Sirens In The Distance
Author: bowtiesandtuxes
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: self harm, suicide.
Word Count: 4600
Summary: Five times Bradley notices Colin's cuts, and the one time Bradley does something.
Disclaimer: Neither Bradley nor Colin belongs to me, or any other characters mentioned; I just like playing with them. The events of this story are all fictional, and a product of my twisted imagination.
Notes: title is from Bullet by Hollywood Undead which I listened to a lot when I was writing this at 2AM this morning. Also, this is my first fic, so any concrit is appreciated.
1.
The first time Bradley notices, they’re on the train to the Cardiff filming studio. Colin’s asleep on Bradley’s shoulder, hood up over his head, sleeves fisted in his hands where his arms are curled around his legs. Bradley is watching Colin sleep with a fond smile on his face, and he moves a hand to brush some of Colin’s hair back off of his forehead. Colin shifts in his sleep, and one of the sleeves of his hoody slips free of his grip, rucking up around his wrists just enough for Bradley to see a flash of red. Intrigued, Bradley pushes Colin’s sleeve a little further up his arm, and utters a quite oh at the sight that greets him.
He almost manages to convince himself that it’s not real, that he’s mistaken, because who would believe that Colin, sweet wonderful Colin who is always smiling and ready to cheer someone up, would be suffering enough mental pain that he is carving lines into his arm in order to deal with it? Bradley would like nothing more than to be wrong, but the truth is staring him right in the face though, five neat lines cut on Colin’s wrist that Bradley can’t ignore, any more than he can ignore the scratch of freshly healed of wounds where he’s running his thumb over Colin’s wrist, in an unintentional soothing gesture.
Bradley feels like crap that he hasn’t noticed Colin was hurting before the proof was in front of him; surely he should have been able to tell that his best friend - and if it’s more than that for Bradley, what difference does it make - was in enough pain to take it out on himself? It makes him wonder how long Colin has been hurting and hiding it, because Bradley is sure that Colin hadn’t been cutting before the end of the last series, would have noticed if he was - because let’s face it, Bradley was, and still is, slightly obsessed with Colin Morgan - which means Colin started in the hiatus between filming. How long he’d been suffering until that point, however, is a mystery to Bradley.
Colin shifts again, and Bradley, fearing Colin waking up, drops his wrist quickly, panic filling him at the thought of Colin realising that Bradley knows. When Colin doesn’t wake up, Bradley can’t bring himself to take hold of Colin’s wrist again, even though he wants to, just to feel the pulse fluttering under his fingertips, and assurance that Colin’s okay. Instead, he watches Colin sleep, watches the way his eyelashes rest against his cheek, how his lips flutter when he breathes and resolves to talk to Colin about it when he wakes up.
~
In the end, he doesn’t talk to Colin about it. Bradley had planned out a whole speech for the rest of the time Colin was dozing, but when Colin wakes up half an hour from their stop, Bradley finds his resolve dying in the face of Colin’s panicked look when he tugs his sleeves further down over his wrists, because as much as he’d like to get Colin to talk to him he knows that if Colin doesn’t want to talk he won’t. There is no way of forcing Colin into talking if he doesn’t want to.
Bradley’s no expert, but he’s sure Colin will just make up an excuse, anyway.
~
Colin wakes up and the first thing he notices is that his hands are colder than they should be. He quickly checks that his sleeves are still pulled over his wrists - over the cuts - and although they are, mostly, they’ve slipped over his fists, and he still feels sick with fear that Bradley might have seen. For the rest of the day Colin tenses every time Bradley opens his mouth, sure that this is the time Bradley will ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, carving up his arm, although Bradley caring that much might just be wishful thinking.
Colin knows one thing though; he can’t keep cutting, at least not his wrists. It’s too obvious, too many people are likely to see them, no matter how careful he is.
~
Colin lasts 3 days before relapsing, although he’s not sure relapse is the word, considering that he wasn’t trying to quit in the first place, not really. When he takes the blade to his skin - although not his wrist - he almost cries at how good it feels after a couple of days without it.
2.
Over the next couple of months, Bradley watches Colin, but finds nothing. After two weeks on set, Colin has stopped wearing long sleeves everywhere, and there’s nothing on his wrists apart from scars so faint they hardly show up against his faint skin to suggest that anything had ever been wrong. Bradley assumes that means Colin has stopped cutting and in return, Bradley stops subtly checking Colin’s arm for fresh cuts every time he sees him.
Bradley has all but forgotten about it, until the week before they leave Cardiff.
~
It takes Bradley a while to realize that the cut on Colin’s ankles actually is an intentional cut, despite the fact that it’s currently right in front of his face from the way he and Colin are arranged on his bed, reading through their scripts for tomorrow’s scenes. He doesn’t initially realise it’s a cut cut, because it’s only one, on its own, and Bradley has kind of assumed that if you cut on purpose, you do it more than once.
“Col?” He asks offhandedly. “What happened to your ankle?”
“Mmm?” Colin sounds distracted, as though he didn’t really hear the question, and Bradley taps Colin’s leg to get to look at him. Colin sits up to look down at Bradley, and asks “What did you say?”
“I asked what happened to your ankle,” Bradleys repeats.
“What happened to my-“ Colin starts twisting his hand together nervously in his lap, and that’s all that Bradley needs to see before he realises Oh. I already know what happened. “I caught it, against- against a nail that was sticking out from the wall,” Colin finishes softly, voice trailing off at the end.
Despite the fact that Bradley is 100% sure that the cut on Colin’s ankle is self-inflicted, he has no actual proof so he just nods, and murmurs, “You should tell someone... about the nail, I mean,” before picking up his script again. He ignores the guilt that blooms in his stomach at the fact that Colin looks slightly disappointed that Bradley had accepted his excuse.
