This is a little bit of Merthur AU I wrote last night, having just read shitloads of fluff and needing to get some out of my system. Lacrima's prompt for me (albeit a half-arsed one) was "penis". So I took a synonym, "doodle", and turned that into the theme for this ficlet. But there are some references to penises, don't worry.
It's very year 12-centric as that's the predicament I've lately landed in, and there's a fair bit of assumed knowledge. Sorry! :)

WARNING: This gets far too silly.

Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin or Arthur and their gang... the BBC do. And we love them for it!

Doodles

Merlin squinted at the near-blank page before him. He could have SWORN that he'd written something constructive. His English teacher had been droning on for a whole period now, but as the bell went for the next half of the double, he realised that he really hadn't absorbed anything. His page consisted of the heading "BELONGING – THE CRUCIBLE" with the "T" going up in flames and the "O" extending downwards into a little Puritan woman, and the date. "Bugger," he muttered to himself.

"What's up?" asked his friend Arthur, leaning over from next to him.

"It's been forty minutes already, and I've written fuck all."

Arthur smirked. Wordlessly, he picked up his pen, which had previously been resting on his own book, barren except for the brief note to self to google some of the dates that their teacher had offered up for Puritans arriving in America. He shifted Merlin's book from out under his grasp and began to draw on it.

A picture began to take shape. Arthur was surprisingly handy with the pen. He depicted Senator McCarthy standing cackling next to a burning stake, with the caption "Arthur Miller loses another battle".

Picking up his pen, Merlin wrote "Another? What was the first one?"

"The salesman died..." Arthur wrote back, "at the stake, probably."

"Because he was a Communist." Merlin added.

They continued drawing in Merlin's book for the rest of the period. The time seemed to pass incredibly quickly.

xxx

Arthur had always berated Merlin for being a copycat and choosing all the same subjects as him, but he secretly thought it had its benefits. For one, he got to see Merlin a lot more than was necessary. And he wasn't sure why that mattered to him so much, but it did. So as they sat in chemistry, side by side, he was studying Merlin's hands as they scribbled the answers to the questions on their latest sheet down into his book. His nails were dirty and his left hand had ink stains all over it from reminders and doodles.

Merlin suddenly looked up. "Hey, Arthur is methane an ionic or covalently bonded molecule? I was thinking ionic, but..."

"You're an idiot!" Arthur snapped. "Methane is CH4, so it's OBVIOUSLY covalent!"

"Oh," Merlin said, eyeing his page like he'd done something terribly wrong somewhere along the way. "How ironic."

"Ha ha," Arthur deadpanned, "that's such a terrible misuse of that word."

"Sorry," Merlin sniped back, "next time I'll consider your preferences before I speak."

Arthur just rolled his eyes. "Why are you even doing chem this year? I SAID you should have dropped it!"

Merlin shrugged. "Maybe I LIKE being in your class."

"So we're constantly bonded."

"Covalently."

They sniggered softly at their own joke.

Merlin caught sight of a flashy magazine a couple of seats down from him. Gwen and Morgana, instead of doing the sheet, were poring over the latest gossip.

"How about Brangelina?" he asked. "Covalent or ionic?"

"Ionic, obviously," Arthur said, "I mean, we don't say 'MonoBrad Mongelina', do we?"

Merlin laughed. "I guess not."

After a short pause, Merlin's eyes lit up like he'd just had another great idea. "What about sex? Covalent or ionic?"

Arthur's face flushed more than it probably should have. "Neither," he settled on, "sex isn't chemistry, it's more... physical. Go ask a physicist."

"Totally," Merlin confirmed, returning to his worksheet, not noticing the very red-faced Arthur run a hand through his hair in confusion.

xxx

Merlin was dismal at chemistry, but at least he enjoyed it. The one subject that just would NOT get off his back, French, always seemed to leave him with a decent mark, even though he spent most lessons doodling in his margins. Arthur hated him for it; he LOVED French, but he never did as well as Merlin.

"Qu'est-ce que tu fais?" Arthur wrote on Merlin's page out of pure boredom.

"What does it look like?" Merlin wrote back.

"It doesn't." Arthur replied.

Merlin smiled at Arthur, and a tightness spread through the latter's chest.

"J'aime faire du baise," Merlin scribbled aimlessly, "et aussi j'aime mon cul et mon pénis. Parce que je suis un homme qui a dix-sept ans et je pense seulement du sexe."

"Dégoûtant," Arthur wrote beneath Merlin's very dirty French sentence. For some reason, though, he wished that it was true. That Merlin liked to have sex, and also liked his arse and his penis. Because he was a seventeen year old boy and only thought about sex, just like Arthur.

As though reading his mind, Merlin added "comme toi." And then he drew a crude penis, as if to hammer his point home.

Arthur frowned. "You're awful," he muttered, elbowing Merlin.

"You love it," Merlin replied with a cheeky grin.

And with a jolt, Arthur realised something that ought to have been blaringly obvious. He DID love it.

xxx

It was clear, from the 3D block letters atop the page in his maths notebook, that Merlin REALLY hated probability. Actually, what the letters said were "FUCK PROBABILITY (preferably up some uncomfortable orifice)", but you know. Same sentiment.

"Hate it THAT much, eh?" Arthur asked from next to him.

"Meh," Merlin said, "I don't mind the more complex stuff, I just hate all this revision crap."

"Tell me about it," Arthur concurred.

They lapsed into silence for a few minutes as their teacher painstakingly explained that putting a bar over the thing inside the brackets was the same as drawing a dash before the brackets; they both indicated the probability of something NOT happening.

"I know how to make this more fun," Arthur whispered suddenly.

He picked up his pen and wrote in Merlin's workbook: "P(Mr. Sloane shutting the hell up) = ?"

Merlin scratched out the question mark and wrote "0%". He then wrote "P`(getting homework) = ?"

Arthur changed the question mark to "4%, unless I finish it in class".

"Not with me distracting you, you won't," Merlin wrote.

Arthur smiled. "P(us ever paying attention in class properly) = ?"

"42%" Merlin wrote. "We do SOMETIMES! P(HSC epic fail) = ?"

"87%, at this rate," Arthur wrote back. "P(doing anything interesting tonight) = ?"

Merlin looked a little confused by this, and for a moment Arthur could have sworn that he smiled. But he mainly looked confused. It was an expression of choice for him. He wrote back "0%".

Before he could pose a new question, Arthur wrote "P(up for coming round to mine instead of doing your homework?) = ?"

Merlin grinned. "100%. P(is that a date?) = ?"

Arthur felt a blush rising in his cheeks, and something else entirely rising in his boxer shorts, but held himself in check, and wrote back "10000000000%".

Now it was Merlin's turn to blush. Almost cautiously, he picked up his pen and wrote "P(a detour to the bathrooms between classes) = ?"

Arthur smiled mischievously. He swapped his biro for a thick permanent marker, and wrote in Merlin's book in large letters one word: "YES."

Enjoy? Leave a review to let me know how you found it! I'd be especially interested in hearing from people who've had to suffer through similar high school situations!

Love,

- Legs