Off the Cuff - PG
Title: Off the Cuff
Pairing: Bradley/Colin
Rating: PG because, uh, I mention the existence of erections? Whatever.
Summary: Colin and His Too-big Jacket: A Love Story featuring Bradley James.
Disclaimer: The extent to which THIS IS SO NOT MINE is incalculable.
Notes: cherrybina made me, ras_elased made sure it was fit for public consumption, millions wept over the fact that I wrote this instead of the nine billion other things I was supposed to write.
Also, the title took just as long to think up as the entire fic took to write, and it's still probably the stupidest part of this entire thing. Maybe. I have no objectivity anymore.
Colin's huge, puffy coat is entirely stupid. It's too big and too long in the arms and it makes Colin look like he's some little kid bumming clothes off his dad or hand-me-downs, and it's absolutely not adorable, no matter how many girls on set coo over him. Bradley's coat is too big too, but it's too big for a reason, it's because he's got to fit it over his stupidly massive armor. Colin just likes to use his long sleeves for gloves.
"Saves time, see," he said to Bradley during one of their first long stretches in the forests in the middle of... somewhere or other. "Gloves take too long to put on and off."
"Pockets?"
"Can't do anything with your hands in your pockets," Colin shrugged.
"Maybe you wouldn't be cold if you weighed more than a stone," Bradley snorted.
"Boo!" Shouted some crew member behind Bradley, and another he couldn't identify either went "Not on, Bradley!" Bradley just flipped them the bird over his shoulder while Colin studiously kept his face straight everywhere except the corners of his mouth, which twitched up and down frantically.
It wasn't that Bradley disliked Colin, he was smart and nice and funny and whatever, it was just that he sort of resented how he didn't even fucking do anything and everyone in the entire world went around like they had a perpetual hard-on for him. And that pretty much summed up series one.
In series two and during subsequent press, Bradley had a perpetual hard-on for Colin Morgan.
Okay, not perpetual because for the first block of series two Colin was just Colin, and Bradley was Bradley, and they were mates who threw apple cores at each other and stole each other's room keys or spent the entire day just speaking in terrible French to each other. But then the second block fell right when a major heat wave rolled through France, making everyone cranky and snappy. Bradley was especially grumpy because he couldn't get out of his armor, which was like a massive oven. At least costume was only making him wear one layer underneath it, but still. Colin only had to wear one layer total and he was still pouty all over the place, lying face-down in the shade next to Bradley and moaning while the crew swore over all the equipment that's decided to break under the hot sun. Colin was muttering on and on about how Ireland never got this hot and shouldn't Bradley be used to it if he'd lived in Florida? And Bradley had to point out that everywhere in Florida was air conditioned, and even if it wasn't, he wasn't walking around Jacksonville Beach in armor.
"I don't know why you're complaining," Bradley said, pointing one of the little handheld fans the ADs have so he doesn't go into heatstroke at himself. Colin managed to steal those half the time, which is why Bradley had the only one with batteries that worked and Colin was extra-cranky. Heat was the only thing that made Colin's veneer of politeness crack until he became as much of a whiny brat as any other reasonable human being. "You only have one layer."
"One layer of wool," Colin said into the ground.
"I have that, and a layer of armor, and I can't take any of it off," Bradley reminded him. "You shut up."
Colin had turned his face and given Bradley a rather squinty glare at that point, and Bradley was utterly distracted by how hilarious he had looked and trying not to laugh at him, his hair sticking up all sweaty and his face covered in wiggly indents from where he'd mashed it into the grass, that when Colin said "right then" and sat up and wiggled out of his shirt before flopping back down face first, Bradley wasn't really prepared. Oh, he'd seen Colin without his shirt on, briefly, in the first episode of Merlin along with the rest of their viewing public, and sometimes he'd caught glimpses of Colin when he'd barged into his room thinking Colin was done changing after his shower or when Colin was trying stuff on in the costume trailer, but those were only glances. Normally Colin was very shy about missing pieces of clothing when he wasn't in character, but he was clearly too hot to care. And Colin's back was so ridiculously pale, it was kind of beautiful in a weird way. He had a few freckles dotted here and there, a mole or two. He was skinny enough that the knobs of his spine form a tiny mountain range Bradley found himself suddenly desperate to explore. With his tongue. All the way down to the dip at the small of his back that shone with sweat. He wanted to know how it smelled, what it felt like, how it tasted...
