Blackberry Picking Part 1: Stains Upon the Tongue and Lust for Picking
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Part 1. Stains Upon the Tongue and Lust for Picking
Bradley loves introverts. He loves the way they respond to him. He has the power and personality to pull away the carefully constructed facade and discover the warm, funny, likeable person that lies beneath.
Case in point: they’re out in Cardiff, and Bradley’s feeling a bit unsteady from all the cider.
“You’re a riddle, Col’n Mor’n,” Bradley says, slinging an arm round Col’s shodler. Shoulder. Thing. “A riddle wrapped within a mystery wrapped within a wossname.”
“Enigma?”
“Yeah, one of those.” He hiccups a bit. “Whereas I,” says Bradley, “M’ a ninja!” He strikes a pose for theatrical effect. Colin seems curiously unimpressed. “N’ introvert-uncovering ninja,” Bradley clarifies. His punctuating belch is nothing short of artistic. “You stick with me, mate,” says Bradley, patting Colin gently on the shoulder. “I’ll see you right.”
Colin staggers a bit as he smiles, all polite. Oops, maybe he patted him a bit harder than he thought. Bradley can feel the heat of his skin through his clothes. He keeps his hand on Colin’s shoulder, in case Colin feels a bit wobbly from all those cokes.
~#~
Bradley sits next to Colin in make-up. They have to keep still. Bradley talks out of the side of his mouth while Maria adjusts his hair.
“That kid really liked you,” Bradley says, “and his mum thought you were adorable.” Bradley’s hand sneaks out, seeks the warmth of Colin’s forearm with the back of his finger, strokes him, making sure he follows the direction of the hairs. His hands love Colin, want him to pay them attention. He can tell by the minute adjustment in Colin’s posture that he’s noticed. Sometimes Colin wriggles, other times he squirms, but he always reacts.
Colin shrugs. Bradley feels the muscles tense. “Seemed like a really sweet kid,” he says.
“I never knew you liked children, Colin,” says Bradley.
“I don’t like children, I’m a vegetarian,” says Col, deadpanning. After a couple of seconds, he lets out a guffaw. Bradley stares at the mirror for a moment or two before he barks out a surprised laugh.
Under Colin’s surface walls of charm and niceness, the brown onion skin of his personality, there is layer upon layer of fascinating, fleshy, Colin-ness underneath. There’s the off-colour humour layer, and the layer of magic-ness, then there’s a dark, bleak layer of insecurity and doom, and then there’s a secret layer under that, which can only be accessed by ninjas.
~#~
Bradley bounds onto set.
“Col, Colin, Cols,” he says, bouncing on his toes. Colin has a script in his hand. He looks up and smiles. Bradley waits for the dimples, the sly corner-of-eye look, and grins triumphantly when he’s rewarded with them. He leans in and punches Colin (gently! He’s not a monster!) on the upper arm. Colin winces, but only a little bit, and doesn’t stop smiling.
“Cols, come with me, we’re going to get some lunch, come on Cols,” Bradley says, hauling him to his feet. “Come on, Cols, you must be starving, I heard a rumour that there was delicious soy-based gloop on offer today.”
Colin flashes him a resigned look. “I already ate,” he says, but he’s getting to his feet.
Bradley frowns, rubs Colin’s shoulder, which hunches. “You’re too bony,” he says. “Eat more. What did you find to eat on set anyway? ” He feels Colin’s skin wriggle minutely under his clothes.
Colin’s face dimples and his eyes crinkle with mischief. “Put it this way,” he says, “you know that kid who was on set yesterday? Well, we won’t be seeing him again.”
Bradley’s laugh doubles him over. “What happened to all your plant-eating principles, Morgan?”
“I was pretty hungry.”
Colin’s face looks almost sad for a moment and then it splits into a shit-eating grin. Bradley laughs, delighted, shoves at Col’s leg with his knee, touches a warm finger to Col’s wrist.
Bradley’s special. No-one else is allowed under Colin’s first and second and third skins like this, to the Colin underneath, the Colin that actually likes being touched. Bradley can’t help himself, he touches Colin hundreds of times every day. He’s addicted.
Colin rewards him for these touches with sidelong looks, coquettish glances through his eyelashes, jokes and self-deprecating shrugs. Bradley could watch Colin all day, waiting for these tiny signals that Colin has noticed him.
Because Colin is brilliant, and most of all because Colin is at his most brilliant for Bradley.
~#~
Angel and Katie are introverts too, at least compared to Bradley, and Bradley enjoys getting in their personal space.
Bradley has a big heart, he loves everyone openly and without prejudice.
He loves Katie and Angel, he loves Anthony and Richard, but most of all he loves Colin. Of course he loves Colin. Everybody loves Colin.
He loves, and touches, and maddens everyone on the set until they’re all half in love with him, and it’s brilliant. By being sunny-natured and warm, he can coax people to open up, like rosebuds in the sun.
Bradley loves this job. He loves the fighting and the action scenes and the banter, he loves being Prince Arthur, and playing a role he was born for. Brilliant. It’s all brilliant.
Most of all he loves his co-star, who is private, and quiet, and hates to be touched, except by ninjas. He loves enigmatic, self-deprecating Colin, with his shy smile, sly eyes, and fey bone structure, who also happens to be the most extraordinary actor Bradley has ever seen. When Colin is in character, he pulls everyone else along with him, makes them all up their game.
Bradley’s drunk on Colin. He’s intoxicated by Colin’s power and his talent.
~#~
Bradley holds Colin’s sleeve, tells him to “shhhh!” - they’re giggling too loudly. When the pizza delivery bloke arrives, and Katie comes to the door, Bradley whisks Colin round the corner so Katie won’t see, and they stifle their giggles while they listen to the conversation.
“Pizza for Miss McGrath?” says the pizza guy.
“What? I didn’t order pizza?” says Katie, and the puzzled note in her voice is just the funniest thing ever. But then Col lets out an explosive kind of guffaw, despite Bradley’s best efforts to hush him, and they’re rumbled. “Wait a second,” she says, and he thinks “uh-oh,” hears footsteps, sees a frowning McGrath stalking round the corner.
She stops, hand on hip, glaring.
“Bradley!”
As if the prank was all his idea, and although it was, her accusatory tone is totally unfair, because it’s Colin making all the noise, not him; Bradley’s as quiet as a mouse. Not to mention the fact that Col’s an Irish pixie, and they’re well known for being pranksters and tricksters, so Colin should get the blame. But everyone thinks Colin is a total innocent. It’s those puppy-dog eyes. Bradley used to think he did good puppy-dog eyes, but that was before he met Colin. Colin is a puppy-dog-eye ninja.
Later, they’re all eating pizza in McGrath’s room, except Colin, because Bradley forgot to order one without cheese. Bradley brags, because ordering pizza for someone who didn’t order pizza is the BEST practical joke, and McGrath lets out an incredulous huff.
“Bradley, seriously, that’s the lamest prank ever,” she says.
Colin laughs. “S’ true, Bradley, it’s pretty lame.” And Bradley is hurt by his betrayal. Bloody Irish prank Mafia. He retaliates by taking the last piece of pizza.
“You were laughing hard enough, Morgan,” he says between mouthfuls, “and anyway I’d like to see you do better.”
~#~
One rainy Tuesday he tracks Colin down where he’s sitting in a dark corner with his earphones in, reading through his script. “Cols!” Bradley says, running up to Colin, shoving his shoulder hard, wedging himself in next to Colin, tugging an earphone out of Colin’s ear and flicking Colin’s earlobe. He puts the earphone in his own ear; Colin’s learning spells again. Bradley’s leg is lined up along Colin’s. Colin shifts so that they’re not touching, turns his shoulder minutely away.
