[Fic] Bradley/Colin -

This doesn't have a title because I hate titles and I'm in a rush DX maybe I'll update with a title later IDK.

Anyway, I hope you guys like this little chapter (it's about 2.000 words.) It's just a little something something I wrote after imagining what it would be like for this Colin to break his hand. I have another chapter for this verse in mind but that's still a work in progress.

Author: slowdead
Pairing: Bradley/Colin (Merlin RPS)
Rating: pg-13
Genre: Fluff, romance, AU
Disclaimer: This never happened, I mean no offense
Summary: Colin breaks his hand
Notes: Part of the deaf!Colin verse. You can read the first chapter here.


The first time Bradley hears Colin’s voice is when he slips in the shower and screams loud enough for Bradley to hear him all the way down in the kitchen.

Bradley drops the carrot he’d been cutting on the floor, and then drops the knife right along with it. He doesn’t even hear it clatter on the tiles over the sound of his own gasp. Never before has the distance between the kitchen and the bathroom felt this big, his heart thumping louder in his chest with ever step he takes.

When the ambulance gets there Bradley’s barking at the medics the whole time. They’re being too rough and not fast enough and just not enough, and he isn’t afraid to let them know. He also refuses to let go of Colin’s left hand, the one that’s not all bruised looking and swollen and horrible.

Colin just squeezes his hand right back and gives him a look that quite possibly means Stop worrying and I’ll be fine, but more likely just means: Please stop making a scene, Bradley.



The doctor in the emergency room is probably very good at what she does, Bradley has no doubt about that, but she said something really inappropriately flirty to Bradley when they first came in; and she keeps talking to him instead of directly to Colin so Bradley barks at her too. “My boyfriend’s deaf, not retarded, could you please talk to him directly so he can read your lips instead of having me repeat everything?”

And so Colin’s eyes widen and he shoots Bradley that look again (the Bradley, again with the scene one,) but he’s also sort of smiling so Bradley figures he did the right thing anyway.



All things considered it’s not that bad; Colin’s right hand is severely bruised and one of the bones is broken, but it could have been much worse. All things considered.

“Certainly wasn’t worth you screaming your lungs out.” Bradley jokes to lighten the mood. It’s not really working. Colin’s just quiet, face blank and his cast lies immobile in his lap while his left is still holding Bradley’s hand tightly.

When they get home Bradley takes Colin to his bedroom. Colin buries himself in Bradley’s chest, clutches at his shirt and inhales shakily.

“I know,” Bradley whispers in Colin’s hair, “I was scared too. I was really scared.” Colin presses his nose into the vibrations of Bradley’s throat and falls asleep right there.



At that point Bradley didn’t know yet; he was too busy being grateful, too busy holding Colin’s hand and filling out paperwork and calling Katie to think about what this really meant. It’s the next day, when Colin can’t button up his pants, can’t even open his juice box, that Bradley starts realizing. When he asks Colin what he wants for lunch, and Colin looks at him a bit moodily it takes a second for Bradley to realize why Colin isn’t writing down what he wants.

Oh, Bradley thinks faintly, this could be a problem.



The first week goes by fine. Colin’s sleepy and docile because of the pain pills most of the time. Joe visits him every day at Bradley’s place, and spoils him rotten (brings him food and video games and everything and anything Colin likes.) Angel comes by a couple of times too, she strokes his hair and calls him poor baby. Bradley thinks Colin might be enjoying all the attention a little too much actually.

They do most of the talking, as Colin can’t properly sign anything one-handed. He tries to spell things out with his left hand, or type them out on his laptop. It’s not easy though, and it takes a lot more effort; and Bradley can gradually see it getting to Colin more and more, until he just stops asking his friends to come around. He tells them he's too busy with his thesis, but Bradley knows better.


In the middle of the second week, when the pain’s mostly gone and the novelty of the cast has worn off, the annoyance really starts setting in. Colin’s distant and snaps at Bradley (he actually manages to make the twenty something words he types to Bradley a day sound downright mean, this mostly because of the way he types them, punching every letter in one by one with his index finger.) And then at one point he even hurls his phone straight across the room.

Bradley doesn’t take it personally when Colin doesn’t kiss him goodnight, or good morning, or have a safe trip, anymore. He’s just busy with his thesis, and he’s under a lot of stress, really. Well, Bradley tries not to take it too personally.


By the fourth week things have really gotten ugly though.

“Oh sweetheart, I know it’s hard,” Bradley tells Colin when he gets home from work to find Colin hasn’t gotten out of bed the whole day.

Colin shakes his head in what Bradley takes as You don’t know and a slap in the face.

“When I was nine I once had such a bad case of bronchitis I couldn’t talk for four days straight. It drove me up the wall.”

Bradley would have been more content to see Colin get lively with something other than anger. Colin grabs his cell phone and types out That’s not the same as this.

“I didn’t say that sweetheart; I just meant that I get it.”

