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Entry tags:
Reason #91 Why Flat-Warming Parties Are Overrated // Merlin RPF // Colin/Bradley
Title: Reason #91 Why Flat-Warming Parties Are Overrated: Rocks Fall, People Die (Almost)
Fandom: Merlin RPF
Character/Pairing: Colin/Bradley, appearances by Angel, Katie, and ASH
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2808
Summary: Katie McGrath has a flat-warming party - shenanigans ensue. Or: why making pie at 4 AM is never a good idea.
Notes: Happy (belated) bitrhday![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thisissirius! This fic was supposed to all about PIE, but ended up being all about Bradley at the hospital. I'm not really sure what happened. Massive thanks to sophieisgod for betaing and brit-picking this for me (and also helping me come up with a title). I LOVE YOU!
Katie dislikes flat-warming parties. A lot. What’s the point of buying a nice, new flat, only to invite fifty people over and have them put their glasses on your nice, new coffee table without using coasters? Or stick their plates in the sink instead of the dishwasher? Or rearrange your furniture into something, ‘more feng shui friendly’?
Only, she invites Angel over for dinner, and then Anthony Head bursts out of a doorway where he’s apparently been lurking around playing his Nintendo DS and goes, “Oh, are you going to be having a flat-warming party? I remember when I first had one of those. Think my great grandmother’s vase got thrown out the window, actually...”
So she invites Anthony because it would probably be kind of rude not to, and Katie doesn’t think he’s going to inflict any damage on the furniture so what’s the harm, really (famous last words if there ever were any)?
But then the next morning she wakes up with thirty texts in her inbox about some flat-warming party she never agreed to having and seven drunken voicemails from Bradley asking why he wasn’t invited.
And, OK, Katie really can just text back with, “I AM NOT HAVING A FLAT-WARMING PARTY. GO AWAY” only everyone already thinks she’s a puppy-hating bitch of epic proportions just because she thinks it’s extremely amusing to watch Bradley flail around in panic by bringing up his Secret Gay Romance of Unsubtlety at inappropriate moments. And Katie thinks fostering more ill will by gaining a reputation as a party-hating bitch of epic proportions probably isn’t wise.
So she just texts back with her new address.
***
Colin really hadn’t been planning on attending Katie’s flat-warming party. He likes Katie all right, but she’s, er, easily angered, to put it nicely, and sticking her in a crowded flat with thirty-odd people didn’t seem like a recipe for a nice Friday evening.
Also, Katie’s left eye twitches whenever someone happens to bring the party up, and Colin had learned long ago that the Eye Twitch usually indicated If-We-Weren’t-In-Public-I’d-Stab-You-With-My-Shoe!Katie, one of the more irritable facets of her personality.
But Bradley insists on going (why, Colin has no idea), and Colin isn’t entirely certain that Katie won’t lock him in a wardrobe for dropping a plate, or something, and then completely forget that she put him there, so he reluctantly replies to her text with, “will b there @ 7, y/n?”
***
Bradley thinks Katie’s flat is nice, if remarkably boring. There’s a lot of beige, and about seven thousand variations of grey and black. And all the stainless steel in the kitchen is just so…shiny.
It doesn’t look lived-in (“That’s because I’ve only been here for a week, James. And take your shoes off”), is the thing and Bradley feels like he’s in one of those fancy interior decorating shops and some beakish, librarian type is going to yell at him for smearing jam on the furniture.
Said beakish, librarian type would be Katie – who is, truthfully speaking, neither beakish nor a librarian, but certainly intimidating enough to be both (one? Technically speaking, being beakish didn’t automatically make you an intimidating person, and was just something Bradley associated with intimidating…ness. Plus ‘librarian’ was a noun and not an adjective so they probably couldn’t go together like that, and this train of thought had really stopped making sense five minutes ago).
Bradley makes sure to lick the jam off his fingers very meticulously.
Angel giggles and tosses a napkin at him. Katie has a look on her face that suggests she would very much like to haul him off her leather couch and stick him with the cat.
***
“Katie, I, uh, think you might have to drive Bradley and me home,” Colin says reluctantly as he attempts to stop Bradley’s hands from crawling under his shirt.
“What?” Katie’s face blanches, and her reply comes out sounding like some sort of strangled animal noise.
“Er, I don’t know how to drive a stick shift, and that’s what he drove over,” Colin replies while prying Bradley’s fingers from his belt loops.
