5 Men Who Loved Merlin Before Arthur, and 1 Who Loved Him After

1. Will

Will had been a troublemaker in his youth. The misfortunes of his father gave his heart a bitterness for authority, and the lack of a strong force of discipline in his life save his mother put mischief in his blood. He sent the flimsy wooden stalls used to sell the wares of the villagers who disdained him for his carefree nature collapsing in showers of flying fruit or fluttering cloth. He opened animal pens and laughed as their owners chased their livestock around the fields, cursing anyone and anything that came to mind. He started fights in the street between big, beefy thugs who passed through town, bullying all in their path, with a few well aimed pebbles, grinning in delight as they stupidly beat each other black and blue.

Merlin had always been a willing accomplice in this. Without a father of his own he sympathized with Will's situation, and his own misfortunes of being shunned for the odd things that happened around him bonded the two boys as companion outcasts. They were fast friends from the very beginning, two lonely boys whom the world had afforded no love and in turn afforded no love for the world. Merlin was his best friend, and for the longest time Will convinced himself the only friend he would ever need.

He had learned about Merlin's magic at a young age. He had always known Merlin was odd, that strange occurrences abounded wherever he walked, but he had never thought his closest companion could be a sorcerer. When knights came riding through their town Will shunned them, ignoring them completely or else glaring savagely from a distance. Merlin however always feared them, and nothing could persuade him to come and watch a procession of them. Will never suspected why. Then, when they were thirteen years old, a bitter, elderly man of the village had set his vicious dog on them when he caught them at their fun. Will had immediately taken flight, but Merlin had tripped on a stone in his path. Will watched, helpless, as Merlin crouched on the ground, scuttling backwards as best he could while the growling beast advanced on him. Then, to Will's complete surprise, his friend's eyes had glowed gold, and suddenly the dog was flying backwards, tumbling end over end far from its prey. When Merlin had gotten to his feet he had met Will's shocked expression with a miserable, fearful one of his own, and had made a break for the woods before Will could find his voice.

Will had found him some hours later, in the darkening twilight, sheltering under a tree from the light rain that had begun to fall.

"Merlin?" he whispered, startling his friend into looking up. Tears streaked the boy's face, and Will's heart went out to him.

"Go away," Merlin insisted, hiding his face in his knees again. "You shouldn't be around me. No one should be around me."

"What are you talking about, idiot?" Will demanded, coming to kneel beside his friend. Merlin tried to shuffle away, but Will seized his arm and he stilled.

"I'm a monster," Merlin said quietly, not looking at him.

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Will asked, knowing the answer.

"Magic is against the law!" Merlin shrieked, looking up only to shout in Will's face. "I'm a criminal! A traitor! A freak! I should just die, shouldn't I? That's the penalty for having magic. Death! I should just die here!"

In that moment Will hated the King and the Knights of Camelot more than ever before. He hated them for their stupid, horrid laws that made people who were born with a gift they couldn't control into criminals. He hated them for their pompousness and their arrogance and their careless entitlement. He hated them for the death of his father, and for the fear and pain in Merlin's eyes.

"You're not a monster," Will said softly, "and you're not a criminal. If the laws say you shouldn't be who you are, then the laws are wrong. You're my friend, and I can't think of a person in this world who deserves to die less than you."

Merlin's expression had been filled with such confusion and despair that Will felt like crying himself. He leaned forward and kissed his friend, lightly on his tear-wet lips, as soft and comforting and loving as he could make it. When he drew back and looked desperately into Merlin's eyes, willing him to understand, he felt his heart swell with happiness at the hope he saw in his best friend's face.

"Come on," he'd said, standing up and wiping at the un-shed tears he had not realized were gathering at the edges of his eyes, "our Mothers will kill us if we catch our death of cold in this rain."

Merlin's magic played a role in all their mischief from that day forth. They could open an animal pen from up on a neighboring rooftop and then sit back to enjoy the show, or mimic the voices of the thugs to make them insult and turn on each other. And if the fear of the passing Knights brought tears to Merlin's eyes Will would kiss them away.

He had thought that the day he watched Merlin leave for Camelot was the saddest of his life. He was proven wrong only when Merlin returned, a pompous Prince in tow. The way Arthur took over the town, barking orders at everyone like they were his slaves, did not hurt Will nearly as much as how earnestly Merlin praised the Royal Prat, with such a burning, shining loyalty in his eyes. He thought that that praise, and how much it made him realized Arthur meant to Merlin, was what made him jump in front of that bloody arrow. The lie about being a sorcerer had been the hardest and the easiest he'd ever told, knowing that it would both save Merlin's life and preserve his bond with the horrible Prince that had stolen him from his best friend. Still, he'd died with only one thought in his head.

