Drabble

[holl-e-wood.livejournal.com]

I started writing one fic, got sidetracked into another, which spawned a third idea, which ended up totally different from how it started out, and somehow in the midst of all that, this turned up. :)  Sometimes I love insomina.


Title: Drabble, for lack of anything better.
Disclaimer: I own the Arizona postcard that came in the mail for me earlier, but that's about it.
A/N: Colin's pov, but I like to think it could almost be interchangable. If Ryan was feeling mushy.



We never spoke of it. How could we? We had families. Lives. Responsibilities.

 

Obligations.

 

But sometimes, after a stage kiss, after a gaze would linger a second to long, after a brief hand on my shoulder as we took our places for the next game, or, God help me, something like the "boa constrictor" incident--sometimes, the silence didn't matter.

 

We were always, first and foremost, professionals. The stage was liberating, open--magic--but never uninhibited. Not only because we had to be aware of the censor and the shifting standards of 'TV-Friendly,' but because it wasn't just us out there. The enchantment of the stage came with its own obligation: to inspire laughter. We welcomed that charge, and it invited personality, honesty, but only to a degree. The price of performance is always in the limits it defines for the expression of that personality and honesty. At some point, the crucial point, we ended, and Actors began.

 

Actors may safely kiss and tell, but they're not allowed to kiss and mean it. 

 

Nevertheless. It was within that delicate process of comedic creation, in forming and finding the tricky chemistry of a great set of friends and actors on stage, that we shaped the silence. For a few moments, we could pretend duty would wait. All that mattered was the next line, the next touch, the next smile.

 

God. His smile.

 

I would stop at nothing to make him smile. Even now.

 

I don't pick up the phone; I don't wish for it to ring. I perform with others, sharing genuine laughter again and again. I tell my family I love them, and I mean it with all my heart. And I know, with the conviction of a lifetime of friendship, that wherever he is, he's doing the same thing. Without stage or banter, without the casual brushing of my arm against his or an audience to egg us on, I help preserve the silence.

 

Then sometimes, late at night, or during an unexpected still moment in the afternoon, I'll find myself smiling. And for a brief, shining moment, I'm sure he's smiling, too