Okay (RPS)
I have fic again! And I remembered to post! And even remembered my log on! Yippy! :-)
Title: Okay
Type: RPS, Bradley/Colin
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2,200
Synopsis: After an accident on set, he just needs to know he’s okay.
Disclaimer: I do not own them, what with them being real and all. I am making no profit from this.
The first time Bradley saw Colin smash into the wall, he panicked. He knew in the back of his mind that it was safe, that it was padded and Colin was in a harness and that he was all excited to do his own stunts for the first time. That did not change the fact that Bradley’s breath caught in his throat until he heard the familiar brogue insist, “I’m all right! Let’s do it again!”
Now doing stunts was old hat for both of them. They would walk by, see the padding being put in place and smile at each other, knowing there would be a bruise or two but a ton of stories to share later about just how they finally got things lined up and working in the end. It’d be a night at the hotel, usually, locked away in one of their rooms, comparing who had the mark that would make the make up department complain the most while they munched on take away and had some awful show playing in the background.
That’s why Bradley really did not think much of it as he saw Colin wrangling his way into another harness, the baddie of the week practicing the elaborate hand motions that would send poor Merlin flying into an unsuspecting tree or wall or possibly person if they decided to include the extras.
He was taking a break, water bottle half to his lips, when he heard the familiar sound of the pulley snapping back. He waited, expecting the muted thud, but heard something that sounded like a snap followed by a loud crash instead. By the time he heard the first person shout out a panicked, “Colin!” he was already running over, water bottle long forgotten.
He found Colin in a heap on the forest floor, body contorted as he still partially hung from the harness, one strap frayed and hanging damningly above him. The director was there, the camera men already converging and he heard someone say they had already called for an ambulance, but he pushed his way through to crouch down and tentatively ask, “Cols?”
The dark head turned and blue eyes blinked up at him before wincing as if in pain. “Ouch,” Colin complained, accent thick and nowhere near his usual character voice. He had blood dripping into one eye from what looked to be a relatively minor scratch, and his lip looked split beneath the clumps of dirt currently decorating his pale features.
One of the camera men produced a knife and sliced through the part of the harness that remained, allowing Colin to be fully lowered to the ground. He was rolled gently on to his back, splayed limbs carefully checked over for breaks or other injuries. He insisted his neck was fine, his back felt bruised but nothing more, and tried to push himself up, only to curl in on himself in pain.
“What’s wrong?” Bradley demanded, already helping him into the sitting position he was insisting on.
“Wrist,” Colin ground out, cradling the offending appendage to him.
The medics had arrived by then and pushed Bradley out of the way. He looked on, using his height to see over their bowed heads while they did their own checks and forced Colin to release his wrist to be examined. From his viewpoint, Bradley swore he could see the swelling already forming and knew there would be no more filming for a certain Irish actor, at least for the afternoon.
He could not justify going with in the ambulance, despite the petulant look directed at both him and Julian and, really, that took a lot of willpower for both of them to resist. An official production assistant sat in instead, promising to update them as soon as she learned anything. Filming was canceled as all the safety equipment was to be reviewed and no one’s minds were really on the script anyway.
He made it back to the costuming truck to turn in his gear and found Anthony there as well, doing the same. “What’s all this about an accident?”
“Colin’s rig snapped,” Bradley explained, careful to keep his voice calm and even.
“Is he all right?” Anthony asked with genuine concern.
“He’s a bit cut up and getting scans now, but they don’t think it’s anything serious,” Bradley replied.
“Poor lad,” Anthony sighed, signing something that likely stated that no, the crown was not his and they could have it back. “Are you going to go check on him?”
“I...” Bradley started, but stopped himself. He wanted to, oh how he wanted to, but he did not want to seem overly concerned, especially when Colin himself insisted he was fine - bruised, but fine. If he made a big deal out of a bruise, he would never live it down.
Anthony rolled his eyes. “We’re both going,” he said knowingly.