But you don’t! And Colin looks livid now. You get to go out and talk to people every day while I have to sit here all alone, by myself. I can’t talk to anybody; I can’t even brush my teeth when you’re not here! You’re just off having fun-

Bradley tugs the phone out of Colin’s hands, “Are you done? I have to go to work, Col, I can’t just not go. I just meant...” Bradley sighs and hands the cell phone back, rubs his hand over his face, “It’s hard on all of us, yeah? Probably most of all on you but...”

Furious typing. How is this hard on you??

“I’m the one taking care of you, for starters! And I hate seeing you like this, all grumpy and sad all the time.”

Sorry to be such a burden.

“You’re not!” Bradley lets out a frustrated groan, “It’s like I can’t talk to you anymore! And not because you can’t write or type properly, but because it feels like you don’t want to talk to me anymore.” The last part comes out so quietly it’s a good thing Colin lip-reads.

Colin doesn’t have anything to say to that, just lowers his eyes to his hand in his lap.

Bradley leaves.



Katie always knows what to say, and even when she doesn’t she always has lots and lots of booze. So Bradley ends up sitting on her couch. She strokes his hair before getting up and getting them a couple of beers and Bradley thinks he’ll probably always end up on her couch. He tells her just that and she just laughs, “Did you already have a couple of shots before getting here?” She asks, stroking his hair again, just like his mom used to do. And she would know, wouldn’t she? Because always been right there.

“Every morning before I go to work I make his lunch. I cut up a couple of apples for him for when he gets hungry, I shower with him, I help him get dressed-”

“You cut his apples for him?”

Bradley wants to tell Katie that he’s afraid that Colin might hate him. “He really likes apples.” He says instead.

“You know it’s going to be fine, right?” Katie tells him, “Because you love him, and just because he’s being grumpy right now doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you anymore.”

And Bradley sort of hates how she always does that, how she always knows exactly what he’s thinking. “Yeah.” He says gruffly.

She laughs, “I don’t think you do, but okay.”

Bradley really wants to take Katie out to the pub down the street and get completely smashed. He wants to drink until he can’t even remember why his chest keeps giving these painful squeezes; until he can’t really think anymore. But instead he allows Katie to pull him into a hug and goes out into the rain again to get take-out. Because most of all, more than pretty much anything, he just wants to fall asleep in his giant bed with Colin.



When Bradley gets home to a nervous looking Colin standing in the kitchen, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he can’t help but say: “I’m glad you’re still here.” Because he is.

Bradley shifts uncomfortably before lifting up the bag of takeout he got Colin. “Dinner,” he’s saying, but then suddenly Colin is standing right in front of him, resting his forehead against Bradley’s and looking at him. Really looking, like he hasn’t for days and he’s shoving a letter in Bradley’s hands; but Bradley’s a bit busy trying not to feel too relieved and too nervous and just a lot of things to really pay it any attention.

So he does the only thing he can think of and that’s kiss Colin like he hasn’t in days. He cups Colin’s cheeks, and run his fingers through his hairs and over his ears until Colin is kissing him back just as eagerly, just as desperately.

He ends up taking Colin to bed with him, completely forgetting about dinner and completely forgetting about the letter. But at the time it hadn’t really seemed that important. More important had been the way Colin was tugging his shirt up and over his head, and the way Colin was sucking bruises in his neck, and the way he was arching beneath him.

When he carefully untangles himself from Colin in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and passes by the forgotten bags of take-out and the letter lying on top of them he stops in his tracks and stares at it. Bradley tip-toes over to them curiously.

They’re in Colin’s horrible and shaky left-handwriting and Bradley isn't even sure he should be reading it, but Colin gave it to him so technically it's his, right?

I’m sorry for being a wanker and I’m sorry for being so hard on you. I hope you know that if you ever need someone to cut your apples for you I’ll always want to be that someone. Please don’t give up on me yet.

Colin is standing in the doorway when Bradley looks up. He smiles softly and Bradley lets the grin that’s been threatening to surface split his face in two. Colin rolls his eyes as Bradley crawls over to him and tugs him down on the floor to kiss him, but Colin lets him do it anyway.

Colin makes the sign that either means food or hungry. Bradley isn’t really sure, he just knows it always ends with Colin eating something. Bradley lifts the bags next to him and asks: “Reheat it?” And Colin nods.



The day the cast gets removed Colin can’t sit still for more than four minutes. He gets up at seven and forces Bradley to get up with him, coaxing him out of his sleep with kisses to his neck. He can hardly sit still when Bradley’s buttoning up his shirt, “And why did you insist on wearing the shirt with the five thousand buttons again?” Bradley grumbles, but Colin just grins and wiggles his eye brows and grins some more. “God, never mind, I don’t want to know.”

The look on Colin’s face when he gets to wiggle his fingers for the first time in over five weeks is priceless. Bradley teases him for it mercilessly (I should’ve taken a picture, or something;) but he’s pretty sure that his grin kind of matches Colin’s when the walk out of the hospital hand in hand.