~
Colin doesn’t realise Bradley is talking to him until Bradley pokes him in leg impatiently.
“What did you say?” He asks, and thinks he might start having a panic attack when Bradley asks him about his ankle. Shit, shit, shit. What do I say? He wasn’t supposed to know. Nobody was supposed to see. Does he realise? He must realise, otherwise he wouldn’t ask. Maybe he’s just curious. He probably doesn’t suspect anything.
Colin is proved wrong at Bradley’s disbelieving look when Colin explains the nail in that wall, and could Colin have come up with a shitter excuse? Despite the worry that Bradley will contest his excuse, will make Colin talk about what he’s doing to his body, he can’t help but feel a flicker of disappointment at the fact that Bradley doesn’t seem to care that he’s lying.
~
That night, when Colin is in the bathroom of his hotel room and there’s blood on the counter top, and a razor blade in the sink, and Colin’s holding an old black t-shirt to the five fresh new cuts on his leg to stop the bleeding, he realises that his ankle was a stupid place to be cutting anyway. His thigh is a much better choice; the only time anyone is going to see that is if he’s getting laid, and that’s not going to happen anytime soon, unless Bradley wakes up one morning and realises that he’s in love with Colin. The prospect of that happening was unlikely in the first place, and even more so now that Bradley knows, or at least suspects that Colin’s been finding solace in a blade.
3.
Bradley feels a little bit like a creep - okay a lot like a creep - for watching Colin while he sleeps, again, but really, Colin shouldn’t fall asleep on top of his covers in his boxers and then Bradley wouldn’t have to stare. It’s not like Bradley gets to see much of Colin’s body in his day-to-day life, and whilst liking Colin has nothing to do with sex - and everything to do with his laugh, and his cheekbones, and his stupid stupid hair, and the fact that his accent gets thicker when he’s tired and everything that makes him Colin - it’s nice to have something to fantasize to.
Bradley has just pushed down the urge to kiss Colin on the head and walked almost to the door when he notices Colin’s left his bathroom light on - because, to use an insult from the show, Colin is a clotpole - and has to come back into the room to turn it off. He’s about to leave again when he sees the edge of a t-shirt sticking out from under the bed side table. Naturally, because he’s Bradley, but also because the rest of Colin’s room is spotlessly tidy, Bradley is curious as to what it’s doing there, but he plays it off as Colin being forgetful. Because he’s such a nice person, Bradley goes to pick the t-shirt up and put it in the washing. He stops, however, when he gets close enough to see that the t-shirt is stained with something.
Blood.
That’s when it becomes obvious to Bradley that Colin hadn’t been forgetful and left the t-shirt there by accident, but had tried to hide it.
Bradley rakes his gaze over Colin’s lean form stretched out on the bed, searching for the source of all the blood, and god, he thinks, that’s a fucking lot of blood. He can’t find any fresh cuts though, and that’s the problem. The cuts that would bleed that much must be obvious, but there aren’t any Bradley can see, and it’s not like Colin’s wearing much. Unless... Bradley’s gaze dropped to Colin’s hips and the top of his skinny legs, covered by his boxers.
“Oh my god,” Bradley breathes, hands in his hair, because if there’s that much blood then it’s serious, and Colin needs help but how is he meant to explain to Colin that he knows because he was snooping around his room when he was asleep?
Bradley doesn’t know.
~
“Shit.” Colin says when he wakes up and realises he fell asleep in his boxers, on top of the covers where anyone could have walked in and seen his. “Shit.” And then again, when he sits up and realises that he’s bled through his boxers onto the duvet cover. Fuck. How do I explain this to hotel management? Fuck. They’re usually alright with keeping stuff quiet, but this much blood? There’s no fucking way they won’t tell someone.
Slightly terrified at the idea of anyone finding out, and in a desperate attempt to keep his secret a secret for just a bit longer, Colin strips off the duvet and takes it into the bathroom to attempt to wash out the blood, cursing the hotel for getting fucking white duvets covers the whole time.
After an hour of trying, and failing, to get the blood out, Colin finally gives up, wanting to scream in frustration. Whilst the blood isn’t out completely, Colin supposes, looking at the stain, that he might be able to convince management he dropped beans on his bed. Possibly.
~
The hotel, thankfully, seem to accept his story.
The next day, though, Colin goes out and buys gauze, and bandages and plasters, spending nearly 30 Euros to make sure he’s got enough to last him a while. From then on, he makes sure his cuts are wrapped before he goes to bed.
4.
By the time they get to the Pierrefonds set, Colin has moved from cutting his thighs, to cutting his hips. Sometimes, he cuts both.
He’s not quite sure how the transition happened; all knows is that one day he realises the waist band of his jeans is irritating his cuts, even through the bandages. He tries to keep the cutting to within the area of skin his boxers cover, so as not to be found out by costuming, even though Merlin’s trousers tend to be quite high waisted, and costuming have always let him get changed in a side room because unlike Bradley, he doesn’t like showing his body at every opportunity.
Unsurprisingly, that hasn’t changed since Colin’s become used to having 40-50 cuts on his body at any one point, and more scars each day than he had the day before. That’s one thing that has surprised Colin. How much he loves his scars. He’d thought he’d be ashamed of the, and he is, in a way. He certainly doesn’t want to show them off, but he gets a vague feeling of panic whenever it seems as though one might be disappearing, and has to go over it with his blade a couple of times, to make sure it doesn’t. He likes the feeling of his cuts, too. When he’s stressed, or panicked, he runs his fingers over them, feeling the roughness of the scabs on the pads of his fingers, and it calms his down.
Up until this point, Colin has always been certain that he could stop whenever he wanted. Now he’s not so sure.
