[FIC] Wreck

[makingamochrie.livejournal.com]

This is a Colin/Greg piece for all the C/G fans out there.  Has a hint of C/R, an is deliberately left so you can imagine the ending.

TITLE:  Wreck
AUTHOR:  Makingamochrie
PAIRING:  Colin/Greg, hint of Colin/Ryan
RATING:  NC-17
DISCLAIMER:  Don't own, don't sue, every word FICTION
Author's notes:  Eh, don't know why I did it.  Long.  More after comments section.

Greg sat in the sprung, lumpy couch in his hotel room, glass of whiskey in one hand, a lit cigarette at the other, gazing at the television.  Here, in England, you didn’t have much choice.  BBC.  Cricket.  He didn’t like either of them, even if the quality of the picture on the tube shit the American version to hell and back. 

 

The same story had been playing for most of the day.  An explosion in one of the underground subway tunnels.  Dozens hurt.  Several dead.  He wasn’t much into death and destruction, but, like rubbernecking at a freak accident on the side of the highway, he couldn’t quite pull himself away from the action.  And to hear the tragedy delivered in such dry, droll tones made it all the more interesting in and of itself.  On ABC, it’d damn near be a celebration.  The other networks, too. He hated that.  Hated the sparkling eyes of the commentators even as they tried their best not to make it look like they were having the time of their lives on the corpses of the dead.

 

Gas main, they thought, though they weren’t entirely sure.  Could have been something else altogether.  No one would know till they got the fire and blood and wreckage and everything else the fuck out of there for a good look-see.

 

A knock on his door interrupted his reverie and, with a sigh, he levered himself up from the couch and made his way to the entrance.  “Who is it?”

 

“Colin.”

 

Damn.  That was one voice he didn’t expect to hear.  Not that he didn’t like the guy, because he did.  They just didn’t hang around the same circles when off set. 

 

“May I come in, Greg?”

 

His voice sounded horrible, like it was coming from the bottom of a very old, poisoned well.  Shaking himself, Greg reached for the latch and yanked the door open.  Seeing his friend, he froze, jaw sprung to its widest point.  “Holy shit,” he breathed.  “What happened to you?”

 

“Subway explosion,” Colin replied flatly, succinctly, as he gently pressed himself past his host and into the small, dark hotel room.  “I…I’m sorry to disturb you, Greg, but I…I needed….”

 

“Fuck that!” Greg said, grabbing one shoulder lightly and spinning his friend around so they were face to face once more.  That simple act almost had Colin on his knees.  Dizziness swamped him, but he managed to stay on his feet, head pounding, chest pounding, practically everything on, in, and around his body pounding.  God, it hurt.

 

“Jesus Motherfucking Christ,” Greg breathed, taking his first close look at Colin.  A long, deep looking gash on his forehead matched the one just under his left eye.  His shirt was half-torn off him, and there was blood seeping through the simple white tee-shirt he wore beneath.  His left pant leg had been rent at the outside seam and was flapping uselessly, coated with what could only be blood.  One shoe was somehow missing, and there wasn’t much left of the sock underneath except for a few threads covering the top of his foot.  “Col, we’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

 

“No,” Colin said, holding one hand up in the air, the other cupping his still sluggishly bleeding forehead.  “No hospitals.  I’ll be okay.”

 

“Like fuck you will!  Something could be broken.  Or burned.  Or worse!  And shit, you need stitches for those cuts on your face!”

 

“I’m okay,” Colin assured him again, his face, where there wasn’t blood, pale as cream.  “I just need….”

 

“C’mon,” Greg interrupted, grasping his friend gently at the crook of the elbow and leading him toward the couch.  Then he changed his mind and led him to the bed instead, rationalizing that it was much more comfortable than that damned couch that smelled like old farts but wasn’t too bad if you didn’t mind getting sodomized by a spring every once in awhile.  Greg doubted that was tops in Colin’s list of things to do this evening.  “Here. Sit down before you fall down.  I’ll get some towels and water and try to clean up some of the blood, ok?”