Colin really hopes Katie just thinks Bradley is a tactile drunk, and not that they’re sleeping together, or anything. Which they are, but it’s not like Katie needs to know that now. Or ever (Although it’s quite possible that she already does, given the looks she sends them sometimes. You never really knew with Katie.).
Bradley looks upward dazedly, pausing in his apparent mission to tear Colin’s clothes off, and says, “Katieeeeee, your ceiling is spinning. And why are my hands blue? Is there a cat in the sink?”
The look on Katie’s face would slaughter millions. “JAMES. Stop. Talking,” she says tersely.
“I’m pretty sure he’s just drunk, and not high, if that’s any consolation,” Colin says, feeling slightly sorry for Katie, but more so for himself. Either he’ll be stuck with Katie and Bradley in a car for an hour – which will quite possibly drive him insane – or Katie will throw them both out and he’ll have to hitchhike back home, which will quite possibly kill him.
“You’re both sleeping over.” Wait – what?
“Er, sorry?” Colin says.
“Colin, it is 10 PM and I wanted to be in bed an hour ago. Also, I am not going to risk Bradley throwing up in my car. You’re sleeping over.”
***
I am really going to have to file this under, ‘100 Reasons Why Flat-Warming Parties Are Overrated’, Katie thinks as she hauls the extra linens out of the airing cupboard.
***
Bradley can’t sleep. He feels horrible, and he’s thrown up twice already, and he’s pretty sure he’s both drunk and hungover.
Also, he really wants to wake Colin up, but Colin always sleeps like the dead after he’s had anything remotely alcoholic and a motherfucking fire alarm wouldn’t wake him at this point.
Also, also, he’s beyond hungry. Bradley sighs and sits up. Good Lord, his head hurts.
***
Katie is dreaming about a wonderful world where she is a private investigator and doesn’t have to deal with Bradley on a daily basis when a noise coming from her…living room (?) wakes her up. It’s a loud jangly sound, followed by a raucous bang, followed by…oh God, swearing.
It all leads Katie to one supremely obvious conclusion: there are burglars in her living room.
Why me, Katie thinks frantically, as she slips out of bed as quietly as possible, why me? She opens her wardrobe door, cringing at the high-pitched squeal the hinges let out – if she makes it through this ordeal without dying she’s totally oiling those bloody things – and rummages through all her miscellaneous junk until she finds what she’s looking for.
She pulls out the metal baseball bat (Hah, Katie thinks triumphantly, knew this thing would come in handy someday), careful not to let it bump into her shoe rack. Katie nudges her bedroom door open, and tiptoes down the hall as silently as possible.
Katie is both scared out her wits and fiercely determined. No one is stealing her flatscreen without a fight, that’s for sure. She rounds the corner into her living room – bat clutched high above her head – only to find no one there and her flatscreen untouched (thank God). And then she sees that her kitchen lights are on.
If Katie had been panicking a little less and thinking a little more, she probably would have realized that most burglars were not going to enter their victim’s kitchen and make themselves a midnight snack before stealing their valuables – but Katie really wasn’t doing either of those things.
Which is why she rushes into her kitchen and swings at the first vaguely person-shaped object she sees.
***
Of all the things Bradley thought might happen to him at Katie’s flat-warming party, “clubbed on the head with a metal baseball bat” was not one of them.
***
***
Bradley wakes to find himself in a hospital bed, with Katie – looking incredibly haggard and downing a cup of coffee – next to him.
He yawns, and Katie jerks her head up.
“You’re awake!” she exclaims excitedly, positively beaming. Bradley is a bit confused. This is the happiest Katie has ever looked around him, times ten.
“Why…am I in a hospital?” Bradley asks. He doesn’t remember much, just something about pie. Colin likes pie. Bradley smiles.
Katie looks rather sheepish and tugs at the sleeves of her pyjama top – which, why is she wearing pyjamas? “I kind of hit you on the head. With a baseball bat.”
“A baseball bat?”
“But only because I thought you were a burglar and trying to steal my flatscreen!” Katie says hurriedly.
“Still, a baseball bat? Why couldn’t you have just punched me?”
Katie scoffs. “What if you’d had a GUN? Well, not you you, burglar!you. Anyway, I guess we’re both really lucky I misjudged your distance from the end of the bat.”
