Summer fic: "Life of Galilei"

[indybaggins.livejournal.com]

Title: Life of Galilei
Pairing: Colin/Greg, with references to Greg/Jen, Colin/Deb, Greg/Ryan and Colin/Ryan
Rating: R
Summary: Written for pdglyph for the Summer's End Fic Exchange. She requested: “Colin/Greg, something clever and steamy in a stripclub for Ryan's birthday party.” There’s two failing marriages, Colin and Greg’s first meeting in a gay bar, and sex in a dark backroom. Enjoy!





The night Greg asks Jen to marry him he takes her to the ballet. More for symbolism than anything else, he’s known her for almost a decade; he knows she’ll say yes. But still, she’s a woman that can get mighty pissed off if he assumes that she wants anything ‘normal’, so therefore he thinks asking in a full theatre might be the safest course of action.

Greg plays with the ring he bought her (decent sized diamond, but nothing too fancy either), hidden in his coat pocket all night. He likes the bounce of the round, smooth shape between his thumb and middle finger. He waits until the last act, until the swan is dying on stage, music dramatic and soft. The surface of the ring has warmed up in his sweaty hands. He gives it to her in the dark, just puts it on the palm of her hand, let her hold on. Yes? No?

She doesn’t say a word, but her hand sneaks towards his crotch and strokes him there, getting him half-hard embarrassingly fast.

“I think yes, no?” she breathes into his ear, and Greg bursts out laughing.

On stage the ballerina loses a feather, spinning faster and faster. One of people sitting next to them shushes him, but Greg can’t stop laughing. God.


---


On the first date Colin ever goes on with Deb, they talk about two things: improv and Ryan. Colin knows how to be funny when talking about both those things, and Deb likes to laugh. Their second date is a lot quieter, a slow leaning together, dancing, and later both they both admit to having liked that one better.

They have to wait until Deb finalizes her divorce until they can be seen in the open. It doesn’t bother Colin, he doesn’t have many friends who needed to know anyway, and the truth is he likes her so much he would look past any flaw. It does make him uneasy, in a way, to know that he is following up on another act, taking the stage not knowing what actor has been there before him, but after talking to Ryan he gets over it.

He marries her after only six months of dating when she gets pregnant. It wasn’t meant to happen, an accident, but Colin asks, and Deb says yes. At the time he felt like the luckiest man in the world; she is gorgeous, talented, fun to be with, everything he ever wanted (if not who he had wanted, but that was beside the point).

When a year later they’re dirt poor, living of food stamps with a baby in a crappy apartment in LA and fighting daily… Colin isn’t so sure anymore.


---


Greg doesn’t remember the day he met Jen. He knows it was somewhere in the early eighties, and that they shared friends and therefore inevitably, fucks, so that it was only to be expected that eventually they hooked up themselves. He doesn’t remember the first time he kissed her, or even the tenth time. He just knows that after a while she was there in his bed and his life and he liked her there. She was intelligent, good-looking, and, most importantly, just that tad more wild that he ever had been, both in bed and out. She kept him on his toes.

By the time Greg meets Colin (a day he does remember) Greg has been married for two years. He has met, fucked, loved and lost Ryan in the time it took to shoot a couple of Whose Line episodes (a cycle to be repeated many times). He has heard numerous things about Colin (shy, good performer, sucked, never coming back, is coming back, is Ryan’s best friend) but doesn’t believe most of it. He has seen the first episode with Colin in it, even studied it a little out of curiosity. But he has never met the man. Until the day Greg is sitting by the bar of his favorite gay club, and he sees Colin walking through the door.


---


Colin feels absolutely, completely, down. He’s having a night to himself, finally, but sitting at home with a crying baby while Deb goes out to work isn’t exactly conductive to making friends so now that he’s finally out here, in the LA nightlife, he doesn’t have a clue where to go. They don’t have a TV because they can’t afford one. No paper to read, no books. Very little furniture. Just a red, screaming thing he holds on his arm and lets pee in the sink because the diapers need to last as long as possible.