Be great, love, and be happy.

2. Gaius

The old court physician had never married. He had once been driven by the ambition to one day become the Royal Wizard, but when the Great Purge began his life quickly became consumed with trying to hide his magic, and then trying to suppress it. He watched a great many of his friends die, along with a lot of innocent people, but he had stuck by Uther through it all, not only for his own safety but also out of the vain hope that he might someday be able to stop his King and not-quite-friend's madness. It had never happened, Uther had grown progressively more insane and there was not a thing Gaius could do to stop it, and in the end he had wound up old and unmarried, with nothing but a thankless job to make the fantastic lie his life had become worth living.

When Merlin had entered his life it was like the sun coming out. The boy was a magic user with far more power than Gaius had ever dreamed of having, a destined player in a prophesied plan to return magic to Camelot, and a poor fatherless innocent in desperate need of the support and guidance of a male role model. He was the son Gaius never had, a bright and happy child that he could nurture and protect, however often Merlin ended up saving him instead, and he relished each day he was allowed to teach, care for, and love such an extraordinary being. The boy was a fairy's gift to an aging man, the perfect son for a childless father. In a way he felt he might have understood Uther a little bit better. He had not fully realized his longing for a son until Merlin had come into his life, and in some small way he felt that he could sympathize with Uther's burning desire to be a father, despite how mad it had driven him in the end. He knew deep down that Merlin was every bit as precious to him as Arthur was to his almost-friend, and the day when Merlin told him that he was more than a father was the happiest of his life. He had never really been in love, he had never given himself the time, but in his declining years he knew what it was to love a child as his own.

3. The Dragon

Despite his foul mood at being imprisoned under the castle for as long as he had, coupled as it was with Merlin's spectacular naivete, the Great Dragon had in fact grown rather fond of him surprisingly quickly. The sound of Dragonlord blood singing through the boy's veins reserved him a place in the Great Dragon's heart long before he had actually occupied it, and his prophesied role in the birth of the Kingdom of Albion didn't hurt either. "Young Warlock," originally a title favored for its simple accuracy, rapidly became an odd term of endearment. The boy's captivating innocence, his earnest desire to be of use to his homeland, how quickly he came to care so much for Arthur, his Prince, his principal, his destined partner, all of these things converged to make a cold heart grow warm again. How far he would go to help and protect those in need spoke of a nobility that Uther Pendragon would never understand. Merlin was a Prince of Magic, a fitting King for any great land, and had the Dragon not known Arthur's role in bringing about the Kingdom of Albion was set in stone he might have encouraged Merlin to foster his hatred of those who persecuted magic users and take the throne for himself.

He would be lying to say he wasn't tempted.

He could feel Merlin's love for Arthur growing, warm and welcome inside him. He was also tempted to interfere in this, as he knew that it would end in a great advantage and happiness for Arthur, but only misery and heartbreak for Merlin. Arthur would ruthlessly take everything Merlin had to offer, from his magic, his body and his heart, keep what glittered with value to his near-blind eyes and cast the rest away like so much rubbish. Many a night the Dragon scraped his claws across the stone, ground his teeth and contemplated luring the Prince to his cave with a simple spell and breathing all his fire over the scavenging little insect. He always had and always would get everything he wanted, at little or no cost to himself, but at a terrible price to all those who followed him.

At a terrible price to Merlin.

Merlin's love was worth all the gold the Dragon had ever seen, and on the day he had sworn, with tears and fury in his eyes over the misfortunes of his birth-mother, never to return to the cavern, the great beast had roared out in an agony he had been sure he could no longer feel. He had called to the Wizardling in his sleep, summoned him with all his power, but in the end it was only the desire to save Arthur's life that brought him back within the Dragon's reach. He knew then, with both a heaviness and a lightness in his heart, that this would not be that last time Arthur was in peril, and so neither would it be the last time he saw his Young Warlock. He had bargained for the only thing he thought was left to him then; the chance at his own freedom. Merlin had agreed with a reluctance that broke the great beast's heart.

It would be some time before Merlin sought the Dragon's company for his own reasons. He could see immediately behind the young man's eyes that Arthur's ill-advised love for Guinevere had resurfaced in this lifetime, and was once again the cause of Merlin's pain. He had wanted to wrap his tail around the Warlock's waist and lift him onto his back, folding him protectively beneath the Dragon's great wings. As it was he only used his claw to wipe away what he could of the tears that fell when Merlin collapsed into sobs on the tiny ledge afforded the great beast's visitors. When the boy shuffled closer to the edge and swung his legs over the side the Great Dragon had reached out one of his talons and allowed the young Sorcerer to scamper across his leg to his side.