~
Bradley notices the gauze. It’s not like it’s difficult, because Colin rarely wears any colour other than black, and the white of the bandage clashes horribly with Colin clothes. Not to mention that Colin looks like he’s gained weight, but only on one strip of his stomach.
The placement of the bandage makes Bradley wonder. Last he’d heard - well, worked out actually, but anyway - Colin had been slicing up his legs, and Bradley wonders whether there’s a pattern. He thinks maybe if he works out the pattern, he might be able to stop it carrying on.
First had been the wrists. Then the ankles, the thighs, and now the hips (at least Bradleys assuming, from how low the gauze is wrapped), but Bradley can’t work out what’s next.
~
A couple of days after noticing the gauze, Bradley gets to see Colin’s hips without it. They’re in Bradley’s hotel room, watching episodes of Buffy on Bradleys laptop, squished up together on Bradley’s bed - which, Colin notes, is smaller than his. Both of them have call times at ridiculous o’clock the next morning, so early that Bradley has set his alarm and is trying to block out the thought that he’ll be up before the sun is in the morning, so at nine, ever-professional Colin rolls off of Bradley bed, kicking Bradley in the process, and puts his shoes on before standing.
“Do you really have to go?” Bradley whines, partly being serious but also partly because he knows Colin thinks Bradley whining is the funniest thing ever.
Colin heaves a - pretend - long-suffering sigh, and shoves Bradley good naturedly in the shoulder. “Yes, Bradley. Do you know why? Because we both have to be up at 4 o’clock in the morning. That’s why.”
Bradley groans, “Oh god, don’t remind me. You could always stay here?” he offers.
“What, because my hotel room is so far away?” Colin asks with a raised eyebrow and laughs quietly when Bradley nods, “It down the corridor Bradley. And anyway, where would I sleep?”
Bradley, however, has stopped listening, because Colin has stretched, raising his arms above his head whilst he was talking, and his t-shirt had rode up slightly. The amount of skin it showed was miniscule, but it was enough for Bradley to see three vicious looking cuts, all looking relatively fresh.
“Are you even listening? Ugh, whatever. Goodnight Bradley.”
Before Bradley can register anything, Colin is walking out of the room, and Bradley barely has time to shout “Good night Colin!” after him before the door shuts.
5.
Colin doesn’t feel safe in his own head anymore. He spends most of the day thinking about cutting, and where he can cut next, and deep he can cut. The rest of the day is spent actually carving lines into his skin.
At this point Colin knows that he’s not going to be able to stop on his own, is going to need help to stop, because he’s tried, god he’s tried, but it doesn’t work. He’ll be clean for two, maybe three days at the most, and then he’ll see one of his blades, and the need to cut will consume him; a burning in the pit of his stomach, a bubble in his chest that makes it difficult to breathe and only has one way of being popped. Realistically, Colin knows that if he really wanted to stop, he would have thrown the blades away, but he couldn’t bring himself to.
He’s in too deep.
Up until this moment in time, Colin’s cuts have been carefully controlled; straight lines equally spaced apart. Not anymore. Now, he has more cuts on his body than he can count, stark lines of red sticking out against pale skin.
~
The first time Colin realizes that he’s passed the point of no return, he’s in the shower and the cuts he’s made just won’t bleed. He’s crying with frustration, and for the first time, instead of neat lines, he just slashes with blade, on his hips, his stomach, anywhere there is spare skin, because suddenly, the idea of any part of his skin being void of either scars or cuts makes him feel physically ill.
When he open his eyes he gasps at the amount of blood there is, because he’s pretty sure there’s more than there usually is, mixing with the water and turning it a pink far more beautiful than it should be considering what it is, before swirling down the drain.
Colin watches it go and sobs with relief, running his fingers over the new cuts, smiling sadly at the feel of the blood bubbling up.
~
In a last attempt to save him from himself, the next time Colin sees Bradley he doesn’t make as much effort to hide his cuts as he usually does. That’s not to say that he makes it obvious what he’s been doing to himself, because as much as he likes them, god knows Colin is ashamed of his cuts and he doesn’t want anyone to see them, least of all Bradley, but Colin knows that without someone’s help he isn’t going to be able stop.
He knows straight away the moment Bradley sees, because his eyes widen slightly, and flicker up to Colin’s face before back down to the slice of stomach that’s showing and Colin is desperately fighting to cover, despite that fact that it’s too late, because Colin’s changed his mind; he doesn’t want Bradley to know, he doesn’t want anyone to know, ever.
Colin still feels ridiculously betrayed when Bradley just clears his throat and carries on talking about whatever they were discussing.
~
Bradley means to say something, when he sees Colin’s stomach, because it’s clear to him that Colin is in over his head, needs help. When Colin’s hands go to tug his t-shirt down over the exposed skin on his stomach but stop halfway there before settling nonchalantly on the bed next to him it dawns on Bradley that this is Colin, in his roundabout way, asking Bradley for help.
So Bradley opens his mouth to tell Colin that he’s here for him, that he’ll help him get through whatever’s upsetting him and making hurt, to tell Colin that he fucking loves him, so he needs to stop, for Bradley. Instead, what happens is Bradley panics at the thought of Colin not feeling the same - and how pathetic is that, that this is the part Bradley chooses to focus on in this whole fucking debacle - and just clears his throat softly, before carrying on the previous conversation.
~
When he goes to bed that night, Bradley ignores the sound of sobbing coming through the wall between his and Colin’s room, pushing down the shame he feels at the fact his best friend needs help but he isn’t able to give it.
~
That night when Colin cuts, he doesn’t pay attention, almost doing it on autopilot, the only thing he can concentrate is the pain in blood. When he lies in bed afterwards, he remembers that Bradley had seen but did nothing about it, and cried because what happens now, if even his best friend can’t help him?
