fic: spiders can play cupid too
title: Spiders Can Play Cupid Too
pairing: Bradley/Colin
words: 1607
rating: PG
note: I am obsessed with these boys D: This may be more mad than my last Bradley/Colin fic, and that's saying something. I'M CLICKING THE POST BUTTON NOW BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND.
edit: this fic has been podficced! Check out the audio file here :)
Spiders Can Play Cupid Too
Admittedly, there are advantages and disadvantages to Bradley and Colin's hotel rooms being next to one another. One advantage is: Colin can see Bradley whenever he wants. One disadvantage is: Bradley can see Colin whenever he wants, and Bradley has no concept of time, so to him it's perfectly reasonable to call on Colin at three in the morning to play ping pong.
(It's not perfectly reasonable to Colin. And usually Bradley is smiled at sweetly before a door is slammed squarely in his face.)
***
Five minutes have passed since Colin called it a night and left Bradley to his own devices. Colin's in the middle of getting ready for bed when he hears a disturbance from next door. The noise can only mean one thing: Bradley's bored, and in the next thirty seconds he's going to knock on Colin's door and bother him. Colin saves time by going to the door and opening it before Bradley even has the chance to knock first. Bradley is stood on Colin's doorstep with his fist raised, looking thoroughly spooked.
"How did you know I was going to call on you?" Bradley asks slowly, crossing his arms.
"I learned magic, remember?" Colin leans against the doorway with a smirk. "Dedication to the role and all that."
"Oh yeah," Bradley says, smacking his forehead with the flat of his palm. "Guess who's back!"
Fifteen guesses later, Colin gives up and Bradley shows him who he's talking about - and he's not even talking about a human being. He's talking about a spider. And Bradley insists it's the very same spider he removed from his bathtub last week. Not only is the spider back, but it's brought a date.
"But how do you know that's the same spider?" Colin asks, pointing at one of the eight legged bath visitors.
"It's got the same eyes!"
Surprisingly, this isn't the weirdest thing Colin's heard Bradley say. It's the weirdest thing Colin's heard Bradley say today, but Colin suspects there will be more mad gibberish to come.
"Maybe it's the offspring of that spider," Colin proposes, "and it has its mother's eyes?"
Colin plays back in his head what he just said, and realizes he's spent far too much time with Bradley James if he's having a serious conversation with him about spider eyes.
"I think," Bradley says, "rather than release the spiders back into the wild, I will allow them to stay in my bathtub out of the kindness of my heart."
Colin scrutinizes Bradley through squinted eyes. "You can't catch them, can you?"
It pains Bradley to admit he's not the skilled spider catcher he's led Merlin fans to believe. "They're too quick! They're like ninja spiders!"
Colin stares at the pair of spiders stretching out by the plughole. "Once again, nature is unbalanced."
Bradley eyes Colin strangely.
"Yeah," Colin says, "I still have no idea what that means."
***
In a matter of days Bradley becomes so attached to his eight legged friends, Colin's surprised Bradley isn't carrying around a picture of them in his wallet.
"By the way," Bradley says to Colin at lunch, "I've decided to name our ninja spiders."
Colin frowns over his lettuce. "Our ninja spiders?"
Bradley looks like he's been slapped in the face. "Well, I'm hardly going to be a single parent, am I," he says with a mouthful of steak. "Look how Arthur turned out!"
Fair point, Colin thinks. "Do I have a say on the spider naming?" he humours Bradley.
"No," Bradley puts it bluntly. "But anyway, they're called Arthur and Merlin."
Colin suspected as much. "Ingenious. I can't imagine where you got those names from. Bradley, how can you even tell them apart? They're practically identical."
Bradley points his fork at Colin. "Arthur is the one with the most chest hair."
"Chest hair? Do you have microscopic eyes that give you the power to see spiders' eyes and their hairy chests?" He's starting to suspect Bradley's a bit of a spidey pervert.
"Yeah," Bradley says, "and you're totally jealous."
***
The first time Colin sees Bradley naked, it's by accident. But as far as Colin's concerned, Bradley brought it on himself since he did use Colin's bathtub. Without his permission. Colin tries to wrap his head around why Bradley would break into his hotel room just so he could use his bath, but Bradley is stood in front of him all wet with water dripping off him onto the carpet, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, and Colin finds it extremely difficult to string a sentence together that isn't along the lines of, "Towel off."
"The spiders would drown if I use my bathtub," Bradley justifies his actions.
Fair point, Colin thinks, then says, "I wouldn't want anything to happen to our spiders..."
Did he just say our spiders?
