lady_ragnell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_ragnell) wrote2011-06-02 10:57 pm
lady_ragnell) wrote2011-06-02 10:57 pm
Entry tags:
These Inconvenient Fireworks (1/2)
Title: These Inconvenient Fireworks
Wordcount: ~13,000
Summary: Gwaine offers to let Freya stay in his flat for the week before Merlin and Arthur's wedding. He doesn't expect to fall in love, but it's definitely a bonus.
Warnings: Some kissing while intoxicated. Other than that, just some strong language.
A/N: Written for this prompt on the meme (raise hands if you already guessed it was me. I am frightfully obvious). And I totally do not know who the OP is. At all. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
non_island, I am looking at youuuuuu.) But anyway, it is sort of an accidental Gwaine Quest fic and the title is from Vienna Teng's "Stray Italian Greyhound." The idea of books about winged cats is stolen from Ursula K. LeGuin.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin. Or Catwings.
Monday
When Gwaine comes into his usual pub out of the rain, the first thing he notices is that Halig has found some new girl to bother, and that this one doesn’t seem inclined to slap him like the incomparable Elena did a few weeks back. This one is small and dark-haired and leaning so far off her barstool it looks like she might fall. And for all Gwaine’s been called trouble by at least a dozen women in three languages, he can’t resist a damsel in distress, so he strolls up behind her and puts an arm around her waist just after she says something about waiting for someone, sliding his thumb to rest in her belt loop so he can lean down and whisper in her ear under the guise of kissing her neck. “Just play along, he’s bad news.” She stiffens, although Halig is thick enough not to notice. Gwaine raises his voice. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry I kept you waiting. Are you making friends?”
“I was just going to find us a table.” She’s got an accent he can’t quite place, and when she turns around, forcing him to loose his grip a bit, she looks a bit more uncomfortable than his pride would like, as well as tousled and tired. Gwaine puts on his most charming smile, and her lips twitch in what looks like automatic response. She’s pretty as is, but he suspects she would be gorgeous if he could get her to smile properly.
“We can do it together, then.” He lets her go when she makes to stand up from her stool, and grins unrepentantly in the face of Halig’s glare. He’s made it a goal to thwart the man in every pull he tries to make. “Good to see you as always, Halig,” he says, and takes the woman’s hand to drag her away to a place where the shape of the wall will let him see the door while he waits for Merlin and Arthur and their guest and she can wait for whoever she’s waiting for. Gwaine drops her hand when they come to a stop, and tries not to be insulted when she steps back. “Are you really waiting for someone, or were you just trying to get rid of him?”
“I really am. Thank you for the help.”
Gwaine is about to ask if he can buy her a drink to make up for the scare, since Merlin is always late and even Arthur can’t change that, but as if that’s a cue, the pub door bursts open with the kind of enthusiasm that only Merlin can manage. Surprisingly, when they get through the door, the woman beside him waves before Gwaine can, which leads to Merlin practically bowling half the crowd over while he rushes to wrap the woman up in a hug while Arthur follows at a more sedate pace.
“Look at you,” Merlin whispers, which marks her pretty clearly as Freya, who’s just arrived in town today and will be staying until the wedding on Saturday, Merlin’s ex-girlfriend and a children’s author. She certainly isn’t what he was expecting, considering she writes books and draws pictures about flying cats. Although he probably shouldn’t have expected a plain, dotty lady with pictures of cats in her wallet, since Merlin used to date her. The shyness is a surprise, though.
“I’ve missed you,” she replies, and pulls a bit away from him when she notices that Arthur and Gwaine are watching them. “I’m so glad to see you,” she adds, and Gwaine steps on Arthur’s foot while Merlin hugs her again so he doesn’t get stupidly jealous and ruin the whole evening.
“I’m glad you decided to come early for the wedding.”
Arthur interrupts with a glare at Gwaine, which is better than continuing to glare at Freya, who looks a bit fragile. “He hasn’t shut up about it for days now,” he says, which is true, and shakes Freya’s hand when she pulls out of Merlin’s embrace. “Very hard to get him to talk about this weekend when he’s busy worrying about whether you and Morgana will get along. I’m pleased to meet you, by the way. I didn’t know you knew Gwaine.”
She looks at Gwaine and starts stammering something out, but he cuts in with an explanation, doing his best at being reassuring. He suspects he misses that mark and lands somewhere in the realm of “rakish,” since Merlin’s soppy smile melts a bit towards disapproval. “She just attracted a bit of attention from Halig, is all. I was being chivalrous.” He winks, as she was looking horrified and he can’t have that. “I’m Gwaine, sweetheart. Would have been even quicker to rescue you if I knew you were the famous Freya.”
Her smile is pained at best, probably still embarrassed at their first meeting. He wonders if he ought to tell her that he met Merlin and Arthur in the barfight that their third date had degenerated into and that her first impression was much better, then decides against it because Merlin is already turning pink and leaning back into Arthur. “Don’t embarrass her, Gwaine, I don’t talk about her that much.”
Arthur, after a second, seems to decide that he needn’t be jealous of Freya and Merlin, so he smiles in her direction. “Let’s get a table before they’re all gone, and you absolutely do talk about her that much. As if there’s a story you tell from uni that doesn’t have her in it somewhere.” He takes Merlin’s arm and starts leading him away. Gwaine thinks about offering Freya his arm, but she follows without even looking at him as Arthur keeps talking. “Did you two really run off to the Isle of Man for a summer and live in a commune?”
Freya’s smile lights up her whole face, and she even turns to look over her shoulder and include Gwaine in it just as they reach a table and start silently sorting out seats. “We really did. I worked the land, since my family farms, and Merlin mostly helped in the kitchen.” Gwaine can’t help laughing, and Arthur joins him, since Merlin’s recounting of that particular story always goes a bit differently. Freya winces apologetically as she sits down across from Merlin, and Gwaine sits down next to her. “He patched us all up when we got ill or hurt as well,” she adds when Merlin’s blush doesn’t subside in the least.
“Still does,” says Gwaine, grinning at her and then at Merlin, who is attempting to hide in Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur glares at him. “He met Arthur when he came into his clinic after an ex-girlfriend tried to drown him.”
Once again Freya smiles, although Merlin and Arthur are both looking a bit mortified now. “He called me to complain about the prat who came in and ordered him about, and then again two days later to say he asked him out.”
Merlin winces in a way that probably means Arthur kicked him under the table. Gwaine grins at them and lets Merlin change the subject with a bright smile. “What do you want to do while you’re in town, Freya?”
She shrugs and folds her hands in her lap. “Well, most of the time I’m available to help out with preparations for Saturday, if you need and extra pair of hands. I know Hunith is coming to town to help, but I thought I would make myself available as well. Other than that, I’ve got a meeting with my agent and he wants me to go to a party on Thursday night.”
“That’s right, you’re a writer. Children’s books, correct?” says Arthur, although he knows it already.
Freya nods, blush rising up her cheeks. “I never thought they’d get so popular. Just a few fancies that I wrote down and drew sketches for, and then Merlin forced me to finish them and send them out when he helped me move. The third book in the series is coming out next month, so the wedding is well-timed for me to get a few meetings in.”
From there, the talk is surprisingly easy. Gwaine gets their drinks and chips up at the bar, since Mary has a bit of a soft spot for him (especially since Merlin started wearing his engagement ring about and she stopped flirting with him) and he sometimes gets a bit of a discount, and they talk about the wedding and themselves until nearly midnight. Merlin is half-asleep on Arthur’s shoulder, since despite Gwaine’s best efforts he can’t hold his liquor, and Freya lets out an exaggerated yawn. “I suppose we ought to turn in for the night.”
