[oc] A Shadow Across. Chapter one.
Okay, I give up. I'm bored, and you know that I tend to post stuff when I'm bored. *g* I'm predictable like that.
This story is not yet finished. It's getting betad, but it's not yet finished. God. I need to finish it. *takes in a deep breath* I'm working on it, that's good. And comments might help my muses focus. *nudge, nudge*
That said, on with the story. *g*
Title: A Shadow Across
Chapter: Chapter one
Pairing: Ryan/Seth.
Spoilers: AU to the whole show. *g* I'm evil like that.
Author's note: Written and winner of NaNo2007.
Special thanks: To 60schic for the amazing beta. Thanks babe!
one | two | three | four
A Shadow Across
I.
May, 27th. 2009
The sky is light blue, and tinged with thick clouds as Ryan tilts his head back, hand shielding his eyes. The sun should be up, bright and early, and it feels weird that it's late May, the 27th, a Wednesday, and the best they can hope for is a warm mid morning. He remembers, four years ago, mid March, and the sun breaking through the dark clouds, warm from mid morning until about four in the afternoon, when the chilly wind would pick up and he'd be forced to put on a jacket.
He shakes his head, a curl at the left corner of his lips, and takes a turn right, and then another right, into Bobby's garage.
He spends the afternoon tuning Barbara's brakes and changing the oil in her eight year old Toyota Yaris, because she always waits until the last possible minute, days after the green light has started to flicker, to finally bring it in. Ryan's heard Bobby tell her that a million times in the four years he's been here, and he's certain the man's probably told her a million more before that.
Barbara sighs, squeezes Ryan's hand as it rests on the edge of the hood of the car. She'll be back when the bank closes.
"I can have it done in two hours, three maybe." Ryan says with a nod. "I'm pretty sure Bobby has the parts out back."
She frowns. "Why, I didn't--"
Ryan ducks his head, grins to himself. "It's been two years now since the last change. Bobby thought you'd be coming here soon enough."
Her eyes narrow, and he can see her lips falling into a pout even as her eyes darken. She can turn into a girl with nothing but a look. Everyone always makes fun of Barbara inability of take good care of her car.
"Yeah, yeah." She snorts. "Thanks, sugar."
Ryan nods, glances at her sideways as she walks out of the garage.
"You might should have told her we didn't have no parts," Bobby says with a snort, a shake of his head.
Ryan rolls his eyes, turns around and leans against the side of the car, watching Bobby clean his hands in a rag that's almost as dirty as the hands. "You have the parts."
The man snorts. "That don't mean nothing, boy. That woman should learn to treat her car better, that's what she should do. She's only had that thing for seven years. I remember her, driving in with her brand new car--"
Ryan sighs, leans back comfortably, folds his arms over his chest, rests his right ankle against the opposite one. He knows Bobby, and this story takes a while. He's heard it a hundred times.
"--bought back in the city, happy as a clam. Oh, I remember. I told her that day, I told her, you need to learn to treat a car better than the last one."
Ryan chuckles. The last one, he knows, was a dark green bug that had to be fifty years old, a gift from her grandfather. She crashed it nine times (eleven, people say, but Ryan isn't counting the two times she went over the ditch coming from a party) in the four years she had it. The last time, the way the story goes, her parents told Bobby to tell her that it was done for good. They then told their darling daughter that she could walk to work, for all they cared, because they weren't buying her a car.
It takes her seven years and marrying Mark -- a pretty decent lawyer she met in Oklahoma City and who fell so much in love with her that he didn't seem to think twice about leaving his practice and moving over here to open a small consulting firm that deals with nothing more exciting than wills and transfer titles of trucks, nothing even close to the mergers he used to be a part of -- to finally afford a car. Bobby keeps saying, one of these days, Mark's gonna come here just like her daddy did years ago, and ask him to tell her that the car is done in for good, she better start wearing flats to work.