 

With a weary sigh and drooping eyes, Colin nodded his assent, and Greg quickly left, headed into the tiny bathroom—thankfully a private one—and grabbed all the towels, washcloths, and other sundries he could find.  He dipped several in hot water and grabbed his own bottle of liquid soap on the way back out.  He hated blood, absolutely detested it in any shape, form or fashion, but damnit, Colin needed him, and he wasn’t going to let him down.

 

When he got back to the bedroom, Colin was swaying on the edge of the bed, hands clamped tight to the sheets, his body rocking gently back and forth as if he’d misplaced his center of gravity. 

 

Dropping his items on the nightstand, Greg gently took hold of Colin’s shoulders again and pressed the half-conscious man onto his back.  “Does that feel ok?”

 

A grunt came in the affirmative and Greg nodded.  As he grabbed the torn t-shirt, he said, “You’re hurt somewhere I can’t see, Col, so I’m going to take this off, ok?”

 

Another grunt.

 

The shirt was thin and it wasn’t much work to split it up the middle and peel it off like a banana skin.  Greg whistled low in his throat as the damage was revealed.  Colin’s torso looked like a Havana sunset, and there were a couple of bumps along his ribs where bumps just shouldn’t be.  “I think you broke a few there, Colin.”

 

Colin shook his head.  “Only cracked them, I think.  I can breathe fine.”

 

“Didn’t know you were a damn doctor.”

 

“Please, Greg,” Colin whispered tiredly, and wisely, Greg backed off.  “Ok, let’s see what you look like under all that blood.”  Picking up one of the damp cloths, he gently dotted it against Colin’s bloodied face, wincing each time he heard his friend’s soft hiss of pain.  The gash on his forehead actually didn’t seem that bad. Scalp wounds bled like a motherfucker, but the cut, though long, seemed pretty shallow.  The one under his eye, however, might cause some problems.  It was already starting to color and swell and, still bleeding sluggishly, he was going to have one hell of a shiner come morning.  If not worse.  “Can you see out of that thing?” he demanded.

 

“Yeah,” Colin replied, as weary as he’d ever heard the man.

 

He basically had scrapes and abrasions across his torso and belly, nothing really deep except one just below his ribs where it looked like a knife had stuck him.  It had stopped bleeding only under direct pressure from Greg, but it had, at last, stopped.  “I think that’s going to need stitches, my friend,” he said, stepping back and dropping the bloodied cloth to the floor.

 

“You have any butterflies?”

 

Greg blinked, thought for a moment.  “Like the kind they use in the hospitals to tape cuts closed?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I don’t think so, but I’ll look.  Maybe….oh, yeah, here they are.  Only a couple, though.  I really don’t think this is a good idea, Col.  It could have done something to your insides, you know”

 

Colin nodded wearily.  “I know, but it’s what I want for now.  Just…bandage me up.  If it gets worse, I’ll figure out a way to get to the nearest hospital.”

 

“Speaking of which,” Greg continued, taping up the gash quite expertly, “how’d you wind up here in the first place?”

 

“Walked,” Colin replied, laying his head back on the flat pillow and closing his eyes.

 

Greg’s own opened wide.  “Walked?  Fuck, Col, that explosion was over eight miles away from here!  Most of the streets around it are closed!”

 

“I managed,” was all Colin would say.

 

“Managed, shit,” Greg grunted, tossing the second bloody rag to the floor.  “You could have called one of us.  We would have picked you up, you know.”  A beat.  “Where’s Ryan?”

 

A slight shrug of shoulders much more muscular than they appeared on television.  “He was…busy.  Something about a family emergency or something.  He’ll try to make it back as soon as he can.”

 

Yeah, Greg thought.  Sure. Fucking A Sure.  My best friend almost blown to bits in an explosion, and I would have been there no matter fucking what.  No. Matter. What. 