"Sleep now, young Crownless Prince," he whispered with all the tenderness the years had left him. "Sleep now in peace, for once."

If Merlin was confused by the Dragon's words he did not show it. He curled up docilely by the dragon's breast and slept, pressed against the source of the Dragonfire that burned with hatred for those that had hurt him.

The Old Prophesy be damned. One day Arthur Pendragon would be made to answer for these tears.

4. Lancelot

Lancelot had not had the blessing of a large number of friends throughout his life. Indeed he had gone through much of his life very nearly alone, and universally unappreciated. No one had ever been proud of him, ever admired him, ever wanted badly for him what he wanted for himself.

So when he simply did what came naturally to him when he saw a young boy about to be killed by a raging beast Lancelot had not expected him to be quite so . . . perfect.

The boy had thanked him so earnestly, with such admiration in his eyes, endlessly praised his skill in combat, and then offered to help him achieve his dream. Lancelot had almost been sure he had stumbled into some kind of fantasy when Merlin had given him the means to bluff his way into a chance at knighthood as though it were the simplest thing in the world, the only natural thing to do, and then stood by him all the way through the process cheering and encouraging as though it were the only purpose he had in life. When Lancelot had ridden out to face the griffin he had been sure that the dream was ending, but lo and behold there again was Merlin, with magic strong enough to win him both the day and the Prince's respect. He stood back and remained quiet when credit was going around, and Lancelot felt the worst kind of fraud for taking advantage of the boy's kindness. Leaving had seemed the only honorable thing to do.

But then when Merlin had stood their awkwardly, saying goodbye with genuine sorrow in his eyes as though he would truly miss him, Lancelot's heart had swelled with such gratitude and fondness and desire not to leave the only person who had shown him this much warmth and friendship that all thoughts of honor fled. He was leaning in to seal his lips over Merlin's quite before he knew what he was doing, his arms encircling the young wizard's waist before he was even conscious of his step forward. The body before him was lithe and limber, the mouth against his own hot and willing, and a fierce hunger flared to life inside him. The kiss had begun with a shocked gasp but ended with Merlin flushed and panting, pressed hard against the stone wall by Lancelot's solid, demanding body, and looking thoroughly debauched. Only then did he stop to think of what he was doing, and to realize how terribly wrong it was. The horrified apology had been hurried and the earnest pardon had been breathless. The second kiss, from sorcerer to knight this time, was soft and chaste, a tender peck. It was goodbye. In the days to come Lancelot would think often of the noble Arthur and the beautiful Guinevere, but a special place in his heart would always be reserved for the sorcerer with the shining eyes and the heart of gold.

5. Edwin

A quest for revenge does not leave much room in one's life for other pursuits. Every one of Edwin's waking moments was consumed with his desire to see Uther Pendragon suffer, and his dreams were haunted by the desperate cries of his parents as they burned. He endeavored, from the books they had hidden and other sources he had found in his travels, to learn all he could about magic. He wanted to become as powerful a sorcerer as he could, the more ease to his work and the more irony to Uther's death. He disguised himself as a physician, pretended that his fascination with magic was the earnest study of science. At long last he discovered the box of cursed insects, hidden away during the time of the Great Purge by a long-dead sorcerer, and made his way to Camelot.

He had expected to ensconce himself in the place of Court Physician, driving Gaius from all he had left in the world as he did so. He would make Uther suffer a painful death, then quickly dispose of his bastard progeny before taking control of the Kingdom. He thought of Arthur as a bastard; his studies had lead him to the old prophesies and the truth about Igraine's death, and he knew that magic had planted the infant Prince in her womb. Arthur was conceived of magic, not Uther's wretched seed. He knew the young bastard would have a sorcerer companion protecting him, as the prophesies also foretold, but Edwin knew that a wizardling so young could not be very skilled yet, and so expected to dispatch him quickly.

He had not expected Merlin.

Merlin had grown up fatherless, and shunned for his magic. He lived day by day in Camelot in constant danger of discovery and execution, with the endless threat of Uther's wrath hanging over him. He suffered through Arthur's abuse and degradation day in and day out. And somehow he still managed to smile. To laugh, even. To put his trust in strangers, and his faith in the bastard Prince. He was cheerful, humble, and kind, his heart open and his words honest. His magic was strong, and fascinated Edwin with its raw power, but Merlin feared it as much as he enjoyed it, and was endearingly shy of praise.

