[fic] My Wrecking Ball - 1/2
Title: My Wrecking Ball
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Ryan/Seth
Rating: M
Word Count: 9,265 (Part 1, 16,564 total)
Warnings: Sex. Superfluous babble. Occasional surfer slang. Spoilers past season 4.
Summary: "Soul searching?” “Backpacking.” “I hear it’s the same thing.”
Disclaimer: I absolutely one hundred percent do not own The OC. I do find Josh Schwartz very attractive though. That should count for something.
Author's Notes: For breila-rose on her belated birthday, because she sends me pictures of Ben McKenzie's biceps. This takes place roughly in 2008ish, by my math, so I tried to keep it technologically and musically in date. I have to give a thousand thank you's to default_dollie, who did my beta despite never having watched The OC.
---
“You’re going to get fat.”
“Who asked you, man? This is America, and as an American, I am exercising my right to do whatever I want. If what I want includes fostering an impressive gut, it is not for you to judge.” Seth takes a moment to cast some serious judgment Ryan’s way. “Body policing is wrong. For shame, Ryan. For shame.”
Ryan gives Seth his best unimpressed look, cutting right through his nonstop babble. “You can’t eat all the baguettes in Europe.”
“Once upon a time you also told me I couldn’t grow a beard. Look at this.” Seth waves his hand beneath his chin, indicating the godawful, patchy scruff sprouting there. “I’m practically a wooly mammoth.”
“Yeah, you should shave that.”
“Ryan, it’s my pride and joy. Pride. And joy.” Seth says emphatically, wounded. “Want to get a dig in about my hair, too? You know, it takes work to look this breathtaking. Hours and hours of work.”
Ryan considers, tilting his head this way and that. He decides, “You need a hobby.”
“I was thinking about macramé. Ooh, hey, you know what we need for this flight? Magazines. No adventure across the pond is complete without reading up on Angelina Jolie’s latest antics, that’s what I always say. Be right back.” Seth stands, dusting off the knees of his jeans. “I’ll grab you something suitably entertaining. Cosmo, maybe? You can find out if you’re a Winter or an Autumn.”
“Pass.”
“Pass? Ryan, this could be an important learning opportunity for you.”
“I’m a Winter.” Ryan replies stonily. “Taylor told me.”
Seth freezes, doing a perfect impersonation of deer-in-headlights. “Ah. Taylor. Maybe I’ll just grab you an issue of the LA Times. Or Hustler? It’s a long trip, and I hear all kinds of crazy goes down in those bathrooms-“
“Seth.”
“Gotcha, right, I’m going, don’t traipse off to London without me now.”
Seth nearly trips over his own feet as he wanders away, his spidery limbs flailing everywhere before he finds his balance. Overhead, a voice crackles on the intercom, asking that a Mr. Babbage proceed to his gate.
Ryan taps his fingers against his thigh and tries not to fiddle with his cell phone. He doesn’t really have anyone to call. They said their goodbyes to Kirsten and Sandy earlier that morning. Marissa’s dead. Taylor’s gone. He’s not really close with any of his friends back at Berkley. Summer texts Ryan every five minutes with strict instructions about the Care and Keeping of Seth Cohen in a European Locale, but after a while, he stopped replying. She knows perfectly well that he can handle Seth.
Around him, LAX bustles. They were supposed to fly out of San Francisco, but in Seth’s quest for the cheapest fare, he dragged them both further South than Ryan has been in a long time. Newport’s even further down the coast, but the people here are exactly like Ryan remembers. Rushing, jostling, dragging suitcases and small children, carting teacup dogs and slowpoke parents. There are pastels and neons and the occasional Hawaiian shirt, cuts and colors too chic and too bright for the laid back crowd up near Berkeley.
Parents cluck, friends bicker. A group of teenagers on a school trip giggle excitedly, and Ryan doesn’t ever remember being exactly like them.
Businessmen strut down the tiled floor with the swaggering purpose of those-who-will-inherit-the-earth, unseasonal trench coats flapping behind them. Someone slides into the seat Seth has evacuated; beautiful, and definitely not-Seth shaped.
“Oh, uh, sorry, that’s taken.”
The pretty girl cocks her head to the side, lips tugging into a smile. “Sorry. Girlfriend?”
“Not exactly.”
The girl does not move. “Where are you headed?”
“All over the place.” Ryan notes that she’s got big blue eyes, the steely, dark color of the Pacific before a storm. Marissa had eyes like that, so easy to sink into, to get lost in.
By contrast, Taylor’s eyes were honeyed brown, and she never made Ryan feel anything but safe.
“Soul searching?”
“Backpacking.”
“I hear it’s the same thing.” The girl crosses her legs, a long stretch of thigh slipping over skin. LAX is the only place Ryan’s ever been where female-folk consider miniskirts proper flying attire. “Your girlfriend’s taking a long time. Think she’s flown the coop?”
It takes Ryan a second to remember she’s talking about Seth. Seth, who is probably bounding all over the Newsstand with the energy of a puppy on Red Bull, bouncing from the magazine display to the shelves full of candy to the tiny overpriced rack of headphones and ear buds.
Seth, who has been a complete trooper about Ryan’s melancholy pity-spiral ever since his breakup with Taylor, even though it’s been nudging in on Ryan’s enthusiasm for this trip for months on end.
“No.”
“Man of many words. I like that.” The girl leans forward and places her hand on Ryan’s knee, baring a fair amount of cleavage in the process.
“Aren’t you going to miss home?”
Ryan lifts an eyebrow, acutely uncomfortable but unsure what to do about it. Trey told him never to turn down the advances of a pretty girl, and of all the horrible, awful, terrible advice Trey gave him, that bit has rarely steered Ryan wrong. “How do you know this is home?”
“Am I interrupting something? This looks like a thing that I am interrupting. I can come back later, me and Mr. Prashad over there were really hitting it off.” Seth wiggles his fingers back down the terminal, hopping from foot to foot. His dark curls hang in his eyes, a cloak of awkward settled neatly upon his shoulders. It’s Seth of old, Classic Newport Version, the discomfited kid he was before he grew into his own skin. “I hate to disrupt all the eye-sex.”
“Oh.” The gorgeous girl says, her steely eyes focusing on Seth. He’s gawky, long legs and hands shoved in his pockets, the expression on his face screaming I’m-About-To-Be-Eaten-By-Komodo-Dragons. That’s Seth’s expression a lot of the time, but the girl snaps back her hand, the imprint of her fingers burning against Ryan’s flesh, straight through his jeans. “I’m usually better at, ah. Honest, I didn’t realize.”
She gathers up her stuff while Ryan and Seth stare, Ryan at the muscle in her legs, moving smooth beneath skin - and God Bless California girls - Seth in utter fascination at her hair. Suitcase firmly in hand, she says briskly, “Travel safe,” and stalks off, mortification clinging to her frame.
“What just happened?” Ryan asks.
“How do you do that?” Seth marvels instead of answering, eyeing Ryan with a combination of suspicion and awe.
“Do what?”
“That. Tell me your secret, because I am a normal person. Normal people do not have random slutty adventures and it is supremely unfair.”
Ryan is pretty sure his face looks exactly like he’s swallowed a sour lemon. “What does that even mean?”
“Don’t play dumb, everyone knows you’ve got super pheromones that make girls want to paw all over you, alright, there’s no shame in being touched by aliens. Just, the rest of us have to do everything the old fashioned way. Share.”
Seth is pouting so ridiculously that it’s hard to be offended about the whole being called a manslut thing. Haltingly, laughter bubbling in his chest, Ryan manages, “I don’t have alien pheromones.”
“No?” Seth’s eyes widen in surprise. “It must be some combination of the biceps and the dimples, then.” He pokes Ryan’s arm for emphasis.
“So while you were getting your mack on, I believe they started boarding. Ready to blow this popsicle stand? I bought you the latest issue of
Allure, for your reading pleasure.”
He waves his plastic bag full of magazines tantalizingly in the air. Ryan makes a face. “Let’s just get on the plane.”
Agreeably, Seth says, “Right, cool. This is going to be fantastic. Unless we crash.”
Ryan swallows his own spit, covering it with a glare.
Flying. Ugh.
“Thanks for that.”
“No, I’m serious. Everything’s fun and games until we’re stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, reenacting Castaway. You get to be Wilson, you’re
too fair haired for Tom Hanks.”
“I could go on this trip by myself,” Ryan suggests, the fear of heights he never quite shook creeping up his spine.
“You’d miss me if I was gone.” Seth hauls Ryan to his feet by the crook of his elbow, waving eagerly to the tarmac as they get in line to board.
“Adieu, Country O’Mine. See you in a month.”
Ryan slumps against Seth’s side while they wait, bag digging into his arm. Seth does not appear to mind. It’s not like Ryan’s carrying much; he’s got his iPod, a dog-eared paperback, and all kinds of maps, courtesy of Anna, who’s done the whole European Shenanigans thing before. She and Ryan stayed in touch long after Seth did the Ex-Boyfriend Disconnect, because Anna is cool and pretty down to Earth, and probably Ryan’s only lady friend who hasn’t ever expressed an interest in climbing into his pants. He likes her. Silently and from a distance, as far as Seth is concerned, because letting him in on that secret would be a terrible idea. He’s never coped well with jealousy.
Or quiet. Ryan gets a whole five seconds of peace while they stand in line, glancing between their boarding passes and the airline attendants standing behind their big, blocky podiums as if sheer willpower might compel them to move the process along faster.
“Hey, Ryan, hey,” Seth nags, pulling at Ryan’s clothes until he has his full attention. “I forgot my robe.”
Ryan has no idea what to do with him at least ninety percent of the time. “The horror. The tragedy.”
Seth pulls back. “Wow, dude, I didn’t know you were so keen on seeing me in my boxers, but if this is how you’re going to take the news, then hey, I guess we’re golden.”
“As long as you’re wearing boxers.”
“I told you, the sleeping au natural thing happened once. Stop punishing me for it.”
“Your roommate called me, sobbing over nightmares for three weeks straight. That’s three weeks’ worth of sleep I can never have back,” Ryan tells him, suppressing a smile.
Architecture was a harsh major, man. Berkeley had bitch slapped him across the face, and living vicariously through Seth’s freshmen follies at RISD had been a hilarious break in the tedium of studying everything, forever, for all of eternity.
Like. Ryan enjoyed learning well enough, but he’d never planned on marrying it.
“Sleep is for the weak, and also, we learned an important lesson that night. Namely that Roommate Rory is not gay.”
“Or you’re hideously scarred. Down there.”
“Blasphemy. Summer never complained.”
“I heard Summer needs glasses.”
“Funny. You are so funny. I will show you my dick right now, Ryan. Don’t tempt me.” Seth begins fumbling with his pants.
An elderly woman standing in line behind them scowls. Her equally old friend grins from ear to ear, ready for the show.
“That is really not necessary.” Seth stares at him blankly, hands poised over his belt. Ryan emphasizes, “Public. Illegal.”
“Is it?” Seth asks, with honest to goodness surprise. “You know Ryan, I genuinely have no idea how I’ve survived these last four months without you to act as my moral compass.”
“I convey the simple wisdoms. Don’t get arrested if you want to see Europe…Sleep clothed.”
Seth nods along. “Words to live by.”
Scowl-faced woman’s more excitable friend drops her glee, apparently disappointed by the lack of naked Cohen. Ryan doesn’t get it. He’s so scrawny. He does have something going on in the abdominal region that isn’t bad to look at, but, uh. Hi, awkward.
He announces, “Line’s moving,” both because it is and because he needs words to erase that image from his brain straightaway. He trips over his own feet, gets his paper barcode scanned, and manages not to think any coherent thoughts all the way through the accordion corridor leading to the door of the plane.
Then he thinks, right, the plane. Flying is really not his favorite thing.
Seth chatters over Ryan’s complete and utter terror while they find their seats, blessedly recounting every action packed detail of an Imax thriller about humpback whales as they buckle in. He’s a good distraction, but even he can’t subdue the wellspring of dread bubbling in
Ryan’s stomach for long.