He did, didn't he?
Oh God.
***
Bradley keeps using Colin's bathtub, and Colin keeps letting him.
Then one day, Bradley goes to Colin's bathroom and finds a bath of hot water waiting for him. Bradley stares at the drawn bath a moment, then wanders back out and into Colin's bedroom, where he's reading a magazine whilst lying on his stomach. He's only looking at the pictures (not because he can't read, but because the magazine is in French).
"You drew me a bath," Bradley says.
"Yeah." Colin turns a page.
"With bubbles."
"Yeah."
"And the red-eyed duck."
"Yeah."
Something a little like love passes over Bradley's face. "You're pretty special, Colin."
Colin looks up from his magazine. "Special needs?"
Bradley shakes his head. "Special endearing."
Colin blushes and smiles, while Bradley leaves the room to take his bath before the water turns cold.
***
Colin's learning lines when Bradley bursts into his hotel room and announces at the top of his lungs, like a doctor who's just delivered twins, "Arthur and Merlin had babies!"
Colin looks at Bradley in shock and rifles through the pages of his script. "What page does that happen?!"
Of course, and much to the disappointment of many, Bradley is talking about the ninja spiders.
Colin examines the contents of Bradley's bathtub: there's Arthur, there's Merlin, and there's, oh, half a dozen baby spiders. They weren't there yesterday.
"They sure have been busy," Colin remarks.
Bradley's smile is proud. "Want some French beer?"
Several bottles of Bière Du Démon later, they're spread out on the floor of Bradley's toilet. There's a sign stuck above the bathtub. Written in biro is the word 'SPIDERLOT' with an arrow pointing downwards.
"Hey Colin," Bradley says with Colin's head on his stomach. "Do you think the ninja spiders are trying to tell us something?"
"Tell us what?" Colin mumbles against Bradley's sweater.
"I dunno," Bradley says with a shrug of his shoulders. "That we should we make babies together."
"One, that's biologically impossible," Colin says. "And two, aren't the spiders trying to tell Merlin and Arthur that, not us?"
"We're kinda like them, though."
"Who?" Colin is probably too drunk to have a conversation with anyone right now, because he's already forgotten who they are talking about.
"Our characters, Arthur and Merlin," Bradley says. "We're the closet thing to them. Sometimes you're an idiot; sometimes I'm a prat; sometimes I bully you; sometimes you draw me baths..."
Colin lifts his head off Bradley's abdomen to stare at him. "Bradley, if you want me to kiss you and stuff, just say so."
"I want you to kiss me and stuff," Bradley says without hesitation.
Colin raises himself up and swings a leg over Bradley so he's straddling his hips. Then, all smiles and cheekbones, Colin leans down and kisses him.
Silently, the spiders rejoice.
***
"You know," Bradley says, fresh from a bath with a towel around his neck rather than his waist, "since I wash here, I might as well sleep here."
That makes sense, Colin thinks. Well, it makes about as much sense as an ostrich hang-gliding, but Bradley is naked, so he could have said absolutely anything and it would have "made sense".
"Okay," Colin happily agrees.
"You know," Bradley says, later that night in Colin's bed with his arm wrapped around his middle, "since I sleep here, I might as well have sex with you."
This all may have gone too far...
"Okay," Colin happily agrees.
All men think with their penises, and Colin Morgan is no exception.
***
"Let me get this straight," Katie says to Bradley between takes. "You have a bathtub... full of spiders?"
"Yeah," Bradley shrugs, sipping his bottle of water.
Katie looks pretty repulsed, but that's her usual expression around Bradley. "Haven't you ever been afraid of spiders climbing inside your mouth while you sleep?"
"No."
But he is now.
***
The spiders are as good as gone.
Bradley and Colin sit in Bradley's toilet and stare at the empty bathtub. Bradley can't help but feel a sense of loss. Colin on the other hand, is relieved the buggers are gone. He hates spiders. Spiders and gingers. If he ever met a ginger spider... He shudders to think.
"Why'd you get rid of them?" Colin asks.
"Katie told me they were going to climb up my butt in my sleep."
In the past Katie has deceived Bradley into accepting a number of lies as truth, but that doesn't sound like something she would say.
"I find that hard to believe," Colin replies, unconvinced.
Bradley damns Colin for knowing him too well after only a matter of months. "She told me they'd climb inside my mouth," Bradley tells the truth, "and then I thought, what other holes could they climb into?"
Colin stares at Bradley in silence until it makes the blond uncomfortable. "You're pretty special, Bradley."
"Special endearing?"
Colin shakes his head. "Special needs."