The call comes in just as Bobby is really starting to get into it, counting all eleven times Barbara crashed her car, how from the first time, when she couldn't even get it out of the goddamn garage, who crashes a car getting out of the goddamn garage, he knew that girl was gonna be trouble on wheels. He picks it up because Bobby hates people calling, doesn't know why someone would call, because he's here from nine to six, unless a car needs longer and the person is in a rush, and that's never, and he's been here from nine to six the last forty years, since he took over from his pop when he was sixteen, so it ain't like people don't know he'll be here.
But it's Zoe, who's been left in charge of the police station again (it's just her and Matthew now, and Matthew tends to do the patrols alone) and she got a call on the radio from Joseph about a boy being stranded along the dirt road that runs parallel to the 54.
"Joseph says he would have given the boy a ride," Zoe tells Ryan over the phone, a smile in her voice and Ryan nods, leans back against the side of the desk. "But the kid took one look at that big ass of a trunk Joseph has and shook his head, started muttering under his breath about serial killers and never seeing the light of day again and him being too thin to actually put up too much of a fight."
He hears her laugh, a nice sound on this not so sunny day, and nods along, because, yeah, he would be afraid of Joseph -- all six four and over two hundred eighty pounds of black man -- and that truck that is older than Ryan is at the moment, if he were to meet the man over the side of the road. He was, actually. So long ago. And so he doesn't fault the kid for not wanting to jump into the truck. The kid had no way of knowing that Joseph loves kittens more than he loves pie, and that's saying a lot.
"It's okay," Ryan says, takes off his cap and wipes off his forehead with the back of his hand before putting it back on, backwards. "I'll head over there. Where did you say it was?"
It takes Ryan less than forty minutes to get there, mostly because the tow truck is as old as Bobby himself, and the thing doesn't do more than twenty on a good day. He's still thirty feet away when he notices the color of the plates, realizes it's not a local. Not that he wouldn't have, five minutes later, when he's putting the truck in park and jumping out. And apparently, the kid doesn't know to recognize the familiar thud thud thud sound of a tire that's about to blow, if the strips of rubber the road has been showered with is any indication.
He lifts his eyes from the rubber on the pavement to really look at the kid for the first time. Ryan can see dark eyes and dark curls, clear skin, nice face. He's wearing loose fitting jeans, a dark long sleeve t-shirt and a short sleeve t-shirt over it. He's sitting in the passenger seat, door wide open, feet firmly planted on the ground. His hand is shielding his eyes, even though the sun is not yet high in the sky, still hiding behind thick clouds.
The kid glances at him doubtfully, then over his shoulder at the tow truck, before shifting to the car door. Ryan can't help but smile inwardly, thinks about the kid wondering about his chances of closing the door fast enough, of it holding against him if Ryan really wanted to hurt him. It probably wouldn't.
"Hey," Ryan says, his tone calm and collected, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He's been told he does friendly like the best of them. Pretend has always been easy for him.
The kid narrows his eyes slightly, his right hand tightening on the edge of the door, where the window is completely rolled down. "Hey."
He falls silent for a second, doesn't know exactly what to say. "Do you need some help?"
The kid seems to hesitate for a second, before shrugging and nodding as he does so. Ryan nods back.
It was stupid, actually fucking stupid, of Trey to think that he could hotwire a car while being high and drunk. But he did. And Ryan followed. That was ten times even more stupid.
It was August 7th, a Thursday, and it was late and the only reason Ryan was still at that bar with Trey was because they had been betting at pool and winning. And then out of the twenty three bucks he earned, Trey asked for ten to score some. Ryan gave it to him.
The next morning, Ryan walked down the hallway, the cuffs tight around his wrists. He didn't mind, he didn't know why. The guard opened the door to the cell, interrogation room, whatever.
He could still hear the sirens wailing around him, the smell of beer on Trey's clothes, Trey's laughter loud in his ears. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and this feeling of wrongness from the moment Trey chose the car to when they hit that power thing. He screamed No, no, no, but it was useless, Trey was too drunk to care, to make a quick turn, to even choose the right time and place and car to steal. This wasn't the first time they'd done this, just the first time they'd gotten caught.
He walked into the place, sat in one of those stupid small stools. The man stood up before him, gave him a quick grin, a patronizing gaze.
