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

Arthur needs a date for Gwen's wedding. The rest is history.

"You want me to – but I'm not a barber!"

Morgause teaches Arthur about himself.

The reason SAS Captain Arthur Pendragon can't keep a communications specialist in Team Excalibur because none of them are good enough. And then Lieutenant Merlin Emrys gets assigned to his squad, and Arthur does everything he can to prove that Merlin isn't good enough, either. Except he is.

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.

It's one week before the wedding and Arthur isn't nervous at all. But that's just the beginning.

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. <<

In which it's 1964, Camelot is an advertising agency with a budget problem, Merlin is a copywriter who loves to twist, and Arthur is a junior partner who loves to shout. More or less.

Being fuckbuddies goes well for an entire semester. Until it doesn't.

Camelot Publishing publishes romance novels, and when Arthur founds a new imprint of gay romance and invites his best friend and pet writer Merlin to write for it, it's a bit too easy to miss the fact that apparently he's living in one.

This was originally posted at the kink meme here for this prompt:

Arthur/Merlin, Arthur/Other

Arthur and Other are in a long distance, unhappy relationship. For whatever reason, Arthur is expect to stay with Other. He meets Merlin and they strike up a fast, emotionally deep, friendship. They often flirt, and have some romantic feelings towards each other. But Arthur and Other have discussed "The Line" which would define cheating on each other: Kissing on the mouth, any touching of private parts and sex.

Merlin goes to visit Arthur for the weekend, at night the end up having a light make out session, but never cross The Line. (kissing/biting necks, playful wrestling, frottage, whatever) On the last night together after an intense session they end up with their mouths barely touching, whispering to each other, but still maintaining The Line. They both want it so badly but they know how guilty they would feel if they crossed The Line.

In which there is pining, Merlin bakes, Arthur borrows batteries he doesn't actually need, and did I mention the pining?

Merlin's addicted to Craigslist, Arthur's looking for love in all the wrong places, and with a little help from their friends, they manage to get it together.

Wherein Mike is Merlin reincarnated, Harvey is Arthur, everybody else is everybody else, and they fall in love. Again.

When Police Sergeant Lance Dulac begins to investigate a crime in the small Welsh village of Camelot, it stirs up decades of secrets.

Canon AU -- Merlin's death is only the beginning; with no-one to protect the kingdom, Camelot falls to an enemy sorcerer and Arthur is forced to serve in the court that he once ruled. When an escape attempt goes horribly wrong, Arthur is rescued by someone he never expected to see again -- and it's their destiny to put things right.

The new Muggle Prime Minister meets the Minister for Magic.

Arthur stares at him. It's not the incredulous stare or the how-are-you-so-stupid stare or the Merlin,-sometimes-you-are-wise-and-it-unnerves-me stare.

It might, possibly, be the speak-quickly-or-I-will-kill-you stare.

They're both less innocent than they were a thousand years ago; less trusting, more broken. This time, Merlin is the one who gets called on his behaviour – and it's true, he thinks ruefully, he'd stopped bothering to learn the names of those around him long ago – and Arthur is the one who refuses to leave anyone behind. This time, Merlin is the one saying words like "idiot" and "moron," and Arthur has the stupid ears.

"What I'm thinking," Arthur says, dodging the crochet question with a small pinch to Merlin's side, "is that you need to let him catch you the way you caught him. See how he feels watching you shag some other man. Then when he confronts you, call him a hypocrite, tell him you'd never have done it if he hadn't first, and finish it off with a well-deserved fuck-you."

Arthur is a BNF and Merlin is his prized beta.

In fact, had they not passed a sniggering stable boy on their way out of the gate, Merlin might have even considered it a good day.

In which Prince Arthur meets Merlin and all hell breaks lose.

Merlin meets Morgana Le Fay at a support group for People With Freaky Unnatural Powers. Alright, it’s not technically called that, but it might as well be.

"King Taranis is dead."

In which Merlin is the most harangued PA in Westminister, Arthur is on the back of the backbench, Uther harasses Merlin (though the Queen never does), Morgana is very clever, and the datebook will take its revenge.