...oh god. He'd grown even hotter under his armor and his erection was sort of awkwardly making a half-hearted attempt to wake up and make it's presence know, and it was way too hot to feel this flushed and hard. He made a really, really terrible excuse and left for another patch of shade.
And once he knew about Colin's back, it didn't matter that a thunderstorm rolled through that day and broke the heat, or that Colin's shirt stayed firmly on after that. It had started. If Colin's shirt rode up, Bradley's eyes were there, tracking it. He tracked the soft insides of his wrists, the nape of his neck, the hollow of his throat, the delicate bones in his ankles. And it was so weird, because he went to drama school. He'd had mates that he shared beds with and was naked around all the time, he'd kissed guys both drunk and sober. It's not like he hadn't looked at guys and wondered, but while his upstairs brain has sometimes thought a bloke or two was attractive, his downstairs brain had never agreed.
And oh, Bradley's downstairs brain agreed now. Colin wasn't just Colin Morgan anymore, he was Colin Morgan, whose hair smelled really good when he brushed past Bradley in a small corner, or whose laugh made Bradley's stomach jump up and down in joy, and when Colin licked his finger in order to turn a difficult page, Bradley started walking into things or forgetting what words he was trying to say.
He knew he was gone when the weather got windy and Colin's coat came back, and he could barely see any of Colin except the tiny tips of his fingers that stuck out. Bradley loved those fingertips. He wanted to kiss them, he wanted to warm them when they went white with cold, he wanted to feel them run over his face and up his thighs and down his chest and... well. He liked them. They made his heart stutter and ache when they peeked out of the dark gray cuffs. God help him, they made him fond of Colin's extremely stupid, too-big jacket. Fond enough that when they started going to press or out on the town after wrap and Colin wore jackets that fit and gloves, he was disappointed.
But Bradley gamely held his tongue until almost series three when he and Colin went out on their man-date, as they were calling it. They'd taken attaching the prefix "man" to any activity they did together that sounded a little too gay, ever since they started saying things like "Oh, Bradley and I are having a bit of a night in, watching movies" or "myself and Colin are going to hit up a bowling alley". Angel and Katie had thought this was absolutely hysterical and would put on deep voices and go "of course, MAN night in" or "yes, Bradley, MAN bowling" and then dissolve into giggles, like what they said was really fantastically witty. It wasn't. Except it stuck in Bradley's head, so now dinner and a movie was a date, obviously, because what else would dinner and a movie be? But it was with Colin, so it wasn't a date, it was a MAN date.
"You didn't like the film?" Colin asked when they were walking to get some coffee and dessert after the movie. Bradley started. He supposed he was being rather quiet instead of his usual nattering about every tiny thing he liked, but in his defense, Colin had hands that weren't being covered by his sleeves, and it was somewhere between bothering him and desperately turning him on.
"Oh, no, it was good, just, thoughtful, you know." Bradley shrugged.
"Thoughtful? You're never thoughtful."
"Excuse me, Colin, thoughtful is my middle name."
Colin rolled his eyes. "You don't have a middle name."
"Ah, but if I did, it would be 'thoughtful'." Bradley snapped his fingers in front of Colin's face. "Keep up, Colin, come on."
"Stop it," Colin laughed, pushing Bradley's hand down, which made Bradley stumble, because Colin's hand. Covering his hand. And then Colin froze too. And his hand didn't move. "Bradley?" He said quietly. "You okay?"
