothing out into elegant lines. His breath caught just looking at it, and the sketch of his crush on Merlin had become inked, right then and there. Slowly he traces Merlin’s knuckles, the patches of hardened skin, the dents in his fingers made by tools, breath catching just the same at the thought of him working on it enough – wanting it to be perfect enough – to leave permanent markers on his bones.
“Dead giveaway,” he says, and the quiet hoarseness of his voice perhaps is one too, indicative that he’s already in a bit deeper than he usually is on a first date. Or a fifth. Not that he usually gets that far.
“I’m not as skilled as I’d like to be,” Merlin says, just as quietly, curling his fingers tighter so the pads rest on the back of Gwaine’s hand, his thumb just scuffing Gwaine’s.
The Sonics barrel to a halt on the stereo, and some winding, slower tune slinks across the air, words about a crossroads and betrayal over a baseline that pulses like the rhythm of a long, slow shag. Gwaine can’t tell – at all – if it’s that heightening the moment, or if it’s just the way Merlin’s touching, light but certain, delicate but deft. Either way his stomach whirls like someone’s swilling a paintbrush in it.
“You want the good news?” Gwaine says. “You’ll never be as skilled as you’d like to be.”
“How’s that good news?”
“Because if you’re always striving to be better – if there’s always a gap between what you think you’re truly capable of and what’s happening with your hands, you’ll never settle, and because you never settle, you’ll never be mediocre. You’ll probably be miserable – ” Merlin laughs, and Gwaine lets go of his fingers to see if breaking the physical connection severs the feeling, and lifts his glass. “ – but that’s what drinking’s for.”
“Voice of experience?”
“Oh, no. I’m just your run of the mill alcoholic paint salesman.”
“Doubt that.”
Merlin’s knee nudges his, casual but sending a spiral as acutely twisting as his sculpture through Gwaine’s body. Gwaine rests his elbow on the back of the sofa, and Merlin sinks into the cushion, inching closer, his gaze intent enough to make Gwaine imagine an invisible join-the-dots bubble drawing magically around them in the air. Merlin smiles, and for the first time in a really fucking long time Gwaine wishes he had something to draw with to try and make it his.
“You paint,” Merlin says.
“I dabbled, once upon a time.”
“Nah, you were more serious about it than that.”
“Working in a magic theme pub’s gifted you the ability to mind read, has it?” Gwaine says, and Merlin squints at him with mock scrutiny which after a moment doesn’t feel very mock at all. “What gave me away, then? If I smell of turps that fucking lingers.”
“Everything,” Merlin says quietly. “You knew exactly who Vasari was.”
“Maybe I learnt that in a pub quiz.”
“Don’t buy it. He’s not exactly the Lady Gaga of the Renaissance.”
“Who’d you reckon is?”
“Michelangelo,” Merlin says. “He thinks David is so edgy, like no-one ever sculpted a guy in laurels with his cock out before.”
“Naturally Machiavelli’s Madonna,” Gwaine says, “pretending he’s really into it because he doesn’t want to seem past it, but secretly seething – ”
“And Petrarch is Cher,” Merlin says. “Somewhere rocking in the corner – gutted that he did it all first and better and no-one cares, but unable to express it facially because of all the Botox.”
Gwaine laughs, and Merlin presses his lips together, pleased with himself.
“Why did you stop painting?” Merlin says, poking at the brown, caramelised hole of an old cigarette burn on the velour.
“Lack of talent.”
“And the real reason? I can read your mind, remember.”
Merlin peeks up through his fringe, and a dozen flippant answers and easy lies flash through Gwaine’s head. Like a meteor shower, though, they flare and dwindle, and the urge for Merlin to see his sky for how dark it really is thunks in his stomach with the same kind of unavoidable insistence as the impulse to do reckless, foolish things when he’s drunk.
“My dad’s been weed food since I was a kid, and then last year my mother died,” he says.
“Oh,” Merlin says, and his fingers stop their worrying at the burn. “I’m sorry.”
“You needn’t be – we hated each other to hell and back. Was mostly a relief when she did the decent thing and left me alone.”
“Then why did you stop painting?”
“No-one with any drive or spark has the kind of family you find in washing powder adverts. Art – it seems to me it all comes from the same place, this dissatisfaction with the amount of love in your life, anger about it, sadness about it, and the desire to do something so spectacular it proves to the people who should’ve loved you and didn’t that they got you really fucking wrong,” Gwaine says. Merlin nods, and Gwaine knows that he gets it, gutturally. “And when that goes away – ”
“Past doesn’t go away. It still happened.”
“Ah well, you didn’t specify my answer had to make sense,” Gwaine says, and afraid he’s made everything far too serious Gwaine bumps Merlin’s wrist. “When you’re famous, what bullshit will it say on your Wikipedia page about your past and its influence?”
“Um – abandoned by his father and raised in a village in the middle of nowhere by a mother with a penchant for social justice, Merlin’s struggle to fit in shows up with tedious regularity in his work, despite his best efforts. You?”
“Life on a caravan park with a heavy-drinking mother and a series of good for nothing step-fathers proved insubstantial inspiration for a career of any note, although did gift Gwaine an unwavering appreciation for a home which doesn’t rock and alert everyone in a hundred metres to his nocturnal activities.” Merlin chuckles, crinkle-eyed, and Gwaine pokes his thigh. “You’re not supposed be amused by my tragic upbringing.”
“Sorry. Guess the caravan explains your travelling paint salesman ways at least.”
“Not really – it was a static,” Gwaine says, and for some reason Merlin thinks that’s so funny he nearly chokes on an ice cube.
