Insert cliched Monday phrase here
Three reasons why today is worse than yesterday:
* Cubs loss. Boo.
* Back at work after a delightful vacay.
* It's Monday. Grr.
Also on a Cubs related front, I had a chance to go to Tuesday night's game, but I refuse to fork over $300. That's my shoe money!
Still looking for betas for future OC fics. Although with a bit of final polish, my next one should be up this evening. *crosses fingers* Then I'm planning a sequel to All Kinds of Time. I'm going to check out some Anais Nin for inspiration. That woman is dee-lish.
Edited to add: Voila! As promised, the evening rolls around and so does the fic. 100% unbetaed (see above ad). 100% property of Fox.
Title: Homemaking
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ryan shows Seth his “hood.” No dirty puns intended.
Disclaimer: The boys belong to Fox. They decorate their home in my alternate universe.
Spoiler Warning: If you haven’t seen the summer season, you may read things you don’t want to know. Then again, if you haven’t seen the whole summer season, stop reading fic and get yourself some copies of the eps, stat!
Homemaking
I take a breath and pull the air in 'til there's nothing left
I'm feeling green like teenage lovers between the sheets
Postal Service * Recycled Air
--------------------------------------------------
If a bystander happened to look over and see Seth sprawled like a starfish on the nubby concrete of the pooldeck in the afternoon sun, they might think that he was trying to evenly tan every square inch of his dimpled face because of the way he was rolling his head back and forth. In truth, he was passing the time by feeling the way his head moved on the hard surface, not in a smooth roll, but catching different angles of his skull before clicking over to the next plane. Even though he was now a “real teenager” with multiple “real friends” (if you could count Summer as a real friend, which he did, sometimes) he often couldn’t help engaging in such geek-worthy activities. His head rolling abruptly ceased when he felt the coolness of a shadow cross his cheeks. Opening his eyes and just barely propping himself up on his right elbow, he nodded a greeting to Ryan, who was the cause of the momentary eclipse.
“I thought you were going to get ready,” the outline of Ryan remarked, as Seth’s hand shaded his eyes against the rays of the sun that still glared brightly from behind Ryan’s head.
“Mmm,” Seth mumbled, resuming his position on the deck and re-closing his eyes.
“Seth!” Ryan swatted at him with a damp towel, locker room style.
A small grin spread across Seth’s face as he squinted up at Ryan with one eye. He raised his palms defensively and managed to execute a shrug, even though he was still flat on the ground. “Okay, man, I’m up, I’m up.”
“To be up, I’d have to see more verticality on your part.” Seth bit his lip to stop from snickering. The longer Ryan spent with the Cohen family, the longer Ryan spent with *Seth* in particular, the more he picked up words that Seth once thought were unique to his own vocabulary.
“And on your part, I’d like to see more horizonticality.” Seth reached up to grasp Ryan’s hand and pulled him downward. Ryan, although smiling, wasn’t about to give in so easily, as he leveraged Seth’s body to a seated position at the same time he was being pulled down.
“Oh, come on!” Seth teased as he took a long look at Ryan, who was no longer sheathed in the sun’s shadow. H. ot. The word needed two syllables when it came to that boy. This applied not only when bathed in sunlight and recently showered, as Ryan was at the moment, but also at all other times: when barely awake and fishing Cap’n Crunch from a nearly empty box and popping the golden bits into his mouth one at a time; when lounging on his unmade bed, getting caught up on old issues of Sandman; or when sneaking Seth repeated free refills of Dr. Pepper at the Crab Shack as Seth sat at the counter, waiting for Ryan’s shift to end. Yeah, Seth was pretty much sure that Ryan was pretty much hot all the time. He shortened the distance between Ryan and himself. “No one’s going to be home for *at least* two hours, maybe three.”
Ryan gave Seth one of his patented coy upward glances, with new improved head tilt action, before leaning in to give him a quick kiss. “Get ready or we’re not going.”
Seth hustled to his bare feet and gave his hair a quick rake with one hand. “Give me ten minutes to get the sand out of my trunks and I’m all yours.”
* * *
As Seth quickly soaped himself up in the glass shower stall, he anticipated the trip down to Chino with relish. It had taken Seth months to get Ryan to take him to his old stomping grounds. At first, no amounts of wheedling and promises of first privileges to all his new comics could convince Ryan. “I’m not going back there. There’s nothing left for me out there,” and other variations on the theme were Ryan’s response. Seth, spider sense tingling, wasn’t quite buying it. He knew that despite Ryan’s cool loner attitude, he hadn’t exactly been friendless when he left Chino, even if he may have felt like it when no one was willing to put him up at their house. Seth knew friendless. For much of his life, Seth had worn friendlessness like a perfectly broken in pair of jeans. He had sported it long before Ryan came, and even for a while after Ryan arrived he’d wondered if he’d be recycling the style for another year.
Seth wasn’t quite sure when he’d realized that Ryan wasn’t in danger of leaving him behind as a friend, but he sure as hell knew when he became *more* than a friend. A part of him always knew that he had a crush on Ryan, but he attributed it to years of loneliness and the sigh of relief he had felt when Ryan had accepted him, no questions asked. It was only after the trip to Tijuana, when they had gotten the call that Marissa was going to be okay after all, that Ryan had knocked on his door in the middle of the night and fallen into Seth’s bed. The hug was at first one of relief, but as Ryan’s arms tightened around his torso the relief gave way to need, and Seth became painfully aware of Ryan’s chest heaving against his own.
