Connecting the dots

The immortal

Of course, the knights weren't always alone on their quests and missions. It wasn't that their little game was a secret from Arthur – but it was from Merlin.

Their headcanons wouldn't really work, if Merlin knew all about them and denied every single one.
(Though it could be said that they wouldn't believe him anyway).
The thing is – Arthur and Merlin were always together. Which was the cause of a lot of their discussions of course. However, it made it hard to involve the king in their Shenanigans.

One night – and god knows why, Merlin seemed so exhausted that he slept the entire night of the hunting trip. Maybe Arthur had asked far too much of him lately.
However, while the knights plus Arthur sat around the fire – just eaten supper and finishing all the chores they had offered Merlin to help with – slowly the boredom filled their minds once more.
Rare – considering Merlin was here. Usually they would just annoy him, when Arthur was around. Or something exciting would happen soon.

"Say, guys. Want to play another round?", Gwaine finally proposed, receiving excited glances in his direction.

"Play what?", Arthur asked, obviously lost.

"Connecting the dots. It's a game we designed to explain all the weird stuff that happens in Camelot.", Leon kindly explained.

"And how does that work?", Arthur asked again. "Should I wake Merlin? I bet he wants to play too."

"NO!", Gwaine exclaimed, almost physically holding the king back. Who in return looked utterly confused.

"We make up random stuff ... like theories, you know? And Merlin is the key to solve our puzzles. We can't tell him. If we do – it takes away our possibilities.", Leon tried to reason.

"Take your possibilities?", Arthur raised an eyebrow.
"Yes!", Gwaine agreed. "He's our cryptid and we are the ones with the conspiracies. You wouldn't talk to a yeti to question whether or not he exists now, would you?"

Arthur seemed to consider this for a second. "But wouldn't you try and search for the Yeti either way?", he asked.

Gwaine sighed and shook his head. "My dear princess, ", he put his arm around Arthur, pulling him a little closer. "Searching is nice – put finding means we can't search anymore and that would be boring as hell."

"Fine, fine. Let go of me.", Arthur pushed him away, noticing faintly how Gwaine swayed.
He was drunk again – great.

"So, Arthur. How about you begin? Tell us something weird you remember Merlin doing."

"You mean – like everything he does?"

"No – something you can hardly explain. Things you're guessing about him.", Leon encouraged further.

"Well – I'm pretty sure I saw him rummaging through Gwen's cupboard once.", he slowly said, knitting his eyebrows in question.

"Yeah no. We've already talked about that part before. Our conclusion is he's either a sorcerer or secretly crossdressing. There is – a debate about whether he could be both but that's besides the point.", Leon waved off, leaving Arthur staring at them.

"Merlin – a sorcerer?"

"I like how you think.", Leon smiled, pointing at Arthur while wiggling his eyebrows at Gwaine. Who groaned.

"You guys do know that I would have to execute Merlin if that turned out to be true.", Arthur said, rage suddenly taking him over. He looked at the sleeping form of his manservant as he felt the betrayal rising within him. "It is against the law and -"