“Bradley!”
There’s a note of resigned protest in his voice, as if he's wanting privacy but doesn’t want to be rude. Bradley sighs, puts the earphone back down in Colin’s lap, pouts, and walks away. Because sometimes the introverts need to escape from him, sometimes he crowds their space a bit too much, or at the wrong time. He knows that; he’s not completely insensitive.
~#~
Another time he finds them all happily sitting together in Katie’s room, not interacting, like some sort of little introspective coven, Katie reading some door-wedge book, Angel strumming her guitar, quietly, and Colin fingering a dog-eared script, listening peacefully to some obscure indie no-hope band on his earphones.
Angel frowns at him when he calls them boring introverts. “Bradley,” she says, in that fond, exasperated voice she reserves especially for him, “just because we just need personal space sometimes doesn’t mean we are introverted. It just means we are normal.”
Bradley ignores the implied “unlike some people,” and pulls a face. “I don’t care what you call it,” he says, “you’re all boring.”
Bradley upsets the dynamic. He can’t sit still for more than two minutes without getting in their faces. He jiggles, tickles Colin, tweaks Katie’s hair, fusses and fiddles with Angel’s guitar case, until they yell at him to go away. He feels left out. It makes him feel like a child. He stalks out of the room, banging the door behind him, and goes for a solitary run in the dark.
But Colin is a genius, and a brilliant friend, and Bradley loves him forever, because Colin buys him a sketch book and some pencils and encourages him to draw, and now when everyone wants to retreat into their shells, he can sit with them and sketch. He still jiggles and whistles and mutters under his breath, but he’ll sit still for up to ten minutes at a time on the floor, his shoulder abutting Colin’s knee, and they’re all very complimentary about his drawings.
He remembers having a teacher at school-Mrs Bradshaw, or was it Miss Turnbull?-who encouraged him to draw when he was feeling fidgety. Bradley loves to draw. It’s one of the activities that he can lose himself in, like football.
He draws pictures of the cast and crew doing funny stuff: Katie batting a wasp away from her hair, the exasperated look that appeared on Angel’s face when she bit into her turkey sandwich and found that Bradley had replaced it with replica food from the props department, Richard wearing Morgana’s wig.
Mostly he draws Colin. He is obsessed with Colin’s bones: his cheekbones, collarbones, splayed fingers, delicate knucklebones, hunched shoulders, taut thighs, long thumbs. He sketches body parts. He zooms in on prominent elbows, bony knees, angular ankles.
“Colin is my muse,” he says to all and sundry, as he sketches Col smirking at him from behind his script, or leaning up against the wall with his legs crossed.
~#~
Colin’s sitting next to him on the minibus, earphones in, fiddling with his iPod. His thumb selects some mournful band’s name.
Bradley jiggles about, gleeful, absolutely unable to contain the feeling of anticipation. Colin frowns at him. Katie frowns at him. Angel frowns at him. They’re all beginning to look suspicious. Bradley sits on his hands and presses his lips together to stop himself from giving the game away.
The expression on Colin’s face when he presses play and nearly jumps out of his skin is absolutely priceless. It’s a good thing Bradley’s got a seatbelt on or he’d have fallen off his chair.
It’s been really tricky reprogramming Col’s iPod so that all the emo music titles jump to 1970s and 1980s rock anthems, but absolutely worth it.
“Just you watch it, James,” says Colin, all mock-ferocious, “I will have my revenge,” and Bradley bursts out laughing, because Colin a genius in many things, but he’s rubbish at practical jokes.
“In your dreams,” he splutters, and Colin pouts.
Angel laughs. “Colin, you’re adorable when you sulk,” she says, and Colin pointedly turns his back on her, or at least his side, because it’s difficult turning your back when you’re strapped into a minibus.
But Colin forgives him soon enough, and they take an earbud each and sing along to “Fat Bottomed Girls” all the rest of the way. The girls yell at them to stop, but Bradley flips them a finger and they end up filming the whole thing instead.
All in all, it’s going really brilliantly.
~#~
When the knights join the cast, and he’s got people to play football and Frisbee with between takes, it’s not quite so oppressive being closeted with the introverts. But sometimes he misses it, misses Colin. At such times he disciplines himself to sit quietly with him, or Katie and Angel, just sketching, while they study their scripts, or knitting patterns, or whatever boring introvert-y thing it is that they’re into now. It gets easier, sitting still, as long as he can feel Colin’s leg, solid alongside his arm.
Colin doesn’t eat enough. Bradley worries about him. Bradley buys him walnuts, and gets his dad to send peanut butter, the real stuff from California. Colin scoops it gratefully out of the jar into his too-skinny face, and Bradley beams with pride.
Colin orders Bradley a portfolio case for his drawings, and Bradley stores it under his bed, where it can’t fall into the wrong hands (i.e., Katie’s).
~#~
It’s about time he got to the bottom of Colin’s deeper onion-skin layers.
“Colin,” says Bradley, one rare night off in a dimly lit Cardiff pub, “do you have like a…” he waves his hand expressively and sighs. “Girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other, whatever?” Bradley’s broken up with his latest amour, and is feeling a bit pensive. He’s never heard Col talk about anyone special, never seen him with anyone.
Colin shakes his head, purses his lips together. Bradley puts his hand on Col’s wrist where he can feel the blood pulsing under his skin.
“I don’t mean to pry,” lies Bradley.
Colin laughs. “Then don’t.”
There’s a pause, and then Bradley nudges him, lips twitching, gives him an expectant, raised eyebrow. Colin laughs again, although Bradley hasn’t made a joke, and takes a sip of his beer.
“There used to be someone,” he says, looking away, “but it didn’t work out, because he was… he was… really…erm…”
Colin’s face is all serious now, his Adam’s apple is working up and down, and Bradley’s beginning to regret starting this conversation, because he doesn’t want Col to be sad, but on the other hand he does want to know, so he just keeps uncharacteristically quiet. Col will tell him about it if he wants to. Col looks back at him, eyes glistening in the wan light, looking tense at the memory.
“Controlling,” Colin breathes. There’s a world of pain in that single word, and Colin shows it all in one expressive look.
Bradley understands, and exhales suddenly at the sudden feeling of rage and hatred that pounds into his gut. Someone hurt Colin, he thinks. He puts a protective arm round Colin’s shoulder. He doesn’t ask Colin who it was, because if he ever knew, he would kill him.
~#~
Bradley loves spending time with all the cast, they’re like family now, but it’s best when it’s just himself and Colin. They make up ridiculous scenarios involving their fellow cast members, Bradley sketches them, and Colin snorts with laughter. They clutch onto each other and giggle, and he can feel the heat of Colin’s skin through his clothes. Sometimes Colin’s arms snake round him, which makes him so happy he could burst. Because Colin’s not tactile like Bradley, so it means that he’s special, Colin trusts him. This is what it means to be happy; this is what it means to have a best mate.
“Draw Eoin kissing Katie,” says Colin, on one such occasion. Bradley laughs, and he sketches Katie and Eoin. He puts Katie in Eoin’s clothes and dresses Eoin in one of Morgana’s gowns, and they giggle so hard that Bradley has tears in his eyes, and Col has to blow his nose. He slips the sketch into his folio case, and they watch a Harry Potter movie that has been dubbed in French.
They make up French spells.
