Once More, With Feeling - Part 3/4
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(Bradley - Friday, June 5th, 2015)
The room is so stale, Bradley’s nose burns with it. The air in it recycled through hundreds of lungs, millions of times. For a horrible moment it really feels as though he’s breathing in other people’s germs. He vaguely wonders if this is what breakdowns are made of.
At some point, his leg has begun to bounce under the table, and he’s holding a swag of script which doesn’t even look like it’s written in English, all the words alien and hard.
“Bradley? Bradley.”
“Hm?”
“It’s your line.”
“Mine? Oh. So sorry, I, um.” Beside him, Tonia discreetly points at his script. He blinks at it. “Seven to base. I have a full house. Your bid,” he says and winces inwardly at the silence in the room.
“All right, everyone,” a voice blares through a microphone, “take five. Read-through will re-commence at four fifteen.”
Bradley rushes through the first available door with an exit sign, ignoring soft voices calling his name. He pinches the bridge of his nose as he slumps against a wet wall, barely noticing the fine drizzle slowly but steadily soaking him through.
He’s fucked. He’s completely fucked.
Becoming an actor was the hardest choice he’d ever made. He isn’t like Colin, who dons other lives like second skin, who takes on acting as if it’s instinct. Bradley had made a gut-wrenching choice, and has given it his everything.
When his agent in those early days told him it was best if he didn’t come out as gay until his career was on firmer ground, Bradley had listened. It would focus attention on the wrong aspect of his life, she’d said and god, if he could only go back to his younger self and shake some sense into him.
Life’s a bitch, though. It hands you a pair of legs and steals your voice, so of course he’d laid eyes on Colin -- weird and unintelligible, funny and sharp Colin -- and had known he was in trouble.
Fuck. Colin had been so sweet in the beginning. So good. Like an orbiting moon, he’d go bright and happy when he was gravitating toward Bradley. People began to notice. (Are you sure there’s nothing going on, Bradley? He looks at you like you’re the chocolate on his strawberry. -- Nothing’s going on, Angel, get your mind out of the gutter. -- How do you think it got there, Bradley? She’d walked off laughing. He’d felt sick with relief.)
For months and months Bradley kept a suffocating hold on his ever deeper rooting feelings, until that one pivotal moment. He lost all sense of himself because suddenly there they were in an isolated little clearing, free of everyone except each other. It had happened in slow motion, with that perfect, stomach-dropping, heart-stampeding feeling first crushes are made of. The way Colin had looked at him scrambled his brain. Before he’d kissed him, Bradley remembers thinking, I don’t deserve you.
Turns out he really didn’t. In a last, desperate attempt to keep control of his life, he’d tried to control Colin instead. Every step of the way, he had lost himself more and more. It had turned bitter and hard. It had turned into secret hook-ups and desperately short hours together where he’d tried to show Colin what he couldn’t tell him out loud.
Of course it hadn’t worked. All Colin had wanted was the Bradley he knew. Instead he got an increasingly cold shoulder in public, and in private, the occasional desperate blow job in an out-of-the-way props room at Pierrefonds, or a silent fuck with a hand over his mouth in a hotel room with walls too thin.
The BBC had suggested another road trip, to Tintagel this time, because the fans liked the first one so much. (They really like the chemistry between you guys, it’s a good sign. -- No. We shouldn’t encourage them to think we’re more than colleagues.) It was at this point, Bradley thinks, that Colin’s kisses became hard, punishing. The moment Colin turned, like the dark side of the moon. When the rumours started in earnest, things had really gone sour.
Finally starting to feel the rain soak through his shirt, Bradley thunks his head on the wall behind him. It all feels like it happened centuries ago. He sniffs, remembering how it had all seemed so dramatic back then. How career-ending, should it ever get out that their affection wasn’t faked or acted. Disgusted, he remembers how they’d both turned into cartoon versions of themselves around each other. Remembers the way Colin looked sometimes, how alone he’d seemed, petting his horse between takes. Wonders if he looked the same way himself, standing in the sun with that bloody chain mail on, waiting for take, after take, after take of Arthur’s epic romance with Guinevere to be filmed.
How it all adds up and comes to this, this weird reunion they’re having, Bradley really doesn’t know. His cheeks burn with equal parts shame and bone-melting desire when he thinks about it all. How they’d thrown themselves at each other like shots from a sling that first night. As if the mantle Colin had taken on allowed them to shove everything else aside so they could just fuck like crazy. God, it sends shivers up Bradley’s spine thinking that just a couple of weeks ago they’d kissed and kissed like lovers. Like the years between their first touch in the meadow and their final goodbye that was barely a cursory handshake after Merlin’s last press junket, never happened.
The shock of seeing Colin within arm’s reach literally took his reason away. He was completely sidelined by feeling the same intense, incendiary heat they’d always shared, that incredible feeling of wanting everything, of never enough. Of a connection Bradley’d never had with anyone else, like they were sharing a brain, like their hands and mouths knew exactly where to go.
Bradley realises he should have arrested the flutter before it became the hurricane now raging through his life, destroying all he’d ever worked for. He should’ve clamped down on the impulse he’d kept under control for so long. He should never have kissed Colin again.
When he woke up, sore and satisfied, he’d been alone. Confusion quickly made room for a cold trickle of doubt, turning into a gush of embarrassed dismissal that made his cheeks burn. Colin had left him there, after--he can’t even name it. Bradley can’t believe how hard and fast he’d fallen again into the groove of wanting, of needing Colin to love him, to need him back.
He purposely knocks his head against the brick wall, letting his eyes fill with rain, realising that though they’re right back at fucking and not communicating, it’s Colin driving now. Bradley might be the one making the phone call, but he’s under no illusion that he’s in control here. He’s quite stunned with the way Colin owns himself, with the way he takes charge. He’s a different man from the one who’d agreed to all manner of hurtful indignity so they could keep their affair in the dark where Bradley had wanted it. He’d taken it for granted back then, that Colin would be willing to be swept under a rug indefinitely, hidden away like a bad habit. But not anymore.
Bradley knows better now, understands what’s at stake. Feels how good they could be. Feels it in his fucking bones.
He always thought falling in love would end with a soft landing. Instead it feels like bouncing off a cliff face, scraped raw long after the headlong rush is over.
And bloody hell, there’s that word he never wanted to acknowledge, but it just keeps eating away at him like heartburn. It makes room for itself inside him, curled tightly around Colin’s sleeping face and the dimple when he smiles, even the way he looks up all impish and intent, sometimes. A little slice of evil peeking through. Yes, fuck it all, Bradley knows the name of it, thinks it on purpose just to test it out. Falling in love.
That’s what it felt like when Colin appeared at the hotel door, so completely, wonderfully unexpected. Bradley’s insides clench hotly, just remembering.
The second time, just over a week ago -- Bradley can’t stop thinking about it, trying to understand it, to analyse it. It’s messing him up, consuming him from the inside out.
He’s reading for the role of his life and all he can think of is quietly determined Colin, untouchable, sitting half hidden in darkness wearing that sexy suit and taking Bradley apart with nothing but the sound of his voice and a memory.
Bradley knows he shouldn’t call the agency again and ask for Connor, but some deep, dark part of him feels like he is doing penance. That this is what he deserves, although if he’s honest with himself, he knows that’s not it. He never got Colin out of his system and if this is the only way he might still have him, he’ll take it.
Scruffing his hands through his dampened hair, Bradley feels a stillness inside. A warning calm before the storm. He breathes, grasping at the notion expanding inside. When it comes, it’s like a revelation.
