FIC: A Gentleman Never Tells
They were half-drunk in the poolhouse, and Summer was sitting on Seth's lap with her feet just tickling his thighs. Marissa was sitting on the floor, almost-but-not-quite touching his knees, still keeping her distance by his request.
They'd stolen a bottle of vodka from the party, and were mixing it with whatever Ryan had in the mini-fridge behind the bar. Well, the other three were mixing it; Ryan was drinking straight cranberry juice and keeping very still. He didn't think that now was the time to tell Marissa that the smell of vodka made him slightly sick to his stomach, that it had ever since Dawn had crept into his bed one night, stinking of it, and mistaken him for AJ in the dark.
Summer, even half-drunk, was her usual commanding self, and tonight she was on a voyage of discovery. She'd already quizzed Seth about his childhood, even though she'd been there for most of it, and Marissa about her sexual experiences with Luke. Such as they were. Now, she was honing in on him.
"C'mon, Chino. You've got to have a story -- you're too good at the whole 'I'm-too-sexy-for-my-wifebeaters' thing to be a virgin. Spill."
Ryan blinked at her in disbelief. How could he even begin to talk about that with Summer Roberts, of all people? Summer, who'd convinced everyone she was Newport's finest good-time gal. Summer, who'd actually lost her virginity to Seth in a flurry one ill-fated, hurried afternoon. Which time?, he wanted to ask.
He knew, of course, what she was asking for -- the earnest, aw-shucks, details, the fumbling in the dark with the clasp of a training bra -- all of which had happened, with Mimi Ramirez, at the end of the 8th grade graduation dance. But it was what she wasn't asking, what she couldn't know, that froze him in his seat.
Mimi Ramirez was his "first," but she hadn't been first by then, not really. His first had been a man whose first name he couldn't bring himself to remember, in a house that had smelled musty and clean, which was an entirely different smell from musty and dirty, which is what their house with Dawn had always smelled like.
His first had been right after they had moved from Fresno, at least marginally. Dawn had gone to Reno to cash in on a "sweet deal," and the dumb boyfriend of the moment turned out to be not so dumb at all. After a week, he'd packed up all of his things and left Trey and Ryan behind in the empty, echoing house.
They'd lasted two weeks, nearly, on their own, with no word from Dawn. They'd eaten the meager contents of the refrigerator first, then made their way through the stale crackers, the canned soup, even the stuffing mix left over from the last year's aborted holiday. Finally, they were down to peanut butter, just peanut butter, and when Trey had been arrested several days later trying to steal Funions and white bread from the Circle-K, and the authorities realized that he and his eleven-year-old brother were at home alone, no parents in sight, it was off to Trey's first stint in Juvie and his own first stay in foster care.
The house had been in the Chino Hills section of the city -- the "nice" part of town. He was placed with an elderly couple who had been foster parents for decades, in a small well-kept house where the first rule he learned was no windows were to be opened, ever. Hence the clean and musty smell.
The Richardsons had been okay at first -- they were the first Protestants he'd ever met, and their lives revolved around their church to in a way that seemed deeply odd to him -- but they gave him a room of his own, and let him eat whenever he was hungry, and even let him call Trey once a week from the phone in the hallway.
It hadn't seemed that bad at first, but he should have realized that the typical Atwood luck would always will out in the end.
It had happened on a night when Mrs. Richardson was out at the Wednesday night prayer meeting. Mr. Richardson had stayed behind, claiming a headache, and Ryan had thought nothing of it. The Richardsons never took him to church during the week, and usually he was left alone for several hours. He'd been with them long enough by then to know that he had to account for his time, so he'd done the dishes and finished his homework and had gone to take a shower before bed.
That night, Mr. Richardson had been waiting outside the bathroom door. That night, when he was finished, Mr. Richardson had beaten Ryan with a belt across his still-bare thighs. That night, Mr. Richardson told him, over and over, in a voice made husky by passion, that he was going to hell for his sins. That night, Mr. Richardson had claimed to Mrs. Richardson that he found Ryan behaving "indecently," and that he couldn't be left alone.
