[FIC] Full Circle

[clayangel.livejournal.com]

Title: Full Circle
Author: Clay
Pairing: Colin/Ryan
Rating: PG
Summary: Something different.
Author’s Notes: Inspired by a tiny flashback in an as of yet unposted story I’m writing. It was floating around in my head for at least a month and I finally decided it needed a story of its own. Pre-Whose Line. And pre-slash, I suppose.



“Okay, I have to go,” I said for what felt like the thousandth time.

Ryan looked at me from where he was laid out on the loveseat, long legs dangling over the armrest, a beer can caught between both hands, resting on his chest.

“Now? Why?”

“Well...” I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “I came over here yesterday to watch the game and it is now...” I made quite the show of checking my watch. “... thirty three hours later. I think it’s time for me to go.”

“But it’s one o’clock in the morning,” Ryan protested, gesturing vaguely to the clock on the wall. “I can’t let you walk home now.”

That was a good argument. After all, we didn’t live in the nicest part of Vancouver. But I had a better one.

“I have work tomorrow.”

Ryan shrugged. “Call out.”

Okay, maybe not.

I sighed and looked down at my own beer. “I can’t. I need the money.”

“But it’s a Tuesday!” Ryan whined. “The diner is always dead on Tuesdays. You’ll only get shit tips anyway.”

“True….” Damn it. I was buckling again. But it was just so easy when we were together.

“And besides,” Ryan continued, squirming around to sit properly on the couch, a shit-eating grin on his face, “you know you don’t want to go.”

I stayed quiet, not willing to admit that he was absolutely right, but my silence was proof enough.

“Stay?” Ryan jumped up to join me on my couch, scooting close and batting his eyelashes coquettishly. The sight made me giggle. “You can have the bed tonight,” he persisted. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No,” I shook my head, “I like the couch.”

“Good.” Ryan perked up immediately. “Then you can sleep on the couch tonight.”

Shit. Looked like I wasn’t going to see my bed yet again. Not that I really minded.

“But I am going to work tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

Ryan was still smiling at me. Yeah. I so wasn’t going to work tomorrow.


“We should do something different today,” Ryan said the next afternoon as we ate breakfast in his living room, curled up on our respective couches, bowls of cereal in our laps and wearing the same clothes we’d had on for the past forty-eight hours.

“Like actually go to work?”

I was still trying to convince myself that I would indeed do the right thing and put making the rent above having fun, but I had little doubt that my conscious would win the battle. It never had before.

“We could see what the other guys are doing,” Ryan continued as though as I hadn’t spoken. “Maybe we could all go out. Do something... active.”

I stared at him. “Active? So when you say out, you mean out? As in outside?” He only nodded excitedly and I couldn’t help but laugh. “You do realize that there’s a foot of snow on the ground?”

“So?”

“So I think I’d like to not lose my toes to frostbite if it’s all the same to you.”

“Which it’s not.” Ryan grinned at me. I threw my spoon at him.


A few hours later I was indeed calling out sick from my shift at the local diner. I wish I could say that it took Ryan a while to convince me, but that would be a flat out lie. The truth was that I hated the job, but I managed to make myself smile enough to earn decent tips, and most importantly, it paid the rent.

We met up with Jim, Patrick and Rick at a quarter to eight having spent most of the day lingering on the couches and flipping through reruns. At one point I had tried to convince Ryan that I needed to go home for a shower and change of clothes, but he would have none of it.

“If we go there we’ll never leave,” was his excuse, and it was probably true. “You can wear my shirt,” he offered and tossed me a thick green hooded sweatshirt. “And I do have a shower here.”

“I don’t have my deodorant,” I argued.

He shrugged. “Use mine.”

“Um... ew.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Just do it. I don’t have cooties.”

“But.…” How to say what I was thinking without sounding like a complete girl? I gestured toward my crotch.

“Your jeans are clean enough,” he retorted, not even sparing me a glance as he rooted through his closet for something to wear himself.

I think I actually blushed. “I wasn’t–“

But Ryan cut me off, jerking his head up with a startling laugh. “There is no way in Hell I’m lending you underwear.”

“I wasn’t asking...”

“Good.” Ryan turned back to the closet, still sitting crossed legged on the floor, a crumpled mass of purple and green material balled up in his hands. “Be dirty. Deal.”

I silently damned him thrice before giving in and heading toward the shower.

