pretending isn't just for kids.
Title: From Here to Eternity (part 2 of 3(?))
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Wherein Ryan is Egypt, and Seth listens to angsty music.
Disclaimer: not mine. sad, isn't it?
From Here to Eternity Part 2: Let’s play pretend.
The laws of God and Man dictated that Seth should have been able to catch Ryan as they plodded separately up the dunes to the Cohen house. But for every step Seth took, Ryan must have made three. It was like trudging through molasses combined with honey combined with that green sludge they dumped on kids heads on Nickelodeon. So this was what being broken up with felt like, he mused as he kicked at an empty Miller Lite can that was half buried in the sand. It was unpleasant. He made a mental note to avoid it from now on.
As he skirted the already dark poolhouse, he had to stop himself from pressing a palm, a dirty cheek against the glass walls, imprinting Ryan with himself. But he couldn’t mark territory that wasn’t his.
He didn’t feel like getting run away from again.
Once he finally plodded safely through the door of his room, he slammed a Bright Eyes CD into his player, cranked Conor Oberst’s plaintive wails until he could feel it in his toes, and flopped limply on his unmade bed, bare arm draped dramatically over his eyes. If he moved-or slept-before dawn, he wasn’t aware of it.
* * *
The midday sun was already casting cubes of light on Seth’s cluttered bedroom carpet when he finally began to stir. In the blissful neverland between being all the way asleep and all the way awake, Seth had no recollection of the previous night’s events. He itched at his chest absently before realizing he was still covered patchily in sand and desperately in need of a shower. Sand. Because he had been at the beach. With Ryan.
The events of the previous night throbbed in Seth’s brain like a hangover. Which was another thing he had never experienced before meeting Ryan. Being with Ryan was all about the new and exciting experiences. For better or for worse.
Right now was definitely swaying on the side of “worse.”
Groaning, Seth pulled his navy pillow over his face. This was bad. Mulderless X-files bad. If he was lucky, the pillow would decide to put him out of his misery. Accidental asphyxiation would be a treat compared with facing Ryan again.
Seth had put his hand in Ryan’s pants. And Ryan had definitely dissed him. He wasn’t the type to play Seth hot and cold. Not to mention that Ryan’s words had left little room for interpretation.
Let’s face it, if Summer had been the first one to approach you, you and I wouldn’t be here right now.
Seth’s neck and elbows cracked loudly as he finally dragged himself to a seated position. Ryan’d picked a hell of a time to start having big gay issues. If anyone should have been having a case of the issues, it was Seth. He wasn’t the one who had initiated the kissing in the first place. Hell, he wasn’t the one who had initiated much of anything. Which brought Seth right back around to last night. Even with all of the negative associations, the thought of Ryan pressed against him caused his groin to stir.
Fuck. This was all making the kind of sense that was not.
Seth made it to his feet, figuring a shower was first on the priority list. Facing what had happened with Ryan last night would come later. Possibly much, much later. Possibly by the time he was old enough to play a teenager on TV later.
If that was the case, Seth had many good wallowing years ahead of him. Which suited him just fine.
* * *
Seth was shocked upon entering the living room to find Ryan dressed and seated in front of the television, working the Playstation with a partially eaten grilled cheese sandwich beside him. With all the running he’d done last night, Seth expected Ryan would be holed up in the poolhouse. Hiding in the bathroom. With balled up socks to throw at Seth if he attempted any form of entry.
Seth’s eyes narrowed as stood at the edge of the room, cereal box clutched under his arm. When Ryan finally looked up from his game, Seth opened his hand warily in greeting.
“Ryan. Morning.” It came out more formally than he intended.
“If you’re going to be technical about it, it’s afternoon.” Ryan noted flatly.
“Oh. Yeah. Well, I’m lucky cereal is an all time of day kind of food. Can I…?” He tilted his head in the direction of the sofa where Ryan was settled. He took the noncommittal shrug Ryan gave him as a yes, and settled tentatively into the cushions.