It’s a long time before Colin goes to sleep.
+1.
Colin doesn’t mean to cut this deep; it just kind of happens. It the first time he’s cut his wrist since they went to Cardiff, but yesterday was the last day of filming, and no one is going to be looking at his wrists in the next couple of months, and to be entirely honest with himself, there isn’t any room left on his hips or stomach to cut.
It’s harder to cut on his wrist though, at least to him, and it isn’t bleeding enough, so he keeps cutting, deeper and deeper, until it is bleeding, but now it’s bleeding too much, and Colin realises that he must have caught a vein because otherwise it wouldn’t be bleeding this much, realises that he’s going to die if he doesn’t get out of the bath right this second and get to the hospital, or at least a first aid kit, but Colin finds that he doesn’t really care, and isn’t that a scary thought, that he’s bleeding to death in front of his own eyes and he can’t muster enough energy to care about it.
Feeling woozy, Colin slides down the wall of the shower-slash-bath until he is sitting in the bath, wrists held up by his chest and sits, watching his blood flow down the drain.
~
This is where Bradley finds him, 10 minutes later, apart from when Bradley barged into the bathroom Colin’s eyes are closes, and he looks nearly dead.
Bradley can’t remember ever feeling this scared before in his life.
He skids over to the bath and gets in, not caring that he’s getting his clothes wet because fuck, Colin is lying there with gashes in his wrists and Bradley’s not a doctor but he can tell that Colin’s lost a lot of blood.
“KATIE!” he yells, knowing that her room is on the other side of Colin’s and hoping that she’s in. “KATIE!”
“What Bradley? Why are you in Colin’s room- Oh my god,” Katie looks like she’s about to cry, and Bradley doesn’t blame her, because he’s close to tears as well.
“Call an ambulance,” He croaks, and she hastily complies.
When she gets on the phone, she chucks him a towel from the rack in the corner. “They said they’ll be here in 10 minutes. Keep pressure on the wounds,”
Bradley does as she says, tying the towels around Colin’s wrist. “You need to wake up, Colin, you need to be okay. For me. I love you okay, you stupid sod. You need to wake up, and I’ll help you through this, like I should have been the past couple of months. God, I should have said something. I’m sorry, I’m the shittest best friend in the world, I’m sorry.” Bradley’s crying by now, and normally he’d be embarrassed for crying front of Katie, but he doesn’t remember she’s there until she comes and stands next to him and runs her fingers through his hair.
When the ambulance arrives, Bradley goes in the back of it with Colin with a promise to Katie that he’ll keep them updated.
~
Colin wakes up in the hospital a couple of hours later, with a vague recollection of someone telling him they loved him, and a feeling of shame so thick in his throat that he can’t swallow properly. He looks down at his wrists - bandaged, as he’d expected - and sees Bradley in the chair next to his bed, head resting on Colin’s thigh where he’d fallen asleep curved over.
A fierce rush of affection for Bradley hits Colin and he almost smiles before he realises that if Bradley’s here it means Bradley was the one who found him, and chokes on the guilt that threatens to overthrow him. Shakily he lifts one if his hands and rests it on Bradley head, stroking the soft golden strands beneath his fingers, aware that he’s probably overstepping his boundaries because if Bradley didn’t like him before, then what chance does he have now?
Bradley sits up suddenly, starting Colin, and looks at Colin like he’s afraid he’s going to do something stupid, or like he’s going to break, which Colin absolutely hates. “Col,” He says, voice hushed, “I’m so sorry,” and then Bradley’s face crumples and he starts crying, looking so miserable that Colin hates himself for putting that look on his face.
Bradley takes Colin’s face between his hands and Colin doesn’t realise that he’s crying as well until Bradley wipes away the tears with his thumb. “I’m sorry too,” Colin chokes out.
“You don’t need to be sorry Col. I’s sorry, god I’m so sorry. I knew what you were doing and I should have said something, or done something, but I didn’t know what to do, and then you looked like you were dead Col, and god I realised that maybe if I’d done something sooner you could have got help-“
“It’s not your fault Bradley,” Colin interjects softly, and Bradley continues stroking Colin’s cheekbones.
“I know,” he carries on, “I know it’s not my fault, but god I was so fucking scared Col, because I need you, you know that right? I fucking love you Col, and I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”
Colin’s breath catches in his throat and he thinks he might be crying even more than he was a moment ago.” I love you too, so much.” He says and he sees Bradley start a little.
“Oh my god, I’ve been even more of an idiot than I usually am. Can I...” Bradley trails off but then sucks it up and carries on, “Can I kiss you?”
Colin nods, and Bradley leans in and presses his mouth against Colin’s, softly, and it’s not perfect - they’re both crying and they’re in a fucking hospital - but Colin thinks it’s the best kiss he’s ever had.
~
It’s not easy.
Colin has to go to therapy, much to his disgust, but he goes because the idea of making Bradley cry again makes him feel sick to his stomach. Bradley and Colin have a lot of arguments, mainly because Bradley treats Colin like a child, and Colin acts like a spoiled brat in return.
Colin slips up a couple of times, and the disappointment in Bradley’s eyes each time he does makes him want to throw things, because it’s not his fucking fault, but he always resists because he ultimately knows that Bradley just wants Colin to get better, because he loves him (and Colin still hasn’t tired of hearing that, even a year and a bit on.)
Bradley holds Colin and presses kisses into his hair, whispering soothing words into his ears on the days where Colin feels like crap and wants nothing more than to take a blade to his skin and make the pain physical.
So yeah, it’s not easy, not by a long shot, but the look on Bradley’s face when he realises Colin’s been a year clean makes up for it. As does the sex, Colin thinks, but that, is another story.
