"If Roses are meant to be red..." Chapter 1/10

[indybaggins.livejournal.com]

Author: Indy Baggins
Title: If Roses are meant to be red…
Pairing: Greg/Ryan
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Sixteen years after they met, Greg realizes he’s never let himself want anything quite as much as he wanted Ryan.
Author’s comments: This was my NaNoWriMo novel for 2006. The story of Greg and Ryan has for me, at its core, always been a love story. Needy, fucked up love, sure, but love none the less. And this is my attempt at telling their story, from the moment Greg met Ryan until the moment he let him go.

Beta-duty is done by Clay, for which she deserves many roses *smiles*

Also, Cover art by Cae









London is cold and grey in late November, and that might be the exact reason Greg’s chosen to come back here, now, but it isn’t really. London has always been both a comfort and a pain, a living reminder of what was once perfect and then wasn’t much of anything anymore, and it’s exactly that kind of pain he needs, longs for now.

He doesn’t quite remember telling anyone he took the red-eye flight to London, nor does he remember much of the plane ride. He figures that anyone who knows him, though, will know where he is. And those who don’t… well screw them really. He doesn’t care to be responsible for anyone’s pain more than he is for his own.

He gets on the right subway by sheer luck, maybe because some part of him still distantly remembers the numbers and stops, even when most of him doesn’t seem to be there at all. He doesn’t pay, not out of principal but out of habit, embedded into his mind the years where paying for something public was unnecessary, and living on the edge involved gleefully stepping over the metal subway turnstiles as if they were nothing but an obstacle on his rebellious way to liberation.

As the doors open with a heavy hiss, Greg walks in, a little unsteadily. The subway is mostly empty; it’s early still, too early for kids going to school, for businessmen in suits and women with magazines, too early for people, and he’s grateful for that. He sits down in an orange plastic chair next to a window-to-nothing-but-darkness and massages his brow, vaguely wondering where the headache came from all of a sudden, or if it was there before but he just hadn’t felt it yet.

As the minutes tick by, Greg notes a lone man staring into the reflection of the window, their eyes crossing, briefly, before he averts his gaze. He knows what he looks like, wearing a dark, wrinkled suit, a long, black trench coat, no luggage but the wallet in his pocket. He should have changed first, he thinks, but it’s a fleeting thought, easily buried under the constant stream of rumbling noise and small, shaking movements the subway makes on its way under the city.

When he finally gets to his stop, away from the stuffy and artificially lit train, and steps up the slippery and dirty stairs, it feels like a release to suddenly be in the street again, the wind blowing in his face, a light but chilled rain falling down.

As he retraces steps he has long forgotten ever walking, he suddenly and clearly realises (his first real thought after deciding to get on the plane to London, the first thing he allows to be crystal clear and stingingly hurtful) that it’s been sixteen years ago now, sixteen, and he can’t quite grasp how so much time has passed.

Sixteen years since he walked down this exact small street in London, Ryan by his side.

Sixteen years since he dragged Ryan into an ally, that one, or maybe the one next to it, or maybe he’s in the wrong part of the city altogether; he doesn’t quite remember, but he doesn’t care and he sees it again, how they kissed, in the middle of the night after exiting a bar, Ryan tall and gangly and young with a rare shocking laugh, and he himself in all the wrong clothes and the too big glasses and fumbling hands because god he had never been so fucking aroused before and then… then his memory blurs into lots of times, earlier than that particular one, later too.

He remembers being rained on and chilled to the bone before they crashed in Ryan’s hotel room together and had sex until they were too spent to even move and the rain outside didn’t matter anymore. Holding hands while walking over Reagon Street, late at night. Ryan pretending he didn’t care one way or another, but the gleam in his eyes and the streetlight telling different when he whispered half-formed promises into Greg’s ear.

There was an end in there somewhere too, but he doesn’t quite care to let himself linger on that small (and insignificant) memory of Ryan’s eyes and smell and the way his entire being ached after they had sex twice (“break-up sex”, one of them had muttered, and the other had agreed with a low grunt and even more friction because hell it felt like they were cheating on themselves right then), once against the wall with their pants still half-on and once on the dusty carpet, limbs tangling into each other and spit instead of lube so it goddamn hurt but neither of them minded.