Fuck it, he is taking it, that one chance.
The moment this thought -- this decision -- is formed, all the weight of guilt and doubt just falls away from his shoulders.
Clutching his phone, he sails dreamlike through the call, only vaguely aware of a pause in the now familiar woman’s voice. Doesn’t think to question it when she asks if there isn’t someone else who might--
“No, only him.” Only ever him.
He pushes away from the wall and straightens, turning his face up into the rain, licking the fat drops from his lips.
It’s a relief to give in.
(Colin - Friday, June 5th, 2015)
Moonlight throws strips of sparse light over the bed, painting Bradley’s back silver. With his rump in the air and his face in the crisp hotel pillow, he’s like a photograph, a trembling monochrome.
Colin forgets where he is for a moment, busy just wrapping his head around this, around what they’re doing, what he’s doing to Bradley. He’d had his weak moments over the years, some stupid daydreams about running into him, punching him in the face, kissing his mouth like the world was ending, but he’d never imagined this. He’d never dreamed of having Bradley so tightly wound that he’s begging, begging, for Colin to let him, to just please, God please harder, pleeease-
No. He’d never ever dreamed of this.
Colin looks at Bradley’s violently bowed back and hands fisted into sheets with a strange sense of detachment, the unreality of this finally giving way to the startling mechanics. With one hand splayed across the small of Bradley’s back to keep him in place, he slowly, methodically fucks him with his fingers, making Bradley keen like he’s in agony.
Yes, he thinks with a maliciousness so alien it stings his eyes, now you know. Now you know what it’s like to be held at arm’s length. Now you know what it’s like to be denied.
He’s appalled with himself to have forgotten everything he’s learnt from offering sex as a service.
Colin relishes this control, holding the reins of how their sex unfolds. He vividly remembers being at the mercy of Bradley’s maybe tomorrow, and I’ll call you, and don’t know what you want from me, Colin. Well, he certainly knows what Bradley wants from him now, begging as he is, and arching like a cat in heat. Having the power tonight is making Colin feel unbreakable, for all that he hasn’t felt whole in what feels like years.
Bradley keeps trying to fuck back onto the torturously slow rhythm, but Colin won’t let him--ebbing against every thrust Bradley tries to force, simply letting his arm go limp. He’s been at it for what feels like hours and he thinks Bradley’s about to snap, but he’s got to give the man points for learning. He’s quickly realised that it’s Colin’s way or no fucking way at all, so he’s all locked knees and gritted teeth, just lying on his face while Colin fucks him like this, three long fingers stroking inside him with dextrous deliberation.
Bradley’s swearing now, and he never swears, never, Colin remembers. It sends a hot zap through Colin’s gut to hear him chant like this into the pillow, but the desperate litany of please Colin, please fucking just. Please, fuck, God, yeah, oh, just fuck me, fuck me isn’t going to make Colin give Bradley what he wants, though his cock couldn’t be harder, the ardent heat of it searing against his stomach.
Bradley’s trembling all over, trying to hold still, and Colin allows his splayed hand to lightly caress the pale, moonlit skin of his back. He touches Bradley with soft strokes, fingers gentle over his waist, his hip, his thigh. Bradley groans, and covers his face with a fistful of sheets, only his openly panting mouth visible. Colin has always loved that mouth, had designs on it, missed it. God, how he misses it, still.
“Kiss me,” Bradley whispers, “Please,” and Colin’s whole body shivers with the sudden overwhelming urge to do just that, to shape himself to Bradley’s back and cradle his face the way he sometimes dreamed about back when it used to be Colin doing all the pleading.
His control wanes for a moment, just watching Bradley’s lovely mouth sputter curses and he almost loses it completely when Bradley’s teeth dent his bottom lip the same way Colin’s fingers are denting the hard flesh of his hip.
“Oh God, God yeah, come on, pleeease, fuck-”
Suddenly Colin wishes Bradley would stop begging, stop being so fucking vulnerable. There’s a line, goddamnit, a line right here, being crossed. Colin knows it, but he can’t see it anymore through blurred vision, can’t feel it with his unexpectedly unsteady, sweating hands.
It’s all wrong, Bradley being this strung out and near sobbing. It’s so not him that Colin’s really thrown for a moment, unable to reconcile the man he has at his fingers’ mercy and the one of five years ago, saying not this week, mate, I’ve got stuff going on, a bit busy, with a rounded edge to his voice which smacked of carefully constructed boredom.
So, instead of giving Bradley what he wants, instead of quieting those whimpers with a roar, he slows down even more, until his his arm feels like a steady piston, slick and glistening fingers massaging more than fucking. He grinds slowly and surely into Bradley’s body, making him moan like a whore, and isn’t that a switch? If not for the frantic thumping in his ears, Colin would think that his heart had stopped, arrested by the sight of Bradley completely at his mercy, with his own knuckles wedged between his bloody teeth and Colin’s fingers in his arse.
Jesus Christ. Anger bubbles like bile in his chest. He has to clamp down on it, shiver around it until it’s gone. Because how dare Bradley give himself over like this, now, when it’s too late? He could’ve had it all for years, before it got so stupidly complicated, and their lives became so misaligned. The unfairness, the flippant cruelty of it all sits on his chest like a stone. He’s looking at everything he ever wanted, and it’s years too late.
The darkest hour, Colin thinks and he almost laughs, stops himself before it bursts out of him like a molten core. There’s no dawn after this.
Colin closes his eyes, but he can still see, feel it in his blood, which beats itself to a froth in his veins, red hot with his own need to come. He’s aware of his hips undulating, moving ever so slightly in time with his arm, and he swallows dryly, careful not to let himself touch Bradley, especially not with his cock, because if he does, that will be it, tonight and all nights.
He needs to focus. If he can just stay like this, working Bradley over with his hands and his filthy mouth, he can still walk away in control.
“You like this, don’t you?” he says hoarsely into the darkness from under cover of his closed eyelids, perversely excited at Bradley’s--and his own--torture. He imagines himself rewarded with a broken moan rasped into a pillow, but when he opens his eyes it takes a moment to understand what he’s seeing.
Bradley is desperately trying to flatten himself to the bed, his big thighs spread so fucking wide that they must hurt, hips pulsing shallowly into the empty space over the sheets. There’s no friction, nothing he can get from this. Colin feels those desperate little ruts on his fingers, Bradley helplessly waiting to be pushed from the edge, working so hard with everything he has to keep still, to stop impaling himself deep and hard on those long, probing fingers, to let Colin play him until he’s good and ready to let him come.
This is easily the most insanely erotic thing Colin has ever seen, but Bradley’s face shocks him. A tear rolls from the corner of Bradley’s eye and over the bridge of his nose, understated and strangely innocent in the scene they’re setting. If Colin hadn’t looked right then, he might have missed it.
Colin startles, the sudden clarity like a slap to the face.
Bradley takes a deep, gasping breath, and it’s undeniable that the tremor which underpins it isn’t a coincidence. Colin is equally fascinated and horrified at how far he has gone in his quest to push Bradley to the brink of self-control. He realises that over the past few weeks, he’d been trying to infuriate Bradley into a state of rage, hoping to... what? Force Bradley to walk away from him again? To prove that he’s still an utter cunt, and that he hasn’t changed at all?
Colin shakes with the realisation that he’s been sabotaging this from the beginning, hoping for exactly that.
