Story: "Slow Dancing In A Burning Room"
Aug. 6th, 2008 12:09 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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wl_fanfictionAuthor: Indy Baggins
Title: Slow Dancing In A Burning Room
Pairing: Colin/Ryan
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The end of the beginning, the beginning of the end. (We’re going down… and you can see it, too.)
Author’s comments: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anoel, for the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
livelongnmarry auction. She requested Colin/Ryan, angst and sex, based on the song “Slow Dancing In A Burning Room” by John Mayer. Because I decided to focus on the early years it is a slightly different interpretation from what you asked, but I hope you love it regardless!
Beta was bysister_coyote
14th of September 1983
11.42pm-04.14am
The show has gone well and Colin is on his way to the small, cramped dressing room the entire troupe shares. He just needs his coat, really, and then he’s out of there.
Even though the show is over, he still feels Ryan’s careful hands splayed over his body, holding him up, patting him down, playing it up for a laugh. He shivers.
He’s never gotten hard on stage but it was close today. Ryan is generous with his touches, too much so. Ryan is the reason he even agrees to do this, to perform on a small crappy stage in a too-full bar, jokes lost in shouting over the noise, voice hoarse from the cigarette smoke, smiles looking faded in the single spotlight.
“Colin!”
He turns around quickly, and remembers to smile. It’s not too hard, it never is when Ryan is around, but he feels tired tonight. Burned out, not from performing, but from fighting it, fighting this.
Ryan steps too close and grabs his arm, and Colin tries to hide the shiver that runs through him at such a touch in a half dark, small hallway. Ryan’s fingers are four pinpricks of heat even through the sleeve of his shirt.
“You want to go with?” Ryan says, and he’s had something to drink already, Colin can tell by the way he holds on too firmly and the way his eyes light up when Colin leans in closer. It’s something that he, too, normally hides better.
“Yeah,” Colin says, even though he hadn’t been thinking about it before this moment. He never says no. He doesn’t like sitting in a bar with the others, watching Ryan slowly get staggeringly drunk. But he wants to be there when he needs to get home again, when he lets enough of his boundaries down to...
“Just let me get…”
But Ryan is lacing his fingers with his now, a quick playful squeeze, and pulls him along.
“…my coat.” Colin mumbles and staggers behind. It isn’t that cold anyway.
They go on to another bar, not a better but a cheaper one. It’s equally busy, dark and dingy, but there are free peanuts that Ryan eats by the handful. He’s not making enough to drink like this, every night, and still have money left for food. None of them are.
Colin, sitting on the opposite side of the table, pretends not to notice to way Ryan bums a cigarette from one of the waitresses.
He would have preferred to sit closer, slide next to Ryan in a booth in the back, but at the same time he’s glad. It gives him time to breathe. To think. There’s this slow pull between them, every time they are in a room together, and even though Ryan pretends not to feel it he knows he does.
Ryan is ignoring him now, smoking his cigarette with something of a victorious air, talking to the others, their friends (mainly his).
Colin nurses a single, already stale mug of beer, traces his finger over the dampness on the rim again and again.
He knows what might happen tonight. Ryan, between beers four and five, looks at him with the familiar smouldering expression in his eyes. Colin swallows.
He wants it too.
It’ll be on Ryan’s terms, Colin knows, it always is, but he can live with it because there is no getting away from it, this, and he’d rather have half a dozen nights like these than nothing at all.
Ryan doesn’t want anything cute, he’s learned that by now, he wants to get off quick and dirty in the hours between night and morning, where it doesn’t matter, where nobody sees. And yes, yes he can do that now.
“Don’t drink too much,” Colin says silently as Ryan orders his sixth beer. Either his voice carries or Ryan had been listening all along for him to say something, because he turns around and looks at him, a curious expression in his eyes.
“You’re coming home with me,” Ryan says, his tone flat and it’s no question, they’ve decided this somewhere around the time Colin said “Yes” to a drink.
Colin has played this game before though, and, tonight, he’s quite sure he can play it better. “Yeah, that’s why,” he says, and some of their friends laugh hollowly.
Ryan’s eyes widen for a second. He approves, Colin can tell. It’s a fine line, between being too obvious and too safe. They’ve been doing this off and on since they met, and he doubts anyone knows but still it’s probably Ryan’s biggest fear. He likes playing with that a little, too. Colin doesn’t sleep with anyone. Ryan sleeps with enough women to convince even himself he’s not gay.
Ryan finishes his beer off fast and decides for the group they’re all going home. Nobody tells him no. They all let him borrow money, drink, clothes, girlfriends occasionally as well, Colin knows. Somehow, Ryan is loved by all and even though he plays into it regularly, it’s never maliciously. They call Colin a friend too, but Colin knows he’s only there by the grace of Ryan. The other improvisers are darker, somehow. Always more of an edge, a deep, vulgar sense of humor he doesn’t want to compete with.
Colin drives on the way back, his hands clammy on the steering wheel. Everyone gets dropped off and it’s only when he parks in front of Ryan’s building that he realises he doesn’t even know whose car he’s driving. It doesn’t matter.
Ryan lives on the fourth floor but the elevator has stopped working a couple months back. Now they take the stairs together in solemn silence. A rat skitters away as they pass by, and the hallway smells sharply of urine. There’s graffiti on the walls.
When they reach the apartment door they halt, and the moment becomes sharp, a split-second in time that they haven’t found a scenario for yet.
“You coming in?” Ryan asks while struggling to find his keys. He’s looking at his hands, and it could be mundane, just a regular question but it isn’t and Colin feels the air between them heat up. God, he could live for this.
“Sure.” Colin says, his voice breaking, and Ryan looks at him with a flash of tenderness Colin knows isn’t imagined, and then the doors opens and he’s stepping inside.
Ryan’s bed is in the middle of the room, and since he has a different girl every couple of nights, it’s probably not even that clean. Colin doesn’t care. He’s already so looking forward to this his knees feel weak and he’s trembling where he stands.
Ryan, back in his own comfort zone now, smiles while he casually takes off his shirt and flings it on the floor, steps out of his jeans and underwear. His body is long and lean, his cock half hard, a dark shadow against his belly in the low light. He’s only ashamed of himself when it’s Colin bringing him off.
Ryan doesn’t ask, “What do you want?” (He had the first time). He already knows the answer is “anything you can give me,” Colin thinks.
Ryan lies down on the bed, spreads out so wickedly relaxed, so incredibly sure of himself it’s bound to be an act, perfected over dozens of conquests. Colin, still dressed completely, hesitates. He knows he won’t be around long enough to do much. He doesn’t want to presume and go lie down next to him.
“You’re beautiful,” Ryan mumbles like a too-fast confession, eyes fixed on him again, and Colin can’t guess whether that’s Ryan being charming or truthful.
He feels all the words dry up in his throat regardless.
He goes to the bed. His jeans-clad knees make indents in the mattress as he crawls on it and he has to place his hand to steady himself. Ryan doesn’t reach out, just lies there. Colin wants to trace a hand over his stomach. He wants to lean down and kiss, maybe do something silly, like blow a raspberry or tickle a little, anything to make Ryan laugh.