The EndAuthor: bowtiesandtuxes
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: self harm, suicide.
Word Count: 4600
Disclaimer: Neither Bradley nor Colin belongs to me, or any other characters mentioned; I just like playing with them. The events of this story are all fictional, and a product of my twisted imagination.
Notes: title is from Bullet by Hollywood Undead which I listened to a lot when I was writing this at 2AM this morning. Also, this is my first fic, so any concrit is appreciated.
1.
The first time Bradley notices, they’re on the train to the Cardiff filming studio. Colin’s asleep on Bradley’s shoulder, hood up over his head, sleeves fisted in his hands where his arms are curled around his legs. Bradley is watching Colin sleep with a fond smile on his face, and he moves a hand to brush some of Colin’s hair back off of his forehead. Colin shifts in his sleep, and one of the sleeves of his hoody slips free of his grip, rucking up around his wrists just enough for Bradley to see a flash of red. Intrigued, Bradley pushes Colin’s sleeve a little further up his arm, and utters a quite oh at the sight that greets him.
He almost manages to convince himself that it’s not real, that he’s mistaken, because who would believe that Colin, sweet wonderful Colin who is always smiling and ready to cheer someone up, would be suffering enough mental pain that he is carving lines into his arm in order to deal with it? Bradley would like nothing more than to be wrong, but the truth is staring him right in the face though, five neat lines cut on Colin’s wrist that Bradley can’t ignore, any more than he can ignore the scratch of freshly healed of wounds where he’s running his thumb over Colin’s wrist, in an unintentional soothing gesture.
Bradley feels like crap that he hasn’t noticed Colin was hurting before the proof was in front of him; surely he should have been able to tell that his best friend - and if it’s more than that for Bradley, what difference does it make - was in enough pain to take it out on himself? It makes him wonder how long Colin has been hurting and hiding it, because Bradley is sure that Colin hadn’t been cutting before the end of the last series, would have noticed if he was - because let’s face it, Bradley was, and still is, slightly obsessed with Colin Morgan - which means Colin started in the hiatus between filming. How long he’d been suffering until that point, however, is a mystery to Bradley.
Colin shifts again, and Bradley, fearing Colin waking up, drops his wrist quickly, panic filling him at the thought of Colin realising that Bradley knows. When Colin doesn’t wake up, Bradley can’t bring himself to take hold of Colin’s wrist again, even though he wants to, just to feel the pulse fluttering under his fingertips, and assurance that Colin’s okay. Instead, he watches Colin sleep, watches the way his eyelashes rest against his cheek, how his lips flutter when he breathes and resolves to talk to Colin about it when he wakes up.
~
In the end, he doesn’t talk to Colin about it. Bradley had planned out a whole speech for the rest of the time Colin was dozing, but when Colin wakes up half an hour from their stop, Bradley finds his resolve dying in the face of Colin’s panicked look when he tugs his sleeves further down over his wrists, because as much as he’d like to get Colin to talk to him he knows that if Colin doesn’t want to talk he won’t. There is no way of forcing Colin into talking if he doesn’t want to.
Bradley’s no expert, but he’s sure Colin will just make up an excuse, anyway.
~
Colin wakes up and the first thing he notices is that his hands are colder than they should be. He quickly checks that his sleeves are still pulled over his wrists - over the cuts - and although they are, mostly, they’ve slipped over his fists, and he still feels sick with fear that Bradley might have seen. For the rest of the day Colin tenses every time Bradley opens his mouth, sure that this is the time Bradley will ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, carving up his arm, although Bradley caring that much might just be wishful thinking.
Colin knows one thing though; he can’t keep cutting, at least not his wrists. It’s too obvious, too many people are likely to see them, no matter how careful he is.
~
Colin lasts 3 days before relapsing, although he’s not sure relapse is the word, considering that he wasn’t trying to quit in the first place, not really. When he takes the blade to his skin - although not his wrist - he almost cries at how good it feels after a couple of days without it.
2.
Over the next couple of months, Bradley watches Colin, but finds nothing. After two weeks on set, Colin has stopped wearing long sleeves everywhere, and there’s nothing on his wrists apart from scars so faint they hardly show up against his faint skin to suggest that anything had ever been wrong. Bradley assumes that means Colin has stopped cutting and in return, Bradley stops subtly checking Colin’s arm for fresh cuts every time he sees him.
Bradley has all but forgotten about it, until the week before they leave Cardiff.
~
It takes Bradley a while to realize that the cut on Colin’s ankles actually is an intentional cut, despite the fact that it’s currently right in front of his face from the way he and Colin are arranged on his bed, reading through their scripts for tomorrow’s scenes. He doesn’t initially realise it’s a cut cut, because it’s only one, on its own, and Bradley has kind of assumed that if you cut on purpose, you do it more than once.
“Col?” He asks offhandedly. “What happened to your ankle?”
“Mmm?” Colin sounds distracted, as though he didn’t really hear the question, and Bradley taps Colin’s leg to get to look at him. Colin sits up to look down at Bradley, and asks “What did you say?”
“I asked what happened to your ankle,” Bradleys repeats.
“What happened to my-“ Colin starts twisting his hand together nervously in his lap, and that’s all that Bradley needs to see before he realises Oh. I already know what happened. “I caught it, against- against a nail that was sticking out from the wall,” Colin finishes softly, voice trailing off at the end.
Despite the fact that Bradley is 100% sure that the cut on Colin’s ankle is self-inflicted, he has no actual proof so he just nods, and murmurs, “You should tell someone... about the nail, I mean,” before picking up his script again. He ignores the guilt that blooms in his stomach at the fact that Colin looks slightly disappointed that Bradley had accepted his excuse.