Waiting for everyone else to hop onboard the plane takes ages, Ryan’s feet getting itchy in his boots, the way they always do when he imagines being up high, too high, too close to a demise he can’t actually fight. Leonardo da Vinci and the Wright Brothers all deserve bricks to the face, because as far as Ryan’s concerned, humans are meant to keep their feet firmly on the ground.
“Are you okay, man? You’re looking kind of…jaundiced, honestly. It’s like a sickly, wan thing right about here.” Seth waves a hand over his own face, repeatedly.
Ryan grunts.
Realization dawns across Seth’s features, eyes widening. “Is this what a panic attack looks like when you’re wearing it? Come on, man, don’t be bogus. Reflect upon how great this trip will be.”
“Because we have such a great track record with trips.”
Maybe he should not be squeezing the armrests so tightly. Ryan is reasonably sure he just heard one pop. He grits his teeth and tries, desperately, to hold onto his remaining cool.
“Tijuana,” Seth concedes. “Palm Springs. That time with the thing.”
“Don’t forget the summer you made me drive to Bixby Bridge just so you could sing Deathcab on top of it.”
“That road trip was a total success.”
“Three hours in the Range Rover so you could serenade me?” Ryan snorts exactly how he feels about that. Seth can carry a decent tune, but Ryan will never be driving to Big Sur just to hear him sing again.
Seth beams from ear to ear, completely aware of what an ass he is. “It sounds minty when you put it that way, but the reality was so much better.”
The plane begins taxiing, and there is a harrowing moment where Ryan is scared he’s broken the audio remote for the miniature TV in the back of the chair in front of him. He hasn’t, but breathing is definitely becoming a challenge. He’s done this before. He flew to Paris for Taylor, for Chris’sake, to win her back after their break-up last year, but that was different.
He loved her.
He loves her.
Neither one sounds quite right in his head.
Seth gives Ryan his puppy pout of death, urging him to be okay with the ginormous aluminum monstrosity they’re trapped inside. Ryan is not okay with this, but Seth is his friend, Ryan’s makeshift brother, and they’ve both been looking forward to this trip for months. He tries to loosen his grip on the arm rests, because in a no homo, completely heteronormative way, he loves Seth every bit as much as he ever loved Taylor.
He can do this, for him. “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”
The set of Seth’s shoulders eases the second the words leave Ryan’s mouth. “Good. That’s good. Sit back, relax, and let me show you the wealth of entertainment opportunities I’ve brought with.”
He unzips his backpack with entirely too much pomp and circumstance, only to reveal Ryan’s worst nightmare. “All four seasons of The Valley?”
“Best show on Earth,” Seth agrees, brainwashing evident. “I still can’t believe they cancelled it.”
As the plane begins to gain speed down the runway, Ryan decides that he can do this, for Seth, you know, as long as he doesn’t decide to strangle him.
There is a jolt in Ryan’s stomach as, for a moment, they hang suspended way too close to the Earth. They arc up, up, up, the wheels retracting beneath their feet, with a rumble of machinery and a whole fiesta going off beneath Ryan’s sternum, but then Seth is nudging his elbow, trying to scramble into Ryan’s lap in the midst of a mission to see out the window.
“I think I can spot our house from up here.”
“Our house is about eight hours north,” Ryan manages over the knot in his throat.
“Our old house,” Seth amends. “Or maybe that’s someone else’s infinity pool.”
Los Angeles is spread out under them, a series of jewel-toned backyards in turquoise and emerald, offset by the rich rust red of adobe roofs. Cars shrink to ant-size, although the lines of bumper to bumper traffic stretch way too long, and Ryan can no longer make out the feathered shape that marks the heads of palm trees.
Taylor’s down there somewhere, set to conquer the world.
Thinking about it makes Ryan happy-sad, bittersweet in his bones, even with Seth practically bouncing on his thighs. He never wanted things with Taylor to end the way they did. The two of them were good together. Ryan admired her, adored her, cherished her when he wasn’t sure he was capable of ever caring again.
Falling for Taylor was uncomplicated and fun, when that was exactly what he needed, but the simplicity of their relationship was also the nail in its coffin. Taylor had seen Ryan with Marissa.
Don’t blow it over some chick you’re not going to care about in ten years, Oliver told Ryan once, prior to his complete psychotic break. He’d been so completely wrong; Ryan never stopped caring about Marissa, even now that she only really exists in the memories of the people who knew her. The two of them had loved each other raw, razor-blades and tears, and sometimes it drove him insane, but sometimes it was better than Ryan knew love could be.
Taylor wanted what she had with him to be the same.
Ryan couldn’t deliver that. He firmly believes everyone deserves their one epic love, but Taylor would never be his. He has trouble believing he survived Marissa, even today. There’d been girls before her, but he’d never been in so hard or so deep. Then the intensity was a shackle, but he misses it now that it’s gone.
So things with Taylor inevitably crashed and burned as a direct result of Ryan’s hopeless romance, and now all he’s got left is Seth.
Slobbering all over the window.
If Marissa was here, she’d laugh.
He misses her. He never stops.
The plane climbs into the sky, LA dissolving into the Prussian Blue of dusk, until every single city light disappears completely.
---
When Ryan was little and things were good, his dad would take him to the park. Ryan can’t remember a lot from back then, but trapped in the amber of his mind, he’s still got this.
Dust stirred around his feet, his chubby ankles, and his dad’s thick rubber-soled boots. They held hands, Ryan swinging his arms back and forth, his dad lifting him in the air at times, spinning him so that he felt like he could fly.
There were clusters of eucalyptus trees arching over the park’s entryway, their scent heady and clinging, spices and mulch. The sidewalks were filthy, but the grass was very, very green, fresh-cut and welcoming. Ryan could smell that, and the eucalyptus; his dad’s dishwater cologne, and the electricity of a cloudy day, of lightning waiting to strike.
He wanted to go on the swings, because the monkey bars were Trey’s favorite, and one time he’d pushed Ryan off when their mom wasn’t looking. Trey wasn’t there at the moment, grounded for sneaking sips of their parents’ beer, but Ryan couldn’t shake the idea that Trey would know.
For a little while, his dad pushed him, chains creaking in their cracked plastic casing, the seat warm beneath Ryan’s bottom as he pumped his tiny legs. Overhead the sun was a white spotlight, straining to break through thin gray clouds. Ryan reached higher and higher on every arc until, on the downswing, his dad was no longer there to push.
He glanced wildly around, searching the length of the sandbox and beyond. His father stood by a particularly worn tree, red, orange, and ochre bleeding out from beneath white bark, the leaves yellow-green and drooping. A man was talking to Ryan’s dad, pushing at his shoulders, angry.
Ryan didn’t know much about anger then. Seeing it, up close? He was scared.
The sky rumbled, every bit as pissed off, and Ryan tried to catch his heels in the sand. They dragged, but didn’t stick, the swing pushing on with too much momentum. He had to jump to get free, but Ryan’s balance was off. He stumbled. He fell.
He called his dad’s name, the new scrape on his arm welling blood, but the sky broke in with another livid growl. Nearby, the jungle gym loomed. It wasn’t quite protection from the rain that began to fell, but it was strong and solid, and to Ryan, it looked like something to hide under.
He huddled there, in the damp sand, guarded by octagons and hexagons, crisscrossed metal lines until his dad was done yelling. Through the geometric shapes of the jungle gym, he peeked in at Ryan, all twinkly blue eyes and concern.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and Ryan did not know how to tell him about all the things that bounced beneath his ribcage, about being afraid or waiting for lightning to strike. He didn’t know then that he’d get used to feeling like that. He would come to expect the earth to crack at every turn, and he’d never, ever escape that desperate, hopeless panic.
He’d soon grow accustomed to looking at his dad behind bars.
---
London is big and kind of gray. The girls have hot accents, the beer isn’t bad, and Ryan hates the taste of tea.
Seth is convinced it is a city full of his people.
“This is the birthplace of like, ninety percent of all the relevant musicians in the past five decades. The Beatles. The Clash. The Arctic Monkeys. The Wombats.” He explains, bouncing up and down on the heels of his Converse. He’s giving Ryan whiplash with all the nonstop frenetic energy.
“The who?”
“Them too.” Seth taps out a soundless beat on his corduroy pants. “Where do you want to go today? Recap, we hit up all the majors; Buckingham, the Eye, The British Museum. If you didn’t have any ideas, I was thinking Stonehenge or the Tower.”
Ryan opens his mouth.
Seth forges on. “Say the Tower. I have a lot of feelings about Anne Boleyn. She was the babe of the sixteenth century.”
“You need to stop falling for dead chicks.”
“I can’t help it, Ryan, man, you know I’ve got a thing for the naughty girls, and well-behaved ladies rarely make history.” Seth makes this face that probably should never have seen the watery English daylight and slings his arm around Ryan’s shoulders. He’s all about the touchy-feely lately, probably because Ryan spent the entire plane ride over doing his best scared turtle impression. “So we’re hitting up the Tower, the fortress, the beheading ground of my Queen fair. I wonder if they serve beer there? What am I talking about, this is London, the water fountains spout hops.”
“Seth. No drinking.”
“But I’m so much better at handling my liquor now. I have been tried by fire and college, and I now know what to do with tequila.”
Seth mimics throwing back a shot, except he sort of rounds out his lips like he’s swallowing cum, and there’s a visual Ryan was not prepared for. He swallows something thick in his throat and agrees, “The Tower sounds great. We can head out to Stonehenge tomorrow.”
“Yes, that is a plan! I wouldn’t want you to miss out on that architectural marvel, seeing as it was built by your ancestors the Martians and everything.”
“And we’re back with the pheromones. I don’t have alien pheromones, Seth.”
“You say that like you believe it, but I am not fooled.” Seth wags a finger in the air, only to be distracted by the state of his cuticles (mortifying, Ryan, how could you have let me look through vinyl in front of that mod shopboy with his mod sneer in this state), followed by an in-depth analysis of the difference between quarters and pound coins. By the time they make their way through the underground and stumble, blinking into the light of Tower Hill, Seth has moved down three topics to where Captain Britain falls in the realm of badass super heroes.
The constant barrage of hyperactivity is weirdly comforting, in that it’s been absent from Ryan’s life for months. Seth’s out in Providence now, doing his own thing, and Ryan’s got Berkley and his impossible workload. Seth runs up both of their phone bills on a regular basis, but long-distance-Cohen doesn’t have the same effect as close-quarters-Seth.
They stand in a line of about eight thousand people with the formidable silhouettes of Tower Bridge and the Gherkin standing big and blue and opalescent on the horizon in either direction. Seth moans and groans about the price of admission, but he hands over a fistful of crumpled pound notes easily enough.
He gathers up their tickets and turns to Ryan. “Are you ready for this?”
Ryan shrugs. He’s not all into gruesome history the way Seth is, but he likes seeing new things. Not so long ago, he never expected to leave Chino, much less California or the entire nation. He’s straightforwardly impressed by all the big, ancient stuff they’ve been seeing, if only by virtue of its foreign-ness. “I’m feeling good, feeling stoked.”
“Fantastic. Let me show you the world, shining, shimmering, splendid. Come along, Ryancenitas.” When Ryan throws Seth his best, most loathsome glare, Seth takes it as a cue to try again. “Ryanchero? No? Ry-ry?”
“You’re beginning to sound like your grandpa.”
“May he rest in peace,” Seth says, crossing himself theatrically.
They spend most of the day exploring the Tower’s bounty, from the arms and armory exhibition to the Queen’s sparkling jewels. There’s an old church full of dead, beheaded queens, and an even older cobblestone catwalk overlooking the Thames, where the sun pools on the water, copper-gold, the color of pennies.
Seth is full of trivia about the monarchy, most of it gleaned from their visit to Westminster Abbey on day one of their adventure. Ryan doesn’t have a lot to contribute to Seth’s running tirade on how he could be four hundred thousandth in line for the throne on the Nichol side of the family, and what exactly would it take to get three hundred and ninety nine thousand people out of the way, exactly? He listens anyway, because it’s Seth and there’s no reason not to.
In between admiring metal codpieces and planning an extraordinarily elaborate burglary of a royal scepter, Seth slows down long enough to eat.