They didn’t speak, just drew slow, deep breaths until finally Ryan lifted his head up and connected with Seth’s lips. He took the bottom edges of Seth’s white t-shirt in his hands and wrapped them around his fists, drawing Seth’s hipbones closer while his mouth worked gently against Seth’s. Seth broke the kiss for a moment, inhaled sharply and then pulled Ryan’s face back to his. The rough feel of Ryan’s unshaven cheeks between his palms was distinctly different from the softness that was Seth’s memory of his kiss with Summer, yet it was even more erotic. Seth was almost positive that his crush on Summer was about to become a distant memory, thanks to the way Ryan’s knee was wedging its way between Seth’s thighs.
Seth was a gentleman. He didn’t kiss and tell. Who was there to tell? He and Ryan had agreed, almost immediately, to keep their relationship clandestine. They spent so much time together anyways that their time behind closed doors just felt like an extension of their normal friendship. Although he was pretty sure that Luke and his waterpolo-playing friends didn’t spend their evenings grinding against each other in various levels of bliss. That’s why the trip to Chino seemed so special. It was, for all intents and purposes, their first real excursion as a couple. Seth heard the kids these days were calling it a “date.”
With a twist of the wrist, Seth shut off the taps and gave his head a quick shake, curls releasing droplets of water. Of course, Ryan had already cautioned him against any sort of date-like behavior on their so-called date. Apparently, holding hands in Chino was just as dangerous as in Newport. Except in Chino, they occasionally did their punching with brass knuckles. Still, Seth couldn’t help but be excited.
“Here’s to a road trip that *doesn’t* lead to massive car repairs,” Seth thought to himself as he bounded into his room to get dressed as swiftly as possible.
* * *
Ryan was characteristically quiet for the first ten minutes of the drive. Seth figured at first that he was simply grooving to the Postal Service album he had spinning in the CD player, but when Seth looked over, Ryan was simply staring out the window, looking pensive.
“Hey, I figured since you liked Death Cab, you’d like this. It’s Ben Gibbard, the singer’s, side project, he and another dude made practically this whole album by mail, that’s why they call themselves The Postal Service…” Ryan turned his head slowly towards Seth.
“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” He paused. “I was just thinking about going back…my mom…”
Even though Ryan had talked to his mom a few times since she’d left Ryan at the Cohen’s for good, Seth had the feeling that they didn’t have much to say to each other. He knew that Ryan had gotten a letter from her recently. He also had a feeling that Ryan’s finally agreeing to take the trip had something to do with the letter, although he had no idea what the letter had said. Certainly they weren’t making beautiful music.
“Ah. So, what are the plans for this voyage? House party? Crazy honeys?” Seth jibed, doing a little driver’s-seat dance in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“We’re getting my stuff.” Ryan said tersely, eyes on the road.
“Oh.” Seth tried not to sound too surprised, but mentally chastised himself. His mom had outfitted Ryan with practically a whole new wardrobe, Seth provided the entertainment baubles, and Ryan helped support himself with his part-time job at the Crab Shack. Seth always assumed that Ryan had all that he needed, or at the very least, didn’t want anything from his past life in Chino.
“Yeah, my mom sent a key…I guess when they, uh, moved out” Ryan’s voice caught on these words “they put a bunch of stuff in a storage locker, since they had nowhere to stay. Now my mom’s got her own new place…and she wondered if I wanted any of my old stuff back.” His lips pressed together until they were nearly white around the edges. “I guess I should be glad they didn’t just toss it out like I thought they did.”
“Oh, so we’re stopping by your mom’s place to get your stuff? That’s cool…”
Ryan interrupted. “She sent the key to the locker. I-we-aren’t going to see her.” He shrugged slightly as he spoke, but Seth could tell from the way Ryan’s mouth curled slightly downward that Ryan was nowhere near as blasé as he tried to act.
“Hey, just tell me how to get there.” Seth placed a hand on Ryan’s denim clad leg in a gesture that was comforting, rather than sexual. “Whatever you want to do.”
* * *
Whatever Ryan wanted to do had nothing to do with driving around Chino and showing Seth the sights. In his mind it was an in-and-out mission that killed two birds with one stone: Seth would stop bugging him about going to his ‘hood, and he could close the door on the chapter that was Chino by sifting through whatever remained of his things. He was positive A.J. and his mom hadn’t been cautious when taking down his posters, and whatever clothes he had left had already been replaced through the multiple shopping trips Kirsten had taken him on.
Seth had quieted down considerably once he had sensed Ryan’s unease regarding their journey. The silence was only interrupted when Seth chimed in with the lyrics coming from the Range Rover’s speakers, or when Ryan told Seth where to turn. The manicured lawns and well kept beaches of Orange County slowly gave way to more run-down structures, and finally Seth pulled in to a U-Haul storage facility that had certainly seen better days. He couldn’t help but look for an “El Barto” tag mixed in with the various graffiti on the grey cinder block walls of the outdoor storage lockers, then almost hit himself for not taking in the gravity of the situation.
Ryan was even stiffer than he had been in the car, if it was possible, as he and Seth checked numbers on the storage lockers. His jaws and fists were tensed, and Seth was sure Ryan would give himself a stress headache if he didn’t slow down and chill for a minute. Seth would have asked Summer for a Xanax from her stepmom’s stash, if he’d known the anxiety the moment would bring out in Ryan.