Seth munched in awkward silence as Ryan returned his eyes to the television and resumed his game. Why hadn’t he ever noticed what a *loud* cereal Cap’n Crunch was? Very appropriately named, though. He’d have to write a letter complimenting Quaker about that.
Lacking any other sort of peace offering, Seth decided to simply slide the box of Cap’n Crunch over to Ryan in a meager attempt to break the tension. Seth was encouraged when it was accepted with a nod and something approaching a smile. But when Seth attempted to tell Ryan the latest dead baby joke, pulling from his vast but largely unused mental cache of grossly politically incorrect jokes and anecdotes, Ryan’s eyes remained firmly focused on Grand Theft Auto and he didn’t so much as snort.
Sure, not everyone was a fan of the infant necro-hilarity, but Seth easily recalled a time when “two scoops of ice cream and a scoop of dead baby” had left Ryan rolling in the aisles. Seth was suddenly hit with the realization that Ryan might never laugh at his jokes again. When that was paired with the thought of never feeling Ryan’s lips on his again, Seth imagined his life would be bleak indeed.
A few minutes later, Seth decided to go for it. He cleared his throat, which had constricted nearly to the point of strangulation. Granted, less than a half hour ago, this was the last thing he wanted to do. But if he was going to be facing Ryan, he might as well be *facing* him.
“About yesterday…” He laid his hand on the black fabric that covered Ryan’s left shoulder and winced when Ryan pulled away as though he’d been burned.
“Seth. Don’t.” Ryan’s blue eyes had a warning glint.
“No. Ryan, I’m just trying to…”
“We’re friends, right? More like brothers really?” Ryan’s voice caught disdainfully on the word brothers. His mouth was set in a hard line.
For once in his life, Seth was at a loss for words. In the past few weeks, he’d been so caught up in the kissing and groping. He’d forgotten that only a few days before the illicit kissing began, he’d been happily penciling Ryan in alongside him on the family tree.
Seth ran his tongue uneasily around his parted lips, feeling the ridges in his teeth while he struggled to find words.
“Yes, Ryan. Friends. Brothers.” He paused. “Maybe even a few other things I can’t repeat in front of impressionable cereal mascots.” He gestured aimlessly in the direction of the Cap’n.
“Other things?” Ryan feigned innocence with his eyebrows, but his tone was deadly serious.
“I’m really not going to have to draw it out for you Quesada-style, am I?” Seth buried his chin in his chest, blushing. What was that thing Anna had tried to teach him? Oh, yeah, confidence. He’d need to be re-schooled when she sailed back into port.
“I really don’t see what there is to draw.” It sounded like a challenge. Seth was never one to turn down a challenge. Actually, he was. But this was a new thing he was willing to try out, with all those other new things. Very White Knight.
Seth inhaled deeply, steeling himself, and latched onto Ryan’s arm, not allowing him to escape. He set his jaw and locked his gaze on Ryan’s. “Fine. Treat me like a brother, if that’s what you want. But you and I both know that sooner or later, you’re going to have to stop acting all Memento on me, and then we’ll see who’s a brother to you. Dude, I’m thinking that the only brother you’ve got is kind of caught up in his own very special episode of Oz right now. It’s your call, Ry. You know where I live.”
Seth stood up and walked purposefully out of the room before he had time to gauge Ryan’s reaction. Once he was safely out of Ryan’s sight, his knees began to tremble and he had to grab at the nearest wall. His nails scrabbled for a grip on the patterned paper before his legs regained feeling and he was able to return to his favored spot buried under a mound of pillows.
If things weren’t fucked up before, he was thinking that all his newfound confidence had suddenly made everything a whole lot worse. Between Anna and Summer, girls had finally taken a major role in Seth’s life. It was just ironic that it only happened after he’d decided he liked boys.
* * *
If only Ryan’s memory loss had been slightly more selective in nature, Seth reflected later, he could have handled the situation bit more delicately. But Ryan wasn’t just pretending that last night’s sink or swim (but mostly sink) debacle didn’t happen. From where Seth stood, it was as though Ryan wanted to forget that anything had happened between them since Ryan and Marissa had their little after hours tete-a-tete poolside.