“The Tower’s cafeteria isn’t half bad,” he says, and Ryan simply smirks, because Anna’s the one who suggested they hit it up on one of her handy dandy maps.
…he refuses to feel guilty about that.
Unfortunately for Ryan, refusing himself has never worked out really well.
Some odd seven hours later, they wander away from the famous landmark of Ye Olde Great Britannia and into the nearest Starbucks, of which there are two. Ryan watches Seth give a critical eye to yellowed flyers on the wall advertising concerts and dog walkers, cupping his frothy latte to his chest like Oliver Twist might come along and snatch it from his hands. He’s a total dork in his tight jeans and witty t-shirt, dark hair stuck somewhere between bird’s nest and elegantly disheveled. A business woman in the corner of the shop keeps eyeing him warily, in case he begins begging for change.
Ryan laughs under his breath, only for his amusement to catch in his throat, a hitched cough, because Seth is facing him with a grin that radiates brilliance. He’s clutching at one of the flyers with his left hand while he flails his latte with his right. “I don’t even know who Mumford and Sons are, but we are seeing them, Ryan, I demand it.”
Sighing into his Café Americano, Ryan prepares for his imminent surrender to the idea. A live show can’t be that bad, right? It’s better than taking Seth to a bar. Worst comes to worst, they waste the night with the pluck of a banjo and bass turning their marrow liquid, Seth’s warmth pressed hot and tight against Ryan’s side.
He works up a sardonic smile and mockingly bows, “Lead the way, your highness.”
The grin Seth flashes him is dizzying.
---
The sun in Chino was brutal, nothing at all like the gentle giant Ryan was used to. Their new yard smelled of bottlebrush, but everything tasted arid on Ryan’s tongue.
His mom said, “Things will be different now, baby,” and Ryan tried to believe her, but. He missed home in a bad way. He missed his friends and Fresno, his classes and his teachers, even though that school had never done anything right by him. Since his dad got arrested, there wasn’t a kid around who hadn’t used Ryan as an easy target.
He still wanted to go back. It was all he’d ever known.
Trey was the one who kept Ryan sane.
“This is our second chance, Ry. Mom stopped drinking. Everything’s going to be better now.”
That was their mantra. Things were going to change.
Except for all of Trey’s overconfidence, sometimes their mom got that edge in her eyes.
There was little to no fanfare when she finally went off the deep end. She was sober one day, and then the next, Ryan found her passed out naked in the living room with a bottle of Jack cradled against her hip.
Dawn Atwood was nothing if not predictable.
---
Seth is all about Belgium.
“There’s chocolate. Chocolate everywhere! How are you not more enthusiastic about this?”
“I don’t think I can eat anymore chocolate, man.” Ryan rubs his stomach heartily, wishing he’d maybe skipped the last eighteen or so pieces.
Seth is unnaturally persuasive when he wants to be. “I’m going to explode.”
“Really? When? Do you think we could set up a change bucket in that square over there and then you could do it on demand? Would people pay to see a kid from Chino explode?”
Ryan groans. “Universal question.”
“Yes feels like a safe bet. People pay to see a lot of things.” Seth stares at him expectantly.
“M’not eating anymore,” Ryan tells him without nearly enough reproach. That fond note in his voice is totally uncalled for.
“Fair enough. Scraping you off the cobblestone would bum me out.” Seth pauses just long enough to let Ryan know that a segue is coming.
He launches into his next speech without missing a beat. “You know Ryan, if someone had told me everyone in Bruges speaks English, I wouldn’t have bothered learning how to ask where the restroom is in Belgian.”
Seth rattles off a terribly accented phrase that mostly sounds like gibberish. Ryan grimaces.
A lady nearby outright sours, from the tightness of her eyes to the hollow of her cheekbones. Carefully, he says, “I don’t think Belgian is a language, and are you sure that means what you think it means?”
Seth considers, eyes rolling back like he’s trying to scrutinize the inside of his brain. “I might have said my pants are leaking.”
The woman makes a disgruntled sound and stalks away. Seth and diplomacy, ever walking hand in hand.
They meander down a twisting street, Seth peeking in the window of every chocolatier they pass, while Ryan admires everything else. He likes all the squat Belgian buildings, the religious icons from different centuries perched on every available corner. He finds it interesting how there are houses of every flavor lining the water, thick paned Spanish windows set next to elaborate French facades sitting pretty beside more practical Dutch canal homes. It’s an amalgam of wood, stone, and brick that must’ve jumped straight from an architect’s wet dream.
“By the way,” Seth interrupts his own diatribe on the merits of ganache mid-sentence. “I spoke to the rental car company and insisted, nay, demanded that we get an iPod port, and naturally they were happy to oblige. You brought yours, right? We’ll have to coordinate our playlists. Do you still listen to Journey?”
Ryan frowns.
Seth wrinkles his nose and says, “You hurt me on the inside.”
And yet internal damage doesn’t put a damper on Seth’s enthusiasm for the next line of shops filled with lacy doilies and chocolate knights. Ryan is traveling with a five year old.
He replies, “You have Boyz II Men on your iPod.”
Breath fogging the window his face is pressed against, Seth mumbles agreeably, “Touché.”
Their hotel is situated down a back alley, next to a sex shop and a microbrewery. They have to pack up and be out by eleven the next morning, but Ryan begrudgingly agrees to let Seth sample the home brews next door.
Beneath cheery signs declaring that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, the two of them pound back a lager or three.
Ryan finds that despite his fervent assertion that he learned how to down a tequila shot in college - and what else has Seth learned how to swallow? - after three beers he remains convinced he’s a ninja.
A really bad, really un-stealthy ninja.
Seth hollers into the night air, “Belgium’s going to miss us, Ryan!” as he stumbles across uneven stone streets. Ryan’s got one arm beneath his slightly damp armpits, which is spectacularly revolting, but less so than it should be. Ryan’s actually pretty tipsy too.
“You,” he decides, slurring only the slightest bit, “Are loud.”
“Of course I’m loud, I’m Seth Cohen,” Seth answers with unnecessary volume.
Ryan grins, unable to help himself. “It would be pretty awful if you were anyone else.”
“Amen and hallelujah and whatever else you gentiles say. You know Dad calls you and mom Gentiles behind your back sometimes?” Seth turns his face into Ryan’s neck, his breath warm and wet.
“How is that an insult?”
“It’s all in the inflection, my man.”
For the sake of being contrary, Ryan rides the happy, fuzzy high in his stomach, snickering out, “I’m not your man.”
Seth slumps against him even heavier, and they nearly end up spun out on the rough cobbles. Ryan catches both of them by leaning most of his weight against a dark storefront, pretty Belgian architecture scraping hard against his bicep.
He means to curse and right them both, but then he hears Seth mumble, “Yeah you are. You’re my Ryan. Who else’s would you be?”
---
Gravel skidded under Ryan’s feet, and he ran and he ran and he ran.
Past ice plant growing glossy between rocks and cracks on the sidewalk, big red blooms perched at the tip of a few hardy patches. Past the paint flaking off the adobe of Crazy Old Mister Corbin’s house, and the giant statue of Our Lady of Fatima in Mrs. Valdez’s yard. Past the ferns and low lying cacti and the hibiscus plants in front of the Diaz’s, where Ryan first met Theresa.
She was a wild thing, skinned knees and dark eyes and flyaway hair, everywhere. She had a story Ryan already knew, familiar to him from countless neighbors; her dad working at the cattle ranches, her mom fully invested in homemaking. Her big brother Arturo was in a gang because that was what guys on Ryan’s block did, same old tale, same ending every time.
But Theresa felt different, somehow. She was from the Earth, beautiful and untamed. Ryan’s mom said she looked like a desert rose.
Theresa was also the reason Ryan was in trouble. Again.
Let’s borrow Eddie’s bike, she’d said.
It’ll be fun, she’d said.
Theresa may have been beautiful, and wild, but she was also a liar.
Ryan tried to pick up the pace, but he had tiny little legs, and Eddie was already a freakishly huge teenager in the making, and a scary one.
He figured out his bike was missing. He did not figure out who actually took it.
Ryan was preparing for his face to meet the pavement in a bad way. He could already taste copper in his mouth.
In the distance, the hills were sleeping giants, the sky milky with emerging stars. Dusk blushed against the horizon. Impossibly spindly palm trees towered three and four stories high, swaying on trunks barely as thick as Ryan’s neck. Objectively, it was picturesque, but in the face of getting his head smashed in, all Ryan saw was a blur. He turned a corner and crashed.
Straight into Trey’s arms.
Eddie pounded after him, asphalt slipping beneath his sneakers, but he stumbled to a stop the second he saw where Ryan had ended up.
Eddie and Trey were friends, yeah, but everyone in the neighborhood knew better than to piss the elder Atwood off. He was the biggest and the tallest, and in his hands, Ryan was safe.
That’s how it worked back then. His big brother could fix everything, and all it took was a tiny collision.
Then Trey turned into a collision himself, and hey, irony.
The world has a funny way of fitting itself together before everything falls apart.
---
Seth spends half the car ride comparing his collegiate journey to the Land Before Time.
“But am I Littlefoot or Ducky, Ryan? It’s a quagmire.”
The entire sky looming over the Belgian countryside is the cloudy color of sunlight filtered through quartz. In the midst of it, Seth’s half-cocked
grin is luminescent. He’s…
Ryan curls his hands around the steering wheel and tries not to think about anything other than cartoon dinosaurs.
They get to Paris as the moon crests the horizon, and despite all the really confusing traffic signs, Ryan can’t help but admire how completely breathtaking this city is. The buildings are all so clean, beige and gray and fronted with elaborate facades and colorful doors. Granted, he’d probably appreciate it more if they weren’t lost.
Seth tries to assist with the navigation thing in his own special way, but four years of French at Harbor have been wiped clean from his mind.
They circle the Arc de Triomphe twice.
“You have maps, don’t you? Hold on, I know you have maps.”
“Yeah, in my bag.” Ryan swerves left to avoid a taxi, muttering expletives to himself. Seth nearly impales him with a knee trying to twist around in his seat, and then there are long seconds on end where his ass wiggles in the air. “Find ‘em?”
“No. But you know what I did find?” Seth asks in his best dramatic and foreboding voice.
Ryan’s mind scrabbles backwards to figure out what Seth could have dug up. There’s only one thing it could be.
Shit.
“I can explain.”
Seth does not want an explanation. He crashes back into the passenger seat and crosses his arms, lower lip jutting petulantly out.
“Remember that time you were secretly best friends with my ex?”
“Anna isn’t my best-“
Seth flaps the maps in the air. “Who’s next, Ryan? Luke? Are you super best buddies with Luke?”
Luke is an overgrown Labrador. The sound of his name still makes Ryan feel like punching something. He’s cool with the kid, but there is definitely some residual anger bouncing around somewhere in his belly. His fingers curl. He doesn’t let it show on his face. “Uh. No. But you are.”
Seth dons his best wounded expression. “That is neither here nor there, and frankly I’m hurt that you’d bring it up.”
Ryan rolls his eyes. “You guys have a special bond. There’s no shame in that.”
“Hell yeah we do,” Seth agrees, rumpling a map of what looks to be Prague. “He showed me how to drop the Great Gatsby.”
Ryan slams his foot into the brake, narrowly avoiding an accident with a tour bus full of people from what looks to be Germany. “Wait, you actually know what that means?”
“Sure do.”
Ryan waits. Ryan waits some more. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Nope. Don’t give me that look, it’s part of the sacred bond that Luke and I share. You know how it is, you and Luke bonded once. Remember? It was a beautiful winter day-“
“We stopped hating each other. That does not make us friends.”
“Then or now?”
“Always,” Ryan promises.
“See, I can’t take you seriously now that I know you’ve been dalliancing with Anna behind my back.”
“Is dalliancing a word?”
“Probably not. Stop changing the subject.” Seth carefully places the maps in his lap. “Seriously, dude. Why didn’t you tell me you were talking to her?”
“I knew it would bug you.”
“It doesn’t bug me that you’re talking to her.”
Ryan squints narrowly at Seth, disbelief radiating off his body in waves.
