No Light, But...
Title:No Light, but...
Author: Iskytheisk
Pairing: Ryan/colin
Rating:
Wordcount:
No Light, But...
There’s no initiation either into such mysteries.
Contrary to what chick-flicks would have us believe, there is no formula for falling in love with your best friend. Or perhaps there just isn’t when neither of you are chicks. I didn’t get a coming out party, as I didn’t come out, and although I trawled both the Self Help and Alternative Lifestyles section at Barnes and Noble, there wasn’t any useful advice there either. So I followed the habit of a lifetime, and improvised.
They were just flung out there, and on we went.
"You’re my best friend, Col."
"You know I love you, buddy."
"Pat…and Deb…"
They didn’t stop him, or me, but they let me know where I stood, or at least where he stood. The ground beneath my feet hadn’t been anything but quicksand for a long time.
I couldn’t help asking him once what he meant by coming there at all.
He had shrugged, and looked away as he unlaced his shoes, sitting on the side of the bed. "I can’t not," had been his only answer, and it had had to do.
Temperament, I suppose.
Ryan would rage and break things, swear at me and her and them and good old unfair life. I contained it, in front of him, anyway. Alone, I would let the agony out silently. I was never a more brilliant improviser than when I was heartbroken. I never cried.
And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace.
Ticking over like a cooling engine, with both of them, wife and lover. Not talking about it any more, just living it, in the brooding shadow of the storm I knew had to break.
Certainly they had brought with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn’t have lasted very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn’t, in the midst of a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard.
The games got increasingly ridiculous at work. We never kissed for the cameras any more. We only kissed for each other, but in the desperation of his mouth I could taste the rottenness eating away at him. A jettison was long overdue.
There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared, and Marlowe’s lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention…
I loved his face in the matchlight, it looked skeletal and drained. I wondered if I had been the one to do that to him, if the meditations within his head were on how much he resented me. I neglected to look at my own face, just visible in the dressing table mirror. I already knew the toll Ryan had taken on me; my hair, what there was of it, hadn’t always been white. It was still worth the price.
He opened his arms wide, staring at me with his little blue eyes that were perfectly round.
"You must see how ridiculous this is, Colin?"
It had never seemed ridiculous, to me. Pathetic perhaps, tragic certainly, stupid maybe, but not ridiculous.
"Who were we trying to fool, anyway?"
I hadn’t been fooling. Neither had he, but his pride will never admit that.
Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky…
I had told Deb everything. That it was stupid and that it was over and that it would never happen again. We had spoken in the garden so as not to wake Luke, but neither of us had shouted. Deb was beautiful in the moonlight, posed like a tragic heroine appealing for clemency. A line from King Lear came to mind but it wouldn’t have been appropriate to quote it. She never asked why and it frightened me that she might know the reason, and might know the reason it had ended, too. Who had ended it.
I was, so to speak, numbered with the dead.
Deb and I lived around each other, now, existing in the same space on different planes. Ryan and I barely spoke, all the easier to do now we no longer worked together. I was still good at my job, that at least, had not deserted me, but I was nothing more than a hollow man, a flawless zombie.
"He is a remarkable man," I said, unsteadily.
The eager young woman grinned, oblivious to the halting form of my answer, and looked once more across the room to where Ryan stood, proud, beautiful, laughing, likely a little tipsy. I hadn’t managed to approach him all night, and talking to the willing potential next conquest in the long line of his extra-maritals, none of whom had lasted more than a night, was as close to Ryan Stiles as I was likely to get tonight.
"A remarkable man," I repeated, and turned away before she could see the surge of life in my eyes. I don’t want reincarnation, thank you very much, my living death is just fine.
I truly believe that.