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merlinrpf2015-04-05 08:38 pm
hyponymn.livejournal.com) wrote in merlinrpf2015-04-05 08:38 pm
fic: A Case of Mistaken Identity (Multi-chapter, Chapter 5)
Author: 
hyponymn
Title: A Case of Mistaken Identity
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Bradley/Colin, Bradley/Merlin
Summary:Colin Morgan is a really good actor. He doesn't just play a character, he becomes the character. He builds the world of the character, synthesizes the struggles of the character, and dreams about the character. And it just so happens that Colin’s character is exactly the type of cotton-headed ninnymuggins that would fall in love with a familiar, friendly face and a parcel of bad jokes. Bradley heroically understands; he totally recognizes his own awesomeness.
Warnings: frustrated boys (Not even UST. Just frustration.)
Word Count: 2,617
Running Word Count: 10,148
Spoilers: Seasons 1, 2, and 3 are fair game; also video diaries and interviews (if those count as spoilers?!)
If you're new to the story, here's the link to the first chapter: http://merlinrpf.livejournal.com/196423.h
Bradley wakes shortly after five feeling a horrible combination of restlessness and exhaustion. He makes his way to the toilet and blearily meanders through his morning routine. He can hear Colin moving on the other side of the wall and sticks his head out the bathroom door.
“Good morning,” Bradley says around his toothbrush.
“You about done in there?” Colin looks like he slept even worse than Bradley. Colin’s pale face is waner than ever and rings of exhaustion make his eyes appear red and bruised.
“Yeah.” Bradley ducks back into the bathroom to spit. He comes back into the bedroom in time to see Colin glare at his pillow as though it had utterly failed him.
“Hey, Colin.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you hear about our john--?” Bradley puts on a bit of an accent, and Colin’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “-ny? He’s a gay man now!”
Colin rolls his eyes and shoulders Bradley on his way to the bathroom, which Bradley supposes is about as much as could be expected. “Hark who’s talking, martyr gay man.”
“It’s not martyrdom, it was practicality!” Bradley says as Colin shuts the door.
“It’s folly.”
Bradley gets a bit defensive, never mind how he mostly agrees with Colin and had hoped that the entire “I could be the romantic interest” idea wouldn’t be remembered in the figurative light of day. “As folly as is your plan to just wait it out on set?”
“You’re not defending it,” Colin says. His expression flickers from blank to horrified. “Bradley James, tell me you’re not defending anything as ludicrous as the idea that you…that we…”
Bradley can imagine him on the other side of the door, his hands fluttering in his struggle to put Bradley’s ill-thought proposition into words without actually verbalizing it. “A bit homophobic, there? Having a hard time appreciating—“
“I already told you that Merlin appreciates you just fine.”
“So what’s the problem then?”
“The problem?” Colin’s voice rises shrilly, and he opens the bathroom door to confront Bradley. “The problem where I’m not gay or the problem where you actually think the idea of us as…as….as romantic interests is a good plan to be going on?” A blush is exploding across his face, but instead of making him look like less of a zombie, it gives him a sickly, mottled complexion. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“First of all,” Bradley says, “the irony of you asking me ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ after I’ve been taking care of your scrawny ass for a month straight—“
Colin groans and pulls at his hair. “Look, I’m sorry—“
“Secondly,” Bradley continues relentlessly—by his saying “first at all,” Colin really should have known that he had more to say— “Your response, while absolutely logical, is also a bit insulting. Yeah, so what if it’s not a good idea. No bloke likes rejection. Even theoretically. I thought that I’d be having to explain why it might not be the best idea to you, but you’re totally refusing to consider it. Just chucked out the idea.”
Colin snorts. “Yeah.” He sags against the door and gestures to his face. “Because this is face of someone who binned Bradley’s barny midnight idea and had a good night’s rest.”
Bradley gawks at him.
“You do want to date?” Bradley takes a quick, automatic step backwards before he thinks about what he’s doing. He goes ahead and sits on his bed so it looks like less of a retreat. He mentally reaches for the countering pile of reasonings he had started accumulating last night.
“Oh, absolutely,” Colin says. “What’s not to love?”
Bradley’s mouth turns dry and he can’t think of anything to say.
“Bradley. This is the part where you convince me that it might not be the best idea.”