“It doesn’t,” he insists, his profile silhouetted by headlights. Ryan can’t tell if he’s scowling or smiling. “I’m wigged out that you kept it a secret, is all. I thought we were past the Cloak and Dagger part of our relationship.”
Ryan misses the street for their hotel a third time. His fingers slip across the steering wheel, searching for an explanation in the tooled leather.
He settles on, “Anna’s nice. Just because you give up on someone doesn’t mean I have to.”
Overhead, a billboard advertising a happy French couple is backlit bright enough to outshine the stars. As far as scenery goes, it’s less than exciting. Ryan wonders where the Eiffel Tower is in proximity to this endless road.
Seth spits out, “I didn’t give Anna up. I’m not you, dude.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Thinking about the Eiffel Tower inevitably stirs up memories of Taylor, and that’s not at all where Ryan wants his head to be. He’s focused. He’s here. He’s now.
He’s getting chastised by his best friend.
“It means people leave and you try to pretend they don’t exist anymore. Your mom and Trey and…and me.”
Kid Chino would’ve told Seth to mind his own fucking business, but Ryan’s not Kid Chino anymore. His foot grows heavier on the gas pedal, but he manages to keep the vast majority of the edge from his words when he demands, “Man, when’ve I ever tried to pretend you don’t exist?”
“I don’t know, like all of college?”
“Seth, I talk to you constantly.”
“Maybe that’s not enough,” Seth replies sulkily, sinking down in the passenger seat. He shoves his knees up against the dashboard and refuses to say anything else, even when Ryan makes him listen to Don’t Stop Believin’ three times in a row.
Basically, it means Ryan’s fucked.
---
A fever was burning through Ryan’s bones.
His mom smoothed a cool hand through his sweaty hair, humming a Whitesnake song underneath her breath. The TV blared a sit-com in another room, Trey’s muted laughter assaulting Ryan’s ears.
“Don’t feel good,” he mumbled, tugging his blanket tighter around his chin.
“I know, baby.”
Her eyes were bright with liquor, but she was there, and that meant more to Ryan than whether his mom was sober or not. He didn’t get a lot
of chances to have her mother him, not since they locked dad up and threw away the key.
She asked, “Do you want some soup?”
Ryan turned his head against her thigh, nuzzling the warmth. “No, stay. Want - stay.”
“Okay,” she soothed.
All he wanted in that moment was to fall asleep, cradled against his mother’s warmth, and to wake up the same way. But in the morning, she was gone, and the empty space near Ryan’s pillow a solemn reminder that he was not a child anymore.
---
They don’t stay in Paris as long as they planned. Notre Dame has a mile long line, Sacre Coeur smells a lot like the market hocking pig shanks and oysters outside, and the Eiffel Tower, while fantastic, is also a really expensive tourist trap.
All of which would be fine if Seth wasn’t pulling a freeze out that would make Kirsten Cohen applaud. Ryan wants to talk about the artist’s garrets and the terracotta roofing, the elaborate sculpture adorning every street corner, the white washed streets and the way people really do wear berets.
Does Seth think the Seine is dirtier than the Thames? Does he hate the taste of red wine? Is he sick of all the dirty looks Parisians throw their way when they wander up, searching for directions, only to find that neither of them know oui from merci?
He’s got no way to ask, because he’s the subject of a world class hissy fit. Long gone are London’s history buff Seth and Bruges’ chocolate-hound Cohen; both have been replaced with an icy, silent man who spends the nights at the hotel thumbing through old copies of Legion and ensuring misery reigns.
It’s frustrating in a way that makes Ryan grit his teeth and clench his fists. He can’t even enjoy all the pretty girls the city has to offer. And damn, are there girls. Girls in skirts and girls in boots and girls in really tight jeans. Girls in bowler hats and vests, stilettos and hobo boots.
There are girls of every flavor, all Bambi limbed and sloe eyed, wearing lipstick as varied in color as a butterfly’s wings. This place is everything Newport strives to be. But all he can think about is…Seth.
Stone gargoyles perch above the buildings, their comic faces judging Ryan’s every misstep. The thing is, they don’t fight like this anymore, not since Marissa, and there’s something unnerving about slipping back into their teenage jeans. After a tense day at the Musée D’Orsay, where Seth’s only contribution to conversation was, “Did you know Van Gogh had a massive boner for Gauguin?” Ryan throws down the gauntlet.
Which is to say, he swallows down his pride (it tastes of blood in his throat) and tries to apologize.
Seth ignores him, singing something that sounds suspiciously like why don’t I go eat worms under his breath.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Ryan murmurs into the shell of Seth’s ear. He’s hoping the shock value alone will kick start Seth out of his funk, but no go. Seth chows down on a baguette, gaze firmly locked on the tiny screen of his phone.
The next day, Ryan books their tickets to Spain, because Paris is a bummer without anyone to share it with.
---
They got older.
The cattle ranches closed.
Theresa’s dad moved onto day labor in the orange groves outside the city limits, then strawberry picking, and then he wasn’t there at all.
Ryan could empathize. Frank Atwood had been rotting in a prison cell since forever ago. It’d been so long that Ryan barely bothered visiting anymore. He and his father never had much to say to each other anyway.
After Theresa’s dad fell off the map, Theresa’s eyes grew harder, but she was no tamer than she’d started out. She got into more trouble than any one person should’ve been able to manage, and not all of it was as consequence-free as stealing Eddie’s bike.
She gave Ryan his first beer, his second ever driving lesson, his fifteenth kiss. Their teachers cared too much or too little. The former were easy to take advantage of, to throw a sob story at, while the latter didn’t give a damn either way. Theresa convinced him to skip out on class a lot.
Ryan never felt bad about it. Adults, he’d found, were pretty useless.
When the thunder rolled in from the hills, streaking lightning across the sky, he and Theresa would run outside and dance and scream. There was nothing she wasn’t willing to do, no rules she wasn’t willing to break. She was a wonder. She was the very center of his world.
Theresa kept arrowheads and shark’s teeth she’d found in her backyard piled high in overflowing bowls in her room. She liked the way sharp things felt, she said when Ryan asked. He thought that was weird, because Theresa had the softest smile, but he never dared to tell her that out loud. Some nights they’d sit together on her bed and she’d drag the rugged edges of obsidian and flint across her fingertips, the glint of candlelight peeking around emblazoned images of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Sagrado Corazon.
And one night she climbed into his lap and made him say her name, over and over, until it became a secret thing, something powerful and sacred.
Ryan wasn’t sure, back then, what love was.
A pretty girl on his dick with fire in her smile felt a lot like it.
---
Ryan’s phone rings at this rundown train station situated somewhere near the border of France and Spain. The only people who care enough to bug Ryan in the midst of this zany adventure of unchecked fun are Kirsten and Sandy, so he picks up without even glancing at the caller ID.
“Atwood!”
“Summer?” Ryan has to look at his phone’s display just to make sure he’s imagining things. It’s just, other than the babysitting-Seth texts, they don’t really talk. “Are we friends now?”
“Of course we’re friends. Luke and I-“
“Do not bring me into this!” There is a sound similar to chair-legs scraping over linoleum, an extremely unmasculine squeaking noise, and then Summer is back, saying, “Luke and I are concerned about Cohen. His statuses on Facebook have been extremely emo. As good friends,
we are troubled and apprehensive for Seth’s wellbeing.”
“Why are you at Luke’s?”
“I got lonely,” Summer complains. “You and Cohen are gay trekking, Coop’s gone-“ She hesitates so briefly after mentioning Marissa’s name that someone who didn’t know her could miss it; a space that represents this poignant, unending sadness. Then Summer’s off and running again, like it never even happened, “-and Taylor’s gone off on this misguided mission in Korea to reintroduce the boy band to the rest of the civilized world. Like that’ll ever happen. Luke’s the only loser I know with a life as pathetic as mine.”
Ryan twists his lips, searching for words. He doesn’t find any other than, “Ah,” but Summer has that effect on him a lot. Then he asks, “Taylor went to Korea?”
“She left right after you did,” Summer confirms. “So how is Cohen?”
“Wouldn’t know.”
“What do you mean you wouldn’t know? Did you let him out of your sight? Atwood, is my ex-boyfriend in Amsterdam, because that is not allowed, okay, we have ground rules-“
“He’s about twenty feet away from me, haggling over the price of a hot dog,” Ryan says as soothingly as he can, because there is a large possibility that Summer owns a machete. He really does not want to explain to Sandy and Kirsten why their firstborn rests in pieces.
“Oh. Why didn’t you say so?” Summer asks suspiciously.
“He isn’t talking to me right now,” Ryan explains, “So I don’t know how he is.”
“Seth Cohen’s not talking?” Summer barks with laughter. In the background, Ryan can hear Luke, calling, “Take a video. I’d pay to see that!”
Ryan is quiet, glaring at one of the pillars supporting the train station’s roof.
“Wait, you’re serious? What did you do?” Summer demands. “How can I replicate it?”
“It’s not as fun as it sounds. But Seth’s fine.”
“Oh no, you are not Chino-voicing me. What did you do to Cohen?”
“Nothing.”
“Ryan!” Summer’s voice can be extraordinarily shrill. Ryan winces. Then he obediently elaborates on exactly what happened, and for a long, long stretch of time, there is dead quiet on the other end of the phone.
He watches Seth piss off the cashier at the train station hot dog stand enough that she throws a bucket of minced onions at his face. A good friend would probably intervene.
“Summer?” Ryan prompts, already walking towards the automatic doors. Seth flaps his hands around and yells something that sounds like Arriba and a curse through the glass. His talents do not lie in the linguistic arena.
“Hold on,” Summer snaps. “I’m trying to figure out if the last time Cohen made me this furious was when he flunked his college interviews or when he hooked up with Zack.”
Ryan’s steps falter. “Seth hooked up with Zack?”
“They dated for like, a day. Before they both remembered how awesome I am,” Summer replies absently. “I think I’m going to murder him.” As an aside, to Luke, Ryan hears her mutter, “Do you own a guillotine?”
Transit security is approaching Seth inside the station. “Summer, I’ve gotta go.”
“Right. You don’t worry about anything, Atwood. I’ll take care of Seth.”
Ryan hangs up, rushing off to assist Seth in worming his way out of the sticky mess he’s gotten into.
It’s only later that he realizes that Summer definitely put murder on the table there. But since Seth still isn’t speaking to him - not even a thank you - Ryan decides he doesn’t care.
So there.
---
The house they rented in Chino wasn’t all that bad.
A.J. was. He didn’t do much more than pound back beer and boss Ryan’s mom around. Ryan started working construction mostly just to get away. He needed the money, sure, and he liked the job, yeah, but the major bonus was not having to breathe the same air as his mom’s skeezy boyfriend.
Chino didn’t exactly sport a skyline, but Ryan got to work on office buildings and housing developments, and to him these places touched the clouds. Everything was geometric shapes, angles and lines, and the first time he made a mistake, no one smacked him around for it or told him how worthless he was.
The foreman of the crew took Ryan under his wing. He was a teacher who cared too much, but for once in Ryan’s life he didn’t view it as a weakness. He thought maybe he and Theresa had it wrong, before.
Theresa had changed too, in the last few months. They hadn’t been hanging out as much, so he went to see her, to ask what was up. She wrapped Ryan up in a tight embrace, pressed her hips tight to his and breathed, “I’ve missed you,” right into the shell of his ear.
Then she told him that she was dating Eddie, and that everything they were before was over.
Ryan waited for it to hurt, but mostly he was happy they were going to be just friends. It always felt like too much pressure when they were together; like Theresa was waiting for Ryan to fall in love, and he didn’t know how. So it went from him and Theresa against the world to him and Theresa and Eddie, and that was okay. Ryan didn’t need anything other than what he had right then.
That summer, possibilities lingered in the air. The wind rustled his hair into reckless spikes, the sun browned his skin, and for the first time in his life, Ryan could taste something other than desert dry and bottlebrush.
Construction was cool that way. It gave him clarity, helped him see things differently. Away from his house, everything fit exactly the way it was supposed to, and if it didn’t, it was alright. There was always a fix.
