tierfallen

Title: Wassailing
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: PG
Word Count: 460
Warnings: fade-to-black sketchiness; excessive wassail consumption
Prompt: wassail
Summary: In which too much wassail is drunk, and Arthur is a terrible poet.
Author's Note: Written for roh_wyn over at ladybracknell's Festive Comment Smut Party. :D


WASSAILING
Arthur pushed a brimming goblet into Merlin’s hand—slightly violently, actually, to the effect that a quick stumble backwards was the only thing that saved Merlin’s shirtfront from a considerable splash.

“Drink more!” Arthur ordered. “I’m not having you and Gaius giving me the eyebrow tomorrow.”

“I don’t give you the eyebrow,” Merlin reminded him sweetly. “I just tell you you’re an idiot and make sure to drop your armor a lot when I’m putting it away.”

“It’s all essentially the same thing,” Arthur responded, apparently not having heard a word Merlin had said. “And the thing is, you should join me in some valiant wassailing.”

“You should write poetry,” Merlin said.

“There’s something wrong with Merlin’s head,” Arthur improvised; “and if he doesn’t drink some damned wassail right this minute, I’m going to kill him dead.”

“On second thought,” Merlin decided, “you should never write poetry again.”

Arthur flung an arm around Merlin’s shoulders, and more wassail leapt free of the goblet’s rim and splattered on the floor of the hall. Merlin was too distracted—by the warm weight of Arthur’s arm, by the warm press of Arthur’s hip, by the warm wall of Arthur’s chest just inches away—to pity whoever was going to be cleaning this up.

“Merlin,” Arthur said, very slowly and remarkably distinctly for someone so soused, “if you don’t get drunk with me, a few things will happen. First of all, I’ll probably vomit on you again. Second, I’ll be deliberately making more work for you for days. Third, I’ll be very, very sad.”

To punctuate this last point, he turned on Merlin a pair of puppy eyes vast with sincerity and woe.

Merlin scowled at him, still all too conscious of Arthur’s fingers rubbing idly at his shoulder-blade, and sipped at the wassail.

The next thing he properly remembered, he was waking up in what looked an awful lot like Arthur’s bed.

In fact, it was Arthur’s bed.

In fact, Merlin was going to go out, bury himself in a snowdrift, and lie there until he died of exposure to escape the shame.

Cheeks and ears burning, heart pounding like mad, Merlin flailed around for a full thirty seconds, trying to disentangle himself from the sheets.

“Hang on,” a completely naked Arthur mumbled into the pillow not far away. “I’ve got this one—Merlin, I’m trying to sleep over here; Besides, Gwen and Morgana have had bets on us for years; And if you don’t come back, I’ll drag you by your ears.”

Bested by the bedsheets and generally defeated, Merlin dropped his blazing face into his hands.

“I hate wassail,” he said.

Arthur threw an arm around him and hauled him in, nuzzling sleepily at his neck.

“Well,” he responded, “I love you.”