gnimaerd | Fic: Things You Shouldn't Do With Your Best Friend's Older Sister (Pt 2 of 3

Merlin picks his uncle’s house.

Gaius has gone away for a couple of days to some medical conference in Wales so they have the place to themselves, and somehow Merlin wants to see her there, in the surroundings with which he’s most familiar. He has this urge to see her out of the extravagant grandeur of chrome kitchen fittings and white marble floors that characterise the Pendragon mansion, and in amongst his uncle’s homely chaos, stacked high on every surface in the living room. He wants to see Morgana amongst the guddle of cooking implements in the kitchen – the recipe books, the dying plants and seashells on the window sill, the fridge and stove and cupboards that were all installed in the 1960s and are somehow still working.

He cooks, and she makes room for herself on the counter, perches on its edge, next to the old, deep stone sink, and watches him. She fiddles with a little plastic toy soldier on one of the shelves and she touches the collection of marbles and pebbles and semi-precious stones piled up next to it.

In her expensive jeans and designer glasses she looks completely alien to this place, which screams muddy wellies, old dogs and duffle coats. But she doesn’t seem unhappy, either. Just curious.

He’s making macaroni cheese – the kind his mother used to make him when he was little – and they take it up to his room to eat; sit on the floor on a blanket, with candles and cheap wine.

“You’re a good cook, Merlin,” she tells him.

“Thanks.” He’s watching the way she’s looking about her.

He has the entire bit under the roof to himself – a great long attic room, with his bed at one end, and a sofa, an old black and white TV, book shelves and a coffee table at the other. There’s also a rickety old desk, with the second hand laptop he got off ebay, some broken pens, dog-eared textbooks and a dusty chess set.

He likes it – his bedroom back home wasn’t much more than a cupboard compared to this and at school he shared a dormitory half this size with six other boys. But he’s also painfully aware of how meagre it is by the standards Morgana is used to.

“It’s a nice place, Merlin,” she seems to sense his anxiety. “It’s very… you. And it’s comfortable. Feels like it’s been lived in.”

“Mostly because it has been,” Merlin points out, “Gaius grew up here. This was my great grandparents’ house.”

“Uther built the mansion up himself,” Morgana replies, “the Pendragons are an old family but they lost all their money a couple of generations back. Once he’d made his millions he spent them buying back their old lands and building the house he imagines they would have had. But I don’t know… it feels kind of sterile sometimes. Empty. I mean, three people living in a ten bedroom, three story mansion? Even with the butler and the cook and the cleaning ladies the place is never exactly lively.”

“No, I can… see that,” Merlin agrees. He’s never been in half the place anyway – just the games room and the kitchen, one of the bathrooms, the big function room where Morgana’s birthday party was based, and of course Morgana’s bedroom.

“My parents had a place that was more like this,” Morgana tells him, leaning back on her hands, “I mean… there was less stuff… and it was probably a little bit bigger but… it was just a normal sort of house, you know? We had a huge garden though – there was a pond with fish, and I’d named them all.” A quick, odd little smile struggles to assert itself on her lips, “when Uther first took guardianship of me I thought we’d be living in my house. That him and Arthur would just come and stay with me and I thought it would be like when they came to visit on holidays, except without my parents, and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, you know? They, um… they had to explain to me that I was going to have to move – not just… out of my house but… out of the country, to England. I really hated Uther for a while, for making me. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just have stayed in Ireland. I was convinced, for a long time, that as soon as I turned eighteen I was going to go back and move into my old house again. Took me ages to realise that it would have been sold – that someone else lives there now. Silly, really.”

“It’s not silly,” Merlin replies, earnestly. He’s a little bit heart-broken for poor, grieving, twelve year old Morgana, who so abruptly lost everything she’d ever known. He wants to reach back through the years and hold onto her – promise her she’ll come out alright, in the end.

Morgana’s lips twitch – she shakes her head. “Sorry. I’m bringing the mood down a little here.”

“No – it’s fine,” Merlin shakes his head, “I’ve had much more depressing dates, trust me. The first one I ever went on, I was so nervous that I was sick all over the restaurant table.”

“Oh, Merlin…”

“I was an anxious sixteen year old.”

“Clearly.”