No kissing, no groping, and *definitely* no attempted oceanside handjobs.
Denial was definitely not just a river in Egypt. Unless of course Ryan was Egypt, cause Seth was pretty sure that’s where he could find it if he looked. And it showed no signs of leaving anytime soon.
It wasn’t as though pretending things didn’t happen was foreign to Seth. He’d pretty much blocked out the saga of fluorescent braces and dubious cross-country team mishaps that were his three years at Kennedy Middle School for the prettier-than-thou. But after their little interaction on the couch, Seth was almost positive Ryan could be a lecturer commanding top dollar on the pretending-it-didn’t-happen circuit.
Seth was suddenly struck with a set of long since abandoned memories. Until Seth was six years old, his imaginary best friend Morton lived in the dilapidated beige-tiled bathroom of the Cohen’s house in Berkeley. Morton had blonde hair and green eyes and no dimples and was just tall enough to reach the cherry Fruit Roll-ups on the top shelf of the pantry where Seth’s mom attempted to keep them hidden.
Morton was suave and cool and brilliant and knew all the words to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song as well as being able to play it on his armpit. These were all very important qualities to find in a five-year-old boy, imaginary or not.
Back then, Seth insisted everything he was punished for-from Roll-Up thievery to Matchbox car crayoning to his dad waking up one morning with half of his right eyebrow mysteriously vanished-was Morton’s idea in the first place. His parents never bought it, and Seth was inevitably banished to his room, where Morton would promptly tiptoe in from the bathroom with the blueprints for his next escapade already drawn up.
Seth had a sneaking suspicion that somewhere, Morton was stifling giggles over a vase and a rug.
If Seth would have known that Morton wasn’t going to make the trip with them from Berkeley to Newport Beach, he’d have clung to that rusty shower-rod for dear life. But, as such things tend to happen, Morton faded from Seth’s life along with Velcro-strap sneakers and the memory of his mom doing laundry.
Morton was a lot like Ryan, Seth mused. A brief friendship filled with lots of wild and zany times, followed by a complete lack of memory thereafter.
No. Screw that. Seth’s memory was working just fine. It was Ryan who playing the soap opera amnesiac. And he wasn’t going to win any Daytime Emmys for his portrayal.
Then again, if Ryan could pretend, Seth could pretend too. If he could invent his own imaginary friend at the age of four, he could certainly create something better than that at sixteen. He would be the best pretender since that guy who had that show on NBC. Hell, he would be better than him. If he had his own TV show, he was sure that it wouldn’t be cancelled.
Maybe Ryan was right, about how he’d take the first person that came along. Seth wouldn’t know unless he tried. If he tried, then he could at least come back to Ryan with the concrete answer of who and what he wanted, with the experiences and evidence to back it up, and maybe Ryan would stop being Egypt or various other Middle Eastern countries. He hadn’t grown up with a lawyer dad without picking up a few things on the way.
The thought was enough to snap him out of his self-induced lethargy and out of his bed for the second time that day. A minute later he was standing at the open front door of the Cooper house as Marissa looked at him quizzically.
“Cohen. Long time no see.”
“You’re one to talk, all shacked up with Luke as you are.”
If Marissa appeared slightly uncomfortable at his words, Seth didn’t notice. Feeling that the requisite small talk had been accomplished, he jumped in, babbling wildly. He talked as much with his hands as with his mouth. “Yeah. Anyway. Now, not so long ago, I did the neighborly thing and worked the mojo with you and Ryan. All I’m asking is for you to return the favor.”
Marissa’s eyes bored into Seth and the back of his neck prickled warmly.
Seth pressed his lips together in determination and made a fist, punching the words out. “What I’m saying, is, Marissa, I want you to hook me up with Summer.”