He knows he can’t or, at least, shouldn’t, but it’s only a distant pain now. He knows what he’s been asked, been allowed to do and so he goes down right away, licks the place between Ryan’s thigh and leg, sucks there. Ryan groans.
Colin wants to take it slow, enjoy it, but Ryan never does; when he allows himself to have this he wants it all and fast and hard. He’s already thrusting up, saying, “Come on Colin, come on, please,” and yes, his are eyes closed now, so he doesn’t have to see himself beg.
Colin licks a long stripe over his dick just to see him buck off the bed.
He makes sure to suck and touch on the edge of what he knows must be too much, to see Ryan writhe and kick and say, “God!”
Ryan doesn’t finger his hair or even touch him, but Colin doesn’t mind. He has Ryan’s dick in his mouth, he’s sucking, making it as good and dirty as he can, and after a couple breathless minutes where he focuses on nothing but this he can feel Ryan’s bitter come spurt into his mouth, coat his tongue.
He doesn’t expect much in return.
Especially not as Ryan keeps his eyes closed and sighs, relaxes even more. So Colin lingers, licks every trace of it off, savouring it, because it could be the last, the last…
Finally Ryan pushes him off; he’s too sensitive there now.
Colin gets up and tries to adjust himself without it being too obvious. Ryan already knows he’s hard, aching for it. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter.
But tonight… Ryan’s eyes flutter open again and, like in the bar, he looks calculating.
“Fuck my mouth.”
Colin’s mind stops, and he blinks. “What?” He knows his voice sounds a little high, but oh wow, he wasn’t expecting that.
“’m tired, I’m not getting up, take it or leave it,” Ryan says, and he sounds anything but tired, drunk yes, but he can hold his drink by now and it’s a challenge again.
Colin wonders how he came up with it. Whether he had been thinking about it for a long time already. He nods.
His hands tremble as he opens the buttons of his jeans and he almost falls over his shoes in his haste to kick them off. He keeps his shirt on but Ryan doesn’t seem to care, eyes half-lidded, glued to his dick.
Colin puts his knee on the bed again, and it takes some awkward manoeuvring to get the other over the other side of Ryan’s face. But then Ryan stills him, huge warm hands splayed over the cheeks of his ass and wow, he could probably come from this alone.
He leans into the touch, lets Ryan keep him up, and Ryan smiles a small smile at him.
Ryan opens his mouth kind of hesitantly, looking up at him, and suddenly Colin wonders whether he’s ever done this before.
He takes his own dick, guides it towards Ryan’s mouth and Ryan takes the tip in, licking softly. He moans around the head.
Colin can feel his skin break out in goose bumps all over, and it’s hard to stay sitting up like this, he can feel his legs start to tremble but he is not moving. No.
Ryan isn’t hard anymore so it’s not urgent, what makes it different from anything they’ve done before. He seems to be content with keeping it light, tracing his tongue and lips over Colin’s dick slowly, almost gently so.
Colin falls completely silent, watching the hypnotic in and out of his dick in Ryan’s mouth, feeling the kneading motion he does on his ass. Ryan’s fingers creep closer to his hole but he doesn’t touch. He’s not going to, Colin knows, but even the suggestion of it makes him slowly lose it.
When he comes it’s with a quiet sound, breath hitching, his legs threatening to give out.
He gets off right away, because otherwise he’s going to sink down on Ryan’s chest and he doesn’t want to overdo it, cross the boundaries he’s sure are still somewhere, hidden beneath the calm expression on Ryan’s face.
While Colin gets back into his pants Ryan really does close his eyes and he’s asleep now, breathing steadily.
Colin closes the door behind him with a soft snick.
12th of December 1986
02.11pm-03.59pm
Colin is standing in line for the passport control, the final check before he’s allowed to go.
The plane had landed right on time, thank god, wheels sliding on the icy Toronto runway. Colin had spent those last couple minutes looking out the little window thinking, “Home. This is home now.”
Ryan has been here for the last six months with the Toronto Second City company. Pat, one of Ryan’s many conquests but one that stuck, moved with him. Colin almost expects her to be here too, to be holding onto Ryan’s arm as she does in his mind whenever he thinks of him, this permanent fixture meant to inspire guilt but mainly burning jealousy because god, he spent the last six months wishing that was him, going with Ryan.
But he’s here now.
He auditioned in Vancouver and found out he was hired two weeks ago. He sold his apartment, most of what he owned, and now he’s standing in the Toronto airport, dressed against the cold, holding a duffel bag in one hand and his passport in the other.
His heart stops when he sees Ryan through the glass. Ryan hasn’t seen him yet, but he can feel the familiar hit to the stomach regardless, the sheer idiotic pleasure he feels whenever he’s around him. Six months apart didn’t change that one bit.
Once he‘s through the line, his passport a stamp richer, Ryan walks up to meet him, grinning. There’s a strange moment as they reach touching distance, because Colin wants to hug him, but he’s not sure if he should, and Ryan reaches out but doesn’t go through with it as well, so they’re just standing close, looking at each other over. Ryan eventually says “You’re here,” smiling to himself as if it’s some sort of personal accomplishment, and Colin smiles back. Of course he’s here.
Ryan says “We have an apartment not far from the theatre. We only have to be on by seven, so how about we go there first?”
And Colin only has to nod because he knows, he knows what they’re going to do.
Ryan has seen a lot, heard a lot, learned a lot in the last six months. Colin listens and looks at him and lets it all wash over him. Ryan seems different. He looks a little more well-fed, healthier maybe. His hair is cropped short, he’s wearing a faded out sweater and jeans. They’re already in the car when Colin realises the difference is that he looks happy.
The drive to the apartment is filled with stories, most of them probably not true, Colin thinks. Ryan doesn’t boast, but a lot of his stories begin with “So, we were drunk…” regardless, so he knows not to take them too seriously. But they’re funny anyway, and they’re both laughing by the time they reach Ryan’s apartment.
The place is nicer than he would have expected, obviously Pat’s influence as there’s no trash or dirty clothes lying around. He only has a moment to take it all in before Ryan grabs his arm, leans in too close, his voice uneven as he asks, “Colin…?”
Colin answers with “Yes,” and “Of course,” and lets himself be pushed against the door, pulls Ryan in. His hands slide under Ryan’s clothes so he can feel his warm, flat belly, and he helps him open his zipper, dropping the jeans to the floor. Ryan is already following his touch, urging him on, hands restless and in the way, and when Colin wraps his hand around Ryan’s dick, he sighs at the touch as if it’s something he’s been longing for.
Colin feels incredible, his heart beating fast in his chest. He starts a fast rhythm, hard velvet skin slipping through his fingers, again and again and he soaks it all in, makes sure to remember it for later, because he’s going to want to, he knows.
Ryan closes his eyes and lets his head lean on Colin’s shoulder. Colin wants to bring him off like this, feeling his ragged breaths on his cheek, seeing every nuance, every change in him while he comes.
It doesn’t take long. Ryan holds himself up away from Colin even as he’s coming all over Colin’s hand and stomach, but his long, drawn out moan is genuine.
He takes a couple seconds to breathe afterwards, but when he blinks his eyes open again it’s to smile sheepishly at Colin.
Colin feels the laughter well up in his throat because yes, he’s painfully hard but at the same time he’s shakily happy, enjoying the fact that he just did this, that Ryan is smiling.