They finish the meal, and lie on their backs on the floor, looking up at his sloping ceilings, which are covered in glowing stars.

“Gaius put them there,” Merlin tells Morgana, as he talks her through the various constellations, “when I was little, when he used to come and visit me and my mum, I went through this phase where I was really into, you know… space, the planets, all of that. Every time he came out to see us he’d bring me another book about stars or something – he taught me how to recognise the planets in the night sky. The first time I came to stay here on my own, when I was… I dunno, maybe ten, he put the stars on the ceiling, so I’d feel more at home.”

“That’s so nice.”

“Yeah, yeah it was.” He rubs his eyes, thinking back. Morgana curls gentle fingers around his wrist and squeezes.

“Your bed is too small,” she complains, later, when they’re curled up in it together – still fully clothed, on top of the duvet. The room is dark aside from the candles, which are still burning in their holders on the floor.

“Well we can’t all have four-posters, Morgana.”

She giggles, and kisses him.

They are half way through undressing each other – oh, so you’re a ‘sex on the second date’ kind of girl, then? – when they hear the front door of the house slam.

Merlin bolts upright, listening intently.

“Thought you said your uncle was away?” Morgana asks, softly – she is lying back beneath him, propped up on he elbows. The soft curve of her bare shoulders in the candle light is distracting.

“He’s meant to be!” Merlin replies, “he must have come back early – hang on.”

He slides off the bed in his bare feet and pads over to the stairs that are the entrance to his room. There’s a door a the bottom of the stairs, which he has left ajar – craning his neck allows him to see out onto the landing, and into the hall below. Gaius – and, he realises, with a horrifying lurch, his mother – are beneath him, shrugging off their coats and talking about the bad quality of the roads in their area.

“Oh, he must be in,” Gaius is saying, “there’s his coat all crumpled up as usual – and what has he done to the kitchen? Merlin!”

Behind him, Merlin can hear Morgana spluttering laughter at the ridiculous nature of their predicament.

“Merlin, are you up there?” Gaius demands, as Merlin beats a hasty retreat out of sight, “come down – I brought your mother back for a visit.”

“Um…” Merlin raises his voice loud enough to be heard as he frantically yanks on his shirt – Morgana throws his jeans at him from across the room. She looks as if she’s enjoying this just a tiny bit too much. “I’ll – I’ll be just a minute – ”

“Hurry up, will you? It’s late – and what have you done to my kitchen? It’s a mess, Merlin.”

“Stay here,” Merlin scurries back to Morgana, “Gaius always goes to bed at eleven, mum wont stay up much later – you can leave after that.”

“I’m glad you’re so proud of the fact that you’re sleeping with me, Merlin,” Morgana retorts, coolly.

Merlin flushes, “I’m not – it’s just – Gaius has this rule about – look, please don’t take this the wrong way – I really like you but Gaius is… scary when he’s angry. And also my mother must never know that I have had sex. She’s Catholic. It’s… complicated.”

Morgana snorts, rolls her eyes, but nods, waving him away.

Merlin tumbles downstairs and into the kitchen a minute or so later, doing his best to look pleased rather than terrified. “Mum!”

“Sweetheart,” she – her name is Hunith – sweeps him up, “oh, my god – what is Gaius feeding you? You’ve got even skinnier!”

“I do try to make him eat, Hunith, but he runs around so much…” Gaius waves a hand, from where he’s poking about the dishes in the sink, “Merlin, what have you been doing in here?”

“Oh – I – um – made some macaroni cheese,” Merlin replies.

“Macaroni – how much did you make, exactly?” Gaius waves a pot, as if the very idea of macaroni cheese offends him, “and would it have killed you to clean up a little?”

“I was… um… making some for… later…” Merlin offers, a little lamely.

Gaius flashes him a deeply sceptical look, “well you can tidy this mess up before you go to bed and no mistake.”

“Whose coat is that?” Hunith asks, abruptly.

And Merlin balks, because there’s Morgana’s expensive designer denim jacket over the back of one of the chairs – quite obviously a girl’s, quite obviously out of place.

“Oh – I – um…” Merlin’s head promptly goes completely blank.

“Have you had someone over?” Gaius glares at him, “you know how I feel about large gatherings of today’s youth on my property, Merlin.”