--end of part 2--
Writing this took more effort than I thought it would. I think I'm about ready to go on hiatus.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Wherein Ryan is Egypt, and Seth listens to angsty music.
Disclaimer: not mine. sad, isn't it?
From Here to Eternity Part 2: Let’s play pretend.
The laws of God and Man dictated that Seth should have been able to catch Ryan as they plodded separately up the dunes to the Cohen house. But for every step Seth took, Ryan must have made three. It was like trudging through molasses combined with honey combined with that green sludge they dumped on kids heads on Nickelodeon. So this was what being broken up with felt like, he mused as he kicked at an empty Miller Lite can that was half buried in the sand. It was unpleasant. He made a mental note to avoid it from now on.
As he skirted the already dark poolhouse, he had to stop himself from pressing a palm, a dirty cheek against the glass walls, imprinting Ryan with himself. But he couldn’t mark territory that wasn’t his.
He didn’t feel like getting run away from again.
Once he finally plodded safely through the door of his room, he slammed a Bright Eyes CD into his player, cranked Conor Oberst’s plaintive wails until he could feel it in his toes, and flopped limply on his unmade bed, bare arm draped dramatically over his eyes. If he moved-or slept-before dawn, he wasn’t aware of it.
* * *
The midday sun was already casting cubes of light on Seth’s cluttered bedroom carpet when he finally began to stir. In the blissful neverland between being all the way asleep and all the way awake, Seth had no recollection of the previous night’s events. He itched at his chest absently before realizing he was still covered patchily in sand and desperately in need of a shower. Sand. Because he had been at the beach. With Ryan.
The events of the previous night throbbed in Seth’s brain like a hangover. Which was another thing he had never experienced before meeting Ryan. Being with Ryan was all about the new and exciting experiences. For better or for worse.
Right now was definitely swaying on the side of “worse.”
Groaning, Seth pulled his navy pillow over his face. This was bad. Mulderless X-files bad. If he was lucky, the pillow would decide to put him out of his misery. Accidental asphyxiation would be a treat compared with facing Ryan again.
Seth had put his hand in Ryan’s pants. And Ryan had definitely dissed him. He wasn’t the type to play Seth hot and cold. Not to mention that Ryan’s words had left little room for interpretation.
Let’s face it, if Summer had been the first one to approach you, you and I wouldn’t be here right now.
Seth’s neck and elbows cracked loudly as he finally dragged himself to a seated position. Ryan’d picked a hell of a time to start having big gay issues. If anyone should have been having a case of the issues, it was Seth. He wasn’t the one who had initiated the kissing in the first place. Hell, he wasn’t the one who had initiated much of anything. Which brought Seth right back around to last night. Even with all of the negative associations, the thought of Ryan pressed against him caused his groin to stir.
Fuck. This was all making the kind of sense that was not.
Seth made it to his feet, figuring a shower was first on the priority list. Facing what had happened with Ryan last night would come later. Possibly much, much later. Possibly by the time he was old enough to play a teenager on TV later.
If that was the case, Seth had many good wallowing years ahead of him. Which suited him just fine.
* * *
Seth was shocked upon entering the living room to find Ryan dressed and seated in front of the television, working the Playstation with a partially eaten grilled cheese sandwich beside him. With all the running he’d done last night, Seth expected Ryan would be holed up in the poolhouse. Hiding in the bathroom. With balled up socks to throw at Seth if he attempted any form of entry.
Seth’s eyes narrowed as stood at the edge of the room, cereal box clutched under his arm. When Ryan finally looked up from his game, Seth opened his hand warily in greeting.
“Ryan. Morning.” It came out more formally than he intended.
“If you’re going to be technical about it, it’s afternoon.” Ryan noted flatly.
“Oh. Yeah. Well, I’m lucky cereal is an all time of day kind of food. Can I…?” He tilted his head in the direction of the sofa where Ryan was settled. He took the noncommittal shrug Ryan gave him as a yes, and settled tentatively into the cushions.