He reaches for his own pants, more for relief than the possibility that Ryan will take the hint, but Ryan stills his hands and opens the buttons himself regardless. His pants and underwear fall to the floor, and Ryan reaches for his dick.
Colin sighs at the first touch, at the heat of his hand. Ryan is a little unsure in his movements, looking at him intently to see his reaction, a bright blush starting to creep over his cheeks. It’s perfect.
It’s almost too much right away, Ryan is tentative but he does know what he’s doing, his sweaty hand moving down with a delicious twist at the end, again and again. He laughs softly into Colin’s ear when he says “So good.”
The tension is building and building and Colin feels his orgasm coming on, a warm wave starting from the tips of his toes.
Ryan looks at him just as he’s coming, his eyes a hot flicker that make it even better, because he too is breathing hard though his nose, moving his hand all the way through the aftershocks, saying “Colin,” and he’s beautiful, Colin thinks. Amazing.
It’s only after they clean up (his pants are pretty much ruined) that Ryan says offhandedly “So, eh, you wanne watch some TV or something?”
And Colin snorts.
3rd of July 1987
11.12pm-09.27am
They’re touring with Second City, the first tour Colin has ever done and it’s tiring, certainly, but when they arrive back at the hotel after a show, Ryan comes up to him in the lobby and frowns. “We’re sleeping together.”
“I… when?” Colin says, his brain going through a fast spin of all possible meanings of the word, Ryan’s facial expression, whether he’s serious because if he is he knows they could go into the men’s bathroom and…
“We’re sharing a room for the rest of the tour.” Ryan says, and he’s looking a little paranoid. Colin suddenly gets it because yes, yes they’ve all been sharing rooms before but somehow Deb, their boss, hadn’t booked them together even once before this.
“Bound to happen some time?” Colin says back, eyeing Deb where she’s talking over to one of the other improvisers. Rumour was she thought he was cute, but he thinks it’s just that, a rumour.
Ryan shrugs “Probably.” But he doesn’t look like he really believes it himself.
Ryan goes up and Colin follows a couple minutes later at Ryan’s insistence, but he’s not sure he even should have bothered. The place is deserted at this time, all the guests either asleep or enjoying the nightlife and not planning on coming back any time soon.
Ryan has already closed the curtains when he gets there. There are two twin beds, of course, so Colin doesn’t really know what the problem is. Ryan looks freaked out regardless though, and doesn’t say a word until Colin has locked the door behind him.
“I didn’t ask her for it,” Colin says, feeling defensive. He’s not stupid.
Ryan nods quickly. “I know.” But still he’s twitching uncomfortably.
Colin kicks off his shoes and starts stripping, and Ryan’s eyes follow him across the room before he takes off his shirt himself.
They don’t say anything more, and when they’re both naked Ryan joins him on the bed. Colin touches him, traces his hand over his back, wills him to relax. They’ll be fine.
Ryan leans into the touch for a moment. He almost seems two different people now, the Ryan that Colin knows during the day, the one who jokes with him on stage and nothing more, and the other one that refuses to do anything for weeks on end and when they are together holds on tight. Colin loves it, but at the same time something has shifted, something he’s not sure how to define.
After a couple minutes of careful touching, he never knows what will be okay and what won’t, Ryan says, “I have…” and points towards the night stand.
Colin looks inside. There’s a plastic bag, and, once he opens it, a tube of lube and a twelve pack of condoms inside.
He looks at Ryan. Does he want to…? Ryan is swallowing heavily, looking like he’s about to be placed in front of a firing squat, and says “I’ve done it before, with a woman. It can’t be too different, it’s supposed to be good, I thought, why not right?” It sounds painfully rehearsed, and Colin doesn’t know whether to hate or love him for it.
But he says “Yes,” right away, surprising even himself.
He says, “Do it,” at Ryan’s surprised look. And then, “fuck me,” the words heavy on his chest like he means, “have me” or “take me”, like he himself is something he can throw away and he’s throwing it at Ryan.
He has given up on the illusion that Ryan will leave Pat for him by now.
Ryan looks impressed for a moment, as if he had been expecting him to say no all along, then snaps out of it, and trails his hand over Colin’s thigh. Colin lets him guide him and turns to lie on his stomach.
Ryan fingers him slowly, teases him until his entire body is buzzing with anticipation. Ryan moans while doing it, gets off on it too, and Colin shouldn’t think it’s that hot, but lying there he does.
Ryan spreads him open with two fingers, three. It doesn’t hurt so much as just feel uneasily full, as if he can feel ever ridge and every minuscule movement. When he finds his prostate Colin has to grip onto the pillow to smother the noise, because it feels like nothing he’s even experienced before.
Ryan fucks him slowly, at a steady rhythm for a long time, and when he looses it, hips pounding an uneven staccato, he screams hoarsely. Later his hand snakes around to palm Colin’s dick, and Colin comes after a couple strokes.
When Ryan slides out and he turns around it feels painful, and he lies back, tiredly.
It’s only then that he sees the wet lines of tears on Ryan’s cheeks. Ryan turns away, but he’s seen them regardless.
They don’t say anything more that night, although they both fall asleep in the small bed, Ryan holding onto him loosely.
The next morning, Ryan is his regular grouchy self again, and, while they’re standing close in front of the tiny bathroom mirror, both of them shaving, he says, “You should ask Deb out.”
“Isn’t she married?” Colin asks, rinsing his razor under the water.
Ryan shrugs, “In the middle of a divorce. She likes you.” And then he looks at him in the mirror, “You need to, Colin. She…” And Colin doesn’t need to hear the unspoken suspects at the end of that.
29th of January 1989
05.03am-06.19am
Colin is at the one event he thought he’d never experience. His own bachelor’s party. It’s late, very late. There’s still porn playing on the screen, a man and a woman going at it quite loudly. Her plastic breasts bounce up and down as she gets fucked, and the man rumbles in appreciation.
Colin doesn’t want to watch per se, but he can’t seem to muster up the energy to tear his eyes away. She’s whining now, high, screechy sounds.
He knows he’s hard, in a detached kind of way, while also wondering how anyone ever enjoys this.
Most of the guests have already left, their murmured well-wishes leaving him cold. He’s gone from drunk to sober to smashingly drunk again in the last few hours.
“So I guess I’m marrying her then?” Colin asks to the room at large, to the scotch he’s holding in his hand, to Ryan who’s sitting next to him. He doesn’t do it for the shock effect, although it’s there. The few guests left are too drunk to hear him anyhow, cheering at the TV.
Ryan… Ryan isn’t drunk though.
Colin has watched Ryan the entire night. Ryan, sitting in the middle of the party. Cracking dirty jokes, having the time of his life. Ryan, not drinking anything.
Ryan, right then, is the one who gets up and convinces everyone the party is over now. Colin hears his words, vaguely. Somebody yells goodbye at him. He doesn’t care.
When everyone is gone, Ryan comes back to sit next to him again. The guy on TV is coming now, the camera zooming in on his spurting dick, the blonde leaning close so she can lick some of it off.
Colin sits there, silently, for what seems like long, long minutes. The couple on the TV gets joined by a brunette, who fucks the blonde with a glass dildo. His eyes, feeling like there’s sand in them, slide shut for a little while. When he opens them again the credits are rolling.