Beneath him, Bradley teeters on the edge, and the glint of moisture on his cheek is wetter, deeper, as deep as Colin’s shame. He’s openly crying while Colin’s fingers torment him, stroking him so deep, but so fucking slow as to drive him insane with need. He shields his face with his hand. From between his fingers, words spill out, all nonsense until Colin realises it’s his own name up there in lights, wearing a garland of please, and oh God, and come on, Colin, please, I--
I need.
And fucking hell, Bradley is paying for this, he’s paying for--why would he put up with--
Colin blanches.
Another tear slips from Bradley’s eye, silver like a dewdrop, and he can’t help it. Colin stops trying to maintain distance. “Shh,” he murmurs, working his fingers a bit harder, his free hand fondling between Bradley’s legs to help him off that ledge and into bliss.
“It’s all right,” he coos unthinkingly, “I’m here, love.” He leans over Bradley’s shaking back, kisses sweetly over the knots of his spine. He strokes his taut balls, then takes a firm grip on Bradley’s cock and jerks in time with his pumping fingers. He manipulates Bradley in a steady rhythm that’s hard and wet and filthy--designed to prolong pleasure, make it mind blowing, but not race to the finish. Bradley is helpless against his determined, unrelenting control, a passenger in his own body, no choice now but just to survive Colin’s single-mindedness.
Nonsensical, he gasps and pants into the bedding, shaking with exertion while Colin fucks him and fucks him with his fingers until there is nothing but the wet push and pull that begins with Bradley’s balls tightening and his insides melting, forcing its way through his skin and out into the universe in intense, pulsing waves--so transparent on Bradley’s face that Colin can almost feel it.
Bradley grunts, his entire body bowing, starting at his toes, the muscles in his backside contracting so violently Colin knows he’ll feel it for days, ending in his fingers scrambling for purchase on the mattress. Finally, finally Bradley releases, coming all over the hotel sheets and clenching so hard Colin’s fingers are ground together. It takes forever for him to stop shuddering violently. He slumps to the bed, hips still pulsing, helpless, exhausted and overwhelmed by the sensory overload.
Colin fights an urge to lie alongside him. He’s still so fit, so strong. All muscle. Colin can easily imagine taking advantage of this moment to fill his hands with Bradley’s warm skin, to sift fingers through his hair, to martyr himself on the altar of the past. Bradley makes it easy--his hand is tender on Colin’s wrist as he attempts to pull him down on the bed. As if he blames Colin for none of this.
His voice is wrecked, hoarse. “C’mere,” he mumbles, his eyes like coals, absorbing all the light like black holes. Colin can see himself falling in, and in, until there is nothing left. He almost goes, mesmerised by Bradley’s earnestness, his obvious need.
Then, he remembers.
He sees himself--a little younger, hair still Merlin-slick from filming that day--sleeping like the dead, wrapped around Bradley with his whole body, arms and legs, everything cradling Bradley’s solid heat. He remembers being flushed from love, sinking into that warm, boneless feeling which comes from being utterly and completely content. Well fucked. To open his eyes some time later to Bradley already dressed, creeping around, gathering his things, looking everywhere but at where Colin lies, wishing he could act his way out of the hurt.
The tightening of Bradley’s hand around his wrist brings Colin back to the now. That small pressure brings such comfort, makes him want to curl up into Bradley’s warmth until morning spills through the curtains, it makes him feel weak. Colin knows what the morning would bring, though. Knows he’d pretend to be asleep, playing out their little game, just like years ago. His heart would be lodged in his throat and somewhere out of sight, he’d be clutching his dignity with bone white fingers while Bradley slipped out of the room like this had never happened. Like it meant nothing. Because to Bradley, it wouldn’t.
Before he can check himself, he says exactly what he’s been thinking.
“Why are we doing this?”
The words are like a bucket of cold water dumped over them both.
(Bradley - Friday, June 5th, 2015)
Bradley’s mind is blank while he tries to dissect Colin’s words and rearrange them into something that makes sense. Still high and warmly aglow, he reaches for Colin’s cheek, wants to pull him down until they’re both tangled up in each other. He wants to fit his mouth around Colin’s cock, still hard and glistening in the low light. But Colin dances away from his grasp, slipping through the lag where Bradley’s still mellow and hasn’t yet caught on there’s something really wrong.
“What?” he finally asks. “What do you mean, why?”
“Don’t be dense,” Colin bites out, and to Bradley’s horror he’s off the bed and into the bathroom, leaving behind an awful sense of dread, like there’s something really important that Bradley’s missing. Like he has horribly misjudged the whole situation. Fluorescent light flickers into life from the bathroom and white strips of it paint the room with starkness.
Slowly, Bradley sits up on the bed and watches the bathroom doorway, on guard now and very carefully blanking his face.
“Rather thought it was because we enjoyed it,” he says evenly, dancing around the truth like a feigning boxer.
A groan echoes off the bathroom walls. “Really? That’s what you’re going with? You enjoy being treated like this.” When Colin emerges, his eyes are hard. Distant.
He’s almost dressed again before Bradley can think of anything to say. Suddenly he senses this situation freefalling, an injured bird spinning out of control where neither of them can reach it.
“Col, come on. You know what I mean, we’re--We’re like nothing else. Don’t you feel it?”
Desperate, he unfolds himself from the sheets and reaches for Colin’s hand, only to have it wrenched from his grasp. Naked and awkward, he just stands there, not knowing what to do, while Colin gathers his things and shrugs on his jacket, jerky and cold and so, so untouchable.
“It’s fucked. This is fucked,” Colin grinds out from between his teeth. ”I don’t know what you want from me--”
“Nothing! I don’t want anything from you, I just.” Bradley throws up his hands, like he’ll find the right words hanging in the air around him. I could love you. If you let me. “It’s not the same as before.”
He’d know Colin Morgan’s laugh anywhere, always will. But this harshness, this tar-black scorn that’s bubbling out of Colin’s mouth sounds like it’s coming from a stranger.
“What are you even saying? Of course it’s not the same, I’m not--” Colin huffs with a panicked incredulity, like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. It stops Bradley’s heart. “I can’t go back. I won’t.” Colin bites out, sudden and sharp in the nighttime quiet of the hotel, the Irish lilt soaking anger through his words.
Bradley swallows dryly, hearing his throat click. Desperate to find the right words, the ones that will get through to Colin, he grasps at all the straws he can reach. “Not go back, Col, I don’t want to go back. Let’s just. This could work.”
Colin hesitates just long enough for Bradley to step in close, almost close enough to lean in, to touch, but he doesn’t dare spook him. He feels his nakedness keenly, standing so raw and exposed in front of Colin, who, ironically, wears his clothes like armour. Softly, he tries again. “This is--this is important.”
“Must be joking,” Colin says, shaking his head, taking a step toward the door. On instinct, Bradley follows, unwilling to accept defeat. “This is like fucking torture, that’s what this is.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that, Colin, if you just let me--”
“No, it doesn’t have to be like anything at all. This is it, I’m done. We’re done.”
“Don’t go, we need to talk about this.”
“We really, really don’t.”
Bradley steps in close, traps Colin against the door, boxes him in with his elbows as he leans his temple against Colin’s. “Please,” Bradley whispers. “Colin, please.” For a second he thinks he feels Colin go boneless against him, feels Colin’s cheek press marginally against his, a breath from his mouth warm against Bradley’s neck.