Merlin learns to fly. (Literally.)

He only meant to complain; you didn't take serving girls on hunting trips, and the alternative interpretation didn't even occur to him until Merlin said indignantly, 'I'm not going to do that!'

Because, really, why wouldn’t the slash dragon’s fire create a slash sword?

Or, How in his tenth year of rule King Arthur chose a man to take the role of Court's Magician, and how Arthur made his decision.

In retrospect, Arthur really should have known. How could he have been so oblivious? It wasn't as if Merlin was being even the least bit subtle about it. Arthur knew Merlin was born with less than a thimble's worth of tact, but this was just ridiculous. Arthur was ashamed of how long it had taken him to work it out. The only good news was that it seemed the rest of the castle had yet to work it out themselves. Arthur could hardly blame them for their ignorance, however, considering it had taken Arthur this long to work it out himself, and he was possessed of a vastly superior intellect inherent in his status at birth. And, after all, if everyone else in the castle had a mad crush on Arthur, it was no wonder they'd missed the fact that Merlin did, too.

Merlin’s not quite sure how this game started, but he can see exactly where it’s going.

Arthur's yowl of pain was followed rapidly by an attempt to peel the soiled, Armani shirt away from his chest before it burned itself into his skin. "You…You idiot!" he roared, frantically checking his Excalibur to make sure it had miraculously survived the moron's bumbling thoughtlessness.

When Merlin woke the next morning, he spent a good ten minutes staring at the canopy, trying to convince himself he didn't remember where he was and didn't remember exactly what he was doing there and how many times he had done it.

Here's what they know: they did not have sex. But no one will ever believe it.

Arthur is a rich business man - Merlin is the down-on-his-luck hooker he picks up almost by accident one night. Things Happen Between Them - and not just the things Arthur paid for.

Gaius taught you magic was something you learned, like an art. Nimueh taught you magic was a gift, something unknowable. If they were alive today, neither could explain how you never got old. How you can’t die.

Lancelot changes things for everyone.

The parking lot behind Camelot looked safe and ordinary again in the midday sun, just genre:cracked asphalt and a couple of beat-up old cars.

He never says it, and Merlin knows this, which is why it means a lot when Arthur says thank you; almost as much as the look he gives Merlin at the same time, something unfamiliar, uncomfortable, something that lasts a little too long.

The first time Lt Arthur Pendragon properly met A1C Merlin Emrys, he was doing push-ups on the floor of the Fort Campbell weather station.

Lancelot was not a great man, sprung as he was from common blood and barely proven. It was not for him to cut away that magic, steal for himself a little piece of a power that could render Albion mighty. It was neither right, nor his right.

In his first trip to Cardiff in over two centuries Merlin was hit by the undeniable sense of Arthur having been reborn nearly as soon as he stepped off the train from London.

It hadn't been Nimueh's destiny to die at his hand, on this isle. And if her destiny could be broken… so could anyone's.

Eight children – all under the age of thirteen – had disappeared from Camelot in the past six weeks. This little girl had been the first one recovered – dead and barely three years old.

"How long do you think it will be, before Uther learns the truth and both your lives are forfeit? Come with me and he will keep his life. By all the ancient gods I swear it."

"You know how some animals can only – they’re only fertile at certain times, and at those times they get very - they have to –"

You see, there were parties. And Arthur liked parties. Merlin, on the other hand, did not like parties. Parties meant about a hundred different people in a crowded room with many, many ways of trying to kill Arthur. And that was not something he particularly wanted them to do. The other thing that happened at parties was lots and lots of drinking.

"And you've been in love with Morgana since before I arrived and you still manage to do your job, so I thought you might have some advice."

As much as Merlin despised the idea of being forced into carrying out a destiny (generally), and having that destiny involve Arthur (specifically), he still secretly thought that being able to consider The Last Dragon a chatting partner was pretty wickedly cool.

