Title: Coulda Woulda Shoulda Pairing: Ry/Col Rating: R because it says "fuck" twice. (that is the rule, isn't it? for the movies?) Summary: Regrets suck, especially when they're shared regrets. Note: Not my normal idea of this pairing, but, well, I couldn't help it. ~~ It should have been him. I knew it then; I know it now. But even after all this time...I can't change anything. I mean, I can, technically. If I walked up to him tomorrow and said I'd changed my mind, I think he'd say "yes." I think, maybe, he always would have. I'll never forget the day he told me, eyes dark with something that, at the time, I couldn't understand. "Colin..." he murmured, his voice lower than usual, gravelly, and then he touched my hand. The offer in his face was way beyond clear. I could've had him then. I didn't. I was young and driven; I thought it would kill both our careers if we were together. Who knows, I might have been right. So I politely refused, told him I wanted to stay friends...and he let me chicken out of the best thing that could've ever happened to me. It was a couple of years later, the next time he asked. We were both a little sloshed, and he leaned over and kissed me, right there on my couch. There were bright stars in his eyes, a little boy's naivete shining with total faith in his best friend. I would've had him, then. I wanted him, with just enough alcohol in my system to have forgotten all my logical objections. They were just covers, anyway, covers for a terror I couldn't fight. I was scared out of my mind by that look in his eyes, but when you're drunk, you don't know what fear is. He was drunk, too, though, and just shifted so he was resting, head on my shoulder, and went to sleep with a delighted smile on his face. By the next morning, my 60-proof induced courage had evaporated, and he didn't remember a thing. The subject was never broached again until the week of my wedding, the night of my bachelor party. After everyone had left, he looked at me with those damn eyes, and said he loved me. Said he always had, that he didn't expect anything of me. That I just deserved to know. I kissed him. I told myself it was a concession, a kindness to my best friend. I knew it wasn't. He...he wanted me, so much, and I couldn't tell him no when he looked at me like I was the whole damn world. So I let him make love to me. He apologized when we woke up the next day, and God help me but I let him, told him I was sorry too. I know he walked out of that apartment sure I had only fucked him because I was drunk. It was a lie. I'd never been less sorry about anything in my life. But I went and got married, and he started dating Pat, and next thing I knew, we had careers, kids, lives - all these complications we'd never imagined. And sometimes, sitting with him at dinner or during an improv show, I'll still see that look in his eyes, that hurt, sweet look. He'd still say yes to me, I think. And it scares me. No one should love that much. No one should love me that much. I hate it. Hate that he loves me, hate that I want him, hate that I don't have him, hate that I could. Maybe this is my midlife crisis after all - I've sure as hell got the regrets to make it count. I love him, want him...can't have him. I can't. It wouldn't be right, for either of us. It wouldn't be fair to him, to make him spend all these years learning to be happy without me and then demand he give it all up. But I could. And I think that's what bothers me most of all. Because I could. Because I should. I can feel it sometimes, a connection that tells me that he's everything I ever wanted or needed, that we'd be too damn perfect. It should be us. It'd just be right. But it can't be right to shatter so much else to make one twenty-year-old mistake okay again. It can't be. Goddammit. I want to fuck it all, go to him and tell him everything. Say "I love you," and kiss him until he's breathless. I want to rub his back at night when it's hurting, and make love to him until he forgets it. I want to know what it would be like for him to take me. I want to feel his hands on my bare skin, to be his like he wants me to be. I can't, I can't, I can't... But I don't know if I'm strong enough to stop myself. Because, really, under it all, without all the extraneous complications that've built up... It should have been him. ~Fin.