He’s not waiting for anything and it’s only when Ryan says slowly, “Yes, you’re marrying her,” that he remembers what he had said, before.
Colin tries to focus on him.
“You… do love her, right?” Ryan asks. He looks extremely uncomfortable. Colin thinks he’s never heard him use the word “love” before and it almost makes him giggle; only he’s so tired. He’s sinking away in the pillows, and even turning his head to look at Ryan is tiring.
“I love her,” he says through the thick mist. The room is sort of spinning now. It’s true, he loves her. He loves the fact that he can share a bed with her every night. That he can hold her hand whenever they go out. That she wants to have a child, still, even though she’s nearing forty.
And then, as his eyes fall shut again, he mumbles, “but I love you more.”
3rd of March 1992
07.24pm-07.27pm
When he wakes up, Ryan is gone.
Ryan even leaves the country a couple weeks later so it must have made quite an impression, Colin thinks wryly. Ryan moves to LA and marries Pat in what must be the smallest wedding of the decade because neither Colin nor any of their friends get invited. Or ever hear from him again.
Colin auditions for a show called “Whose Line,” that month. He doesn’t get on, although he later hears that Ryan does.
Deb gets pregnant, and then gets an amazing job offer. The only down side being that it forces them to move to LA as well. Colin has never been a fan of irony, but arriving at the LA airport and hearing Deb say “Well, I guess this is home now” makes him nearly lash out.
Which is probably why he hates the fucking city from the moment he sets foot in it.
He never actually runs into Ryan, which is a torture in itself. He wakes up every morning with the knowledge that Ryan is close, most likely only living a couple miles over, hell, they’re probably looking for jobs in the same places, but still it doesn’t happen.
He’s stuck with a screaming baby in a tiny, blood-hot apartment in an endless summer where Deb goes out to find work and they have to sell most of everything they own to make ends meet. He often remembers Ryan living on nothing but peanuts, alcohol and women. And how easy he had made it seem back then.
Now he needs to make money, somehow, because he has this small, fragile being that’s screaming bloody murder because they can’t afford the good diapers, the good formula. He’s only been a father for a month and already he’s fucking it up.
Deb starts joking about selling their kid so they can at least keep the CD’s, but he finds it hard to keep on laughing. They live on food stamps, for a while. Out of work actors in LA, nothing special there.
When a second audition for Whose Line comes up he has to argue and fight to be even allowed in for a second time, but he aces it.
They live on hope that way for a while, even though he just gets paid enough for the plane tickets and to keep them holding on for another month or two. He takes the cheapest flights he can find so he’s underway for two days, crossing eight time zones, and when he’s finally there he sucks.
He clinically, methodically thinks about killing himself on the way back.
It becomes winter but not really cold after that. He spends hours in the completely empty apartment staring at the walls, trying to be there for a kid that’s crawling now. “At least he can’t get into anything,” Deb says, and punches him when he looks too sombre.
And then he gets a phone call and he’s flying out to London again. He’s being called back for a second taping. With Ryan.
He doesn’t even have a suit to wear since they sold them all, so he goes to a thrift store and gets the cheapest thing there.
“Colin, we need this.” Deb says before he leaves, and he nods. “Yeah.”
“It was you,” Colin says. He’s standing in the parking lot of the studio building in London, in the drizzling rain, waiting for the second Whose Line taping of his life to start. Talking to a Ryan that almost looks like a stranger, now.
“You made them ask me back,” Colin says and as he’s looking at Ryan and he still won’t look him in the eyes, he’s sure of it now. Ryan must have heard. Someone must have talked, told him he needed it badly, and he made it happen. Out of some misplaced sense of guilt or duty, he doesn’t know.
Ryan says, “Guess I did,” while flicking his cigarette on the concrete ground. He doesn’t wait for a response before walking away.
22nd of September 1993
11.31pm-03.06am
Britain becomes both something that’s on his mind constantly and the one place he dreads going to.
He gets to go on stage with Ryan again, and he never should have forgotten that that was where he had fallen for the guy in the first place.
The first months, Ryan goes out of his way to make him shine. When they’re on stage, they joke together, move together seamlessly and they’re funny, they’re good. Off-stage Ryan makes sure not to interact with him more than is necessary, but it seems to have been settled. They can work together still, and that’s what matters.
Soon Colin starts getting hired for shows without Ryan as well, and he can move his family back to Toronto. They’re saved.
It’s a night in the second year when they’re sitting in a bar, all of them, Ryan, Clive, Tony, Richard, Josie, when Ryan, sitting three seats over, tells Clive in passing, “Colin has a son.”
Colin is surprised he even knows, he hasn’t seen Luke yet, although, on second thought, Deb might have sent them a picture. The conversation goes on, but he doesn’t forget.
As some of them leave for the bathroom and there’s a silence falling over the table, Colin breaks their steady trust by looking directly at Ryan and asking him, “How’s Pat?”
Ryan gives him a long look back that makes the hairs on his arms rise before answering, “She’s pregnant.” And then, after giving him another look, he smiles wryly, “I’m scared shitless.”
Colin shakes his head and he’s saying something reassuring in return before he can remember that they don’t talk, anymore.
The one question settles something else between them though, because suddenly they’re talking. Ryan tells a cynical story about his own Whose Line audition, and Colin tells him about Luke’s birth, and before they know it everyone has left and they’re alone at the table, recalling memories from their Second City time.
Around 2.30am the bartender politely asks them to leave because they’re closing up.
It’s raining, when they walk back to the hotel, it always seems to be, but neither of them care. Colin was careful not to drink too much, and Ryan hasn’t either, he knows, but still they’re being loud, laughing, joking, trading mundane stories about their lives.
Then Ryan says, to the end of one of his stories, “So you’re happy now,” and it’s never a question, with him, it’s a definition, a diagnosis.
“Yes,” Colin says, because he quite probably is. He’s a father, a husband. He loves and cares and is loved and cared for now.
Then he looks at Ryan, the words “Are you?” are dying on his lips because all he can see is empty, sad eyes.
Ryan was always a good liar. Somehow, he hadn’t seen this. Probably because he didn’t want to, Colin thinks.
They’re standing still, looking at each other and Colin feels the slow burn flare again. Because, if anything, he always wanted to make Ryan happy.
He reaches out to Ryan’s face, traces his cheek, and Ryan doesn’t pull away.
He kisses him.
Ryan doesn’t struggle or try to lead the kiss, he just lets him do what he wants, accepting every bit he can give, hands fisted into Colin’s jacket.
Which makes it that much worse.
Colin knows exactly what he’s doing, but he doesn’t even think about Deb. All he can do is move in again and again, in soft, gentle kisses that taste like cheap beer and rain.
They both startle when someone on a motorcycle passes them by.
The walk back to the hotel room seems short after that because he can still feel Ryan’s hot breaths against his lips, the feeling of his hands pulling him closer.
Once they’re in front of the hotel doors they kiss again and it feels glorious. It’s coming home, it’s never leaving, it’s warm and hot and Ryan groans into his mouth.
When they break apart Ryan says, “We can’t,” but he looks broken, like he needs it regardless.