Ryan just had to find it.
---
Author: garnetice
Pairing: Ryan/Seth
Rating: M
Word Count: 9,265 (Part 1, 16,564 total)
Warnings: Sex. Superfluous babble. Occasional surfer slang. Spoilers past season 4.
Summary: "Soul searching?” “Backpacking.” “I hear it’s the same thing.”
Disclaimer: I absolutely one hundred percent do not own The OC. I do find Josh Schwartz very attractive though. That should count for something.
Author's Notes: For breila-rose on her belated birthday, because she sends me pictures of Ben McKenzie's biceps. This takes place roughly in 2008ish, by my math, so I tried to keep it technologically and musically in date. I have to give a thousand thank you's to default_dollie, who did my beta despite never having watched The OC.
---
“You’re going to get fat.”
“Who asked you, man? This is America, and as an American, I am exercising my right to do whatever I want. If what I want includes fostering an impressive gut, it is not for you to judge.” Seth takes a moment to cast some serious judgment Ryan’s way. “Body policing is wrong. For shame, Ryan. For shame.”
Ryan gives Seth his best unimpressed look, cutting right through his nonstop babble. “You can’t eat all the baguettes in Europe.”
“Once upon a time you also told me I couldn’t grow a beard. Look at this.” Seth waves his hand beneath his chin, indicating the godawful, patchy scruff sprouting there. “I’m practically a wooly mammoth.”
“Yeah, you should shave that.”
“Ryan, it’s my pride and joy. Pride. And joy.” Seth says emphatically, wounded. “Want to get a dig in about my hair, too? You know, it takes work to look this breathtaking. Hours and hours of work.”
Ryan considers, tilting his head this way and that. He decides, “You need a hobby.”
“I was thinking about macramé. Ooh, hey, you know what we need for this flight? Magazines. No adventure across the pond is complete without reading up on Angelina Jolie’s latest antics, that’s what I always say. Be right back.” Seth stands, dusting off the knees of his jeans. “I’ll grab you something suitably entertaining. Cosmo, maybe? You can find out if you’re a Winter or an Autumn.”
“Pass.”
“Pass? Ryan, this could be an important learning opportunity for you.”
“I’m a Winter.” Ryan replies stonily. “Taylor told me.”
Seth freezes, doing a perfect impersonation of deer-in-headlights. “Ah. Taylor. Maybe I’ll just grab you an issue of the LA Times. Or Hustler? It’s a long trip, and I hear all kinds of crazy goes down in those bathrooms-“
“Seth.”
“Gotcha, right, I’m going, don’t traipse off to London without me now.”
Seth nearly trips over his own feet as he wanders away, his spidery limbs flailing everywhere before he finds his balance. Overhead, a voice crackles on the intercom, asking that a Mr. Babbage proceed to his gate.
Ryan taps his fingers against his thigh and tries not to fiddle with his cell phone. He doesn’t really have anyone to call. They said their goodbyes to Kirsten and Sandy earlier that morning. Marissa’s dead. Taylor’s gone. He’s not really close with any of his friends back at Berkley. Summer texts Ryan every five minutes with strict instructions about the Care and Keeping of Seth Cohen in a European Locale, but after a while, he stopped replying. She knows perfectly well that he can handle Seth.
Around him, LAX bustles. They were supposed to fly out of San Francisco, but in Seth’s quest for the cheapest fare, he dragged them both further South than Ryan has been in a long time. Newport’s even further down the coast, but the people here are exactly like Ryan remembers. Rushing, jostling, dragging suitcases and small children, carting teacup dogs and slowpoke parents. There are pastels and neons and the occasional Hawaiian shirt, cuts and colors too chic and too bright for the laid back crowd up near Berkeley.
Parents cluck, friends bicker. A group of teenagers on a school trip giggle excitedly, and Ryan doesn’t ever remember being exactly like them.
Businessmen strut down the tiled floor with the swaggering purpose of those-who-will-inherit-the-earth, unseasonal trench coats flapping behind them. Someone slides into the seat Seth has evacuated; beautiful, and definitely not-Seth shaped.
“Oh, uh, sorry, that’s taken.”
The pretty girl cocks her head to the side, lips tugging into a smile. “Sorry. Girlfriend?”
“Not exactly.”
The girl does not move. “Where are you headed?”
“All over the place.” Ryan notes that she’s got big blue eyes, the steely, dark color of the Pacific before a storm. Marissa had eyes like that, so easy to sink into, to get lost in.
By contrast, Taylor’s eyes were honeyed brown, and she never made Ryan feel anything but safe.
“Soul searching?”
“Backpacking.”
“I hear it’s the same thing.” The girl crosses her legs, a long stretch of thigh slipping over skin. LAX is the only place Ryan’s ever been where female-folk consider miniskirts proper flying attire. “Your girlfriend’s taking a long time. Think she’s flown the coop?”
It takes Ryan a second to remember she’s talking about Seth. Seth, who is probably bounding all over the Newsstand with the energy of a puppy on Red Bull, bouncing from the magazine display to the shelves full of candy to the tiny overpriced rack of headphones and ear buds.
Seth, who has been a complete trooper about Ryan’s melancholy pity-spiral ever since his breakup with Taylor, even though it’s been nudging in on Ryan’s enthusiasm for this trip for months on end.
“No.”
“Man of many words. I like that.” The girl leans forward and places her hand on Ryan’s knee, baring a fair amount of cleavage in the process.
“Aren’t you going to miss home?”
Ryan lifts an eyebrow, acutely uncomfortable but unsure what to do about it. Trey told him never to turn down the advances of a pretty girl, and of all the horrible, awful, terrible advice Trey gave him, that bit has rarely steered Ryan wrong. “How do you know this is home?”
“Am I interrupting something? This looks like a thing that I am interrupting. I can come back later, me and Mr. Prashad over there were really hitting it off.” Seth wiggles his fingers back down the terminal, hopping from foot to foot. His dark curls hang in his eyes, a cloak of awkward settled neatly upon his shoulders. It’s Seth of old, Classic Newport Version, the discomfited kid he was before he grew into his own skin. “I hate to disrupt all the eye-sex.”
“Oh.” The gorgeous girl says, her steely eyes focusing on Seth. He’s gawky, long legs and hands shoved in his pockets, the expression on his face screaming I’m-About-To-Be-Eaten-By-Komodo-Dragons. That’s Seth’s expression a lot of the time, but the girl snaps back her hand, the imprint of her fingers burning against Ryan’s flesh, straight through his jeans. “I’m usually better at, ah. Honest, I didn’t realize.”
She gathers up her stuff while Ryan and Seth stare, Ryan at the muscle in her legs, moving smooth beneath skin - and God Bless California girls - Seth in utter fascination at her hair. Suitcase firmly in hand, she says briskly, “Travel safe,” and stalks off, mortification clinging to her frame.
“What just happened?” Ryan asks.
“How do you do that?” Seth marvels instead of answering, eyeing Ryan with a combination of suspicion and awe.
“Do what?”
“That. Tell me your secret, because I am a normal person. Normal people do not have random slutty adventures and it is supremely unfair.”
Ryan is pretty sure his face looks exactly like he’s swallowed a sour lemon. “What does that even mean?”
“Don’t play dumb, everyone knows you’ve got super pheromones that make girls want to paw all over you, alright, there’s no shame in being touched by aliens. Just, the rest of us have to do everything the old fashioned way. Share.”
Seth is pouting so ridiculously that it’s hard to be offended about the whole being called a manslut thing. Haltingly, laughter bubbling in his chest, Ryan manages, “I don’t have alien pheromones.”
“No?” Seth’s eyes widen in surprise. “It must be some combination of the biceps and the dimples, then.” He pokes Ryan’s arm for emphasis.
“So while you were getting your mack on, I believe they started boarding. Ready to blow this popsicle stand? I bought you the latest issue of
Allure, for your reading pleasure.”
He waves his plastic bag full of magazines tantalizingly in the air. Ryan makes a face. “Let’s just get on the plane.”
Agreeably, Seth says, “Right, cool. This is going to be fantastic. Unless we crash.”
Ryan swallows his own spit, covering it with a glare.
Flying. Ugh.
“Thanks for that.”
“No, I’m serious. Everything’s fun and games until we’re stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, reenacting Castaway. You get to be Wilson, you’re
too fair haired for Tom Hanks.”
“I could go on this trip by myself,” Ryan suggests, the fear of heights he never quite shook creeping up his spine.
“You’d miss me if I was gone.” Seth hauls Ryan to his feet by the crook of his elbow, waving eagerly to the tarmac as they get in line to board.
“Adieu, Country O’Mine. See you in a month.”
Ryan slumps against Seth’s side while they wait, bag digging into his arm. Seth does not appear to mind. It’s not like Ryan’s carrying much; he’s got his iPod, a dog-eared paperback, and all kinds of maps, courtesy of Anna, who’s done the whole European Shenanigans thing before. She and Ryan stayed in touch long after Seth did the Ex-Boyfriend Disconnect, because Anna is cool and pretty down to Earth, and probably Ryan’s only lady friend who hasn’t ever expressed an interest in climbing into his pants. He likes her. Silently and from a distance, as far as Seth is concerned, because letting him in on that secret would be a terrible idea. He’s never coped well with jealousy.
Or quiet. Ryan gets a whole five seconds of peace while they stand in line, glancing between their boarding passes and the airline attendants standing behind their big, blocky podiums as if sheer willpower might compel them to move the process along faster.
“Hey, Ryan, hey,” Seth nags, pulling at Ryan’s clothes until he has his full attention. “I forgot my robe.”
Ryan has no idea what to do with him at least ninety percent of the time. “The horror. The tragedy.”
Seth pulls back. “Wow, dude, I didn’t know you were so keen on seeing me in my boxers, but if this is how you’re going to take the news, then hey, I guess we’re golden.”
“As long as you’re wearing boxers.”
“I told you, the sleeping au natural thing happened once. Stop punishing me for it.”
“Your roommate called me, sobbing over nightmares for three weeks straight. That’s three weeks’ worth of sleep I can never have back,” Ryan tells him, suppressing a smile.
Architecture was a harsh major, man. Berkeley had bitch slapped him across the face, and living vicariously through Seth’s freshmen follies at RISD had been a hilarious break in the tedium of studying everything, forever, for all of eternity.
Like. Ryan enjoyed learning well enough, but he’d never planned on marrying it.
“Sleep is for the weak, and also, we learned an important lesson that night. Namely that Roommate Rory is not gay.”
“Or you’re hideously scarred. Down there.”
“Blasphemy. Summer never complained.”
“I heard Summer needs glasses.”
“Funny. You are so funny. I will show you my dick right now, Ryan. Don’t tempt me.” Seth begins fumbling with his pants.
An elderly woman standing in line behind them scowls. Her equally old friend grins from ear to ear, ready for the show.
“That is really not necessary.” Seth stares at him blankly, hands poised over his belt. Ryan emphasizes, “Public. Illegal.”
“Is it?” Seth asks, with honest to goodness surprise. “You know Ryan, I genuinely have no idea how I’ve survived these last four months without you to act as my moral compass.”
“I convey the simple wisdoms. Don’t get arrested if you want to see Europe…Sleep clothed.”
Seth nods along. “Words to live by.”
Scowl-faced woman’s more excitable friend drops her glee, apparently disappointed by the lack of naked Cohen. Ryan doesn’t get it. He’s so scrawny. He does have something going on in the abdominal region that isn’t bad to look at, but, uh. Hi, awkward.
He announces, “Line’s moving,” both because it is and because he needs words to erase that image from his brain straightaway. He trips over his own feet, gets his paper barcode scanned, and manages not to think any coherent thoughts all the way through the accordion corridor leading to the door of the plane.
Then he thinks, right, the plane. Flying is really not his favorite thing.
Seth chatters over Ryan’s complete and utter terror while they find their seats, blessedly recounting every action packed detail of an Imax thriller about humpback whales as they buckle in. He’s a good distraction, but even he can’t subdue the wellspring of dread bubbling in
Ryan’s stomach for long.
