Chapter Text
Mrs. Aftby was really the one to blame. Being the mother of Merlin, she was well aware of technology and what it could do for the world. With that in mind, she went out one fine spring day and bought herself a shiny new iPhone 6. And because she was Merlin’s mother, she promptly took it to him and had him do all sorts of fun and illegal things to it. Now armed with a selfie-snapping taser that could also utilize almost any wifi network (public or private), as well as crack the doors in hotels that used keycards, Mrs. Aftby put it into use.
It began with Guinevere (as these things often did). The knights had gathered around the table, some in person and some via hologram from wherever they were. In the middle of Merlin giving the rundown on some mission or another, Guinevere’s phone chirped. He looked aghast and scrambled to turn it off, enduring Arthur’s mostly disapproving glare and the other knights’ expressions, ranging from Percival’s slight bemusement to Gawain’s outright anger at being interrupted.
And then Guinevere choked so loudly, that the agents physically present, Merlin included, rose to give him a hand. Eggsy looked wide eyed at Merlin, turned an interesting shade of scarlet, and fled the room with a muttered excuse in what Roxy later determined was a mixture of Romani and Portuguese laced with East End slang. The knights looked to their tech genius, who stared after Eggsy’s retreating form with a look of utter confusion on his face. Then his own phone chirped.
Merlin checked it, blinked a few times, and then shot the rest of the table a terrified glare.
Arthur pressed a few buttons on his own clipboard iPad, and the feed from Merlin’s glasses displayed on the holoscreen behind him, as well as on the various screen the non-present knights were looking at. Merlin let out a strangled noise and shoved his phone in his pocket to prevent whatever it was displaying from being seen, but the damage was done. The image burned into the retinas of the entire knight cohort and there was silence.
Then Roxy lost it.
For frozen on the screen behind Merlin’s head was the image from his own glasses feed, perfectly timed to show the Snapchat image he’d received from his dear, sweet mother.
She’d sent him a snapchat of himself. Nude. Asleep next to him was an also very clearly nude Harry Hart (although his face was turned from the camera, the knights knew that shock of curly hair anywhere). Merlin had hair as well, and was in the middle of attempting to both cover himself up and flee the bed that he had been laying in. A look of nearly blurry shock covered his face and one hand was thrown out to the photographer as if to stop them. The photo was clearly an older shot, if the hair and youthful face wasn’t enough of a tell. Certainly the clunky brick of a cell phone resting on the nightstand by the bed was a dead giveaway.
But despite the holoscreen’s contents, what had set Roxy off was not the image itself. No, it was the caption that “Rsmry_Aftby1934” had sent “XxXMeRLiNXxX” accompanying the snap:
my baby boy and his 1st hunnypot! [heart] [heart] [baby face] [okay hand]
Merlin snapped his clipboard in half while Arthur simply looked at the image and said calmly, “I wondered why your mother took that photo. Lovely evening, if I recall.”
He sipped his tea and motioned for Merlin to continue the meeting, Roxy’s tears and snorting notwithstanding. Merlin’s reddened face and destroyed clipboard made for the second of many snaps that began to circulate Kingsman HQ after that.
(And though much strife was caused by that second snap, it was not Roxy who took it. Percival, devious bastard that he was, took it to send to James. The bellowing laughter that resulted was reported to have been heard as far away as the outdoor firing range.)
Merlin was not amused.