~
Colin doesn’t realise Bradley is talking to him until Bradley pokes him in leg impatiently.
“What did you say?” He asks, and thinks he might start having a panic attack when Bradley asks him about his ankle. Shit, shit, shit. What do I say? He wasn’t supposed to know. Nobody was supposed to see. Does he realise? He must realise, otherwise he wouldn’t ask. Maybe he’s just curious. He probably doesn’t suspect anything.
Colin is proved wrong at Bradley’s disbelieving look when Colin explains the nail in that wall, and could Colin have come up with a shitter excuse? Despite the worry that Bradley will contest his excuse, will make Colin talk about what he’s doing to his body, he can’t help but feel a flicker of disappointment at the fact that Bradley doesn’t seem to care that he’s lying.
~
That night, when Colin is in the bathroom of his hotel room and there’s blood on the counter top, and a razor blade in the sink, and Colin’s holding an old black t-shirt to the five fresh new cuts on his leg to stop the bleeding, he realises that his ankle was a stupid place to be cutting anyway. His thigh is a much better choice; the only time anyone is going to see that is if he’s getting laid, and that’s not going to happen anytime soon, unless Bradley wakes up one morning and realises that he’s in love with Colin. The prospect of that happening was unlikely in the first place, and even more so now that Bradley knows, or at least suspects that Colin’s been finding solace in a blade.
3.
Bradley feels a little bit like a creep - okay a lot like a creep - for watching Colin while he sleeps, again, but really, Colin shouldn’t fall asleep on top of his covers in his boxers and then Bradley wouldn’t have to stare. It’s not like Bradley gets to see much of Colin’s body in his day-to-day life, and whilst liking Colin has nothing to do with sex - and everything to do with his laugh, and his cheekbones, and his stupid stupid hair, and the fact that his accent gets thicker when he’s tired and everything that makes him Colin - it’s nice to have something to fantasize to.
Bradley has just pushed down the urge to kiss Colin on the head and walked almost to the door when he notices Colin’s left his bathroom light on - because, to use an insult from the show, Colin is a clotpole - and has to come back into the room to turn it off. He’s about to leave again when he sees the edge of a t-shirt sticking out from under the bed side table. Naturally, because he’s Bradley, but also because the rest of Colin’s room is spotlessly tidy, Bradley is curious as to what it’s doing there, but he plays it off as Colin being forgetful. Because he’s such a nice person, Bradley goes to pick the t-shirt up and put it in the washing. He stops, however, when he gets close enough to see that the t-shirt is stained with something.
Blood.
That’s when it becomes obvious to Bradley that Colin hadn’t been forgetful and left the t-shirt there by accident, but had tried to hide it.
Bradley rakes his gaze over Colin’s lean form stretched out on the bed, searching for the source of all the blood, and god, he thinks, that’s a fucking lot of blood. He can’t find any fresh cuts though, and that’s the problem. The cuts that would bleed that much must be obvious, but there aren’t any Bradley can see, and it’s not like Colin’s wearing much. Unless... Bradley’s gaze dropped to Colin’s hips and the top of his skinny legs, covered by his boxers.
“Oh my god,” Bradley breathes, hands in his hair, because if there’s that much blood then it’s serious, and Colin needs help but how is he meant to explain to Colin that he knows because he was snooping around his room when he was asleep?
Bradley doesn’t know.
~
“Shit.” Colin says when he wakes up and realises he fell asleep in his boxers, on top of the covers where anyone could have walked in and seen his. “Shit.” And then again, when he sits up and realises that he’s bled through his boxers onto the duvet cover. Fuck. How do I explain this to hotel management? Fuck. They’re usually alright with keeping stuff quiet, but this much blood? There’s no fucking way they won’t tell someone.
Slightly terrified at the idea of anyone finding out, and in a desperate attempt to keep his secret a secret for just a bit longer, Colin strips off the duvet and takes it into the bathroom to attempt to wash out the blood, cursing the hotel for getting fucking white duvets covers the whole time.
After an hour of trying, and failing, to get the blood out, Colin finally gives up, wanting to scream in frustration. Whilst the blood isn’t out completely, Colin supposes, looking at the stain, that he might be able to convince management he dropped beans on his bed. Possibly.
~
The hotel, thankfully, seem to accept his story.
The next day, though, Colin goes out and buys gauze, and bandages and plasters, spending nearly 30 Euros to make sure he’s got enough to last him a while. From then on, he makes sure his cuts are wrapped before he goes to bed.
4.
By the time they get to the Pierrefonds set, Colin has moved from cutting his thighs, to cutting his hips. Sometimes, he cuts both.
He’s not quite sure how the transition happened; all knows is that one day he realises the waist band of his jeans is irritating his cuts, even through the bandages. He tries to keep the cutting to within the area of skin his boxers cover, so as not to be found out by costuming, even though Merlin’s trousers tend to be quite high waisted, and costuming have always let him get changed in a side room because unlike Bradley, he doesn’t like showing his body at every opportunity.
Unsurprisingly, that hasn’t changed since Colin’s become used to having 40-50 cuts on his body at any one point, and more scars each day than he had the day before. That’s one thing that has surprised Colin. How much he loves his scars. He’d thought he’d be ashamed of the, and he is, in a way. He certainly doesn’t want to show them off, but he gets a vague feeling of panic whenever it seems as though one might be disappearing, and has to go over it with his blade a couple of times, to make sure it doesn’t. He likes the feeling of his cuts, too. When he’s stressed, or panicked, he runs his fingers over them, feeling the roughness of the scabs on the pads of his fingers, and it calms his down.
Up until this point, Colin has always been certain that he could stop whenever he wanted. Now he’s not so sure.