He looked at Edwin's face as though he could not even see the scar.

Merlin's sweet, childish smile spoke of an innocence that captivated Edwin. Over the years his bed had more often then not remained cold, and Merlin's warmth made him want to enveloped it selfishly. His earnest praise and a few tender touches were all it took to lure the wizardling to his chambers, and from there the older man's heated kisses took control of the situation. Merlin's body was a work of art; one long, taut bowstring of lithe muscle that flexed and shifted under the simplest touch. Merlin's skin was perfect; flawless and completely unblemished by wounds or natural discoloration. Edwin took his time leaving marks on the minx's collarbone, up and down his stomach, on the inside of his thighs, anywhere they would go unnoticed in daylight. The sounds he drew from his plaything were heavenly; breathy gasps for gliding caresses, soft mewls for rougher licks and choked-back cries for the love bites Edwin littered across his untouched body. He could feel Merlin's magic pressing at the boundaries of his skin, welling up at the entirely new sensations Edwin was bringing forth in him. It did things to him, knowing that it was the most powerful sorcerer in the world beneath him, writhing and moaning like a common whore, begging prettily for what he could give. As his fingers violated the boy's untried body so that it would yield to his claiming he could not help but recall that Merlin was destined to one day warm Arthur's bed, and it made a possessive growl rise in his throat.

The next night, when they met in battle rather than in pleasure, Edwin thrilled at seeing Merlin's power flare with his anger. His offer of partnership had been genuine and a little desperate, as he'd known the answer before he spoke, and though he was defeated he died with a savage pride that he had tasted the little treat long before the bastard prince had ever sunk his teeth in.

+1. Balinor

The last of the Dragonlords had known love. He had loved his Kingdom, and by turn the King that ruled it. He had loved his brethren, both human and dragon alike. He had loved a woman named Hunith, with eyes like stars and a heart of gold. For all this, however, he had never known the love of a parent for its child. He had watched too much of what he loved die in the Great Purge, and when Uther had driven him from Hunith as well, sentenced him to live out his days in the agony of knowing she was alive but he could not be with her, he had sworn to never let love into his heart again. Some people just lived to make others miserable, and he would not invite their wrath again by searching for happiness.

This is what comes of the monarchy, he thought. Great men raised in privilege expect something for nothing, and throw a tempter-tantrum that kills thousands when they don't get it.

But then there was the boy. The boy whose eyes shone like the stars (really, he should have noticed that sooner) and who came to his cave begging for help for the wounded Prince. He called Arthur his master, but first he called him his friend, and this puzzled Balinor. Kings and their sons, in his experience, did not have friends, only equals and inferiors. This strange boy was called Merlin, and he was a riddle. He asked questions on behalf of his master as though biting back a burning one of his own, and choked on the lies that tasted bitter and tripped up his honest tongue. He spoke of goodness and innocence and the right thing to do as though both suffering and difficult choices were a part of his life, and the earnestness of his voice as well as his shining eyes stirred something deep in Balinor's heart that he thought he had sealed off for good.

When the Prince awoke Balinor began to understand. Just as Merlin was no ordinary boy, Arthur was no ordinary Prince. Merlin brought this out in him. Something about the way they spoke to each other. Everything about the way they looked at each other. How they instinctively knew what to do with each other, and their voices rose and fell in concert, good-naturedly teasing or arguing without malice. Balinor had not known that Princes knew how to love, and yet Arthur loved Merlin, just as earnestly as Merlin loved Arthur.

Then Arthur was gone, and they were alone, and the mysterious Merlin turned his shining, loving eyes on the last Dragonlord.

When Merlin said Hunith was his mother Balinor's heart dropped like a stone.

When he said she had never married it soared on dragon wings.

When he realized this boy, this magnificent boy, his boy, was the son and heir that he had craved, wished for, never dared to hope he could have, he was sure that Dragonfire could not compare to the feeling in his chest. His heart felt warm enough to melt, full enough to burst, light enough to float away from him forever and join his hopes in the wild blue sky. This boy, his boy, was everything he could have hoped for in a son. His magic was strong, his heart was good, his words were wise and his eyes were kind and warm and shone like the stars in the sky.

He was not afraid to die for his son.

Balinor could only use his last breaths to tell Merlin how to save his home. There was so much he wanted to say, but if he lived forever there wouldn't be enough time to say it in.

Balinor's smile said you're everything I could have asked for.

Merlin's eyes said you're everything I hoped you'd be.

Balinor, the second-to-last Dragonlord, died with a heart full of love and free of doubt. There was only one thought in his head.

Be great, my son, and be happy.