Colin ducks a thrown toothbrush.
pairing: Bradley/Colin
words: 1607
rating: PG
note: I am obsessed with these boys D: This may be more mad than my last Bradley/Colin fic, and that's saying something. I'M CLICKING THE POST BUTTON NOW BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND.
edit: this fic has been podficced! Check out the audio file here :)
Spiders Can Play Cupid Too
Admittedly, there are advantages and disadvantages to Bradley and Colin's hotel rooms being next to one another. One advantage is: Colin can see Bradley whenever he wants. One disadvantage is: Bradley can see Colin whenever he wants, and Bradley has no concept of time, so to him it's perfectly reasonable to call on Colin at three in the morning to play ping pong.
(It's not perfectly reasonable to Colin. And usually Bradley is smiled at sweetly before a door is slammed squarely in his face.)
***
Five minutes have passed since Colin called it a night and left Bradley to his own devices. Colin's in the middle of getting ready for bed when he hears a disturbance from next door. The noise can only mean one thing: Bradley's bored, and in the next thirty seconds he's going to knock on Colin's door and bother him. Colin saves time by going to the door and opening it before Bradley even has the chance to knock first. Bradley is stood on Colin's doorstep with his fist raised, looking thoroughly spooked.
"How did you know I was going to call on you?" Bradley asks slowly, crossing his arms.
"I learned magic, remember?" Colin leans against the doorway with a smirk. "Dedication to the role and all that."
"Oh yeah," Bradley says, smacking his forehead with the flat of his palm. "Guess who's back!"
Fifteen guesses later, Colin gives up and Bradley shows him who he's talking about - and he's not even talking about a human being. He's talking about a spider. And Bradley insists it's the very same spider he removed from his bathtub last week. Not only is the spider back, but it's brought a date.
"But how do you know that's the same spider?" Colin asks, pointing at one of the eight legged bath visitors.
"It's got the same eyes!"
Surprisingly, this isn't the weirdest thing Colin's heard Bradley say. It's the weirdest thing Colin's heard Bradley say today, but Colin suspects there will be more mad gibberish to come.
"Maybe it's the offspring of that spider," Colin proposes, "and it has its mother's eyes?"
Colin plays back in his head what he just said, and realizes he's spent far too much time with Bradley James if he's having a serious conversation with him about spider eyes.
"I think," Bradley says, "rather than release the spiders back into the wild, I will allow them to stay in my bathtub out of the kindness of my heart."
Colin scrutinizes Bradley through squinted eyes. "You can't catch them, can you?"
It pains Bradley to admit he's not the skilled spider catcher he's led Merlin fans to believe. "They're too quick! They're like ninja spiders!"
Colin stares at the pair of spiders stretching out by the plughole. "Once again, nature is unbalanced."
Bradley eyes Colin strangely.
"Yeah," Colin says, "I still have no idea what that means."
***
In a matter of days Bradley becomes so attached to his eight legged friends, Colin's surprised Bradley isn't carrying around a picture of them in his wallet.
"By the way," Bradley says to Colin at lunch, "I've decided to name our ninja spiders."
Colin frowns over his lettuce. "Our ninja spiders?"
Bradley looks like he's been slapped in the face. "Well, I'm hardly going to be a single parent, am I," he says with a mouthful of steak. "Look how Arthur turned out!"
Fair point, Colin thinks. "Do I have a say on the spider naming?" he humours Bradley.
"No," Bradley puts it bluntly. "But anyway, they're called Arthur and Merlin."
Colin suspected as much. "Ingenious. I can't imagine where you got those names from. Bradley, how can you even tell them apart? They're practically identical."
Bradley points his fork at Colin. "Arthur is the one with the most chest hair."
"Chest hair? Do you have microscopic eyes that give you the power to see spiders' eyes and their hairy chests?" He's starting to suspect Bradley's a bit of a spidey pervert.
"Yeah," Bradley says, "and you're totally jealous."
***
The first time Colin sees Bradley naked, it's by accident. But as far as Colin's concerned, Bradley brought it on himself since he did use Colin's bathtub. Without his permission. Colin tries to wrap his head around why Bradley would break into his hotel room just so he could use his bath, but Bradley is stood in front of him all wet with water dripping off him onto the carpet, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, and Colin finds it extremely difficult to string a sentence together that isn't along the lines of, "Towel off."
"The spiders would drown if I use my bathtub," Bradley justifies his actions.
Fair point, Colin thinks, then says, "I wouldn't want anything to happen to our spiders..."
Did he just say our spiders?
He did, didn't he?
Oh God.