“Don’t,” Colin says when Bradley turns into him further, pressing his nose against Colin’s cheekbone. He’s watching Colin’s mouth move, is drawn to it like it’s a gravitational force. If he can just kiss Colin, then he'll have to feel it. Feel what Bradley feels. The word only registers when Colin’s hands press against his chest. Bradley senses the change; like someone poured adamantium in his bones, Colin steels himself. His shoulders straighten and his voice is emotionless when he repeats, “Don’t.”
“We can fix this,” Bradley says and he believes it. Believes he can tap into what they once were if he could only steal a kiss and take Colin’s heart.
“No we can’t, Bradley. We blew this years ago. Just let me go.” It’s generous, the we. It’s not like they don’t both know who exactly ruined it. Is ruining it again.
“I can’t just forget about you, Colin. I couldn’t the first time. It’s like, you marked me. And no one else fits.”
“Scars are marks too,” Colin says. For a blink of an eye, the look on his face is pure agony.
Bradley blanches, his head spinning with vertigo like he’s looking over a cliff. “Look, can we just calm down and-”
It’s exactly the wrong thing to say.
Colin throws up his hands, edges out of the loose cage of Bradley’s arms. “God, can we not? I’m not hanging around for you to tell me how it’s gonna be, all right? You don’t owe me any explanations or whatever, we’re not dating, so just. Find someone else to scratch your itch so we don’t have to dig up all the skeletons.”
Colin opens the door and glances back, his eyes sliding over bed and window and floor like he’s seeing them for the first time.
“No hard feelings. Just. Take care of yourself.”
And with that, he’s gone, taking all the air in the room with him.
(Bradley, Monday, June 8th, 2015)
“I’m sorry Mr Smith, Connor has moved on from our agency. I would be happy to recommend someone else, we have--”
The woman is still speaking but Bradley’s not hearing it. Moved on. Colin has moved on. He closes his eyes tight and clamps down on the panicky giggle threatening to force its way out, thinking, Well, I suppose it is his turn to do that.
“Can I have his number?” he interrupts, his mouth faster than his brain. The moment the words are out, he wishes he could snatch them out of the air, and hears the confirmation of his rookie mistake in the woman’s frosty tone.
“I’m afraid that information is not something I can share with you, sir.”
Of course not.
“When did this happen?” Has he missed Colin by hours? Minutes?
The woman sighs, perhaps sensing his desperation. “Connor hasn’t been with the agency since the middle of May.”
Wait. What?
“But that’s not right, I just saw him on Friday night--”
“He requested we pass on the message if you should call, but whether or not he accepted the appointment was purely at his discretion, sir.”
Bradley’s brain attempts to compute the meaning behind Colin seeing him in June. When he finished up in May.
Suddenly, Colin leaving the money behind makes sense. Before he crawled into the minibar, Bradley thought Colin had forgotten the money following their argument. Hours later, after he’d gotten royally shitfaced, Bradley thought nothing about him was good enough, not even his money.
Now he just feels sick.
Doesn’t mean anything, maybe he’s just working for someone else now. Doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean--
Somehow finding his manners, he absently thanks the woman before hanging up and googling the agency on his phone. The mountain is coming to Mohammed.
Not an hour later, he’s in the street outside Summer Escorts, his brain still snagging on all the unanswered questions.
The building looks nothing like Bradley expected. It’s just a normal house, on a normal estate.
There are no red curtains behind the windows, bleeding insinuations like a badly kept secret. No signs, no name. There are just a few steps and a white door that opens without a sound against Bradley’s push. What used to be a living room, he thinks, has been turned into a reception with several doors leading away from it. It’s a little sterile, and when he walks in a woman lifts her head and gives him a bland smile.
“Can I help you?” she asks. There may be a hint of recognition in her eyes, but it’s gone so fast, Bradley can’t be sure. She’s one hundred and ten percent professional.
He walks up to her desk, all the ruses and lies he had rehearsed falling unspoken from his mouth with a heavy sigh. He bends his head in defeat. He’s tired. So very, very tired. “I’m Mr Smith,” he says and it doesn’t take more than three seconds for her jaw to stiffen, for her hands to fold in her lap, for her back to straighten.
“You,” is all she says, her voice quiet but no less cold than it had become on the phone. “No wonder.”
“I need to see him.”
And just like that, she is all business. She looks back at her computer screen, face a mask of careful indifference. “Our employees have the right to refuse seeing a client and whether they’re currently employed here or not, their personal information is protected and will not be handed out. It says so in the contract you signed, Mr Smith.”
Employee. The word had brought with it images Bradley had never even thought to conjure up. Colin being fucked by random stranger after random stranger. Colin enjoying it. Colin kissing them, but refusing to kiss Bradley.
“I know,” he rasps, “I know that.” He breathes hard through his nose, trying to calm down. To think. “Can’t you just. Can’t you pass on a message? Like on Friday?”
For the first time, Bradley registers a drop in her efficient demeanour. She sighs, giving him a look of such compassion, he must look totally pathetic. It’s telling of his state of mind that he absolutely doesn’t give a shit. Softly, she says, “He kindly requested I don't contact him again when I talked to him on Saturday. I couldn’t call him even if wanted to help you, sir.”
Bradley feels dizzy, badly enough for him to sway, badly enough for the woman to rise to her feet and reach for him. His hand shoots out before she can touch him and he waves away her gesture.
“Do you need to sit down?” she asks. There is concern in her voice now, even though she tries very hard to hide it.
“No,” Bradley manages to choke out. He turns to the door, doesn’t know how he manages it, but next thing he knows, he’s outside. A soft drizzle has begun to fall and Bradley lifts his face toward it, gulping cool air.
With a crushing sense of helplessness, Bradley realises that this is it. The end of the trail. He can’t reach Colin, who clearly doesn’t want to be found. They have no friends in common anymore, nobody left to buffer the intensity between them. Bradley has spoken to Katie and to Eoin on a couple of occasions over the years and he knows they’re not in touch with Colin. It’s not so unusual--Bradley is hardly one to keep contact with any of his past colleagues. Although it does seem now Colin had been the most effective of all of them at cutting ties, leaving Merlin behind so completely that for a very short time Bradley’s conscience had been eased by Colin’s complete self-removal.
Now he aches with that same absence.
He walks and walks, and his thoughts clamber over each other like mad, frantic things. Did any of it mean anything? He’s sidelined by the tempting glint of new information from the woman at Summer Escorts, but doesn’t have the tools or the strength to decipher it. He can’t stop thinking about the time discrepancy, can’t kill the wild, stupid hope knocking around inside his ribcage.
When he finally makes it back to his flat, the weather has turned well and truly feral, the kind of wild summer storm which makes everything slick with rain within moments. Bradley scruffs his hair into errant spikes with a towel and sits down to think.
Startled by thunder, he wakes hours later, cold and stiff-necked on the couch. Watching lightning split the evening sky, he feels empty, scooped hollow somehow. He wonders if somewhere across the city, Colin’s watching the same spectacular sky or if he’s too busy to pay it any mind.
The reflection in the bathroom mirror looks too much like his own personal ghost. Bradley snorts, swipes a wet line through the condensation. It only brings out the purpled skin beneath his eyes more. He’d like to think his younger self would laugh at the state of him. He worries it’d be more like pity, if they met.
Colin’s right. It can’t go on like this. He’s done too.
“I’m taking some time off,” Bradley tells Agent Orange’s voicemail. “Leave me a message if something comes up, but I probably won’t be in touch for a while.”
She’s gonna murder him in his sleep when he gets back. Right now that doesn’t seem like a bad prospect.