And so Bradley found himself dragged along to the hospital with very little protest, only remembering to phone Katie and Angel as they arrived. The two women met them there soon enough, having already heard through the set grapevine what had happened, and the four of them sent the assistant home and waited and teased and joked and generally tried to make each other feel better for about an hour or so until Colin was pushed out in a wheelchair, still in costume save for the scrub shirt he wore instead of his usual tunic and coat. There was no telling what happened to the rest of it, though the Costuming department was likely to throw a hissy if they found out.
“That bad?” Bradley asked, surprised. Colin looked all right, a bit of color back in his cheeks next to a tiny cut above his eyebrow and the split lip. His wrist was encased in one of the removable fiberglass casts, the slick surface no doubt preventing the thousand and one lewd messages the group had been thinking up while they waited.
“Nah,” Colin waved off his concern. His eyes were glassy and it was clear he had been given the good stuff. The small white bag on his lap gave story to more of the good stuff coming home with him. “It’s just policy, I can walk fine.” To put action to words, he attempted to stand, the nurse scrambling to lock the wheels of the chair and Angel grabbing the bag of drugs before it fell while Katie offered an arm for support and chided him when he tried to use his bad wrist.
“Oh yeah, you’re a hundred percent there, Cols,” Bradley rolled his eyes and took his other side for support. He gave him a reassuring squeeze to take the sting out of his words, then quickly apologized when Colin cringed from the action.
“Can we assume no filming for a while?” Anthony asked, taking in the show with a hint of a smile.
“Twentyfour hours required downtime with a preferred fortyeight,” Colin dutifully recited. “We also will have to work around the cast for a little while.”
“Broken?” Anthony guessed.
“Severe sprain,” he replied with a frown.
“At least the bruising can be explained by your fight with the evil witch?” Katie suggested hopefully.
“If we shoot in order,” Colin conceded, and Bradley was forced to agree. Merlin having a cut or two after getting tossed into a tree was one thing; Merlin having a cut or two while supposedly doing nothing by wait on Gaius or Arthur was another all together.
“You look ready to pass out, are you sure it’s okay to send you home?” Anthony asked with concern.
“Just tired,” Colin yawned. “Whatever they gave me is helping with the pain, but is knocking me on my arse.”
“Then let’s get that arse back to the hotel where you can sleep and we can figure out how many days we have off,” Bradley suggested.
They got Colin back to the hotel and situated in his room. Angel tucked him under the covers and Katie offered a kiss on his bruised forehead. “Try not to do anything stupid in your sleep,” Angel told him as she left. He tried to flip her off good-naturedly, but the cast got in the way.
Bradley let him sleep while they sorted out what was going on with the filming. All stunts were on hold until the rigs could be checked over, but the other scenes should be on schedule the following day. They thought they had a good enough take of the stunt in question to use in post-production, so Colin wouldn’t even be forced to redo the thing. Secretly Bradley wondered if the rest of them would talk them into artful editing or CGI-ing the thing if needed because there was no way any one of them would allow Colin to do it again after this.
When his stomach growled, he knew Colin’s would soon be doing the same. Angel and Katie had already gone off to some café together, so he grabbed some takeaway and knocked on Colin’s door. He let himself in at the muttered reply to find Colin still in bed, covers a knot at his feet and hair smashed every which way. There were sleep lines from his pillow pressed into his cheek but it were the fine lines of pain around his eyes that drew Bradley’s gaze.
“Let me guess, ‘destiny and chicken’?” Colin yawned.
“Well, the vegetarian equivalent for you,” Bradley corrected. He sat the bags down on the bed and himself beside them. “Let’s get some of this into you so you can have more of the stuff that makes you loopy.”
He flipped on the television and put on the most inane thing he could find, which was a channel airing old cartoons, while Colin tried to arrange himself into more of a sitting position, this time remembering not to use his now bad wrist.
Bradley waited until he had at least a third of his meal in him to pop open the pain pills and offer him his dose, hoping the padded stomach would prevent them from reappearing. Another third of the meal gone and the little pain lines began to ease, and by the time Colin was scraping his plate, he was giggling inanely at something the coyote was doing to the roadrunner and looked a fair deal stoned.