Merlin looks blearily around. “Where’s your luggage?” he asks, like he’s expecting it to magically appear.
“At my hotel.”
Soft heart that he is, Merlin looks absolutely horrified at the thought of Freya staying in a hotel. “But you were meant to be staying with us!” Arthur squeezes his arm. “We’ve been planning on it.”
She reaches across the table and pats his hand. “And now your mother can stay there instead. I’ll be just fine in my hotel. I’ve stayed in them before.”
“But you can’t this time.”
Gwaine knows Merlin when he gets stubborn, but it makes more sense for Hunith to stay with the grooms, so he breaks into the conversation with another solution. He certainly wouldn’t be averse to spending a bit more time with the lovely Freya. “Can’t she stay with someone else?” All three of them immediately look at him with varying levels of suspicion. “I think Morgana has--”
“Not Morgana,” Merlin and Arthur say in unison. The way Freya’s eyes go wide suggests that Merlin tells her as much about them as he tells them about her.
“Well, then,” says Gwaine, and grins as he turns to Freya, who looks more than a bit wary. “I’ve got a spare room, since my flatmate moved out a few weeks back and I haven’t found a new one yet.” All of which even has the added bonus of being true. Elyan got a big engineering position in Birmingham and went right off. “You could stay with me. It’s mostly clean.” Although he’ll have to hope the dark will hide what mess there is tonight and clean before she gets up in the morning.
Merlin gives him a few seconds of his surprisingly convincing if-you-fuck-with-her-I-will-end-you expression before relaxing into a tentative smile even as Freya says she can’t impose. “I’ve already paid for tonight, at least,” she adds when all three of them just look at her expectantly. Gwaine could tell her if she asked that she won’t win this one, but he lets it figure it out for herself. Sure enough, it’s only a few seconds before she lets out a breath. “Perhaps tomorrow we’ll discuss it some more.”
Gwaine chooses to interpret that as wholesale surrender and takes it as his cue to stand from the table and start the round of goodbyes. Arthur goes off to pay the bill, leaving Freya looking uncomfortable. “He does that,” Gwaine assures her. “Best get used to it.”
“Bring your luggage to lunch with you tomorrow,” Merlin says as he hugs Freya again. “My mother will be there half past eleven, we’ll probably be serving food around noon. She’ll be glad to see you again.”
“I’ll be glad to see her as well.” Arthur reappears, looking as smug as always, and Freya turns to him. “And it was lovely to meet you, Arthur. Thank you for picking up the tab.”
That, Gwaine thinks, will ensure that Arthur is preening for days, but at least it means he won’t be giving Freya mistrustful looks all week. Much better for all of them. The goodbyes are easy, and Merlin and Arthur leave first on the short walk back to their flat, out into the London rain. That leaves Freya and Gwaine standing by the door. She breaks the silence first, peering outside. “It was good to meet you, Gwaine. I’m sure I’ll see you some more.”
“You might be staying with me,” he points out. Hopefully Merlin won’t decide overnight that he disapproves and call Gwen and Lancelot to see if Freya can stay in their spare room. “We’ll certainly see each other again.” It’s dark and from what Merlin’s said, she hasn’t lived in the city for over two years now, so Gwaine takes the opportunity to be chivalrous again. “Can I walk you to your hotel?”
Freya shakes her head. “I’ll just get a cab. Thanks for the offer, though.” She shakes his hand and steps out the door without further ado, pulling her coat tight around herself as she holds out a hand for a cab.
Gwaine watches her until the cab drives out of sight, then walks out the door and heads to his flat. At least he’s got more time to clean it, now.
*
Tuesday
Gwaine’s phone rings at half past nine, blaring “Pinball Wizard” while he’s in the midst of running the vacuum through Elyan’s old room. Since that’s been Merlin’s ringtone for as long as they’ve known each other, he picks it up. “You’re awake,” Merlin says, sounding wrongfooted, after Gwaine’s cheerful hello.
“I am,” Gwaine agrees.
“You’re never awake before ten when you aren’t working.”
“I’m cleaning my flat.”
“Dear God,” says Merlin, then raises his voice when Arthur says something in the background. “Gwaine says he’s cleaning!” He lowers his voice again. “Are you all right? Have you been taken over by Pod People? Did a microbrewing project explode?”
Gwaine laughs. “If Freya is going to be staying with me for a few days, I thought I’d get the dust up off the floor, that’s all.”
There’s a pause. “Ah. Freya. That’s why I called, actually.”
“Of course it is. I’m not stupid, remember?” Gwaine sighs. “Here, I’ll save you the trouble. I’m to be a good lad and not torture the poor girl, yeah? She’s a fragile flower and I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
Merlin snorts. “Gentleman? You?” Gwaine can hear Arthur laughing in the background. “Look, just don’t be a fuckwit. I’m not going to stop her staying with you or anything stupid like that, but she’s not had an easy time of it, and I’d rather not have her fleeing back to Hampshire before the wedding, that’s all.”
Gwaine doesn’t allow himself more than a second to wonder what Merlin means by that, since he talks about Freya all the time and never once mentioned her having troubles. It’s none of his business. “I’ll be good,” he promises instead.
“Great.” He can almost hear Merlin’s grin. “Now, Mum is getting here in a few hours, and she wants you to come to lunch. You can get Freya and her luggage at the same time if we manage to convince her she isn’t imposing.”
“I’m always glad to see Hunith. I’ll get there a bit before noon.”
“I’ll see you then.” Merlin laughs. “Good luck with your cleaning.” He hangs up before Gwaine can respond to that, and Gwaine rolls his eyes before turning the vacuum back on and continuing making the flat fit to live in.
By the time he heads over to Merlin and Arthur’s for lunch, just a few buildings away, the flat is as clean as it will get without a lot more work, and Gwaine gives himself a pat on the back for it before he leaves. When he gets there, Merlin is in the kitchen, Arthur is on the couch (obviously kicked out, since he burns toast), and Hunith greets him at the door with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He gives her one in return. “Hunith! Your son has been keeping us from each other. This can’t be allowed.”
Hunith laughs, and he spends the next twenty minutes flirting with her while Merlin rolls his eyes and Arthur eventually gets up to put the salad together and start setting the table.
Freya knocks at noon on the dot, and Gwaine goes to the teapot so he can at least pretend to be useful. Hunith opens the door, revealing Freya looking a good deal more put-together than she did when he saw her last (which probably had something to do with the train journey from Hampshire, he realizes) and carrying a suitcase and a garment bag. She fumbles and nearly drops them when Hunith doesn’t even let her get the door closed before pulling her into a long hug, whispering something Gwaine can’t make out and kissing her forehead.
When they pull apart, Freya looks near tears, but Hunith gets her talking about her books and how popular they are at the creche she runs. “Ealdor isn’t that far from home,” says Freya after she’s put down her bags and taken off her jacket. “I’ll come do a reading when the third one comes out, if you like. Maybe draw some sketches for the kids. It’s the least I could do after you were so kind to me.”
“I’ll be glad to have you. You can stay a night or two.”
“Are you going to pour the tea, or are you just looking decorative?” Arthur asks, prodding Gwaine with his elbow. Gwaine prods him right back and starts setting out teacups while Merlin laughs at them and Hunith sits Freya down at the table and fusses over her, certainly more than she fussed over Gwaine. He tries not to be put out over that.