***
Bradley keeps using Colin's bathtub, and Colin keeps letting him.
Then one day, Bradley goes to Colin's bathroom and finds a bath of hot water waiting for him. Bradley stares at the drawn bath a moment, then wanders back out and into Colin's bedroom, where he's reading a magazine whilst lying on his stomach. He's only looking at the pictures (not because he can't read, but because the magazine is in French).
"You drew me a bath," Bradley says.
"Yeah." Colin turns a page.
"With bubbles."
"Yeah."
"And the red-eyed duck."
"Yeah."
Something a little like love passes over Bradley's face. "You're pretty special, Colin."
Colin looks up from his magazine. "Special needs?"
Bradley shakes his head. "Special endearing."
Colin blushes and smiles, while Bradley leaves the room to take his bath before the water turns cold.
***
Colin's learning lines when Bradley bursts into his hotel room and announces at the top of his lungs, like a doctor who's just delivered twins, "Arthur and Merlin had babies!"
Colin looks at Bradley in shock and rifles through the pages of his script. "What page does that happen?!"
Of course, and much to the disappointment of many, Bradley is talking about the ninja spiders.
Colin examines the contents of Bradley's bathtub: there's Arthur, there's Merlin, and there's, oh, half a dozen baby spiders. They weren't there yesterday.
"They sure have been busy," Colin remarks.
Bradley's smile is proud. "Want some French beer?"
Several bottles of Bière Du Démon later, they're spread out on the floor of Bradley's toilet. There's a sign stuck above the bathtub. Written in biro is the word 'SPIDERLOT' with an arrow pointing downwards.
"Hey Colin," Bradley says with Colin's head on his stomach. "Do you think the ninja spiders are trying to tell us something?"
"Tell us what?" Colin mumbles against Bradley's sweater.
"I dunno," Bradley says with a shrug of his shoulders. "That we should we make babies together."
"One, that's biologically impossible," Colin says. "And two, aren't the spiders trying to tell Merlin and Arthur that, not us?"
"We're kinda like them, though."
"Who?" Colin is probably too drunk to have a conversation with anyone right now, because he's already forgotten who they are talking about.
"Our characters, Arthur and Merlin," Bradley says. "We're the closet thing to them. Sometimes you're an idiot; sometimes I'm a prat; sometimes I bully you; sometimes you draw me baths..."
Colin lifts his head off Bradley's abdomen to stare at him. "Bradley, if you want me to kiss you and stuff, just say so."
"I want you to kiss me and stuff," Bradley says without hesitation.
Colin raises himself up and swings a leg over Bradley so he's straddling his hips. Then, all smiles and cheekbones, Colin leans down and kisses him.
Silently, the spiders rejoice.
***
"You know," Bradley says, fresh from a bath with a towel around his neck rather than his waist, "since I wash here, I might as well sleep here."
That makes sense, Colin thinks. Well, it makes about as much sense as an ostrich hang-gliding, but Bradley is naked, so he could have said absolutely anything and it would have "made sense".
"Okay," Colin happily agrees.
"You know," Bradley says, later that night in Colin's bed with his arm wrapped around his middle, "since I sleep here, I might as well have sex with you."
This all may have gone too far...
"Okay," Colin happily agrees.
All men think with their penises, and Colin Morgan is no exception.
***
"Let me get this straight," Katie says to Bradley between takes. "You have a bathtub... full of spiders?"
"Yeah," Bradley shrugs, sipping his bottle of water.
Katie looks pretty repulsed, but that's her usual expression around Bradley. "Haven't you ever been afraid of spiders climbing inside your mouth while you sleep?"
"No."
But he is now.
***
The spiders are as good as gone.
Bradley and Colin sit in Bradley's toilet and stare at the empty bathtub. Bradley can't help but feel a sense of loss. Colin on the other hand, is relieved the buggers are gone. He hates spiders. Spiders and gingers. If he ever met a ginger spider... He shudders to think.
"Why'd you get rid of them?" Colin asks.
"Katie told me they were going to climb up my butt in my sleep."
In the past Katie has deceived Bradley into accepting a number of lies as truth, but that doesn't sound like something she would say.
"I find that hard to believe," Colin replies, unconvinced.
Bradley damns Colin for knowing him too well after only a matter of months. "She told me they'd climb inside my mouth," Bradley tells the truth, "and then I thought, what other holes could they climb into?"
Colin stares at Bradley in silence until it makes the blond uncomfortable. "You're pretty special, Bradley."
"Special endearing?"
Colin shakes his head. "Special needs."
Colin ducks a thrown toothbrush.