Title: Those Nights Author: Sun Green Pairing: Ryan/Colin Rating: PG? I'm so bad at ratings Summary: "Boys Night" for Colin and Ryan It’s a years-long tradition for Colin and Ryan, those nights out together. Usually once a month, occasionally more if schedules allow, but once a month at a minimum is the rule. The wives take sole charge of the kids and any other responsibilities for an evening, shaking their heads and smiling as their husbands rush out their respective doors, sometimes forgetting to say goodbye in their haste to get started on their cherished ritual. Those nights always proceed in much the same way. They sit in some dive of a bar where no one knows or cares who they are, left in peace to revel in each other’s company. They talk for hours on end, words tumbling out over themselves in their eagerness to share thoughts with one another. Some of the conversation is serious, a few problems confessed and made easier by the telling and the advice and comfort given, until things don’t seem so bad, after all. But most of the talk is lighter, of shared interests and common friends, punctuated by laughter and marked by the security of always knowing that the other understands completely. They talk and laugh long into the wee hours of those nights, matching each other beer for beer until they’re drunk enough to convulse with uncontrollable laughter at the most random, ridiculous utterances, wiping tears from their eyes and gasping for breath. Until they’re drunk enough to stagger, still laughing, out into the chill darkness, done with drinking for the night but not yet ready to call a cab and head for home, ending their special time together for another month. Until they’re drunk enough to pretend it’s only the beer that makes them shove each other up against the cold brick wall of a closed storefront in the deserted streets, lips colliding, tongues probing, hands groping; giggling hysterically like it’s all a joke, yet sometimes forgetting to laugh for a minute or two until one of them realizes that it’s gotten quiet but for their ragged breaths and the wet sounds of their mouths’ hungry explorations, and the squeak of clothes rubbing between their grinding bodies. Then the laughter begins again, less rambunctiously now, and soon after, they break apart and continue on their way, careful to keep the laughter going until they’re able to slip more or less naturally back into the easy camaraderie that those nights start out with. That’s the only part of those nights they don’t talk about afterward. It’s as if they were too drunk to remember it. As if they were too drunk to know what they were doing in the first place. But they’ve never been that drunk.