"Hello," the man said, with his big blue eyes and sun bleached hair. "I'm Richard Care, your public defender."
Ryan gave him a quick glance, up and down, then grimaced. The man snorted.
"Where's my brother?"
It doesn't take long to get the gray sedan up on the truck, and the kid just stands back and watches, arms folded over his chest, his bag being hugged tight against his chest. Ryan wonders about that.
"My name's Ryan, by the way," he says with shrug of his shoulders, taking a step back and securing the car so it won't slide down on the way into the garage. And that only happened once.
The kid nods, shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "Nice meeting you. Seth. Seth Cohen."
Ryan nods again, smiles, this time more natural on his lips. He jumps into the cab of the truck, and leans to open the passenger door. Seth just stares at it as if he has never seen one before. Ryan watches Seth almost take a step back.
"It's okay. The town is only a little over half an hour from here." He thinks about adding more, that there's the garage there and there's Nellie's restaurant, nice and homey and maybe some lunch and a soda is just what he needs, but he doesn't know if that'll help or not. The kid looks too scared to be good for his health.
After a moment, Seth nods, and jumps into the cab of the truck. "Thanks," Seth says, his voice low, looking down at his lap before glancing up as Ryan pulls off the side of the road. "Hmm. Thanks."
Ryan nods. "Sure, don't mention it."
They fall into silence for almost five minutes before Seth breaks it. "So, um. That guy, he said he'd call someone."
"Joseph, yeah. He called Zoe about it, let her know you were stranded. She called us."
"Us?"
"Bobby's garage. I work there." Ryan takes a right, and then catches the 54. "I take it you took a wrong turn."
Seth sighs, and then groans before leaning his head back. Ryan smiles for some reason. "Yeah, yeah. It's so stupid. That car is supposed to have GPS, you know? But either it's a very old model or a very new model, and I'm really leaning toward the first one, because I must have hit something and it all went weird on me and when I clicked it on again, it just wouldn't start. It kept saying, Recalculating."
Ryan chuckles, low in his throat, smiling slightly, and for a moment he thinks Seth will fall quiet once again, but Seth only laughs along and shakes his head.
"Stupid, right? So then I rummaged in the glove compartment for a map or something that would actually let me know where I was and I found this Oklahoma map that's all yellow and wrinkly and I tried reading it, but apparently I suck at that too, because I couldn't tell one way from the other and I kept trying to remember if the sun goes down in the east or the west and I couldn't, so I just took a right somewhere and, like, an hour later that stupid tire blew."
Ryan shrugs, doesn't know what to say to that. The roads are tricky in these parts, mostly because besides the 40 and the 183, they tend to swirl up against one another, and unless you really know your way around, one can get lost.
"Maybe I should have gone with that guy. Joseph, right?"
Ryan nods. "Yeah, Joseph. He's nice. He just looks threatening."
"I was sure he was gonna kill me and eat me and all that." He grimaces, glances at Ryan before grimacing again. "Sorry. You probably know him and--"
His eyes on the road, Ryan shrugs. "Joseph's looks the part, yeah. It's not your fault." He glances at Seth from the corner of his eyes.
Ryan watches Seth surreptitiously, noticing the way his finger lingers on the edge of the bag as if it is protecting his life, almost. A moment later, Seth takes out his cell phone from his pocket, opens it, and Ryan half hides a smile.
"I'm sure this is going to sound all kinds of stupid," Seth says with a grimace on his lips, self-deprecating. "But, my cell phone doesn't have any signal. Do you know what's up with that?"
Ryan doesn't look away from the road, but a grin is on his lips. "There are no cell towers around here and some patches of the road around the town, but in the town itself, yeah, sure, you'll get a signal there." He glances at Seth from the corner of his eye, notices the way the kid has one hand around the cell phone, like it's saving his sanity. "You tried to call, huh?"
Seth nods, looking out the window, and Ryan frowns and stares back at the road. "Yeah," Ryan hears him say, not turn around this time. "It took two and a half hours for that man, Joseph, to come through. I was afraid to walk away from the car, I'm not good with directions."