Finally, the boys located the locker and Ryan put the key in the lock with a resounding click. The door rattled upwards and the fading evening sunlight revealed mostly empty space.
Ryan stepped inside, pressed his back up against a damp wall and slowly slid into a seated position, his plain t-shirt catching on the untreated concrete and making a rasping noise. Seth followed, stepping tentatively into the cold, stale air of the room.
Ryan let his head fall onto his knees. His life in Chino had been reduced to two large boxes and one laundry basket, sitting in the corner of a cement and metal cell that smelled vaguely of mothballs and mildew. He wondered where his mom and A.J. had even had time to find boxes during their exodus.
“Hey. Hey.” Seth’s voice softened on the second word as he squatted beside Ryan’s curled form.
Head still firmly planted between his legs, Ryan rocked his head from left to right and exhaled a long sigh.
Freaking out a little bit now, Seth gripped Ryan’s shoulder. He had never seen Ryan more than a shade less than stoic, even the first night…the night they had found out Marissa was going to be fine.
Ryan still didn’t move, and Seth had to struggle to make out the muffled voice. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come back.”
“Well, then, let’s just get your stuff and get out of here.” Seth took a step over to Ryan’s collected belongings. He strained lifting a heavy box, staggered a few steps, and then dropped it near the entrance. “Hmm, I wouldn’t have worn my good jeans if I’d known we were going to be doing manual labor.” Ryan lifted his head and barely cracked a grin before resuming his fetal wall-sit. This was not a good sign.
“Hey.” Seth tried again. He moved back to Ryan’s side and offered a makeshift hug, as Ryan’s back remained pressed against the wall. Ryan softened slightly and leaned into Seth’s arms. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Someone roughly cleared their throat in the aisle outside, startling the two boys. An unkempt man stared in with something resembling disdain before shaking his head and walking quickly away.
Seth gesticulated wildly with his hands in the direction of the entrance. “I’ll just…” He took three short steps and pulled down the door, which stopped short of the ground when it hit the box that Seth had moved with a resounding clunk, bathing the boys in relative blackness. “Voila,” said Seth. “Privacy. All the amenities of home.
Although I guess you’d need a flashlight if you were going to stay in here for good. They should equip these places with lightbulbs. And-air fresheners.” His eyes slowly adjusted to the small amount of light that shone from the gap in the entry to make out Ryan gazing up at him.
“It feels weird. To see my old life all packed up and put away. It’s like I almost forgot about this stuff. And now I feel guilty for forgetting it.” Ryan stood up and began pacing around, and Seth attempted to follow his location by the slight shadows Ryan’s feet cast on the floor.
“Do you wish you hadn’t come to Newport? Or that you were still in Chino?” Insecurity colored Seth’s voice. It would be just his luck to be broken up with in a Chino-area public storage facility.
“I wish…I don’t know. These past few months have been so amazing. But I’m still not sure where my home is.”
“Do you want me to get you an engraved collar to wear around your neck, so if you get lost whoever finds you can deliver you back to us? I never took you for the freak-goth type, dude, but I guess it could work.” Seth was never at a loss for comments that made light of dark situations. And at the moment, it felt pretty dark. Literally and metaphorically.
Seth was sure that if he could see Ryan’s eyes, he would be giving him a Look right about now. Instead his voice emerged from a new point in the unlit room. “I just wish that I didn’t have to go through all that I did to get here. But then again, if I hadn’t lived my old life, if I hadn’t been arrested…I never would have met you.” Ryan’s voice had begun to creep out of its frightening monotone, and he had stealthily moved to lay a warm hand on Seth’s neck.
Seth exhaled, unaware he had been holding his breath. “You almost had me scared there, Ryan.”
“Scared?” the hand rubbed Seth’s neck absently.
“I mean, why would you choose Newport when you have all…this.” His hand made an ironic wave when he realized what he had been asking.
“Scared that this is more important to me than Newport?”
“Yeah, dude, I don’t think I know what I’m talking about.”
“Seth, I know abandonment issues. Don’t tell me you’re getting them.” It was hard to read Ryan’s tone with only the faintest idea of what his facial expression was. Seth remained silent. Ryan cleared his throat and went on. “I guess you know why it’s so hard for me to come back here.”
“Sorry if I forced the issue. I just thought that it would be cool, you know. To get a feeling of what your life was like. What your home was like.”
“Chino…was not home. I don’t think I know what home is. A real home.” Ryan hesitated and his hand lifted and trailed down Seth’s shirt front. “This…your family…You. It’s the closest I’ve ever come. But it’s still…” His voice trailed off.
“Still what?” Seth’s lips trembled as Ryan’s hand strayed lower.
“Home isn’t about secrets.”
“So you’re saying when we get back…” Seth waited for Ryan to finish his sentence.
“Yeah, I’d like to. Tell. If it’s okay?” The last sentence seemed small.
It was more than okay with Seth. In fact, it was so much more than okay that he had no idea how to express it with verbalizations. He groped blindly in the shadows for Ryan’s face. Once finding it, he ran his fingertips lightly over the angles, memorizing where nose, cheeks, chin were, before finally tracing Ryan’s lips with the pad of his thumb. Their mouths connected and currents of activity jolted all the way to the tips of Seth’s Saucony-clad feet. “Yes.” He muttered into Ryan’s mouth. The word was garbled, but from the way Ryan’s hands had inched their way up Seth’s t-shirt and were gripping his sides, he knew that Ryan got the picture. Oh, the picture was gotten, all right.