As he walks on, over the cold and grey street, he remembers with something akin to fondness that they’d ended it many times, each time more resignedly hurtful than the last. Until… ‘Until now,’ he thinks, and then closes his eyes at the painful stab that memory brings. Until now.


---



Even today, Greg can still clearly remember the day he had met Ryan.

He had heard the others talk about the “new guy” from the day Ryan did his first show, Josie with an unexpected high note to her tone when describing him, Mike with a rumbling belly laugh. That alone had warned him that Ryan Stiles was deemed to be both attractive and funny, a great improv talent and womaniser to boot. He hadn’t cared, not at first, but as the rumours had persisted, it had woken something akin to annoyance in him.

When the tapings in New York were announced and Greg saw he was scheduled to do a show with this Ryan, he had been prepared to take in the competition, play alongside with him for the night, and then show him the door afterwards. He didn’t think it was unusually harsh of him, or of any performer for that matter, to think this way. It was routine. He didn’t really know Whose Line was going to be big, not then, but it was more of a break than he could hope for, and he intended to ride it as far it would take him. So he didn’t plan to be blatantly off-putting, or rude. Just better. Better than Ryan.

By 6.30pm, he had downed a couple beers in his dressing room, finding that he always worked better when slightly intoxicated. Nobody seemed to care if he was, not when it came to alcohol anyway. All they cared about was performance, and whatever he needed to do to give him that edge was not only just fine, it was encouraged.

Thirty minutes later, he was dressed by costume, painted and coddled by the girls from make-up, and he had taken up a seat with a direct-line of view to the door, newspaper in hand and mentally racking through all the nonsensical British words he could use tonight, both to get a rise from Clive (who he knew would be outdoing himself with an actual American audience), and hopefully, an acknowledged defeat from the new guy.

He had been so consumed in his search for funny acronyms, insults and comparisons that he didn’t hear the door open. It was when he felt a gust of wind that messed up his paper and heard the sloppy sound of wet, sneaker-clad feet landing on the beige, fluffy carpet that he looked up, doing his best to look as cynical and defensive as humanly possible.

What he saw, though, made him suppress a completely involuntary smile. The man in front of him was absolutely drenched. His dark blonde hair was plastered to his skull, the water running in small streams over his face. His jacket seemed glued to his shoulders, giving him the all-over air of a wet -although terribly lanky and tall- child hovering in the doorway.

Taking some form of pity on the man’s obvious bad luck, Greg glanced over his newspaper, stopped pretending not to have noticed his entry, and asked -voice carefully kept neutral- “Ryan Stiles?”

That is when he realised his mistake. Not embarrassed in the least, Ryan grinned, genuinely, almost as if he had planned to be rained on for the comical effect alone, replied a confident “A very wet one, but yeah” and strode over to shake his hand, his fingers wet and icy cold but his grip pleasant and strong.

“Greg Proops,” Greg, a spare smile on his lips, introduced himself, and Ryan smiled again, still holding his hand, but his eyes flashed to the exposed watch on Greg’s wrist, saying “I have to hurry.”

Greg nodded his approval, and with that, Ryan let go of his hand, and, with a last amused look, one that could have said “wish me well” or maybe “I sure hope someone has some spare clothes around here,” but mainly served to make Greg note the flash of green in the man’s eyes, Ryan walked towards the dressing rooms and out of sight.

Once he was gone, Greg wiped his hand on his pants, coughed once or twice to himself, and then curiously looked at the drop of water that had fallen on his newspaper and was slowly blurring the ink.

So that was Ryan Stiles then…


The show they did that night wasn’t one of his best, but certainly qualified as one of the more enjoyable ones. In general, he tended to prefer the British audiences over the American ones (‘they are just that much smarter,’ had he confided to Josie once, who had patriotically agreed), but that night he welcomed every over-rehearsed applause and every single loud and obnoxious laugh that came his way.