“LUCKY? I’m in the hospital!” Bradley yelps. A passing nurse gives him a look of intense disproval.
“Yeah, well, you’re still alive aren’t you?” Katie replies, distractedly checking her watch.
Bradley sputters in indignation. “What Katie, have somewhere more important to be? Somewhere more important than the bedside of the man you hit on the head with a baseball bat?”
“Yes, actually,” Katie says coolly (Bradley thinks that given it was Katie who’d hit him with the bat, she should sound more ashamed about the whole affair), “I’d really like to get back to my flat and clean up all the blood before it stains my tiling beyond repair.”
“What – there was blood too?!” He anxiously reaches back – attempting to feel his head for the apparent head wound – and sure enough, his fingers smooth over a large bandage.
“Bradley, you got hit on the head with a metal baseball bat,” Katie says slowly, as if explaining things to a toddler.
Bradley opens his mouth, intending to ask Katie to stop patronizing him (he was in a hospital bed! He deserved pity! Especially from the person who’d put him in the hospital in the first place!) but comes to a sudden, exciting realization first.
“You called me Bradley!” he exclaims, an elated smile on his face.
“Because that’s your name,” Katie replies, giving him a look that is half-worried and half-exasperated.
“You never call me Bradley! It’s always ‘James’ this, and ‘James’ that…”
“Oh,” Katie says, looking relieved (probably at the fact that she didn’t give him a case of short term memory loss), “I only call you ‘James’ because you make this hilarious face whenever I do. Like I stole your doll, or something.”
Bradley doesn’t know whether to be more upset about the fact that Katie has been calling him ‘James’ just to torture him or the fact that she thinks he plays with dolls.
***
When Colin wakes up, Katie’s flat smells like bleach, orange-scented cleaning solution, and cherry pie. Weirdly enough, Bradley is not attempting to spoon with him, but is instead…conspicuously absent from the bed.
He shrugs off the covers, gets up, and – after tossing on a pair of jeans, because there’s no way Colin is walking into a room that might contain Katie while he’s half-naked – follows the scent of food.
Colin arrives at the kitchen only to be greeted by a puff of perfume being sprayed in his face.
“Oh, SHIT. Sorry about that Colin. God, I keep endangering people today. First Bradley, now you, who’s next?” Katie mutters, sounding slightly hysterical (but mostly annoyed).
“It’s fine,” Colin says, sneezing several times, “Just a bit…surprising. Where is Bradley, anyway?”
Probably ran off to buy that ridiculous breakfast cereal he likes, Colin thinks idly, Flat’s way too quiet for him to actually be here.
“Ah,” Katie begins, looking a bit guilty, “he’s at the hospital. I, er, may have hit him on the head with a baseball bat.”
As the words spill from her mouth, Colin feels like he’s being hit with a baseball bat. In the stomach. Repeatedly.
Katie seems to sense Colin’s growing panic, because she hurriedly adds, “He’s fine, though! Just – knocked unconscious for a bit. I thought he was a burglar, honest to God. I don’t typically hit my house guests with baseball bats in the dead of night, or anything.”
Colin nods, relief flooding his body (because if Bradley had been in a coma, or paralyzed, or Jesus Christ, dead, Colin would’ve – Colin would’ve, God, he didn’t even know). “I should, I should really go. And see him –”
“I know,” Katie says simply. The look in her eyes conveys her understanding more than words ever could.
Colin scrambles to grab his jacket (draped over the back of an armchair), but Katie puts a hand on his arm before he can race outside.
“Wait. Give this to him, will you?” she says, and hands him the pie (wrapped in tin foil, a post-it note stuck on top).
***
This time, Bradley wakes to find Colin hovering over him, clutching something wrapped in a very shiny substance in his hands.
“Hey,” Colin says softly.
“Oh, hey!” Bradley replies enthusiastically, “Wondered if you might be coming in. Is that…pie?”
“What? Oh, yeah, it is. Here,” Colin places the pie in Bradley’s hands and glances back at the door. “Don’t think we’re really allowed to bring outside food in here,” he explains when he catches Bradley eyeing him quizzically.
Bradley shrugs, “Well it’s not like I’ve got diabetes, right? I’m not going to die eating a pie. Unless you think Katie drugged it.” The last was supposed to be a joke, but given how Colin’s back stiffens and he immediately glares down at the pie, he doesn’t find it very funny.