Ryan’s mouth worked slowly down the side of Seth’s flushed face, to his neck. When Ryan’s tongue first grazed Seth’s earlobe, he groaned audibly. The combination of tongue, lips and teeth, on ear and neck was too much to take.
Because of the darkness, Seth had to rely solely on touch when it came to finding and unfastening the buttons on Ryan’s shirt front as they sank to the floor. Ryan had no such problems with Seth’s t-shirt, a quick up and over was all it took for their smooth bare torsos to finally connect.
As much as he had joked about it in the past, Seth clearly appreciated the merits of a hairless chest.
Seth fished in his pocket for the Range Rover keys that were threatening to puncture his thigh, due to the increased pressure that area of his jeans was being subjected to, and tossed them blindly. They made a skittering, jingling noise on the hard floor of the locker for a moment before finally coming to a rest. Then, silence, except for the soft noise of two bodies colliding in the dark.
* * *
Seth reclined languidly on his elbows in sweaty, rumpled clothing as Ryan re-opened the door and pushed the remaining box towards the entrance. Seth rubbed his eyes against the encroachment of the outside light. “Hey, this place is pretty comfy after all. If we’d known about it when you were trying to run away that one time, you could have crashed here.” He knocked a wall with his fist. “And look…fireproof!”
There it was. The Look. “Because no one’s ever thought of that before.”
“I was just sayin’.” Seth defended. “Wanna get out of here?”
“Let’s roll.” Ryan picked up the laundry basket as Seth groped around the shadows in the corners of the room for his keys, finally finding them next to a soft damp mass that may or may not have once been alive. “I think I need another shower,” Seth muttered to himself.
* * *
As Seth laid the final box on the floor of the poolhouse, Ryan surveyed the room with narrowed eyes. Seth assumed he was working the feng shui. Not that he knew anything about that. The only Asian discipline Seth had experience with was kung fu. Actually, he had no grasp of kung fu either, but he could do a mean Keanu Reeves impression.
Seth had to admit, he was still a little bit reluctant to begin nesting with Ryan. After all, the first place that Seth had tried to help Ryan “spruce” had almost burned to the ground. But the poolhouse wasn’t a half completed model home, and he was pretty sure that this round would result in a loofah-free zone. Only a few days before Seth had spotted a bottle of Kiehl’s cucumber moisturizer in one of Ryan’s drawer’s, though, and reminded himself to pick up some Lava soap the next time he was out, to counteract the girliness. Gay, they might be, but girly? Definitely not.
“Okay, we might as well get a bit of a start tonight” Ryan directed. “I’m thinking screens over there, maybe a few pictures on the far wall, I’ve been thinking about asking your mom if I can repaint the bathroom…”
“Ryan, I didn’t take you for a Queer Eye. Queer, of course, but designer stylish?” Seth lowered his voice conspiratorially. “We’ve already discussed the many wrongs that are the wifebeater and choker.”
Ryan laughed. “*Someone* has a selective memory, and it’s sure as hell not me.”
A faint blush crept across Seth’s cheeks. His memory was just fine, thankyouverymuch. In fact, that particular memory had quite recently been playing in heavy rotation in Seth’s brain. It began…well, as usual, Seth didn’t remember where it began, but it most definitely ended with he and Ryan curled up in tangled beige sheets, Ryan’s torn wifebeater lying on the floor besides other haphazardly strewn articles of their clothing. “Dude, I told you I’d buy you a new one.”
“ ‘S cool” Ryan said. “Let’s get this stuff organized.” He plopped one of the laundry baskets on the bed and began pulling items out.
Despite Summer’s notions about Chino, most of Ryan’s stuff was deceptively nice. Construction money, Seth guessed. The usual array of clothes, of course, but also framed black and white prints, a small TV/VCR combo… “Ohhh!” Seth let out an almost orgasmic groan as he pulled items from a box. “You have an old school Nintendo? Sweet! My dad made me give mine away when I got my Super NES in first grade.”
Seth had clearly been gaming since he was in Pampers.
“It was my brother’s. We could never afford to upgrade. Besides,” Ryan shuffled through his basket until he found what he was searching for. “Who needs high tech when you’ve got this?” He tossed over a familiar grey cartridge. Seth caught it firmly in his hands and flipped it over to take a look, his smile widening.
“Ahh, the Communists have given us many things, but this, this is by far the greatest.” He waved the copy of Tetris around in the air. “Up for a game?”
“Seth, Tetris is a one player game.” Ryan commented dryly.
“Hmm.” Seth put a finger to the corner of his mouth and tried to look pensive. “Then what are you up for?” He stressed the second to last word and lifted his eyebrows flirtatiously.
“Again?” Ryan’s eyebrows challenged.
“I am a sixteen year old male, you know.”
Ryan wrapped his arms around Seth’s waist and pulled him to a supine position on the bed. “We still have things to do,” he said softly. “Hook up that Nintendo, for one.”
“I think decorating can wait for a while, don’t you, Ryan?” Seth turned his head in Ryan’s direction, feeling the smooth 300 count pima cotton sheets on his cheek, not worrying about who might walk in, what feeble excuse they would have to make. In response, Ryan snuggled his head to fit the curve of Seth’s armpit, and Seth pulled him closer. Their breathing slowed and synchronized, and at that moment, neither could recall a time when they had felt more at peace.