Colin says, “I know,” and follows Ryan up to his room.
mood:
thirsty
Title: Slow Dancing In A Burning Room
Pairing: Colin/Ryan
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The end of the beginning, the beginning of the end. (We’re going down… and you can see it, too.)
Author’s comments: Written for
anoel, for the livelongnmarry auction. She requested Colin/Ryan, angst and sex, based on the song “Slow Dancing In A Burning Room” by John Mayer. Because I decided to focus on the early years it is a slightly different interpretation from what you asked, but I hope you love it regardless! Beta was by
sister_coyote 14th of September 1983
11.42pm-04.14am
The show has gone well and Colin is on his way to the small, cramped dressing room the entire troupe shares. He just needs his coat, really, and then he’s out of there.
Even though the show is over, he still feels Ryan’s careful hands splayed over his body, holding him up, patting him down, playing it up for a laugh. He shivers.
He’s never gotten hard on stage but it was close today. Ryan is generous with his touches, too much so. Ryan is the reason he even agrees to do this, to perform on a small crappy stage in a too-full bar, jokes lost in shouting over the noise, voice hoarse from the cigarette smoke, smiles looking faded in the single spotlight.
“Colin!”
He turns around quickly, and remembers to smile. It’s not too hard, it never is when Ryan is around, but he feels tired tonight. Burned out, not from performing, but from fighting it, fighting this.
Ryan steps too close and grabs his arm, and Colin tries to hide the shiver that runs through him at such a touch in a half dark, small hallway. Ryan’s fingers are four pinpricks of heat even through the sleeve of his shirt.
“You want to go with?” Ryan says, and he’s had something to drink already, Colin can tell by the way he holds on too firmly and the way his eyes light up when Colin leans in closer. It’s something that he, too, normally hides better.
“Yeah,” Colin says, even though he hadn’t been thinking about it before this moment. He never says no. He doesn’t like sitting in a bar with the others, watching Ryan slowly get staggeringly drunk. But he wants to be there when he needs to get home again, when he lets enough of his boundaries down to...
“Just let me get…”
But Ryan is lacing his fingers with his now, a quick playful squeeze, and pulls him along.
“…my coat.” Colin mumbles and staggers behind. It isn’t that cold anyway.
They go on to another bar, not a better but a cheaper one. It’s equally busy, dark and dingy, but there are free peanuts that Ryan eats by the handful. He’s not making enough to drink like this, every night, and still have money left for food. None of them are.
Colin, sitting on the opposite side of the table, pretends not to notice to way Ryan bums a cigarette from one of the waitresses.
He would have preferred to sit closer, slide next to Ryan in a booth in the back, but at the same time he’s glad. It gives him time to breathe. To think. There’s this slow pull between them, every time they are in a room together, and even though Ryan pretends not to feel it he knows he does.
Ryan is ignoring him now, smoking his cigarette with something of a victorious air, talking to the others, their friends (mainly his).
Colin nurses a single, already stale mug of beer, traces his finger over the dampness on the rim again and again.
He knows what might happen tonight. Ryan, between beers four and five, looks at him with the familiar smouldering expression in his eyes. Colin swallows.
He wants it too.
It’ll be on Ryan’s terms, Colin knows, it always is, but he can live with it because there is no getting away from it, this, and he’d rather have half a dozen nights like these than nothing at all.
Ryan doesn’t want anything cute, he’s learned that by now, he wants to get off quick and dirty in the hours between night and morning, where it doesn’t matter, where nobody sees. And yes, yes he can do that now.
“Don’t drink too much,” Colin says silently as Ryan orders his sixth beer. Either his voice carries or Ryan had been listening all along for him to say something, because he turns around and looks at him, a curious expression in his eyes.
“You’re coming home with me,” Ryan says, his tone flat and it’s no question, they’ve decided this somewhere around the time Colin said “Yes” to a drink.
Colin has played this game before though, and, tonight, he’s quite sure he can play it better. “Yeah, that’s why,” he says, and some of their friends laugh hollowly.
Ryan’s eyes widen for a second. He approves, Colin can tell. It’s a fine line, between being too obvious and too safe. They’ve been doing this off and on since they met, and he doubts anyone knows but still it’s probably Ryan’s biggest fear. He likes playing with that a little, too. Colin doesn’t sleep with anyone. Ryan sleeps with enough women to convince even himself he’s not gay.
Ryan finishes his beer off fast and decides for the group they’re all going home. Nobody tells him no. They all let him borrow money, drink, clothes, girlfriends occasionally as well, Colin knows. Somehow, Ryan is loved by all and even though he plays into it regularly, it’s never maliciously. They call Colin a friend too, but Colin knows he’s only there by the grace of Ryan. The other improvisers are darker, somehow. Always more of an edge, a deep, vulgar sense of humor he doesn’t want to compete with.
Colin drives on the way back, his hands clammy on the steering wheel. Everyone gets dropped off and it’s only when he parks in front of Ryan’s building that he realises he doesn’t even know whose car he’s driving. It doesn’t matter.
Ryan lives on the fourth floor but the elevator has stopped working a couple months back. Now they take the stairs together in solemn silence. A rat skitters away as they pass by, and the hallway smells sharply of urine. There’s graffiti on the walls.
When they reach the apartment door they halt, and the moment becomes sharp, a split-second in time that they haven’t found a scenario for yet.
“You coming in?” Ryan asks while struggling to find his keys. He’s looking at his hands, and it could be mundane, just a regular question but it isn’t and Colin feels the air between them heat up. God, he could live for this.
“Sure.” Colin says, his voice breaking, and Ryan looks at him with a flash of tenderness Colin knows isn’t imagined, and then the doors opens and he’s stepping inside.
Ryan’s bed is in the middle of the room, and since he has a different girl every couple of nights, it’s probably not even that clean. Colin doesn’t care. He’s already so looking forward to this his knees feel weak and he’s trembling where he stands.
Ryan, back in his own comfort zone now, smiles while he casually takes off his shirt and flings it on the floor, steps out of his jeans and underwear. His body is long and lean, his cock half hard, a dark shadow against his belly in the low light. He’s only ashamed of himself when it’s Colin bringing him off.
Ryan doesn’t ask, “What do you want?” (He had the first time). He already knows the answer is “anything you can give me,” Colin thinks.
Ryan lies down on the bed, spreads out so wickedly relaxed, so incredibly sure of himself it’s bound to be an act, perfected over dozens of conquests. Colin, still dressed completely, hesitates. He knows he won’t be around long enough to do much. He doesn’t want to presume and go lie down next to him.
“You’re beautiful,” Ryan mumbles like a too-fast confession, eyes fixed on him again, and Colin can’t guess whether that’s Ryan being charming or truthful.
He feels all the words dry up in his throat regardless.
He goes to the bed. His jeans-clad knees make indents in the mattress as he crawls on it and he has to place his hand to steady himself. Ryan doesn’t reach out, just lies there. Colin wants to trace a hand over his stomach. He wants to lean down and kiss, maybe do something silly, like blow a raspberry or tickle a little, anything to make Ryan laugh.
He knows he can’t or, at least, shouldn’t, but it’s only a distant pain now. He knows what he’s been asked, been allowed to do and so he goes down right away, licks the place between Ryan’s thigh and leg, sucks there. Ryan groans.