“What were you thinking about last night?” Bradley asks. The question rings more accusatorily than intended, and Colin stares at him for a moment before looking away and answering.
“Everything. Whether it would be you and me or you and Merlin. Which would have a higher success rate. How happy Merlin would be, even though he would totally be weepy about Freya. What the first date could be. How it could go wrong. How it could go right. Whether or not I would lose being Colin to being Merlin. Who you’d prefer. If you’d care enough to intercede. What would break us. Being discovered. Losing the show. You deciding it’s not enough. Me not being able to care enough—“
“Right, okay,” Bradley interrupts. “I get it.”
“Is your ego restored?” Colin gives him a shadowy smile and pushes off the wall. “I’m going to get washed up, now that that’s sorted out.”
“Nothing’s been sorted out!”
“That much has. That I’m still out of sorts.” Colin shrugs and disappears back into the bathroom. Bradley groans because they’re not making any progress, and he’s knackered, and he has more training today. He raids the minifridge for the last of his candy stash and sinks back onto his bed. He must eventually doze off, because the next thing he knows, Colin’s standing over him with wet hair spiraling every which way and eyes bright.
“What?” Bradley grunts.
Colin turns bright red. “I said no one could know.”
“No one could know?” Bradley repeats dumbly.
“Absolutely no one. Especially Angel and Katie. .”
Bradley blinks at Colin. “Are you asking me out? Because that’s about the least romantic—“
“Bradley,” Colin says softly. “Please stop.”
Bradley doesn’t know what to stop doing, so he clamps his mouth shut.
“I want to lay down some ground rules. Obviously nothing public. You can call quits whenever you like, but you have to give me at least ten hours heads-up before filming. We don’t do anything. You have to tell me if things are getting to be too much.”
“That sounds a lot like a yes,” Bradley says. “And for the record, I totally asked you out first, so clearly I’m the dude.”
“Obviously you’re a dude,” Colin mimicks Bradley. “That’s the main reason this is a problem.”
“So we’re doing this, then?” Bradley asks. “Because we weren’t last time I checked. On account of it being a bad idea and all.”
“We won’t be actually doing anything.” Colin’s shoulders are hunched inward, and Bradley wants to slap his back until they even back out. “We just won’t be doing anything, exclusively.”
“That’s not dating.”
“That’s what we’d be doing.” Colin grabs at his neck, and Bradley recognizes it as a tell that Colin is uncomfortable. “I think that knowing you’d be open—even under the duress of our jobs being on the line—helps a bit.”
“Well, then yes, obviously.”
“Your next opportunity to skivvy out is tomorrow early evening, between 3:30 and 5:00.”
“I’m not skivvying out,” Bradley says. He’s a bit offended by the implication. “You’re a bigger flake than me.”
“It’s not a contest,” Colin snorts. He swats at Bradley’s head and goes to finish drying his hair. Bradley watches him walk away and tries to ignore the ball of terrified nerves that has erupted in his stomach.
Once the credits started rolling for The Mark of Nimueh, Bradley left Colin on the couch so he could wash for dinner. He made faces at himself as he brushed his teeth and combed his hair six different ways before he settled on the usual flop. Whenever he poked his head out of the bathroom to check on Colin, Colin was staring enthralled at the screen. Bradley congratulated himself on having unending entertainment on short notice. He wouldn’t have to worry about Colin for a solid six hours.
He dug through the cupboards and, after discarding the possibilities of a dry cornflakes or a hardboiled egg, decided to order take-out for Colin.
“Hey, Colin,” Bradley bellowed. “What do you want to eat?”
He threw a shoulder into the kitchen doorframe and leaned to wait for Colin’s answer, but Colin was absolutely nonresponsive. Bradley looked to the screen. Merlin had just been poisoned, and Uther was roaring while Arthur ran to an unconscious Merlin’s side.
“I suppose this is all new to you, then,” Bradley said, and Colin jumped.
“Sorry, I didn’t see you.” His eyes turned automatically back to the screen.
“You know you survive,” Bradley said. “Merlin survives. There’s all those things that happen after this, remember?”
“I know,” Colin said. “But it’s different, seeing things from this perspective. Seeing what happened when I wasn’t there. Seeing who all cares.”