The gay district is 1.2 miles from their apartment and he hasn’t been in this particular one, but yet he manages to drift towards it on foot without thinking about it. He’s been on similar streets in similar cities; it’s a familiar, but never loved, road. Ryan. He can’t think of Ryan anymore, he let him down, got married too, he’s… they’re nothing. Instead it’s bodies, just bodies he sees. There’s the close thrumming of his skin, the prickle of sweat on the back of his neck, the longing for something different than what he has, an escape.

Colin walks into the first bar that looks like it could be serious, no dancing but a small sitting area and, most likely, a bigger room or at least an alleyway behind it. He’s not naive enough to think he can just do this without remembering, the memory always sticks to him like a second skin after he comes out of a place like this. But he knows what he wants. He wants to be broken down and built up again, he wants to lose control, wants to pant and sweat and feel, to exist for a moment without any consequence.

He walks into the bar, and sits down next to a man that is giving him a very peculiar look.


---


Greg had been kicked out of the house by Jen around seven because he was bustling with restless energy, annoying her to no end. She had stopped making him laugh, now. He knew she was probably having a date herself, she regularly slept with other people and their marriage had changed nothing about that. So on days like this, when she said things like “Oh just please go have some, Greg” and “Don’t forget your keys!” he managed to feel grateful for her, still, even though it was getting harder.

By the time Colin walks into the bar, Greg is quite buzzed already. There is the quarter-of-a-joint he had smoked with the barman while he was on break. There is the whiskey, and the pitcher of beer, and also the fact that he hasn’t eaten anything but some nachos since lunch. So all in all, life is having those pleasant fuzzy edges and he is both eyeing the blue lit bottles on the bar as trying to make eye contact with the leather-clad bear of a man two tables over. One more drink, and he is planning to see if he can get the guy to follow him into the back room.

And then it all gets unhinged somehow as this beige-looking nobody walks in and sits down on the black bar stool next to him. It takes Greg a second to place who it is and when he does he feels a kind of a let-down. Still, there’s no escaping now.

“Colin?” Greg asks over the beat of the music, “Colin Mochrie?” He’s aware that he could be much more of a jerk about this, if he had played his cards right he could have fucked the man and whispered Ryan’s name in his ear when he came, just to see him freak the hell out. For a second Greg curses that he didn’t because damn, that could have been amusing.

Instead the effect he’s having now is simply depressing. “You know me?” Colin asks, expression like he’s been caught at something much worse than having a drink. In a gay bar. While wearing his wedding ring, Greg notices. Colin is looking at his own hands, worrying them. He looks pretty miserable.

“No,” Greg says truthfully. And then, taking the smallest amount of pity on the man, he extends his hand and says “Greg Proops, I’m…” he wants to say that he’s an improviser too. That he has been on Whose Line (and what, somehow he does not get recognised?) but he changes his mind. This is not what this guy wants to hear. No one comes to a place like this to make friends. So Greg goes with what he thinks will have the most interesting result: “I know Ryan.” And then, at Colin’s surprised look, “I’ve fucked him.”

Colin doesn’t respond straight away. He slowly blinks, but instead of getting angry (what Greg possibly was going for) he slowly turns to completely face Greg.

He’s interested, Greg realizes with a start. He wants to know more.

“Have you?” Greg asks while he takes a package of cigarettes out of his pocket, and lights one. He does not offer one to Colin. He’s somewhere inwardly thinking that this is the strangest pick-up line he has ever used but that it seems to be working, as Colin is looking him over, a weary expression in his eyes but slowly building sense of something else as well.

It takes a minute, Colin taking a breath, his tongue coming out to lick his lips (Greg looks at it, studies him without a sense of guilt, he wants to watch this Colin, to see who he really is). Then Colin finally looks him in the eye and says, “Yes.”

Greg feels a strange thrill. Now this will be a story to tell. Tony will love to hear it. But it isn’t over yet. There’s more there. “Yeah?” Greg asks, going for broke now as his hand leaves the rim of his already forgotten drink, and he moves it slowly, hotly, to lie on Colin’s knee. It’s a bold move, and Greg was again expecting rejection. But Colin doesn’t shy away from the touch. Instead he flagrantly moves into it so that Greg’s hand slides over the denim towards the middle of Colin’s thigh. Greg feels a slow rise of heat. His dick twitches in appreciation. This is going to be so much fun.