Colin wants to take it slow, enjoy it, but Ryan never does; when he allows himself to have this he wants it all and fast and hard. He’s already thrusting up, saying, “Come on Colin, come on, please,” and yes, his are eyes closed now, so he doesn’t have to see himself beg.
Colin licks a long stripe over his dick just to see him buck off the bed.
He makes sure to suck and touch on the edge of what he knows must be too much, to see Ryan writhe and kick and say, “God!”
Ryan doesn’t finger his hair or even touch him, but Colin doesn’t mind. He has Ryan’s dick in his mouth, he’s sucking, making it as good and dirty as he can, and after a couple breathless minutes where he focuses on nothing but this he can feel Ryan’s bitter come spurt into his mouth, coat his tongue.
He doesn’t expect much in return.
Especially not as Ryan keeps his eyes closed and sighs, relaxes even more. So Colin lingers, licks every trace of it off, savouring it, because it could be the last, the last…
Finally Ryan pushes him off; he’s too sensitive there now.
Colin gets up and tries to adjust himself without it being too obvious. Ryan already knows he’s hard, aching for it. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter.
But tonight… Ryan’s eyes flutter open again and, like in the bar, he looks calculating.
“Fuck my mouth.”
Colin’s mind stops, and he blinks. “What?” He knows his voice sounds a little high, but oh wow, he wasn’t expecting that.
“’m tired, I’m not getting up, take it or leave it,” Ryan says, and he sounds anything but tired, drunk yes, but he can hold his drink by now and it’s a challenge again.
Colin wonders how he came up with it. Whether he had been thinking about it for a long time already. He nods.
His hands tremble as he opens the buttons of his jeans and he almost falls over his shoes in his haste to kick them off. He keeps his shirt on but Ryan doesn’t seem to care, eyes half-lidded, glued to his dick.
Colin puts his knee on the bed again, and it takes some awkward manoeuvring to get the other over the other side of Ryan’s face. But then Ryan stills him, huge warm hands splayed over the cheeks of his ass and wow, he could probably come from this alone.
He leans into the touch, lets Ryan keep him up, and Ryan smiles a small smile at him.
Ryan opens his mouth kind of hesitantly, looking up at him, and suddenly Colin wonders whether he’s ever done this before.
He takes his own dick, guides it towards Ryan’s mouth and Ryan takes the tip in, licking softly. He moans around the head.
Colin can feel his skin break out in goose bumps all over, and it’s hard to stay sitting up like this, he can feel his legs start to tremble but he is not moving. No.
Ryan isn’t hard anymore so it’s not urgent, what makes it different from anything they’ve done before. He seems to be content with keeping it light, tracing his tongue and lips over Colin’s dick slowly, almost gently so.
Colin falls completely silent, watching the hypnotic in and out of his dick in Ryan’s mouth, feeling the kneading motion he does on his ass. Ryan’s fingers creep closer to his hole but he doesn’t touch. He’s not going to, Colin knows, but even the suggestion of it makes him slowly lose it.
When he comes it’s with a quiet sound, breath hitching, his legs threatening to give out.
He gets off right away, because otherwise he’s going to sink down on Ryan’s chest and he doesn’t want to overdo it, cross the boundaries he’s sure are still somewhere, hidden beneath the calm expression on Ryan’s face.
While Colin gets back into his pants Ryan really does close his eyes and he’s asleep now, breathing steadily.
Colin closes the door behind him with a soft snick.
12th of December 1986
02.11pm-03.59pm
Colin is standing in line for the passport control, the final check before he’s allowed to go.
The plane had landed right on time, thank god, wheels sliding on the icy Toronto runway. Colin had spent those last couple minutes looking out the little window thinking, “Home. This is home now.”
Ryan has been here for the last six months with the Toronto Second City company. Pat, one of Ryan’s many conquests but one that stuck, moved with him. Colin almost expects her to be here too, to be holding onto Ryan’s arm as she does in his mind whenever he thinks of him, this permanent fixture meant to inspire guilt but mainly burning jealousy because god, he spent the last six months wishing that was him, going with Ryan.
But he’s here now.
He auditioned in Vancouver and found out he was hired two weeks ago. He sold his apartment, most of what he owned, and now he’s standing in the Toronto airport, dressed against the cold, holding a duffel bag in one hand and his passport in the other.
His heart stops when he sees Ryan through the glass. Ryan hasn’t seen him yet, but he can feel the familiar hit to the stomach regardless, the sheer idiotic pleasure he feels whenever he’s around him. Six months apart didn’t change that one bit.
Once he‘s through the line, his passport a stamp richer, Ryan walks up to meet him, grinning. There’s a strange moment as they reach touching distance, because Colin wants to hug him, but he’s not sure if he should, and Ryan reaches out but doesn’t go through with it as well, so they’re just standing close, looking at each other over. Ryan eventually says “You’re here,” smiling to himself as if it’s some sort of personal accomplishment, and Colin smiles back. Of course he’s here.
Ryan says “We have an apartment not far from the theatre. We only have to be on by seven, so how about we go there first?”
And Colin only has to nod because he knows, he knows what they’re going to do.
Ryan has seen a lot, heard a lot, learned a lot in the last six months. Colin listens and looks at him and lets it all wash over him. Ryan seems different. He looks a little more well-fed, healthier maybe. His hair is cropped short, he’s wearing a faded out sweater and jeans. They’re already in the car when Colin realises the difference is that he looks happy.
The drive to the apartment is filled with stories, most of them probably not true, Colin thinks. Ryan doesn’t boast, but a lot of his stories begin with “So, we were drunk…” regardless, so he knows not to take them too seriously. But they’re funny anyway, and they’re both laughing by the time they reach Ryan’s apartment.
The place is nicer than he would have expected, obviously Pat’s influence as there’s no trash or dirty clothes lying around. He only has a moment to take it all in before Ryan grabs his arm, leans in too close, his voice uneven as he asks, “Colin…?”
Colin answers with “Yes,” and “Of course,” and lets himself be pushed against the door, pulls Ryan in. His hands slide under Ryan’s clothes so he can feel his warm, flat belly, and he helps him open his zipper, dropping the jeans to the floor. Ryan is already following his touch, urging him on, hands restless and in the way, and when Colin wraps his hand around Ryan’s dick, he sighs at the touch as if it’s something he’s been longing for.
Colin feels incredible, his heart beating fast in his chest. He starts a fast rhythm, hard velvet skin slipping through his fingers, again and again and he soaks it all in, makes sure to remember it for later, because he’s going to want to, he knows.
Ryan closes his eyes and lets his head lean on Colin’s shoulder. Colin wants to bring him off like this, feeling his ragged breaths on his cheek, seeing every nuance, every change in him while he comes.
It doesn’t take long. Ryan holds himself up away from Colin even as he’s coming all over Colin’s hand and stomach, but his long, drawn out moan is genuine.
He takes a couple seconds to breathe afterwards, but when he blinks his eyes open again it’s to smile sheepishly at Colin.
Colin feels the laughter well up in his throat because yes, he’s painfully hard but at the same time he’s shakily happy, enjoying the fact that he just did this, that Ryan is smiling.
