Royal Rendezvous
Title: Royal Rendezvous
Author: tudor_rose445
Rating/Warnings: R/ RPF
Characters/Pairings: Arthur, Gwen, Bradley, Angel, Arthur/Gwen, Arthur/Angel
Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin. BBC does.
Summary: Somehow going to tell off Bradley led to an intimate encounter with The Once and Future King...and Angel still doesn't know how it happened.
Author’s notes: This was my first ever contribution to, kinkme_merlin , so I was a little nervous. I don't normally write RPF but this prompt looked too interesting to pass up. :P Anyway..I see it like this. If you are going to write a novel about Anne Boleyn like The Other Boleyn Girl, or Marie Antoinette isn't that RPF? This takes place during the filming of 3x10.
Prompt:
RPF, Angel/Arthur, Angel ends up in Arthur's world or Arthur in Angel's, and he mistakes her for Gwen, while Angel thinks it's another of Bradley's pranks.
“Annnnddd Cut! Good work people! After lunch we'll run through it again.”
The crowd of actors and crewmen began to disperse rather quickly at the mention of lunch by their director.
Angel let out an exhale, reaching up a small hand to adjust the crown currently resting on her head. Despite it not being made of actual gold the metal used to craft the piece was surprisingly heavy on her head. She sincerely hoped that, if the series reached Guinevere's actual coronation, the costume department would go for something a bit lighter in headgear. She chanced a glance at the man beside her who was currently adjusting his own crown.
“It would have been nice of Tony to warn me ahead of time that his crown is ridiculously uncomfortable,” he mumbled, sparking the woman beside him to laugh.
She dropped his hand, turning more on her throne to observe him.
“Maybe you shouldn't have stolen his DS yesterday and he might have warned you,” she advised, watching as Bradley contemplated her advice.
“As I am his favorite person on set,” he began, causing Angel to give him a playful eye roll, “I'd think it would simply be out of the goodness of his heart to tell me.” He shrugged, standing and stretching his arms over his head. A member of the costume department collected the pair of crowns from them silently.
“But I think I could get used to being king,” he remarked as she stood up from her own throne. The two began the short walk down from the dais, leaving the hall along with the last few stragglers of the crew.
“I mean, Uther doesn't do anything, does he?” he questioned as they started the trek to the craft services truck. “All he does is send Arthur running about to do his dirty work.” He straightened up as he lifted his head, narrowing his eyes in an attempt at Uther.
“Arthur, go fight the griffin! Arthur, go kill the cockatrice!”
He shook his head as the girl beside him grinned.
“Really, I hope we have sons so I can send them out to get all my crap taken care of.” He stopped short, nearly causing her to trip on the hem of her gown as she too stopped quickly.
“Do we even have kids?”
Working on productions for so long had taught Angel that when one spoke about “I” it could either mean the actor or the character, much as “we” could be the actors or characters. She didn't even hesitate at his question.
“I have no idea,” she said, adjusting the hem of her skirts. Really, how Katie managed to walk around in these elaborate gowns she had no clue.
She laughed, pushing his faux chain mail covered arm with her elbow.
“Although if they have your childish streak we're doomed.”
He flashed her a grin, opening his mouth to respond when a mobile ring broke through the air. He reached into one of the pockets of his trousers before extracting his phone. He gave her a grimace of apology before reading the caller id and answering it.
“Hi Mum....No,no, I've taken care of it... Seriously!”
She gave him a wave before continuing down the hall. Knowing Bradley his mother would have his ear for the entire lunch break. She inwardly groaned. Just what she needed; a hungry, grumpy Bradley James to put up with for the rest of the afternoon.
Angel traced the familiar path through Pierrefonds alone, the sound of her low heeled shoes the only thing she could hear. An outsider might find it strange that the castle was silent while a filming crew was on premises, but that outsider clearly didn't understand the importance of the craft services truck. If there was one thing the entire cast and crew could agree on it was that the length of time between breakfast and lunch was far too long and that lunch was perhaps one of the best times of the day. She had been craving carrot cake all day, knowing fully well that the catering van had quite the recipe.
She idly glanced down a side corridor, remembering the footrace she had challenged Collin to there during their first week of filming back in Series One, and froze. The corridor was currently roped off to all tourists, including the cast and crew, for renovations. Yet despite the rather large sign written in both French and English, she could hear muffled speaking coming from somewhere within the corridor.
It might not have caught her attention if the voice had been in French, or of someone she didn't recognize.
But the muffled speaker was most definitely Bradley.
She frowned in confusion before hesitantly approaching the bright orange tape strung across the corridor entrance.