The next five minutes are full of chaos, even after Merlin banishes Arthur to sit with the ladies when he dares try to stir a pot. Gwaine gets everyone’s tea poured and sorted, kisses Freya’s hand in greeting, and gets a not-so-coincidental whack on the knuckles from Merlin’s cooking spoon five seconds later for some imagined transgression. Eventually, though, they manage to get food on the table, some sort of chicken dish that Gwaine would bet any money is mostly on the table so Merlin can show off a bit for his mum.
Talk over lunch is mostly about the wedding, catching Hunith and Freya up on whatever details Merlin didn’t tell them over the phone, so Gwaine pays more attention to his food than the conversation. He’s probably more excited for Saturday than Merlin and Arthur, at this point, if only so he can stop hearing about the wedding. All he’s heard since they got engaged is “I can’t believe we’re really going to be married” and “we’re going to be so happy” and very occasionally “oh, God, Gwaine, I can’t do this, if his sister doesn’t kill me his father will.”
When they finish eating, Freya stands up almost immediately. “I’ll wash the dishes.” Gwaine can’t help but be impressed when she stops Merlin three words into his protest with nothing but a raised hand. “You go ahead and catch up with your mother, Merlin, I know it’s been a while.”
“I’ll dry,” Gwaine offers. Merlin, Arthur, and Hunith all turn to stare at him. He gets a smile out of Freya, though, so he counts it as a net win. It’s becoming a bit too fun to jar her out of the frown she seems to default to when no one’s talking to her. He waits until Merlin and Hunith start talking about Arthur’s office and for Arthur to go off to call said office before he starts a conversation. “Have you thought any more about moving in with me for the week? It’s close by here, and I’ve got to be out and about some, so I won’t bother you too much.”
She scrubs at a stubborn spot on a plate before she answers. “What do you do, anyway? Merlin’s wonderful about telling me all sorts of hair-raising stories about what you all get up to, but he isn’t quite as good at basic facts. The first I heard about you was some sort of barfight in the middle of one of Merlin and Arthur’s dates.”
“Freelance travel writing, mostly. I just got back from Singapore two weeks ago, so I’m having a bit of a break while I get the article together. I’m free to squire you about the city, if you’d like.”
“I really can’t--”
“You’re not imposing.” Gwaine raises his voice to interrupt the quiet conversation in the living room, where Merlin and his mother are talking about people back in Ealdor. “Merlin, wouldn’t I tell Freya if she was imposing?”
“You sure didn’t hesitate to tell me when I was staying with you,” Merlin calls back without missing a beat.
“He stayed with me when he was on the outs with Arthur last autumn,” Gwaine explains. “And he spent the whole time moaning about how much he loves him. They’re a bit disgusting, really.” Freya actually giggles, and Gwaine hides his grin when he takes another dish from her. “So you don’t want to be staying with them. I can’t imagine how Hunith will stand it.”
“That wasn’t very subtle,” she points out, but she’s still smiling.
“I have many virtues. I wouldn’t call subtlety one of them.” Arthur, just coming back to the living room from his call, snorts. “You’d have the kitchen to yourself, I eat more takeaway than anything else for everything but breakfast, and you won’t have to travel all the way to a hotel every night.”
Gwaine knows the look of a woman who’s softening, but he tries not to let his triumph show quite yet. Instead, he lets Freya finish doing most of the dishes without talking about it again, just changes the subject to some of the articles he’s written, and the travel books that he’s been asked about, and he’s rewarded for his patience when Freya turns to him while she’s soaking a pot. “You’re sure you don’t mind me staying with you? I can pay a bit--”
He interrupts before she can talk herself out of it. “Just buy your own groceries and we’re square as far as I’m concerned.” After a second, she nods, and he holds out a hand, which she shakes with her soapy one. “We’ll get you moved into my place after Merlin sees fit to release us for the afternoon, then.”
“You’re released whenever,” Merlin calls. “Arthur’s got to go to the office for a few hours, and mum and I need to catch up a bit. We’re all having dinner with Uther and Morgana tonight. Freya, you don’t mind being left? I could call Uther and ask if he’d mind one more …”
Freya looks rightly horrified. Nobody, not even Arthur, spends more time with Uther than absolutely necessary. “I’ll be fine, Merlin. We’ll see each other tomorrow. I’ve got a meeting with Mr. Garvey at Avalon tomorrow, but after that if you want wedding help I’d be glad.”
“I feel terrible roping my ex-girlfriend into helping with my wedding, especially when it’s her first week in town for years.”
“It’s my excuse to see you,” says Freya, and rinses off the pot she’s been scrubbing, the last dish that Gwaine has to dry.
“You’ll have to come back sometime after the honeymoon. So we can talk properly when I’m not going a bit mad making sure there isn’t a disaster because this one wanted something fancy.” Merlin jerks his head in Arthur’s direction and gets a roll of the eyes in response.
Freya shakes her head and dries her hands. “The company is trying to talk me into going to a few bookstores to do readings even though I always choke up at them. Maybe I’ll do one in London so I can see you.” She turns to Gwaine. “Would you mind taking me to your flat? I didn’t sleep very well at the hotel last night and I wouldn’t mind a nap, actually.”
“That’s why you should have stayed with us,” mutters Merlin, but he gets up, followed by Hunith and Arthur, and comes over to hug Freya. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Dinner. It’s stag night after that, I’m afraid, and Gwaine’s planned it--”
“I got strippers, since neither of them will ever be with a woman again, unless they decide on a threesome,” Gwaine says cheerfully, winking at Freya and Hunith when they both look scandalized. “You’ll like Vivian,” he adds, and Arthur steps over to swat his arm while Hunith hugs Freya again.
Merlin catches Gwaine’s arm just as he’s about to step out the door after Freya, holding her suitcase since he insisted. “Be careful,” he whispers, and Gwaine gives him a mocking salute before walking out the door.
*
Wednesday
Gwaine gets home from a meeting with Myror, who took the pictures for the Singapore trip, to find Freya curled up on his couch with a large sketchbook in her lap and coloured pencils scattered around. Since she spent most of Tuesday afternoon and evening shut in Elyan’s old room other than a few minutes in the kitchen with a pizza that she helped polish off surprisingly fast, that’s a bit of a shock.
She jumps a bit when he opens the door, but actually smiles at him without him teasing it out of her a second afterwards. “Character sketches for another book,” she explains before he can ask. “There’s always a scene or two with a crowd of the cats, and it’s good to have some background cats that I can put in easily.”
He decides to take that as an invitation and comes to peer over her shoulder to find a page full of winged cats in various poses. “Do you have a lot of cats, then?”
“A few neighbourhood strays I feed sometimes. None of my own.” This time, when she smiles, he catches sight of dimples, and she points at one particular figure on the sketchpad--a little black cat with big ears and a slightly startled look. “This one has shown up in every one of my books so far,” she says, and Gwaine realizes that if Merlin were a cat he would probably look exactly like that.
“Do you do everyone you meet like that?”
Her smile falls a bit, but she moves her feet off the end of the couch and he takes that as an invitation to sit down next to her and get a better look at her sketchbook. “I don’t meet many people, these days. But most people, yes.” She points at a bony, mean-looking old cat at the top of the page. “My agent.” A motherly gray tabby with neat wings and whiskers he recognizes as Hunith before Freya can say it.