“J’expect le patronum,” says Colin. He smirks. “One nil.”
Bradley chuckles. “Le leviosa du wingardium,” he says. “One all.”
Colin looks faintly constipated while he roots around desperately in his head for another spell. “Oh. Ah. Erm. I know. Erm. Je sais.” He nods.
Bradley rolls his eyes. “Get on with it, Morgan. Allez!”
Colin holds up a triumphant finger. “Les totales de petrifiques!”
Bradley groans. Damn, Col’s good at this. It’s two-one and Colin’s laughing at him. The humiliation.
“Le kadavra de l’avada,” says Bradley, eventually. It’s a desperate move.
“You can’t have that one. It’s an unforgiveable curse,” Colin says, pursing his lips up smugly. Bradley pushes Colin off the bed, but Colin grabs him and they both end up in a squawking, messy, ticklish heap. Bradley falls asleep on Col’s bed with Col’s feet snuggled under his thighs for warmth.
~#~
It’s around then that weird things start happening.
Eoin and Katie are shooting a scene; Bradley and Colin have a rare couple of hours free and decide to watch. Remembering Bradley’s drawing, he and Colin exchange nudges and wordless glances throughout, which is thoroughly distracting for the actors, and Katie shouts at Bradley to stop sniggering. They slink away, sheepish.
Colin sends Bradley to her trailer later on to say sorry. Bradley knocks on the door and lets himself in without waiting to be asked.
He’s only slightly surprised when he discovers that she’s not alone, and he’s a little bit thrilled that he’s surprised her mid-snog with another woman. He’s just about to back away, after storing that up for later enjoyment, when they break apart and he realises that she’s snogging the lips off Eoin, who’s dressed in one of Morgana’s dresses.
Just like his drawing.
Weird.
He backs away, apologetic, and runs off to find Colin in his trailer. Katie is yelling at him but he can’t hear what she’s saying. Bradley thunders up the steps, barges in, clutches Colin’s shoulder. Colin has a resigned expression on his face, his “humouring-Bradley” expression, not one of Bradley’s favourites. Bradley takes a moment to tickle Colin so he drops his book and his face returns to one of the acceptable expressions, the “all right Bradley, you’ve got my full attention now, you charming yet irritating fucker” one in this case.
“You’ll never guess what I just saw,” says Bradley with what he hopes is an enigmatic smile.
Colin purses his lips. “A koala?” he suggests lips quirking up. “No-a battleship. No, you look far to excited. I know, Rudolph Ferdinand?”
“It’s Rio Ferdinand, and no,” says Bradley. Honestly, Colin is hopeless with names, footballers’ names doubly so. But then Colin’s smirking at him, and he realises he’s been had. Bradley barks out a laugh, doubles up. Colin always does that to him.
Bradley wipes the tears from his eyes. “No, no, it’s weirder than that,” he says, shifting the weight from one foot to another in his excitement. “Guess, guess, guess, go on Cols.” Cols screws his face up, lets out a little laugh. “Damian Beckham?”
Bradley smacks him, gently, on the arm. “No, no Cols, it was Katie! Katie snogging Eoin, like in the picture I drew last night. And Eoin, get this, Eoin was wearing Katie’s dress! Like in my drawing!”
Colin’s mouth drops open. “Away on! You are actually kidding me, right? This is like the time with Richard and Millie’s wig, right?”
But Bradley isn’t. “NO! I’m not, not this time, I swear,” he says, hands on Colin’s shoulders, opening his eyes wide so Colin can see inside him, that he’s not lying. “I thought Katie was kissing another girl at first. It was kind of hot, actually.”
“Urgh!” says Colin, pulling a mock-disgusted face.
“What’s up, Colin? Don’t you find the idea of two girls kissing hot?”
Colin chuckles. “No! Two boys kissing, maybe!”
“That’s a great idea for a porno,” Bradley says.
Bradley adopts his “sleazy-voiceover” voice.
“Colin Morgan,” he purrs, steps closer to Colin. “Saves the woooorld. Agaiinnn. And in his spare tiiiime. Gets off on watching boys kissiiiing.”
The idea of Colin pulling himself off while he watches two boys kissing is sizzling hot. In Bradley’s head, the two boys are already naked, tugging at each other breathlessly while they kiss. One of them might be Bradley. The other one might be Colin. He’s not quite sure how that will work, but the details are irrelevant.
Wow. Bradley’s got some great new material for his wankbank today.
He can smell Colin’s breath. “Wait a minute,” he says. “Do you have contraband?”
Colin grins, reaches behind himself, brings out a brown paper bag.
Bradley peers inside. “Pear drops!” Bradley crows. “Thank you, Ma Morgan!” Life doesn’t get much better than this.
He forgets about the picture. But not about all the hot, same-sex kissing. He remembers that.
~#~
“Draw Rupert with half a beard,” says Colin, another night, and Bradley snorts, and sketches a hilarious picture of Rupert with whiskers down one side of his face.
He frowns a bit the next day, though, when Rupert turns up to make-up half-shaved, all apologetic, muttering about dropping his last razor down the sink. Bradley exchanges a look with Colin, who’s creasing up with laughter at his expression. They nudge one another conspiratorially, and giggle. Col’s bony elbow sticks in Bradley’s upper arm, and he loves it. Colin never touches anyone except him.
“Did I do that with my magic?” Bradley whispers.
Colin shrugs and smiles. “Shhh!” he says with his finger to his lips. “Keep the magic secret!”
Then he’s filming a fight scene - he loves those, the delicate choreography, his sore muscles afterwards. So it’s another great day on set, and by the time he goes to bed he’s forgotten all about Rupert’s half beard. But he still remembers Colin’s comment about boys kissing, and finds himself getting hard when he thinks about it.
For a split second while he’s palming his cock, he wonders whether Colin’s remembered it too, whether Colin’s tugging himself off this very second thinking about boys kissing. That mental image pushes him over the edge, and he cries out as his come pulses over his stomach.
~#~
They’re sitting in Colin’s room. Angel has just popped to the loo. “Col,” says Bradley in a conspiratorial whisper, “do you think I’m really making stuff happen with my drawings?”
Colin smiles, shifts his weight a little. “Yeah, sure!” he says.
“What shall I make happen next?” says Bradley.
“I think the question, Bradley, is whether you’re going to use your powers for good or for bad,” says Colin.
Bradley thinks for about a second too long about that. “For good, obviously,” he says, eventually. “But I’m not sure how to draw world peace.” He pouts a bit, then brightens. “But in the meantime, I do know how to draw Richard playing table tennis.”
They’re sniggering over a drawing when Angel comes back from the loo and gives them one of her resigned, head-on-one-side, pursed-lip, Bradley-and-Colin-are-being-idiots-again expressions. She has a bank of them reserved for such occasions.
They lift the picture for her perusal: Richard is clutching a table tennis bat, and a cartoon bubble emerges from his mouth. “I don’t believe it,” the bubble says. In the background Bradley jumps up and down in triumph.
But the next day, when for the first time Bradley actually does defeat Richard at ping-pong, he’s the one that doesn’t believe it.
~#~
They’re in Cardiff, filming some scenes on set. Between takes Colin’s fiddling with his new phone, trying to get the camera to work.
Bradley’s idly doodling a picture of the biggest guy in the crew. He’s drawn him hiding behind a cupboard door in Gaius’s chambers on the set, stark bollock naked. Merlin and Gaius are on the other side of the door having an animated discussion on camera.