Ryan had changed his sodden clothes for a green suit, white shirt and flashy pinkish tie, and while it wasn’t too fashionable it looked good on him nonetheless. He was very thin, Greg noticed, even from where he sat he could see the bones of the man’s wrist and, when he leaned forward, the clear outline of his shoulders and back. He bore it well though; at first sight Ryan was a little gawky, but as soon as he moved he was plain graceful, his long legs carrying him in elegant strides across the stage, his entire body language easily controlled to fit every image, from an old lady to a hawk to a ballet dancer, Ryan effortlessly impersonated it all.

What intrigued him about Ryan was that he didn’t seem to be nervous in the least, during breaks casually smiling up at the audience, sipping his water. It made him feel laid-back and comfortable too, instead of the revved up, hyper-active feeling he tended to get from performing, and at several occasions he found himself startled to suddenly hear Clive’s voice when calling him down to do a game.

Once they got playing together in some games, Ryan proved to be every bit as good as he was rumoured to be, but Greg found that he didn’t mind that fact at all. Where he had taken Ryan as someone who’d egocentrically steal the spotlight, he turned out to be a great team player (‘He comes from Second City,’ Mike told him later when he expressed his surprise on that particular side of Ryan, as if that explained it all) and he was mainly just very, very funny. The audience loved him, and so did Greg, biting back a laugh at more than one occasion.

Ryan was also a very physical actor, freely hugging and touching everyone whenever the scenes seemed to call for it, or even when they didn’t. While walking up the stage, Ryan would modify his steps to match Greg’s, trying to get in sync before the acting even began. While walking back towards their seats, there was Ryan’s quick hand on Greg’s shoulder, his touch reassuring. After a particularly good joke, there was a shared laughter, not just towards the audience, but no, Ryan seemed to play solely for the person standing across from him, Greg had never felt that simple fact radiate from someone so openly as it did from Ryan, and it excited him, in a way.

When the taping ended it was almost too soon, and Greg grudgingly, but strangely still very stress-free, followed the others off the stage.

Before he had even completely closed his dressing room door behind him, Mike was knocking on it, inviting him to go out for drinks. Without having to think about it, he’d voiced his agreement, and after a pause, yelled “don’t forget to invite Ryan!”

A good twenty minutes later, face washed to get rid of the make-up and donned in a much more comfortable shirt and jacket, he could hear the others gather in the hallway, loudly boasting about “showing Clive a good American time”.

He poked his head out and locked eyes with Clive, who threw him a soft suffering smile and told him stoically, “I believe they mean to get me terribly drunk.” Greg laughed, snatched up his cigarettes, and closed the door behind him, only to bump into Ryan, who seemed oddly aware of the fact that he had been talking to Clive, his eyes traveling from one to the other.

Greg, intrigued, aimed a chipper smile at the both of them and said “Let’s go then?”



In truth, he didn’t know New York well at all and neither did Clive, Richard or Ryan, so it was Mike and George who lead the way, walking over the wet pavement and avoiding the puddles for a couple blocks before they stumbled (Mike insisted he had intended to lead them there, but Greg had his doubts) on a small, crowed bar.

Taking the lead through the masses, George secured them a booth in the back, and as they filed in, Greg got stuck in the middle, Clive on one side, Ryan on the other. The waiter followed them there, and soon they were all sipping on various drinks, from Mike’s dark German beer to Ryan’s scotch and Greg’s Martini.

The place was fine, although a little too rowdy and busy for his own tastes, Greg thought, and certainly not quite up to Clive’s, Greg realised as he looked at him and saw him smile cynically, cringing at the loud and repellent beat of the music. He was preparing dozens of half-formed comments in his mind, ranging from “too old for this, Clive?” to “want to get out of here and shag?”, all designed to jest, to make the man smile, nothing more, but in the end he thought none of them good enough to actually venture yelling through the noise, and settled for just smiling at Clive with what he hoped was sympathy.

Ryan, on the other side of him, seemed equally uninterested in conversation, and so Greg sat back and let the atmosphere wash over him, half-heartedly commenting when asked a question to his left or right, but mainly just relaxing, letting the high of the evening slowly fade. When he reached for his lighter and cigarettes in his coat pocket, he did so unconsciously, putting one between his lips and lighting it before he had even given it a second thought.