The Merlin-cat is at the top of the page as well, with a yellow tabby grooming his wings. “You should give them a copy of that as a wedding gift,” he says, pointing to it. “Merlin will love it and Arthur will be mortified. Ideal situation, if you ask me.”
“I want Arthur to like me, though,” she says, and then moves her arm to point at another figure. “That’s you.”
Gwaine laughs when he sees it: apparently he’s a smoke-grey stray with a tattered ear and long whiskers, stalking another cat’s tail across the page. “It certainly is. You’ve got quite the gift for this.” He nudges her. “Where are you, then?”
Freya gives him a sidelong look he can’t quite read and then flips back a few pages to point at another figure. It’s a tiny tortoiseshell cat, barely bigger than a kitten, with big eyes and wings poised ready to fly off. “That’s me,” she says.
She looks so abashed about it that he has to jostle her shoulder and point at a particularly fierce-looking black cat with its ears flat back on its head. “And here I thought you were going to say this was the one. Seems to suit you.”
“She’s showed up a few times in the books, in the backgrounds like Merlin. Most of the ones in this sketchbook have, though.”
“Do you draw anything but cats?”
“It would get quite boring if I didn’t. This sketchbook is just for them, though, so I don’t get confused. I keep my other work in different places.” She sighs and leans back against the arm of the couch. “I’ve been drawing ever since I got back from my meeting with Mr. Garvey. I probably ought to stop.”
“We’ve a few hours yet until dinner. Do you have any plans?”
“I might take a walk. I don’t know this area of London very well, but it’s nice enough.” She shuts her sketchbook and starts picking up pencils. Gwaine fishes a few out from between his couch cushions. When he hands them to her, she bites her lip and then turns to face him. “I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit odd this week. It’s just I haven’t met too many new people lately, like I said. I live in my parents’ old house in the countryside and there’s almost nobody in town who doesn’t know me. London’s a bit overwhelming, after all this time.”
“Just stick with me, sweetheart, and you’ll be fine. It’s my job to meet new people.” He decides not to ask why she moved out of London to stay in her parents’ old home, especially as they don’t live there any longer, since he suspects that would come under the heading of “being a fuckwit” and he doesn’t want Merlin to scold him. “I’ll stick by you at the wedding,” he says instead.
“You won’t be around tomorrow night, I’m afraid.” He raises a questioning eyebrow. “Avalon Press is having a party, and since my books are published through one of the imprints … Mr. Garvey has ordered me there on pain of extra book signings.”
“All the literary elite of London?” Gwaine asks. He’s been to a party or two like that himself, with whatever magazine has him hired at the moment.
Freya nods, looking more than a bit glum. “And they’ll all be very polite when they learn that I’m a children’s author and then go on to talk about their bestsellers. I can’t even ask Merlin to come, it’s the last night before the rehearsal and there’s plenty he’s got to be doing.”
“Ask me, then,” he says without even thinking about it. She drops her whole handful of coloured pencils. Gwaine grins at her. “I’ll go with you and we’ll get drunk off their champagne and talk about what they look like as cats. It’s not like I have any other plans.”
“But the wedding--”
“The stag night is tonight and even Merlin isn’t foolish enough to give me any responsibilities for the day itself.” He doesn’t quite tempt a smile at her for that, but she does relax a bit. “We’ll just stop in, make your agent happy, and remind the snobs that there are children all over Britain forcing their parents to read them your books every night.”
“Not just Britain,” says Freya, smile returning, even if it’s a bit tentative. “You’re sure you wouldn’t mind? I feel like I’m taking up a lot of your time this week, for a complete stranger.”
Gwaine flaps a hand in dismissal. “You aren’t a complete stranger, though. I know all about you from Merlin, we’ve been waiting to meet you for ages.”
She stiffens right back up at that. “All about me?”
If he didn’t already figure that there was some big mess in her past that even can’t-keep-a-secret-to-save-his-life Merlin has kept, that just confirms it. “Well, you know Merlin. Lots of good stories, rubbish at the facts of the matter. I only knew you were a writer beforehand because he saw your books in a shop once.”
“He didn’t give them to you for Christmas? He keeps swearing he’ll do that some year, give a copy to everyone he knows.” It takes her another few seconds, but she does start loosening up again. At this rate he’s going to have to call Merlin and ask which subjects to avoid for the next few days. He’s never had a woman flee from him in terror before, and he doesn’t plan to start now. “So, we’re agreed? I’ll take you to this party of yours.”
There’s a moment of silence, then: “We’re agreed. Thank you. Mr. Garvey probably would have insisted on introducing me around, otherwise, and he’s a bit creepy.”
“I’ll protect you from him, don’t worry.”
“I don’t need much protecting.” She stands up and sets her sketchbook on the coffee table, which is less a table and more a collection of books he doesn’t read very often with boards on top of them, since Elyan took the actual coffee table with him when he moved out. Perhaps he ought to do something about that soon. “Other than from Halig the other night, I guess. I’m better in that kind of situation if I’m actually allowed to beat them up.”
Gwaine can’t help staring a bit, because he was expecting many things but that was not one of them. Freya beats people up? “You beat people up?”
“I took a self-defense course when they offered it near where I live last year. Merlin said I should.” She goes bright pink and starts fidgeting where she stands. “The exam, for passing it, we were supposed to fight our way out of a little room using what we’d learnt. I knocked the instructor unconscious.”
“Remind me never to sneak up on you, then,” Gwaine says, trying not to show how impressed he is. It’s hard to imagine Freya knocking anyone out, but he definitely believes her. She wouldn’t be so embarrassed otherwise. “Was Merlin afraid you were going to be assaulted out there in the Hampshire countryside? I hear the sheep can be quite dangerous.”
Once again, she goes quiet, but she sits down on the couch again. “My parents were killed in a mugging. Almost two and a half years ago, now. I got … worried, sometimes. Merlin thought it would help. It did.”
“Obviously. And here I thought I was protecting you at this party.”
That, for once, is the right thing to say. “Like I said, it’s easier when I’m allowed to hurt them. That’s frowned on at parties.”
“Nobody would ever believe it was you who did it. I would get blamed and be kicked out and you would be free to pick more off.” Gwaine debates for a second, but he’ll feel like an arse forever if he doesn’t say this next bit, even if it makes her shut down again. “I’m sorry. About your parents.”
“Thank you. It’s getting better.” She stands again. “I bought a few packages of popcorn while I was out this morning. Would you want to share one? We’ve a while until dinner and I was just getting a bit hungry when you came in.”
Gwaine stands up as well. “I can’t cook, but I can work my own microwave. I’ll make the popcorn.”
“Okay.” Instead of disappearing back to Elyan’s old room, she follows him to the kitchen and leans on the fridge after pointing out which cupboard she stuck the popcorn in. “Tell me about Singapore,” she says after he’s pressed the buttons on the microwave, which was the first thing he replaced after Elyan moved out. “It’s been a while since I had an adventure.”
He tells her about Singapore over popcorn, and then when she keeps asking questions, he tells her about Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and Malawi and Peru and his upcoming trip to Egypt,. When that’s done, he coaxes her into telling him about the adventures she used to go on--the Isle of Man with Merlin, Spain in her last term of uni, but definitely nothing in the past two years.
They’re twenty minutes late for dinner, but Gwaine decides that Arthur’s glare and Merlin and Hunith’s identical worried looks are completely worth it. For the first time in quite a while, he’s more excited about a cocktail party than he is about a stag one.