Forward to Part 4/4 >
(Bradley - Friday, June 5th, 2015)
The room is so stale, Bradley’s nose burns with it. The air in it recycled through hundreds of lungs, millions of times. For a horrible moment it really feels as though he’s breathing in other people’s germs. He vaguely wonders if this is what breakdowns are made of.
At some point, his leg has begun to bounce under the table, and he’s holding a swag of script which doesn’t even look like it’s written in English, all the words alien and hard.
“Bradley? Bradley.”
“Hm?”
“It’s your line.”
“Mine? Oh. So sorry, I, um.” Beside him, Tonia discreetly points at his script. He blinks at it. “Seven to base. I have a full house. Your bid,” he says and winces inwardly at the silence in the room.
“All right, everyone,” a voice blares through a microphone, “take five. Read-through will re-commence at four fifteen.”
Bradley rushes through the first available door with an exit sign, ignoring soft voices calling his name. He pinches the bridge of his nose as he slumps against a wet wall, barely noticing the fine drizzle slowly but steadily soaking him through.
He’s fucked. He’s completely fucked.
Becoming an actor was the hardest choice he’d ever made. He isn’t like Colin, who dons other lives like second skin, who takes on acting as if it’s instinct. Bradley had made a gut-wrenching choice, and has given it his everything.
When his agent in those early days told him it was best if he didn’t come out as gay until his career was on firmer ground, Bradley had listened. It would focus attention on the wrong aspect of his life, she’d said and god, if he could only go back to his younger self and shake some sense into him.
Life’s a bitch, though. It hands you a pair of legs and steals your voice, so of course he’d laid eyes on Colin -- weird and unintelligible, funny and sharp Colin -- and had known he was in trouble.
Fuck. Colin had been so sweet in the beginning. So good. Like an orbiting moon, he’d go bright and happy when he was gravitating toward Bradley. People began to notice. (Are you sure there’s nothing going on, Bradley? He looks at you like you’re the chocolate on his strawberry. -- Nothing’s going on, Angel, get your mind out of the gutter. -- How do you think it got there, Bradley? She’d walked off laughing. He’d felt sick with relief.)
For months and months Bradley kept a suffocating hold on his ever deeper rooting feelings, until that one pivotal moment. He lost all sense of himself because suddenly there they were in an isolated little clearing, free of everyone except each other. It had happened in slow motion, with that perfect, stomach-dropping, heart-stampeding feeling first crushes are made of. The way Colin had looked at him scrambled his brain. Before he’d kissed him, Bradley remembers thinking, I don’t deserve you.
Turns out he really didn’t. In a last, desperate attempt to keep control of his life, he’d tried to control Colin instead. Every step of the way, he had lost himself more and more. It had turned bitter and hard. It had turned into secret hook-ups and desperately short hours together where he’d tried to show Colin what he couldn’t tell him out loud.
Of course it hadn’t worked. All Colin had wanted was the Bradley he knew. Instead he got an increasingly cold shoulder in public, and in private, the occasional desperate blow job in an out-of-the-way props room at Pierrefonds, or a silent fuck with a hand over his mouth in a hotel room with walls too thin.
The BBC had suggested another road trip, to Tintagel this time, because the fans liked the first one so much. (They really like the chemistry between you guys, it’s a good sign. -- No. We shouldn’t encourage them to think we’re more than colleagues.) It was at this point, Bradley thinks, that Colin’s kisses became hard, punishing. The moment Colin turned, like the dark side of the moon. When the rumours started in earnest, things had really gone sour.
Finally starting to feel the rain soak through his shirt, Bradley thunks his head on the wall behind him. It all feels like it happened centuries ago. He sniffs, remembering how it had all seemed so dramatic back then. How career-ending, should it ever get out that their affection wasn’t faked or acted. Disgusted, he remembers how they’d both turned into cartoon versions of themselves around each other. Remembers the way Colin looked sometimes, how alone he’d seemed, petting his horse between takes. Wonders if he looked the same way himself, standing in the sun with that bloody chain mail on, waiting for take, after take, after take of Arthur’s epic romance with Guinevere to be filmed.
How it all adds up and comes to this, this weird reunion they’re having, Bradley really doesn’t know. His cheeks burn with equal parts shame and bone-melting desire when he thinks about it all. How they’d thrown themselves at each other like shots from a sling that first night. As if the mantle Colin had taken on allowed them to shove everything else aside so they could just fuck like crazy. God, it sends shivers up Bradley’s spine thinking that just a couple of weeks ago they’d kissed and kissed like lovers. Like the years between their first touch in the meadow and their final goodbye that was barely a cursory handshake after Merlin’s last press junket, never happened.
The shock of seeing Colin within arm’s reach literally took his reason away. He was completely sidelined by feeling the same intense, incendiary heat they’d always shared, that incredible feeling of wanting everything, of never enough. Of a connection Bradley’d never had with anyone else, like they were sharing a brain, like their hands and mouths knew exactly where to go.
Bradley realises he should have arrested the flutter before it became the hurricane now raging through his life, destroying all he’d ever worked for. He should’ve clamped down on the impulse he’d kept under control for so long. He should never have kissed Colin again.
When he woke up, sore and satisfied, he’d been alone. Confusion quickly made room for a cold trickle of doubt, turning into a gush of embarrassed dismissal that made his cheeks burn. Colin had left him there, after--he can’t even name it. Bradley can’t believe how hard and fast he’d fallen again into the groove of wanting, of needing Colin to love him, to need him back.
He purposely knocks his head against the brick wall, letting his eyes fill with rain, realising that though they’re right back at fucking and not communicating, it’s Colin driving now. Bradley might be the one making the phone call, but he’s under no illusion that he’s in control here. He’s quite stunned with the way Colin owns himself, with the way he takes charge. He’s a different man from the one who’d agreed to all manner of hurtful indignity so they could keep their affair in the dark where Bradley had wanted it. He’d taken it for granted back then, that Colin would be willing to be swept under a rug indefinitely, hidden away like a bad habit. But not anymore.
Bradley knows better now, understands what’s at stake. Feels how good they could be. Feels it in his fucking bones.
He always thought falling in love would end with a soft landing. Instead it feels like bouncing off a cliff face, scraped raw long after the headlong rush is over.
And bloody hell, there’s that word he never wanted to acknowledge, but it just keeps eating away at him like heartburn. It makes room for itself inside him, curled tightly around Colin’s sleeping face and the dimple when he smiles, even the way he looks up all impish and intent, sometimes. A little slice of evil peeking through. Yes, fuck it all, Bradley knows the name of it, thinks it on purpose just to test it out. Falling in love.
That’s what it felt like when Colin appeared at the hotel door, so completely, wonderfully unexpected. Bradley’s insides clench hotly, just remembering.
The second time, just over a week ago -- Bradley can’t stop thinking about it, trying to understand it, to analyse it. It’s messing him up, consuming him from the inside out.
He’s reading for the role of his life and all he can think of is quietly determined Colin, untouchable, sitting half hidden in darkness wearing that sexy suit and taking Bradley apart with nothing but the sound of his voice and a memory.
Bradley knows he shouldn’t call the agency again and ask for Connor, but some deep, dark part of him feels like he is doing penance. That this is what he deserves, although if he’s honest with himself, he knows that’s not it. He never got Colin out of his system and if this is the only way he might still have him, he’ll take it.
Scruffing his hands through his dampened hair, Bradley feels a stillness inside. A warning calm before the storm. He breathes, grasping at the notion expanding inside. When it comes, it’s like a revelation.