Seth munched in awkward silence as Ryan returned his eyes to the television and resumed his game. Why hadn’t he ever noticed what a *loud* cereal Cap’n Crunch was? Very appropriately named, though. He’d have to write a letter complimenting Quaker about that.
Lacking any other sort of peace offering, Seth decided to simply slide the box of Cap’n Crunch over to Ryan in a meager attempt to break the tension. Seth was encouraged when it was accepted with a nod and something approaching a smile. But when Seth attempted to tell Ryan the latest dead baby joke, pulling from his vast but largely unused mental cache of grossly politically incorrect jokes and anecdotes, Ryan’s eyes remained firmly focused on Grand Theft Auto and he didn’t so much as snort.
Sure, not everyone was a fan of the infant necro-hilarity, but Seth easily recalled a time when “two scoops of ice cream and a scoop of dead baby” had left Ryan rolling in the aisles. Seth was suddenly hit with the realization that Ryan might never laugh at his jokes again. When that was paired with the thought of never feeling Ryan’s lips on his again, Seth imagined his life would be bleak indeed.
A few minutes later, Seth decided to go for it. He cleared his throat, which had constricted nearly to the point of strangulation. Granted, less than a half hour ago, this was the last thing he wanted to do. But if he was going to be facing Ryan, he might as well be *facing* him.
“About yesterday…” He laid his hand on the black fabric that covered Ryan’s left shoulder and winced when Ryan pulled away as though he’d been burned.
“Seth. Don’t.” Ryan’s blue eyes had a warning glint.
“No. Ryan, I’m just trying to…”
“We’re friends, right? More like brothers really?” Ryan’s voice caught disdainfully on the word brothers. His mouth was set in a hard line.
For once in his life, Seth was at a loss for words. In the past few weeks, he’d been so caught up in the kissing and groping. He’d forgotten that only a few days before the illicit kissing began, he’d been happily penciling Ryan in alongside him on the family tree.
Seth ran his tongue uneasily around his parted lips, feeling the ridges in his teeth while he struggled to find words.
“Yes, Ryan. Friends. Brothers.” He paused. “Maybe even a few other things I can’t repeat in front of impressionable cereal mascots.” He gestured aimlessly in the direction of the Cap’n.
“Other things?” Ryan feigned innocence with his eyebrows, but his tone was deadly serious.
“I’m really not going to have to draw it out for you Quesada-style, am I?” Seth buried his chin in his chest, blushing. What was that thing Anna had tried to teach him? Oh, yeah, confidence. He’d need to be re-schooled when she sailed back into port.
“I really don’t see what there is to draw.” It sounded like a challenge. Seth was never one to turn down a challenge. Actually, he was. But this was a new thing he was willing to try out, with all those other new things. Very White Knight.
Seth inhaled deeply, steeling himself, and latched onto Ryan’s arm, not allowing him to escape. He set his jaw and locked his gaze on Ryan’s. “Fine. Treat me like a brother, if that’s what you want. But you and I both know that sooner or later, you’re going to have to stop acting all Memento on me, and then we’ll see who’s a brother to you. Dude, I’m thinking that the only brother you’ve got is kind of caught up in his own very special episode of Oz right now. It’s your call, Ry. You know where I live.”
Seth stood up and walked purposefully out of the room before he had time to gauge Ryan’s reaction. Once he was safely out of Ryan’s sight, his knees began to tremble and he had to grab at the nearest wall. His nails scrabbled for a grip on the patterned paper before his legs regained feeling and he was able to return to his favored spot buried under a mound of pillows.
If things weren’t fucked up before, he was thinking that all his newfound confidence had suddenly made everything a whole lot worse. Between Anna and Summer, girls had finally taken a major role in Seth’s life. It was just ironic that it only happened after he’d decided he liked boys.
* * *
If only Ryan’s memory loss had been slightly more selective in nature, Seth reflected later, he could have handled the situation bit more delicately. But Ryan wasn’t just pretending that last night’s sink or swim (but mostly sink) debacle didn’t happen. From where Seth stood, it was as though Ryan wanted to forget that anything had happened between them since Ryan and Marissa had their little after hours tete-a-tete poolside.