"Uh." Colin's hand was still there. Warm. Comforting. Bradley couldn't not catch it and slide their fingers together just to watch Colin swallow and blush under the dim streetlamps. "Your hands are really cute," he whispered finally. Which was smooth. Up there amongst the pantheon of Bradley James' Greatest Pick-Up Lines Ever. Your hands are really cute. Excellent.
"My hands?"
"I notice them. Um." Bradley looked down and scuffed his trainer into the concrete. The toes of Colin's trainers took a step closer to his.
"Thank you."
Colin looked really kind of happy when Bradley looked up, and he was blushing, and his eyelashes looked really long in the shadows and his skin and lips looked soft, and Bradley had to brush their lips together once.
Twice, maybe.
Colin's hand shot out and latched onto Bradley's coat when his breath hitched, and the fingers on both hands tightened when Bradley kissed him again, harder, kissed him until all he could taste and smell was Colin and all he could feel was he pull of his lips and the heat of his breath and their knuckles trapped between their bodies as their hands clung together for dear life.
It's cold when they go back to France for series three. More nippy, really. Colin and Bradley cart their coats around to set, or more accurately, Bradley carts both of their coats around because Colin loses his all the time and that's the sort of nice, thoughtful person Bradley is, that he takes Colin his big, puffy, ridiculous coat so he can see the tips of Colin's fingers poke out from the cuffs.
"Your fingers look cold," Bradley says casually when they're taking a break from filming in the forest, sitting and waiting while their stunt doubles film a few scenes, and there aren't any fans with their cameras around.
"Ah, I should get some gloves, maybe," Colin shrugs.
"Nah, don't do that, here." Bradley reaches over and tangles the tips of his fingers that are poking out of his too-big coat (the armor's off today and Bradley's swimming in it) with Colin's. "Warmer?" He asks. His voice has gone all husky.
Colin smiles and raises their fingertips to his mouth, brushing a kiss across them, which makes Bradley blush, cough, look away.
"Better," he says quietly. "Cheers."
"Yeah, well," Bradley shrugs. "You know me. Full of solutions."
Pairing: Bradley/Colin
Rating: PG because, uh, I mention the existence of erections? Whatever.
Summary: Colin and His Too-big Jacket: A Love Story featuring Bradley James.
Disclaimer: The extent to which THIS IS SO NOT MINE is incalculable.
Notes: cherrybina made me, ras_elased made sure it was fit for public consumption, millions wept over the fact that I wrote this instead of the nine billion other things I was supposed to write.
Also, the title took just as long to think up as the entire fic took to write, and it's still probably the stupidest part of this entire thing. Maybe. I have no objectivity anymore.
Colin's huge, puffy coat is entirely stupid. It's too big and too long in the arms and it makes Colin look like he's some little kid bumming clothes off his dad or hand-me-downs, and it's absolutely not adorable, no matter how many girls on set coo over him. Bradley's coat is too big too, but it's too big for a reason, it's because he's got to fit it over his stupidly massive armor. Colin just likes to use his long sleeves for gloves.
"Saves time, see," he said to Bradley during one of their first long stretches in the forests in the middle of... somewhere or other. "Gloves take too long to put on and off."
"Pockets?"
"Can't do anything with your hands in your pockets," Colin shrugged.
"Maybe you wouldn't be cold if you weighed more than a stone," Bradley snorted.
"Boo!" Shouted some crew member behind Bradley, and another he couldn't identify either went "Not on, Bradley!" Bradley just flipped them the bird over his shoulder while Colin studiously kept his face straight everywhere except the corners of his mouth, which twitched up and down frantically.
It wasn't that Bradley disliked Colin, he was smart and nice and funny and whatever, it was just that he sort of resented how he didn't even fucking do anything and everyone in the entire world went around like they had a perpetual hard-on for him. And that pretty much summed up series one.
In series two and during subsequent press, Bradley had a perpetual hard-on for Colin Morgan.