“Hey, Bradley,” says Colin, voice all soft and fond. There’s a brief ‘click’. But Bradley’s getting really into his drawing and has only half an ear open, doesn’t respond.
Colin comes over to have a look at the picture, and snorts with laughter.
“I’d pay money to see that,” says Colin.
Bradley grabs Col’s phone, looks at the photo Colin’s taken of him. He’s sitting on the floor in his armour, frowning at his sketch book. “Urgh,” he says, starting to delete it.
Colin snatches the phone off him. “No, you don’t,” he says with a grin, backing away, holding the phone up above his head. He runs off, cackling.
Bradley surges to his feet, chases Col down and tackles him to the ground. He straddles Colin and tickles him into submission. Colin’s limbs splay out and flail, and his muscles all bunch up while he giggles and squawks his protests.
“Let that be a lesson to you, Morgan,” Bradley shouts, finally, brandishing the phone, and both of them end up being told off for getting their hair all dishevelled. It’s brilliant, and what with one thing and another, when he tumbles into bed that night, Bradley’s forgotten about the picture on the phone, and the drawing in his sketch book.
But funnily enough he still hasn’t forgotten the mental image of two boys kissing, nor how it felt to have Colin Morgan stretched out between his legs, hot muscles squirming beneath his weight. His thighs tremble while he wanks furiously into his pillow, and he bites his lip until it bleeds to stop himself from shouting Colin’s name when he comes.
He feels a bit odd, though, when he sees an out-take from that day’s filming. The big guy from props played a trick, surprising Colin and Richard during a scene by springing, naked, out of a cupboard on set.
Bradley wonders if he really does have the power to make things happen by sketching them.
~#~
Colin sits next to him while he drinks his coffee.
“I have magic,” says Bradley. He’s a bit awestruck. He’d known about his introvert-coaxing powers, but this art thing puts him in a different league. He’s up there with Gandalf.
“Yeah?” says Col, smiling. “Actually, about that, Bradley…”
“I can make things happen by the power of art.” Bradley takes a sip of coffee. “Not even Pablo Picasso could do that, you know. Even David Bowie couldn’t do that.” He’s pretty chuffed actually.
Col sighs and pats his arm, which makes Bradley smile. A touch from Colin is a gift to be treasured. He squirrels it away.
~#~
Bradley thinks he might be a little bit obsessed with Colin.
He wants to tease out the essence of Colin into alabaster and midnight strands, and intertwine them with threads of Bradley, weave them together into a fabric which is Bradley-and-Colin, myself-and-Colin, alabaster-gold-and-blue, a shining beautiful new cloth.
Bradley wants to map every inch of Colin with his fingers and his tongue, find out all the spaces where they fit together, and mark them as his. He wants to uncover all Colin’s secrets and hug them to himself. The strength of his desire squeezes his chest. He can hardly breathe for it.
And Bradley has the power at his fingertips to make people do things.
So, in secret, in his room late at night, he starts to sketch the things that he dreams about. He draws Colin’s lips and tongue enveloping Bradley’s fingers, imagines the feeling of wet heat as Colin sucks and licks. He draws himself, between Colin’s thighs, his hand snaking between them, his mouth stretched round the tip of Colin’s knob. He sketches Colin’s taut rump, Bradley’s thumb inserted into Colin’s opening, thumb ring showing.
He imagines the feel of Colin’s balls heavy in his palm, wet and spit-slick, the sound of Colin moaning his name. He imagines Colin’s face, as he comes, draws it taut with desire, veins throbbing in his temples.
Deep down, maybe, Bradley doesn’t believe in magic, really he doesn’t, but when he sees his heart’s dearest wishes laid out for him on the floor of his room, he can’t help hoping for a miracle. He’s only human.
He tries to ignore the nagging voice in his head that tells him that if he does have magic, and uses it to coerce Colin to do all these things he fantasises about, it’s all a bit non-consensual isn’t it?
And he hates himself a little bit, because he knows how guarded Colin is, knows about the bad experience Colin had with a controlling ex-boyfriend.
But he doesn’t stop.
~#~
It’s Angel’s birthday and they take a break from filming to go out in Cardiff.
Bradley takes time getting ready. He wants to look sharp. He wears a suit that shows off his broad shoulders, his hair is artfully tousled. They’re meeting the others at a discreet bar. The girls are already there when they arrive, and they’ve made an effort, Angel stunning in yellow, and Katie managing to look like a model even though she’s dressed down in jeans and killer heels.
His eyes widen when he sees Colin, looking mouth-wateringly trim in elegant slim-fit trousers, topped off with a blue-silk button-down shirt that matches his eyes. Katie must have been on at him to ditch the plaid for once. When Colin sends a coy smile his way, Bradley can hardly breathe. He puts a finger under his collar and loosens his tie a little to cover his confusion and the ready blush that he can feel staining his cheeks.
Bradley and the Knights are on the beer, the girls drink shots, and even Colin has a shot of vodka in his coke. They sit in a booth playing “Mafia” and “Wink Murder”. Bradley thinks Eoin is cheating but can’t work out how.
But then there’s a girl, who sidles into their midst and starts to crowd Colin’s space. When she deposits herself on Colin’s lap and starts declaring her undying love, poor Colin looks like he wants the floor to swallow him up.
Bradley comes to his rescue. He’s Colin’s knight in shining armour. He tugs the girl away. “Excuse me, lovely lady,” he tells her, “I think your friends are looking for you.” He holds her hand, drags her over to a pocket of expectant, giggling faces, and smiles reassuringly. He poses for a several mobile-phone pictures, chats to them, charms them and buys soft drinks.
When he comes back, Colin is gone, so Bradley goes after him like a good mate, calls his mobile. He’s hiding in plain sight, on a park bench outside.
Bradley bounds up to him. “Cols!” he says, breath coalescing like smoke in the cool night air. “You ran away, coward!” He tugs Colin to his feet, still euphoric with beer and bonhomie. Colin’s shivering, even though it’s August, he needs more flesh on his bones. He smiles, face full of crinkle-eyed wonder, as if Bradley had rescued him from certain death, not just a drunken, over-affectionate fangirl. His shoulders feel a little tense under Bradley’s hands. Bradley rubs them encouragingly and tries not to look too goofy, too smitten, but it’s hard because Colin looks like a wet dream tonight.
“I realised something,” Colin says, head tilted on one side, still smiling at him as if he’s something special, cheekbones stark in the orange streetlights. “When that girl was all over me, trying to get me to go home with her, there was only one person I wanted to come home with, tonight.”
“Oh yeah,” says Bradley, grinning at Col, who has only had one shot of vodka, but is all pink-cheeked and breathless. “And who might that be, then? Eoin? Rupert?” Bradley’s knuckles brush against Colin’s cold hands.
“Stop it, you big tease,” Colin says, stepping in even closer, an intent look on his face that makes Bradley gulp. He whispers in Bradley’s ear so that his breath tickles. “It’s you, of course,” he says, and he leans in, warm lips ghosting across Bradley’s cheek, touching Bradley’s lips, gently at first and then with increasing urgency. “You know it’s you, you in your fuck-me suit, and all,” he carries on between kisses, his long fingers rubbing Bradley’s scalp, his body brushing up against Bradley’s hip, clothes rustling faintly. “Sex on two legs is what you look like. Made for sin.”
This is what Bradley dreams of, what he wants, what he needs, and he lets a low moan escape from his throat when Colin lowers his head to tongue and suck at his neck.
“Fuck, yeah, Morgan,” he says. “What have we been waiting for, all this time?” He pulls Colin closer. “Come home with me, Cols.”