Not sure how to break the tense silence that has descended between them, Bradley starts talking again. “I don’t think she would, though. Drug the pie, I mean. She could totally have killed me in the kitchen if she wanted to, and, you know, claimed it was self-defense and everything. It’d be really complicated to save me from death and then kill me with a poisoned pie –”
“Bradley.”
“Right, sorry, I was rambling, I know. I should really have someone around to just slap me whenever I do that,” Bradley says, smiling apologetically.
“Hmm,” Colin replies, looking contemplative. He places a cool hand on Bradley’s cheek, as if testing to see if Bradley is really there, or if he’s just an apparition. And, suddenly, Bradley thinks he understands the silence.
He reaches up to take Colin’s hand in his and says, “I’m here. Really. The doctors say I didn’t even come close to dying. I just went messily unconscious, for a bit.”
“I know,” Colin replies, “It was just – it was weird to come in and see you with all those tubes in your arms –”
“There’s only one tube, Colin,” Bradley interrupts.
“ – With all those tubes in your arms, and just…lying there. That’s the stillest I’ve seen you in ages.”
Silence falls again, but this time it’s Colin that breaks it.
“…You should probably eat the pie, or something. I think it’s Katie’s attempt at an apology.”
The mention of pie cheers Bradley up instantly. “I’d actually forgotten about that for a second,” he says, tearing the tinfoil off the dessert.
He hands Colin the fork. “Feed it to me?”
“What’s wrong with your hands?” Colin says, taking the fork but giving Bradley a worried look.
Bradley pouts rather obscenely and says, “I’m sick! Or, well, injured. Which is close enough.”
Colin rolls his eyes, but shovels some pie on the fork and stuffs it in Bradley’s mouth. “There,” he says, “Satisfied?”
Bradley’s eyes practically roll back into his head with pie-induced ecstasy. “It’s bloody fantastic,” he attempts to say, only there’s so much pie in his mouth it comes out outrageously garbled, and he doubts Colin actually understands any of it.
“You are so ridiculous,” Colin says fondly, and leans forward to lick pie filling off the corner of Bradley’s mouth.
Bradley thinks to himself that getting hit by a baseball bat – after the initial pain and “Why am I in a hospital?” confusion – is actually incredibly awesome.
***
Fandom: Merlin RPF
Character/Pairing: Colin/Bradley, appearances by Angel, Katie, and ASH
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2808
Summary: Katie McGrath has a flat-warming party - shenanigans ensue. Or: why making pie at 4 AM is never a good idea.
Notes: Happy (belated) bitrhday
thisissirius! This fic was supposed to all about PIE, but ended up being all about Bradley at the hospital. I'm not really sure what happened. Massive thanks to sophieisgod for betaing and brit-picking this for me (and also helping me come up with a title). I LOVE YOU!Katie dislikes flat-warming parties. A lot. What’s the point of buying a nice, new flat, only to invite fifty people over and have them put their glasses on your nice, new coffee table without using coasters? Or stick their plates in the sink instead of the dishwasher? Or rearrange your furniture into something, ‘more feng shui friendly’?
Only, she invites Angel over for dinner, and then Anthony Head bursts out of a doorway where he’s apparently been lurking around playing his Nintendo DS and goes, “Oh, are you going to be having a flat-warming party? I remember when I first had one of those. Think my great grandmother’s vase got thrown out the window, actually...”
So she invites Anthony because it would probably be kind of rude not to, and Katie doesn’t think he’s going to inflict any damage on the furniture so what’s the harm, really (famous last words if there ever were any)?
But then the next morning she wakes up with thirty texts in her inbox about some flat-warming party she never agreed to having and seven drunken voicemails from Bradley asking why he wasn’t invited.
And, OK, Katie really can just text back with, “I AM NOT HAVING A FLAT-WARMING PARTY. GO AWAY” only everyone already thinks she’s a puppy-hating bitch of epic proportions just because she thinks it’s extremely amusing to watch Bradley flail around in panic by bringing up his Secret Gay Romance of Unsubtlety at inappropriate moments. And Katie thinks fostering more ill will by gaining a reputation as a party-hating bitch of epic proportions probably isn’t wise.
So she just texts back with her new address.
