They're paired by their music teacher for their final assessment, a Battle of the Bands-style playoff. Unfortunately, she doesn't know that a bit of high school drama went down at term-break. She doesn't know what this one song she's making them play might mean to both of them.

Merlin was looking for something uncomplicated. Arthur was just looking to get paid. Neither of them expected to find the other.

It might be difficult to seduce someone when you want to climb their boyfriend like a tree. Merlin learns this the hard way when Uther mistakes him for someone who knows how to seduce anyone at all.

“This,” call-me-Gaius thunders, “is Mr. Morgan. He’ll be preparing you for Oxbridge applications, and I trust that you will treat him with the respect he deserves.” He is pointedly looking straight at Arthur as he says it.

Brad meets a Nate on his first day at the new school. It's a beginning.

“The others are running late?” he asks and Brad blinks at him slowly, because he doesn’t think he actually knows this guy. It’s true, he doesn’t remember everyone he has classes with, but he’s pretty damn sure he’d know if he made lunch arrangements.

And while some people simply have no sense of decorum (Ray) or refuse to acknowledge all the hard work Brad puts into seeming as unapproachable as humanly possible (Ray) to save himself from idiots (also Ray), this one looks like he attends Sunday school and says all the thank yous and pleases in the right places.

What he doesn’t look is confused, at least not until Brad stares at him.

Their sophomore year the whole school was suddenly bursting with gossip, the scuttlebutt having Nate caught on a steamy make-out session with Rick Sykes. Rick protested a great deal, maintained he was drunk or stoned or temporarily insane, and then he transferred to another school. Nate laughed when asked, rolled his eyes at the occasional spiteful comment, and then went and joined the cheerleading squad and started volunteering with the homecoming committee.

Few weeks later he dated the homecoming queen for a while and she was gushing about him to everyone who wanted to listen and to a few who didn't.

The entire school quietly wondered what the fuck.

"Bisexuality, look it up," Nate advised Ray earnestly, not a hint of mocking in his voice or on his face, just the helpful smile, like he was ready to lend Ray his dictionary.

He'd been living like this long enough to know what being scared felt like, and yet this wasn't like any of that. Rodney hadn't wanted to know so that he could hurt John or laugh at him or pigeon hole him as the bratty rich boy. He'd wanted to know John, and John knew that if he could keep from running, he might finally be free.

Brad's maybe not the best at handling his feelings, but he's got good biceps.

Brad unexpectedly meets a charming street hustler who insinuates himself into Brad's heart and life. Can Brad get him off the street? Does he want off the street?

Bravo platoon as a fraternity.

A modern day AU that delivers three well-worn tropes (university, strippers, businessmen) for the price of one. Consider this your warning.

>> When Merlin finished his A-levels, financing university by taking his clothes off didn't exactly occur to him. <<

During Tony's senior year at MIT, his partying habit finally hit the edge of his parents' patience. When Howard and Maria cut him off from his usual sources of money, he decides to turn to less conventional ones.

Charles and his BFF Tony Stark have the life - they're co-valedictorians at the most prestigious high school in the city, they have their own condo in Manhattan, and they get to go to all the awesome parties. Charles just wished he understood relationships and sex as well as Tony does. His theoretical bisexuality starts to feel a lot less theoretical when he and Tony end up in Professor Lehnsherr's Physics III course at Columbia University, but Charles' decision to take their relationship further leaves both student and professor with more than they bargained for. Features an enthusiastically-consenting!16-year-old!Charles.

Brad considers it a good sign that when he sits down and says, “I have to hit on you,” the guy’s only response is raised eyebrows. “Sorry. I’d hoped for more creative hazing, but I guess gay chicken appeals to the developmentally stunted.”

Nate spares a thought for his parents down the hall, but there are his sisters' two empty bedrooms, a guest room and a bathroom between them and him; everybody's used to Brad being in Nate's room anyway.

Did everybody else see this but him?

At age fifteen, Steve Rogers had been in love with Tony Stark.

By age twenty, he’d (mostly) gotten over it. And then he promptly became Tony Stark's fuck buddy.

Nate's pretty sure that most Marine Corps recruitment drives don't include lusting after your potential Marine brothers, but it's not Nate's fault.

John Sheppard was on a mission from God.

He was seventeen years old, the starting quarterback on his high school football team, it was T-minus three hours until the first big party of the school year, and his father was going to be away. All. Weekend. Long.

One day Arthur finds a quote scrawled on his desk. His competitive streak forces him to reply.

Arthur's known since he was young that he has a knack for cooking and baking, and beginning culinary school only makes him more certain. But no matter how good he is, it seems Eames is better – which does not endear him to Arthur in the slightest. Eames, however, is quite determined to get Arthur to open up and stop being so uptight and prickly by any means necessary. While each hones his skill in the culinary arts (and Arthur desperately tries to convince Ariadne that the desired structural integrity of her cakes violates basic laws of physics), they increasingly find themselves drawn together, inside the classroom and out. Given such close quarters in the kitchen, and the amount of sensory stimulation involved with preparing all manner of food, it starts to become difficult for Arthur to retain his customary level of distance and detachment. And, as Arthur will find, when it comes to unsatisfied appetites, hunger is often the best sauce of all.