Waiting for everyone else to hop onboard the plane takes ages, Ryan’s feet getting itchy in his boots, the way they always do when he imagines being up high, too high, too close to a demise he can’t actually fight. Leonardo da Vinci and the Wright Brothers all deserve bricks to the face, because as far as Ryan’s concerned, humans are meant to keep their feet firmly on the ground.
“Are you okay, man? You’re looking kind of…jaundiced, honestly. It’s like a sickly, wan thing right about here.” Seth waves a hand over his own face, repeatedly.
Ryan grunts.
Realization dawns across Seth’s features, eyes widening. “Is this what a panic attack looks like when you’re wearing it? Come on, man, don’t be bogus. Reflect upon how great this trip will be.”
“Because we have such a great track record with trips.”
Maybe he should not be squeezing the armrests so tightly. Ryan is reasonably sure he just heard one pop. He grits his teeth and tries, desperately, to hold onto his remaining cool.
“Tijuana,” Seth concedes. “Palm Springs. That time with the thing.”
“Don’t forget the summer you made me drive to Bixby Bridge just so you could sing Deathcab on top of it.”
“That road trip was a total success.”
“Three hours in the Range Rover so you could serenade me?” Ryan snorts exactly how he feels about that. Seth can carry a decent tune, but Ryan will never be driving to Big Sur just to hear him sing again.
Seth beams from ear to ear, completely aware of what an ass he is. “It sounds minty when you put it that way, but the reality was so much better.”
The plane begins taxiing, and there is a harrowing moment where Ryan is scared he’s broken the audio remote for the miniature TV in the back of the chair in front of him. He hasn’t, but breathing is definitely becoming a challenge. He’s done this before. He flew to Paris for Taylor, for Chris’sake, to win her back after their break-up last year, but that was different.
He loved her.
He loves her.
Neither one sounds quite right in his head.
Seth gives Ryan his puppy pout of death, urging him to be okay with the ginormous aluminum monstrosity they’re trapped inside. Ryan is not okay with this, but Seth is his friend, Ryan’s makeshift brother, and they’ve both been looking forward to this trip for months. He tries to loosen his grip on the arm rests, because in a no homo, completely heteronormative way, he loves Seth every bit as much as he ever loved Taylor.
He can do this, for him. “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”
The set of Seth’s shoulders eases the second the words leave Ryan’s mouth. “Good. That’s good. Sit back, relax, and let me show you the wealth of entertainment opportunities I’ve brought with.”
He unzips his backpack with entirely too much pomp and circumstance, only to reveal Ryan’s worst nightmare. “All four seasons of The Valley?”
“Best show on Earth,” Seth agrees, brainwashing evident. “I still can’t believe they cancelled it.”
As the plane begins to gain speed down the runway, Ryan decides that he can do this, for Seth, you know, as long as he doesn’t decide to strangle him.
There is a jolt in Ryan’s stomach as, for a moment, they hang suspended way too close to the Earth. They arc up, up, up, the wheels retracting beneath their feet, with a rumble of machinery and a whole fiesta going off beneath Ryan’s sternum, but then Seth is nudging his elbow, trying to scramble into Ryan’s lap in the midst of a mission to see out the window.
“I think I can spot our house from up here.”
“Our house is about eight hours north,” Ryan manages over the knot in his throat.
“Our old house,” Seth amends. “Or maybe that’s someone else’s infinity pool.”
Los Angeles is spread out under them, a series of jewel-toned backyards in turquoise and emerald, offset by the rich rust red of adobe roofs. Cars shrink to ant-size, although the lines of bumper to bumper traffic stretch way too long, and Ryan can no longer make out the feathered shape that marks the heads of palm trees.
Taylor’s down there somewhere, set to conquer the world.
Thinking about it makes Ryan happy-sad, bittersweet in his bones, even with Seth practically bouncing on his thighs. He never wanted things with Taylor to end the way they did. The two of them were good together. Ryan admired her, adored her, cherished her when he wasn’t sure he was capable of ever caring again.
Falling for Taylor was uncomplicated and fun, when that was exactly what he needed, but the simplicity of their relationship was also the nail in its coffin. Taylor had seen Ryan with Marissa.
Don’t blow it over some chick you’re not going to care about in ten years, Oliver told Ryan once, prior to his complete psychotic break. He’d been so completely wrong; Ryan never stopped caring about Marissa, even now that she only really exists in the memories of the people who knew her. The two of them had loved each other raw, razor-blades and tears, and sometimes it drove him insane, but sometimes it was better than Ryan knew love could be.
Taylor wanted what she had with him to be the same.
Ryan couldn’t deliver that. He firmly believes everyone deserves their one epic love, but Taylor would never be his. He has trouble believing he survived Marissa, even today. There’d been girls before her, but he’d never been in so hard or so deep. Then the intensity was a shackle, but he misses it now that it’s gone.
So things with Taylor inevitably crashed and burned as a direct result of Ryan’s hopeless romance, and now all he’s got left is Seth.
Slobbering all over the window.
If Marissa was here, she’d laugh.
He misses her. He never stops.
The plane climbs into the sky, LA dissolving into the Prussian Blue of dusk, until every single city light disappears completely.
---
When Ryan was little and things were good, his dad would take him to the park. Ryan can’t remember a lot from back then, but trapped in the amber of his mind, he’s still got this.
Dust stirred around his feet, his chubby ankles, and his dad’s thick rubber-soled boots. They held hands, Ryan swinging his arms back and forth, his dad lifting him in the air at times, spinning him so that he felt like he could fly.
There were clusters of eucalyptus trees arching over the park’s entryway, their scent heady and clinging, spices and mulch. The sidewalks were filthy, but the grass was very, very green, fresh-cut and welcoming. Ryan could smell that, and the eucalyptus; his dad’s dishwater cologne, and the electricity of a cloudy day, of lightning waiting to strike.
He wanted to go on the swings, because the monkey bars were Trey’s favorite, and one time he’d pushed Ryan off when their mom wasn’t looking. Trey wasn’t there at the moment, grounded for sneaking sips of their parents’ beer, but Ryan couldn’t shake the idea that Trey would know.
For a little while, his dad pushed him, chains creaking in their cracked plastic casing, the seat warm beneath Ryan’s bottom as he pumped his tiny legs. Overhead the sun was a white spotlight, straining to break through thin gray clouds. Ryan reached higher and higher on every arc until, on the downswing, his dad was no longer there to push.
He glanced wildly around, searching the length of the sandbox and beyond. His father stood by a particularly worn tree, red, orange, and ochre bleeding out from beneath white bark, the leaves yellow-green and drooping. A man was talking to Ryan’s dad, pushing at his shoulders, angry.
Ryan didn’t know much about anger then. Seeing it, up close? He was scared.
The sky rumbled, every bit as pissed off, and Ryan tried to catch his heels in the sand. They dragged, but didn’t stick, the swing pushing on with too much momentum. He had to jump to get free, but Ryan’s balance was off. He stumbled. He fell.
He called his dad’s name, the new scrape on his arm welling blood, but the sky broke in with another livid growl. Nearby, the jungle gym loomed. It wasn’t quite protection from the rain that began to fell, but it was strong and solid, and to Ryan, it looked like something to hide under.
He huddled there, in the damp sand, guarded by octagons and hexagons, crisscrossed metal lines until his dad was done yelling. Through the geometric shapes of the jungle gym, he peeked in at Ryan, all twinkly blue eyes and concern.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and Ryan did not know how to tell him about all the things that bounced beneath his ribcage, about being afraid or waiting for lightning to strike. He didn’t know then that he’d get used to feeling like that. He would come to expect the earth to crack at every turn, and he’d never, ever escape that desperate, hopeless panic.
He’d soon grow accustomed to looking at his dad behind bars.
---
London is big and kind of gray. The girls have hot accents, the beer isn’t bad, and Ryan hates the taste of tea.
Seth is convinced it is a city full of his people.
“This is the birthplace of like, ninety percent of all the relevant musicians in the past five decades. The Beatles. The Clash. The Arctic Monkeys. The Wombats.” He explains, bouncing up and down on the heels of his Converse. He’s giving Ryan whiplash with all the nonstop frenetic energy.
“The who?”
“Them too.” Seth taps out a soundless beat on his corduroy pants. “Where do you want to go today? Recap, we hit up all the majors; Buckingham, the Eye, The British Museum. If you didn’t have any ideas, I was thinking Stonehenge or the Tower.”
Ryan opens his mouth.
Seth forges on. “Say the Tower. I have a lot of feelings about Anne Boleyn. She was the babe of the sixteenth century.”
“You need to stop falling for dead chicks.”
“I can’t help it, Ryan, man, you know I’ve got a thing for the naughty girls, and well-behaved ladies rarely make history.” Seth makes this face that probably should never have seen the watery English daylight and slings his arm around Ryan’s shoulders. He’s all about the touchy-feely lately, probably because Ryan spent the entire plane ride over doing his best scared turtle impression. “So we’re hitting up the Tower, the fortress, the beheading ground of my Queen fair. I wonder if they serve beer there? What am I talking about, this is London, the water fountains spout hops.”
“Seth. No drinking.”
“But I’m so much better at handling my liquor now. I have been tried by fire and college, and I now know what to do with tequila.”
Seth mimics throwing back a shot, except he sort of rounds out his lips like he’s swallowing cum, and there’s a visual Ryan was not prepared for. He swallows something thick in his throat and agrees, “The Tower sounds great. We can head out to Stonehenge tomorrow.”
“Yes, that is a plan! I wouldn’t want you to miss out on that architectural marvel, seeing as it was built by your ancestors the Martians and everything.”
“And we’re back with the pheromones. I don’t have alien pheromones, Seth.”
“You say that like you believe it, but I am not fooled.” Seth wags a finger in the air, only to be distracted by the state of his cuticles (mortifying, Ryan, how could you have let me look through vinyl in front of that mod shopboy with his mod sneer in this state), followed by an in-depth analysis of the difference between quarters and pound coins. By the time they make their way through the underground and stumble, blinking into the light of Tower Hill, Seth has moved down three topics to where Captain Britain falls in the realm of badass super heroes.
The constant barrage of hyperactivity is weirdly comforting, in that it’s been absent from Ryan’s life for months. Seth’s out in Providence now, doing his own thing, and Ryan’s got Berkley and his impossible workload. Seth runs up both of their phone bills on a regular basis, but long-distance-Cohen doesn’t have the same effect as close-quarters-Seth.
They stand in a line of about eight thousand people with the formidable silhouettes of Tower Bridge and the Gherkin standing big and blue and opalescent on the horizon in either direction. Seth moans and groans about the price of admission, but he hands over a fistful of crumpled pound notes easily enough.
He gathers up their tickets and turns to Ryan. “Are you ready for this?”
Ryan shrugs. He’s not all into gruesome history the way Seth is, but he likes seeing new things. Not so long ago, he never expected to leave Chino, much less California or the entire nation. He’s straightforwardly impressed by all the big, ancient stuff they’ve been seeing, if only by virtue of its foreign-ness. “I’m feeling good, feeling stoked.”
“Fantastic. Let me show you the world, shining, shimmering, splendid. Come along, Ryancenitas.” When Ryan throws Seth his best, most loathsome glare, Seth takes it as a cue to try again. “Ryanchero? No? Ry-ry?”
“You’re beginning to sound like your grandpa.”
“May he rest in peace,” Seth says, crossing himself theatrically.
They spend most of the day exploring the Tower’s bounty, from the arms and armory exhibition to the Queen’s sparkling jewels. There’s an old church full of dead, beheaded queens, and an even older cobblestone catwalk overlooking the Thames, where the sun pools on the water, copper-gold, the color of pennies.
Seth is full of trivia about the monarchy, most of it gleaned from their visit to Westminster Abbey on day one of their adventure. Ryan doesn’t have a lot to contribute to Seth’s running tirade on how he could be four hundred thousandth in line for the throne on the Nichol side of the family, and what exactly would it take to get three hundred and ninety nine thousand people out of the way, exactly? He listens anyway, because it’s Seth and there’s no reason not to.
In between admiring metal codpieces and planning an extraordinarily elaborate burglary of a royal scepter, Seth slows down long enough to eat.