For the next several months, until Dawn finished her first stint in rehab and regained custody of both the boys, each Wednesday night found Ryan on his knees, in supplication, but not in prayer. And before Mrs. Richardson returned home each Wednesday night, Mr. Richardson made sure that Ryan repented for his sins, chanting "whore," under his breath in time with the swing of his belt against Ryan's back.
Ryan doubted that was a story Summer was prepared to hear -- that any of them were prepared to hear, really. He doubted that any of his "firsts," were really safe for public consumption, not in Chino and certainly not in Newport.
His first older woman? Not Gabby, but a friend of his mother's, two weeks after his fumblings with Mimi in the dark. Dawn and AJ were passed out among their other guests in the living room, and Melinda had found him asleep in the double bed he had once shared with Trey. She had smelled like old booze and cheap perfume, the same perfume Dawn wore, and he'd woken up with her hand on his dick, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. She was bossy and half-wasted, but she taught him to go down on a woman, how to listen to her body's signals, how to read each twitch and sigh.
The first time it meant something? He was tempted to say Theresa, in the back of 'Turo's beater outside the Winter Dance. She'd been wearing a polyester dress with a rough, acrylic crinoline, and they'd laughed and laughed as he fought first the rough fabric and then the smooth, off her soft, familiar body. She smelled like home to him, like tamales and pot roast and the perfume her father had bought her before he died, which was not cheap and not heavy and somehow made the essence of her the only thing he sensed.
He hadn't wanted to -- well of course he'd wanted to, he was fifteen, but he'd been afraid, afraid he'd lose their friendship, their firm connection. In the end, she'd guided him inside her with an impatient grunt, and it was only then that he realized that he was her first. She'd cried a little, and he'd kissed her temples, holding himself up with his arms above the mass of crinolines and cheap fabric, until she'd grown able to accommodate him, until her hips had started to quiver and roll beneath him. That's what he remembered about that night, that they'd laughed and cried and laughed and cried, and forever ever, sex with Theresa had felt like home.
That was his most tender memory. He could share it, but suddenly, it seemed like that guy in the Bible, that if he looked back it would all crumble behind him like so much salt, and he wasn't sure that was really the first time he'd cared, anyway.
The first time he'd cared? Not cared in the way he'd cared for Theresa, but cared desperately, still. The night he'd been "jumped" into Trey's gang, which was really Arturo's gang, six months after he and Trey had returned to their mother. Arturo sent Eddie and Trey on a beer run, and walked him around the side of the garage, the side that faced the alley that only Ryan and Trey's bedroom and Arturo's garage apartment faced. He promised Ryan that after tonight, he'd be a man, not a kid brother, not a hanger-on.
When Arturo had turned him to face the wall, he'd started to shiver and shake, and had nearly thrown up in Eva's neat bed of impatiens. He'd been prepared for a beating, but this, this was bringing back memories he'd tried hard to forget, despite the nightmares that Trey complained woke him on a regular basis.
Arturo was no Trey, though. He figured out immediately what the problem was, and turned Ryan around to face him. He murmured apologies in his ear as he drew Ryan into an embrace, as he stroked his hair and murmured endearments in Spanish in his ear.
"It won't be like before, ese," he assured him. "It won't hurt. We've got to do it, though, before Trey and Eddie get back."
He'd spread Ryan out against the wall as though he were going to frisk him, and unbuckled both their belts with ease. Ryan's pants had puddled around his knees, but before he had time to think, before his breath could speed into panic, Arturo had placed himself behind him. He had smelled the sharp, acrid tang of Arturo's hair grease, and then one hand was on parting his backside. He jumped at the cold feel of the grease, and as Arturo moved one finger delicately inside him, his arm wrapped around Ryan's midsection, gentling him, stroking the planes of his stomach from navel to groin, the back of his hand brushing against Ryan's hardening cock with every stroke.