Arthur's one of the bright lights of the conservatory, but he's sharing the stage with a star about to go supernova.

In the midst of a very dull summer, Arthur wheedles his way into a bar and into Eames's pants. Cobb despairs.

Being a freshman piano performance major at a prestigious New England conservatory is difficult enough without landing the school's star baritone as your singer, and inevitably, your hopeless crush.

Eames runs a porn studio, and has a very inconvenient crush on their newest bottom.

Arthur breaks all the rules of American high school films, as though he’s never even heard of John Hughes, and Eames can’t decide if, given the choice, he wouldn’t rather just become Arthur instead of having the chance to be with him.

Traumatized by his experience on Tarsus IV, Jim Kirk runs away to Vulcan to undergo kolinahr.

On a family trip to Las Vegas, a bored Arthur decides it’s time to lose his virginity and Eames, the stranger a few tables over, is the man to help him.

Harvey Specter, second year law student at Harvard, was walking home one night when he found a teenaged runaway named Mike freezing to death on his doorstep.

Arthur found himself staring deeply into Eames' eyes, which were very serious. "Don't worry," Eames assured him, "I'm a level eighty-five ret paladin."

At seventeen, Trevor and Jenny are prototypical high school sweethearts, or they would be, it if wasn’t for Mike. They’ve been dating since the eighth grade, and it’s at the point where they’re firmly “Trevor and Jenny,” and not “Trevor” and “Jenny,” but Mike’s been there for every minute of it. Officially, he’s Trevor’s best friend, and Jenny’s confidante, but in practice, Mike’s so much more than that.

He’s cybered before, obviously (who hasn’t?), but he’s only been on Chatroulette a few times.

Arthur, Merlin, frat brothers, the Dragon, Arthur's BlackBerry, script writing, shitty hip-hop music, Dogma, FATE & DESTINY - oh God I wish I were joking.

Arthur is an Oxford Blue. Merlin is an Oxford cox. Lancelot is Merlin's romantic-dalliance-loving friend. Morgana is horribly clever; Gwen is cleverly waiting for Lancelot to grow up. Merlin and Arthur rub each other the wrong way, at first, but it soon becomes clear that Arthur is a university-class rower with a world-class heart (yes, I typed that). Clichés ensue.

"They take care of the chickens at the farm, don’t you know?" the fox said. "Oh, I see. You must be new." It tilted its head. "Yes. I don’t recall ever meeting a human here who can talk to me before."

Their first attempt at having sex lasts exactly ninety seconds, which is the precise amount of time needed for Merlin to reach behind Arthur's back to try to unhook his nonexistent bra, and for Arthur to smooth his hands over Merlin's chest to palm his nonexistent breasts. The moment of utter confusion is followed immediately by a supremely awkward silence.

James Potter était assis à son bureau et corrigeait des copies. Lorsqu’il arriva à « Lily Evans », il sourit de toutes ses dents, sourire de séducteur qui lui avait permis de tomber tant de filles jusque là et, ne prenant même pas la peine de lire la copie, il y plaça un gros « D » à l’encre rouge (il ne s’en servait que pour les Serpentard). Cette rouquine l’énervait au plus haut point. Voilà un mois qu’elle jouait la Miss je sais tout dans son cours. Si elle croyait se le mettre dans la poche de cette manière là, elle se fourrait le doigt dans l’œil madame la préfète.

Lily, too caught up in her musings of James' room, had not noticed James at all. When Lily finally did look his way she was stunned with how heavily the attraction hit her. She began to wonder what it would be like to kiss him again. That was when the mantra started running through her head: "He's your professor..."

"Yeah! Him! Yeah, the kid, with the--" That same vague wave. "--magic...shit. Anyway, dude! So there're these people, right, on the internet, and they like--write shit. I mean, as in." He leans forward a bit, lowers his voice, "Erotic shit." A dramatic pause. "About the kid."

He knows who the boy is--one James T. Kirk, lauded across the nation for his amazing skill at the trumpet. He goes to Columbia, if Spock recalls correctly, where he double-majors in Music and Jazz Studies and minors in Mechanical Engineering.

"You are in love. Wait, should I put this in something you’ll understand?" Bones clears his throat, stands up taller, and folds his hands behind his back, raising a single eyebrow. "Fascinating, Cadet. It seems you have taken an infatuation to another person of superior status to you in the Academy."

"I think accidentally signing up for a sex change trumps getting caught masturbating." An American-university AU (because that is the sort of university I know!) in which things are inevitable indeed.