Fuck it, he is taking it, that one chance.
The moment this thought -- this decision -- is formed, all the weight of guilt and doubt just falls away from his shoulders.
Clutching his phone, he sails dreamlike through the call, only vaguely aware of a pause in the now familiar woman’s voice. Doesn’t think to question it when she asks if there isn’t someone else who might--
“No, only him.” Only ever him.
He pushes away from the wall and straightens, turning his face up into the rain, licking the fat drops from his lips.
It’s a relief to give in.
(Colin - Friday, June 5th, 2015)
Moonlight throws strips of sparse light over the bed, painting Bradley’s back silver. With his rump in the air and his face in the crisp hotel pillow, he’s like a photograph, a trembling monochrome.
Colin forgets where he is for a moment, busy just wrapping his head around this, around what they’re doing, what he’s doing to Bradley. He’d had his weak moments over the years, some stupid daydreams about running into him, punching him in the face, kissing his mouth like the world was ending, but he’d never imagined this. He’d never dreamed of having Bradley so tightly wound that he’s begging, begging, for Colin to let him, to just please, God please harder, pleeease-
No. He’d never ever dreamed of this.
Colin looks at Bradley’s violently bowed back and hands fisted into sheets with a strange sense of detachment, the unreality of this finally giving way to the startling mechanics. With one hand splayed across the small of Bradley’s back to keep him in place, he slowly, methodically fucks him with his fingers, making Bradley keen like he’s in agony.
Yes, he thinks with a maliciousness so alien it stings his eyes, now you know. Now you know what it’s like to be held at arm’s length. Now you know what it’s like to be denied.
He’s appalled with himself to have forgotten everything he’s learnt from offering sex as a service.
Colin relishes this control, holding the reins of how their sex unfolds. He vividly remembers being at the mercy of Bradley’s maybe tomorrow, and I’ll call you, and don’t know what you want from me, Colin. Well, he certainly knows what Bradley wants from him now, begging as he is, and arching like a cat in heat. Having the power tonight is making Colin feel unbreakable, for all that he hasn’t felt whole in what feels like years.
Bradley keeps trying to fuck back onto the torturously slow rhythm, but Colin won’t let him--ebbing against every thrust Bradley tries to force, simply letting his arm go limp. He’s been at it for what feels like hours and he thinks Bradley’s about to snap, but he’s got to give the man points for learning. He’s quickly realised that it’s Colin’s way or no fucking way at all, so he’s all locked knees and gritted teeth, just lying on his face while Colin fucks him like this, three long fingers stroking inside him with dextrous deliberation.
Bradley’s swearing now, and he never swears, never, Colin remembers. It sends a hot zap through Colin’s gut to hear him chant like this into the pillow, but the desperate litany of please Colin, please fucking just. Please, fuck, God, yeah, oh, just fuck me, fuck me isn’t going to make Colin give Bradley what he wants, though his cock couldn’t be harder, the ardent heat of it searing against his stomach.
Bradley’s trembling all over, trying to hold still, and Colin allows his splayed hand to lightly caress the pale, moonlit skin of his back. He touches Bradley with soft strokes, fingers gentle over his waist, his hip, his thigh. Bradley groans, and covers his face with a fistful of sheets, only his openly panting mouth visible. Colin has always loved that mouth, had designs on it, missed it. God, how he misses it, still.
“Kiss me,” Bradley whispers, “Please,” and Colin’s whole body shivers with the sudden overwhelming urge to do just that, to shape himself to Bradley’s back and cradle his face the way he sometimes dreamed about back when it used to be Colin doing all the pleading.
His control wanes for a moment, just watching Bradley’s lovely mouth sputter curses and he almost loses it completely when Bradley’s teeth dent his bottom lip the same way Colin’s fingers are denting the hard flesh of his hip.
“Oh God, God yeah, come on, pleeease, fuck-”
Suddenly Colin wishes Bradley would stop begging, stop being so fucking vulnerable. There’s a line, goddamnit, a line right here, being crossed. Colin knows it, but he can’t see it anymore through blurred vision, can’t feel it with his unexpectedly unsteady, sweating hands.
It’s all wrong, Bradley being this strung out and near sobbing. It’s so not him that Colin’s really thrown for a moment, unable to reconcile the man he has at his fingers’ mercy and the one of five years ago, saying not this week, mate, I’ve got stuff going on, a bit busy, with a rounded edge to his voice which smacked of carefully constructed boredom.
So, instead of giving Bradley what he wants, instead of quieting those whimpers with a roar, he slows down even more, until his his arm feels like a steady piston, slick and glistening fingers massaging more than fucking. He grinds slowly and surely into Bradley’s body, making him moan like a whore, and isn’t that a switch? If not for the frantic thumping in his ears, Colin would think that his heart had stopped, arrested by the sight of Bradley completely at his mercy, with his own knuckles wedged between his bloody teeth and Colin’s fingers in his arse.
Jesus Christ. Anger bubbles like bile in his chest. He has to clamp down on it, shiver around it until it’s gone. Because how dare Bradley give himself over like this, now, when it’s too late? He could’ve had it all for years, before it got so stupidly complicated, and their lives became so misaligned. The unfairness, the flippant cruelty of it all sits on his chest like a stone. He’s looking at everything he ever wanted, and it’s years too late.
The darkest hour, Colin thinks and he almost laughs, stops himself before it bursts out of him like a molten core. There’s no dawn after this.
Colin closes his eyes, but he can still see, feel it in his blood, which beats itself to a froth in his veins, red hot with his own need to come. He’s aware of his hips undulating, moving ever so slightly in time with his arm, and he swallows dryly, careful not to let himself touch Bradley, especially not with his cock, because if he does, that will be it, tonight and all nights.
He needs to focus. If he can just stay like this, working Bradley over with his hands and his filthy mouth, he can still walk away in control.
“You like this, don’t you?” he says hoarsely into the darkness from under cover of his closed eyelids, perversely excited at Bradley’s--and his own--torture. He imagines himself rewarded with a broken moan rasped into a pillow, but when he opens his eyes it takes a moment to understand what he’s seeing.
Bradley is desperately trying to flatten himself to the bed, his big thighs spread so fucking wide that they must hurt, hips pulsing shallowly into the empty space over the sheets. There’s no friction, nothing he can get from this. Colin feels those desperate little ruts on his fingers, Bradley helplessly waiting to be pushed from the edge, working so hard with everything he has to keep still, to stop impaling himself deep and hard on those long, probing fingers, to let Colin play him until he’s good and ready to let him come.
This is easily the most insanely erotic thing Colin has ever seen, but Bradley’s face shocks him. A tear rolls from the corner of Bradley’s eye and over the bridge of his nose, understated and strangely innocent in the scene they’re setting. If Colin hadn’t looked right then, he might have missed it.
Colin startles, the sudden clarity like a slap to the face.
Bradley takes a deep, gasping breath, and it’s undeniable that the tremor which underpins it isn’t a coincidence. Colin is equally fascinated and horrified at how far he has gone in his quest to push Bradley to the brink of self-control. He realises that over the past few weeks, he’d been trying to infuriate Bradley into a state of rage, hoping to... what? Force Bradley to walk away from him again? To prove that he’s still an utter cunt, and that he hasn’t changed at all?
Colin shakes with the realisation that he’s been sabotaging this from the beginning, hoping for exactly that.