When he’s recovered, Merlin segues into asking how a person goes from living on a caravan park to selling eco-mentalist paint, and Gwaine tells him the tale of him, Leon, and the disused ballroom they both found themselves in: Leon the public schoolboy whose investment-banker father had ended up on the wrong side of embezzlement charges and left him holed up in there on some false legalese about dwelling rights; Gwaine breaking in one night to get out of the rain and Leon letting him stay because there was nothing to steal and he wanted the company. He tells anecdotes about Leon sitting around while he painted, getting high on cheap white spirit and whatever else they could lay their hands on until they’d drunk and smoked everything they could afford and came to the sober realisation they needed to find something to do with their lives. Merlin chuckles, sitting closer and closer until Gwaine can smell the sharpness of citrus on his breath and see all the different colours in his eyes: the wash of dark denim blue; the slight flecks of sky; the tiny, tiny spot of hazel just to the side of his pupil, like a lost moon. When he finishes talking he realises both their drinks are gone and he’s told Merlin things about himself it usually takes people years of knowing him to piece together for themselves. There’s comfort in Merlin still looking at him with soft, curious eyes like he’s just pencilling in the details, rather than joining them all up into a picture of how fragmented a soul he’s sharing his space with; edge, too, the reckless reel of spilling it all and allowing someone close enough to see the emptiness which remains when all the funny stories are gone.
“You want another?” Gwaine says, quietly, hooking his finger into the lip of Merlin’s glass. “Or – we could go back to mine, if – ” Merlin swallows. “I could pretend I have etchings to look at if that’ll spare your blushes.”
“What are etchings?”
“I don’t know, but I’m fairly sure in the whole history of everything, no-one has ever accepted an invite back somewhere and actually wanted to see them.”
“What if I’m the exception?” Merlin says, running his finger around the top of his glass until it butts up against Gwaine’s. He draws over it slowly, all the way to the back of his hand, and it’s a tiny thing to make Gwaine’s heart turn feral in his chest, but it does. “What if I come back to yours and then I’m crushed to find you don’t really have any?”
Gwaine lets his hand slide away to trace a lazy pattern on the back of Merlin’s neck, and Merlin looks at him, the air thickening around his softly coy gaze. Gwaine ignores the well-worn line that goes I’m sure we’d find something to take your mind off it, but leans in anyway because Christ, he wants to see if that mouth feels as soft as it looks. Merlin’s lips part and Gwaine hesitates – just to prove to himself that he can – so close Merlin’s tiny inhale of expectation pulls cold across his skin. Like he means to catch it, Gwaine touches his lips to Merlin’s. Merlin presses into the kiss a bit too fast, his nose squashing against Gwaine’s cheek, but then he smiles and mutters some sort of apology against his mouth and moves back in at a better angle. His tongue just flickers out to taste Gwaine’s lip before retreating, and so the rest of him doesn’t get the same idea Gwaine slips his fingers into the soft tickle of Merlin’s hair. Merlin shifts closer with a tiny huff of pleasure, and their tongues find each other, but just as things are getting interesting someone wolf-whistles and Merlin pulls away, dropping his head to Gwaine’s shoulder and sniggering.
“Shall we get out of here?” Gwaine whispers, stroking his nape to draw him out.
Merlin nods, and reaches for his coat.
Part 2
Recipient:
luisadezaAuthor:
junkshop_discoRating: NC-17
Pairings: Merlin/Gwaine (with background Percival/Leon and unrequited Merlin/Arthur)
Word Count: 18k
Warnings: Swearing, sex, and slight age disparity (Merlin is 21, Gwaine 28). References to: alcoholism, grief, and consensual but rubbish underage sex. Also: bad puns.
Summary: Since he fell out with a Painting By Numbers kit at eight, Gwaine has been incapable of painting within other people’s lines. Luckily he’s about to meet Merlin, an art student, who’s equally keen on making a splodgy mess of life.
Author's Notes: Yuletide felicitations,
luisadeza - I really wanted to write you Renaissance sculptor Merlin and quarry-worker Gwaine, but alas my knowledge of fifteenth century sculpting techniques and quarrying methods is not what it might be. I hope this suffices as a substitute ♥.Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to Shine and the BBC. I make no profit from this endeavour.
In 1951, Palmer Paint introduced the first ever Painting By Numbers kit. Each one of the twelve million boxes sold declared: a beautiful oil painting the first time you try!
Gwaine got one for Christmas when he was eight. The little plastic pots filled with colour and a runny, clear liquid which required shaking before use delighted him. The numbers and guidelines did not, and he drove his mother to many a gin and squash by ignoring them and painting whatever he wanted over the top. He neither ended up with what the box said he should nor something his mother wanted to hang on the wall, but he found the resultant splodges beautiful, and since then he’s always steered clear of painting within other people’s lines.
Perhaps that explains why – twenty years later – he’s sitting waiting in an art professor’s office, and instead of reading a book or playing Angry Birds on his phone, he’s spinning round and round on the chair. The bookcase blurs into a Monet of indistinct colour and shape, and just as he lets his head loll to make the most of the dizziness the door opens. He scrabbles for the edge of the filing cabinet to bring himself to a giddy halt, fixing a suitably respectable grin on his face. Where he’s expecting to find a wizened old biddy with a wrinkled neck, pearls, and a hundred borrowed opinions on Bosch there stands a young bloke – mostly hat and coat and curious eyes – a couple of books on the Renaissance clutched to his chest.
“Hi,” the young bloke says, clearly unsure whether he’s allowed to laugh or not, “you’re Professor Armitage?”
“No. Sorry to disappoint,” Gwaine says.
“Damn, I’ve been trying to track her down for weeks.” Cheeks pink with coming in from the cold, he edges in, leans on the desk, and juggles the books against his chest before setting them down, tugging off his hat and ruffling thick, dark hair into his eyes. “I just need a stupid form signed.”
Gwaine’s gaze falls over the Cubist lines of his face and pallid colour of his skin to find itself temporally enraptured by a mouth on loan from the Pre-Raphaelites. The guy glances at him, like he can tell he’s being watched with less than casual eyes, and his lip just twitches into a hint of smile Gwaine’s sure would be lovely in full effect.