Forward to Part 2
Part 1. Stains Upon the Tongue and Lust for Picking
Bradley loves introverts. He loves the way they respond to him. He has the power and personality to pull away the carefully constructed facade and discover the warm, funny, likeable person that lies beneath.
Case in point: they’re out in Cardiff, and Bradley’s feeling a bit unsteady from all the cider.
“You’re a riddle, Col’n Mor’n,” Bradley says, slinging an arm round Col’s shodler. Shoulder. Thing. “A riddle wrapped within a mystery wrapped within a wossname.”
“Enigma?”
“Yeah, one of those.” He hiccups a bit. “Whereas I,” says Bradley, “M’ a ninja!” He strikes a pose for theatrical effect. Colin seems curiously unimpressed. “N’ introvert-uncovering ninja,” Bradley clarifies. His punctuating belch is nothing short of artistic. “You stick with me, mate,” says Bradley, patting Colin gently on the shoulder. “I’ll see you right.”
Colin staggers a bit as he smiles, all polite. Oops, maybe he patted him a bit harder than he thought. Bradley can feel the heat of his skin through his clothes. He keeps his hand on Colin’s shoulder, in case Colin feels a bit wobbly from all those cokes.
~#~
Bradley sits next to Colin in make-up. They have to keep still. Bradley talks out of the side of his mouth while Maria adjusts his hair.
“That kid really liked you,” Bradley says, “and his mum thought you were adorable.” Bradley’s hand sneaks out, seeks the warmth of Colin’s forearm with the back of his finger, strokes him, making sure he follows the direction of the hairs. His hands love Colin, want him to pay them attention. He can tell by the minute adjustment in Colin’s posture that he’s noticed. Sometimes Colin wriggles, other times he squirms, but he always reacts.
Colin shrugs. Bradley feels the muscles tense. “Seemed like a really sweet kid,” he says.
“I never knew you liked children, Colin,” says Bradley.
“I don’t like children, I’m a vegetarian,” says Col, deadpanning. After a couple of seconds, he lets out a guffaw. Bradley stares at the mirror for a moment or two before he barks out a surprised laugh.
Under Colin’s surface walls of charm and niceness, the brown onion skin of his personality, there is layer upon layer of fascinating, fleshy, Colin-ness underneath. There’s the off-colour humour layer, and the layer of magic-ness, then there’s a dark, bleak layer of insecurity and doom, and then there’s a secret layer under that, which can only be accessed by ninjas.
~#~
Bradley bounds onto set.
“Col, Colin, Cols,” he says, bouncing on his toes. Colin has a script in his hand. He looks up and smiles. Bradley waits for the dimples, the sly corner-of-eye look, and grins triumphantly when he’s rewarded with them. He leans in and punches Colin (gently! He’s not a monster!) on the upper arm. Colin winces, but only a little bit, and doesn’t stop smiling.
“Cols, come with me, we’re going to get some lunch, come on Cols,” Bradley says, hauling him to his feet. “Come on, Cols, you must be starving, I heard a rumour that there was delicious soy-based gloop on offer today.”
Colin flashes him a resigned look. “I already ate,” he says, but he’s getting to his feet.
Bradley frowns, rubs Colin’s shoulder, which hunches. “You’re too bony,” he says. “Eat more. What did you find to eat on set anyway? ” He feels Colin’s skin wriggle minutely under his clothes.
Colin’s face dimples and his eyes crinkle with mischief. “Put it this way,” he says, “you know that kid who was on set yesterday? Well, we won’t be seeing him again.”
Bradley’s laugh doubles him over. “What happened to all your plant-eating principles, Morgan?”
“I was pretty hungry.”
Colin’s face looks almost sad for a moment and then it splits into a shit-eating grin. Bradley laughs, delighted, shoves at Col’s leg with his knee, touches a warm finger to Col’s wrist.
Bradley’s special. No-one else is allowed under Colin’s first and second and third skins like this, to the Colin underneath, the Colin that actually likes being touched. Bradley can’t help himself, he touches Colin hundreds of times every day. He’s addicted.
Colin rewards him for these touches with sidelong looks, coquettish glances through his eyelashes, jokes and self-deprecating shrugs. Bradley could watch Colin all day, waiting for these tiny signals that Colin has noticed him.
Because Colin is brilliant, and most of all because Colin is at his most brilliant for Bradley.
~#~
Angel and Katie are introverts too, at least compared to Bradley, and Bradley enjoys getting in their personal space.
Bradley has a big heart, he loves everyone openly and without prejudice.
He loves Katie and Angel, he loves Anthony and Richard, but most of all he loves Colin. Of course he loves Colin. Everybody loves Colin.
He loves, and touches, and maddens everyone on the set until they’re all half in love with him, and it’s brilliant. By being sunny-natured and warm, he can coax people to open up, like rosebuds in the sun.
Bradley loves this job. He loves the fighting and the action scenes and the banter, he loves being Prince Arthur, and playing a role he was born for. Brilliant. It’s all brilliant.
Most of all he loves his co-star, who is private, and quiet, and hates to be touched, except by ninjas. He loves enigmatic, self-deprecating Colin, with his shy smile, sly eyes, and fey bone structure, who also happens to be the most extraordinary actor Bradley has ever seen. When Colin is in character, he pulls everyone else along with him, makes them all up their game.
Bradley’s drunk on Colin. He’s intoxicated by Colin’s power and his talent.
~#~
Bradley holds Colin’s sleeve, tells him to “shhhh!” - they’re giggling too loudly. When the pizza delivery bloke arrives, and Katie comes to the door, Bradley whisks Colin round the corner so Katie won’t see, and they stifle their giggles while they listen to the conversation.
“Pizza for Miss McGrath?” says the pizza guy.
“What? I didn’t order pizza?” says Katie, and the puzzled note in her voice is just the funniest thing ever. But then Col lets out an explosive kind of guffaw, despite Bradley’s best efforts to hush him, and they’re rumbled. “Wait a second,” she says, and he thinks “uh-oh,” hears footsteps, sees a frowning McGrath stalking round the corner.
She stops, hand on hip, glaring.
“Bradley!”
As if the prank was all his idea, and although it was, her accusatory tone is totally unfair, because it’s Colin making all the noise, not him; Bradley’s as quiet as a mouse. Not to mention the fact that Col’s an Irish pixie, and they’re well known for being pranksters and tricksters, so Colin should get the blame. But everyone thinks Colin is a total innocent. It’s those puppy-dog eyes. Bradley used to think he did good puppy-dog eyes, but that was before he met Colin. Colin is a puppy-dog-eye ninja.
Later, they’re all eating pizza in McGrath’s room, except Colin, because Bradley forgot to order one without cheese. Bradley brags, because ordering pizza for someone who didn’t order pizza is the BEST practical joke, and McGrath lets out an incredulous huff.
“Bradley, seriously, that’s the lamest prank ever,” she says.
Colin laughs. “S’ true, Bradley, it’s pretty lame.” And Bradley is hurt by his betrayal. Bloody Irish prank Mafia. He retaliates by taking the last piece of pizza.
“You were laughing hard enough, Morgan,” he says between mouthfuls, “and anyway I’d like to see you do better.”
~#~
One rainy Tuesday he tracks Colin down where he’s sitting in a dark corner with his earphones in, reading through his script. “Cols!” Bradley says, running up to Colin, shoving his shoulder hard, wedging himself in next to Colin, tugging an earphone out of Colin’s ear and flicking Colin’s earlobe. He puts the earphone in his own ear; Colin’s learning spells again. Bradley’s leg is lined up along Colin’s. Colin shifts so that they’re not touching, turns his shoulder minutely away.