Beneath him, Bradley teeters on the edge, and the glint of moisture on his cheek is wetter, deeper, as deep as Colin’s shame. He’s openly crying while Colin’s fingers torment him, stroking him so deep, but so fucking slow as to drive him insane with need. He shields his face with his hand. From between his fingers, words spill out, all nonsense until Colin realises it’s his own name up there in lights, wearing a garland of please, and oh God, and come on, Colin, please, I--
I need.
And fucking hell, Bradley is paying for this, he’s paying for--why would he put up with--
Colin blanches.
Another tear slips from Bradley’s eye, silver like a dewdrop, and he can’t help it. Colin stops trying to maintain distance. “Shh,” he murmurs, working his fingers a bit harder, his free hand fondling between Bradley’s legs to help him off that ledge and into bliss.
“It’s all right,” he coos unthinkingly, “I’m here, love.” He leans over Bradley’s shaking back, kisses sweetly over the knots of his spine. He strokes his taut balls, then takes a firm grip on Bradley’s cock and jerks in time with his pumping fingers. He manipulates Bradley in a steady rhythm that’s hard and wet and filthy--designed to prolong pleasure, make it mind blowing, but not race to the finish. Bradley is helpless against his determined, unrelenting control, a passenger in his own body, no choice now but just to survive Colin’s single-mindedness.
Nonsensical, he gasps and pants into the bedding, shaking with exertion while Colin fucks him and fucks him with his fingers until there is nothing but the wet push and pull that begins with Bradley’s balls tightening and his insides melting, forcing its way through his skin and out into the universe in intense, pulsing waves--so transparent on Bradley’s face that Colin can almost feel it.
Bradley grunts, his entire body bowing, starting at his toes, the muscles in his backside contracting so violently Colin knows he’ll feel it for days, ending in his fingers scrambling for purchase on the mattress. Finally, finally Bradley releases, coming all over the hotel sheets and clenching so hard Colin’s fingers are ground together. It takes forever for him to stop shuddering violently. He slumps to the bed, hips still pulsing, helpless, exhausted and overwhelmed by the sensory overload.
Colin fights an urge to lie alongside him. He’s still so fit, so strong. All muscle. Colin can easily imagine taking advantage of this moment to fill his hands with Bradley’s warm skin, to sift fingers through his hair, to martyr himself on the altar of the past. Bradley makes it easy--his hand is tender on Colin’s wrist as he attempts to pull him down on the bed. As if he blames Colin for none of this.
His voice is wrecked, hoarse. “C’mere,” he mumbles, his eyes like coals, absorbing all the light like black holes. Colin can see himself falling in, and in, until there is nothing left. He almost goes, mesmerised by Bradley’s earnestness, his obvious need.
Then, he remembers.
He sees himself--a little younger, hair still Merlin-slick from filming that day--sleeping like the dead, wrapped around Bradley with his whole body, arms and legs, everything cradling Bradley’s solid heat. He remembers being flushed from love, sinking into that warm, boneless feeling which comes from being utterly and completely content. Well fucked. To open his eyes some time later to Bradley already dressed, creeping around, gathering his things, looking everywhere but at where Colin lies, wishing he could act his way out of the hurt.
The tightening of Bradley’s hand around his wrist brings Colin back to the now. That small pressure brings such comfort, makes him want to curl up into Bradley’s warmth until morning spills through the curtains, it makes him feel weak. Colin knows what the morning would bring, though. Knows he’d pretend to be asleep, playing out their little game, just like years ago. His heart would be lodged in his throat and somewhere out of sight, he’d be clutching his dignity with bone white fingers while Bradley slipped out of the room like this had never happened. Like it meant nothing. Because to Bradley, it wouldn’t.
Before he can check himself, he says exactly what he’s been thinking.
“Why are we doing this?”
The words are like a bucket of cold water dumped over them both.
(Bradley - Friday, June 5th, 2015)
Bradley’s mind is blank while he tries to dissect Colin’s words and rearrange them into something that makes sense. Still high and warmly aglow, he reaches for Colin’s cheek, wants to pull him down until they’re both tangled up in each other. He wants to fit his mouth around Colin’s cock, still hard and glistening in the low light. But Colin dances away from his grasp, slipping through the lag where Bradley’s still mellow and hasn’t yet caught on there’s something really wrong.
“What?” he finally asks. “What do you mean, why?”
“Don’t be dense,” Colin bites out, and to Bradley’s horror he’s off the bed and into the bathroom, leaving behind an awful sense of dread, like there’s something really important that Bradley’s missing. Like he has horribly misjudged the whole situation. Fluorescent light flickers into life from the bathroom and white strips of it paint the room with starkness.
Slowly, Bradley sits up on the bed and watches the bathroom doorway, on guard now and very carefully blanking his face.
“Rather thought it was because we enjoyed it,” he says evenly, dancing around the truth like a feigning boxer.
A groan echoes off the bathroom walls. “Really? That’s what you’re going with? You enjoy being treated like this.” When Colin emerges, his eyes are hard. Distant.
He’s almost dressed again before Bradley can think of anything to say. Suddenly he senses this situation freefalling, an injured bird spinning out of control where neither of them can reach it.
“Col, come on. You know what I mean, we’re--We’re like nothing else. Don’t you feel it?”
Desperate, he unfolds himself from the sheets and reaches for Colin’s hand, only to have it wrenched from his grasp. Naked and awkward, he just stands there, not knowing what to do, while Colin gathers his things and shrugs on his jacket, jerky and cold and so, so untouchable.
“It’s fucked. This is fucked,” Colin grinds out from between his teeth. ”I don’t know what you want from me--”
“Nothing! I don’t want anything from you, I just.” Bradley throws up his hands, like he’ll find the right words hanging in the air around him. I could love you. If you let me. “It’s not the same as before.”
He’d know Colin Morgan’s laugh anywhere, always will. But this harshness, this tar-black scorn that’s bubbling out of Colin’s mouth sounds like it’s coming from a stranger.
“What are you even saying? Of course it’s not the same, I’m not--” Colin huffs with a panicked incredulity, like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. It stops Bradley’s heart. “I can’t go back. I won’t.” Colin bites out, sudden and sharp in the nighttime quiet of the hotel, the Irish lilt soaking anger through his words.
Bradley swallows dryly, hearing his throat click. Desperate to find the right words, the ones that will get through to Colin, he grasps at all the straws he can reach. “Not go back, Col, I don’t want to go back. Let’s just. This could work.”
Colin hesitates just long enough for Bradley to step in close, almost close enough to lean in, to touch, but he doesn’t dare spook him. He feels his nakedness keenly, standing so raw and exposed in front of Colin, who, ironically, wears his clothes like armour. Softly, he tries again. “This is--this is important.”
“Must be joking,” Colin says, shaking his head, taking a step toward the door. On instinct, Bradley follows, unwilling to accept defeat. “This is like fucking torture, that’s what this is.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that, Colin, if you just let me--”
“No, it doesn’t have to be like anything at all. This is it, I’m done. We’re done.”
“Don’t go, we need to talk about this.”
“We really, really don’t.”
Bradley steps in close, traps Colin against the door, boxes him in with his elbows as he leans his temple against Colin’s. “Please,” Bradley whispers. “Colin, please.” For a second he thinks he feels Colin go boneless against him, feels Colin’s cheek press marginally against his, a breath from his mouth warm against Bradley’s neck.