“Forge it for you, if you want,” Gwaine says. “In my disreputable youth I had quite a sideline in phony doctor’s and parents’ signatures. I’m sure I haven’t lost my gift.”
The guy laughs and looks away, shaking his head. Then he looks back, one eyebrow lifted in curiosity, eyes lit up with mischief. He unbuttons his coat, revealing a blue jumper to his knees which can’t quite conceal a coat-hanger frame, and produces a folded A4 page from his inside pocket. He meets Gwaine’s eye, and bites his lip in consideration.
“This is probably illegal,” he says.
“There’s no probably about it. You could always try again later, if – ”
“Term’s nearly over. I’m getting pretty desperate,” he says, and holds the sheet out, expression dancing with challenge. “Go on, then.”
Gwaine thumbs his chin, trying to hide a smile at the fuck, you’re cute burgeoning in his head. He takes the form, unfolds it, the warmth from being tucked snug into a body radiating enticingly from the paper to his fingertips. He scans the text, leaning on the desk in some kind of faux professor pose.
“So – it says here that your name is Merlin, and you want to take a mooch through the library’s antiquity stash?”
“Inspiration for my dissertation.”
“On?”
The guy lifts a book from his small stack.
“Giorgio Vasari – ”
“Ah, a devotee of Italian Gothic and frescoes.”
“One who can’t afford a trip to the Santa Maria del Fiore, so a rummage in the basement through his volumes is as close as I’m going to get.”
“Well, then, I’m happy to oblige, Merlin,” Gwaine says, over-stressing his name to lodge it in place in his head. “Just need something to – ”
Gwaine rustles through the papers littering the desk until his fingers fall on an essay with a messy scrawl of a moniker on the top sheet. He reaches for a pen, cradles it loosely to reflect the loopiness of the scrawl, and goes over the movement in his head: the upstroke on the A, the talon-like hook of the g. He rehearses it in the air before he draws the words Professor S Armitage in one flowing line with just a little tick of a flourish to cross the t and the f.
“There you go.”
“That’s – ” Merlin says, taking the paper and staring at it, a crease between his eyebrows. He looks from Gwaine’s signature to Professor Armitage’s side by side and – even if Gwaine does say so himself – it's indistinguishable.
“Delinquent was the word my teachers most often used,” Gwaine says, and Merlin laughs, quick and shy.
“How did you – you didn’t even practice.”
“It’s mostly nerve, forgery. The trick is not to copy the individual letters, but to imagine the motion of the person’s hand as they wrote the whole word.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Merlin says, tucking the form into his pocket. “Chances are in a couple of months I’ll need a second income.”
“Art history student?”
“Worse – I’m doing fine art too. Gave me delusions of having a professional career, so when I graduate I’ll be looking for a garret to starve in and avoiding messages from my mother about how I should have done accountancy.”
“Mothers,” Gwaine says. “Why do they all think being chained to a calculator is the route to happiness?”
“Square root to happiness, surely?”
“Oh, very droll.”
Merlin grins – it is very, very lovely – shifts, glances down at him, eyes lingering on the glimpse of chest the opening of Gwaine’s shirt reveals with a light pricking of interest.
“So – why are you waiting for no-concept-of-time Armitage?” Merlin says, lifting his gaze back slowly. “I’m guessing you’re not a student.”
“I’m Gwaine,” Gwaine says, and he offers his hand. Merlin takes it with a surprisingly strong grasp, his fingers cold, a bit dry, and peppered with rough calluses. “I’m a travelling paint salesman.” Merlin’s eyebrows jump, amused. “I’ll have you know it’s a real thing,” Gwaine says, swinging a little on the chair, giving Merlin his best winning smile. “My friend and I have this whole line of organic eco paints and brush cleaners. He’s more science-y so he makes them, and I charm art departments into buying them. It was only because of the Industrial Revolution paint started being made with petrochemical by-products – for your man Vasari it was all plants and clay, so really what we’re doing is just taking paint back to where it came – ”
“That your entire sales pitch?”
“Pretty much. You want samples? I’ve a very fetching crimson today.”
“No thanks, but sounds cool,” Merlin says, meeting Gwaine’s eye with perfect seriousness. “There’s a cave in Denmark that was painted hundreds of years ago with ox blood and it still looks perfect. I always wanted to go and see.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Too little money, too little time,” Merlin says, and looks down at his feet. “Or maybe I’m just making excuses. I always put off things I’d really like to do in case they don’t measure up to how they are in my head.”
“Oh, well that blights us all if we’re not careful.”
“What’s the answer?”
“Leap of faith every now and then,” Gwaine says, “and trust that wherever your feet land is where they’re supposed to be. Even if they’ve landed in a puddle of disappointment you still jumped, and you can step out of it any time and jump again.”
The corner of Merlin’s mouth hitches into something that’s almost a smile. Gwaine goes to say something else to keep it there and see if he can make it blossom into another grin, but a bell rings.
“Shit,” Merlin says, pushing off the desk as the ceiling vibrates with the weight of dozens of pairs of feet stampeding down the stairs. “I’ve got to go – I’ve got a lecture on Surrealism right on the other side of campus, and last time I tried to make a sorry-I’m-late-melting-clocks joke it didn’t go over as well as I hoped.”
“No worries,” Gwaine says, and adopts a melodramatically put-upon tone. “I’ll just go back to dejectedly spinning on the chair.”
Merlin tugs his hat on and peers at Gwaine from under it, gesturing to the door with a breathy laugh at nothing.
“I – er – I hope Armitage shows up to hear your pitch – it’s a good one. And thanks for the forgery. It’s going to save my life.”
“Any time, Merlin.”
Merlin pauses on the threshold, fingering his book, lips switching from side to side.
“You know I could steal anything from the library’s collection, now,” he says, head cocked.
“Yeah, but – you seem trustworthy.”
“Do I?”
“Your face is honest. Amongst other things.”
