One Shot: Butterfly
Title: Butterfly
Pairing: Colin/Ryan (friendship)
Rating: Strong PG-13
Warnings: Some angst and swearing, plus suicidal themes.
Summary: A man escapes his life for thirty minutes, and wonders what might have been…
Word Count: 1,750
A/N: This idea’s been floating around for a while, so I thought I’d finally spill it out onto paper. (:
~
He enters his apartment, scrubs his face free of rain and throws dampened keys onto the nearby shelf. He leans back against the door and sighs, finally finding solitude in this tiny box-room of a house. It isn’t much, but it’s home.
He shrugs off his coat and kicks his shoes but leaves the clothing on the floor - he’ll pick them up later. The place is looking a lot like a bachelor pad now, even though he hasn’t had a girl - or a guy - up here since the dawn of time.
Scavenging through the cupboard, his hand finds a can of chicken soup, enough for one. Feeling his stomach rumble, he pulls the ring pull and… damn, the ring comes off in his hand, snapping like a twig.
Fuck.
Exasperated now, he goes in search for the tin opener. It lies mutely in the sink, along with dirty dishes that really need cleaning - he’ll wash them later. A pan hangs from a hook above the cooker, looking very much worse for wear and so he settles for this, almost slamming it onto the stove.
The little stove takes forever and a day to warm up, so he goes to find something to do for a while. He checks the clock and in a final and rare moment of joy realises that his favourite TV show would be on in ten minutes. Escapism for half an hour is just what he needs.
Flicking the small television on, he absent-mindedly watches as the news blurs past his eyes - who cares what’s happening in the world, anyway? In his eyes, all news is bad news.
While the newscasters finish up, he goes to check on his soup-for-one. As he transfers the hot liquid from pan to bowl, some spatters onto his hand and sleeve, staining his shirt. He swears, sighs but does nothing about it - he’ll clean it up later.
“Good evening everybody and welcome to Whose Line is it Anyway?”
The show begins and his mood brightens beyond joy. Shuffling over to the tatty armchair, the one with the cigarette butts and loose change buried into the cushions, he sits with soup in hand, ready to be entertained.
“On tonight’s show: Silence in court; Brad Sherwood!
I call my first witness; Wayne Brady!
Objection overruled; Greg Proops! And…”
As the camera cuts to Ryan’s face, he notices that the tall performer is pretending to be asleep again. He looks so adorable like that.
“I sentence you to a lifetime of; Ryan Stiles!
Hi, I’m your host Drew Carey, come on down and let’s have some fun!”
He finds himself almost applauding and cheering with the audience and wishes with all his might that he could be there too, and be part of the fun for once.
“…and the points don’t matter. That’s right, they don’t matter; just like your girlfriend’s opinion.”
He laughs to himself bitterly at the deadpan delivery. What girlfriend?
And for a whole thirty minutes, he forgets that his life is going nowhere, forgets that he’s three weeks behind on rent, forgets the fact that he works in a small-time diner (for minimum wage, of course) and forgets about every single thing in his crappy little excuse for a life. He laughs and engrosses himself into the bizarre, hilarious world of improvisation - not once coming up for air.
As Ryan and Greg play Whose Line together, he wishes that he could have a friendship like that with such knowing, unique chemistry. All the guys on the show have that love for each other like an old gang who always hung out at the benches in high school, smoking and drinking and being rebels without a cause.
Also, he wonders what might’ve happened if he’d stuck with that crazy idea of comedy back when he was in high school. The whole marine biologist plan had fallen flat on its smug face, which is something he’d rather forget (however, he can name thirty different species of anemone found in Californian waters), and he wonders if life would’ve been so much better if he’d had the courage to follow that mad little dream.
The guys on TV make it look so easy - their timings were superb, as were their presence on that stage as if it were a second home.
He snaps the TV off as soon as he sees that Warner Bros. Logo. That one picture fills him with great sadness, as he knows then that the fun has ended for another week.
The room, once generously lit with the glow of the screen, suddenly darkens along with the mood. Oh that’s right, he thinks, my life’s dull and hopeless. I should just end it all now…
He usually thinks this as a joke; he never means it - even as he walks leisurely into the kitchen, he’s joking. As he picks up a rusty carving knife, he kids to himself - he wouldn’t really end it all.
Not even as he goes to fill his bath does he stop to think how ludicrous this all is, how childish and cowardly and completely insane.