Suddenly, things were really starting to feel like home.
---finis---
* Cubs loss. Boo.
* Back at work after a delightful vacay.
* It's Monday. Grr.
Also on a Cubs related front, I had a chance to go to Tuesday night's game, but I refuse to fork over $300. That's my shoe money!
Still looking for betas for future OC fics. Although with a bit of final polish, my next one should be up this evening. *crosses fingers* Then I'm planning a sequel to All Kinds of Time. I'm going to check out some Anais Nin for inspiration. That woman is dee-lish.
Edited to add: Voila! As promised, the evening rolls around and so does the fic. 100% unbetaed (see above ad). 100% property of Fox.
Title: Homemaking
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ryan shows Seth his “hood.” No dirty puns intended.
Disclaimer: The boys belong to Fox. They decorate their home in my alternate universe.
Spoiler Warning: If you haven’t seen the summer season, you may read things you don’t want to know. Then again, if you haven’t seen the whole summer season, stop reading fic and get yourself some copies of the eps, stat!
Homemaking
I take a breath and pull the air in 'til there's nothing left
I'm feeling green like teenage lovers between the sheets
Postal Service * Recycled Air
--------------------------------------------------
If a bystander happened to look over and see Seth sprawled like a starfish on the nubby concrete of the pooldeck in the afternoon sun, they might think that he was trying to evenly tan every square inch of his dimpled face because of the way he was rolling his head back and forth. In truth, he was passing the time by feeling the way his head moved on the hard surface, not in a smooth roll, but catching different angles of his skull before clicking over to the next plane. Even though he was now a “real teenager” with multiple “real friends” (if you could count Summer as a real friend, which he did, sometimes) he often couldn’t help engaging in such geek-worthy activities. His head rolling abruptly ceased when he felt the coolness of a shadow cross his cheeks. Opening his eyes and just barely propping himself up on his right elbow, he nodded a greeting to Ryan, who was the cause of the momentary eclipse.
“I thought you were going to get ready,” the outline of Ryan remarked, as Seth’s hand shaded his eyes against the rays of the sun that still glared brightly from behind Ryan’s head.
“Mmm,” Seth mumbled, resuming his position on the deck and re-closing his eyes.
“Seth!” Ryan swatted at him with a damp towel, locker room style.
A small grin spread across Seth’s face as he squinted up at Ryan with one eye. He raised his palms defensively and managed to execute a shrug, even though he was still flat on the ground. “Okay, man, I’m up, I’m up.”
“To be up, I’d have to see more verticality on your part.” Seth bit his lip to stop from snickering. The longer Ryan spent with the Cohen family, the longer Ryan spent with *Seth* in particular, the more he picked up words that Seth once thought were unique to his own vocabulary.
“And on your part, I’d like to see more horizonticality.” Seth reached up to grasp Ryan’s hand and pulled him downward. Ryan, although smiling, wasn’t about to give in so easily, as he leveraged Seth’s body to a seated position at the same time he was being pulled down.
“Oh, come on!” Seth teased as he took a long look at Ryan, who was no longer sheathed in the sun’s shadow. H. ot. The word needed two syllables when it came to that boy. This applied not only when bathed in sunlight and recently showered, as Ryan was at the moment, but also at all other times: when barely awake and fishing Cap’n Crunch from a nearly empty box and popping the golden bits into his mouth one at a time; when lounging on his unmade bed, getting caught up on old issues of Sandman; or when sneaking Seth repeated free refills of Dr. Pepper at the Crab Shack as Seth sat at the counter, waiting for Ryan’s shift to end. Yeah, Seth was pretty much sure that Ryan was pretty much hot all the time. He shortened the distance between Ryan and himself. “No one’s going to be home for *at least* two hours, maybe three.”
Ryan gave Seth one of his patented coy upward glances, with new improved head tilt action, before leaning in to give him a quick kiss. “Get ready or we’re not going.”
Seth hustled to his bare feet and gave his hair a quick rake with one hand. “Give me ten minutes to get the sand out of my trunks and I’m all yours.”
* * *
As Seth quickly soaped himself up in the glass shower stall, he anticipated the trip down to Chino with relish. It had taken Seth months to get Ryan to take him to his old stomping grounds. At first, no amounts of wheedling and promises of first privileges to all his new comics could convince Ryan. “I’m not going back there. There’s nothing left for me out there,” and other variations on the theme were Ryan’s response. Seth, spider sense tingling, wasn’t quite buying it. He knew that despite Ryan’s cool loner attitude, he hadn’t exactly been friendless when he left Chino, even if he may have felt like it when no one was willing to put him up at their house. Seth knew friendless. For much of his life, Seth had worn friendlessness like a perfectly broken in pair of jeans. He had sported it long before Ryan came, and even for a while after Ryan arrived he’d wondered if he’d be recycling the style for another year.
Seth wasn’t quite sure when he’d realized that Ryan wasn’t in danger of leaving him behind as a friend, but he sure as hell knew when he became *more* than a friend. A part of him always knew that he had a crush on Ryan, but he attributed it to years of loneliness and the sigh of relief he had felt when Ryan had accepted him, no questions asked. It was only after the trip to Tijuana, when they had gotten the call that Marissa was going to be okay after all, that Ryan had knocked on his door in the middle of the night and fallen into Seth’s bed. The hug was at first one of relief, but as Ryan’s arms tightened around his torso the relief gave way to need, and Seth became painfully aware of Ryan’s chest heaving against his own.