As he inhaled, his eye fell on Ryan again, who seemed to be inhaling right along with him, a look of concentration on his face. Laughing, Greg pulled out the packet again and pushed it in Ryan’s general direction, who took one, looking incredibly grateful, and half-said half-mouthed through the noise “wife wants me to quit…”

Greg, not knowing what had even prompted him to speak, commented in the general direction of Ryan’s now half-empty scotch “Don’t quit what you don’t want to quit man, we all need our poison.” Ryan looked at him at that, sadly, and said “Yeah, I suppose we do…”

Later on, Greg told himself he shouldn’t have felt such weight behind those words. That anyone could have spoken them, and that they didn’t really mean anything anyhow. But the truth was, in that moment, he saw someone in Ryan who possibly understood everything he wasn’t trying to say, and for a fleeting second he knew that feeling was mutual.

He smilingly handed Ryan another cigarette minutes after he had stubbed out his first in the ashtray, and then, in a moment of inspiration, leaned in close and spoke into Ryan’s ear “want to go do that outside?” before motioning Clive to move over so he could get out.

Walking through the bar, he didn’t check to see who was following, just tried to look forceful when maneuvering his way through the crowd. The fast, sickening beat of the too-loud music had given him a nagging headache, and he suddenly really longed for the cold and wet night air.

Upon reaching the fogged-up door, he saw out of the corner of his eye a tall figure behind him, and he smiled a little. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who was sick of the evening… Pushing it open, he was greeted by a gust of cold rain, the wind blowing it into his face. He briefly considered going back, but then looked to his right, a couple doors up the street, and saw a closed store saying “Alicia’s Flowers” with a large covered entryway that looked relatively dry.

Making a dash for it, he felt the rain pouring over his jacket, instantly soaking his hair, neck and back, and as he stepped under the entryway, panting, he turned around, making room for Ryan. Ryan had been right behind him and stepped up as well, huddling closer to the wall to get as far away from the rain as possible.

“That’s the second time today I got rained on,” Ryan noted, his voice light and casual and very close, to the left of Greg’s ear. Greg grinned at the rain, and said “yeah, it’s… New York showers.”

He didn’t pull away as he felt Ryan lean into him a bit, they were in a cramped space after all, and he bumped into Ryan’s side as he looked for his cigarettes, hoping they weren’t as soaked as he suspected they were.

Retrieving his lighter, he tried to light one, and, upon success, also Ryan’s, who seemed to have stayed miraculously dry. They smoked for a few minutes in relative silence, the heavy cascade of the rain so close by drowning out the music undoubtedly still emitting from the bar.

His cigarette gone, Ryan’s body heat was the only thing left to focus on, and he seemed to be positively radiating, warm and comfortable. Greg found himself leaning into him a little more than was exactly necessary. He felt shivery, unsteady on his feet, and he wondered if he would have a cold the next morning, and in the same line of thought, wondered if he would be waking up with Ryan in his bed the next morning.

He turned his head to look at Ryan, who looked soft in the low lighting, his eyes mirroring something gentle but dangerous, something forbidden, and at that moment, nothing seemed like it was entirely impossible anymore, and so Greg guiltily entertained the thought of slowly undressing Ryan and laying him down on a bed, making him beg for it…

Their mutual reverie was broken as a strong British voice rang through the air, “Greg? Ryan? Are you out there?” And then Ryan checked with him, a quick flick of his eyes, a barely distinguishable movement of consent from Greg, and they were both leaning in, closing the distance between them. When his lips actually reached Ryan’s it was really chaste, Greg thought, but soft too; they were both shivering and it was uncoordinated, a quick heated flash of tongue, the faint taste of nicotine and alcohol, the strange feeling of cold lips, and then they stepped apart, both breathing a little harder, sharing a crazy grin before stepping back into the rain and to where Clive was calling them.

And that, Greg would admit later, that was the exact moment he had fallen (what? In love? In lust? Could a person fall into friendship?) with Ryan. Not during their kiss, it had been too fast and undefined to predict anything major. But right after, when Ryan grinned at him like a ten year old boy who just got a cookie, and then walked away, his hair getting soaking wet again, the silhouette of his square shoulders slowly disappearing in the dark night, his voice an already familiar rumble as he talked to Clive. That had been it, the kick, the rush to the head Greg had been looking for his entire life, even though he didn’t know it yet.


Chapter Two...




mood: yay