He strips and climbs into the tub, letting the liquid cradle him softly. He stares at the grey ceiling and smiles to himself - of course he doesn’t mean it, he’s still joking, even as the knife hovers over his upturned wrist.
No one would come to look for him.
No one would care.
Inhaling gently, he shuts his eyes, raises his hand…
~~~
“Psst, Colin. Wake up.”
Colin shakes his head as light intrudes his eyes like venom. He rolls in the bed and tugs the covers over his face with a groan. But his wife grabs at them with smaller but strong hands and yanks them away.
“Happy birthday, sweetie,” Deb whispers and lays a soft kiss onto his broadening forehead in affection. Colin lets out a gruff laugh, still trying to clear the sleep from his throat.
“Thank you very much.” he croaks out, trying his best to sit up with the weight of post-sleep fatigue on his chest.
“No, no, you wait right here. I’ll go and make you some breakfast, birthday boy.”
Colin laughs again and leans in for a loving kiss - almost twenty years of marriage, and he’s loved every second of it.
He watches his beautiful wife walk away and laughs to himself again. After his sorrowful dream, he was very pleased and relieved to see his life back in perfect working order, and took a moment or two to relish in his incredible good fortune.
If he had taken that different path, was that nightmare that reality? If he’d not dared himself on in those early days, if he’d never had seen it all through then he would never have such a terrific job today. And without Deb and Luke in his life, where else would he have gone?
“Ryan.”
He blinks to himself upon speaking that name and wonders why it’s so relevant. Ryan - that goofy friend of his whom he’s known for thirty years, like when they played the improv stages together back in Vancouver, or when Second City became a second home for the two starving twenty-somethings with dreams bigger than they were…
And then it clicked: If it weren’t for Ryan, he would never have met Deb, and subsequently never have had a beautiful son either. If it weren’t for Ryan, Whose Line would’ve never given him that second chance that he so desperately needed and his career would never have taken off so well.
That goofy friend of his had given him so much and asked for so little in return, which was just so Ryan - so selfless and protective. And Colin then realises that his nightmare was simply an epiphany in calling, showing what life would’ve been like if he’d never met Ryan Stiles.
He could shudder at the mere thought, and succeeds in so doing, feeling the chills run up his spine and shock the hairs on the back of his neck into submission. Wrapping the sheets tightly back around him, he snuggles back into the warmth - thank God for fate at least.
~~~
Colin presses the sequence of numbers into the phone like a routine, though he hardly ever calls this number. How odd that something so mundane becomes something so anticipated.
“Hello?”
He pauses for a second and grins helplessly - oh, that voice eases him to great extent. “Hi, Ryan.”
“Colin!” The man on the other end seems surprised. “Hey, buddy. What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing much. I just felt like talking to you.”
Ryan snorts. “On your birthday? That can only mean one thing: Mid-life crisis talk?”
“No, not exactly.” Colin laughs also, relaxing back into the couch. “I was thinking about my life this morning and what it might’ve been like if… well, thank you.”
“Thank you? For what?”
“For being alive,” Colin shrugs, “and for sticking with me all these years. Thanks, Ry. You’ve been a really great friend to me.”
There’s a bit of a pause on the other end, and Colin can just picture Ryan looking clueless like a deer caught in a headlight and laughs softly to himself. “Oh, you’re welcome.” Ryan sounds confused, but happy, too. “This isn’t like you at all, since when did you turn so polite and retrospective?”
“Since I turned fifty, you jerk.”
“I knew it wouldn’t last,” Ryan says, and both boys continue to laugh and joke for the best part of half an hour, lapping up the chemistry like two starved cats. “Oh, I haven’t said it yet! Happy birthday.”
Colin smiles. “Thanks, how about a hug?”
“Not right now,” laughs Ryan. “I’ll owe you one.”
“I may hold you to that.” Colin twirls the phone cord around his fingers, as if twining them through hair. “Say hi to Pat and the kids for me.”
“Will do. Tell you what, I’ll keep the guest room clean for you, if you feel like dropping by for a day or two.”
“Yeah, that’d be nice.”
Deb walks into the room suddenly, tugging Colin towards the kitchen with a huge smile. The Canadian sighs playfully and nods. “I have to go, Ry. I think my birthday’s getting started.”
Ryan laughs again. “Alright, you have fun. And don’t throw your back out, grandpa.”
Colin thinks for a moment, says, “Tapioca!” into the phone and quickly hangs up, falling into his wife’s arms as they share in the joy of being alive.
The End