Arturo had been right. It hadn't hurt half as much as before, but there was still a dull pain as Arturo replaced his finger with himself, pausing to give Ryan a moment to stretch, to adjust. Ryan's own cock had softened, but when Arturo eased into him all the way, he had moved to wrap one hand around it, the other finding Ryan's nipple of its own accord. After a few minutes, the pain had been replaced, not with pleasure exactly, but with a need deep in the pit of his stomach. Ryan had pushed back to meet Arturo's weight against him, and when he was buried to the hilt in Ryan, his hands had come up to cover Ryan's own, still spread flat against the wall of the garage.
He was still murmuring in Spanish, endearments Ryan had heard used by Theresa's father when he was alive, by Eva with all of them, kissing the back of Ryan's neck as he had begun to stroke in and out of Ryan's body. Ryan could still picture their hands, intertwined, dark over light, in the gloom of the alley. Arturo's hands were calloused and his nails were dirty with grease from the garage where he worked every day. Ryan's hands were still a summer away from the construction site, still soft and formless, with nails bitten down to the quick.
It hadn't lasted very long, and to Ryan's eternal shame, he'd come before Arturo, just from the sensations, without anyone even touching him to completion. Arturo had seemed pleased by that, though, kissing his ear again as he withdrew. Ryan had felt numb, and it had taken him a moment to realize his whole body was shaking, but Arturo was quick and efficient. He'd disposed of the condom and redressed before Ryan even had a chance to turn around, then, as though Ryan were a child -- even though he'd just proved he wasn't -- he'd wiped him off with tissues, redressed him as he still leaned against the wall.
When he had finished, he'd spun Ryan's face to him again, tracing Ryan's cheekbone tenderly with the back of a finger. He'd pulled Ryan into an embrace again and kissed him on the forehead, as though in benediction, then to Ryan's shock had kissed him deeply, tongue probing the corners of his mouth.
Arturo had laughed at Ryan's surprise and ruffled his hair.
"We're supposed to swap, you know, fluid, so we're bound to each other. We gotta find a way around the condom somehow. Don't look so surprised, mijo. It's not prison. I'm not gonna make you my bitch."
Arturo had sounded completely normal, like he always did, even though Ryan had continued to gape, and shake. He'd pulled Ryan close again and murmured in his ear,
"Just once, mijo, so we all know who's in charge. It won't happen again."
Ryan hadn't known whether to be happy or sad as that news, but Arturo wasn't done.
"Just remember, when you're with my sister, how I was gentle with you. You hurt her, and I'll fuck you every way I can. Comprende?"
Ryan had nodded, still in shock, and Arturo had laughed again, then slapped him on the back before letting him go. By the time they had returned to Eva's back garden, Trey and Eddie had come back with the beer, and they spent a warm summer's night getting slowly drunk and watching Theresa and her girlfriends chase fireflies in the yard, seemingly oblivious to them.
No one had ever spoken of that night again, and it had been ages since Ryan had thought of it at all.
"Hey, Chino, you still with us?"
Summer still managed to sound bossy, even when she was slurring half her words. She kicked him with a tiny foot and he startled, almost dropping his glass of juice down the front of his shirt.
Seth was flailing after her waving arms and Marissa was laughing as he shot them apologetic looks and grappled with his girlfriend.
"Cohen! Let me go, I want to hear Ryan's story," she protested, and Seth made an exasperated face.
"Dude, just tell her something," he ordered, and Marissa laughed again, cocking her head at him in a familiar way.
"Yeah, Ryan, I want to hear this, too," she demanded, but playfully. Suddenly, he was very glad to be in Newport, surrounded by merry, inexperienced drunks.
He raised his glass in mock-salute and downed it in one gulp.
"A gentlemen never tells."