Part Two
Wordcount: ~13,000
Summary: Gwaine offers to let Freya stay in his flat for the week before Merlin and Arthur's wedding. He doesn't expect to fall in love, but it's definitely a bonus.
Warnings: Some kissing while intoxicated. Other than that, just some strong language.
A/N: Written for this prompt on the meme (raise hands if you already guessed it was me. I am frightfully obvious). And I totally do not know who the OP is. At all. (
non_island, I am looking at youuuuuu.) But anyway, it is sort of an accidental Gwaine Quest fic and the title is from Vienna Teng's "Stray Italian Greyhound." The idea of books about winged cats is stolen from Ursula K. LeGuin.Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin. Or Catwings.
Monday
When Gwaine comes into his usual pub out of the rain, the first thing he notices is that Halig has found some new girl to bother, and that this one doesn’t seem inclined to slap him like the incomparable Elena did a few weeks back. This one is small and dark-haired and leaning so far off her barstool it looks like she might fall. And for all Gwaine’s been called trouble by at least a dozen women in three languages, he can’t resist a damsel in distress, so he strolls up behind her and puts an arm around her waist just after she says something about waiting for someone, sliding his thumb to rest in her belt loop so he can lean down and whisper in her ear under the guise of kissing her neck. “Just play along, he’s bad news.” She stiffens, although Halig is thick enough not to notice. Gwaine raises his voice. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry I kept you waiting. Are you making friends?”
“I was just going to find us a table.” She’s got an accent he can’t quite place, and when she turns around, forcing him to loose his grip a bit, she looks a bit more uncomfortable than his pride would like, as well as tousled and tired. Gwaine puts on his most charming smile, and her lips twitch in what looks like automatic response. She’s pretty as is, but he suspects she would be gorgeous if he could get her to smile properly.
“We can do it together, then.” He lets her go when she makes to stand up from her stool, and grins unrepentantly in the face of Halig’s glare. He’s made it a goal to thwart the man in every pull he tries to make. “Good to see you as always, Halig,” he says, and takes the woman’s hand to drag her away to a place where the shape of the wall will let him see the door while he waits for Merlin and Arthur and their guest and she can wait for whoever she’s waiting for. Gwaine drops her hand when they come to a stop, and tries not to be insulted when she steps back. “Are you really waiting for someone, or were you just trying to get rid of him?”
“I really am. Thank you for the help.”
Gwaine is about to ask if he can buy her a drink to make up for the scare, since Merlin is always late and even Arthur can’t change that, but as if that’s a cue, the pub door bursts open with the kind of enthusiasm that only Merlin can manage. Surprisingly, when they get through the door, the woman beside him waves before Gwaine can, which leads to Merlin practically bowling half the crowd over while he rushes to wrap the woman up in a hug while Arthur follows at a more sedate pace.
“Look at you,” Merlin whispers, which marks her pretty clearly as Freya, who’s just arrived in town today and will be staying until the wedding on Saturday, Merlin’s ex-girlfriend and a children’s author. She certainly isn’t what he was expecting, considering she writes books and draws pictures about flying cats. Although he probably shouldn’t have expected a plain, dotty lady with pictures of cats in her wallet, since Merlin used to date her. The shyness is a surprise, though.
“I’ve missed you,” she replies, and pulls a bit away from him when she notices that Arthur and Gwaine are watching them. “I’m so glad to see you,” she adds, and Gwaine steps on Arthur’s foot while Merlin hugs her again so he doesn’t get stupidly jealous and ruin the whole evening.
“I’m glad you decided to come early for the wedding.”
Arthur interrupts with a glare at Gwaine, which is better than continuing to glare at Freya, who looks a bit fragile. “He hasn’t shut up about it for days now,” he says, which is true, and shakes Freya’s hand when she pulls out of Merlin’s embrace. “Very hard to get him to talk about this weekend when he’s busy worrying about whether you and Morgana will get along. I’m pleased to meet you, by the way. I didn’t know you knew Gwaine.”
She looks at Gwaine and starts stammering something out, but he cuts in with an explanation, doing his best at being reassuring. He suspects he misses that mark and lands somewhere in the realm of “rakish,” since Merlin’s soppy smile melts a bit towards disapproval. “She just attracted a bit of attention from Halig, is all. I was being chivalrous.” He winks, as she was looking horrified and he can’t have that. “I’m Gwaine, sweetheart. Would have been even quicker to rescue you if I knew you were the famous Freya.”
Her smile is pained at best, probably still embarrassed at their first meeting. He wonders if he ought to tell her that he met Merlin and Arthur in the barfight that their third date had degenerated into and that her first impression was much better, then decides against it because Merlin is already turning pink and leaning back into Arthur. “Don’t embarrass her, Gwaine, I don’t talk about her that much.”
Arthur, after a second, seems to decide that he needn’t be jealous of Freya and Merlin, so he smiles in her direction. “Let’s get a table before they’re all gone, and you absolutely do talk about her that much. As if there’s a story you tell from uni that doesn’t have her in it somewhere.” He takes Merlin’s arm and starts leading him away. Gwaine thinks about offering Freya his arm, but she follows without even looking at him as Arthur keeps talking. “Did you two really run off to the Isle of Man for a summer and live in a commune?”
Freya’s smile lights up her whole face, and she even turns to look over her shoulder and include Gwaine in it just as they reach a table and start silently sorting out seats. “We really did. I worked the land, since my family farms, and Merlin mostly helped in the kitchen.” Gwaine can’t help laughing, and Arthur joins him, since Merlin’s recounting of that particular story always goes a bit differently. Freya winces apologetically as she sits down across from Merlin, and Gwaine sits down next to her. “He patched us all up when we got ill or hurt as well,” she adds when Merlin’s blush doesn’t subside in the least.
“Still does,” says Gwaine, grinning at her and then at Merlin, who is attempting to hide in Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur glares at him. “He met Arthur when he came into his clinic after an ex-girlfriend tried to drown him.”
Once again Freya smiles, although Merlin and Arthur are both looking a bit mortified now. “He called me to complain about the prat who came in and ordered him about, and then again two days later to say he asked him out.”
Merlin winces in a way that probably means Arthur kicked him under the table. Gwaine grins at them and lets Merlin change the subject with a bright smile. “What do you want to do while you’re in town, Freya?”
She shrugs and folds her hands in her lap. “Well, most of the time I’m available to help out with preparations for Saturday, if you need and extra pair of hands. I know Hunith is coming to town to help, but I thought I would make myself available as well. Other than that, I’ve got a meeting with my agent and he wants me to go to a party on Thursday night.”
“That’s right, you’re a writer. Children’s books, correct?” says Arthur, although he knows it already.
Freya nods, blush rising up her cheeks. “I never thought they’d get so popular. Just a few fancies that I wrote down and drew sketches for, and then Merlin forced me to finish them and send them out when he helped me move. The third book in the series is coming out next month, so the wedding is well-timed for me to get a few meetings in.”
From there, the talk is surprisingly easy. Gwaine gets their drinks and chips up at the bar, since Mary has a bit of a soft spot for him (especially since Merlin started wearing his engagement ring about and she stopped flirting with him) and he sometimes gets a bit of a discount, and they talk about the wedding and themselves until nearly midnight. Merlin is half-asleep on Arthur’s shoulder, since despite Gwaine’s best efforts he can’t hold his liquor, and Freya lets out an exaggerated yawn. “I suppose we ought to turn in for the night.”
Merlin looks blearily around. “Where’s your luggage?” he asks, like he’s expecting it to magically appear.
“At my hotel.”