“Was it good, fucking him?” Greg asks lowly, the smoke of his cigarette curling towards the ceiling, his voice already betraying that he is liking this. Colin starts to blush, with how close they are sitting Greg can practically feel the heat radiating from him, but he does not seem hesitant any more. He’s enjoying this just as much as Greg is.

Colin scrapes his throat. “It’s… it was him who fucked me,” he says, a little hoarse, eyes reflecting the bar lights, pupils big and black.

“Hmm,” Greg massages Colin’s thigh, lets his fingers dig into the flesh and let go again. Slowly he moves up higher, stopping an inch before the crotch, doing it again. Colin is angling his body towards Greg’s hand, wanting it, his breaths coming a bit quicker, tongue darting out to lick his lips again, but Greg intentionally does not touch any further. Not yet.

Instead Greg leans over, and nips at Colin’s neck, worries his teeth there and licks a little, tasting sweat and cheap aftershave, before he whispers into Colin’s ear “and did you like it?”

He can feel Colin’s surprised exhale at the back of his neck, and his small gasp when Greg finally, finally, lets his fingers trail over Colin’s erection. He can feel its shape through the denim, let his fingers play with the hard warmth.

“Yes.” Colin says rather harshly, but his body is obviously enjoying this too, his eyes half-lidded, his chest a bit damp with sweat.

Greg moves back a bit, and tries to think clearly. His fingers on Colin’s cock are just waiting to take it out and finish him off, or to put it in his mouth and taste him there, or… He can see a lot of possibilities, but the barman is already throwing them a dirty look. No sex here.

He stubs his cigarette, and says “let’s go to the back.” Greg is being brash even by his own standards, but this Colin is just complicated and desperate enough to make it worth while. He wants to have this man that Ryan had before him, wants to make him moan, wants to give him the pleasure he’s so obviously longing for.

Colin just nods and gets off the chair, dislodging Greg’s hand. Like it was already agreed upon before he ever sat down.


---


Colin does feel as if there is a sense of destiny involved. He did not mean to go into this bar. He did not mean to run into this man with the designer glasses and all-too-knowing eyes. But he came here to momentarily fall in love with whoever would touch him, and the fact that this person has been touched by Ryan as well makes it so much better. Colin wants to both justify and relive the anger, the sadness, how good it all was. But at the same time he knows that he never will, that what he really wants is simply to get off, to pretend, the need humming throughout his whole body now but centring on his dick.

Greg walks in front of him, showing him the way. There is a long straight hallway leading them away from the sound, the smoke and heat of the bar but it’s completely dark, so Colin holds onto the rough wall and lets it guide him. Greg, much more confident, does not and as a result nearly trips over a person or possibly two that are sprawled out on the floor. Colin can see a flash of flesh, somehow paler than the shadows, and hear Greg apologising. Colin feels his heartbeat rise. That’s going to be them. Soon.

Greg does not seem to be content with the hallway, and instead walks on all the way to the end, through flaps of leather, where there is a bigger, cushioned room. Colin notices the smell of sex, musky and heavy, even before his ears pick up the sounds of slapping flesh, slow sucking and a mumble here and there over the muted music filtering in from the bar. They are very much not alone. Colin does not mind, and stops Greg right there by reaching for his wrist and pulling it. Greg complies, they are just a couple paces into the room but that seems far enough, and Colin feels his way down to Greg’s belt.

It’s harder to undo a belt, a button and a zipper in the dark on someone else than it would have been on himself, and Colin’s hands are shaking. When he does finally get the belt to open, Greg’s warm hands reach down to help and pull out his own dick. It feels hot in Colin’s hands, hard and smooth, and he does not hesitate at all before going down on his knees (and now the reason for the padded floor becomes much more evident) and slowly, teasingly lets the tip of his tongue trace the length of Greg’s dick and wetly slide over the head.