Merlin sniffs a laugh, and on the back of another smile he’s gone. Gwaine waits until the door at the end of the corridor swings closed before digging his heel into the carpet and spinning round on the chair again. The blur changes, no longer a mishmash of books and office but all Merlin – a cobbled guess at how he might look really, really laughing, all fogged and soft-lit like something from a daytime soap.
Fuck, Gwaine thinks. That’ll be a sketch of crush on some art student, then, on the previously blank pages of my heart.
He lasts ten more minutes, and then – a bit too dizzy – he gets up and flirts with the woman on reception until she tells him where he might find a lecture on Surrealism.
Gwaine peers into the amphitheatre of a lecture hall through the window in the door. Most of the students tap away on laptops, barely listening behind their designer specs and studiedly off-centre haircuts, but Merlin’s at the back with a notebook, bouncing the end of a pencil off his lip. Gwaine squeezes in with a squeak of hinge, and drops down the stairs to his row.
“This seat taken?” he whispers, and Merlin looks up, startled.
“Oh – hi. No.”
He moves his bag onto the floor, smiling and sneaking little glances from underneath eyebrows high with surprise. Gwaine slides in next to him, sinking back on the seat and pretending to be listening as a woman at the front with a piercing voice and knee-high red leather boots jabbers about Dali’s dead brother. Gwaine hooks his elbow onto the arm rest, nestles it just against Merlin’s, pulse hitching when Merlin doesn’t move away. He glances at Merlin’s notes. Instead of writing there’s a drawing of a wall where the words this is bullshit rain down in faux-graffiti script while a Banksy-esque doodle of Merlin hangs himself from the t.
Gwaine rubs his chin to keep from laughing, and after a tedious bunch of waffle about self-fashioning, the lecturer flicks off the lights. The projector whirls, clicking through some obligatory and unnecessarily pixelated examples of Dali’s work (Alice in Wonderland, wrong order), and as the professor starts wittering about dualism Merlin leans in.
“I thought you said you were a paint salesman?” he whispers.
“I am. I was just thinking about what you said about never doing what you want and – well, I’d always really wanted to know more about Surrealism so I decided to take my own advice.”
Merlin’s eyes glint, unconvinced, but he leans in closer, turning and rearranging his Bambi legs so his knees brush Gwaine’s thigh.
“There are better people than her to fill you in,” Merlin whispers, shooting a conspiratorial glance at the stage. “There’s this guy in my other class who actually met Dali.” His breath flutters against Gwaine’s hair, and Gwaine watches his fingers toy with his pencil, stomach coiling at the thought of what they might do with him. “He’s, like, ninety, and he has this story about one time, in return for an interview, Dali made Brian Sewell get on his knees and wank until he cried. Only time Brian Sewell ever did anything I thought was interesting.”
Gwaine sniffs a laugh, and they watch a couple of slides whizz by, staying close. A loose, hazy fantasy – this one distinctly less daytime and more like grainy porn – flickers in Gwaine’s head: running his hand up Merlin’s leg, him squirming in response and trying to stay quiet as Gwaine teases him to the point of madness through his jeans. He eases in to Merlin’s ear, catching a whiff of his shampoo – woody and fresh like a forest in the rain.
“This is a flimsy façade,” he says, and lightly taps Merlin’s knee.
“You didn’t come for the Dali?” Merlin says, and Gwaine can’t tell if he’s a really good actor in the name of a flirt or he’s genuinely surprised.
“Truth is you were just a bit persistent in my memory.”
“For all of half an hour?”
“I could tell you were a sticker,” Gwaine says, and Merlin dips his head, bites his lip and makes it flood white. “You want to get out of here and do something?”
“I’d blow this off in a heartbeat, but I’m working after. I won’t be done until late.”
“How late?”
“Half eleven.”
“That’s not late,” Gwaine says. “How about I pick you up and take you to some seedy bar after you finish?”
Merlin swallows, gaze flitting over Gwaine’s face as he considers it, all breath and warmth and huge, curious eyes. He fidgets with his note book, scrawling on the bottom of the page and slowly tearing the strip off. He winces comically at the noise, and pins the scrap to the armrest with his finger. With a deliberate brush Gwaine takes it, and reads the words call me later? and a number. By way of reply Gwaine squeezes Merlin’s arm.
“If you get some inappropriately flirty text while you’re at work, don’t worry. That's just the pervert poltergeist in my phone,” he whispers.
Merlin laughs, low and hushed, and Gwaine backs away, grinning at him in the dark.
Gwaine:
We still on for tonight? It’s Gwaine the travelling paint salesman if that sways your answer any.
Merlin:
Sure :). You know The Wounded Unicorn?
Gwaine:
..?
Merlin:
On Church Street. It’s a magic-themed pub. Don’t laugh.
Gwaine:
Wouldn’t dream of it.
Gwaine:
Actually, will you permit me a small titter?
Merlin:
Come before we close and I’ll make you a cocktail and you can laugh your arse off at my uniform.
Gwaine:
Tell me you don’t have to wear a horn?
Merlin:
And a tail. There’s this old guy who comes every Wednesday and brings me sugar lumps sprinkled with glitter. He makes me neigh for him. Shit gtg. Boss found me hiding in the cellar.
Gwaine:
Giddy up.
There’s no reply, and Gwaine sets his phone down on the counter, looking at their conversation for a second while Jon Snow drones in the background about fuel poverty. Leon ambles over with a bowl of noodles and leans on the worktop, poking at them with a fork.
“How’d it go today?”
“Estimable Professor Armitage never showed,” Gwaine says, disentangling the end of a noodle, drawing it out, and dropping it into his mouth.
“Then why are you smiling? This morning you were sulking like a sitcom teenager when the gas bill arrived.”
“What can I say? I’m mercurial.”
“I’ll give you that on occasion I want to cover you in sawdust because there’s something toxic about you.”