Soft heart that he is, Merlin looks absolutely horrified at the thought of Freya staying in a hotel. “But you were meant to be staying with us!” Arthur squeezes his arm. “We’ve been planning on it.”
She reaches across the table and pats his hand. “And now your mother can stay there instead. I’ll be just fine in my hotel. I’ve stayed in them before.”
“But you can’t this time.”
Gwaine knows Merlin when he gets stubborn, but it makes more sense for Hunith to stay with the grooms, so he breaks into the conversation with another solution. He certainly wouldn’t be averse to spending a bit more time with the lovely Freya. “Can’t she stay with someone else?” All three of them immediately look at him with varying levels of suspicion. “I think Morgana has--”
“Not Morgana,” Merlin and Arthur say in unison. The way Freya’s eyes go wide suggests that Merlin tells her as much about them as he tells them about her.
“Well, then,” says Gwaine, and grins as he turns to Freya, who looks more than a bit wary. “I’ve got a spare room, since my flatmate moved out a few weeks back and I haven’t found a new one yet.” All of which even has the added bonus of being true. Elyan got a big engineering position in Birmingham and went right off. “You could stay with me. It’s mostly clean.” Although he’ll have to hope the dark will hide what mess there is tonight and clean before she gets up in the morning.
Merlin gives him a few seconds of his surprisingly convincing if-you-fuck-with-her-I-will-end-you expression before relaxing into a tentative smile even as Freya says she can’t impose. “I’ve already paid for tonight, at least,” she adds when all three of them just look at her expectantly. Gwaine could tell her if she asked that she won’t win this one, but he lets it figure it out for herself. Sure enough, it’s only a few seconds before she lets out a breath. “Perhaps tomorrow we’ll discuss it some more.”
Gwaine chooses to interpret that as wholesale surrender and takes it as his cue to stand from the table and start the round of goodbyes. Arthur goes off to pay the bill, leaving Freya looking uncomfortable. “He does that,” Gwaine assures her. “Best get used to it.”
“Bring your luggage to lunch with you tomorrow,” Merlin says as he hugs Freya again. “My mother will be there half past eleven, we’ll probably be serving food around noon. She’ll be glad to see you again.”
“I’ll be glad to see her as well.” Arthur reappears, looking as smug as always, and Freya turns to him. “And it was lovely to meet you, Arthur. Thank you for picking up the tab.”
That, Gwaine thinks, will ensure that Arthur is preening for days, but at least it means he won’t be giving Freya mistrustful looks all week. Much better for all of them. The goodbyes are easy, and Merlin and Arthur leave first on the short walk back to their flat, out into the London rain. That leaves Freya and Gwaine standing by the door. She breaks the silence first, peering outside. “It was good to meet you, Gwaine. I’m sure I’ll see you some more.”
“You might be staying with me,” he points out. Hopefully Merlin won’t decide overnight that he disapproves and call Gwen and Lancelot to see if Freya can stay in their spare room. “We’ll certainly see each other again.” It’s dark and from what Merlin’s said, she hasn’t lived in the city for over two years now, so Gwaine takes the opportunity to be chivalrous again. “Can I walk you to your hotel?”
Freya shakes her head. “I’ll just get a cab. Thanks for the offer, though.” She shakes his hand and steps out the door without further ado, pulling her coat tight around herself as she holds out a hand for a cab.
Gwaine watches her until the cab drives out of sight, then walks out the door and heads to his flat. At least he’s got more time to clean it, now.
*
Tuesday
Gwaine’s phone rings at half past nine, blaring “Pinball Wizard” while he’s in the midst of running the vacuum through Elyan’s old room. Since that’s been Merlin’s ringtone for as long as they’ve known each other, he picks it up. “You’re awake,” Merlin says, sounding wrongfooted, after Gwaine’s cheerful hello.
“I am,” Gwaine agrees.
“You’re never awake before ten when you aren’t working.”
“I’m cleaning my flat.”
“Dear God,” says Merlin, then raises his voice when Arthur says something in the background. “Gwaine says he’s cleaning!” He lowers his voice again. “Are you all right? Have you been taken over by Pod People? Did a microbrewing project explode?”
Gwaine laughs. “If Freya is going to be staying with me for a few days, I thought I’d get the dust up off the floor, that’s all.”
There’s a pause. “Ah. Freya. That’s why I called, actually.”
“Of course it is. I’m not stupid, remember?” Gwaine sighs. “Here, I’ll save you the trouble. I’m to be a good lad and not torture the poor girl, yeah? She’s a fragile flower and I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
Merlin snorts. “Gentleman? You?” Gwaine can hear Arthur laughing in the background. “Look, just don’t be a fuckwit. I’m not going to stop her staying with you or anything stupid like that, but she’s not had an easy time of it, and I’d rather not have her fleeing back to Hampshire before the wedding, that’s all.”
Gwaine doesn’t allow himself more than a second to wonder what Merlin means by that, since he talks about Freya all the time and never once mentioned her having troubles. It’s none of his business. “I’ll be good,” he promises instead.
“Great.” He can almost hear Merlin’s grin. “Now, Mum is getting here in a few hours, and she wants you to come to lunch. You can get Freya and her luggage at the same time if we manage to convince her she isn’t imposing.”
“I’m always glad to see Hunith. I’ll get there a bit before noon.”
“I’ll see you then.” Merlin laughs. “Good luck with your cleaning.” He hangs up before Gwaine can respond to that, and Gwaine rolls his eyes before turning the vacuum back on and continuing making the flat fit to live in.
By the time he heads over to Merlin and Arthur’s for lunch, just a few buildings away, the flat is as clean as it will get without a lot more work, and Gwaine gives himself a pat on the back for it before he leaves. When he gets there, Merlin is in the kitchen, Arthur is on the couch (obviously kicked out, since he burns toast), and Hunith greets him at the door with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He gives her one in return. “Hunith! Your son has been keeping us from each other. This can’t be allowed.”
Hunith laughs, and he spends the next twenty minutes flirting with her while Merlin rolls his eyes and Arthur eventually gets up to put the salad together and start setting the table.
Freya knocks at noon on the dot, and Gwaine goes to the teapot so he can at least pretend to be useful. Hunith opens the door, revealing Freya looking a good deal more put-together than she did when he saw her last (which probably had something to do with the train journey from Hampshire, he realizes) and carrying a suitcase and a garment bag. She fumbles and nearly drops them when Hunith doesn’t even let her get the door closed before pulling her into a long hug, whispering something Gwaine can’t make out and kissing her forehead.
When they pull apart, Freya looks near tears, but Hunith gets her talking about her books and how popular they are at the creche she runs. “Ealdor isn’t that far from home,” says Freya after she’s put down her bags and taken off her jacket. “I’ll come do a reading when the third one comes out, if you like. Maybe draw some sketches for the kids. It’s the least I could do after you were so kind to me.”
“I’ll be glad to have you. You can stay a night or two.”
“Are you going to pour the tea, or are you just looking decorative?” Arthur asks, prodding Gwaine with his elbow. Gwaine prods him right back and starts setting out teacups while Merlin laughs at them and Hunith sits Freya down at the table and fusses over her, certainly more than she fussed over Gwaine. He tries not to be put out over that.
The next five minutes are full of chaos, even after Merlin banishes Arthur to sit with the ladies when he dares try to stir a pot. Gwaine gets everyone’s tea poured and sorted, kisses Freya’s hand in greeting, and gets a not-so-coincidental whack on the knuckles from Merlin’s cooking spoon five seconds later for some imagined transgression. Eventually, though, they manage to get food on the table, some sort of chicken dish that Gwaine would bet any money is mostly on the table so Merlin can show off a bit for his mum.