“Don’t,” Colin says when Bradley turns into him further, pressing his nose against Colin’s cheekbone. He’s watching Colin’s mouth move, is drawn to it like it’s a gravitational force. If he can just kiss Colin, then he'll have to feel it. Feel what Bradley feels. The word only registers when Colin’s hands press against his chest. Bradley senses the change; like someone poured adamantium in his bones, Colin steels himself. His shoulders straighten and his voice is emotionless when he repeats, “Don’t.”
“We can fix this,” Bradley says and he believes it. Believes he can tap into what they once were if he could only steal a kiss and take Colin’s heart.
“No we can’t, Bradley. We blew this years ago. Just let me go.” It’s generous, the we. It’s not like they don’t both know who exactly ruined it. Is ruining it again.
“I can’t just forget about you, Colin. I couldn’t the first time. It’s like, you marked me. And no one else fits.”
“Scars are marks too,” Colin says. For a blink of an eye, the look on his face is pure agony.
Bradley blanches, his head spinning with vertigo like he’s looking over a cliff. “Look, can we just calm down and-”
It’s exactly the wrong thing to say.
Colin throws up his hands, edges out of the loose cage of Bradley’s arms. “God, can we not? I’m not hanging around for you to tell me how it’s gonna be, all right? You don’t owe me any explanations or whatever, we’re not dating, so just. Find someone else to scratch your itch so we don’t have to dig up all the skeletons.”
Colin opens the door and glances back, his eyes sliding over bed and window and floor like he’s seeing them for the first time.
“No hard feelings. Just. Take care of yourself.”
And with that, he’s gone, taking all the air in the room with him.
(Bradley, Monday, June 8th, 2015)
“I’m sorry Mr Smith, Connor has moved on from our agency. I would be happy to recommend someone else, we have--”
The woman is still speaking but Bradley’s not hearing it. Moved on. Colin has moved on. He closes his eyes tight and clamps down on the panicky giggle threatening to force its way out, thinking, Well, I suppose it is his turn to do that.
“Can I have his number?” he interrupts, his mouth faster than his brain. The moment the words are out, he wishes he could snatch them out of the air, and hears the confirmation of his rookie mistake in the woman’s frosty tone.
“I’m afraid that information is not something I can share with you, sir.”
Of course not.
“When did this happen?” Has he missed Colin by hours? Minutes?
The woman sighs, perhaps sensing his desperation. “Connor hasn’t been with the agency since the middle of May.”
Wait. What?
“But that’s not right, I just saw him on Friday night--”
“He requested we pass on the message if you should call, but whether or not he accepted the appointment was purely at his discretion, sir.”
Bradley’s brain attempts to compute the meaning behind Colin seeing him in June. When he finished up in May.
Suddenly, Colin leaving the money behind makes sense. Before he crawled into the minibar, Bradley thought Colin had forgotten the money following their argument. Hours later, after he’d gotten royally shitfaced, Bradley thought nothing about him was good enough, not even his money.
Now he just feels sick.
Doesn’t mean anything, maybe he’s just working for someone else now. Doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean--
Somehow finding his manners, he absently thanks the woman before hanging up and googling the agency on his phone. The mountain is coming to Mohammed.
Not an hour later, he’s in the street outside Summer Escorts, his brain still snagging on all the unanswered questions.
The building looks nothing like Bradley expected. It’s just a normal house, on a normal estate.
There are no red curtains behind the windows, bleeding insinuations like a badly kept secret. No signs, no name. There are just a few steps and a white door that opens without a sound against Bradley’s push. What used to be a living room, he thinks, has been turned into a reception with several doors leading away from it. It’s a little sterile, and when he walks in a woman lifts her head and gives him a bland smile.
“Can I help you?” she asks. There may be a hint of recognition in her eyes, but it’s gone so fast, Bradley can’t be sure. She’s one hundred and ten percent professional.
He walks up to her desk, all the ruses and lies he had rehearsed falling unspoken from his mouth with a heavy sigh. He bends his head in defeat. He’s tired. So very, very tired. “I’m Mr Smith,” he says and it doesn’t take more than three seconds for her jaw to stiffen, for her hands to fold in her lap, for her back to straighten.
“You,” is all she says, her voice quiet but no less cold than it had become on the phone. “No wonder.”
“I need to see him.”
And just like that, she is all business. She looks back at her computer screen, face a mask of careful indifference. “Our employees have the right to refuse seeing a client and whether they’re currently employed here or not, their personal information is protected and will not be handed out. It says so in the contract you signed, Mr Smith.”
Employee. The word had brought with it images Bradley had never even thought to conjure up. Colin being fucked by random stranger after random stranger. Colin enjoying it. Colin kissing them, but refusing to kiss Bradley.
“I know,” he rasps, “I know that.” He breathes hard through his nose, trying to calm down. To think. “Can’t you just. Can’t you pass on a message? Like on Friday?”
For the first time, Bradley registers a drop in her efficient demeanour. She sighs, giving him a look of such compassion, he must look totally pathetic. It’s telling of his state of mind that he absolutely doesn’t give a shit. Softly, she says, “He kindly requested I don't contact him again when I talked to him on Saturday. I couldn’t call him even if wanted to help you, sir.”
Bradley feels dizzy, badly enough for him to sway, badly enough for the woman to rise to her feet and reach for him. His hand shoots out before she can touch him and he waves away her gesture.
“Do you need to sit down?” she asks. There is concern in her voice now, even though she tries very hard to hide it.
“No,” Bradley manages to choke out. He turns to the door, doesn’t know how he manages it, but next thing he knows, he’s outside. A soft drizzle has begun to fall and Bradley lifts his face toward it, gulping cool air.
With a crushing sense of helplessness, Bradley realises that this is it. The end of the trail. He can’t reach Colin, who clearly doesn’t want to be found. They have no friends in common anymore, nobody left to buffer the intensity between them. Bradley has spoken to Katie and to Eoin on a couple of occasions over the years and he knows they’re not in touch with Colin. It’s not so unusual--Bradley is hardly one to keep contact with any of his past colleagues. Although it does seem now Colin had been the most effective of all of them at cutting ties, leaving Merlin behind so completely that for a very short time Bradley’s conscience had been eased by Colin’s complete self-removal.
Now he aches with that same absence.
He walks and walks, and his thoughts clamber over each other like mad, frantic things. Did any of it mean anything? He’s sidelined by the tempting glint of new information from the woman at Summer Escorts, but doesn’t have the tools or the strength to decipher it. He can’t stop thinking about the time discrepancy, can’t kill the wild, stupid hope knocking around inside his ribcage.
When he finally makes it back to his flat, the weather has turned well and truly feral, the kind of wild summer storm which makes everything slick with rain within moments. Bradley scruffs his hair into errant spikes with a towel and sits down to think.
Startled by thunder, he wakes hours later, cold and stiff-necked on the couch. Watching lightning split the evening sky, he feels empty, scooped hollow somehow. He wonders if somewhere across the city, Colin’s watching the same spectacular sky or if he’s too busy to pay it any mind.
The reflection in the bathroom mirror looks too much like his own personal ghost. Bradley snorts, swipes a wet line through the condensation. It only brings out the purpled skin beneath his eyes more. He’d like to think his younger self would laugh at the state of him. He worries it’d be more like pity, if they met.
Colin’s right. It can’t go on like this. He’s done too.
“I’m taking some time off,” Bradley tells Agent Orange’s voicemail. “Leave me a message if something comes up, but I probably won’t be in touch for a while.”
She’s gonna murder him in his sleep when he gets back. Right now that doesn’t seem like a bad prospect.
Forward to Part 4/4 >