Introspection
Title: Introspection
Pairing: Ryan/Colin
Rating: PG
Words: 1042
Disclaimer: This is an act of fiction intended for entertainment purposes only. No slander is intended, I own nothing!
Summary: Ryan does a little thinking, but refuses to get a clue. ––
Colin gets – weird – on me sometimes. There’s really no other word for it. We’ll be joking away, or talking, not even to each other, and I’ll just get this – feeling. He’ll go sort of – quiet and hard and – it’s like a snail pulling into its shell. Like on the show, when he’s always been so good at coming out of a scene, while I’ll still be laughing or whatever as we walk to the chairs, he snaps his mental fingers and click – he’s Col again.
I’m not putting this very well.
See, I don’t understand it myself.
There’s never any pattern to it, it’s not like he does it after I say something stupid – because I do that a fair bit, to be honest – or after I say something about what his friendship means to be – I do that quite a lot as well – or after I can’t hide the grin when we do a bit of stage kissing – that’s always just too much fun!
At the time, it bugs me, I mean it really gets under my skin, and I’ll find myself chasing after him – whether that means physically, following him outside or wherever he goes for a cigarette or a breath of air – or just staring at him, trying to make him meet my eyes by the force of my will alone. He almost never does, and when he does, sometimes his expression – it scares me. Because it’s says so many things I don’t understand.
We have this ‘psychic connection’, it works very well for us on the show and the guys always rib us about it when we use it to win at stupid games – drinking games or some mini betting or whatever – like we’re cheating, somehow. It’s not cheating, it’s not even knowing what he’s thinking, it’s just knowing what he’ll do next, and that he knows what I’ll do next. Like we’re joined in a place before thought begins.
So when he does this drawing away, this avoidance, this closing down, it really scares me. That I can’t make that connection, that he won’t let me make that connection.
I don’t understand it.
There was one night, years back, when we were all hanging out, drinking over at Drew’s, and Colin did his thing. I don’t really remember why, I think Greg had been regaling us with a story about some businessman who climbed out of his window to join a Pride parade in Frisco or something, or maybe we had been playing that ‘I never’ drinking game, I’m really not sure. Anyway, that’s not important, Colin went all weird, tho I’m sure I’m the only one who noticed. I couldn’t not, it was as though someone had cut my heart strings, closed up my veins. I breathe Colin, when we’re together.
Man, that sounds sappy.
So he excuses himself and gets up, and when he doesn’t come back, I follow. He’s in the garden – Drew has this amazing garden, pool, tennis courts, orchard – under the trees in the dark and I almost didn’t see him. But he was smoking, and the glow gave him away. His eyes were really bright in the darkness, and to this day I don’t know if it was the reflection from the house or if he’d been crying.
I thought perhaps something had happened at home, asked if Deb was okay, the kids.
He had turned away, and laughed this weirdly bitter laugh that I’d never heard before, and did not suit him. Told me I always knew exactly the wrong thing to say. I had thought I was being a good friend, and that had hurt.
I’m a bit of a short fuse, it makes me a good comedian, but sometimes it makes me a shit person. Anyway, I had a go at him then, told him I had only wanted to help, and what the hell was his problem, anyway. I think he’d been off with me for a few weeks, looking back, and I was pretty damn sick of it.
I think he said something angry back, but I don’t remember what it was because of what he did in the same moment. Lunged at me, hands scrabbling into my shirt, pushing me backwards roughly into one of the trees. Reared back his head and I thought he was going to bring his forehead smashing down into my face – I’d lost my footing and he was taller than me in that moment. Then he just dropped it forward toward mine instead, so close, and I thought he was – thought he was going to kiss me.
I know, I know, who thinks that about his best friend?
But then he just let me go, mumbled an apology and said he’d be in in a minute.
I’m ashamed to admit that I high-tailed it out of there as though the devil himself was after me.
He came in and the party continued and after another drink or so we were fine again, though it took another couple of weeks for our connection to reknit itself.
Greg’s a pretty smart guy, as he never fails to demonstrate, given the chance. I asked him, later that month, what it was with Colin. I explained – briefly, I keep my confidences – what the problem was, at least, how Col tended to act sometimes, and asked what he thought it meant.
Greg had looked at me with this – condescending – look on his face, that made me wanna sock him one, before it changed into something softer, like pity. He had said that it wasn’t his place to say, and if I couldn’t figure it out, maybe I should just ask Colin straight out.
I never did. Guys don’t talk about that sort of stuff, right? Guys like me, anyway. Greg might, but Greg’s – well, Greg.
It doesn’t happen very often these days, anyway. Or maybe Col’s just better at hiding it.
Sometimes, it makes me feel like the biggest jerk though, like I’m missing out on something that everybody else just knows.
I wish I could ask him.
I wish he’d talk to me.
I wish – ah, what does it matter, anyway?
He’s still my friend. Nothing’s ever gonna change that.
I won’t let it.