Gwaine goes in for another noodle, and quick as a viper Leon smacks his knuckles with his fork, making pain ping along the bone. Gwaine tuts and shakes his hand, and Leon glares, his frayed cardigan and fuzzy hair – which spills out from underneath a fairly ludicrous stripy hat – only denting its efficacy slightly.
“Forecast says snow’s on the way tonight,” Leon says.
“We agreed, no heating until Christmas,” Gwaine says. “Although – I was going to say – if tonight you fancied staying at Percy’s on account of this place rivalling Greenland for the lowest recorded temperature that might fit with my plans.”
“I knew it. You’re not mercurial, you met someone.”
“Either way my thermometer’s on the way up.”
Leon starts twirling up a fresh knot of noodle, and while his fork’s occupied Gwaine grabs the end of one and sucks it up – at least until the other end reveals itself to be wrapped around a prong and catches. Gwaine grins, and Leon rolls his eyes.
“This isn’t Lady and the Tramp,” he says, but he lets Gwaine have the noodle, anyway. “Who is he?”
“His name’s Merlin. He’s very lovely.”
“Well as long as he buys you dinner so you keep your mitts out of mine.”
“He’s an art student, so – ”
Gwaine’s phone buzzes and lights up, the little window declaring:
Merlin:
That’s just mean. Here I am, working my hooves to the bone….
Gwaine smiles, fingers hesitating over the reply button.
“How many times do you have to text someone in one night to appear needy and over-eager?” he says.
“Depends how good-looking you are. Neediness can be off-set by a spectacularly good nose,” Leon says. “I’d say in your case fourteen’s your limit.”
“Really? You can calculate – ”
Leon raises an eyebrow in a clear: no, of course not.
“So what’s it worth?” Leon says. “Me making myself scarce tonight so you can be needy and over-eager with your art student?”
“My undying love and gratitude?” Gwaine says.
“Sorry, that’s not the answer I have on the card.”
“Next time Percy stays over I won’t shout helpful instructions through the wall.”
“Done. You want the rest of these?” he says, pushing the bowl towards Gwaine.
“Thank you kindly.”
“Well, younger man and everything,” Leon says, “you’ll need to keep your strength up.”
The Wounded Unicorn turns out to be a grove of a place. Students litter the tables, groaning under the weight of cheap cocktails named after mythological fairies, and hundreds of fake plastic plants fail to conceal the rough, concrete ceiling and the bare brick walls. Gwaine picks his way to the bar, feeling a bit like a cracked oil in a sea of fresh new watercolours, but he forgets it instantly when Merlin looks up from the pint he’s pouring and brightens with a grin.
“Hi.”
He’s not actually wearing a tail, but his t-shirt is at least two sizes too small and clings to a narrow chest and a dip of waist so enticing it takes Gwaine a second to realise on the front there’s a severed unicorn’s head. Merlin turns to clatter coins into the till, and emblazoned across his shoulders streak the words: at the Wounded Unicorn we’re always horny. Gwaine stifles a laugh and leans on the wood, four dozen texts neither of them really has the nose to offset softening his thoughts when Merlin ambles over.
“You’re doing well,” he says, waving over his t-shirt. “I expected hysterics.”
“I never joke about a decapitated unicorn, Merlin. It’s bad luck, I’m sure of it.”
Merlin fingers the tap in front of him which declares Hobgoblin Best Better above a picture of a pissed witch, eying him with a wry smile.
“What can I get you?” he says.
“Whatever you recommend.”
“I recommend going somewhere else, frankly.”
“Hey! Merlin, do you want the sack?”
The voice comes from the end of the bar, where a blond guy with a stiff shirt and a stiffer upper lip looks up from surveying a spreadsheet with an affronted glare. Merlin raises his hands in apology, but rather ruins it with a smirk.
“That’s Arthur,” Merlin says, with a jerk of his head. “Owns the place. And the entire chain, actually.”
“There’s a chain? You mean there are Wounded Unicorns all over the country and I never noticed?”
“They’re not all unicorns – there’s Squiffy Griffins and Merry Mermen and Get Your Drag-On cabaret bars. It’s student places, mostly.”
“Quite an empire, then.”
“Yeah. Hey, Arthur, this is Gwaine. Guy I told you about?”
Arthur quirks an eyebrow by way of greeting and goes back to scribbling on his notes.
“Friendly,” Gwaine says.
“There’s no room for hospitality in the hospitality industry these days,” Merlin says, low and private. “Just a lot of plastic plants and awful puns.”
Merlin turns away and grabs a couple of bottles from the display on the back of the bar. From a squat, round one he pours a generous measure of red-ish liquid, then adds a splash from frosted glass, topping it up with a spritz of lemonade from a gun under the bar and finishing it with a bright green straw.
“Fancy a Puck?” Merlin says, with a sly raise of eyebrow as he sets some pink fizzing thing on the bar in front of Gwaine. Obligingly Gwaine mouths the straw, and sickly lemonade and schnapps wash on his tongue, followed by a fierce aftertaste of raspberries and a slight burning sensation.
“That’s – ” He loses whatever adjective he was going to ascribe it to a cough. “This is payback for my pony jokes, isn’t it?”
Merlin grins and backs away down the bar to serve a clutch of girls wearing baby-blue rugby tops. Cross-eyed, the first one tells Merlin she wants three Feel My Titanias and a Tinkerbell End, and Gwaine watches him move between the optics, the ice bucket, and the taps with little spins, all angles and yet somehow graceful as he tosses jokes at them while they wait, utterly charming and yet apparently unconscious about the effect he has.
While he works they chat about the jukebox’s affection for Bruno Mars and the variously slaughtered state of the customers, and at half eleven Merlin herds the last of the patrons – one of the girls who got separated from the pack and is crying her mascara into a proper Alice Cooper face – out of the door and into a taxi Arthur paid for on the quiet to get rid of her. He buzzes about collecting the remaining glasses and loading them into the mouth of the washer, and that done he sidles over to Arthur, who’s frowning at the optics. A hand on his arm and a hushed conversation – Merlin tilting his head and Arthur gurning a grimace, then relenting – and Merlin grins.