“Everybody cares about Merlin.” Bradley rolled his eyes. “The show’s called Merlin. I mean, they’re going to kill off Arthur eventually if they’re planning on keeping to legend, but Merlin’s basically immortal.”
On screen, Merlin’s limp body was hauled to Gaius’ quarters and dropped onto the table.
“Does Arthur know I have magic?” Colin asked.
“Not officially,” Bradley said. “I’m holding out that he has to suspect. There’s only so many times he can think that he killed whatever was threatening Camelot only to immediately fall unconscious and forget all about it.”
“What else could I say?” Colin snorted. “And no offense, Bradley, but I think you’ve underestimated Arthur’s ego. Head injuries are very powerful things.”
“I’m not faulting you,” Bradley said placatingly. “How do you feel about noodles?”
Colin cocked his head. “Noodles?”
“Noodles it is,” Bradley announced. “And tofu. Something pretty vanilla too, I reckon. Nothing too spicy.” Colin continued to look bewildered. “You could probably handle Lo Mein.” He turned back into the kitchen and rang for the Chinese food before rejoining Colin on the couch. Colin made little distressed noises when Arthur stumbled upon Nimueh disguised as a slave girl and shouted a bit in Welsh when the chimera snuck up on Arthur.
“You can tell it’s Nimueh, right?” Colin demanded. “It’s obvious.”
“Yeah, of course,” Bradley said. “But Arthur didn’t interact with Nimueh much; it was mostly Merlin.”
“But she looks exactly like the woman who was serving Bayard and went missing!” Colin protested.
“Why on earth would a prince be memorizing the faces of visiting royalty’s servants?” Bradley retorted. “Stop downing on my character.”
Colin was silent and pale as Nimueh revealed her identity and left Arthur to die, and he held his breath in the dark moments before Merlin’s orb of light materialized to show Arthur the way out of the cave.
“I don’t really remember this,” Colin said.
“I expect Merlin wouldn’t,” Bradley agreed.
Colin wrinkled his nose as he tried to sense whether or not he was being insulted.
The Chinese arrived as Gwen began crying over the presumably dead body of Merlin. Colin trailed Bradley to the door and demanded to know if he had been reanimated and was under someone else’s control. Bradley physically turned Colin’s head back to the screen as he reached for his wallet.
Once The Poisoned Chalice ended, Bradley showed Colin how to call Bradley and had him practice a few times. He walked Colin through how to change out DVDs, reminded him where the bathroom was, and headed out the door.
He hadn’t seen Stu and Kim for over a year, and Cooper was going to be shipped out in a couple of days. They started out at a pub for dinner and hopped to a few different bars. It was good to see the old crew, and he felt like he was still in university, where the biggest problem was grades and not whether or not his current job was going to last on account of his co-star going mental.
Colin didn’t call, which Bradley had to keep reminding himself was a good sign, and he was able to relax enough that he was surprised to realize that it was nearly 2 a.m. when he was unlocking the door to his apartment.
“Col?” Bradley croaked. He was tipsy, probably. Maybe a combination of tipsy and downright drunk. Not completely drunk. Definitely not completely drunk. The title page for the fifth DVD was playing on repeat. Bradley thought about turning on a light, but he didn’t want to wake Colin up.
He made his way towards the bedroom, and as he passed the couch, saw Colin shaking on the floor.
“Hey,” Bradley said. He was admittedly not at his most articulate. “You cold? Hey. Colin. I could get you a blanket.”
Colin flinched and looked up. His face was red and snotty; he was an absolute mess.
“Hey,” Bradley said. “Stop. Hey.” He collapsed on the couch and tugged on Colin’s t-shirt until Colin turned to face him. “Enough of that. What’s wrong?”
Colin opened his mouth and promptly started gasping for breath. Bradley manhandled an arm around Colin in what turned out to be a bit of a chokehold. He patted at Colin’s head.
“There, there,” he said uselessly. “Talk to me, yeah?”
“She was going to kill Arthur,” Colin gasped. “She nearly killed my mother, and then Nimueh nearly took Gaius. I had to, to…” Bradley squinted at Colin.
“Kill her?” Bradley suggested helpfully. “Fry her? Smite her?”
“It’s not me,” Colin sniffled. “Bradley, you have to believe that that’s not me. I’m not someone you should be scared of.”