Bradley gathered the trash and tossed it in the bin. When he turned back, he found Colin staring intently at him. “What?” he asked, suddenly self-conscious. “Do I have food on me or something?”
Colin shook his head and paused as if watching the colors of the room swirl by. He blinked and announced, “Okay, let’s get this over with, shall we?”
Bradley was about to ask what they were getting over, but Colin was attempting to pull his scrub top off and getting his cast caught in the sleeve in the process. He helped him free his hand and tossed the shirt to the side and asked, “What, you suddenly have an exhibitionist streak in you?”
Colin rolled his eyes. “You were going to ask anyway, so here you go. Look your fill and all that, but know I totally win because there is no way Make Up can cover this cast with a bit of toner,” he explained.
Bradley swallowed, barely hearing what Colin had said as his eyes traced bruises that were already turning deep shades of blue and purple on Colin’s chest and down his arm. He shifted his stance and saw matching marks and deep red lines from the harness marring the pale skin of his back as well. Bradley sat back down on the bed, wishing he could erase the marks and the pain they so obviously caused. Instead, he settled for a whispered, “I don’t think this counts as winning.”
Colin looked over to him with his too blue eyes and cocked his head to the side. He squirmed just a bit closer, enough so that he could rest his head on Bradley’s shoulder. As Bradley’s arm came up around him automatically, he closed his eyes and sighed, “I don’t know, sure doesn’t seem like losing right now.”
Bradley rested his chin on top of the unruly mess of hair and was kind of forced to disagree. His eyes traced the bruising, found the shadow of skin beneath the edge of the cast, and hew knew it could have been so much worse. That didn’t mean it also could be so much better. He tilted his head enough to press a kiss to the top of Colin’s head and sighed before returning to rest his chin again.
Colin’s good hand snaked through to find the button on his jeans, but Bradley stopped him. “Not while you’re high on pain meds and look like the wrong side of a train wreck,” he said gently.
He could hear Colin’s pout in his breath, but the fingers strayed over to a belt loop instead and just held on. “This okay?” Colin asked around a yawn, betraying his earlier bravado.
Bradley held him just a little bit tighter and said, “Yeah, this is more than okay.”
Title: Okay
Type: RPS, Bradley/Colin
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2,200
Synopsis: After an accident on set, he just needs to know he’s okay.
Disclaimer: I do not own them, what with them being real and all. I am making no profit from this.
The first time Bradley saw Colin smash into the wall, he panicked. He knew in the back of his mind that it was safe, that it was padded and Colin was in a harness and that he was all excited to do his own stunts for the first time. That did not change the fact that Bradley’s breath caught in his throat until he heard the familiar brogue insist, “I’m all right! Let’s do it again!”
Now doing stunts was old hat for both of them. They would walk by, see the padding being put in place and smile at each other, knowing there would be a bruise or two but a ton of stories to share later about just how they finally got things lined up and working in the end. It’d be a night at the hotel, usually, locked away in one of their rooms, comparing who had the mark that would make the make up department complain the most while they munched on take away and had some awful show playing in the background.
That’s why Bradley really did not think much of it as he saw Colin wrangling his way into another harness, the baddie of the week practicing the elaborate hand motions that would send poor Merlin flying into an unsuspecting tree or wall or possibly person if they decided to include the extras.
He was taking a break, water bottle half to his lips, when he heard the familiar sound of the pulley snapping back. He waited, expecting the muted thud, but heard something that sounded like a snap followed by a loud crash instead. By the time he heard the first person shout out a panicked, “Colin!” he was already running over, water bottle long forgotten.
He found Colin in a heap on the forest floor, body contorted as he still partially hung from the harness, one strap frayed and hanging damningly above him. The director was there, the camera men already converging and he heard someone say they had already called for an ambulance, but he pushed his way through to crouch down and tentatively ask, “Cols?”
The dark head turned and blue eyes blinked up at him before wincing as if in pain. “Ouch,” Colin complained, accent thick and nowhere near his usual character voice. He had blood dripping into one eye from what looked to be a relatively minor scratch, and his lip looked split beneath the clumps of dirt currently decorating his pale features.