“I’ll just get changed and then I’m all yours,” he says, and bounces off the door frame and into the office.
The tune on the jukebox dies as Arthur hits a switch behind the bar, and in the quiet Gwaine fiddles with a flyer for burger and beer night declaring: dinner needn’t be a pickle, why not get your hands on our baps?
“Merlin designed that.”
“Oh, really?” Gwaine says. “He’s multi-talented, then.”
“It’s rather more he’s so desperate for money he’ll do anything, even pen pickle puns.”
“Not sure where I planned to take him is up to scratch. ”
“He holds his drink like a fourteen-year-old girl, so he’s unlikely to care,” Arthur says, getting his foot caught on the mop bucket Merlin abandoned and swearing at the door. From beyond it Merlin tells him he should have looked where he was going and that he can hold his drink perfectly well, thank you very much, and if Arthur remembers he’s not the one who fell over and skidded face-first down a bowling lane at the Christmas party because they’d had too much mulled wine. Arthur huffs and shoves the mop onto the wall, doing a little dance with it until it stays put. “Good luck with him. You’re a braver man than I.”
Arthur meets his eye with a forced smile which prickles the back of Gwaine’s neck. He opens one of the tills and starts counting the notes with a look that suggests if Gwaine interrupts he’ll lose a bollock.
Gwaine rests on the bar, one foot lifted up behind him like a stork, and when Merlin reappears he’s pulling his coat on over a checked shirt – not as tight as his work t-shirt but enough to denote effort and thought.
“Ready?”
“More than,” Merlin says, digging his hat out of his pocket and tugging it onto his head. “ ‘Night, Arthur.”
They slip out of the door, and wind races up off the pavement to meet them.
“Wow, that’s – ” The cold knocks the words out of Merlin’s mouth, and he hugs his sides, grimacing, and glances up at the sky. “You think it’s going to snow?”
“My flatmate seemed to think so,” Gwaine says, smiling as Merlin turns round, walking backwards to look at him with no concern about whether a manhole or the kerb lies behind him. “Maybe I’ll buy you something on fire to warm you up.”
“Oh, we do these Breathe The Dragon cocktails,” Merlin says, every word packed with the same enthusiasm a six-year-old might have for a new toy, “black Sambuca on fire – every time someone orders one there’s at least one minor singeing.”
“Lucky for you I know the trick,” Gwaine says, and makes a grab for the front of Merlin’s coat to steer him out of the way of a woman walking her dog. Merlin spins, dodges her and her yapping terrier, muttering apologies and hopping out of the way of the lead. Gwaine laughs and turns him the right way, hooking a hand under his elbow to keep him there. “Eyes front, Merlin.”
Merlin bumps Gwaine’s chest with his arm and doesn’t move away again, grins at himself, and Gwaine wonders what Merlin would do if he just grabbed him and shoved him against a wall because hell, that’s what he wants to do – what he’s wanted to do all evening.
“As I was saying,” Gwaine says, “and pay attention because this is vital safety information – you have to put your hand over the glass until it sticks to your palm. Creates a vacuum, and that puts the fire out, because – well, I think it has something to do with a triangle but I can’t remember what. I mastered the technique but not the theory.”
“That how you do everything?”
“Pretty much.”
“Bodes well,” Merlin says, and meets his eye askance before scanning the star-splattered sky and the streets washed with people on their way home. “I always liked this, going out when everyone else is limping to bed.”
“That how you ended up working in a unicorn pub?” Gwaine says, and pulls Merlin closer, rubbing his arm a little to keep him warm.
“Just needed a job, only I wasn’t qualified for anything. I was in there arguing with Arthur about what kind of qualifications does a person need to wash up and a fight broke out between rival rugby teams. I helped him separate them – or tried to – mostly I got elbowed in the face, and after he stopped shouting at me for bleeding on the floor he took pity on me.”
“I don’t think he likes me much.”
“It’s not personal. He’s having a rough time.” Gwaine waits for him to go on, and Merlin buries his hands in his pockets and his chin in the collar of his coat. “His dad’s ill. When we met, Arthur was just assistant manager – now he’s running the whole chain.”
“He’s pretty young for that kind of responsibility.”
“Yeah, he is,” Merlin says, with a sad little smile.
Down the street a siren blares, and a fresh whip of wind makes Merlin shiver theatrically and say maybe something's on fire after all.
Inside the bar’s rough, red walls they make their way to where the surly girl who owns the place skulks, rearranging the shot glasses into a castle. Merlin’s eyes widen as he takes in the furniture – all eclectic styles like it’s been stolen from a dozen different skips – and the irregular-haired regulars sitting in small clusters, talking animatedly above the psychedelic soundtrack, swapping anecdotes from rock’n’roll and performance poetry. A couple of them call out hellos and beckon him over, but Gwaine waves them off and leads Merlin to the bar.
“It’s like a speakeasy,” Merlin says, leaning in.
“That’s why I like it. What’ll you have?” Gwaine says, pointing to the chalkboard where the words Today’s Specials have been struck through and replaced with the words: Ask for whatever the fuck you want. You’re a grown-up.
“Surprise me. Nothing with cherries.”
A couple covered in tattoos and piercings who were canoodling in one of the alcoves gets up, and Merlin taps Gwaine’s arm and gestures to it before going over to claim it by chucking his coat over the back of the sofa. He piles the glasses strewing the wrought iron garden table into a neat stack, and Gwaine eyes his arse and the way it sits snug against his back pockets before Merlin turns and brings the glasses to the bar.
“Looking for another job?”
“Habit,” he says, with a little mutter of a laugh, and goes back over to the tiny squashy settee.
He pulls off his hat, and curls one leg half under himself, fingers tapping along to The Sonics on his knee. Gwaine orders, and after a brief conversation of eyebrow raises with the girl behind the bar while she mixes – not like you to bring someone here – mind your own business, you – goes over clutching two different cocktails.