 

Some of that must have shown, because his mocha colored eyes fluttered open to Greg, almost begging him not to take it any further than he already had.  With his own sigh, he nodded.  They had some kind of wordless conversation going on, too. 

 

Take that, Stiles.

 

He picked up the largest two towels and nodded, face set in stone.  “I need to know what’s under those pants, so I’m going to take them off, ok?”

 

Colin gave another weary nod, helping as much as he was able by pressing his hips off the bed so Greg could yank the pants from under his ass and thighs.  Needing to see more—medically, of course—he yanked off the boxers as well and quickly covered Colin’s seemingly unmarked groin with a towel, though not before seeing that the man was…er….certainly not lacking in that particular department.  Wow!  Who knew? No wonder fucking Stiles has that smug little grin on his face all the fucking time.  Jesus.

 

Keeping his face completely expressionless, he wiped down the muscled legs.  Small gashes and tiny burns here and there, but nothing to be too concerned about, he didn’t think.  The medkit that came with the room—wonder of wonders—actually had both antibiotic and burn ointments in it and he grabbed both and tended as carefully as he was able.

 

Soon, he’d gone as far as he could, and he stood back up, assessing the damage and his attempted repairs.  The bleeding, the most important thing in his opinion, seemed to have stopped all over.  “I still think you need to go to the hospital.”

 

“I know,” Colin replied hoarsely, tiredly.  “But it can wait for the morning, if at all.  For now, thank you.  I didn’t want to disturb you, but I didn’t know where else to turn.”

 

“Shh,” Greg said, pressing a finger against Colin’s soft, cool lips.  “I’m your friend, Col, and I hope I always will be.  If you can’t come to your friends, who can you come to?”

 

“You’re scaring me,” Colin said with a trace of humor lighting his dark eyes.

 

“Me?  What did I do?”

 

“Nice.”

 

“Hey!  I can do the ‘nice guy’ thing once in awhile, you know.  Just don’t ask for it too often.  I might have to lump you up a little more so you remember what a rat bastard I really am.”

 

Colin’s chuckle was weary as an old tire wheezing out the last of its air, but it made Greg warm inside nonetheless.

 

“Thanks, Greg,” Colin sighed before sinking back into the bed and letting the blankets engulf him.  He shivered slightly.

 

“What is it?  What’s the matter?  Are you cold?”

 

“No.  Just a delayed reaction, I think.  I don’t want to be alone right now.”

 

“You’re not.  I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere, man.”

 

A hand cold as ice reached up and grasped Greg’s tightly.  “Thank you, Greg.  Thank you.”

 

Greg shuffled uncomfortably for a moment, never really sure how to take such unflinching gratitude.  After a moment, though, he squeezed back and smiled.  “Anytime, Col.  You know that.  You…um…want me to get under there with you?  Having me nearby might help a little.”  He couldn’t believe he was saying this, but sometimes his mouth moved before his brain totally engaged.

 

The smile Colin gave him, however, made it all worth it, and in almost no time at all, Greg was dressed down to his civvies and crawling under the covers.

 

Colin was shivering up a storm by the time Greg made it all the way under and, figuring that lying on his back was the only comfortable way for his friend to sleep, eased slowly over, slipped a gentle arm around Colin’s waist below the deep cut, and snuggled his head on an uninjured shoulder, surreptitiously taking in the scent of the man beside him and biting back a groan.  Sweet, slightly musky, and sharp, like a cutting north wind blowing down from the Arctic, fresh and exciting with the temptation of the unknown, the unseen, the unheard, the untouched.  The unexplored.

 

“Better?” he murmured, tangling their legs gently, trying to remember where all the burns, cuts and scrapes were so as to not make things worse for his friend.

 

“Much,” Colin murmured, lacing his still icy fingers through Greg’s and resting them on his own belly.  His tremors gradually began to lessen until he was nearly still in Greg’s arms.  His breathing deepened, and soon he was asleep.