***
Colin really hadn’t been planning on attending Katie’s flat-warming party. He likes Katie all right, but she’s, er, easily angered, to put it nicely, and sticking her in a crowded flat with thirty-odd people didn’t seem like a recipe for a nice Friday evening.
Also, Katie’s left eye twitches whenever someone happens to bring the party up, and Colin had learned long ago that the Eye Twitch usually indicated If-We-Weren’t-In-Public-I’d-Stab-You-With-My-Shoe!Katie, one of the more irritable facets of her personality.
But Bradley insists on going (why, Colin has no idea), and Colin isn’t entirely certain that Katie won’t lock him in a wardrobe for dropping a plate, or something, and then completely forget that she put him there, so he reluctantly replies to her text with, “will b there @ 7, y/n?”
***
Bradley thinks Katie’s flat is nice, if remarkably boring. There’s a lot of beige, and about seven thousand variations of grey and black. And all the stainless steel in the kitchen is just so…shiny.
It doesn’t look lived-in (“That’s because I’ve only been here for a week, James. And take your shoes off”), is the thing and Bradley feels like he’s in one of those fancy interior decorating shops and some beakish, librarian type is going to yell at him for smearing jam on the furniture.
Said beakish, librarian type would be Katie – who is, truthfully speaking, neither beakish nor a librarian, but certainly intimidating enough to be both (one? Technically speaking, being beakish didn’t automatically make you an intimidating person, and was just something Bradley associated with intimidating…ness. Plus ‘librarian’ was a noun and not an adjective so they probably couldn’t go together like that, and this train of thought had really stopped making sense five minutes ago).
Bradley makes sure to lick the jam off his fingers very meticulously.
Angel giggles and tosses a napkin at him. Katie has a look on her face that suggests she would very much like to haul him off her leather couch and stick him with the cat.
***
“Katie, I, uh, think you might have to drive Bradley and me home,” Colin says reluctantly as he attempts to stop Bradley’s hands from crawling under his shirt.
“What?” Katie’s face blanches, and her reply comes out sounding like some sort of strangled animal noise.
“Er, I don’t know how to drive a stick shift, and that’s what he drove over,” Colin replies while prying Bradley’s fingers from his belt loops.
Colin really hopes Katie just thinks Bradley is a tactile drunk, and not that they’re sleeping together, or anything. Which they are, but it’s not like Katie needs to know that now. Or ever (Although it’s quite possible that she already does, given the looks she sends them sometimes. You never really knew with Katie.).
Bradley looks upward dazedly, pausing in his apparent mission to tear Colin’s clothes off, and says, “Katieeeeee, your ceiling is spinning. And why are my hands blue? Is there a cat in the sink?”
The look on Katie’s face would slaughter millions. “JAMES. Stop. Talking,” she says tersely.
“I’m pretty sure he’s just drunk, and not high, if that’s any consolation,” Colin says, feeling slightly sorry for Katie, but more so for himself. Either he’ll be stuck with Katie and Bradley in a car for an hour – which will quite possibly drive him insane – or Katie will throw them both out and he’ll have to hitchhike back home, which will quite possibly kill him.
“You’re both sleeping over.” Wait – what?
“Er, sorry?” Colin says.
“Colin, it is 10 PM and I wanted to be in bed an hour ago. Also, I am not going to risk Bradley throwing up in my car. You’re sleeping over.”
***
I am really going to have to file this under, ‘100 Reasons Why Flat-Warming Parties Are Overrated’, Katie thinks as she hauls the extra linens out of the airing cupboard.
***
Bradley can’t sleep. He feels horrible, and he’s thrown up twice already, and he’s pretty sure he’s both drunk and hungover.
Also, he really wants to wake Colin up, but Colin always sleeps like the dead after he’s had anything remotely alcoholic and a motherfucking fire alarm wouldn’t wake him at this point.
Also, also, he’s beyond hungry. Bradley sighs and sits up. Good Lord, his head hurts.
***
Katie is dreaming about a wonderful world where she is a private investigator and doesn’t have to deal with Bradley on a daily basis when a noise coming from her…living room (?) wakes her up. It’s a loud jangly sound, followed by a raucous bang, followed by…oh God, swearing.
It all leads Katie to one supremely obvious conclusion: there are burglars in her living room.
Why me, Katie thinks frantically, as she slips out of bed as quietly as possible, why me? She opens her wardrobe door, cringing at the high-pitched squeal the hinges let out – if she makes it through this ordeal without dying she’s totally oiling those bloody things – and rummages through all her miscellaneous junk until she finds what she’s looking for.