“Course not,” Bradley said. “I’m more scared for you than scared of you. And of course it’s not you. You’re not you.”
Colin didn’t look particularly swayed by Bradley’s logic.
“I don’t kill. You don’t understand—I’ve never before—“
“I’ve never killed anyone before either,” Bradley said. “I mean, if we’re opening up about this sort of thing. Never have. And Colin hasn’t either.”
Colin huffed. “You have, Bradley. Remember Valiant?”
“We don’t kill actors!” Bradley exclaimed. “That’d make casting impossible. Unions would have a field day. We fake it. That’s acting.”
“I’ve seen you kill,” Colin insisted. “I’ve seen you hunt—“
“You’ve seen Arthur hunt,” Bradley said. He released Colin’s head. “My biggest kill was a pigeon that flew into my car. My character’s a killing machine, certainly, but I, Bradley James, am not.”
“I don’t like killing,” Colin said in a small voice. “I don’t like knowing that I will actually do anything to keep Arthur alive. But I know I will, because that’s what’s most important. More important than my life. More important than who I am. All that matters—“
“No,” Bradley interjected. “That kind of loyalty is fantastic, but you can’t lose you, right? You’re not just the guy who keeps Arthur alive, you’re the man that turns some snotty-ass prince into a king. You are essential to who Arthur becomes, not just for keeping him alive.”
Colin stared fixedly at his knees. “And now I’m not even that. Right now, Arthur is unprotected.”
“You think an awful lot of yourself, don’t you,” Bradley said. “Arthur survived just fine until you got there. Just because you carry the weight for keeping Arthur alive doesn’t mean that others can’t. Uther won a war against sorcery—you just try telling me that he doesn’t have ways of fighting magic.”
Colin’s head dipped up again. “I don’t know who I am.” His voice was a miserable whisper. “What am I without magic? What am I without Arthur?”
“Merlin isn’t just Arthur’s sorcerer lackey.” Bradley bopped Colin on the arm, only he missed and hit his head instead. “It’s definitely a part of who he is, but not the entirety. Maybe it’s time you figured out more about Merlin than those two pieces.”
Colin looked about ready to burst into a fresh round of tears, so Bradley hastily made an exit. He threw his blanket in the vague direction of the couch before he turned and collapsed into bed.
hyponymnTitle: A Case of Mistaken Identity
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Bradley/Colin, Bradley/Merlin
Summary:Colin Morgan is a really good actor. He doesn't just play a character, he becomes the character. He builds the world of the character, synthesizes the struggles of the character, and dreams about the character. And it just so happens that Colin’s character is exactly the type of cotton-headed ninnymuggins that would fall in love with a familiar, friendly face and a parcel of bad jokes. Bradley heroically understands; he totally recognizes his own awesomeness.
Warnings: frustrated boys (Not even UST. Just frustration.)
Word Count: 2,617
Running Word Count: 10,148
Spoilers: Seasons 1, 2, and 3 are fair game; also video diaries and interviews (if those count as spoilers?!)
If you're new to the story, here's the link to the first chapter: http://merlinrpf.livejournal.com/196423.h
Bradley wakes shortly after five feeling a horrible combination of restlessness and exhaustion. He makes his way to the toilet and blearily meanders through his morning routine. He can hear Colin moving on the other side of the wall and sticks his head out the bathroom door.
“Good morning,” Bradley says around his toothbrush.
“You about done in there?” Colin looks like he slept even worse than Bradley. Colin’s pale face is waner than ever and rings of exhaustion make his eyes appear red and bruised.
“Yeah.” Bradley ducks back into the bathroom to spit. He comes back into the bedroom in time to see Colin glare at his pillow as though it had utterly failed him.
“Hey, Colin.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you hear about our john--?” Bradley puts on a bit of an accent, and Colin’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “-ny? He’s a gay man now!”
Colin rolls his eyes and shoulders Bradley on his way to the bathroom, which Bradley supposes is about as much as could be expected. “Hark who’s talking, martyr gay man.”
“It’s not martyrdom, it was practicality!” Bradley says as Colin shuts the door.
“It’s folly.”
Bradley gets a bit defensive, never mind how he mostly agrees with Colin and had hoped that the entire “I could be the romantic interest” idea wouldn’t be remembered in the figurative light of day. “As folly as is your plan to just wait it out on set?”