There was no green shirt in with the blacks. There were no black shirts in with the greens. There were no shirts in any sort of wrong order. The string of curses that fell from his tongue was hostile and possibly suggestive of violence and might have continued to go on for quite a while longer had someone not elbowed him in the side and said: 'Oi, my mother’s here. Stop cursing like a bloody sailor.

The answer is √π233/hy7. Has been for all three months of the first semester. Jim's not sure why the galaxy's best and brightest haven't realize that, but it's not his school, not his problem.

"I do not care even a little bit. Take Vulcan or go back to Tactics with your tail between your legs, but I've done you enough favors. Leave now."

When he says she got the planet in the divorce, he means it.

Sarek does not always understand his son, but that does not mean he does not love him.

Spock's been played. He doesn't mind too much.

This has been the worst day of Arthur’s life. Arthur shoves Merlin into the lockers as hard as he can, relishes the thud of Merlin’s body against metal and the whoosh of his lost breath. "You little fucking shit," he says.

Merlin thinks his asthma should be downplayed somewhat, it's perfectly controlled (he has set alarms each morning and night to remind him to take his preventer inhaler) and it doesn't stop him doing normal, everyday things (if he's not too energetic or around irritants in the air). After years of his mother coddling him and being over protective about it, Merlin can't help but feel a little freer, fewer pity eyes looking at him when he's being held behind in the playground when the pollen levels are high. Whatever, Merlin thinks, he'll like to be rebellious just this once.

"No! Arthur. You're straight, all right? You're completely and entirely straight. Because if you're anything else, if you're gay or bi or even curious or what the fuck ever, Arthur, you will ruin my entire fucking life."

He changes his mind. "I may have made out with Eames a little bit."

Silence.

"What," Ariadne trails off.

'When does making out a little bit cross over to making out a lot?' Cobb asks vaguely.

A Modern day Merlin AU set at the University of St Andrews, featuring teetotal kickboxers, secret wizards, magnificent bodyguards of various genders, irate fairies, imprisoned dragons, crumbling gothic architecture, arrogant princes, adorable engineering students, stolen gold, magical doorways, attempted assassination, drunken students, shaving foam fights, embarrassing mornings after, The Hammer Dance, duty, responsibility, friendship and true love.

Arthur doesn’t even meet his roommate until two weeks into the semester, at which point the only knowledge he’s gleaned about the guy is that he loves sweets, he doesn’t care about laundry days, and he watches Oprah religiously. The TV is always blaring the show when Arthur comes back from class, anyway.

Freshman classes for years to come will know the legend of Erik Lehnsherr, Alpha Beta Gamma's most notorious president. They'll hear the hushed whispers of the boy who skipped pledge week and got inducted anyway; they'll try to figure out how he planned it, when, why. They'll get drunk on the lawn and tell tales of how he'd crashed the initiation ceremony, a cock-sure freshman with a handle of vodka in him, without even breaking a sweat. They'll talk about Erik like he's some kind of god, and Charles will smile indulgently at them and bite his tongue, too amused to tell them the truth.

"Besides," Eames goes on, "I think we already established that I'm not most kids. I can remind you, if you've forgot." In other words: the boarding school fic you never knew Inception didn't have.

"I actually don't even know your name," Merlin replied.

They stared at each other solemnly for a second, and burst out laughing. Arthur couldn't stop, and kept thinking of all the silly angst and stupidity he had gone through during the past week, and all that time Merlin hadn't even known his name. He laughed and laughed and every time Merlin looked at him they started afresh.

"Oh shit, I'm so glad you're not offended, I was going to be so sneaky and try to figure it out some other way, but it kept not happening and then it was too late for me to ask," Merlin said, wiping his eyes. "I was going to steal your wallet--"

Wherein Arthur And Merlin Are Dating, Save For the Part Where They Aren't. Also There Needs To Be A Girl Version Of "Bromance" But That’s a Discussion For Another Time.

In his rational mind, Rodney knew that following a girl who'd just dumped you into a strip club was really, really pathetic.

But so was going to your little sister's wedding without a date.

Science was his mistress, yes, but it was hardly one Rodney could put into a turquoise mermaid dress and parade around skeptical and shocked family members who had been taking bets on whether Rodney was asexual, gay, or more attracted to theoretical physics than other organic matter.

"James T Kirk," Jim says, and sticks his hands in his pockets because Vulcans don't shake hands, and he's pretty sure his fingers don't bend that way.

It was love at first sight, and Merlin knew it - when it came to the flat, that was. Merlin wasn't anything like as clear about the man he was going to have to live with.

Sure, and what will Uther say when we miss the plane? 'No matter, boys, there's always the next flight, huh?' You'd manage to make it sound like it was entirely my fault, too.

Colin in Bradley meet through a mutual friend, start sending each other cards and end up falling for each other. But it's still all rather complicated (possibly because they keep trying to make it complicated.)

Merlin starts to receive lovely gifts (and less-lovely flowers) from a secret admirer.

Spock will only ever be certain of one thing.