He reaches for his own pants, more for relief than the possibility that Ryan will take the hint, but Ryan stills his hands and opens the buttons himself regardless. His pants and underwear fall to the floor, and Ryan reaches for his dick.
Colin sighs at the first touch, at the heat of his hand. Ryan is a little unsure in his movements, looking at him intently to see his reaction, a bright blush starting to creep over his cheeks. It’s perfect.
It’s almost too much right away, Ryan is tentative but he does know what he’s doing, his sweaty hand moving down with a delicious twist at the end, again and again. He laughs softly into Colin’s ear when he says “So good.”
The tension is building and building and Colin feels his orgasm coming on, a warm wave starting from the tips of his toes.
Ryan looks at him just as he’s coming, his eyes a hot flicker that make it even better, because he too is breathing hard though his nose, moving his hand all the way through the aftershocks, saying “Colin,” and he’s beautiful, Colin thinks. Amazing.
It’s only after they clean up (his pants are pretty much ruined) that Ryan says offhandedly “So, eh, you wanne watch some TV or something?”
And Colin snorts.
3rd of July 1987
11.12pm-09.27am
They’re touring with Second City, the first tour Colin has ever done and it’s tiring, certainly, but when they arrive back at the hotel after a show, Ryan comes up to him in the lobby and frowns. “We’re sleeping together.”
“I… when?” Colin says, his brain going through a fast spin of all possible meanings of the word, Ryan’s facial expression, whether he’s serious because if he is he knows they could go into the men’s bathroom and…
“We’re sharing a room for the rest of the tour.” Ryan says, and he’s looking a little paranoid. Colin suddenly gets it because yes, yes they’ve all been sharing rooms before but somehow Deb, their boss, hadn’t booked them together even once before this.
“Bound to happen some time?” Colin says back, eyeing Deb where she’s talking over to one of the other improvisers. Rumour was she thought he was cute, but he thinks it’s just that, a rumour.
Ryan shrugs “Probably.” But he doesn’t look like he really believes it himself.
Ryan goes up and Colin follows a couple minutes later at Ryan’s insistence, but he’s not sure he even should have bothered. The place is deserted at this time, all the guests either asleep or enjoying the nightlife and not planning on coming back any time soon.
Ryan has already closed the curtains when he gets there. There are two twin beds, of course, so Colin doesn’t really know what the problem is. Ryan looks freaked out regardless though, and doesn’t say a word until Colin has locked the door behind him.
“I didn’t ask her for it,” Colin says, feeling defensive. He’s not stupid.
Ryan nods quickly. “I know.” But still he’s twitching uncomfortably.
Colin kicks off his shoes and starts stripping, and Ryan’s eyes follow him across the room before he takes off his shirt himself.
They don’t say anything more, and when they’re both naked Ryan joins him on the bed. Colin touches him, traces his hand over his back, wills him to relax. They’ll be fine.
Ryan leans into the touch for a moment. He almost seems two different people now, the Ryan that Colin knows during the day, the one who jokes with him on stage and nothing more, and the other one that refuses to do anything for weeks on end and when they are together holds on tight. Colin loves it, but at the same time something has shifted, something he’s not sure how to define.
After a couple minutes of careful touching, he never knows what will be okay and what won’t, Ryan says, “I have…” and points towards the night stand.
Colin looks inside. There’s a plastic bag, and, once he opens it, a tube of lube and a twelve pack of condoms inside.
He looks at Ryan. Does he want to…? Ryan is swallowing heavily, looking like he’s about to be placed in front of a firing squat, and says “I’ve done it before, with a woman. It can’t be too different, it’s supposed to be good, I thought, why not right?” It sounds painfully rehearsed, and Colin doesn’t know whether to hate or love him for it.
But he says “Yes,” right away, surprising even himself.
He says, “Do it,” at Ryan’s surprised look. And then, “fuck me,” the words heavy on his chest like he means, “have me” or “take me”, like he himself is something he can throw away and he’s throwing it at Ryan.
He has given up on the illusion that Ryan will leave Pat for him by now.
Ryan looks impressed for a moment, as if he had been expecting him to say no all along, then snaps out of it, and trails his hand over Colin’s thigh. Colin lets him guide him and turns to lie on his stomach.
Ryan fingers him slowly, teases him until his entire body is buzzing with anticipation. Ryan moans while doing it, gets off on it too, and Colin shouldn’t think it’s that hot, but lying there he does.
Ryan spreads him open with two fingers, three. It doesn’t hurt so much as just feel uneasily full, as if he can feel ever ridge and every minuscule movement. When he finds his prostate Colin has to grip onto the pillow to smother the noise, because it feels like nothing he’s even experienced before.
Ryan fucks him slowly, at a steady rhythm for a long time, and when he looses it, hips pounding an uneven staccato, he screams hoarsely. Later his hand snakes around to palm Colin’s dick, and Colin comes after a couple strokes.
When Ryan slides out and he turns around it feels painful, and he lies back, tiredly.
It’s only then that he sees the wet lines of tears on Ryan’s cheeks. Ryan turns away, but he’s seen them regardless.
They don’t say anything more that night, although they both fall asleep in the small bed, Ryan holding onto him loosely.
The next morning, Ryan is his regular grouchy self again, and, while they’re standing close in front of the tiny bathroom mirror, both of them shaving, he says, “You should ask Deb out.”
“Isn’t she married?” Colin asks, rinsing his razor under the water.
Ryan shrugs, “In the middle of a divorce. She likes you.” And then he looks at him in the mirror, “You need to, Colin. She…” And Colin doesn’t need to hear the unspoken suspects at the end of that.
29th of January 1989
05.03am-06.19am
Colin is at the one event he thought he’d never experience. His own bachelor’s party. It’s late, very late. There’s still porn playing on the screen, a man and a woman going at it quite loudly. Her plastic breasts bounce up and down as she gets fucked, and the man rumbles in appreciation.
Colin doesn’t want to watch per se, but he can’t seem to muster up the energy to tear his eyes away. She’s whining now, high, screechy sounds.
He knows he’s hard, in a detached kind of way, while also wondering how anyone ever enjoys this.
Most of the guests have already left, their murmured well-wishes leaving him cold. He’s gone from drunk to sober to smashingly drunk again in the last few hours.
“So I guess I’m marrying her then?” Colin asks to the room at large, to the scotch he’s holding in his hand, to Ryan who’s sitting next to him. He doesn’t do it for the shock effect, although it’s there. The few guests left are too drunk to hear him anyhow, cheering at the TV.
Ryan… Ryan isn’t drunk though.
Colin has watched Ryan the entire night. Ryan, sitting in the middle of the party. Cracking dirty jokes, having the time of his life. Ryan, not drinking anything.
Ryan, right then, is the one who gets up and convinces everyone the party is over now. Colin hears his words, vaguely. Somebody yells goodbye at him. He doesn’t care.
When everyone is gone, Ryan comes back to sit next to him again. The guy on TV is coming now, the camera zooming in on his spurting dick, the blonde leaning close so she can lick some of it off.
Colin sits there, silently, for what seems like long, long minutes. The couple on the TV gets joined by a brunette, who fucks the blonde with a glass dildo. His eyes, feeling like there’s sand in them, slide shut for a little while. When he opens them again the credits are rolling.