Ryan smiles. Smart thing, too, because he could have gotten lost, and he doesn't want to think about what could have happened.
He feels Seth's eyes on him, and when he glances to the right, Seth's looking directly at him, smile on his face. Ryan can feel his face softening.
"Thanks," Seth says, and Ryan shrugs.
Bobby checks the car, because Ryan's supposed to be changing Barbara's brakes, and so he only hears Bobby tell Seth that the tire is out, for good, and he'll have to order one from the city because he only has spares for trucks and tractors this time of the year.
"Oh," Ryan hears Seth say from his spot under Barbara's Toyota. "Okay. Sure. Um, how long do you think it'll take?"
"I can go there tomorrow morning, be back before dark." Ryan hears Bobby say. "I could have the car back to you the following day, kid. Friday, bright and early."
Ryan pauses in adjusting the brake pads.
"Friday. Okay. Good. I'll pay extra, of course. Thanks."
Ryan sighs, and then blinks at the bottom of the car; Barbara really did a number on the brake pads. Another couple of weeks and the timing belt would have blown. He doesn't shake his head because he would end up hitting it on something and then cursing up a storm, and Bobby doesn't like that because he says the missus then ends up giving him the evil eye, as if she can tell -- she probably can, Ryan, I'm telling you; women are weird like that -- that they've been cursing or Bobby had a smoke with Pete when he came by.
It takes him another twenty minutes to feel pleased with the work, and then he's sliding from under the car, letting his feet hit the farthest wall because so far in the garage there's only Barbara's Toyota and the sedan. He's lying there, on the dolly, arms folded over his chest, when he blinks and cocks his head to the side, only now seeing Seth sitting on the ground, back against the wall, legs stretched before him.
"Hey," Ryan says, jumping to his feet, wiping his hands on the rag in the back pocket of his jeans. "I thought you'd," he says, shrugging before finishing the sentence.
Seth blinks and looks up, as if he hadn't noticed Ryan had been under the Toyota. He glances at his car, then back at Ryan and shrugs. "Yeah, I should leave, right? It's just that..." He says, trailing off, turning his head around to look out of the wide open doors of the garage, out into their main street that's empty and will be empty until six when most shops close and people head home. Seth turns around once again, and Ryan catches his eyes. "Um, is there somewhere around here where I could stay?"
He's never been one to take breaks, not even when there are no cars to work on, not even when Bobby had suggested he might want to go to the restaurant across the street for lunch instead of staying in the garage.
"Sure," he says, his voice low, cleaning his hands once again on the rag. "I can show you."
He got a phone call, got to call his mom, got to tell her that he had been picked up and Trey wasn't even going to make bail and could she come and pick him up?
She did, four hours later. Ryan sat on the curb outside the police station, men walking in and out giving him a sideways glance, snorting under their breath. Ryan clenched his jaw and waited.
She arrived around four in the afternoon, the car making stupid noises even as she pulled into the street, car half parked on the pavement and half on the sidewalk.
"Unbelievable! What kinda family I got, huh? What the HELL did I do to deserve this family? You want to tell me that?"
He rolled his eyes and walked toward her, stopped as he reached the passenger side door.
"You're gonna end up rotting in jail," she spat, and he looked away, down and away. "Just like your Dad's doing, just like his your brother's gonna."
She got in the car and Ryan sighed, pulling the door open and getting in before she continued to yell.
He didn't say a word.
There's not much to show off in Shadow's Willow, not really, but it's still three in the afternoon and though Ryan had a sandwich for lunch, when he asks Seth if he's hungry, he can hear Seth's stomach growling.
He sees Seth snort, duck his head and shake it at the same time.
"Sorry," Seth says with a shrug, a chuckle. "I figured I could drive through lunch and be in Ponca by the end of the day, maybe even earlier."
Ryan frowns, titling his head as they cross the street to Nellie's restaurant. He hasn't really asked Seth if he likes roasted chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes, but he figures everyone has to love Nellie's cooking.
He pauses as his hand touches the glass pane of Nellie's restaurant. "You're going to Ponca city?"