“You’re not defending it,” Colin says. His expression flickers from blank to horrified. “Bradley James, tell me you’re not defending anything as ludicrous as the idea that you…that we…”
Bradley can imagine him on the other side of the door, his hands fluttering in his struggle to put Bradley’s ill-thought proposition into words without actually verbalizing it. “A bit homophobic, there? Having a hard time appreciating—“
“I already told you that Merlin appreciates you just fine.”
“So what’s the problem then?”
“The problem?” Colin’s voice rises shrilly, and he opens the bathroom door to confront Bradley. “The problem where I’m not gay or the problem where you actually think the idea of us as…as….as romantic interests is a good plan to be going on?” A blush is exploding across his face, but instead of making him look like less of a zombie, it gives him a sickly, mottled complexion. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“First of all,” Bradley says, “the irony of you asking me ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ after I’ve been taking care of your scrawny ass for a month straight—“
Colin groans and pulls at his hair. “Look, I’m sorry—“
“Secondly,” Bradley continues relentlessly—by his saying “first at all,” Colin really should have known that he had more to say— “Your response, while absolutely logical, is also a bit insulting. Yeah, so what if it’s not a good idea. No bloke likes rejection. Even theoretically. I thought that I’d be having to explain why it might not be the best idea to you, but you’re totally refusing to consider it. Just chucked out the idea.”
Colin snorts. “Yeah.” He sags against the door and gestures to his face. “Because this is face of someone who binned Bradley’s barny midnight idea and had a good night’s rest.”
Bradley gawks at him.
“You do want to date?” Bradley takes a quick, automatic step backwards before he thinks about what he’s doing. He goes ahead and sits on his bed so it looks like less of a retreat. He mentally reaches for the countering pile of reasonings he had started accumulating last night.
“Oh, absolutely,” Colin says. “What’s not to love?”
Bradley’s mouth turns dry and he can’t think of anything to say.
“Bradley. This is the part where you convince me that it might not be the best idea.”
“What were you thinking about last night?” Bradley asks. The question rings more accusatorily than intended, and Colin stares at him for a moment before looking away and answering.
“Everything. Whether it would be you and me or you and Merlin. Which would have a higher success rate. How happy Merlin would be, even though he would totally be weepy about Freya. What the first date could be. How it could go wrong. How it could go right. Whether or not I would lose being Colin to being Merlin. Who you’d prefer. If you’d care enough to intercede. What would break us. Being discovered. Losing the show. You deciding it’s not enough. Me not being able to care enough—“
“Right, okay,” Bradley interrupts. “I get it.”
“Is your ego restored?” Colin gives him a shadowy smile and pushes off the wall. “I’m going to get washed up, now that that’s sorted out.”
“Nothing’s been sorted out!”
“That much has. That I’m still out of sorts.” Colin shrugs and disappears back into the bathroom. Bradley groans because they’re not making any progress, and he’s knackered, and he has more training today. He raids the minifridge for the last of his candy stash and sinks back onto his bed. He must eventually doze off, because the next thing he knows, Colin’s standing over him with wet hair spiraling every which way and eyes bright.
“What?” Bradley grunts.
Colin turns bright red. “I said no one could know.”
“No one could know?” Bradley repeats dumbly.
“Absolutely no one. Especially Angel and Katie. .”
Bradley blinks at Colin. “Are you asking me out? Because that’s about the least romantic—“
“Bradley,” Colin says softly. “Please stop.”
Bradley doesn’t know what to stop doing, so he clamps his mouth shut.
“I want to lay down some ground rules. Obviously nothing public. You can call quits whenever you like, but you have to give me at least ten hours heads-up before filming. We don’t do anything. You have to tell me if things are getting to be too much.”
“That sounds a lot like a yes,” Bradley says. “And for the record, I totally asked you out first, so clearly I’m the dude.”
“Obviously you’re a dude,” Colin mimicks Bradley. “That’s the main reason this is a problem.”
“So we’re doing this, then?” Bradley asks. “Because we weren’t last time I checked. On account of it being a bad idea and all.”
“We won’t be actually doing anything.” Colin’s shoulders are hunched inward, and Bradley wants to slap his back until they even back out. “We just won’t be doing anything, exclusively.”