They didn’t speak, just drew slow, deep breaths until finally Ryan lifted his head up and connected with Seth’s lips. He took the bottom edges of Seth’s white t-shirt in his hands and wrapped them around his fists, drawing Seth’s hipbones closer while his mouth worked gently against Seth’s. Seth broke the kiss for a moment, inhaled sharply and then pulled Ryan’s face back to his. The rough feel of Ryan’s unshaven cheeks between his palms was distinctly different from the softness that was Seth’s memory of his kiss with Summer, yet it was even more erotic. Seth was almost positive that his crush on Summer was about to become a distant memory, thanks to the way Ryan’s knee was wedging its way between Seth’s thighs.
Seth was a gentleman. He didn’t kiss and tell. Who was there to tell? He and Ryan had agreed, almost immediately, to keep their relationship clandestine. They spent so much time together anyways that their time behind closed doors just felt like an extension of their normal friendship. Although he was pretty sure that Luke and his waterpolo-playing friends didn’t spend their evenings grinding against each other in various levels of bliss. That’s why the trip to Chino seemed so special. It was, for all intents and purposes, their first real excursion as a couple. Seth heard the kids these days were calling it a “date.”
With a twist of the wrist, Seth shut off the taps and gave his head a quick shake, curls releasing droplets of water. Of course, Ryan had already cautioned him against any sort of date-like behavior on their so-called date. Apparently, holding hands in Chino was just as dangerous as in Newport. Except in Chino, they occasionally did their punching with brass knuckles. Still, Seth couldn’t help but be excited.
“Here’s to a road trip that *doesn’t* lead to massive car repairs,” Seth thought to himself as he bounded into his room to get dressed as swiftly as possible.
* * *
Ryan was characteristically quiet for the first ten minutes of the drive. Seth figured at first that he was simply grooving to the Postal Service album he had spinning in the CD player, but when Seth looked over, Ryan was simply staring out the window, looking pensive.
“Hey, I figured since you liked Death Cab, you’d like this. It’s Ben Gibbard, the singer’s, side project, he and another dude made practically this whole album by mail, that’s why they call themselves The Postal Service…” Ryan turned his head slowly towards Seth.
“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” He paused. “I was just thinking about going back…my mom…”
Even though Ryan had talked to his mom a few times since she’d left Ryan at the Cohen’s for good, Seth had the feeling that they didn’t have much to say to each other. He knew that Ryan had gotten a letter from her recently. He also had a feeling that Ryan’s finally agreeing to take the trip had something to do with the letter, although he had no idea what the letter had said. Certainly they weren’t making beautiful music.
“Ah. So, what are the plans for this voyage? House party? Crazy honeys?” Seth jibed, doing a little driver’s-seat dance in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“We’re getting my stuff.” Ryan said tersely, eyes on the road.
“Oh.” Seth tried not to sound too surprised, but mentally chastised himself. His mom had outfitted Ryan with practically a whole new wardrobe, Seth provided the entertainment baubles, and Ryan helped support himself with his part-time job at the Crab Shack. Seth always assumed that Ryan had all that he needed, or at the very least, didn’t want anything from his past life in Chino.
“Yeah, my mom sent a key…I guess when they, uh, moved out” Ryan’s voice caught on these words “they put a bunch of stuff in a storage locker, since they had nowhere to stay. Now my mom’s got her own new place…and she wondered if I wanted any of my old stuff back.” His lips pressed together until they were nearly white around the edges. “I guess I should be glad they didn’t just toss it out like I thought they did.”
“Oh, so we’re stopping by your mom’s place to get your stuff? That’s cool…”
Ryan interrupted. “She sent the key to the locker. I-we-aren’t going to see her.” He shrugged slightly as he spoke, but Seth could tell from the way Ryan’s mouth curled slightly downward that Ryan was nowhere near as blasé as he tried to act.
“Hey, just tell me how to get there.” Seth placed a hand on Ryan’s denim clad leg in a gesture that was comforting, rather than sexual. “Whatever you want to do.”
* * *
Whatever Ryan wanted to do had nothing to do with driving around Chino and showing Seth the sights. In his mind it was an in-and-out mission that killed two birds with one stone: Seth would stop bugging him about going to his ‘hood, and he could close the door on the chapter that was Chino by sifting through whatever remained of his things. He was positive A.J. and his mom hadn’t been cautious when taking down his posters, and whatever clothes he had left had already been replaced through the multiple shopping trips Kirsten had taken him on.
Seth had quieted down considerably once he had sensed Ryan’s unease regarding their journey. The silence was only interrupted when Seth chimed in with the lyrics coming from the Range Rover’s speakers, or when Ryan told Seth where to turn. The manicured lawns and well kept beaches of Orange County slowly gave way to more run-down structures, and finally Seth pulled in to a U-Haul storage facility that had certainly seen better days. He couldn’t help but look for an “El Barto” tag mixed in with the various graffiti on the grey cinder block walls of the outdoor storage lockers, then almost hit himself for not taking in the gravity of the situation.
Ryan was even stiffer than he had been in the car, if it was possible, as he and Seth checked numbers on the storage lockers. His jaws and fists were tensed, and Seth was sure Ryan would give himself a stress headache if he didn’t slow down and chill for a minute. Seth would have asked Summer for a Xanax from her stepmom’s stash, if he’d known the anxiety the moment would bring out in Ryan.