No kissing, no groping, and *definitely* no attempted oceanside handjobs.
Denial was definitely not just a river in Egypt. Unless of course Ryan was Egypt, cause Seth was pretty sure that’s where he could find it if he looked. And it showed no signs of leaving anytime soon.
It wasn’t as though pretending things didn’t happen was foreign to Seth. He’d pretty much blocked out the saga of fluorescent braces and dubious cross-country team mishaps that were his three years at Kennedy Middle School for the prettier-than-thou. But after their little interaction on the couch, Seth was almost positive Ryan could be a lecturer commanding top dollar on the pretending-it-didn’t-happen circuit.
Seth was suddenly struck with a set of long since abandoned memories. Until Seth was six years old, his imaginary best friend Morton lived in the dilapidated beige-tiled bathroom of the Cohen’s house in Berkeley. Morton had blonde hair and green eyes and no dimples and was just tall enough to reach the cherry Fruit Roll-ups on the top shelf of the pantry where Seth’s mom attempted to keep them hidden.
Morton was suave and cool and brilliant and knew all the words to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song as well as being able to play it on his armpit. These were all very important qualities to find in a five-year-old boy, imaginary or not.
Back then, Seth insisted everything he was punished for-from Roll-Up thievery to Matchbox car crayoning to his dad waking up one morning with half of his right eyebrow mysteriously vanished-was Morton’s idea in the first place. His parents never bought it, and Seth was inevitably banished to his room, where Morton would promptly tiptoe in from the bathroom with the blueprints for his next escapade already drawn up.
Seth had a sneaking suspicion that somewhere, Morton was stifling giggles over a vase and a rug.
If Seth would have known that Morton wasn’t going to make the trip with them from Berkeley to Newport Beach, he’d have clung to that rusty shower-rod for dear life. But, as such things tend to happen, Morton faded from Seth’s life along with Velcro-strap sneakers and the memory of his mom doing laundry.
Morton was a lot like Ryan, Seth mused. A brief friendship filled with lots of wild and zany times, followed by a complete lack of memory thereafter.
No. Screw that. Seth’s memory was working just fine. It was Ryan who playing the soap opera amnesiac. And he wasn’t going to win any Daytime Emmys for his portrayal.
Then again, if Ryan could pretend, Seth could pretend too. If he could invent his own imaginary friend at the age of four, he could certainly create something better than that at sixteen. He would be the best pretender since that guy who had that show on NBC. Hell, he would be better than him. If he had his own TV show, he was sure that it wouldn’t be cancelled.
Maybe Ryan was right, about how he’d take the first person that came along. Seth wouldn’t know unless he tried. If he tried, then he could at least come back to Ryan with the concrete answer of who and what he wanted, with the experiences and evidence to back it up, and maybe Ryan would stop being Egypt or various other Middle Eastern countries. He hadn’t grown up with a lawyer dad without picking up a few things on the way.
The thought was enough to snap him out of his self-induced lethargy and out of his bed for the second time that day. A minute later he was standing at the open front door of the Cooper house as Marissa looked at him quizzically.
“Cohen. Long time no see.”
“You’re one to talk, all shacked up with Luke as you are.”
If Marissa appeared slightly uncomfortable at his words, Seth didn’t notice. Feeling that the requisite small talk had been accomplished, he jumped in, babbling wildly. He talked as much with his hands as with his mouth. “Yeah. Anyway. Now, not so long ago, I did the neighborly thing and worked the mojo with you and Ryan. All I’m asking is for you to return the favor.”
Marissa’s eyes bored into Seth and the back of his neck prickled warmly.
Seth pressed his lips together in determination and made a fist, punching the words out. “What I’m saying, is, Marissa, I want you to hook me up with Summer.”
--end of part 2--
Writing this took more effort than I thought it would. I think I'm about ready to go on hiatus.