 

Greg, however, remained wide awake, not just because of the feel of the unfamiliar body sharing his bed, but also because of the thoughts running rampant in his head.  Where the fuck was Ryan?  That ‘family emergency’ shit had to be an excuse.  And why hadn’t they been together on that subway?  As of this morning, they were planning to make a day of it.  What had happened?

 

Knowing he’d get no answers, he told his brain to shut up, and after a moment, it listened and he fell into a light, troubled sleep.

 

Sometime later, he was awakened by violent tremoring and muffled shouting at his side.  He blinked fuzzily and reached for his glasses.

 

It was Colin, obviously, dreaming about what had happened to him that day.  His heavily sweating, injured body was thrashing to and fro, dealing Greg a few good, if unconscious, blows every now and then. 

 

Carefully not touching the man, he leaned up and whispered in his ear.  “Col, it’s me. Greg.  You’re safe now.  You’re with me, and nothing’s going to hurt you.  Can you hear me?  You’re safe, Col.  You’re safe.  I promise.”

 

As the thrashing started to abate, little by little, Greg took a chance and threw both arms around his bedmate in a mildly tight, comforting embrace, crooning nonsense words into his ear and rocking him gently.  He, himself, felt as uncomfortable as hell.  This kind of shit wasn’t his bag, but fuck it.  If anyone needed comforting right this minute, it was Colin, and he was going to do the damn best he could, no matter how it made him feel.

 

Soon, Colin calmed, and soon after that, his chocolate eyes fluttered open, blinking several times before settling on the face before his.  “Greg?  What….?”

 

“’sokay, my friend.  You’re ok.  You were just having a nightmare.  Or maybe a daymare.  Fuck, I dunno.  But you’re safe now.”

 

Sighing softly, Colin let his body drop back into the sweaty imprint it had left on the sheets.  “It was so real,” he whispered, rubbing his fingers back and forth across the uninjured part of his brow.  “So damn real.”

 

“You…wanna talk about it?” Greg asked after a long moment.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear all the gory details, but if it would help Colin, he would.

 

Colin was silent for such a long time that if his glassy eyes weren’t wide open and far away, Greg would have thought he’d gone back to sleep.  Then the hand in his own clamped down hard, and Colin’s chest rose and fell with the deep breath he’d taken.  “It was just another day, you know?” he began in a whisper that Greg had to strain to hear.  “I don’t even remember where I was going.  Just…away.”   He was silent for another long moment, a deep frown on his face.  Then it cleared.  “A woman sat next to me.  Young. Blonde. Pretty.  She had a daughter, maybe two years old, with a head of blonde curls like Shirley Temple.”  Smiling slightly, he shook his head.  “We didn’t talk much.  You can’t on those things anyway, they’re so crowded and noisy, you know?”

 

Greg grunted his assent, squeezing Colin’s hand as hard as he was able.  The connection seemed important somehow.

 

“We were going along at a pretty good clip, stopping every now and then to let passengers off and others on, but the woman and her child stayed.  I figured they were going to the end of the line, and I decided I’d be doing that, too.  Anything was better than….”  Again, that deep, deep frown as his voice trailed off.  He shook his head vigorously, then clasped it with his free hand, fighting back the dizziness and nausea that had accompanied the action.

 

“You ok?”

 

“Yeah.  Just give me a minute, eh?”

 

“Whatever you need, Col.  You got it.”

 

Another long pause.  Another deep breath.  “I remember looking at one of the posters, can’t even really remember what it was about.  Jeans, I think.  Then I heard a loud explosion, and looking to my left, I saw a giant fireball headed straight down the aisle.  It was instinct, I think, that made me grab the woman and her little girl in my arms and push them under me.   Maybe I thought they wouldn’t get burned so bad.  I don’t know.”  Another deep breath.  “The car we were in buckled and turned to its side.  I remember flying off my seat, holding both of them in my arms still, though my grip was weakening.  I couldn’t feel any pain right then, but remembered that they said when you were badly burned, you didn’t feel much pain at all and figured that was it.  The scent of charred flesh was all around, and I thought most of it was my own.  The lights flickered, then went off, and I thought there would be total panic, but there wasn’t.  Maybe everyone else was dead, or unconscious, I don’t know.  I only knew I wasn’t.”