“Bradley!”
There’s a note of resigned protest in his voice, as if he's wanting privacy but doesn’t want to be rude. Bradley sighs, puts the earphone back down in Colin’s lap, pouts, and walks away. Because sometimes the introverts need to escape from him, sometimes he crowds their space a bit too much, or at the wrong time. He knows that; he’s not completely insensitive.
~#~
Another time he finds them all happily sitting together in Katie’s room, not interacting, like some sort of little introspective coven, Katie reading some door-wedge book, Angel strumming her guitar, quietly, and Colin fingering a dog-eared script, listening peacefully to some obscure indie no-hope band on his earphones.
Angel frowns at him when he calls them boring introverts. “Bradley,” she says, in that fond, exasperated voice she reserves especially for him, “just because we just need personal space sometimes doesn’t mean we are introverted. It just means we are normal.”
Bradley ignores the implied “unlike some people,” and pulls a face. “I don’t care what you call it,” he says, “you’re all boring.”
Bradley upsets the dynamic. He can’t sit still for more than two minutes without getting in their faces. He jiggles, tickles Colin, tweaks Katie’s hair, fusses and fiddles with Angel’s guitar case, until they yell at him to go away. He feels left out. It makes him feel like a child. He stalks out of the room, banging the door behind him, and goes for a solitary run in the dark.
But Colin is a genius, and a brilliant friend, and Bradley loves him forever, because Colin buys him a sketch book and some pencils and encourages him to draw, and now when everyone wants to retreat into their shells, he can sit with them and sketch. He still jiggles and whistles and mutters under his breath, but he’ll sit still for up to ten minutes at a time on the floor, his shoulder abutting Colin’s knee, and they’re all very complimentary about his drawings.
He remembers having a teacher at school-Mrs Bradshaw, or was it Miss Turnbull?-who encouraged him to draw when he was feeling fidgety. Bradley loves to draw. It’s one of the activities that he can lose himself in, like football.
He draws pictures of the cast and crew doing funny stuff: Katie batting a wasp away from her hair, the exasperated look that appeared on Angel’s face when she bit into her turkey sandwich and found that Bradley had replaced it with replica food from the props department, Richard wearing Morgana’s wig.
Mostly he draws Colin. He is obsessed with Colin’s bones: his cheekbones, collarbones, splayed fingers, delicate knucklebones, hunched shoulders, taut thighs, long thumbs. He sketches body parts. He zooms in on prominent elbows, bony knees, angular ankles.
“Colin is my muse,” he says to all and sundry, as he sketches Col smirking at him from behind his script, or leaning up against the wall with his legs crossed.
~#~
Colin’s sitting next to him on the minibus, earphones in, fiddling with his iPod. His thumb selects some mournful band’s name.
Bradley jiggles about, gleeful, absolutely unable to contain the feeling of anticipation. Colin frowns at him. Katie frowns at him. Angel frowns at him. They’re all beginning to look suspicious. Bradley sits on his hands and presses his lips together to stop himself from giving the game away.
The expression on Colin’s face when he presses play and nearly jumps out of his skin is absolutely priceless. It’s a good thing Bradley’s got a seatbelt on or he’d have fallen off his chair.
It’s been really tricky reprogramming Col’s iPod so that all the emo music titles jump to 1970s and 1980s rock anthems, but absolutely worth it.
“Just you watch it, James,” says Colin, all mock-ferocious, “I will have my revenge,” and Bradley bursts out laughing, because Colin a genius in many things, but he’s rubbish at practical jokes.
“In your dreams,” he splutters, and Colin pouts.
Angel laughs. “Colin, you’re adorable when you sulk,” she says, and Colin pointedly turns his back on her, or at least his side, because it’s difficult turning your back when you’re strapped into a minibus.
But Colin forgives him soon enough, and they take an earbud each and sing along to “Fat Bottomed Girls” all the rest of the way. The girls yell at them to stop, but Bradley flips them a finger and they end up filming the whole thing instead.
All in all, it’s going really brilliantly.
~#~
When the knights join the cast, and he’s got people to play football and Frisbee with between takes, it’s not quite so oppressive being closeted with the introverts. But sometimes he misses it, misses Colin. At such times he disciplines himself to sit quietly with him, or Katie and Angel, just sketching, while they study their scripts, or knitting patterns, or whatever boring introvert-y thing it is that they’re into now. It gets easier, sitting still, as long as he can feel Colin’s leg, solid alongside his arm.
Colin doesn’t eat enough. Bradley worries about him. Bradley buys him walnuts, and gets his dad to send peanut butter, the real stuff from California. Colin scoops it gratefully out of the jar into his too-skinny face, and Bradley beams with pride.
Colin orders Bradley a portfolio case for his drawings, and Bradley stores it under his bed, where it can’t fall into the wrong hands (i.e., Katie’s).
~#~
It’s about time he got to the bottom of Colin’s deeper onion-skin layers.
“Colin,” says Bradley, one rare night off in a dimly lit Cardiff pub, “do you have like a…” he waves his hand expressively and sighs. “Girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other, whatever?” Bradley’s broken up with his latest amour, and is feeling a bit pensive. He’s never heard Col talk about anyone special, never seen him with anyone.
Colin shakes his head, purses his lips together. Bradley puts his hand on Col’s wrist where he can feel the blood pulsing under his skin.
“I don’t mean to pry,” lies Bradley.
Colin laughs. “Then don’t.”
There’s a pause, and then Bradley nudges him, lips twitching, gives him an expectant, raised eyebrow. Colin laughs again, although Bradley hasn’t made a joke, and takes a sip of his beer.
“There used to be someone,” he says, looking away, “but it didn’t work out, because he was… he was… really…erm…”
Colin’s face is all serious now, his Adam’s apple is working up and down, and Bradley’s beginning to regret starting this conversation, because he doesn’t want Col to be sad, but on the other hand he does want to know, so he just keeps uncharacteristically quiet. Col will tell him about it if he wants to. Col looks back at him, eyes glistening in the wan light, looking tense at the memory.
“Controlling,” Colin breathes. There’s a world of pain in that single word, and Colin shows it all in one expressive look.
Bradley understands, and exhales suddenly at the sudden feeling of rage and hatred that pounds into his gut. Someone hurt Colin, he thinks. He puts a protective arm round Colin’s shoulder. He doesn’t ask Colin who it was, because if he ever knew, he would kill him.
~#~
Bradley loves spending time with all the cast, they’re like family now, but it’s best when it’s just himself and Colin. They make up ridiculous scenarios involving their fellow cast members, Bradley sketches them, and Colin snorts with laughter. They clutch onto each other and giggle, and he can feel the heat of Colin’s skin through his clothes. Sometimes Colin’s arms snake round him, which makes him so happy he could burst. Because Colin’s not tactile like Bradley, so it means that he’s special, Colin trusts him. This is what it means to be happy; this is what it means to have a best mate.
“Draw Eoin kissing Katie,” says Colin, on one such occasion. Bradley laughs, and he sketches Katie and Eoin. He puts Katie in Eoin’s clothes and dresses Eoin in one of Morgana’s gowns, and they giggle so hard that Bradley has tears in his eyes, and Col has to blow his nose. He slips the sketch into his folio case, and they watch a Harry Potter movie that has been dubbed in French.
They make up French spells.
“J’expect le patronum,” says Colin. He smirks. “One nil.”