Talk over lunch is mostly about the wedding, catching Hunith and Freya up on whatever details Merlin didn’t tell them over the phone, so Gwaine pays more attention to his food than the conversation. He’s probably more excited for Saturday than Merlin and Arthur, at this point, if only so he can stop hearing about the wedding. All he’s heard since they got engaged is “I can’t believe we’re really going to be married” and “we’re going to be so happy” and very occasionally “oh, God, Gwaine, I can’t do this, if his sister doesn’t kill me his father will.”
When they finish eating, Freya stands up almost immediately. “I’ll wash the dishes.” Gwaine can’t help but be impressed when she stops Merlin three words into his protest with nothing but a raised hand. “You go ahead and catch up with your mother, Merlin, I know it’s been a while.”
“I’ll dry,” Gwaine offers. Merlin, Arthur, and Hunith all turn to stare at him. He gets a smile out of Freya, though, so he counts it as a net win. It’s becoming a bit too fun to jar her out of the frown she seems to default to when no one’s talking to her. He waits until Merlin and Hunith start talking about Arthur’s office and for Arthur to go off to call said office before he starts a conversation. “Have you thought any more about moving in with me for the week? It’s close by here, and I’ve got to be out and about some, so I won’t bother you too much.”
She scrubs at a stubborn spot on a plate before she answers. “What do you do, anyway? Merlin’s wonderful about telling me all sorts of hair-raising stories about what you all get up to, but he isn’t quite as good at basic facts. The first I heard about you was some sort of barfight in the middle of one of Merlin and Arthur’s dates.”
“Freelance travel writing, mostly. I just got back from Singapore two weeks ago, so I’m having a bit of a break while I get the article together. I’m free to squire you about the city, if you’d like.”
“I really can’t--”
“You’re not imposing.” Gwaine raises his voice to interrupt the quiet conversation in the living room, where Merlin and his mother are talking about people back in Ealdor. “Merlin, wouldn’t I tell Freya if she was imposing?”
“You sure didn’t hesitate to tell me when I was staying with you,” Merlin calls back without missing a beat.
“He stayed with me when he was on the outs with Arthur last autumn,” Gwaine explains. “And he spent the whole time moaning about how much he loves him. They’re a bit disgusting, really.” Freya actually giggles, and Gwaine hides his grin when he takes another dish from her. “So you don’t want to be staying with them. I can’t imagine how Hunith will stand it.”
“That wasn’t very subtle,” she points out, but she’s still smiling.
“I have many virtues. I wouldn’t call subtlety one of them.” Arthur, just coming back to the living room from his call, snorts. “You’d have the kitchen to yourself, I eat more takeaway than anything else for everything but breakfast, and you won’t have to travel all the way to a hotel every night.”
Gwaine knows the look of a woman who’s softening, but he tries not to let his triumph show quite yet. Instead, he lets Freya finish doing most of the dishes without talking about it again, just changes the subject to some of the articles he’s written, and the travel books that he’s been asked about, and he’s rewarded for his patience when Freya turns to him while she’s soaking a pot. “You’re sure you don’t mind me staying with you? I can pay a bit--”
He interrupts before she can talk herself out of it. “Just buy your own groceries and we’re square as far as I’m concerned.” After a second, she nods, and he holds out a hand, which she shakes with her soapy one. “We’ll get you moved into my place after Merlin sees fit to release us for the afternoon, then.”
“You’re released whenever,” Merlin calls. “Arthur’s got to go to the office for a few hours, and mum and I need to catch up a bit. We’re all having dinner with Uther and Morgana tonight. Freya, you don’t mind being left? I could call Uther and ask if he’d mind one more …”
Freya looks rightly horrified. Nobody, not even Arthur, spends more time with Uther than absolutely necessary. “I’ll be fine, Merlin. We’ll see each other tomorrow. I’ve got a meeting with Mr. Garvey at Avalon tomorrow, but after that if you want wedding help I’d be glad.”
“I feel terrible roping my ex-girlfriend into helping with my wedding, especially when it’s her first week in town for years.”
“It’s my excuse to see you,” says Freya, and rinses off the pot she’s been scrubbing, the last dish that Gwaine has to dry.
“You’ll have to come back sometime after the honeymoon. So we can talk properly when I’m not going a bit mad making sure there isn’t a disaster because this one wanted something fancy.” Merlin jerks his head in Arthur’s direction and gets a roll of the eyes in response.
Freya shakes her head and dries her hands. “The company is trying to talk me into going to a few bookstores to do readings even though I always choke up at them. Maybe I’ll do one in London so I can see you.” She turns to Gwaine. “Would you mind taking me to your flat? I didn’t sleep very well at the hotel last night and I wouldn’t mind a nap, actually.”
“That’s why you should have stayed with us,” mutters Merlin, but he gets up, followed by Hunith and Arthur, and comes over to hug Freya. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Dinner. It’s stag night after that, I’m afraid, and Gwaine’s planned it--”
“I got strippers, since neither of them will ever be with a woman again, unless they decide on a threesome,” Gwaine says cheerfully, winking at Freya and Hunith when they both look scandalized. “You’ll like Vivian,” he adds, and Arthur steps over to swat his arm while Hunith hugs Freya again.
Merlin catches Gwaine’s arm just as he’s about to step out the door after Freya, holding her suitcase since he insisted. “Be careful,” he whispers, and Gwaine gives him a mocking salute before walking out the door.
*
Wednesday
Gwaine gets home from a meeting with Myror, who took the pictures for the Singapore trip, to find Freya curled up on his couch with a large sketchbook in her lap and coloured pencils scattered around. Since she spent most of Tuesday afternoon and evening shut in Elyan’s old room other than a few minutes in the kitchen with a pizza that she helped polish off surprisingly fast, that’s a bit of a shock.
She jumps a bit when he opens the door, but actually smiles at him without him teasing it out of her a second afterwards. “Character sketches for another book,” she explains before he can ask. “There’s always a scene or two with a crowd of the cats, and it’s good to have some background cats that I can put in easily.”
He decides to take that as an invitation and comes to peer over her shoulder to find a page full of winged cats in various poses. “Do you have a lot of cats, then?”
“A few neighbourhood strays I feed sometimes. None of my own.” This time, when she smiles, he catches sight of dimples, and she points at one particular figure on the sketchpad--a little black cat with big ears and a slightly startled look. “This one has shown up in every one of my books so far,” she says, and Gwaine realizes that if Merlin were a cat he would probably look exactly like that.
“Do you do everyone you meet like that?”
Her smile falls a bit, but she moves her feet off the end of the couch and he takes that as an invitation to sit down next to her and get a better look at her sketchbook. “I don’t meet many people, these days. But most people, yes.” She points at a bony, mean-looking old cat at the top of the page. “My agent.” A motherly gray tabby with neat wings and whiskers he recognizes as Hunith before Freya can say it.
The Merlin-cat is at the top of the page as well, with a yellow tabby grooming his wings. “You should give them a copy of that as a wedding gift,” he says, pointing to it. “Merlin will love it and Arthur will be mortified. Ideal situation, if you ask me.”
“I want Arthur to like me, though,” she says, and then moves her arm to point at another figure. “That’s you.”