“You looked like a man in need of a Smokey Margarita.”
Gwaine places a tall glass full of lime and tequila on the table, and throws himself down next to him. Merlin pushes at the mist on the glass from the ice, prodding it until his finger squeaks, his lip caught between his teeth. Up close the sparse light from the candle shoved into a gin bottle on the table makes deep relief of Merlin’s cheekbones, transforming him from cute to downright exquisite. Gwaine pictures himself tasting the shadows, and then realises he’s probably staring with a tinge of what Leon calls his Afghan puppy with a cartoon steak expression. He gestures to Merlin’s glass.
“No measures here so don’t drink it too quick or you’ll be on your arse.”
“I’m already on my arse. I’m sitting down,” Merlin says, with a sly grin, and he lifts his drink and slurps, wincing a bit at the noise he makes and then making a wide-eyed face.
“Better than the Fancy a Puck?”
“You want to try?”
He offers Gwaine the glass and they swap and sip and swap back, and Merlin laughs at nothing, like he did in Armitage’s office. Gwaine suppresses the word adorable and rubs at his jaw, then runs a hand through his hair, leaning back on the sofa so he doesn’t drag Merlin into his lap and scare him off with an overly-familiar grope.
“So,” he says, “we need something to talk about. I think you should tell me about your work.”
“You saw,” Merlin says, with a little confused huff. “I make cocktails, I wash glasses, I pour drunk girls into taxis – ”
“I meant your real work – your art.”
“Nothing much to say there.”
“Must be nice to be so casually brilliant.”
“Who says I’m – ”
“Me.”
“You haven’t seen – ”
“Yes I have. On my quest for Armitage as a last ditch I stopped by the studio.” Merlin tilts his head and mugs a non-verbal question, befuddled. “I couldn’t resist a nose around and there were three pieces in there with real flair – an oil painting, some metalwork, and in the corner someone had worked magic with stone,” Gwaine says. “If I were a betting man, my money would be on you being the promising sculptor.”
“How on earth did you work that out?”
“Power of deduction. It’s a week to Christmas and everyone else is counting down the days like they’re already in a turkey coma, but you were fresh from the library with a bunch of really dull books and desperate to find a way to break in for a peek at some even duller ones. So desperate, in fact, you let a stranger – who by anybody’s definition is dodgy – talk you into criminal activity and then let him take you out. If that doesn’t say crazy but brilliant artist I don’t know what does.” Merlin laughs, a faint waft of pink high on his cheeks. “So that just left narrowing down which stuff was yours. You don’t have any burns so you don’t weld – I’m intimately familiar with the smell of turps and you, thank god, don’t have it – and then there’s this.”
Gwaine reaches for Merlin’s hand and slips their fingers into a loose twine. His pulse quickens at the first real touch of skin on skin, and he runs his thumb up to Merlin’s nail, picturing the sculpture – this intricate, twisting, spiral of a thing – jagged at the bottom before smoothing out into elegant lines. His breath caught just looking at it, and the sketch of his crush on Merlin had become inked, right then and there. Slowly he traces Merlin’s knuckles, the patches of hardened skin, the dents in his fingers made by tools, breath catching just the same at the thought of him working on it enough – wanting it to be perfect enough – to leave permanent markers on his bones.
“Dead giveaway,” he says, and the quiet hoarseness of his voice perhaps is one too, indicative that he’s already in a bit deeper than he usually is on a first date. Or a fifth. Not that he usually gets that far.
“I’m not as skilled as I’d like to be,” Merlin says, just as quietly, curling his fingers tighter so the pads rest on the back of Gwaine’s hand, his thumb just scuffing Gwaine’s.
The Sonics barrel to a halt on the stereo, and some winding, slower tune slinks across the air, words about a crossroads and betrayal over a baseline that pulses like the rhythm of a long, slow shag. Gwaine can’t tell – at all – if it’s that heightening the moment, or if it’s just the way Merlin’s touching, light but certain, delicate but deft. Either way his stomach whirls like someone’s swilling a paintbrush in it.
“You want the good news?” Gwaine says. “You’ll never be as skilled as you’d like to be.”
“How’s that good news?”
“Because if you’re always striving to be better – if there’s always a gap between what you think you’re truly capable of and what’s happening with your hands, you’ll never settle, and because you never settle, you’ll never be mediocre. You’ll probably be miserable – ” Merlin laughs, and Gwaine lets go of his fingers to see if breaking the physical connection severs the feeling, and lifts his glass. “ – but that’s what drinking’s for.”
“Voice of experience?”
“Oh, no. I’m just your run of the mill alcoholic paint salesman.”
“Doubt that.”
Merlin’s knee nudges his, casual but sending a spiral as acutely twisting as his sculpture through Gwaine’s body. Gwaine rests his elbow on the back of the sofa, and Merlin sinks into the cushion, inching closer, his gaze intent enough to make Gwaine imagine an invisible join-the-dots bubble drawing magically around them in the air. Merlin smiles, and for the first time in a really fucking long time Gwaine wishes he had something to draw with to try and make it his.
“You paint,” Merlin says.
“I dabbled, once upon a time.”
“Nah, you were more serious about it than that.”
“Working in a magic theme pub’s gifted you the ability to mind read, has it?” Gwaine says, and Merlin squints at him with mock scrutiny which after a moment doesn’t feel very mock at all. “What gave me away, then? If I smell of turps that fucking lingers.”
“Everything,” Merlin says quietly. “You knew exactly who Vasari was.”
“Maybe I learnt that in a pub quiz.”
“Don’t buy it. He’s not exactly the Lady Gaga of the Renaissance.”
“Who’d you reckon is?”
“Michelangelo,” Merlin says. “He thinks David is so edgy, like no-one ever sculpted a guy in laurels with his cock out before.”
