fic: Seven Steps

Title: Seven Steps
Author: Harlequin aka slashweaver
Artists: The awesome kinkme_merlin for the art, and the wonderful slashweaver for the graphics.
Betas: The amazing tindu, with admirable support from slashweaver and kinkme_merlin on technical matters; Thank you, all! Remaining infelicities and misguided choices are alas my own.



Pairings/characters: Merlin/Gaius, with a full supporting cast of Alice, Arthur, Erika (OFC), Freya, Gwen, Hunith, Lance, Leon, Morgana, Teague (OMC), and sundry others
Rating: NC17
Word Count: 36,400
Warnings: Includes a secondary character death, as per canon. Also involves, as will be obvious, a significant age difference between the two lovers.
Summary: Merlin is an art student, working as an orderly at a Pendragon Care care home during the summer break; he falls in love with Gaius, one of the (temporary) residents. The feeling is mutual, but such an unexpected relationship is never going to be easy to establish when both men feel so diffident about their claims on each other. And that's before taking into account the mutual antipathy between Merlin and Gaius's beloved godson Arthur, not to mention a surprising addition to Merlin's family, and Merlin's grief over his best friend Freya being institutionalised…
Author's notes: This all grew out of a Gaius/Merlin prompt on slashweaver: 'When Merlin signs up to be a summer volunteer at the local old age home, he never once expected to meet the great love of his life there.' My first thought was, 'Ooh! I could do that.' Then I dreamt up Pendragon Care, and Gaius's relationship with Uther and Arthur. And then… Well. All this happened!
♦ I would very much like to thank everyone who encouraged me along the way, and I'm especially grateful to my artists and betas. It's just wonderful that so many of you feel kindly towards this rare pair! And really, as a writer, I feel I have an embarrassment of riches in collaborators here…
♦ A special thank you is also due to gealach_ros for organising yet another brilliant paperlegends challenge!
Artist's notes: Coming soon!
Story link: Read it at our Seven Steps website, or on AO3. Both of those are broken into chapters; if you want it all on one page, read it at my fic website.
Art link: art by tindu
Graphics link: graphics by gealach_ros
Disclaimer: We do not own these characters, and are only taking the liberty of playing with them for a time…