“That’s not dating.”
“That’s what we’d be doing.” Colin grabs at his neck, and Bradley recognizes it as a tell that Colin is uncomfortable. “I think that knowing you’d be open—even under the duress of our jobs being on the line—helps a bit.”
“Well, then yes, obviously.”
“Your next opportunity to skivvy out is tomorrow early evening, between 3:30 and 5:00.”
“I’m not skivvying out,” Bradley says. He’s a bit offended by the implication. “You’re a bigger flake than me.”
“It’s not a contest,” Colin snorts. He swats at Bradley’s head and goes to finish drying his hair. Bradley watches him walk away and tries to ignore the ball of terrified nerves that has erupted in his stomach.
*
Once the credits started rolling for The Mark of Nimueh, Bradley left Colin on the couch so he could wash for dinner. He made faces at himself as he brushed his teeth and combed his hair six different ways before he settled on the usual flop. Whenever he poked his head out of the bathroom to check on Colin, Colin was staring enthralled at the screen. Bradley congratulated himself on having unending entertainment on short notice. He wouldn’t have to worry about Colin for a solid six hours.
He dug through the cupboards and, after discarding the possibilities of a dry cornflakes or a hardboiled egg, decided to order take-out for Colin.
“Hey, Colin,” Bradley bellowed. “What do you want to eat?”
He threw a shoulder into the kitchen doorframe and leaned to wait for Colin’s answer, but Colin was absolutely nonresponsive. Bradley looked to the screen. Merlin had just been poisoned, and Uther was roaring while Arthur ran to an unconscious Merlin’s side.
“I suppose this is all new to you, then,” Bradley said, and Colin jumped.
“Sorry, I didn’t see you.” His eyes turned automatically back to the screen.
“You know you survive,” Bradley said. “Merlin survives. There’s all those things that happen after this, remember?”
“I know,” Colin said. “But it’s different, seeing things from this perspective. Seeing what happened when I wasn’t there. Seeing who all cares.”
“Everybody cares about Merlin.” Bradley rolled his eyes. “The show’s called Merlin. I mean, they’re going to kill off Arthur eventually if they’re planning on keeping to legend, but Merlin’s basically immortal.”
On screen, Merlin’s limp body was hauled to Gaius’ quarters and dropped onto the table.
“Does Arthur know I have magic?” Colin asked.
“Not officially,” Bradley said. “I’m holding out that he has to suspect. There’s only so many times he can think that he killed whatever was threatening Camelot only to immediately fall unconscious and forget all about it.”
“What else could I say?” Colin snorted. “And no offense, Bradley, but I think you’ve underestimated Arthur’s ego. Head injuries are very powerful things.”
“I’m not faulting you,” Bradley said placatingly. “How do you feel about noodles?”
Colin cocked his head. “Noodles?”
“Noodles it is,” Bradley announced. “And tofu. Something pretty vanilla too, I reckon. Nothing too spicy.” Colin continued to look bewildered. “You could probably handle Lo Mein.” He turned back into the kitchen and rang for the Chinese food before rejoining Colin on the couch. Colin made little distressed noises when Arthur stumbled upon Nimueh disguised as a slave girl and shouted a bit in Welsh when the chimera snuck up on Arthur.
“You can tell it’s Nimueh, right?” Colin demanded. “It’s obvious.”
“Yeah, of course,” Bradley said. “But Arthur didn’t interact with Nimueh much; it was mostly Merlin.”
“But she looks exactly like the woman who was serving Bayard and went missing!” Colin protested.
“Why on earth would a prince be memorizing the faces of visiting royalty’s servants?” Bradley retorted. “Stop downing on my character.”
Colin was silent and pale as Nimueh revealed her identity and left Arthur to die, and he held his breath in the dark moments before Merlin’s orb of light materialized to show Arthur the way out of the cave.
“I don’t really remember this,” Colin said.
“I expect Merlin wouldn’t,” Bradley agreed.
Colin wrinkled his nose as he tried to sense whether or not he was being insulted.
The Chinese arrived as Gwen began crying over the presumably dead body of Merlin. Colin trailed Bradley to the door and demanded to know if he had been reanimated and was under someone else’s control. Bradley physically turned Colin’s head back to the screen as he reached for his wallet.