~
Bradley notices the gauze. It’s not like it’s difficult, because Colin rarely wears any colour other than black, and the white of the bandage clashes horribly with Colin clothes. Not to mention that Colin looks like he’s gained weight, but only on one strip of his stomach.
The placement of the bandage makes Bradley wonder. Last he’d heard - well, worked out actually, but anyway - Colin had been slicing up his legs, and Bradley wonders whether there’s a pattern. He thinks maybe if he works out the pattern, he might be able to stop it carrying on.
First had been the wrists. Then the ankles, the thighs, and now the hips (at least Bradleys assuming, from how low the gauze is wrapped), but Bradley can’t work out what’s next.
~
A couple of days after noticing the gauze, Bradley gets to see Colin’s hips without it. They’re in Bradley’s hotel room, watching episodes of Buffy on Bradleys laptop, squished up together on Bradley’s bed - which, Colin notes, is smaller than his. Both of them have call times at ridiculous o’clock the next morning, so early that Bradley has set his alarm and is trying to block out the thought that he’ll be up before the sun is in the morning, so at nine, ever-professional Colin rolls off of Bradley bed, kicking Bradley in the process, and puts his shoes on before standing.
“Do you really have to go?” Bradley whines, partly being serious but also partly because he knows Colin thinks Bradley whining is the funniest thing ever.
Colin heaves a - pretend - long-suffering sigh, and shoves Bradley good naturedly in the shoulder. “Yes, Bradley. Do you know why? Because we both have to be up at 4 o’clock in the morning. That’s why.”
Bradley groans, “Oh god, don’t remind me. You could always stay here?” he offers.
“What, because my hotel room is so far away?” Colin asks with a raised eyebrow and laughs quietly when Bradley nods, “It down the corridor Bradley. And anyway, where would I sleep?”
Bradley, however, has stopped listening, because Colin has stretched, raising his arms above his head whilst he was talking, and his t-shirt had rode up slightly. The amount of skin it showed was miniscule, but it was enough for Bradley to see three vicious looking cuts, all looking relatively fresh.
“Are you even listening? Ugh, whatever. Goodnight Bradley.”
Before Bradley can register anything, Colin is walking out of the room, and Bradley barely has time to shout “Good night Colin!” after him before the door shuts.
5.
Colin doesn’t feel safe in his own head anymore. He spends most of the day thinking about cutting, and where he can cut next, and deep he can cut. The rest of the day is spent actually carving lines into his skin.
At this point Colin knows that he’s not going to be able to stop on his own, is going to need help to stop, because he’s tried, god he’s tried, but it doesn’t work. He’ll be clean for two, maybe three days at the most, and then he’ll see one of his blades, and the need to cut will consume him; a burning in the pit of his stomach, a bubble in his chest that makes it difficult to breathe and only has one way of being popped. Realistically, Colin knows that if he really wanted to stop, he would have thrown the blades away, but he couldn’t bring himself to.
He’s in too deep.
Up until this moment in time, Colin’s cuts have been carefully controlled; straight lines equally spaced apart. Not anymore. Now, he has more cuts on his body than he can count, stark lines of red sticking out against pale skin.
~
The first time Colin realizes that he’s passed the point of no return, he’s in the shower and the cuts he’s made just won’t bleed. He’s crying with frustration, and for the first time, instead of neat lines, he just slashes with blade, on his hips, his stomach, anywhere there is spare skin, because suddenly, the idea of any part of his skin being void of either scars or cuts makes him feel physically ill.
When he open his eyes he gasps at the amount of blood there is, because he’s pretty sure there’s more than there usually is, mixing with the water and turning it a pink far more beautiful than it should be considering what it is, before swirling down the drain.
Colin watches it go and sobs with relief, running his fingers over the new cuts, smiling sadly at the feel of the blood bubbling up.
~
In a last attempt to save him from himself, the next time Colin sees Bradley he doesn’t make as much effort to hide his cuts as he usually does. That’s not to say that he makes it obvious what he’s been doing to himself, because as much as he likes them, god knows Colin is ashamed of his cuts and he doesn’t want anyone to see them, least of all Bradley, but Colin knows that without someone’s help he isn’t going to be able stop.
He knows straight away the moment Bradley sees, because his eyes widen slightly, and flicker up to Colin’s face before back down to the slice of stomach that’s showing and Colin is desperately fighting to cover, despite that fact that it’s too late, because Colin’s changed his mind; he doesn’t want Bradley to know, he doesn’t want anyone to know, ever.
Colin still feels ridiculously betrayed when Bradley just clears his throat and carries on talking about whatever they were discussing.
~
Bradley means to say something, when he sees Colin’s stomach, because it’s clear to him that Colin is in over his head, needs help. When Colin’s hands go to tug his t-shirt down over the exposed skin on his stomach but stop halfway there before settling nonchalantly on the bed next to him it dawns on Bradley that this is Colin, in his roundabout way, asking Bradley for help.
So Bradley opens his mouth to tell Colin that he’s here for him, that he’ll help him get through whatever’s upsetting him and making hurt, to tell Colin that he fucking loves him, so he needs to stop, for Bradley. Instead, what happens is Bradley panics at the thought of Colin not feeling the same - and how pathetic is that, that this is the part Bradley chooses to focus on in this whole fucking debacle - and just clears his throat softly, before carrying on the previous conversation.
~
When he goes to bed that night, Bradley ignores the sound of sobbing coming through the wall between his and Colin’s room, pushing down the shame he feels at the fact his best friend needs help but he isn’t able to give it.
~
That night when Colin cuts, he doesn’t pay attention, almost doing it on autopilot, the only thing he can concentrate is the pain in blood. When he lies in bed afterwards, he remembers that Bradley had seen but did nothing about it, and cried because what happens now, if even his best friend can’t help him?