He’s not waiting for anything and it’s only when Ryan says slowly, “Yes, you’re marrying her,” that he remembers what he had said, before.
Colin tries to focus on him.
“You… do love her, right?” Ryan asks. He looks extremely uncomfortable. Colin thinks he’s never heard him use the word “love” before and it almost makes him giggle; only he’s so tired. He’s sinking away in the pillows, and even turning his head to look at Ryan is tiring.
“I love her,” he says through the thick mist. The room is sort of spinning now. It’s true, he loves her. He loves the fact that he can share a bed with her every night. That he can hold her hand whenever they go out. That she wants to have a child, still, even though she’s nearing forty.
And then, as his eyes fall shut again, he mumbles, “but I love you more.”
3rd of March 1992
07.24pm-07.27pm
When he wakes up, Ryan is gone.
Ryan even leaves the country a couple weeks later so it must have made quite an impression, Colin thinks wryly. Ryan moves to LA and marries Pat in what must be the smallest wedding of the decade because neither Colin nor any of their friends get invited. Or ever hear from him again.
Colin auditions for a show called “Whose Line,” that month. He doesn’t get on, although he later hears that Ryan does.
Deb gets pregnant, and then gets an amazing job offer. The only down side being that it forces them to move to LA as well. Colin has never been a fan of irony, but arriving at the LA airport and hearing Deb say “Well, I guess this is home now” makes him nearly lash out.
Which is probably why he hates the fucking city from the moment he sets foot in it.
He never actually runs into Ryan, which is a torture in itself. He wakes up every morning with the knowledge that Ryan is close, most likely only living a couple miles over, hell, they’re probably looking for jobs in the same places, but still it doesn’t happen.
He’s stuck with a screaming baby in a tiny, blood-hot apartment in an endless summer where Deb goes out to find work and they have to sell most of everything they own to make ends meet. He often remembers Ryan living on nothing but peanuts, alcohol and women. And how easy he had made it seem back then.
Now he needs to make money, somehow, because he has this small, fragile being that’s screaming bloody murder because they can’t afford the good diapers, the good formula. He’s only been a father for a month and already he’s fucking it up.
Deb starts joking about selling their kid so they can at least keep the CD’s, but he finds it hard to keep on laughing. They live on food stamps, for a while. Out of work actors in LA, nothing special there.
When a second audition for Whose Line comes up he has to argue and fight to be even allowed in for a second time, but he aces it.
They live on hope that way for a while, even though he just gets paid enough for the plane tickets and to keep them holding on for another month or two. He takes the cheapest flights he can find so he’s underway for two days, crossing eight time zones, and when he’s finally there he sucks.
He clinically, methodically thinks about killing himself on the way back.
It becomes winter but not really cold after that. He spends hours in the completely empty apartment staring at the walls, trying to be there for a kid that’s crawling now. “At least he can’t get into anything,” Deb says, and punches him when he looks too sombre.
And then he gets a phone call and he’s flying out to London again. He’s being called back for a second taping. With Ryan.
He doesn’t even have a suit to wear since they sold them all, so he goes to a thrift store and gets the cheapest thing there.
“Colin, we need this.” Deb says before he leaves, and he nods. “Yeah.”
“It was you,” Colin says. He’s standing in the parking lot of the studio building in London, in the drizzling rain, waiting for the second Whose Line taping of his life to start. Talking to a Ryan that almost looks like a stranger, now.
“You made them ask me back,” Colin says and as he’s looking at Ryan and he still won’t look him in the eyes, he’s sure of it now. Ryan must have heard. Someone must have talked, told him he needed it badly, and he made it happen. Out of some misplaced sense of guilt or duty, he doesn’t know.
Ryan says, “Guess I did,” while flicking his cigarette on the concrete ground. He doesn’t wait for a response before walking away.
22nd of September 1993
11.31pm-03.06am
Britain becomes both something that’s on his mind constantly and the one place he dreads going to.
He gets to go on stage with Ryan again, and he never should have forgotten that that was where he had fallen for the guy in the first place.
The first months, Ryan goes out of his way to make him shine. When they’re on stage, they joke together, move together seamlessly and they’re funny, they’re good. Off-stage Ryan makes sure not to interact with him more than is necessary, but it seems to have been settled. They can work together still, and that’s what matters.
Soon Colin starts getting hired for shows without Ryan as well, and he can move his family back to Toronto. They’re saved.
It’s a night in the second year when they’re sitting in a bar, all of them, Ryan, Clive, Tony, Richard, Josie, when Ryan, sitting three seats over, tells Clive in passing, “Colin has a son.”
Colin is surprised he even knows, he hasn’t seen Luke yet, although, on second thought, Deb might have sent them a picture. The conversation goes on, but he doesn’t forget.
As some of them leave for the bathroom and there’s a silence falling over the table, Colin breaks their steady trust by looking directly at Ryan and asking him, “How’s Pat?”
Ryan gives him a long look back that makes the hairs on his arms rise before answering, “She’s pregnant.” And then, after giving him another look, he smiles wryly, “I’m scared shitless.”
Colin shakes his head and he’s saying something reassuring in return before he can remember that they don’t talk, anymore.
The one question settles something else between them though, because suddenly they’re talking. Ryan tells a cynical story about his own Whose Line audition, and Colin tells him about Luke’s birth, and before they know it everyone has left and they’re alone at the table, recalling memories from their Second City time.
Around 2.30am the bartender politely asks them to leave because they’re closing up.
It’s raining, when they walk back to the hotel, it always seems to be, but neither of them care. Colin was careful not to drink too much, and Ryan hasn’t either, he knows, but still they’re being loud, laughing, joking, trading mundane stories about their lives.
Then Ryan says, to the end of one of his stories, “So you’re happy now,” and it’s never a question, with him, it’s a definition, a diagnosis.
“Yes,” Colin says, because he quite probably is. He’s a father, a husband. He loves and cares and is loved and cared for now.
Then he looks at Ryan, the words “Are you?” are dying on his lips because all he can see is empty, sad eyes.
Ryan was always a good liar. Somehow, he hadn’t seen this. Probably because he didn’t want to, Colin thinks.
They’re standing still, looking at each other and Colin feels the slow burn flare again. Because, if anything, he always wanted to make Ryan happy.
He reaches out to Ryan’s face, traces his cheek, and Ryan doesn’t pull away.
He kisses him.
Ryan doesn’t struggle or try to lead the kiss, he just lets him do what he wants, accepting every bit he can give, hands fisted into Colin’s jacket.
Which makes it that much worse.
Colin knows exactly what he’s doing, but he doesn’t even think about Deb. All he can do is move in again and again, in soft, gentle kisses that taste like cheap beer and rain.
They both startle when someone on a motorcycle passes them by.
The walk back to the hotel room seems short after that because he can still feel Ryan’s hot breaths against his lips, the feeling of his hands pulling him closer.
Once they’re in front of the hotel doors they kiss again and it feels glorious. It’s coming home, it’s never leaving, it’s warm and hot and Ryan groans into his mouth.
When they break apart Ryan says, “We can’t,” but he looks broken, like he needs it regardless.
Colin says, “I know,” and follows Ryan up to his room.
mood:
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