At the bar, the five of us shared a pitcher of beer and plastic basket of greasy french fries. The bar was in spitting distance of Ryan’s apartment, so we’d trudged through a fog of falling snow to get there. I recognized Patrick’s car in the tiny lot and smiled, wondering just where it would take us that night. Unfortunately, even after all but the driver had a substantial buzz going on, we still hadn’t decided on an adventure. We were climbing into Patrick’s car hours later, still arguing the point.

“Why don’t we just go back to my place?” Rick asked, squashed between myself and the door in the backseat. I, of course, had the middle seat, which didn’t really make sense being that I stood a full head taller than Rick, but I had this bad habit of breaking under pressure. Though to be honest I hardly minded being squished against Ryan. I tended to lean against him, telling myself and all who’d ask that I was just trying to keep my head out of the middle of the back window.

“And do what? Play cards?” Ryan asked, craning around me to throw Rick a disgruntled frown. “We always do that.” He had one arm around my shoulders to make the seating arrangement slightly more comfortable. I settled against his side and fought the urge to lay my head on his shoulder in my inebriated complacency.

“I want to do something different,” Ryan continued. “Colin does, too. Right?” He squeezed me gently.

“Hm? Yeah, sure.”

Jim was turned around in the front passenger seat, worrying his lower lip. “We could... go bowling...”

Rick shook his head, now scowling out the window. “We did that yesterday.”

Suddenly an idea seemed to strike Ryan. I could feel it in the way he tensed beside me. “Let’s go play tag.”

“Freeze tag?” Patrick asked, eyeing Ryan via the rearview mirror as he referred to the improv game. We were all in our own tiny troupe, so it wouldn’t have been an implausible option.

“No,” Ryan said, the excitement traveling from his voice to his hands as he absently picked at a loose thread in the shoulder seam of my jacket. “Tag. Actual running around tag. Like we played when we were kids.”

“And just where do you propose we do this?” Jim asked.

Ryan lifted the hand not wrapped around me to point out the windshield. “There’s a park on Fifth. We could play there.”

Jim and Patrick exchanged a look, and then Patrick looked to Ryan again. “It’s absolutely freezing out there!”

“And snowing,” Jim put in.

Ryan nodded emphatically. “Colin wants to play.”

Four pairs of eyes turned on me. I shrugged. “It sounds like fun.” It didn’t.

“I don’t know...” Patrick was saying, but I couldn’t help but notice that he had turned onto Fifth Street.

“Why not?” Rick piped up suddenly. “It could be fun. If we hate it, then we’ll go do something else.”

“Still...” Patrick murmured, now pulling in to the park’s tiny parking lot.

“Majority rules!” Ryan grinned manically and hopped out of the car the second it was off. I took a moment to relish the warmth of the car combined with actually having enough room to breath and then followed him.

The rest of us stood there awkwardly, clutching our coats tight around us as Ryan traipsed right past the large sign informing us that the park had closed at six. I might have been exaggerating when I’d said there was a foot of snow on the ground, but not by much, and at the rate that snow was still falling, it would likely be twice that by morning.

Ryan was twenty feet away when he realized no one was following. He spun on us. “Well?”

Patrick frowned. “It’s cold.”

“And standing around isn’t going to warm you up any.”

No one moved.

Ryan stalked back toward us, slowly and deliberately. He came to stand in front of me in particular. He was going for serious, angry even, but his lips twitched, unable to contain the smile he was hiding. “You want to play, right?”

I could feel the others’ eyes on me. They were depending on me to get them out of this, but Ryan was smiling at me now...

“Yes....”

“Good. Then you’re it!” He tagged me and took off at a run, disappearing in a swirl of snow into the black field with its trees jutting out of the earth at all angles like toothpicks on a cake.

I heaved a very heavy sigh and turned back to the guys. Each one was aiming his most disappointed glare my way, but only Rick had the nerve to say, “I can’t believe–“

“You’re it!” I yelled, slapping his arm and taking off after Ryan.

“You two are nuts!” I heard Rick call out, followed by the unmistakable sound of footfalls as he came after me. The game was on.

I raced blindly into the darkness. The lights of the parking lot faded after only a hundred yards, and even the light of the moon bouncing off the snow was little help amongst the trees. I could just barely make out Ryan’s imprints in the snow.

And I could hear laughter all around, muffled behind the crunch of ice beneath my sneakers. Ryan’s tracks swayed and twisted through a grove of trees, turned about, and lead straight back toward the park’s entrance. I caught sight of the guys again, flashes like a strobe light as they darted through patches of moonlight.