Finally, the boys located the locker and Ryan put the key in the lock with a resounding click. The door rattled upwards and the fading evening sunlight revealed mostly empty space.
Ryan stepped inside, pressed his back up against a damp wall and slowly slid into a seated position, his plain t-shirt catching on the untreated concrete and making a rasping noise. Seth followed, stepping tentatively into the cold, stale air of the room.
Ryan let his head fall onto his knees. His life in Chino had been reduced to two large boxes and one laundry basket, sitting in the corner of a cement and metal cell that smelled vaguely of mothballs and mildew. He wondered where his mom and A.J. had even had time to find boxes during their exodus.
“Hey. Hey.” Seth’s voice softened on the second word as he squatted beside Ryan’s curled form.
Head still firmly planted between his legs, Ryan rocked his head from left to right and exhaled a long sigh.
Freaking out a little bit now, Seth gripped Ryan’s shoulder. He had never seen Ryan more than a shade less than stoic, even the first night…the night they had found out Marissa was going to be fine.
Ryan still didn’t move, and Seth had to struggle to make out the muffled voice. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come back.”
“Well, then, let’s just get your stuff and get out of here.” Seth took a step over to Ryan’s collected belongings. He strained lifting a heavy box, staggered a few steps, and then dropped it near the entrance. “Hmm, I wouldn’t have worn my good jeans if I’d known we were going to be doing manual labor.” Ryan lifted his head and barely cracked a grin before resuming his fetal wall-sit. This was not a good sign.
“Hey.” Seth tried again. He moved back to Ryan’s side and offered a makeshift hug, as Ryan’s back remained pressed against the wall. Ryan softened slightly and leaned into Seth’s arms. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Someone roughly cleared their throat in the aisle outside, startling the two boys. An unkempt man stared in with something resembling disdain before shaking his head and walking quickly away.
Seth gesticulated wildly with his hands in the direction of the entrance. “I’ll just…” He took three short steps and pulled down the door, which stopped short of the ground when it hit the box that Seth had moved with a resounding clunk, bathing the boys in relative blackness. “Voila,” said Seth. “Privacy. All the amenities of home.
Although I guess you’d need a flashlight if you were going to stay in here for good. They should equip these places with lightbulbs. And-air fresheners.” His eyes slowly adjusted to the small amount of light that shone from the gap in the entry to make out Ryan gazing up at him.
“It feels weird. To see my old life all packed up and put away. It’s like I almost forgot about this stuff. And now I feel guilty for forgetting it.” Ryan stood up and began pacing around, and Seth attempted to follow his location by the slight shadows Ryan’s feet cast on the floor.
“Do you wish you hadn’t come to Newport? Or that you were still in Chino?” Insecurity colored Seth’s voice. It would be just his luck to be broken up with in a Chino-area public storage facility.
“I wish…I don’t know. These past few months have been so amazing. But I’m still not sure where my home is.”
“Do you want me to get you an engraved collar to wear around your neck, so if you get lost whoever finds you can deliver you back to us? I never took you for the freak-goth type, dude, but I guess it could work.” Seth was never at a loss for comments that made light of dark situations. And at the moment, it felt pretty dark. Literally and metaphorically.
Seth was sure that if he could see Ryan’s eyes, he would be giving him a Look right about now. Instead his voice emerged from a new point in the unlit room. “I just wish that I didn’t have to go through all that I did to get here. But then again, if I hadn’t lived my old life, if I hadn’t been arrested…I never would have met you.” Ryan’s voice had begun to creep out of its frightening monotone, and he had stealthily moved to lay a warm hand on Seth’s neck.
Seth exhaled, unaware he had been holding his breath. “You almost had me scared there, Ryan.”
“Scared?” the hand rubbed Seth’s neck absently.
“I mean, why would you choose Newport when you have all…this.” His hand made an ironic wave when he realized what he had been asking.
“Scared that this is more important to me than Newport?”
“Yeah, dude, I don’t think I know what I’m talking about.”
“Seth, I know abandonment issues. Don’t tell me you’re getting them.” It was hard to read Ryan’s tone with only the faintest idea of what his facial expression was. Seth remained silent. Ryan cleared his throat and went on. “I guess you know why it’s so hard for me to come back here.”
“Sorry if I forced the issue. I just thought that it would be cool, you know. To get a feeling of what your life was like. What your home was like.”
“Chino…was not home. I don’t think I know what home is. A real home.” Ryan hesitated and his hand lifted and trailed down Seth’s shirt front. “This…your family…You. It’s the closest I’ve ever come. But it’s still…” His voice trailed off.
“Still what?” Seth’s lips trembled as Ryan’s hand strayed lower.
“Home isn’t about secrets.”
“So you’re saying when we get back…” Seth waited for Ryan to finish his sentence.
“Yeah, I’d like to. Tell. If it’s okay?” The last sentence seemed small.
It was more than okay with Seth. In fact, it was so much more than okay that he had no idea how to express it with verbalizations. He groped blindly in the shadows for Ryan’s face. Once finding it, he ran his fingertips lightly over the angles, memorizing where nose, cheeks, chin were, before finally tracing Ryan’s lips with the pad of his thumb. Their mouths connected and currents of activity jolted all the way to the tips of Seth’s Saucony-clad feet. “Yes.” He muttered into Ryan’s mouth. The word was garbled, but from the way Ryan’s hands had inched their way up Seth’s t-shirt and were gripping his sides, he knew that Ryan got the picture. Oh, the picture was gotten, all right.