Okay, not perpetual because for the first block of series two Colin was just Colin, and Bradley was Bradley, and they were mates who threw apple cores at each other and stole each other's room keys or spent the entire day just speaking in terrible French to each other. But then the second block fell right when a major heat wave rolled through France, making everyone cranky and snappy. Bradley was especially grumpy because he couldn't get out of his armor, which was like a massive oven. At least costume was only making him wear one layer underneath it, but still. Colin only had to wear one layer total and he was still pouty all over the place, lying face-down in the shade next to Bradley and moaning while the crew swore over all the equipment that's decided to break under the hot sun. Colin was muttering on and on about how Ireland never got this hot and shouldn't Bradley be used to it if he'd lived in Florida? And Bradley had to point out that everywhere in Florida was air conditioned, and even if it wasn't, he wasn't walking around Jacksonville Beach in armor.
"I don't know why you're complaining," Bradley said, pointing one of the little handheld fans the ADs have so he doesn't go into heatstroke at himself. Colin managed to steal those half the time, which is why Bradley had the only one with batteries that worked and Colin was extra-cranky. Heat was the only thing that made Colin's veneer of politeness crack until he became as much of a whiny brat as any other reasonable human being. "You only have one layer."
"One layer of wool," Colin said into the ground.
"I have that, and a layer of armor, and I can't take any of it off," Bradley reminded him. "You shut up."
Colin had turned his face and given Bradley a rather squinty glare at that point, and Bradley was utterly distracted by how hilarious he had looked and trying not to laugh at him, his hair sticking up all sweaty and his face covered in wiggly indents from where he'd mashed it into the grass, that when Colin said "right then" and sat up and wiggled out of his shirt before flopping back down face first, Bradley wasn't really prepared. Oh, he'd seen Colin without his shirt on, briefly, in the first episode of Merlin along with the rest of their viewing public, and sometimes he'd caught glimpses of Colin when he'd barged into his room thinking Colin was done changing after his shower or when Colin was trying stuff on in the costume trailer, but those were only glances. Normally Colin was very shy about missing pieces of clothing when he wasn't in character, but he was clearly too hot to care. And Colin's back was so ridiculously pale, it was kind of beautiful in a weird way. He had a few freckles dotted here and there, a mole or two. He was skinny enough that the knobs of his spine form a tiny mountain range Bradley found himself suddenly desperate to explore. With his tongue. All the way down to the dip at the small of his back that shone with sweat. He wanted to know how it smelled, what it felt like, how it tasted...
...oh god. He'd grown even hotter under his armor and his erection was sort of awkwardly making a half-hearted attempt to wake up and make it's presence know, and it was way too hot to feel this flushed and hard. He made a really, really terrible excuse and left for another patch of shade.
And once he knew about Colin's back, it didn't matter that a thunderstorm rolled through that day and broke the heat, or that Colin's shirt stayed firmly on after that. It had started. If Colin's shirt rode up, Bradley's eyes were there, tracking it. He tracked the soft insides of his wrists, the nape of his neck, the hollow of his throat, the delicate bones in his ankles. And it was so weird, because he went to drama school. He'd had mates that he shared beds with and was naked around all the time, he'd kissed guys both drunk and sober. It's not like he hadn't looked at guys and wondered, but while his upstairs brain has sometimes thought a bloke or two was attractive, his downstairs brain had never agreed.
And oh, Bradley's downstairs brain agreed now. Colin wasn't just Colin Morgan anymore, he was Colin Morgan, whose hair smelled really good when he brushed past Bradley in a small corner, or whose laugh made Bradley's stomach jump up and down in joy, and when Colin licked his finger in order to turn a difficult page, Bradley started walking into things or forgetting what words he was trying to say.
He knew he was gone when the weather got windy and Colin's coat came back, and he could barely see any of Colin except the tiny tips of his fingers that stuck out. Bradley loved those fingertips. He wanted to kiss them, he wanted to warm them when they went white with cold, he wanted to feel them run over his face and up his thighs and down his chest and... well. He liked them. They made his heart stutter and ache when they peeked out of the dark gray cuffs. God help him, they made him fond of Colin's extremely stupid, too-big jacket. Fond enough that when they started going to press or out on the town after wrap and Colin wore jackets that fit and gloves, he was disappointed.
