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.

“You don’t appreciate my natural-born talent,” Arthur said mournfully. “I suppose I will just have to remind you of how spectacular I really am.”

In which Arthur tries his hardest to make Merlin scream, and Merlin tries his hardest to make Arthur realize that he is, in fact, a giant princely prat.

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

This time, Arthur has a secret.

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.

"He predates S.H.I.E.L.D. Everything we know about him are stories of legends."

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.

In which an argument about Dickens leads to a Twitter scandal, broken bones, midnight conversations, and transatlantic longing.

(Or, an AU with Arthur and Merlin as moderately famous authors.)

By the time he had teamed up with the one that looked like a very young Tristan, and the one that looked like Bedevere, if Bedevere had been a changeling, or, at least, vaguely fey, he still had not found Merlin.

"Ah! I was right! You weren't doing it correctly. No wonder it hurt, you idiot."

"Shut it. Oil isn't going to make anything smaller and it isn't going to make anything bigger!"

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.

Arthur absolutely cannot stand anything about the housekeeper's son. Especially when Gwaine starts to take notice.

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.

The cardinal rule of being a wedding planner is not falling in love with the bride or groom. Arthur's never had trouble with that rule.

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.

Arthur sees a vision of himself and Merlin married and happy, but they can barely stand each other. They both start doing everything they can to avoid it happening.

Arthur doesn't care much about the popular radio program Dragon's Lonely Hearts until his ex-girlfriend calls in to slag him off and get advice. When he calls in and has an on-air argument with the host, it starts off more than he expected, including meddling friends, overinvolved fans, and maybe love.

Arthur knows exactly where they are, even with the snow landing fast and thick around them. He knows the woods they’re in better than anyone in the kingdom, recognises every laden bough as he would a brother, and all Merlin’s talk about being lost is just wasted air. Arthur could never be lost in Camelot, not on these lands he’s ranged over since boyhood, this soil he’s fought and lost and bled for.

“...where we’re going, Arthur,” Merlin is saying, and Arthur turns to him with a sigh, because apparently ignoring Merlin isn’t going to make him stop talking. “We’ve passed that stump four times now.”

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

After pining for longer than he'd care to admit, Arthur asks Merlin out and gets more than he expected.

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.

What he actually walks in on is his sister, stark naked, blowing his boyfriend, who is wearing white lacy knickers.

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 Merlin's tech support at work.

Arthur is a BNF and Merlin is his prized beta.

"You're being annoying, so no, I'd have to say this seems perfectly normal."

"I'm sending you to Ealdor. Make Camelot proud." With that the King turned and left his son standing dumbfounded in the armory, grasping for words.

"You shall be king for a year and a day," she said, putting a cool finger on his lips.

Arthur frowned. "You're... the spirit of my father." Uther nodded.

Obviously, it was not just any sort of egg.

The original plan had been, in fact, to honeymoon in Spain.

The throw-in begins play at the start of the game, after each goal, and after the ball goes out of bounds.

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.

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

"Merlin," it read in a very familiar and stern manner. "Stop defacing this book."

Pustilius is an idiot, but Arthur's seen him fight and he's dangerous. Of course, this is Merlin; Pustilius doesn't *need* to be dangerous. He can just be competent. Hell, he can *sit on Merlin* and end the match in slow, undignified suffocation.

"I didn't know for sure until Ealdor. Your friend Will would've turned me into a toad ten times over if he'd had a drop of magic in him."

Of all the many things Merlin had ever worried about getting arrested for, despoiling the king's ward hadn't been one of them.

"King Taranis is dead."

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 there is a quest, a test, and maybe some kissing.

But legend also speaks of the scabbard, woven out of the very fabric of magic. Protecting the sword and its bearer from all harm. A man who bore the scabbard would not bleed from his wounds and no strike could kill him.

"Arthur wants you to pretend to be him so that he doesn’t have to get married to Princess Helena?"

"I left my key, and Gaius won't let me in."

It was the fifth in as many nights and each one had been more elaborate than the last. Camelot was playing host to several powerful barons from the borders of the kingdom and King Uther seemed determined to awe and impress them with Camelot's wealth and might by any means, including killing them with partying."

Merlin learns to fly. (Literally.)

In the not so distant future, Merlin builds a tower. That's not suspicious at all.

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!'

The king has been ever more obsessed since Merlin. Searching through the surrounding villages, posting guards at the castle gates to check anyone who enters. The executioner has been kept busy these last few months.

Through careful observation and pattern-spotting of which he felt Gaius would have been very proud, Merlin had concluded that Arthur was in fact a selective prat, and predicting the worst fits of prattery was no more difficult than looking out of the window and predicting rain based on the presence of charcoal clouds."

Arthur is mostly confused about what happened with the Black Knight. Thank goodness Merlin is there to help him understand. Well, understand most of it.

It was true that Merlin was kind of a miserable excuse for a servant, but Arthur was beginning to suspect that something more than his usual incompetence was going on.

"To my great-nephew Arthur I bequeath Tintagel Distribution, wholly and without reserve, save for one condition. You must marry, and stay married, for a period of no less than six months."

Merlin was attempting to flirt. He had never really had the chance to learn the subtleties of this strangely difficult art in Ealdor. Yet, however little practice he’d had, Merlin was smart enough to understand that it was all going very, very badly.

Four Ways Merlin is a Crap Servant and One Way He Isn’t. Oh, Who Are We Kidding. Five. Five Ways.

Merlin looked her in the eye – rare enough, for the man who shares her husband’s bed – and told her he’d no idea what was coming, but that they had all better be more prepared than they were.

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's mouth opened and shut a few times, no sound coming out. He replayed the conversation in his head, trying to work out what on earth Arthur thought was going on. If the entire Belton family had burst into the room naked and dancing a jig, he couldn't have been more confused.

The castle is sweltering in the midsummer heat, stones breathing damply under the sun's height when even the air lies still. Training and necessary drill is a thing for the morning, to be endured; now at last the armor has been discarded, and Arthur's flung himself naked over the crushed red expanse of his coverlet, his hair untidy against the crimson and his back sticking to the wool beneath him.

Arthur was surrounded, fighting off three attackers at a time, but he couldn't battle them all. Merlin ran towards him, but he wasn't fast enough, and an axe glinted in the sunlight before bearing down on Arthur, death certain in a matter of moments--

Merlin was no expert, but the minstrel troupe's performance in the courtyard seemed to be going fairly well until the dragon landed on the roof of the Great Hall.

Arthur gritted his teeth and drew his sword back. He was waiting for Merlin to throw him back with magic, or vanish, or choke him like the others even as he swung the blade back down.

He doesn't mean to the first time. Truly. It was an honest mistake.

Closing his eyes, Merlin sucked in a breath. "Kill me, Arthur," he said.

It would have been all right if it had only been the one time. Merlin could appreciate that people celebrated near-death experiences differently. Merlin slept; Arthur shagged.

"If I confess to sorcery, will you let me sleep in the dungeons? They're very cool, or so I've heard."

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