“The Tower’s cafeteria isn’t half bad,” he says, and Ryan simply smirks, because Anna’s the one who suggested they hit it up on one of her handy dandy maps.
…he refuses to feel guilty about that.
Unfortunately for Ryan, refusing himself has never worked out really well.
Some odd seven hours later, they wander away from the famous landmark of Ye Olde Great Britannia and into the nearest Starbucks, of which there are two. Ryan watches Seth give a critical eye to yellowed flyers on the wall advertising concerts and dog walkers, cupping his frothy latte to his chest like Oliver Twist might come along and snatch it from his hands. He’s a total dork in his tight jeans and witty t-shirt, dark hair stuck somewhere between bird’s nest and elegantly disheveled. A business woman in the corner of the shop keeps eyeing him warily, in case he begins begging for change.
Ryan laughs under his breath, only for his amusement to catch in his throat, a hitched cough, because Seth is facing him with a grin that radiates brilliance. He’s clutching at one of the flyers with his left hand while he flails his latte with his right. “I don’t even know who Mumford and Sons are, but we are seeing them, Ryan, I demand it.”
Sighing into his Café Americano, Ryan prepares for his imminent surrender to the idea. A live show can’t be that bad, right? It’s better than taking Seth to a bar. Worst comes to worst, they waste the night with the pluck of a banjo and bass turning their marrow liquid, Seth’s warmth pressed hot and tight against Ryan’s side.
He works up a sardonic smile and mockingly bows, “Lead the way, your highness.”
The grin Seth flashes him is dizzying.
---
The sun in Chino was brutal, nothing at all like the gentle giant Ryan was used to. Their new yard smelled of bottlebrush, but everything tasted arid on Ryan’s tongue.
His mom said, “Things will be different now, baby,” and Ryan tried to believe her, but. He missed home in a bad way. He missed his friends and Fresno, his classes and his teachers, even though that school had never done anything right by him. Since his dad got arrested, there wasn’t a kid around who hadn’t used Ryan as an easy target.
He still wanted to go back. It was all he’d ever known.
Trey was the one who kept Ryan sane.
“This is our second chance, Ry. Mom stopped drinking. Everything’s going to be better now.”
That was their mantra. Things were going to change.
Except for all of Trey’s overconfidence, sometimes their mom got that edge in her eyes.
There was little to no fanfare when she finally went off the deep end. She was sober one day, and then the next, Ryan found her passed out naked in the living room with a bottle of Jack cradled against her hip.
Dawn Atwood was nothing if not predictable.
---
Seth is all about Belgium.
“There’s chocolate. Chocolate everywhere! How are you not more enthusiastic about this?”
“I don’t think I can eat anymore chocolate, man.” Ryan rubs his stomach heartily, wishing he’d maybe skipped the last eighteen or so pieces.
Seth is unnaturally persuasive when he wants to be. “I’m going to explode.”
“Really? When? Do you think we could set up a change bucket in that square over there and then you could do it on demand? Would people pay to see a kid from Chino explode?”
Ryan groans. “Universal question.”
“Yes feels like a safe bet. People pay to see a lot of things.” Seth stares at him expectantly.
“M’not eating anymore,” Ryan tells him without nearly enough reproach. That fond note in his voice is totally uncalled for.
“Fair enough. Scraping you off the cobblestone would bum me out.” Seth pauses just long enough to let Ryan know that a segue is coming.
He launches into his next speech without missing a beat. “You know Ryan, if someone had told me everyone in Bruges speaks English, I wouldn’t have bothered learning how to ask where the restroom is in Belgian.”
Seth rattles off a terribly accented phrase that mostly sounds like gibberish. Ryan grimaces.
A lady nearby outright sours, from the tightness of her eyes to the hollow of her cheekbones. Carefully, he says, “I don’t think Belgian is a language, and are you sure that means what you think it means?”
Seth considers, eyes rolling back like he’s trying to scrutinize the inside of his brain. “I might have said my pants are leaking.”
The woman makes a disgruntled sound and stalks away. Seth and diplomacy, ever walking hand in hand.
They meander down a twisting street, Seth peeking in the window of every chocolatier they pass, while Ryan admires everything else. He likes all the squat Belgian buildings, the religious icons from different centuries perched on every available corner. He finds it interesting how there are houses of every flavor lining the water, thick paned Spanish windows set next to elaborate French facades sitting pretty beside more practical Dutch canal homes. It’s an amalgam of wood, stone, and brick that must’ve jumped straight from an architect’s wet dream.
“By the way,” Seth interrupts his own diatribe on the merits of ganache mid-sentence. “I spoke to the rental car company and insisted, nay, demanded that we get an iPod port, and naturally they were happy to oblige. You brought yours, right? We’ll have to coordinate our playlists. Do you still listen to Journey?”
Ryan frowns.
Seth wrinkles his nose and says, “You hurt me on the inside.”
And yet internal damage doesn’t put a damper on Seth’s enthusiasm for the next line of shops filled with lacy doilies and chocolate knights. Ryan is traveling with a five year old.
He replies, “You have Boyz II Men on your iPod.”
Breath fogging the window his face is pressed against, Seth mumbles agreeably, “Touché.”
Their hotel is situated down a back alley, next to a sex shop and a microbrewery. They have to pack up and be out by eleven the next morning, but Ryan begrudgingly agrees to let Seth sample the home brews next door.
Beneath cheery signs declaring that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, the two of them pound back a lager or three.
Ryan finds that despite his fervent assertion that he learned how to down a tequila shot in college - and what else has Seth learned how to swallow? - after three beers he remains convinced he’s a ninja.
A really bad, really un-stealthy ninja.
Seth hollers into the night air, “Belgium’s going to miss us, Ryan!” as he stumbles across uneven stone streets. Ryan’s got one arm beneath his slightly damp armpits, which is spectacularly revolting, but less so than it should be. Ryan’s actually pretty tipsy too.
“You,” he decides, slurring only the slightest bit, “Are loud.”
“Of course I’m loud, I’m Seth Cohen,” Seth answers with unnecessary volume.
Ryan grins, unable to help himself. “It would be pretty awful if you were anyone else.”
“Amen and hallelujah and whatever else you gentiles say. You know Dad calls you and mom Gentiles behind your back sometimes?” Seth turns his face into Ryan’s neck, his breath warm and wet.
“How is that an insult?”
“It’s all in the inflection, my man.”
For the sake of being contrary, Ryan rides the happy, fuzzy high in his stomach, snickering out, “I’m not your man.”
Seth slumps against him even heavier, and they nearly end up spun out on the rough cobbles. Ryan catches both of them by leaning most of his weight against a dark storefront, pretty Belgian architecture scraping hard against his bicep.
He means to curse and right them both, but then he hears Seth mumble, “Yeah you are. You’re my Ryan. Who else’s would you be?”
---
Gravel skidded under Ryan’s feet, and he ran and he ran and he ran.
Past ice plant growing glossy between rocks and cracks on the sidewalk, big red blooms perched at the tip of a few hardy patches. Past the paint flaking off the adobe of Crazy Old Mister Corbin’s house, and the giant statue of Our Lady of Fatima in Mrs. Valdez’s yard. Past the ferns and low lying cacti and the hibiscus plants in front of the Diaz’s, where Ryan first met Theresa.
She was a wild thing, skinned knees and dark eyes and flyaway hair, everywhere. She had a story Ryan already knew, familiar to him from countless neighbors; her dad working at the cattle ranches, her mom fully invested in homemaking. Her big brother Arturo was in a gang because that was what guys on Ryan’s block did, same old tale, same ending every time.
But Theresa felt different, somehow. She was from the Earth, beautiful and untamed. Ryan’s mom said she looked like a desert rose.
Theresa was also the reason Ryan was in trouble. Again.
Let’s borrow Eddie’s bike, she’d said.
It’ll be fun, she’d said.
Theresa may have been beautiful, and wild, but she was also a liar.
Ryan tried to pick up the pace, but he had tiny little legs, and Eddie was already a freakishly huge teenager in the making, and a scary one.
He figured out his bike was missing. He did not figure out who actually took it.
Ryan was preparing for his face to meet the pavement in a bad way. He could already taste copper in his mouth.
In the distance, the hills were sleeping giants, the sky milky with emerging stars. Dusk blushed against the horizon. Impossibly spindly palm trees towered three and four stories high, swaying on trunks barely as thick as Ryan’s neck. Objectively, it was picturesque, but in the face of getting his head smashed in, all Ryan saw was a blur. He turned a corner and crashed.
Straight into Trey’s arms.
Eddie pounded after him, asphalt slipping beneath his sneakers, but he stumbled to a stop the second he saw where Ryan had ended up.
Eddie and Trey were friends, yeah, but everyone in the neighborhood knew better than to piss the elder Atwood off. He was the biggest and the tallest, and in his hands, Ryan was safe.
That’s how it worked back then. His big brother could fix everything, and all it took was a tiny collision.
Then Trey turned into a collision himself, and hey, irony.
The world has a funny way of fitting itself together before everything falls apart.
---
Seth spends half the car ride comparing his collegiate journey to the Land Before Time.
“But am I Littlefoot or Ducky, Ryan? It’s a quagmire.”
The entire sky looming over the Belgian countryside is the cloudy color of sunlight filtered through quartz. In the midst of it, Seth’s half-cocked
grin is luminescent. He’s…
Ryan curls his hands around the steering wheel and tries not to think about anything other than cartoon dinosaurs.
They get to Paris as the moon crests the horizon, and despite all the really confusing traffic signs, Ryan can’t help but admire how completely breathtaking this city is. The buildings are all so clean, beige and gray and fronted with elaborate facades and colorful doors. Granted, he’d probably appreciate it more if they weren’t lost.
Seth tries to assist with the navigation thing in his own special way, but four years of French at Harbor have been wiped clean from his mind.
They circle the Arc de Triomphe twice.
“You have maps, don’t you? Hold on, I know you have maps.”
“Yeah, in my bag.” Ryan swerves left to avoid a taxi, muttering expletives to himself. Seth nearly impales him with a knee trying to twist around in his seat, and then there are long seconds on end where his ass wiggles in the air. “Find ‘em?”
“No. But you know what I did find?” Seth asks in his best dramatic and foreboding voice.
Ryan’s mind scrabbles backwards to figure out what Seth could have dug up. There’s only one thing it could be.
Shit.
“I can explain.”
Seth does not want an explanation. He crashes back into the passenger seat and crosses his arms, lower lip jutting petulantly out.
“Remember that time you were secretly best friends with my ex?”
“Anna isn’t my best-“
Seth flaps the maps in the air. “Who’s next, Ryan? Luke? Are you super best buddies with Luke?”
Luke is an overgrown Labrador. The sound of his name still makes Ryan feel like punching something. He’s cool with the kid, but there is definitely some residual anger bouncing around somewhere in his belly. His fingers curl. He doesn’t let it show on his face. “Uh. No. But you are.”
Seth dons his best wounded expression. “That is neither here nor there, and frankly I’m hurt that you’d bring it up.”
Ryan rolls his eyes. “You guys have a special bond. There’s no shame in that.”
“Hell yeah we do,” Seth agrees, rumpling a map of what looks to be Prague. “He showed me how to drop the Great Gatsby.”
Ryan slams his foot into the brake, narrowly avoiding an accident with a tour bus full of people from what looks to be Germany. “Wait, you actually know what that means?”
“Sure do.”
Ryan waits. Ryan waits some more. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Nope. Don’t give me that look, it’s part of the sacred bond that Luke and I share. You know how it is, you and Luke bonded once. Remember? It was a beautiful winter day-“
“We stopped hating each other. That does not make us friends.”
“Then or now?”
“Always,” Ryan promises.
“See, I can’t take you seriously now that I know you’ve been dalliancing with Anna behind my back.”
“Is dalliancing a word?”
“Probably not. Stop changing the subject.” Seth carefully places the maps in his lap. “Seriously, dude. Why didn’t you tell me you were talking to her?”
“I knew it would bug you.”
“It doesn’t bug me that you’re talking to her.”
Ryan squints narrowly at Seth, disbelief radiating off his body in waves.