“Naturally Machiavelli’s Madonna,” Gwaine says, “pretending he’s really into it because he doesn’t want to seem past it, but secretly seething – ”
“And Petrarch is Cher,” Merlin says. “Somewhere rocking in the corner – gutted that he did it all first and better and no-one cares, but unable to express it facially because of all the Botox.”
Gwaine laughs, and Merlin presses his lips together, pleased with himself.
“Why did you stop painting?” Merlin says, poking at the brown, caramelised hole of an old cigarette burn on the velour.
“Lack of talent.”
“And the real reason? I can read your mind, remember.”
Merlin peeks up through his fringe, and a dozen flippant answers and easy lies flash through Gwaine’s head. Like a meteor shower, though, they flare and dwindle, and the urge for Merlin to see his sky for how dark it really is thunks in his stomach with the same kind of unavoidable insistence as the impulse to do reckless, foolish things when he’s drunk.
“My dad’s been weed food since I was a kid, and then last year my mother died,” he says.
“Oh,” Merlin says, and his fingers stop their worrying at the burn. “I’m sorry.”
“You needn’t be – we hated each other to hell and back. Was mostly a relief when she did the decent thing and left me alone.”
“Then why did you stop painting?”
“No-one with any drive or spark has the kind of family you find in washing powder adverts. Art – it seems to me it all comes from the same place, this dissatisfaction with the amount of love in your life, anger about it, sadness about it, and the desire to do something so spectacular it proves to the people who should’ve loved you and didn’t that they got you really fucking wrong,” Gwaine says. Merlin nods, and Gwaine knows that he gets it, gutturally. “And when that goes away – ”
“Past doesn’t go away. It still happened.”
“Ah well, you didn’t specify my answer had to make sense,” Gwaine says, and afraid he’s made everything far too serious Gwaine bumps Merlin’s wrist. “When you’re famous, what bullshit will it say on your Wikipedia page about your past and its influence?”
“Um – abandoned by his father and raised in a village in the middle of nowhere by a mother with a penchant for social justice, Merlin’s struggle to fit in shows up with tedious regularity in his work, despite his best efforts. You?”
“Life on a caravan park with a heavy-drinking mother and a series of good for nothing step-fathers proved insubstantial inspiration for a career of any note, although did gift Gwaine an unwavering appreciation for a home which doesn’t rock and alert everyone in a hundred metres to his nocturnal activities.” Merlin chuckles, crinkle-eyed, and Gwaine pokes his thigh. “You’re not supposed be amused by my tragic upbringing.”
“Sorry. Guess the caravan explains your travelling paint salesman ways at least.”
“Not really – it was a static,” Gwaine says, and for some reason Merlin thinks that’s so funny he nearly chokes on an ice cube.
When he’s recovered, Merlin segues into asking how a person goes from living on a caravan park to selling eco-mentalist paint, and Gwaine tells him the tale of him, Leon, and the disused ballroom they both found themselves in: Leon the public schoolboy whose investment-banker father had ended up on the wrong side of embezzlement charges and left him holed up in there on some false legalese about dwelling rights; Gwaine breaking in one night to get out of the rain and Leon letting him stay because there was nothing to steal and he wanted the company. He tells anecdotes about Leon sitting around while he painted, getting high on cheap white spirit and whatever else they could lay their hands on until they’d drunk and smoked everything they could afford and came to the sober realisation they needed to find something to do with their lives. Merlin chuckles, sitting closer and closer until Gwaine can smell the sharpness of citrus on his breath and see all the different colours in his eyes: the wash of dark denim blue; the slight flecks of sky; the tiny, tiny spot of hazel just to the side of his pupil, like a lost moon. When he finishes talking he realises both their drinks are gone and he’s told Merlin things about himself it usually takes people years of knowing him to piece together for themselves. There’s comfort in Merlin still looking at him with soft, curious eyes like he’s just pencilling in the details, rather than joining them all up into a picture of how fragmented a soul he’s sharing his space with; edge, too, the reckless reel of spilling it all and allowing someone close enough to see the emptiness which remains when all the funny stories are gone.
“You want another?” Gwaine says, quietly, hooking his finger into the lip of Merlin’s glass. “Or – we could go back to mine, if – ” Merlin swallows. “I could pretend I have etchings to look at if that’ll spare your blushes.”
“What are etchings?”
“I don’t know, but I’m fairly sure in the whole history of everything, no-one has ever accepted an invite back somewhere and actually wanted to see them.”
“What if I’m the exception?” Merlin says, running his finger around the top of his glass until it butts up against Gwaine’s. He draws over it slowly, all the way to the back of his hand, and it’s a tiny thing to make Gwaine’s heart turn feral in his chest, but it does. “What if I come back to yours and then I’m crushed to find you don’t really have any?”
Gwaine lets his hand slide away to trace a lazy pattern on the back of Merlin’s neck, and Merlin looks at him, the air thickening around his softly coy gaze. Gwaine ignores the well-worn line that goes I’m sure we’d find something to take your mind off it, but leans in anyway because Christ, he wants to see if that mouth feels as soft as it looks. Merlin’s lips part and Gwaine hesitates – just to prove to himself that he can – so close Merlin’s tiny inhale of expectation pulls cold across his skin. Like he means to catch it, Gwaine touches his lips to Merlin’s. Merlin presses into the kiss a bit too fast, his nose squashing against Gwaine’s cheek, but then he smiles and mutters some sort of apology against his mouth and moves back in at a better angle. His tongue just flickers out to taste Gwaine’s lip before retreating, and so the rest of him doesn’t get the same idea Gwaine slips his fingers into the soft tickle of Merlin’s hair. Merlin shifts closer with a tiny huff of pleasure, and their tongues find each other, but just as things are getting interesting someone wolf-whistles and Merlin pulls away, dropping his head to Gwaine’s shoulder and sniggering.
“Shall we get out of here?” Gwaine whispers, stroking his nape to draw him out.
Merlin nods, and reaches for his coat.
Part 2
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}