There’s a photograph of Arthur throwing his copy of Superman onto the bonfire; headlines screaming 'Ten Thousand Comic Books Burned,' news cuttings pasted into albums his father won’t look at but is proud of nonetheless.

There are very few moments when Merlin feels that perhaps the Dragon is not wrong. Moments like when he holds a goblet to his lips and feels the warm wine slide down his throat, leaving a path of sheer ice behind it. Before that moment, Merlin had never tasted poison. He also never tasted the surety that his life was worth less than another’s, and the warmth in knowing that if and when he died here, with his body destroying itself through a tainted drink, that he was in some twisted sense glad that he could die for Arthur.

"It figures that even as a dog, you’d be a prat."

Arthur had been taught right from wrong and this, this was wrong!

"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."

As it turns out, the "citizen" is one Merlin Emrys, a former Lance Corporal for the Independents and a wanted criminal.

What the fuck, Merlin thought in utter shock, staring at Uther--Uther--across a rich mahogany desk in rural Suffolk, fate was like a bad Hollywood remake, then?

So what's a Christian ghost dragon doing under a hill in Glywysing?

Merlin was getting out of hand. Or rather, the people around Merlin were getting out of hand, and Arthur wondered how much his reputation as a benevolent king would suffer if he ended up decking everybody who dared to impose themselves on his -- well, Camelot's resident sorcerer.

Arthur doesn’t have an exceptional rebirth, nor does he live an exceptional life, but it is one free from expectations. Arthur does not marry Gwen, no one betrays him and he lives longer than he ever could have as king. There are no great wars, no disasters, no pain; just a vegetable garden, two cows, and William.

His work is done. There will come a day, a millennium hence, when the greatest evil will walk the earth. Then shall Pendragon rise, and only then.

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 sorceress has a destiny that must be fulfilled. She shall return. She will be called Nyneve, and she will be given another chance. Are we in agreement?"

"By the time they finally crashed together it could’ve been either of them. It didn’t matter, because whoever started it was unimportant."

In which there are aerialists, decorative metal flowers, prejudices, artsy books and magic. Obviously.

King Arthur meets his new manservant, a 16-year-old boy named Merlin.

Wherein Arthur is not the rich boss, and Merlin is not the assistant.

Arthur and Morgana are Metropolitan police officers drawn into a strange case involving robbery of ancient artifacts. Merlin is a graduate student at Imperial College studying the healing plants of Ancient Britain under Gaius – or at least that's what he tells everyone. Soon they, along with Gwen, Lancelot and Uther, will be facing a battle for the future of the country. Can they defend the realm from those who would seek to destroy it?

Uther fears his son's power, and Merlin has helped Arthur flee to escape imprisonment. Now the two of them must fight to regain Arthur's rightful place in Camelot.

When Merlin first hears that Arthur has been betrothed, his ribs pull inwards with an odd little hitch, and he only allows himself a second—which he needs in order to coordinate spinning in place without falling on his face—before he’s running to Arthur’s chambers.

Arthur comes back as Barack Obama. YES. I WENT THERE.

Merlin was raised by Druids, and Arthur pokes things with sticks.

One time they get re-born as brothers.

It was just after midnight on a Sunday in June. Merlin’s life was about to change forever, but he didn’t know it yet.

He vaguely remembered Merlin not having a visa when he started- something about his grandparents and parents being citizens. Which made Merlin a citizen. And if Arthur were to get his papers some other way—say, by marrying a citizen—he’d be able to stay in the country and keep the company out of Valiant’s grubby little hands.

1928, Cairo. Merlin Emrys is a special librarian and aspiring archaeologist. One day his brother, Will, brings him a new find of his: it could lead them to the fabled city of Amunhaptra, resting place of the pharaohs, and to some unforeseen adventures.

This is the punishment Arthur devised for him, he realizes; betrayal and disloyalty repaid with unforgiving, implacable forgetfulness.

They kissed like it was no surprise; like it had been leading up to this all along, like taking one step forward and two steps back was an intricate dance and not the end of their relationship, like they were always going to end up with their hands clasped when the music stopped.