Bradley chuckles. “Le leviosa du wingardium,” he says. “One all.”
Colin looks faintly constipated while he roots around desperately in his head for another spell. “Oh. Ah. Erm. I know. Erm. Je sais.” He nods.
Bradley rolls his eyes. “Get on with it, Morgan. Allez!”
Colin holds up a triumphant finger. “Les totales de petrifiques!”
Bradley groans. Damn, Col’s good at this. It’s two-one and Colin’s laughing at him. The humiliation.
“Le kadavra de l’avada,” says Bradley, eventually. It’s a desperate move.
“You can’t have that one. It’s an unforgiveable curse,” Colin says, pursing his lips up smugly. Bradley pushes Colin off the bed, but Colin grabs him and they both end up in a squawking, messy, ticklish heap. Bradley falls asleep on Col’s bed with Col’s feet snuggled under his thighs for warmth.
~#~
It’s around then that weird things start happening.
Eoin and Katie are shooting a scene; Bradley and Colin have a rare couple of hours free and decide to watch. Remembering Bradley’s drawing, he and Colin exchange nudges and wordless glances throughout, which is thoroughly distracting for the actors, and Katie shouts at Bradley to stop sniggering. They slink away, sheepish.
Colin sends Bradley to her trailer later on to say sorry. Bradley knocks on the door and lets himself in without waiting to be asked.
He’s only slightly surprised when he discovers that she’s not alone, and he’s a little bit thrilled that he’s surprised her mid-snog with another woman. He’s just about to back away, after storing that up for later enjoyment, when they break apart and he realises that she’s snogging the lips off Eoin, who’s dressed in one of Morgana’s dresses.
Just like his drawing.
Weird.
He backs away, apologetic, and runs off to find Colin in his trailer. Katie is yelling at him but he can’t hear what she’s saying. Bradley thunders up the steps, barges in, clutches Colin’s shoulder. Colin has a resigned expression on his face, his “humouring-Bradley” expression, not one of Bradley’s favourites. Bradley takes a moment to tickle Colin so he drops his book and his face returns to one of the acceptable expressions, the “all right Bradley, you’ve got my full attention now, you charming yet irritating fucker” one in this case.
“You’ll never guess what I just saw,” says Bradley with what he hopes is an enigmatic smile.
Colin purses his lips. “A koala?” he suggests lips quirking up. “No-a battleship. No, you look far to excited. I know, Rudolph Ferdinand?”
“It’s Rio Ferdinand, and no,” says Bradley. Honestly, Colin is hopeless with names, footballers’ names doubly so. But then Colin’s smirking at him, and he realises he’s been had. Bradley barks out a laugh, doubles up. Colin always does that to him.
Bradley wipes the tears from his eyes. “No, no, it’s weirder than that,” he says, shifting the weight from one foot to another in his excitement. “Guess, guess, guess, go on Cols.” Cols screws his face up, lets out a little laugh. “Damian Beckham?”
Bradley smacks him, gently, on the arm. “No, no Cols, it was Katie! Katie snogging Eoin, like in the picture I drew last night. And Eoin, get this, Eoin was wearing Katie’s dress! Like in my drawing!”
Colin’s mouth drops open. “Away on! You are actually kidding me, right? This is like the time with Richard and Millie’s wig, right?”
But Bradley isn’t. “NO! I’m not, not this time, I swear,” he says, hands on Colin’s shoulders, opening his eyes wide so Colin can see inside him, that he’s not lying. “I thought Katie was kissing another girl at first. It was kind of hot, actually.”
“Urgh!” says Colin, pulling a mock-disgusted face.
“What’s up, Colin? Don’t you find the idea of two girls kissing hot?”
Colin chuckles. “No! Two boys kissing, maybe!”
“That’s a great idea for a porno,” Bradley says.
Bradley adopts his “sleazy-voiceover” voice.
“Colin Morgan,” he purrs, steps closer to Colin. “Saves the woooorld. Agaiinnn. And in his spare tiiiime. Gets off on watching boys kissiiiing.”
The idea of Colin pulling himself off while he watches two boys kissing is sizzling hot. In Bradley’s head, the two boys are already naked, tugging at each other breathlessly while they kiss. One of them might be Bradley. The other one might be Colin. He’s not quite sure how that will work, but the details are irrelevant.
Wow. Bradley’s got some great new material for his wankbank today.
He can smell Colin’s breath. “Wait a minute,” he says. “Do you have contraband?”
Colin grins, reaches behind himself, brings out a brown paper bag.
Bradley peers inside. “Pear drops!” Bradley crows. “Thank you, Ma Morgan!” Life doesn’t get much better than this.
He forgets about the picture. But not about all the hot, same-sex kissing. He remembers that.
~#~
“Draw Rupert with half a beard,” says Colin, another night, and Bradley snorts, and sketches a hilarious picture of Rupert with whiskers down one side of his face.
He frowns a bit the next day, though, when Rupert turns up to make-up half-shaved, all apologetic, muttering about dropping his last razor down the sink. Bradley exchanges a look with Colin, who’s creasing up with laughter at his expression. They nudge one another conspiratorially, and giggle. Col’s bony elbow sticks in Bradley’s upper arm, and he loves it. Colin never touches anyone except him.
“Did I do that with my magic?” Bradley whispers.
Colin shrugs and smiles. “Shhh!” he says with his finger to his lips. “Keep the magic secret!”
Then he’s filming a fight scene - he loves those, the delicate choreography, his sore muscles afterwards. So it’s another great day on set, and by the time he goes to bed he’s forgotten all about Rupert’s half beard. But he still remembers Colin’s comment about boys kissing, and finds himself getting hard when he thinks about it.
For a split second while he’s palming his cock, he wonders whether Colin’s remembered it too, whether Colin’s tugging himself off this very second thinking about boys kissing. That mental image pushes him over the edge, and he cries out as his come pulses over his stomach.
~#~
They’re sitting in Colin’s room. Angel has just popped to the loo. “Col,” says Bradley in a conspiratorial whisper, “do you think I’m really making stuff happen with my drawings?”
Colin smiles, shifts his weight a little. “Yeah, sure!” he says.
“What shall I make happen next?” says Bradley.
“I think the question, Bradley, is whether you’re going to use your powers for good or for bad,” says Colin.
Bradley thinks for about a second too long about that. “For good, obviously,” he says, eventually. “But I’m not sure how to draw world peace.” He pouts a bit, then brightens. “But in the meantime, I do know how to draw Richard playing table tennis.”
They’re sniggering over a drawing when Angel comes back from the loo and gives them one of her resigned, head-on-one-side, pursed-lip, Bradley-and-Colin-are-being-idiots-again expressions. She has a bank of them reserved for such occasions.
They lift the picture for her perusal: Richard is clutching a table tennis bat, and a cartoon bubble emerges from his mouth. “I don’t believe it,” the bubble says. In the background Bradley jumps up and down in triumph.
But the next day, when for the first time Bradley actually does defeat Richard at ping-pong, he’s the one that doesn’t believe it.
~#~
They’re in Cardiff, filming some scenes on set. Between takes Colin’s fiddling with his new phone, trying to get the camera to work.
Bradley’s idly doodling a picture of the biggest guy in the crew. He’s drawn him hiding behind a cupboard door in Gaius’s chambers on the set, stark bollock naked. Merlin and Gaius are on the other side of the door having an animated discussion on camera.
“Hey, Bradley,” says Colin, voice all soft and fond. There’s a brief ‘click’. But Bradley’s getting really into his drawing and has only half an ear open, doesn’t respond.