Greg does not make a sound, but his dick jerks on its own accord, and Colin wraps his fingers over the base and takes the tip between his lips. He makes sure to open his mouth and move in a long, slow slide, to take him in as far as he can at once, and now he does hear Greg’s sigh of approval. He repeats it several times, going deep and back again, brain on zero and senses on maximum, he can feel some of Greg’s pubes tickle his nose when he goes down, his mouth is already cramping, his throat aching, but he goes faster and faster, his own arousal only strengthening. When Greg’s hand wraps around the back of Colin’s head and holds him there, slowly starts fucking his mouth, Colin lets out a muted moan himself. This is too good.

He’s not used to it though: after a couple wonderful thrusts Greg goes too far, bumping his throat, and Colin chokes. He feels a moment of absolute panic, and then Greg’s grip loosens and he falls back on his knees, coughing violently.

“You okay there?” Greg asks, his fingers fumbling in the dark but finding Colin’s cheek and stroking it, and Colin can already hear the breathlessness in his voice. Colin wants to say yes, but instead he coughs again, and Greg takes his shoulder and motions his up.

Colin is a little unsteady on his feet and he’s glad for Greg’s grip. Greg’s face is close now; Colin can see a glint of light from somewhere reflecting in his glasses. He can’t see Greg’s face clearly, so he doesn’t know if it was Greg’s movement or his own, but suddenly Greg’s lips bump his cheekbone, and then travel down to his lips and they’re kissing wetly and sloppily, Greg’s mouth hot and all alcohol. Colin lets his hand sneak down to wrap around Greg’s dick, Greg’s hand find its way towards the front of Colin’s pants, and they move together somewhat clumsily but Colin is enjoying himself a lot none the less.

Greg’s fingers on his dick know exactly what they are doing. Greg changes the speed and tightness of his movements, and eventually adds a little twist at the end that has Colin groaning into his neck. When it gets really good Colin forgets what he was doing to Greg and just holds on, tries to stay standing as Greg moves quicker and quicker and rumbles something vaguely encouraging into his ear before using his teeth on Colin’s neck again. That little sting combined with the immense rush of feeling Greg’s fingers are giving him is enough to send him over the edge, and he comes all over Greg’s hand.

Greg holds onto him for a couple more seconds, lets him come down, and then starts searching around in his pockets. Colin panicky thinks for a second that he must be going for a condom now, and tries to decide whether he even wants that or not, but Greg gets out a folded cotton handkerchief and calmly starts wiping his fingers with it.

Colin goes fishing for his underpants and pants that have drifted towards his knees, and pulls them all up together, not caring about the mess. For the first time he gets the feeling like he’s being looked at, his eyes have adjusted to the dark better and when he looks around he sees that yes, he is. He meets the eyes of a muscular man with a mustache busy fucking another one from behind, grunting with every move. The man winks at him. Colin looks away, and feels a sudden sense of loss. He doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t need to be here.

He mumbles “I’m sorry,” to Greg, and walks away. He can hear Greg shouting “Hey!” at him, and then another voice replying with “You don’t have to go yet, sweetie!” it only serves to make Colin walk faster, and once he’s outside he even puts in a little sprint, stopping after a couple blocks because he is already out of breath. Damn it.

He gets lost twice on the way back home, but he is in no hurry. The closer he gets to the apartment the slower he walks. His pants are sticky, both on the inside and where he sat down on his knees. He has a mark on his neck that he can still feel the sting off. He can’t go home. But he does.


---


The next time Greg ever sees Colin (and by then, he was hoping he would never again), is Ryan’s birthday. The initial curiosity Greg had felt about Colin was now replaced by a vague sense of pity. He had seen men deeper in the closet than that but very few quite so desperate because of it. Whenever Ryan would bring him up; and he did, frequently, especially now that Colin was contracted for more Whose Line episodes, Greg would try to give the most non-committal answer possible. Which worked out fine until Ryan started asking defensively whether he thought Colin didn’t deserve to be there. Greg quite enjoyed Ryan, possibly even loved him every once in a while, so by the time the birthday party rolled around he had resigned himself to being civil, if only for Ryan’s sake.