Gwaine laughs when he sees it: apparently he’s a smoke-grey stray with a tattered ear and long whiskers, stalking another cat’s tail across the page. “It certainly is. You’ve got quite the gift for this.” He nudges her. “Where are you, then?”
Freya gives him a sidelong look he can’t quite read and then flips back a few pages to point at another figure. It’s a tiny tortoiseshell cat, barely bigger than a kitten, with big eyes and wings poised ready to fly off. “That’s me,” she says.
She looks so abashed about it that he has to jostle her shoulder and point at a particularly fierce-looking black cat with its ears flat back on its head. “And here I thought you were going to say this was the one. Seems to suit you.”
“She’s showed up a few times in the books, in the backgrounds like Merlin. Most of the ones in this sketchbook have, though.”
“Do you draw anything but cats?”
“It would get quite boring if I didn’t. This sketchbook is just for them, though, so I don’t get confused. I keep my other work in different places.” She sighs and leans back against the arm of the couch. “I’ve been drawing ever since I got back from my meeting with Mr. Garvey. I probably ought to stop.”
“We’ve a few hours yet until dinner. Do you have any plans?”
“I might take a walk. I don’t know this area of London very well, but it’s nice enough.” She shuts her sketchbook and starts picking up pencils. Gwaine fishes a few out from between his couch cushions. When he hands them to her, she bites her lip and then turns to face him. “I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit odd this week. It’s just I haven’t met too many new people lately, like I said. I live in my parents’ old house in the countryside and there’s almost nobody in town who doesn’t know me. London’s a bit overwhelming, after all this time.”
“Just stick with me, sweetheart, and you’ll be fine. It’s my job to meet new people.” He decides not to ask why she moved out of London to stay in her parents’ old home, especially as they don’t live there any longer, since he suspects that would come under the heading of “being a fuckwit” and he doesn’t want Merlin to scold him. “I’ll stick by you at the wedding,” he says instead.
“You won’t be around tomorrow night, I’m afraid.” He raises a questioning eyebrow. “Avalon Press is having a party, and since my books are published through one of the imprints … Mr. Garvey has ordered me there on pain of extra book signings.”
“All the literary elite of London?” Gwaine asks. He’s been to a party or two like that himself, with whatever magazine has him hired at the moment.
Freya nods, looking more than a bit glum. “And they’ll all be very polite when they learn that I’m a children’s author and then go on to talk about their bestsellers. I can’t even ask Merlin to come, it’s the last night before the rehearsal and there’s plenty he’s got to be doing.”
“Ask me, then,” he says without even thinking about it. She drops her whole handful of coloured pencils. Gwaine grins at her. “I’ll go with you and we’ll get drunk off their champagne and talk about what they look like as cats. It’s not like I have any other plans.”
“But the wedding--”
“The stag night is tonight and even Merlin isn’t foolish enough to give me any responsibilities for the day itself.” He doesn’t quite tempt a smile at her for that, but she does relax a bit. “We’ll just stop in, make your agent happy, and remind the snobs that there are children all over Britain forcing their parents to read them your books every night.”
“Not just Britain,” says Freya, smile returning, even if it’s a bit tentative. “You’re sure you wouldn’t mind? I feel like I’m taking up a lot of your time this week, for a complete stranger.”
Gwaine flaps a hand in dismissal. “You aren’t a complete stranger, though. I know all about you from Merlin, we’ve been waiting to meet you for ages.”
She stiffens right back up at that. “All about me?”
If he didn’t already figure that there was some big mess in her past that even can’t-keep-a-secret-to-save-his-life Merlin has kept, that just confirms it. “Well, you know Merlin. Lots of good stories, rubbish at the facts of the matter. I only knew you were a writer beforehand because he saw your books in a shop once.”
“He didn’t give them to you for Christmas? He keeps swearing he’ll do that some year, give a copy to everyone he knows.” It takes her another few seconds, but she does start loosening up again. At this rate he’s going to have to call Merlin and ask which subjects to avoid for the next few days. He’s never had a woman flee from him in terror before, and he doesn’t plan to start now. “So, we’re agreed? I’ll take you to this party of yours.”
There’s a moment of silence, then: “We’re agreed. Thank you. Mr. Garvey probably would have insisted on introducing me around, otherwise, and he’s a bit creepy.”
“I’ll protect you from him, don’t worry.”
“I don’t need much protecting.” She stands up and sets her sketchbook on the coffee table, which is less a table and more a collection of books he doesn’t read very often with boards on top of them, since Elyan took the actual coffee table with him when he moved out. Perhaps he ought to do something about that soon. “Other than from Halig the other night, I guess. I’m better in that kind of situation if I’m actually allowed to beat them up.”
Gwaine can’t help staring a bit, because he was expecting many things but that was not one of them. Freya beats people up? “You beat people up?”
“I took a self-defense course when they offered it near where I live last year. Merlin said I should.” She goes bright pink and starts fidgeting where she stands. “The exam, for passing it, we were supposed to fight our way out of a little room using what we’d learnt. I knocked the instructor unconscious.”
“Remind me never to sneak up on you, then,” Gwaine says, trying not to show how impressed he is. It’s hard to imagine Freya knocking anyone out, but he definitely believes her. She wouldn’t be so embarrassed otherwise. “Was Merlin afraid you were going to be assaulted out there in the Hampshire countryside? I hear the sheep can be quite dangerous.”
Once again, she goes quiet, but she sits down on the couch again. “My parents were killed in a mugging. Almost two and a half years ago, now. I got … worried, sometimes. Merlin thought it would help. It did.”
“Obviously. And here I thought I was protecting you at this party.”
That, for once, is the right thing to say. “Like I said, it’s easier when I’m allowed to hurt them. That’s frowned on at parties.”
“Nobody would ever believe it was you who did it. I would get blamed and be kicked out and you would be free to pick more off.” Gwaine debates for a second, but he’ll feel like an arse forever if he doesn’t say this next bit, even if it makes her shut down again. “I’m sorry. About your parents.”
“Thank you. It’s getting better.” She stands again. “I bought a few packages of popcorn while I was out this morning. Would you want to share one? We’ve a while until dinner and I was just getting a bit hungry when you came in.”
Gwaine stands up as well. “I can’t cook, but I can work my own microwave. I’ll make the popcorn.”
“Okay.” Instead of disappearing back to Elyan’s old room, she follows him to the kitchen and leans on the fridge after pointing out which cupboard she stuck the popcorn in. “Tell me about Singapore,” she says after he’s pressed the buttons on the microwave, which was the first thing he replaced after Elyan moved out. “It’s been a while since I had an adventure.”
He tells her about Singapore over popcorn, and then when she keeps asking questions, he tells her about Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and Malawi and Peru and his upcoming trip to Egypt,. When that’s done, he coaxes her into telling him about the adventures she used to go on--the Isle of Man with Merlin, Spain in her last term of uni, but definitely nothing in the past two years.
They’re twenty minutes late for dinner, but Gwaine decides that Arthur’s glare and Merlin and Hunith’s identical worried looks are completely worth it. For the first time in quite a while, he’s more excited about a cocktail party than he is about a stag one.
Part Two
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This fragile Freya is intriguing and I'm enjoying getting her back story a bit at a time. Her career fits her and I love that she incorporates her friends and acquaintances into her cat drawings. I would love to see the illustration of Cat!Merlin and Cat!Arthur!
Gwaine, too, is well drawn and I like how careful he's being with Freya. He's tempered his flirtatiousness just a bit, fitting his reactions and actions to her moods. It's all making for a delightful read.