How had he managed to catch up with her so quickly? She glanced down the darkened corridor as she tried to picture the castle's layout in her mind. There was a chance that this hallway intersected with another, and maybe he had gotten lost? But if anyone knew Pierrefond's layout it was Bradley. He had been the one, after all, to go exploring during Series One with that silly little camera of his all over the castle.
She sighed before ducking under the tape and padding down the corridor.
She might as well tell him to get his arse down to craft services before someone saw him in a restricted section. Stopping filming because the future king of Camelot was getting told off by the producers wasn't high on her list of things to witness that afternoon. She sincerely hoped that they would be wrap up filming for the day at a reasonable hour; there was a hot bath in the hotel with her name on it. If anyone got in the way of an early finish that day they would have to answer to her. She wandered further down the corridor, pinpointing Bradley's voice to a room on the far left.
Angel pushed the heavy door open, peeking in.
“Bradley, I'd rather not see Johnny and Julian tear you apart for trespassing so lets go-”
There was a number of things that could have caused the words to catch in her throat.
It could have been that the room was completely furnished.
It could have been that the windows lining the far wall did not reveal the roofs of houses of the village that Pierrefonds rested in.
Or it could have been that Bradley was leaning against a table, his chest bare before her.
She was going to go for 'all of the above'.
She stepped into the room hesitantly, leaning against the door as she took in the layout. It looked much like the set back in Cardiff, yet she knew quite well that she was in France and not Wales. However, the design of the room was outfitted almost exactly like Arthur's chambers back in the studio.
A grin broke out onto Bradley's face.
“I had thought, for a moment, that you weren't coming up,” he began, crossing the room toward her. His expression rested somewhere between hunger and anticipation.
“My wife.”
She gaped at him openly for a moment as she struggled to put things in order, before she felt a flush of annoyance tint her cheeks.
“Funny, Bradley,” she began, bringing a hand to run through her curls. “You think I'd let you get in trouble? C'mon or all the carrot cake will be gone.”
He should have laughed and declared his joke a success. He should have flaunted his right to tease her for the rest of the day over freaking out at his improv. But instead he paused before her, his face melting into confusion.
“What?” he asked, reaching out a hand to smooth her hair.
She ducked out of his reach, giving him a serious stare.
“That's enough,” she insisted, going to tug on the chamber door. “The producers are stressed enough about the schedule. I'd rather them not have a coronary because you broke a priceless artifact or something.”
His hand, so much larger than her own, halted her tug on the door.
“Guinevere, what are you talking about?” he inquired, looking down at her with a frown.
She gave him an exasperated sigh.
“Joke's over!” she insisted, pulling her hand out from under his.
“Did you get the art department to paint a new backdrop for the window? You must have had to bother them for the furniture as well. You've outdone yourself with this; the fake door sign and the saran wrap on my toilet look pretty amateurish compared to this one.”
She felt him staring at her as she crossed the room to the row of windows.
“And was that Katie on the phone with you before, pretending to-”
The blood drained from her face as she looked upon the courtyard below.
Knights walked to and fro amongst servants clad in the Pendragon crest. Over the drawbridge she could make out the smoke rising from the chimneys of the lower town. But what frightened her the most was the lack of a sign of modern life anywhere beyond the window.
She swiveled quickly, clutching at the lip of the window ledge so tightly that she could almost feel her fingers going numb.
Those people down below should have been extras lining up at the food tent. There should have been cameras stationed in the courtyard. There should have been some sign that she was in the year 2011.
Yet there was none.
Bradley crossed the room slowly toward her, concern clear on his features as he once again paused before her.
“Are you alright, Guinevere?” he asked, ducking down slightly to look her in the eyes.
She blinked, trying to formulate an intelligible response.
He had called her Guinevere.
A shaky laugh burst forth from her lips.
No; time travel was just in movies in books. There was no such thing.
Yet the man before her was quite real as were the people in the courtyard.
A small part of her still held out that it was all a prank. It had to be a prank...it was the only logical explanation.
She played along.
Clearing her expression, she allowed a small smile to form on her face.
“It's nothing, sire,” she responded, falling into Gwen easily.
One of his hands came to rest on her cheek as he caressed her slightly with his knuckles. “You've been working yourself too hard,” he commented, his other hand resting on her collar bone. “You've only been queen for a month love; you have to slow down.”
She laughed lightly in an attempt to brush aside his worry.
“But there is so much to do,” she insisted as her mind scrambled for an explanation. She had researched quite a lot on medieval life, especially that of queens, once she had been casted and now was mentally rifling through the information.
“I've feasts to plan, people to greet, ladies-in-waiting to instruct,” she rambled, her attention focusing on his head as it began to move closer and closer to her. She almost jumped out of her skin as his lips began to suck at the curve of her collar bone.
Alright, this had gone far enough!
A protest was halfway to her lips before she halted. He wanted a prank? Well, he was getting a prank. She wouldn't be the one to fold first.