The party was in one of the dingiest strip clubs of LA Ryan had been able to find, and there certainly were a lot to choose from (Greg knew, as he had recommended a couple). This one had the trademark aged stripper who could open a beer bottle in a way Greg preferred not to imagine. Ripped upholstery on the seats, sticky floors, the faint odour of urine and a broken neon light, sadly displaying “OOBS” in a faded pink to every passer-by. But, most importantly, it was within Ryan’s budget to rent out the whole place, and because it was his birthday he even got a special deal involving whipped cream and a girl of his choice on top.

So there they all went, all of Ryan’s friends within the area anyway, most unknown to Greg but he was going regardless. And of course, the first person he sees when he pulls up onto the parking lot is Colin fucking Mochrie. He is standing near the entrance, smoking a cigarette by himself. There are quite a lot of cars already, and as soon as Greg steps out of his own he can hear the thump-thump of the music inside. Colin looks up when he walks closer, and Greg takes a breath, ready for the face off.

Only Colin is awfully polite. “Greg,” he says, looking down at his hands in a way Greg now recognises as nervousness. Colin continues quickly, “Look, I’m sorry for the… what happened. We’ll have to work together, and we’re both Ryan’s friends, so do you think we can forget this?”

Greg knows Colin must have been waiting out here for him quite a while, judging by the scattering of half-smoked cigarettes under his feet and the rehearsed tone to the lines he just said. There’s no ring on Colin’s finger tonight, Greg sees. Also some of the dark shadows under his eyes are gone. He nods to Colin’s hands, “you’re not wearing your wedding ring to a strip club, but you were to a gay bar?”

Colin looks up at him with a flicker of surprise. Then he says, somewhat strained, “My wife left me.”

“Oh,” Greg says, “so that means that next time a guy wants to fuck you you might want to stick around?”

He hadn’t meant to say it, per se. For a second he thought that he had done it, made this Colin pissed as hell. But instead he sees the tiny tell-tale of a smile, and, at his own smile, Colin actually laughs and says “I guess so, yes?”

And that is the moment where Greg actually forgives him, and starts liking Colin.

They go in together, and find an excited Ryan with a pink crown made out of paper mache on his head grinding a 300-pound black woman in a string bikini. He leaves his stripper for a moment, shouting “my two favorite people!” and hugging them both, and then goes back to the serious business of getting horribly drunk and embarrassing himself in the process.

As they both watch Ryan walk away Greg sighs and says rhetorically, “What is it with him and strippers?” But Colin takes it upon himself to tell the tale of how a seventeen year old Ryan got his very first time with a good looking but balding transsexual named Edna, and Greg is hooked. He doesn’t know how much of what Colin says is true and how much of it is made up but he doesn’t care because before he knows it he’s sitting there drinking a beer next to Colin, listening and telling his own raunchy stories until he’s laughing so hard the beer bubbles out of his nose.

They stay together the whole night, partially because neither Greg nor Colin know any one else but Ryan and he’s just busy getting drunk and pinching everyone’s asses (and later, throwing up on his own shoes), but mostly because somehow, it’s easy to get along.

It’s only at the very end of the night, when it’s getting light and violet-blue outside again, Ryan has been driven home and the strippers are ready to close up, that there is a moment of awkwardness.

They walk over the parking lot together, and Greg really, really wants to do more than just say goodbye. Colin seems oblivious to it though, still laughing with twinkling eyes about something that happened five years earlier, his lips red from all the talking and booze, his movements a bit slower, sleepy, and Greg decides to just risk this newly found understanding and kiss him. He moves forward, interrupts Colin’s path, and just meshes his lips to Colin’s.

For a long, stomach turning moment, Colin stays perfectly still. And then there is the whisper of his tongue to Greg’s lips, and Greg opens his mouth, and this kiss is so much better than the one before it because it’s outside, they are being seen, Colin is threading his fingers through Greg’s hair and Greg is giving back as much as he has and they’re both trembling together, wanting this.

And when Greg, more as a joke than anything, whispers into Colin’s ear “So… about the fucking?” Colin laughs out loud and mock-pushes him away a bit, but not too far, and then kisses him again. And Greg, while he opens Colin’s pants, realizes that they still managed to become friends after all. And smiles.







mood: indescribable