Ryan’s mouth worked slowly down the side of Seth’s flushed face, to his neck. When Ryan’s tongue first grazed Seth’s earlobe, he groaned audibly. The combination of tongue, lips and teeth, on ear and neck was too much to take.
Because of the darkness, Seth had to rely solely on touch when it came to finding and unfastening the buttons on Ryan’s shirt front as they sank to the floor. Ryan had no such problems with Seth’s t-shirt, a quick up and over was all it took for their smooth bare torsos to finally connect.
As much as he had joked about it in the past, Seth clearly appreciated the merits of a hairless chest.
Seth fished in his pocket for the Range Rover keys that were threatening to puncture his thigh, due to the increased pressure that area of his jeans was being subjected to, and tossed them blindly. They made a skittering, jingling noise on the hard floor of the locker for a moment before finally coming to a rest. Then, silence, except for the soft noise of two bodies colliding in the dark.
* * *
Seth reclined languidly on his elbows in sweaty, rumpled clothing as Ryan re-opened the door and pushed the remaining box towards the entrance. Seth rubbed his eyes against the encroachment of the outside light. “Hey, this place is pretty comfy after all. If we’d known about it when you were trying to run away that one time, you could have crashed here.” He knocked a wall with his fist. “And look…fireproof!”
There it was. The Look. “Because no one’s ever thought of that before.”
“I was just sayin’.” Seth defended. “Wanna get out of here?”
“Let’s roll.” Ryan picked up the laundry basket as Seth groped around the shadows in the corners of the room for his keys, finally finding them next to a soft damp mass that may or may not have once been alive. “I think I need another shower,” Seth muttered to himself.
* * *
As Seth laid the final box on the floor of the poolhouse, Ryan surveyed the room with narrowed eyes. Seth assumed he was working the feng shui. Not that he knew anything about that. The only Asian discipline Seth had experience with was kung fu. Actually, he had no grasp of kung fu either, but he could do a mean Keanu Reeves impression.
Seth had to admit, he was still a little bit reluctant to begin nesting with Ryan. After all, the first place that Seth had tried to help Ryan “spruce” had almost burned to the ground. But the poolhouse wasn’t a half completed model home, and he was pretty sure that this round would result in a loofah-free zone. Only a few days before Seth had spotted a bottle of Kiehl’s cucumber moisturizer in one of Ryan’s drawer’s, though, and reminded himself to pick up some Lava soap the next time he was out, to counteract the girliness. Gay, they might be, but girly? Definitely not.
“Okay, we might as well get a bit of a start tonight” Ryan directed. “I’m thinking screens over there, maybe a few pictures on the far wall, I’ve been thinking about asking your mom if I can repaint the bathroom…”
“Ryan, I didn’t take you for a Queer Eye. Queer, of course, but designer stylish?” Seth lowered his voice conspiratorially. “We’ve already discussed the many wrongs that are the wifebeater and choker.”
Ryan laughed. “*Someone* has a selective memory, and it’s sure as hell not me.”
A faint blush crept across Seth’s cheeks. His memory was just fine, thankyouverymuch. In fact, that particular memory had quite recently been playing in heavy rotation in Seth’s brain. It began…well, as usual, Seth didn’t remember where it began, but it most definitely ended with he and Ryan curled up in tangled beige sheets, Ryan’s torn wifebeater lying on the floor besides other haphazardly strewn articles of their clothing. “Dude, I told you I’d buy you a new one.”
“ ‘S cool” Ryan said. “Let’s get this stuff organized.” He plopped one of the laundry baskets on the bed and began pulling items out.
Despite Summer’s notions about Chino, most of Ryan’s stuff was deceptively nice. Construction money, Seth guessed. The usual array of clothes, of course, but also framed black and white prints, a small TV/VCR combo… “Ohhh!” Seth let out an almost orgasmic groan as he pulled items from a box. “You have an old school Nintendo? Sweet! My dad made me give mine away when I got my Super NES in first grade.”
Seth had clearly been gaming since he was in Pampers.
“It was my brother’s. We could never afford to upgrade. Besides,” Ryan shuffled through his basket until he found what he was searching for. “Who needs high tech when you’ve got this?” He tossed over a familiar grey cartridge. Seth caught it firmly in his hands and flipped it over to take a look, his smile widening.
“Ahh, the Communists have given us many things, but this, this is by far the greatest.” He waved the copy of Tetris around in the air. “Up for a game?”
“Seth, Tetris is a one player game.” Ryan commented dryly.
“Hmm.” Seth put a finger to the corner of his mouth and tried to look pensive. “Then what are you up for?” He stressed the second to last word and lifted his eyebrows flirtatiously.
“Again?” Ryan’s eyebrows challenged.
“I am a sixteen year old male, you know.”
Ryan wrapped his arms around Seth’s waist and pulled him to a supine position on the bed. “We still have things to do,” he said softly. “Hook up that Nintendo, for one.”
“I think decorating can wait for a while, don’t you, Ryan?” Seth turned his head in Ryan’s direction, feeling the smooth 300 count pima cotton sheets on his cheek, not worrying about who might walk in, what feeble excuse they would have to make. In response, Ryan snuggled his head to fit the curve of Seth’s armpit, and Seth pulled him closer. Their breathing slowed and synchronized, and at that moment, neither could recall a time when they had felt more at peace.
Suddenly, things were really starting to feel like home.
---finis---