Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me, I'm just borrowing, as you all very well know.

A/N: Something I kinda... came up with, because this one sentence got stuck in my head irrevocably and never seems to fit into my Merlin-fanfic, so I wrote this one-shot – which, of course, didn't went the way I planned it, but writing about Gwaine never is wrong.

Anyone else out there watching The Night Shift because Eoin Macken's in it?!

I got the "loyal trees" from "The Rules of Camelot" by SisterOfAnElvenWannabe. If you haven't checked it out yet, go and do so!

Hope you enjoy, one way or another, and as always, let me know what you think :D

Smart

Merlin sharply sucked in his breath when Gwaine carefully examined his wounded side: "Ouch!"

"Don't be such a baby, Merlin", the knight murmured absent-mindedly, though the warlock could hear he was concerned as well as more than just a bit angry at his friend.

In hindsight, Merlin knew he had been foolish. He should've know much better by now, and he was used to being secretive and careful about his powers. The warlock knew exactly how to behave so that no one would go after him: first by acting innocently, not posing a threat, and then getting rid of enemies from behind by the use of convenient branches or stones or a spear apparently thrown amiss, but when he got carried away in a battle (happening too often, as Gaius kept saying), he was really bad at looking out for himself instead of his King.

But this time he had had to act fast or otherwise Arthur would've been run through by this enormous bandit with a toothless grin (in which still far too many teeth were visible... and yes, that was possible), so he had used his own body to canon into dollophead and knock him out of the way. He might have slowed time down a bit (though by now he was not sure any more), and it had worked perfectly.

Well, for Arthur, at least, but Merlin had been hit by the giant's sword (which was pretty big, too, which hadn't surprised him, really). He was pretty sure it was nothing too serious, but it hurt, and it bled, and Arthur had managed to get himself unconscious by tripping over a tree root (apparently not all of Camelot's trees were loyal), and so the only person left to have a look at him was Gwaine.

Merlin suspected that Gwaine knew something about him. In all the years he had been manservant for Arthur, the King had never come so close to guessing and behaving suspicious as Gwaine had. Merlin often found the knight staring at him after a branch had fallen out of the sky from nowhere, or when yet another supposedly dangerous enemy was beaten without so much as a bead of sweat trickling down Arthur's brow.

Another sharp pain spread through Merlin's body and he flinched again: "You sure would make a good physician, Gwaine", the warlock hissed through gritted teeth.

He felt Gwaine pause for a moment before resuming his needle work: "Nah", the knight answered, "that wouldn't be fun at all. Look at Gaius – he's always behaving so wise. That simply isn't my way of doing things."

While the knight was well-known mostly for drinking mead, bedding women and chewing apples, Merlin knew that people didn't give him enough credit.

Gwaine could be rather smart, if he wanted to, and when he cared to admit it. And he had always been smart about Merlin.