Colin comes over to have a look at the picture, and snorts with laughter.
“I’d pay money to see that,” says Colin.
Bradley grabs Col’s phone, looks at the photo Colin’s taken of him. He’s sitting on the floor in his armour, frowning at his sketch book. “Urgh,” he says, starting to delete it.
Colin snatches the phone off him. “No, you don’t,” he says with a grin, backing away, holding the phone up above his head. He runs off, cackling.
Bradley surges to his feet, chases Col down and tackles him to the ground. He straddles Colin and tickles him into submission. Colin’s limbs splay out and flail, and his muscles all bunch up while he giggles and squawks his protests.
“Let that be a lesson to you, Morgan,” Bradley shouts, finally, brandishing the phone, and both of them end up being told off for getting their hair all dishevelled. It’s brilliant, and what with one thing and another, when he tumbles into bed that night, Bradley’s forgotten about the picture on the phone, and the drawing in his sketch book.
But funnily enough he still hasn’t forgotten the mental image of two boys kissing, nor how it felt to have Colin Morgan stretched out between his legs, hot muscles squirming beneath his weight. His thighs tremble while he wanks furiously into his pillow, and he bites his lip until it bleeds to stop himself from shouting Colin’s name when he comes.
He feels a bit odd, though, when he sees an out-take from that day’s filming. The big guy from props played a trick, surprising Colin and Richard during a scene by springing, naked, out of a cupboard on set.
Bradley wonders if he really does have the power to make things happen by sketching them.
~#~
Colin sits next to him while he drinks his coffee.
“I have magic,” says Bradley. He’s a bit awestruck. He’d known about his introvert-coaxing powers, but this art thing puts him in a different league. He’s up there with Gandalf.
“Yeah?” says Col, smiling. “Actually, about that, Bradley…”
“I can make things happen by the power of art.” Bradley takes a sip of coffee. “Not even Pablo Picasso could do that, you know. Even David Bowie couldn’t do that.” He’s pretty chuffed actually.
Col sighs and pats his arm, which makes Bradley smile. A touch from Colin is a gift to be treasured. He squirrels it away.
~#~
Bradley thinks he might be a little bit obsessed with Colin.
He wants to tease out the essence of Colin into alabaster and midnight strands, and intertwine them with threads of Bradley, weave them together into a fabric which is Bradley-and-Colin, myself-and-Colin, alabaster-gold-and-blue, a shining beautiful new cloth.
Bradley wants to map every inch of Colin with his fingers and his tongue, find out all the spaces where they fit together, and mark them as his. He wants to uncover all Colin’s secrets and hug them to himself. The strength of his desire squeezes his chest. He can hardly breathe for it.
And Bradley has the power at his fingertips to make people do things.
So, in secret, in his room late at night, he starts to sketch the things that he dreams about. He draws Colin’s lips and tongue enveloping Bradley’s fingers, imagines the feeling of wet heat as Colin sucks and licks. He draws himself, between Colin’s thighs, his hand snaking between them, his mouth stretched round the tip of Colin’s knob. He sketches Colin’s taut rump, Bradley’s thumb inserted into Colin’s opening, thumb ring showing.
He imagines the feel of Colin’s balls heavy in his palm, wet and spit-slick, the sound of Colin moaning his name. He imagines Colin’s face, as he comes, draws it taut with desire, veins throbbing in his temples.
Deep down, maybe, Bradley doesn’t believe in magic, really he doesn’t, but when he sees his heart’s dearest wishes laid out for him on the floor of his room, he can’t help hoping for a miracle. He’s only human.
He tries to ignore the nagging voice in his head that tells him that if he does have magic, and uses it to coerce Colin to do all these things he fantasises about, it’s all a bit non-consensual isn’t it?
And he hates himself a little bit, because he knows how guarded Colin is, knows about the bad experience Colin had with a controlling ex-boyfriend.
But he doesn’t stop.
~#~
It’s Angel’s birthday and they take a break from filming to go out in Cardiff.
Bradley takes time getting ready. He wants to look sharp. He wears a suit that shows off his broad shoulders, his hair is artfully tousled. They’re meeting the others at a discreet bar. The girls are already there when they arrive, and they’ve made an effort, Angel stunning in yellow, and Katie managing to look like a model even though she’s dressed down in jeans and killer heels.
His eyes widen when he sees Colin, looking mouth-wateringly trim in elegant slim-fit trousers, topped off with a blue-silk button-down shirt that matches his eyes. Katie must have been on at him to ditch the plaid for once. When Colin sends a coy smile his way, Bradley can hardly breathe. He puts a finger under his collar and loosens his tie a little to cover his confusion and the ready blush that he can feel staining his cheeks.
Bradley and the Knights are on the beer, the girls drink shots, and even Colin has a shot of vodka in his coke. They sit in a booth playing “Mafia” and “Wink Murder”. Bradley thinks Eoin is cheating but can’t work out how.
But then there’s a girl, who sidles into their midst and starts to crowd Colin’s space. When she deposits herself on Colin’s lap and starts declaring her undying love, poor Colin looks like he wants the floor to swallow him up.
Bradley comes to his rescue. He’s Colin’s knight in shining armour. He tugs the girl away. “Excuse me, lovely lady,” he tells her, “I think your friends are looking for you.” He holds her hand, drags her over to a pocket of expectant, giggling faces, and smiles reassuringly. He poses for a several mobile-phone pictures, chats to them, charms them and buys soft drinks.
When he comes back, Colin is gone, so Bradley goes after him like a good mate, calls his mobile. He’s hiding in plain sight, on a park bench outside.
Bradley bounds up to him. “Cols!” he says, breath coalescing like smoke in the cool night air. “You ran away, coward!” He tugs Colin to his feet, still euphoric with beer and bonhomie. Colin’s shivering, even though it’s August, he needs more flesh on his bones. He smiles, face full of crinkle-eyed wonder, as if Bradley had rescued him from certain death, not just a drunken, over-affectionate fangirl. His shoulders feel a little tense under Bradley’s hands. Bradley rubs them encouragingly and tries not to look too goofy, too smitten, but it’s hard because Colin looks like a wet dream tonight.
“I realised something,” Colin says, head tilted on one side, still smiling at him as if he’s something special, cheekbones stark in the orange streetlights. “When that girl was all over me, trying to get me to go home with her, there was only one person I wanted to come home with, tonight.”
“Oh yeah,” says Bradley, grinning at Col, who has only had one shot of vodka, but is all pink-cheeked and breathless. “And who might that be, then? Eoin? Rupert?” Bradley’s knuckles brush against Colin’s cold hands.
“Stop it, you big tease,” Colin says, stepping in even closer, an intent look on his face that makes Bradley gulp. He whispers in Bradley’s ear so that his breath tickles. “It’s you, of course,” he says, and he leans in, warm lips ghosting across Bradley’s cheek, touching Bradley’s lips, gently at first and then with increasing urgency. “You know it’s you, you in your fuck-me suit, and all,” he carries on between kisses, his long fingers rubbing Bradley’s scalp, his body brushing up against Bradley’s hip, clothes rustling faintly. “Sex on two legs is what you look like. Made for sin.”
This is what Bradley dreams of, what he wants, what he needs, and he lets a low moan escape from his throat when Colin lowers his head to tongue and suck at his neck.
“Fuck, yeah, Morgan,” he says. “What have we been waiting for, all this time?” He pulls Colin closer. “Come home with me, Cols.”
Forward to Part 2