Canal Boat Summer (Merthur Fanfic)

In The Morning

Merlin felt like there was a hairy rocker beating a drum set manically inside his head. He tried to peel his eyes open but the sunlight pouring through the window made them ache. He shielded them from the brightness and sat up, stretching his stiffened joints. Then he looked around. Leon's living room was trashed. There were empty bottles scattered across the floor, and bottles which had once been half full that had leaked out onto the floorboards or the rug. The sofa was covered in a thick blanket of Doritos. Merlin pulled himself to his feet, dizzy and nauseated. No one else was awake.

He was only trying to be helpful by tidying up, but his mind was like scrambled eggs and he only seemed to make things worse. Using magic wasn't really the best idea, especially when he was hungover. He levitated three empty bottles carefully and began to move them towards the door, when a large yawn from one of his sleeping friends somewhere in the room caught him off guard. The sudden noise in the quiet made him jump and all three bottles dropped and smashed on the floor. Everyone, bar Gwaine, woke up with a start.

"Whattafuwastha?" Percy grumbled, sitting up and rubbing his head continuously.

"Sorry, I, errrr, tripped." Merlin tried to manoeuvre himself into looking as if he had just almost fallen over. Percy was too sleepy to care and laid back down beside Mithian to fall asleep again. Gwaine was still snoring, balanced precariously on the back of the sofa. Gwen and Leon got up and helped, tidying around the bodies of their sleeping friends. There were stains on the rug and cushions, but most of the debris that blanketed the floor could be dealt with by Leon's ancient Henry Hoover.

Two and a half hours later, Merlin found himself at a loose end having finished tidying and taking no interest in the breakfast Percy was cooking. He left his friends and wandered into town. It was a gloriously warm morning, the kind you only see in soppy movies. The sunlight filtered through the trees, dappling the pavement with patches of gold. Had he not still had a banging headache, he would have thought the appropriate thing to do was to skip down the road, whistling to himself.

He stopped at a newsagents to get himself some painkillers and water. He struggled to swallow the pills, but once he'd done with them, he downed the water quickly. The continued into Avalon, which was pretty much dead this early on a Saturday morning. He found himself once more outside the Chinese takeaway. And after the events of the night before he wasn't sure if he was pleased or anxious to be there.

He had barely been standing there for three seconds when the old man came waddling out through the door. "Ah, Merlin," he said as if he had been expecting this. Which Merlin didn't exactly doubt. "Would you like to come in?" Merlin nodded, and found himself within the shop immediately, without having moved a step. He jumped in surprise at the change, but the old man just have a hearty laugh in response.

"Wha... what was that?" He found himself quite out of breath when he spoke.

"Magic, young warlock." He replied matter-of-factly.

"Ma... War... What?"

"What you can do, that's magic, just like what I just did. And this..." He clicked his fingers and a flame sprung up between them, spitting fluorescent orange sparks into the air.

It took Merlin a couple of minutes to regain his speech. "You mean actual magic? Like witches around cauldrons and wizened old wizards. That kind of magic."

"Not so much anymore, my lad. Nowadays it's much more subtle. But I'm sure you'll be able to brew a good potion in time and, if you're lucky, maybe even grow a beard."

"Are there a lot of you then? Magical people?"

"More than you might expect. Your friend Morgana, for one."

"Morgana's a witch?!"

"Yes, and she'd be a rather promising one if she practised more often. Can't blame her though, some nasty business with her father a few years back- not that all business isn't nasty with that man."

"So you, what, teach people?"

"That, boy, is exactly what I do."

His first lesson with the old man, Gaius was his name, took up most of the rest of the day. Merlin found it hard to summon his magic on command and kept getting frustrated. Although it wasn't in his nature to show it, Gaius could see it in his face and made sure to slips im words of encouragement whenever he did anything nearly right. He told him his magic was "bound to be temperamental at first" but he seemed genuinely ecstatic when Merlin managed to conjure up his very own fluorescent orange flame on only his first day. Unfortunately, Merlin still couldn't master not burning himself, so four times he had to stamp it out after accidentally dropping it on the carpet. Gaius just laughed, but he noticed him inching a bit closer the fire extinguisher each time it happened. At five The Great Dragon opened for the evening, so Merlin said goodbye, thanked his new mentor and set off for home, whistling as he went with all thoughts of Arthur and the night before temporarily forgotten.