But Bradley gamely held his tongue until almost series three when he and Colin went out on their man-date, as they were calling it. They'd taken attaching the prefix "man" to any activity they did together that sounded a little too gay, ever since they started saying things like "Oh, Bradley and I are having a bit of a night in, watching movies" or "myself and Colin are going to hit up a bowling alley". Angel and Katie had thought this was absolutely hysterical and would put on deep voices and go "of course, MAN night in" or "yes, Bradley, MAN bowling" and then dissolve into giggles, like what they said was really fantastically witty. It wasn't. Except it stuck in Bradley's head, so now dinner and a movie was a date, obviously, because what else would dinner and a movie be? But it was with Colin, so it wasn't a date, it was a MAN date.
"You didn't like the film?" Colin asked when they were walking to get some coffee and dessert after the movie. Bradley started. He supposed he was being rather quiet instead of his usual nattering about every tiny thing he liked, but in his defense, Colin had hands that weren't being covered by his sleeves, and it was somewhere between bothering him and desperately turning him on.
"Oh, no, it was good, just, thoughtful, you know." Bradley shrugged.
"Thoughtful? You're never thoughtful."
"Excuse me, Colin, thoughtful is my middle name."
Colin rolled his eyes. "You don't have a middle name."
"Ah, but if I did, it would be 'thoughtful'." Bradley snapped his fingers in front of Colin's face. "Keep up, Colin, come on."
"Stop it," Colin laughed, pushing Bradley's hand down, which made Bradley stumble, because Colin's hand. Covering his hand. And then Colin froze too. And his hand didn't move. "Bradley?" He said quietly. "You okay?"
"Uh." Colin's hand was still there. Warm. Comforting. Bradley couldn't not catch it and slide their fingers together just to watch Colin swallow and blush under the dim streetlamps. "Your hands are really cute," he whispered finally. Which was smooth. Up there amongst the pantheon of Bradley James' Greatest Pick-Up Lines Ever. Your hands are really cute. Excellent.
"My hands?"
"I notice them. Um." Bradley looked down and scuffed his trainer into the concrete. The toes of Colin's trainers took a step closer to his.
"Thank you."
Colin looked really kind of happy when Bradley looked up, and he was blushing, and his eyelashes looked really long in the shadows and his skin and lips looked soft, and Bradley had to brush their lips together once.
Twice, maybe.
Colin's hand shot out and latched onto Bradley's coat when his breath hitched, and the fingers on both hands tightened when Bradley kissed him again, harder, kissed him until all he could taste and smell was Colin and all he could feel was he pull of his lips and the heat of his breath and their knuckles trapped between their bodies as their hands clung together for dear life.
It's cold when they go back to France for series three. More nippy, really. Colin and Bradley cart their coats around to set, or more accurately, Bradley carts both of their coats around because Colin loses his all the time and that's the sort of nice, thoughtful person Bradley is, that he takes Colin his big, puffy, ridiculous coat so he can see the tips of Colin's fingers poke out from the cuffs.
"Your fingers look cold," Bradley says casually when they're taking a break from filming in the forest, sitting and waiting while their stunt doubles film a few scenes, and there aren't any fans with their cameras around.
"Ah, I should get some gloves, maybe," Colin shrugs.
"Nah, don't do that, here." Bradley reaches over and tangles the tips of his fingers that are poking out of his too-big coat (the armor's off today and Bradley's swimming in it) with Colin's. "Warmer?" He asks. His voice has gone all husky.
Colin smiles and raises their fingertips to his mouth, brushing a kiss across them, which makes Bradley blush, cough, look away.
"Better," he says quietly. "Cheers."
"Yeah, well," Bradley shrugs. "You know me. Full of solutions."