She raised her head to expose more of her neck, resting her hands on his head. She felt a smile of triumph form on her face. She was going to win! She would be able to hold this over him for the rest of the series if she succeeded. It was a rare day that anyone defeated Bradley James in regards to pranking.
She threaded her fingers through his golden hair, earning a soft moan from him in appreciation. His head dipped lower still, bestowing kisses upon the tops of her breasts.
This certainly had never been on the show before.
She must not have hidden her apprehension over this sudden turn in their game well as 'Arthur' raised his head to look up at her. An amused smile rested on his lips.
“Still shy, wife?” he asked, drawing back enough to take her hands into his.
She stammered for a response as she scrambled to salvage her chance of winning.
He silenced her explanation by pressing his lips to hers as his arms snaked around her.
She often joked that kissing Bradley was a chore in itself but she honestly couldn't complain. He was handsome which always helped, and he had been her friend for quite some time now. They were comfortable enough around each other to plan out, often in detail, how their intimate scenes were to proceed.
But this kiss was nothing like the ones they had shared onscreen.
His lips were hungry against hers, causing her to push herself to respond in kind. To her surprise, it was easier than she would have thought. She rested her hands on his shoulders for balance as she threw all the passion she could muster into the kiss. She vaguely felt his hands fumbling with her back, deftly untying the laces that held her gown together.
The fabric sliding down her skin sent a jolt through her.
But why worry? She still had her chemise and other undergarments on. Bradley seeing her in a nightgown-like dress wasn't crossing any lines.
Yet Bradley groping her through that nightgown-like dress certainly did.
His hands seemed to be everywhere at once: her breasts, her back, her bum. She glided her fingertips over the planes of his chest in order to steel herself.
It would be over in a minute; he had to call it off now.
Yet instead of pouting over his foiled joke he lifted her off the floor. She gasped, holding onto his back to keep herself upright as his lips once more landed on her neck.
How was she going to explain this to the makeup team? They would have to keep her curls over her shoulder in order to disguise the marks that were surely forming on her skin.
She felt her back collide with a mattress before he enveloped her with his body. His skin felt pleasantly warm against hers as his hand snaked up her chemise. She couldn't find the nerve to speak as she threaded her fingers through his hair once more, her mind reeling at the feeling. Her mind was drifting from the game to craving the feeling of his lips on hers once more. She lifted her head to find his lips, which quickly molded themselves against hers.
Apprehension began to dim as she helped him raise the chemise over her head before it was discarded to the floor. His hands fumbled with the lacing of her corset as she sucked against his throat. A low groan escaped from his throat at her attentions, causing him to pause in his untying.
“If you keep that up I'll never finish this,” he murmured, his hands going back to their work on the knots.
She laughed before bringing down his head once more.
A knock sounded at the door, startling them both.
“Sire?” came a muffled voice from beyond the door.
“Duke Aberforth is in your council chambers waiting for you.”
'Arthur' rested his head against her chest, exhaling slowly.
He finally raised his head before glaring at the door.
“Tell him I will be there shortly,” he yelled before returning his attention to his 'wife'.
“I'm sorry love,” he whispered, kissing her once more before reluctantly standing.
Angel averted her eyes at the sight of his arousal clear against the cut of his trousers. He adjusted the laces of her corset before gently kissing above her right shoulder. She numbly lifted her arms as he pulled her chemise back over her head.
“You had best not have many plans tomorrow morning,” he whispered against her skin before carefully helping her step back into her gown. His fingers felt incredibly warm against her as they skimmed over the laces of her gown.
“What I have planned for you tonight will keep you abed much later than usual.”
She felt a warm blush grace her cheeks at his words. She turned quickly, a question halfway to her lips to find that he had left.
She hurried to the chamber door before pulling it open and stepping out into the corridor.
“Angel?'
She squinted in the darkness of the corridor, recognizing Bradley at the end of it. He was fully dressed once more and was just putting away his phone.
“What are you doing?” he asked, confusion lacing his words. He fingered the orange tape strung across the corridor's entrance.
“I know none of us are spectacular at french, but I would think that having something blocked off is universal for 'do not go there'.”
She frowned at his teasing before ducking back under the tape.
His eyes widened as he took in her disheveled appearance.
“What the hell were you doing?” he asked, causing her to quickly comb back her hair. She must look a mess; she could already feel her lips swelling from 'Arthur's' kisses.
Her stomach dropped.
It couldn't have been Bradley in that room. He was standing before her, dressed in something entirely different. Even he, the prankster that he was, wouldn't have allowed that joke to go on for that long.
She let out an exhale.
How did one explain nearly having sex with a supposedly mythological king?
Angel had no clue. But one thing was for certain; the carrot cake would be gone by the time she finished.