It’s a long time before Colin goes to sleep.
+1.
Colin doesn’t mean to cut this deep; it just kind of happens. It the first time he’s cut his wrist since they went to Cardiff, but yesterday was the last day of filming, and no one is going to be looking at his wrists in the next couple of months, and to be entirely honest with himself, there isn’t any room left on his hips or stomach to cut.
It’s harder to cut on his wrist though, at least to him, and it isn’t bleeding enough, so he keeps cutting, deeper and deeper, until it is bleeding, but now it’s bleeding too much, and Colin realises that he must have caught a vein because otherwise it wouldn’t be bleeding this much, realises that he’s going to die if he doesn’t get out of the bath right this second and get to the hospital, or at least a first aid kit, but Colin finds that he doesn’t really care, and isn’t that a scary thought, that he’s bleeding to death in front of his own eyes and he can’t muster enough energy to care about it.
Feeling woozy, Colin slides down the wall of the shower-slash-bath until he is sitting in the bath, wrists held up by his chest and sits, watching his blood flow down the drain.
~
This is where Bradley finds him, 10 minutes later, apart from when Bradley barged into the bathroom Colin’s eyes are closes, and he looks nearly dead.
Bradley can’t remember ever feeling this scared before in his life.
He skids over to the bath and gets in, not caring that he’s getting his clothes wet because fuck, Colin is lying there with gashes in his wrists and Bradley’s not a doctor but he can tell that Colin’s lost a lot of blood.
“KATIE!” he yells, knowing that her room is on the other side of Colin’s and hoping that she’s in. “KATIE!”
“What Bradley? Why are you in Colin’s room- Oh my god,” Katie looks like she’s about to cry, and Bradley doesn’t blame her, because he’s close to tears as well.
“Call an ambulance,” He croaks, and she hastily complies.
When she gets on the phone, she chucks him a towel from the rack in the corner. “They said they’ll be here in 10 minutes. Keep pressure on the wounds,”
Bradley does as she says, tying the towels around Colin’s wrist. “You need to wake up, Colin, you need to be okay. For me. I love you okay, you stupid sod. You need to wake up, and I’ll help you through this, like I should have been the past couple of months. God, I should have said something. I’m sorry, I’m the shittest best friend in the world, I’m sorry.” Bradley’s crying by now, and normally he’d be embarrassed for crying front of Katie, but he doesn’t remember she’s there until she comes and stands next to him and runs her fingers through his hair.
When the ambulance arrives, Bradley goes in the back of it with Colin with a promise to Katie that he’ll keep them updated.
~
Colin wakes up in the hospital a couple of hours later, with a vague recollection of someone telling him they loved him, and a feeling of shame so thick in his throat that he can’t swallow properly. He looks down at his wrists - bandaged, as he’d expected - and sees Bradley in the chair next to his bed, head resting on Colin’s thigh where he’d fallen asleep curved over.
A fierce rush of affection for Bradley hits Colin and he almost smiles before he realises that if Bradley’s here it means Bradley was the one who found him, and chokes on the guilt that threatens to overthrow him. Shakily he lifts one if his hands and rests it on Bradley head, stroking the soft golden strands beneath his fingers, aware that he’s probably overstepping his boundaries because if Bradley didn’t like him before, then what chance does he have now?
Bradley sits up suddenly, starting Colin, and looks at Colin like he’s afraid he’s going to do something stupid, or like he’s going to break, which Colin absolutely hates. “Col,” He says, voice hushed, “I’m so sorry,” and then Bradley’s face crumples and he starts crying, looking so miserable that Colin hates himself for putting that look on his face.
Bradley takes Colin’s face between his hands and Colin doesn’t realise that he’s crying as well until Bradley wipes away the tears with his thumb. “I’m sorry too,” Colin chokes out.
“You don’t need to be sorry Col. I’s sorry, god I’m so sorry. I knew what you were doing and I should have said something, or done something, but I didn’t know what to do, and then you looked like you were dead Col, and god I realised that maybe if I’d done something sooner you could have got help-“
“It’s not your fault Bradley,” Colin interjects softly, and Bradley continues stroking Colin’s cheekbones.
“I know,” he carries on, “I know it’s not my fault, but god I was so fucking scared Col, because I need you, you know that right? I fucking love you Col, and I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”
Colin’s breath catches in his throat and he thinks he might be crying even more than he was a moment ago.” I love you too, so much.” He says and he sees Bradley start a little.
“Oh my god, I’ve been even more of an idiot than I usually am. Can I...” Bradley trails off but then sucks it up and carries on, “Can I kiss you?”
Colin nods, and Bradley leans in and presses his mouth against Colin’s, softly, and it’s not perfect - they’re both crying and they’re in a fucking hospital - but Colin thinks it’s the best kiss he’s ever had.
~
It’s not easy.
Colin has to go to therapy, much to his disgust, but he goes because the idea of making Bradley cry again makes him feel sick to his stomach. Bradley and Colin have a lot of arguments, mainly because Bradley treats Colin like a child, and Colin acts like a spoiled brat in return.
Colin slips up a couple of times, and the disappointment in Bradley’s eyes each time he does makes him want to throw things, because it’s not his fucking fault, but he always resists because he ultimately knows that Bradley just wants Colin to get better, because he loves him (and Colin still hasn’t tired of hearing that, even a year and a bit on.)
Bradley holds Colin and presses kisses into his hair, whispering soothing words into his ears on the days where Colin feels like crap and wants nothing more than to take a blade to his skin and make the pain physical.
So yeah, it’s not easy, not by a long shot, but the look on Bradley’s face when he realises Colin’s been a year clean makes up for it. As does the sex, Colin thinks, but that, is another story.
The End