Once The Poisoned Chalice ended, Bradley showed Colin how to call Bradley and had him practice a few times. He walked Colin through how to change out DVDs, reminded him where the bathroom was, and headed out the door.
He hadn’t seen Stu and Kim for over a year, and Cooper was going to be shipped out in a couple of days. They started out at a pub for dinner and hopped to a few different bars. It was good to see the old crew, and he felt like he was still in university, where the biggest problem was grades and not whether or not his current job was going to last on account of his co-star going mental.
Colin didn’t call, which Bradley had to keep reminding himself was a good sign, and he was able to relax enough that he was surprised to realize that it was nearly 2 a.m. when he was unlocking the door to his apartment.
“Col?” Bradley croaked. He was tipsy, probably. Maybe a combination of tipsy and downright drunk. Not completely drunk. Definitely not completely drunk. The title page for the fifth DVD was playing on repeat. Bradley thought about turning on a light, but he didn’t want to wake Colin up.
He made his way towards the bedroom, and as he passed the couch, saw Colin shaking on the floor.
“Hey,” Bradley said. He was admittedly not at his most articulate. “You cold? Hey. Colin. I could get you a blanket.”
Colin flinched and looked up. His face was red and snotty; he was an absolute mess.
“Hey,” Bradley said. “Stop. Hey.” He collapsed on the couch and tugged on Colin’s t-shirt until Colin turned to face him. “Enough of that. What’s wrong?”
Colin opened his mouth and promptly started gasping for breath. Bradley manhandled an arm around Colin in what turned out to be a bit of a chokehold. He patted at Colin’s head.
“There, there,” he said uselessly. “Talk to me, yeah?”
“She was going to kill Arthur,” Colin gasped. “She nearly killed my mother, and then Nimueh nearly took Gaius. I had to, to…” Bradley squinted at Colin.
“Kill her?” Bradley suggested helpfully. “Fry her? Smite her?”
“It’s not me,” Colin sniffled. “Bradley, you have to believe that that’s not me. I’m not someone you should be scared of.”
“Course not,” Bradley said. “I’m more scared for you than scared of you. And of course it’s not you. You’re not you.”
Colin didn’t look particularly swayed by Bradley’s logic.
“I don’t kill. You don’t understand—I’ve never before—“
“I’ve never killed anyone before either,” Bradley said. “I mean, if we’re opening up about this sort of thing. Never have. And Colin hasn’t either.”
Colin huffed. “You have, Bradley. Remember Valiant?”
“We don’t kill actors!” Bradley exclaimed. “That’d make casting impossible. Unions would have a field day. We fake it. That’s acting.”
“I’ve seen you kill,” Colin insisted. “I’ve seen you hunt—“
“You’ve seen Arthur hunt,” Bradley said. He released Colin’s head. “My biggest kill was a pigeon that flew into my car. My character’s a killing machine, certainly, but I, Bradley James, am not.”
“I don’t like killing,” Colin said in a small voice. “I don’t like knowing that I will actually do anything to keep Arthur alive. But I know I will, because that’s what’s most important. More important than my life. More important than who I am. All that matters—“
“No,” Bradley interjected. “That kind of loyalty is fantastic, but you can’t lose you, right? You’re not just the guy who keeps Arthur alive, you’re the man that turns some snotty-ass prince into a king. You are essential to who Arthur becomes, not just for keeping him alive.”
Colin stared fixedly at his knees. “And now I’m not even that. Right now, Arthur is unprotected.”
“You think an awful lot of yourself, don’t you,” Bradley said. “Arthur survived just fine until you got there. Just because you carry the weight for keeping Arthur alive doesn’t mean that others can’t. Uther won a war against sorcery—you just try telling me that he doesn’t have ways of fighting magic.”
Colin’s head dipped up again. “I don’t know who I am.” His voice was a miserable whisper. “What am I without magic? What am I without Arthur?”
“Merlin isn’t just Arthur’s sorcerer lackey.” Bradley bopped Colin on the arm, only he missed and hit his head instead. “It’s definitely a part of who he is, but not the entirety. Maybe it’s time you figured out more about Merlin than those two pieces.”
Colin looked about ready to burst into a fresh round of tears, so Bradley hastily made an exit. He threw his blanket in the vague direction of the couch before he turned and collapsed into bed.