One of the camera men produced a knife and sliced through the part of the harness that remained, allowing Colin to be fully lowered to the ground. He was rolled gently on to his back, splayed limbs carefully checked over for breaks or other injuries. He insisted his neck was fine, his back felt bruised but nothing more, and tried to push himself up, only to curl in on himself in pain.
“What’s wrong?” Bradley demanded, already helping him into the sitting position he was insisting on.
“Wrist,” Colin ground out, cradling the offending appendage to him.
The medics had arrived by then and pushed Bradley out of the way. He looked on, using his height to see over their bowed heads while they did their own checks and forced Colin to release his wrist to be examined. From his viewpoint, Bradley swore he could see the swelling already forming and knew there would be no more filming for a certain Irish actor, at least for the afternoon.
He could not justify going with in the ambulance, despite the petulant look directed at both him and Julian and, really, that took a lot of willpower for both of them to resist. An official production assistant sat in instead, promising to update them as soon as she learned anything. Filming was canceled as all the safety equipment was to be reviewed and no one’s minds were really on the script anyway.
He made it back to the costuming truck to turn in his gear and found Anthony there as well, doing the same. “What’s all this about an accident?”
“Colin’s rig snapped,” Bradley explained, careful to keep his voice calm and even.
“Is he all right?” Anthony asked with genuine concern.
“He’s a bit cut up and getting scans now, but they don’t think it’s anything serious,” Bradley replied.
“Poor lad,” Anthony sighed, signing something that likely stated that no, the crown was not his and they could have it back. “Are you going to go check on him?”
“I...” Bradley started, but stopped himself. He wanted to, oh how he wanted to, but he did not want to seem overly concerned, especially when Colin himself insisted he was fine - bruised, but fine. If he made a big deal out of a bruise, he would never live it down.
Anthony rolled his eyes. “We’re both going,” he said knowingly.
And so Bradley found himself dragged along to the hospital with very little protest, only remembering to phone Katie and Angel as they arrived. The two women met them there soon enough, having already heard through the set grapevine what had happened, and the four of them sent the assistant home and waited and teased and joked and generally tried to make each other feel better for about an hour or so until Colin was pushed out in a wheelchair, still in costume save for the scrub shirt he wore instead of his usual tunic and coat. There was no telling what happened to the rest of it, though the Costuming department was likely to throw a hissy if they found out.
“That bad?” Bradley asked, surprised. Colin looked all right, a bit of color back in his cheeks next to a tiny cut above his eyebrow and the split lip. His wrist was encased in one of the removable fiberglass casts, the slick surface no doubt preventing the thousand and one lewd messages the group had been thinking up while they waited.
“Nah,” Colin waved off his concern. His eyes were glassy and it was clear he had been given the good stuff. The small white bag on his lap gave story to more of the good stuff coming home with him. “It’s just policy, I can walk fine.” To put action to words, he attempted to stand, the nurse scrambling to lock the wheels of the chair and Angel grabbing the bag of drugs before it fell while Katie offered an arm for support and chided him when he tried to use his bad wrist.
“Oh yeah, you’re a hundred percent there, Cols,” Bradley rolled his eyes and took his other side for support. He gave him a reassuring squeeze to take the sting out of his words, then quickly apologized when Colin cringed from the action.
“Can we assume no filming for a while?” Anthony asked, taking in the show with a hint of a smile.
“Twentyfour hours required downtime with a preferred fortyeight,” Colin dutifully recited. “We also will have to work around the cast for a little while.”
“Broken?” Anthony guessed.
“Severe sprain,” he replied with a frown.
“At least the bruising can be explained by your fight with the evil witch?” Katie suggested hopefully.
“If we shoot in order,” Colin conceded, and Bradley was forced to agree. Merlin having a cut or two after getting tossed into a tree was one thing; Merlin having a cut or two while supposedly doing nothing by wait on Gaius or Arthur was another all together.
“You look ready to pass out, are you sure it’s okay to send you home?” Anthony asked with concern.
“Just tired,” Colin yawned. “Whatever they gave me is helping with the pain, but is knocking me on my arse.”