 

“Then what happened?” Greg prodded gently after another long moment of silence.

 

“I…could see some light.  Most of the windows had shattered, and once I found out I wasn’t too badly hurt,” (and here, Greg snorted loudly, but Colin ignored him), “I tried to get my charges to move to the light with me.”  The frown came again, along with shining eyes that spoke of nothing remotely good.

 

“They were dead, weren’t they.”

 

Colin nodded, swiping at his eyes, not caring that one was almost swollen shut.  “Yeah.  The mother…I think she broke her neck when we fell.  The daughter…she…she…she was in pieces all over the floor.  The glass had cut her to ribbons.  It was….”  Colin looked like he was going to vomit, but somehow he managed to force it down and squeezed Greg’s hand all the harder.  “I…let them go and called out to see if anyone else needed help, but it was totally silent in that car.  Not a sound.  None at all.  So I picked myself up and managed to squeeze through one of the broken windows at the top of the car and out onto the tracks.  Luckily the electricity had gone out, or I’d have fried for sure.”  His smile was wry.  “And then I walked.  Until I wound up here.  With you.”

 

“And you tried to call Ryan?”  Greg hated to ask, but felt he had to.  Why, he didn’t know.  But it was just a gut instinct.  And he always went with those.  It was part of who he was.

 

“Yeah.   I told him what had happened, underplayed it actually, and he told me about the emergency and that he’d be back as soon as he could.”

 

“And you believed him?” Greg demanded, quite a bit louder than he’d meant.

 

Colin nodded.  “I underplayed my part, remember.  He didn’t know it was as serious as it was.  You know family always comes first to him.”  There was not one ounce of judgment in his voice.  Not one ounce.  Greg was both angry and amazed.

 

“Col,” he said softly, trying not to let his anger show, “he knew how bad it was.  It was all over the news, for God’s sake!  He’d have had to be a blind and deaf man not to know what had happened!”

 

All of Colin’s emotions closed down at that very second.  Every single one of them.  Trying to read him was like trying to read a rock, or a blank piece of paper.  There was just…nothing there.  Greg knew enough to know that he was hiding something very deeply, and his gut instinct again told him not to push. Not yet, anyway.  Time enough for that later. If needed.

 

“Anyway,” Colin continued, “I found myself praying that you wouldn’t have any…company…tonight.  I was hurting and alone and I needed…..”

 

“You’ve got me, my friend,” Greg said, squeezing a mite harder, then backing off slightly, telling Colin with his body what he couldn’t say with his words.  Words which were his stock in trade and had come so damned easily to him.  Pushing himself up a little, he prepared to plant a tiny kiss on Colin’s stubbled cheek, but Colin turned to him at the same time, and their lips met.  Softly at first, shocked, unsure, but the barriers came down quickly and soon they were kissing deeply, hungrily. 

 

I’m kissing Colin! Greg thought, shocked through to his core.  Colin Mochrie!  It was pretty unbelievable.  Colin wasn’t exactly his type, but even if he was, he felt more of a brotherly affection toward him than anything even remotely romantic.  Besides, Ryan was always there, and really, even if Colin had been a raving Adonis, what would have been the point?  He had no wish to be pounded to pudding by those gigantic fists just for a little flirtatious pleasure.

 

But here, now, it was happening, by God, and Colin’s expertise at kissing was literally taking his breath away.  He knew it was most likely the need of a man who had barely escaped death proving to himself that life still went on in the most basic way he knew, but still…wow.  It was incredible.

continued in comments below

Comments

[corliamat.livejournal.com]

Colin whumpage = love

I actually ended up feeling kinda sorry for Ryan too, if that was him knocking on the door. 'Cause he did show up after all.

I have an odd brain.

Great stuff :)

[makingamochrie.livejournal.com]

thank ya thank ya.