“It wasn’t – a – a large gathering – it was just – ”

“Me,” Morgana suddenly appears in the door way, “it was just me. Merlin made me dinner. But I was about to go anyway.”

She looks, bless her, absolutely immaculate. Not one hair out of place, not one piece of clothing wrinkled, not a single thing to suggest that Merlin had his hands down her knickers barely ten minutes previously.

“Oh,” Hunith stands up. She looks… pleased? “oh, well, aren’t you lovely? And you weren’t going to introduce us to your… um – your friend, Merlin?”

“Um…” Merlin glances from his mother to Morgana and back again. He can feel his ears beginning to burn – is aware that he’s blushing like a fool. “Mum, this is Morgana. Morgana – my mum. And my great uncle, Gaius.”

“Nice to meet you both,” Morgana’s smile is brilliantly warm and fiendishly innocent. Merlin catches the mischievous glint in her eye but suspects that neither his uncle nor his mother will know her well enough to see it themselves.

“Very nice,” Hunith agrees. She still seems bizarrely enthused by the entire scenario, “and how long have you two… known each other?”

“A few months,” Morgana replies, “Merlin’s very sweet to me.”

“But of course he is!” Hunith cries, “I raised a gentleman, didn’t I, Merlin?”

“Mum…” Merlin suspects that if his face gets any hotter his eyes are going to melt.

“But don’t feel you have to go on our account!” Hunith adds, ignoring her son, “please – come in – Gaius was about to make some tea – ”

“I have to be up early tomorrow,” Morgana interrupts her, her tone finely balanced between an apology and a refusal, “I really was about to leave. But it’s nice to meet you.”

“And you dear, and you,” Hunith agrees.

“I’ll – I’ll walk you to your car,” Merlin hurries past his mother to follow Morgana out.

Morgana giggles into his shoulder once they’ve closed the front door. “Sorry.”

“No – no – it’s… fine…”

“Your face…” she leans against him for a moment, “oh, Merlin, you’re mum’s lovely.”

“She did take that alarmingly well,” Merlin frowns for a moment. “I hope Gaius hasn’t been slipping her anti-depressants again. He does that sometimes – it doesn’t seem right…”

“…your family may be a bit weirder than mine,” Morgana informs him, as they begin to walk to her car. “Which is saying something, considering.”

She pulls him closer and kisses him before getting in – she tastes like cheap wine and smells like the sex they didn’t quite get to have.

“You’re coming round tomorrow, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Be early.”

“Obviously.”

She flashes him a brilliant smile as she drives past and Merlin feels something odd happen to his stomach. He stays on the side of the pavement for a moment, grinning after her car. And then he realises that in all likelihood his mother and Gaius can see him from the kitchen window and decides to go back inside.

It turns out, she’s left her digital camera behind in his room – when he goes up after enduring an hour of questioning from his still oddly-enthused mother and deeply suspicious uncle. She’s stuck a post-it not to the screen:

Turn me on.

A little smiley face next to her distinctive cursive. Merlin senses some typically Morgana-ish mischief afoot, and sits down on the edge of the bed to do as instructed.

The camera is set to display previously taken images as soon as it powers up – and it takes Merlin a moment to realise that what she’s done is leave photos of her semi-clothed self on the memory card. In the five minutes or so between him leaving her in his bedroom and her joining him in the kitchen, she’s photographed every inch of her exposed flesh – her breasts, her abdomen, her parted thighs and what’s between them…

The shots are all a little shadowy, one or two a bit blurred – though that somehow adds to the tantalising, secretive, intimate nature of them. You’d never find something like this on a porn site – nothing false or plastic or photoshoped about them. This is Morgana, showing him her body, just for him, just for her. It should be vulgar, except that it’s… really not. It’s hot – but it’s also kind of beautiful.

He licks his lips, then slides to down to lie on the bed in the position she must have been in to take these photos – in her place, recognising (or perhaps only imagining) faint traces of her perfume still on his bed-sheets. She’s so… she’s just so… he touches a tentative finger tip to the screen of the camera, tracing the outline of her shape with a nail.

“You are the best thing that has ever, ever happened to me,” he tells her picture – and then, embarrassed, he quickly turns the camera off.

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Part three here.