“Then let’s get that arse back to the hotel where you can sleep and we can figure out how many days we have off,” Bradley suggested.
They got Colin back to the hotel and situated in his room. Angel tucked him under the covers and Katie offered a kiss on his bruised forehead. “Try not to do anything stupid in your sleep,” Angel told him as she left. He tried to flip her off good-naturedly, but the cast got in the way.
Bradley let him sleep while they sorted out what was going on with the filming. All stunts were on hold until the rigs could be checked over, but the other scenes should be on schedule the following day. They thought they had a good enough take of the stunt in question to use in post-production, so Colin wouldn’t even be forced to redo the thing. Secretly Bradley wondered if the rest of them would talk them into artful editing or CGI-ing the thing if needed because there was no way any one of them would allow Colin to do it again after this.
When his stomach growled, he knew Colin’s would soon be doing the same. Angel and Katie had already gone off to some café together, so he grabbed some takeaway and knocked on Colin’s door. He let himself in at the muttered reply to find Colin still in bed, covers a knot at his feet and hair smashed every which way. There were sleep lines from his pillow pressed into his cheek but it were the fine lines of pain around his eyes that drew Bradley’s gaze.
“Let me guess, ‘destiny and chicken’?” Colin yawned.
“Well, the vegetarian equivalent for you,” Bradley corrected. He sat the bags down on the bed and himself beside them. “Let’s get some of this into you so you can have more of the stuff that makes you loopy.”
He flipped on the television and put on the most inane thing he could find, which was a channel airing old cartoons, while Colin tried to arrange himself into more of a sitting position, this time remembering not to use his now bad wrist.
Bradley waited until he had at least a third of his meal in him to pop open the pain pills and offer him his dose, hoping the padded stomach would prevent them from reappearing. Another third of the meal gone and the little pain lines began to ease, and by the time Colin was scraping his plate, he was giggling inanely at something the coyote was doing to the roadrunner and looked a fair deal stoned.
Bradley gathered the trash and tossed it in the bin. When he turned back, he found Colin staring intently at him. “What?” he asked, suddenly self-conscious. “Do I have food on me or something?”
Colin shook his head and paused as if watching the colors of the room swirl by. He blinked and announced, “Okay, let’s get this over with, shall we?”
Bradley was about to ask what they were getting over, but Colin was attempting to pull his scrub top off and getting his cast caught in the sleeve in the process. He helped him free his hand and tossed the shirt to the side and asked, “What, you suddenly have an exhibitionist streak in you?”
Colin rolled his eyes. “You were going to ask anyway, so here you go. Look your fill and all that, but know I totally win because there is no way Make Up can cover this cast with a bit of toner,” he explained.
Bradley swallowed, barely hearing what Colin had said as his eyes traced bruises that were already turning deep shades of blue and purple on Colin’s chest and down his arm. He shifted his stance and saw matching marks and deep red lines from the harness marring the pale skin of his back as well. Bradley sat back down on the bed, wishing he could erase the marks and the pain they so obviously caused. Instead, he settled for a whispered, “I don’t think this counts as winning.”
Colin looked over to him with his too blue eyes and cocked his head to the side. He squirmed just a bit closer, enough so that he could rest his head on Bradley’s shoulder. As Bradley’s arm came up around him automatically, he closed his eyes and sighed, “I don’t know, sure doesn’t seem like losing right now.”
Bradley rested his chin on top of the unruly mess of hair and was kind of forced to disagree. His eyes traced the bruising, found the shadow of skin beneath the edge of the cast, and hew knew it could have been so much worse. That didn’t mean it also could be so much better. He tilted his head enough to press a kiss to the top of Colin’s head and sighed before returning to rest his chin again.
Colin’s good hand snaked through to find the button on his jeans, but Bradley stopped him. “Not while you’re high on pain meds and look like the wrong side of a train wreck,” he said gently.
He could hear Colin’s pout in his breath, but the fingers strayed over to a belt loop instead and just held on. “This okay?” Colin asked around a yawn, betraying his earlier bravado.
Bradley held him just a little bit tighter and said, “Yeah, this is more than okay.”