She pulls out the metal baseball bat (Hah, Katie thinks triumphantly, knew this thing would come in handy someday), careful not to let it bump into her shoe rack. Katie nudges her bedroom door open, and tiptoes down the hall as silently as possible.
Katie is both scared out her wits and fiercely determined. No one is stealing her flatscreen without a fight, that’s for sure. She rounds the corner into her living room – bat clutched high above her head – only to find no one there and her flatscreen untouched (thank God). And then she sees that her kitchen lights are on.
If Katie had been panicking a little less and thinking a little more, she probably would have realized that most burglars were not going to enter their victim’s kitchen and make themselves a midnight snack before stealing their valuables – but Katie really wasn’t doing either of those things.
Which is why she rushes into her kitchen and swings at the first vaguely person-shaped object she sees.
***
Of all the things Bradley thought might happen to him at Katie’s flat-warming party, “clubbed on the head with a metal baseball bat” was not one of them.
***
***
Bradley wakes to find himself in a hospital bed, with Katie – looking incredibly haggard and downing a cup of coffee – next to him.
He yawns, and Katie jerks her head up.
“You’re awake!” she exclaims excitedly, positively beaming. Bradley is a bit confused. This is the happiest Katie has ever looked around him, times ten.
“Why…am I in a hospital?” Bradley asks. He doesn’t remember much, just something about pie. Colin likes pie. Bradley smiles.
Katie looks rather sheepish and tugs at the sleeves of her pyjama top – which, why is she wearing pyjamas? “I kind of hit you on the head. With a baseball bat.”
“A baseball bat?”
“But only because I thought you were a burglar and trying to steal my flatscreen!” Katie says hurriedly.
“Still, a baseball bat? Why couldn’t you have just punched me?”
Katie scoffs. “What if you’d had a GUN? Well, not you you, burglar!you. Anyway, I guess we’re both really lucky I misjudged your distance from the end of the bat.”
“LUCKY? I’m in the hospital!” Bradley yelps. A passing nurse gives him a look of intense disproval.
“Yeah, well, you’re still alive aren’t you?” Katie replies, distractedly checking her watch.
Bradley sputters in indignation. “What Katie, have somewhere more important to be? Somewhere more important than the bedside of the man you hit on the head with a baseball bat?”
“Yes, actually,” Katie says coolly (Bradley thinks that given it was Katie who’d hit him with the bat, she should sound more ashamed about the whole affair), “I’d really like to get back to my flat and clean up all the blood before it stains my tiling beyond repair.”
“What – there was blood too?!” He anxiously reaches back – attempting to feel his head for the apparent head wound – and sure enough, his fingers smooth over a large bandage.
“Bradley, you got hit on the head with a metal baseball bat,” Katie says slowly, as if explaining things to a toddler.
Bradley opens his mouth, intending to ask Katie to stop patronizing him (he was in a hospital bed! He deserved pity! Especially from the person who’d put him in the hospital in the first place!) but comes to a sudden, exciting realization first.
“You called me Bradley!” he exclaims, an elated smile on his face.
“Because that’s your name,” Katie replies, giving him a look that is half-worried and half-exasperated.
“You never call me Bradley! It’s always ‘James’ this, and ‘James’ that…”
“Oh,” Katie says, looking relieved (probably at the fact that she didn’t give him a case of short term memory loss), “I only call you ‘James’ because you make this hilarious face whenever I do. Like I stole your doll, or something.”
Bradley doesn’t know whether to be more upset about the fact that Katie has been calling him ‘James’ just to torture him or the fact that she thinks he plays with dolls.
***
When Colin wakes up, Katie’s flat smells like bleach, orange-scented cleaning solution, and cherry pie. Weirdly enough, Bradley is not attempting to spoon with him, but is instead…conspicuously absent from the bed.
He shrugs off the covers, gets up, and – after tossing on a pair of jeans, because there’s no way Colin is walking into a room that might contain Katie while he’s half-naked – follows the scent of food.
Colin arrives at the kitchen only to be greeted by a puff of perfume being sprayed in his face.
“Oh, SHIT. Sorry about that Colin. God, I keep endangering people today. First Bradley, now you, who’s next?” Katie mutters, sounding slightly hysterical (but mostly annoyed).