We raced like madmen, never quite knowing whom we were running from until he was almost upon us.

Jim’s resounding cry of “You’re it!” was the only sign that the game had shifted once again, and then Ryan was running after me, and it didn’t matter if he had been the one tagged or not; I laughed as I fled.

Snow stuck to my glasses as I stumbled along the field. A stitch in my side told me that I wasn’t in nearly good enough shape, but Ryan was closing in fast. He had longer legs, a more streamlined body, and I pumped my legs harder, weaving through trees, pushing faster and faster until the laughter of the others was little more than a backdrop, indistinct like a dream.

I hooked one hand around a thin tree trunk and use my momentum to swing around it, doing an abrupt about face.

But Ryan had anticipated the action. He’d swerved just before he reached the tree, and I barreled into him, throwing my hands up just in time and rebounding soundly off his chest. Ryan’s hand flew up to catch my arms, to steady me.

For just a moment we both stood very still, our breath swimming around us in thick white clouds.

I could feel adrenaline pumping through my veins. I stared up at Ryan. His eyes were dark, unreadable in shadow. The moon shone off the highlights in his hair; snowflakes dotted the curls like stars.

He was just so beautiful like that, smiling down at me as the snow fell around him. I couldn’t help myself; I kissed him.

In retrospect I would realize that he met me halfway, sealing his cold, soft lips over mine, his tongue silky and wet and so very hot as it slid over my wind chapped lips, as it darted inside my mouth, tickling the caps of my teeth before delving deeper. I tried to get closer, nearly crushing my hands where they still rested on his chest, on his jacket, wet and dusted with ice, the hint of warmth beneath delightfully teasing. His hands tightened on my arms, drew me to him in a quick tug.

We pushed away at the same time, more breathless now than when we’d begun.

He heaved a shaky breath, two, and then leaned in to whisper against my lips, “You’re it.”

I blinked and he was gone, racing back toward the sound of laughter.

We played for hours, until we were all too cold and tired to do anything but fall bonelessly back into the car. Laughter still hung in the air, softer now, but unmistakably there.

I once again found myself trapped between Rick and Ryan in the back seat. We took up our assumed position on instinct, Ryan working one arm around my shoulder and me leaning into his side.

I felt his breath ghost over the shell of my ear as we settled in and the car started up, felt the joy in his whispered words, “Now that was fun.”

“That was the dumbest thing we’ve ever done,” Patrick said, shockingly loud in the tiny vehicle. He was nearly choking on his laughter, forgetting that he was still sorely out of breath. “What now?”

“Home,” Jim groaned. “I am dead on my feet.”

There was a general murmur of agreement, so Patrick turned the car onto the road proper. “Colin?” he asked after we’d gone a couple blocks. I had to force myself to pay less attention to the rapid beating of Ryan’s heart against my side and focus on the words. “Where am I dropping you?”

But before I had the chance to even consider it, Ryan was answering for me. “My place.” I looked to him quizzically and he shrugged. “Your shirt’s there. You still have to get it.”

It would be just as easy to pick up the shirt at a later date, but I was too tired to argue, even if it was obvious he was up to something.

“Okay.” I shrugged and met Patrick’s gaze in the rearview. “Drop me off at Ryan’s.”

The clock was chiming one a.m. when we stepped through the door. Ryan immediately fell onto the love seat, swinging his legs over the armrest with a weary sigh.

I looked at the other couch longingly. Collapsing looked like a very good idea right now, but I still had to get my shirt and go home.

I flung off my coat and hurried into Ryan’s bedroom, already half way out of my borrowed shirt before I’d even crossed the threshold. When I was redressed in my own threadbare red sweater I came back into the living room only to find Ryan hadn’t moved one inch.

Watching Ryan it suddenly occurred to me that I had kissed him. In all the play it had barely registered, even as it occurred, but now the full weight of that action was bearing down on me. Neither of us had said a word about it, but now that we were alone the issue would inevitably come up. I still wasn’t sure why I had done it in the first place, much less why he had let me, and I sure as Hell wasn’t ready to deal with the consequences, so I scooped up my jacket and nearly ripped the seams in my haste to get it on, saying, “Okay, I have to go.”

Ryan’s eyes opened slowly, training on me through a sleepy haze.

“Now?”

Despite everything, I couldn’t help but smile. This was the beginning of the conversation we had every single time I left Ryan’s apartment. It was going to be a long night.

End