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When the doors to his chambers swung open without any kind of warning, Leon looked up expecting to see Arthur, since he and the king were the only ones that weren’t required to knock on his door outside of an emergency. The warning bells were definitely not ringing and the king was definitely not in a condition to be surprising anyone with a visit.
Expecting to see Arthur made sense.
What he wasn’t expecting to see was Gwaine sauntering in like he owned the damn place. Leon stared, mouth falling open slightly at the sheer impertinence while the other man closed the doors behind him and then crossed the floor, only to stop and lean forward, resting his forearms on the flat surface of Leon’s desk.
“I think Lancelot knows about the magic.” He said in a conspiratorial whisper.
Leon dropped head into his arms. It was official. Nowhere was safe anymore. Not even his own chambers. “Go away.” He groaned, already feeling a headache coming on. “Please, I’m begging you. Just leave me alone.”
He was ignored.
“Don’t be like that Leon.” Gwaine said. Leon immediately decided that the cheerfulness in his voice was the most irritating sound he’d ever heard. He lifted his head just enough to see his treason partner watching him earnestly. “We need to be on top of this thing.”
“I don’t want to be on top of it.” He said flatly, giving the other knight a dirty look. “I don’t want anything to do with it. The less I know, the better. And the less I see you, the happier I am.”
“Rude.”
He sat up straighter with some reluctance, leaning back into his chair to create more distance between the two of them. He shrugged nonchalantly, moving his stack of finished reports closer to his person. With his luck, Gwaine would smudge them somehow and he'd have to start over. “Accurate.”
Gwaine made a face.
Leon sighed. “Look, I’ve accepted Merlin has magic and you know I’m not going to turn him in. But you don’t need to pester me about it all the damn time. I don’t want to know any details.”
Knowing Merlin had magic and keeping it a secret was one thing. Talking about it was another. And Leon really didn’t want to talk about it.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter what you want sometimes.” Gwaine said simply, though there was a slightly harder edge to his voice. “You do know and I know and now it looks like somebody else knows. And Lancelot is not the criminal type that we are. He’ll definitely tell Arthur unless we convince him not to.”
“You’d be surprised what Lancelot can do.” Leon said with some annoyance, thinking back to the forged seal of nobility the man had used the first time he’d tried to become a knight. He snorted, shaking his head. Yeah, Lancelot definitely wasn’t above bending some rules to get what he wanted. And Leon didn’t doubt for a second that he’d bend a few more in order to protect a friend.
Which Merlin most certainly was.
But if Gwaine wanted to stress himself out needlessly, then so be it. It wasn’t like he listened to anyone except himself. He was the self-proclaimed dictator of their “partnership”, after all.
“We should still talk to him.” Gwaine insisted stubbornly.
“And then what? Are you proposing we start a club?” Leon asked drily. “Have weekly get-togethers at the Rising Sun?”
Gwaine’s face lit up immediately. “We could call it Treason Tuesday.”
“Oh yeah, that’ll definitely keep everyone’s heads on their shoulders.” Leon rolled his eyes, beyond exasperated at this point. “Nothing screams ‘I’m not breaking the law!’ quite like Treason Tuesday.”
“Support groups are the way of the future, Leon –“
“Would you get out of here?” He interrupted irritably. “I’m busy, I’m not in the mood for this, and you didn’t even bother to knock.”
For the love of Camelot. A man had a right to his privacy and doors were invented for a reason, dammit!
Gwaine stared at him for a long second, an annoyed expression replacing the humor on his face. “Fine.” He said snippily, turning on his heel to leave. Leon watched, bemused, as the other man pulled the door open and left, closing it harshly behind him.
It was blissfully quiet once again. Leon waited a few tense seconds before breathing a soft sigh of relief. It was rare that he actually got his way in this particular matter.
Smiling to himself, he picked up his quill, for once thrilled that there were so many reports to occupy his time and thoughts with. Reports about men, provisions, recent patrols, and status of new knights and nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with magic whatsoever.
He dipped the quill in his inkwell, thinking that he’d finish this report on Sir Taylor before maybe calling for an early dinner to be brought.
Leon had just pressed the quill to the piece of parchment when an obnoxiously loud banging on his doors made him jerk in surprise. His hand accidentally knocked the inkwell over.
Right on his stack of finished reports.
He stared at them with disbelief, watching the ink quickly obscure his neat handwriting and soak into the pages.
Hours of hard work. Ruined.
The doors to his rooms opened once again and he looked up furiously to see Gwaine poking his head in.
“I have something to tell you.”
“Get the hell out of here!”