“It’s fine,” Colin says, sneezing several times, “Just a bit…surprising. Where is Bradley, anyway?”
Probably ran off to buy that ridiculous breakfast cereal he likes, Colin thinks idly, Flat’s way too quiet for him to actually be here.
“Ah,” Katie begins, looking a bit guilty, “he’s at the hospital. I, er, may have hit him on the head with a baseball bat.”
As the words spill from her mouth, Colin feels like he’s being hit with a baseball bat. In the stomach. Repeatedly.
Katie seems to sense Colin’s growing panic, because she hurriedly adds, “He’s fine, though! Just – knocked unconscious for a bit. I thought he was a burglar, honest to God. I don’t typically hit my house guests with baseball bats in the dead of night, or anything.”
Colin nods, relief flooding his body (because if Bradley had been in a coma, or paralyzed, or Jesus Christ, dead, Colin would’ve – Colin would’ve, God, he didn’t even know). “I should, I should really go. And see him –”
“I know,” Katie says simply. The look in her eyes conveys her understanding more than words ever could.
Colin scrambles to grab his jacket (draped over the back of an armchair), but Katie puts a hand on his arm before he can race outside.
“Wait. Give this to him, will you?” she says, and hands him the pie (wrapped in tin foil, a post-it note stuck on top).
***
This time, Bradley wakes to find Colin hovering over him, clutching something wrapped in a very shiny substance in his hands.
“Hey,” Colin says softly.
“Oh, hey!” Bradley replies enthusiastically, “Wondered if you might be coming in. Is that…pie?”
“What? Oh, yeah, it is. Here,” Colin places the pie in Bradley’s hands and glances back at the door. “Don’t think we’re really allowed to bring outside food in here,” he explains when he catches Bradley eyeing him quizzically.
Bradley shrugs, “Well it’s not like I’ve got diabetes, right? I’m not going to die eating a pie. Unless you think Katie drugged it.” The last was supposed to be a joke, but given how Colin’s back stiffens and he immediately glares down at the pie, he doesn’t find it very funny.
Not sure how to break the tense silence that has descended between them, Bradley starts talking again. “I don’t think she would, though. Drug the pie, I mean. She could totally have killed me in the kitchen if she wanted to, and, you know, claimed it was self-defense and everything. It’d be really complicated to save me from death and then kill me with a poisoned pie –”
“Bradley.”
“Right, sorry, I was rambling, I know. I should really have someone around to just slap me whenever I do that,” Bradley says, smiling apologetically.
“Hmm,” Colin replies, looking contemplative. He places a cool hand on Bradley’s cheek, as if testing to see if Bradley is really there, or if he’s just an apparition. And, suddenly, Bradley thinks he understands the silence.
He reaches up to take Colin’s hand in his and says, “I’m here. Really. The doctors say I didn’t even come close to dying. I just went messily unconscious, for a bit.”
“I know,” Colin replies, “It was just – it was weird to come in and see you with all those tubes in your arms –”
“There’s only one tube, Colin,” Bradley interrupts.
“ – With all those tubes in your arms, and just…lying there. That’s the stillest I’ve seen you in ages.”
Silence falls again, but this time it’s Colin that breaks it.
“…You should probably eat the pie, or something. I think it’s Katie’s attempt at an apology.”
The mention of pie cheers Bradley up instantly. “I’d actually forgotten about that for a second,” he says, tearing the tinfoil off the dessert.
He hands Colin the fork. “Feed it to me?”
“What’s wrong with your hands?” Colin says, taking the fork but giving Bradley a worried look.
Bradley pouts rather obscenely and says, “I’m sick! Or, well, injured. Which is close enough.”
Colin rolls his eyes, but shovels some pie on the fork and stuffs it in Bradley’s mouth. “There,” he says, “Satisfied?”
Bradley’s eyes practically roll back into his head with pie-induced ecstasy. “It’s bloody fantastic,” he attempts to say, only there’s so much pie in his mouth it comes out outrageously garbled, and he doubts Colin actually understands any of it.
“You are so ridiculous,” Colin says fondly, and leans forward to lick pie filling off the corner of Bradley’s mouth.
Bradley thinks to himself that getting hit by a baseball bat – after the initial pain and “Why am I in a hospital?” confusion – is actually incredibly awesome.
***