“It doesn’t,” he insists, his profile silhouetted by headlights. Ryan can’t tell if he’s scowling or smiling. “I’m wigged out that you kept it a secret, is all. I thought we were past the Cloak and Dagger part of our relationship.”
Ryan misses the street for their hotel a third time. His fingers slip across the steering wheel, searching for an explanation in the tooled leather.
He settles on, “Anna’s nice. Just because you give up on someone doesn’t mean I have to.”
Overhead, a billboard advertising a happy French couple is backlit bright enough to outshine the stars. As far as scenery goes, it’s less than exciting. Ryan wonders where the Eiffel Tower is in proximity to this endless road.
Seth spits out, “I didn’t give Anna up. I’m not you, dude.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Thinking about the Eiffel Tower inevitably stirs up memories of Taylor, and that’s not at all where Ryan wants his head to be. He’s focused. He’s here. He’s now.
He’s getting chastised by his best friend.
“It means people leave and you try to pretend they don’t exist anymore. Your mom and Trey and…and me.”
Kid Chino would’ve told Seth to mind his own fucking business, but Ryan’s not Kid Chino anymore. His foot grows heavier on the gas pedal, but he manages to keep the vast majority of the edge from his words when he demands, “Man, when’ve I ever tried to pretend you don’t exist?”
“I don’t know, like all of college?”
“Seth, I talk to you constantly.”
“Maybe that’s not enough,” Seth replies sulkily, sinking down in the passenger seat. He shoves his knees up against the dashboard and refuses to say anything else, even when Ryan makes him listen to Don’t Stop Believin’ three times in a row.
Basically, it means Ryan’s fucked.
---
A fever was burning through Ryan’s bones.
His mom smoothed a cool hand through his sweaty hair, humming a Whitesnake song underneath her breath. The TV blared a sit-com in another room, Trey’s muted laughter assaulting Ryan’s ears.
“Don’t feel good,” he mumbled, tugging his blanket tighter around his chin.
“I know, baby.”
Her eyes were bright with liquor, but she was there, and that meant more to Ryan than whether his mom was sober or not. He didn’t get a lot
of chances to have her mother him, not since they locked dad up and threw away the key.
She asked, “Do you want some soup?”
Ryan turned his head against her thigh, nuzzling the warmth. “No, stay. Want - stay.”
“Okay,” she soothed.
All he wanted in that moment was to fall asleep, cradled against his mother’s warmth, and to wake up the same way. But in the morning, she was gone, and the empty space near Ryan’s pillow a solemn reminder that he was not a child anymore.
---
They don’t stay in Paris as long as they planned. Notre Dame has a mile long line, Sacre Coeur smells a lot like the market hocking pig shanks and oysters outside, and the Eiffel Tower, while fantastic, is also a really expensive tourist trap.
All of which would be fine if Seth wasn’t pulling a freeze out that would make Kirsten Cohen applaud. Ryan wants to talk about the artist’s garrets and the terracotta roofing, the elaborate sculpture adorning every street corner, the white washed streets and the way people really do wear berets.
Does Seth think the Seine is dirtier than the Thames? Does he hate the taste of red wine? Is he sick of all the dirty looks Parisians throw their way when they wander up, searching for directions, only to find that neither of them know oui from merci?
He’s got no way to ask, because he’s the subject of a world class hissy fit. Long gone are London’s history buff Seth and Bruges’ chocolate-hound Cohen; both have been replaced with an icy, silent man who spends the nights at the hotel thumbing through old copies of Legion and ensuring misery reigns.
It’s frustrating in a way that makes Ryan grit his teeth and clench his fists. He can’t even enjoy all the pretty girls the city has to offer. And damn, are there girls. Girls in skirts and girls in boots and girls in really tight jeans. Girls in bowler hats and vests, stilettos and hobo boots.
There are girls of every flavor, all Bambi limbed and sloe eyed, wearing lipstick as varied in color as a butterfly’s wings. This place is everything Newport strives to be. But all he can think about is…Seth.
Stone gargoyles perch above the buildings, their comic faces judging Ryan’s every misstep. The thing is, they don’t fight like this anymore, not since Marissa, and there’s something unnerving about slipping back into their teenage jeans. After a tense day at the Musée D’Orsay, where Seth’s only contribution to conversation was, “Did you know Van Gogh had a massive boner for Gauguin?” Ryan throws down the gauntlet.
Which is to say, he swallows down his pride (it tastes of blood in his throat) and tries to apologize.
Seth ignores him, singing something that sounds suspiciously like why don’t I go eat worms under his breath.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Ryan murmurs into the shell of Seth’s ear. He’s hoping the shock value alone will kick start Seth out of his funk, but no go. Seth chows down on a baguette, gaze firmly locked on the tiny screen of his phone.
The next day, Ryan books their tickets to Spain, because Paris is a bummer without anyone to share it with.
---
They got older.
The cattle ranches closed.
Theresa’s dad moved onto day labor in the orange groves outside the city limits, then strawberry picking, and then he wasn’t there at all.
Ryan could empathize. Frank Atwood had been rotting in a prison cell since forever ago. It’d been so long that Ryan barely bothered visiting anymore. He and his father never had much to say to each other anyway.
After Theresa’s dad fell off the map, Theresa’s eyes grew harder, but she was no tamer than she’d started out. She got into more trouble than any one person should’ve been able to manage, and not all of it was as consequence-free as stealing Eddie’s bike.
She gave Ryan his first beer, his second ever driving lesson, his fifteenth kiss. Their teachers cared too much or too little. The former were easy to take advantage of, to throw a sob story at, while the latter didn’t give a damn either way. Theresa convinced him to skip out on class a lot.
Ryan never felt bad about it. Adults, he’d found, were pretty useless.
When the thunder rolled in from the hills, streaking lightning across the sky, he and Theresa would run outside and dance and scream. There was nothing she wasn’t willing to do, no rules she wasn’t willing to break. She was a wonder. She was the very center of his world.
Theresa kept arrowheads and shark’s teeth she’d found in her backyard piled high in overflowing bowls in her room. She liked the way sharp things felt, she said when Ryan asked. He thought that was weird, because Theresa had the softest smile, but he never dared to tell her that out loud. Some nights they’d sit together on her bed and she’d drag the rugged edges of obsidian and flint across her fingertips, the glint of candlelight peeking around emblazoned images of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Sagrado Corazon.
And one night she climbed into his lap and made him say her name, over and over, until it became a secret thing, something powerful and sacred.
Ryan wasn’t sure, back then, what love was.
A pretty girl on his dick with fire in her smile felt a lot like it.
---
Ryan’s phone rings at this rundown train station situated somewhere near the border of France and Spain. The only people who care enough to bug Ryan in the midst of this zany adventure of unchecked fun are Kirsten and Sandy, so he picks up without even glancing at the caller ID.
“Atwood!”
“Summer?” Ryan has to look at his phone’s display just to make sure he’s imagining things. It’s just, other than the babysitting-Seth texts, they don’t really talk. “Are we friends now?”
“Of course we’re friends. Luke and I-“
“Do not bring me into this!” There is a sound similar to chair-legs scraping over linoleum, an extremely unmasculine squeaking noise, and then Summer is back, saying, “Luke and I are concerned about Cohen. His statuses on Facebook have been extremely emo. As good friends,
we are troubled and apprehensive for Seth’s wellbeing.”
“Why are you at Luke’s?”
“I got lonely,” Summer complains. “You and Cohen are gay trekking, Coop’s gone-“ She hesitates so briefly after mentioning Marissa’s name that someone who didn’t know her could miss it; a space that represents this poignant, unending sadness. Then Summer’s off and running again, like it never even happened, “-and Taylor’s gone off on this misguided mission in Korea to reintroduce the boy band to the rest of the civilized world. Like that’ll ever happen. Luke’s the only loser I know with a life as pathetic as mine.”
Ryan twists his lips, searching for words. He doesn’t find any other than, “Ah,” but Summer has that effect on him a lot. Then he asks, “Taylor went to Korea?”
“She left right after you did,” Summer confirms. “So how is Cohen?”
“Wouldn’t know.”
“What do you mean you wouldn’t know? Did you let him out of your sight? Atwood, is my ex-boyfriend in Amsterdam, because that is not allowed, okay, we have ground rules-“
“He’s about twenty feet away from me, haggling over the price of a hot dog,” Ryan says as soothingly as he can, because there is a large possibility that Summer owns a machete. He really does not want to explain to Sandy and Kirsten why their firstborn rests in pieces.
“Oh. Why didn’t you say so?” Summer asks suspiciously.
“He isn’t talking to me right now,” Ryan explains, “So I don’t know how he is.”
“Seth Cohen’s not talking?” Summer barks with laughter. In the background, Ryan can hear Luke, calling, “Take a video. I’d pay to see that!”
Ryan is quiet, glaring at one of the pillars supporting the train station’s roof.
“Wait, you’re serious? What did you do?” Summer demands. “How can I replicate it?”
“It’s not as fun as it sounds. But Seth’s fine.”
“Oh no, you are not Chino-voicing me. What did you do to Cohen?”
“Nothing.”
“Ryan!” Summer’s voice can be extraordinarily shrill. Ryan winces. Then he obediently elaborates on exactly what happened, and for a long, long stretch of time, there is dead quiet on the other end of the phone.
He watches Seth piss off the cashier at the train station hot dog stand enough that she throws a bucket of minced onions at his face. A good friend would probably intervene.
“Summer?” Ryan prompts, already walking towards the automatic doors. Seth flaps his hands around and yells something that sounds like Arriba and a curse through the glass. His talents do not lie in the linguistic arena.
“Hold on,” Summer snaps. “I’m trying to figure out if the last time Cohen made me this furious was when he flunked his college interviews or when he hooked up with Zack.”
Ryan’s steps falter. “Seth hooked up with Zack?”
“They dated for like, a day. Before they both remembered how awesome I am,” Summer replies absently. “I think I’m going to murder him.” As an aside, to Luke, Ryan hears her mutter, “Do you own a guillotine?”
Transit security is approaching Seth inside the station. “Summer, I’ve gotta go.”
“Right. You don’t worry about anything, Atwood. I’ll take care of Seth.”
Ryan hangs up, rushing off to assist Seth in worming his way out of the sticky mess he’s gotten into.
It’s only later that he realizes that Summer definitely put murder on the table there. But since Seth still isn’t speaking to him - not even a thank you - Ryan decides he doesn’t care.
So there.
---
The house they rented in Chino wasn’t all that bad.
A.J. was. He didn’t do much more than pound back beer and boss Ryan’s mom around. Ryan started working construction mostly just to get away. He needed the money, sure, and he liked the job, yeah, but the major bonus was not having to breathe the same air as his mom’s skeezy boyfriend.
Chino didn’t exactly sport a skyline, but Ryan got to work on office buildings and housing developments, and to him these places touched the clouds. Everything was geometric shapes, angles and lines, and the first time he made a mistake, no one smacked him around for it or told him how worthless he was.
The foreman of the crew took Ryan under his wing. He was a teacher who cared too much, but for once in Ryan’s life he didn’t view it as a weakness. He thought maybe he and Theresa had it wrong, before.
Theresa had changed too, in the last few months. They hadn’t been hanging out as much, so he went to see her, to ask what was up. She wrapped Ryan up in a tight embrace, pressed her hips tight to his and breathed, “I’ve missed you,” right into the shell of his ear.
Then she told him that she was dating Eddie, and that everything they were before was over.
Ryan waited for it to hurt, but mostly he was happy they were going to be just friends. It always felt like too much pressure when they were together; like Theresa was waiting for Ryan to fall in love, and he didn’t know how. So it went from him and Theresa against the world to him and Theresa and Eddie, and that was okay. Ryan didn’t need anything other than what he had right then.
That summer, possibilities lingered in the air. The wind rustled his hair into reckless spikes, the sun browned his skin, and for the first time in his life, Ryan could taste something other than desert dry and bottlebrush.
Construction was cool that way. It gave him clarity, helped him see things differently. Away from his house, everything fit exactly the way it was supposed to, and if it didn’t, it was alright. There was always a fix.
Ryan just had to find it.
---