Seth nods, frowning as he does so, walking after Ryan into the place. Ryan says hello to Mr. Clark and Mr. Lopez talking at the corner of the counter, and then at Nellie smiling back at him, notepad in her hand. They take a seat in one of the booths, the place almost empty after the lunch rush.
"Ryan, nice seein' you getting out of that garage." Nellie smiles at both of them as they sit, and then she turns to regard Seth. "And this must be the boy Joseph run into, huh?"
Ryan can see Seth's lips pressing into a thin line, and he understands him. He had become resigned to it three years ago, when after already living here for almost a year, he realized he was still being called boy. He still was half the time.
"Nice to meet you," Seth says, cold in his politeness, even though it goes right past Nellie. She grins and nods and hands them a menu that no one really uses, everyone has been eating here since forever.
Nellie grins, because she can't not, and then tells them she'll give them a minute to decide what they want, and the apple pie is fresh.
"It's a small town," Ryan says as part of his explanation, a shrug of his shoulders. "Gossip and wildfire, and I bet you that the moment you walked into the garage, everyone knew you were there."
Seth nods, and picks up his menu and focuses on it so intently, Ryan's left to frown at the dark curls on top of Seth's head. This is one weird kid, Ryan can't stop himself from thinking, and then half a smile forms at the corner of his lips.
It takes Seth almost ten minutes to choose the chicken and gravy and mash potatoes, say something about home cooked meal and how he never really had it, considering his mother was never one to cook. Seth's lips press tight on that sentence, and Ryan doesn't ask, just shrugs and asks for a slice of pie for himself, considering he already had lunch. Seth takes one look at the pie and asks for one for himself. Ryan nods and digs in, Seth follows shortly.
It's only after they've had lunch -- Seth had lunch, and second servings of the chicken because he was starving and airport food was not breakfast, anyone knows that -- that Ryan remembers what Seth said before going in.
"You're going to Ponca City?"
Seth frowns for a moment, at the non sequitur, and Ryan can feel a dark blush rising on his cheeks because that's not him, even talking this much is not him. "Yeah," he says, nodding as he does so. "Yeah, I'm working for this magazine. Online magazine and the pay doesn't even cover my gas bill, but it's work, and they want me to interview a new, up and coming writer in his hometown. Why?"
Ryan rubs the back of his neck with his right hand, not sure how to say this without making Seth feel like an idiot. He knows he would. "Ponca is up north from the city. We're west. It's about two hundred miles from here; you could get there in three hours," he says, shrugs, and he can see Seth cursing under his breath.
He watches Seth turn around, back to him, and he thinks Seth might be tempted to pull at his hair if he wasn't biting back really nasty words. Ryan chuckles, because he doesn't know what else to do, and the image is really funny, and maybe in years to come, Seth will be able to laugh about being stranded in the middle of nowhere that one time he had to interview an up and coming writer.
It takes Seth a minute to calm down, and Ryan just stands there, waits him out, leaning against the mail box at the side of the street, arms folded on his chest.
"Okay, okay. It's okay. I can work with this. I can. I'm supposed to be writing, damn it, this could be a chapter. The day I turned around and ended up in the middle of nowhere, chapter. I can totally work with this."
The corner of Ryan's mouth curls into a smile, and he nods along, not knowing what else to do, finding amusement in doing it just the same.
"So." Seth says, finally turning around, looking back at him. Ryan notices the dark eyes, the pull at the corners, the way his eyebrows lift and then lower. "I took a wrong turn."
Ryan nods, because that looks a hell of a lot nicer than saying, "Hell yeah." He shrugs. "You were supposed to take the 35, but took the 40 instead."
He wants to say, anyone can make that mistake, but he'd be lying, and he thinks Seth would know that too.
Seth grimaces before snorting, muttering something along the lines of, of course, of course that would happen to me. Ryan stays quiet until Seth sighs one final time, before shrugging and jerking his head across the street, to the garage.
"I gotta get back. There's a small bed and breakfast across Main Street, down one corner to your left. It's mostly Emily with five rooms on the second and third floor, but it's nice and clean, and the only place close by." He doesn't know what else to say, and Seth just looks back at him, blinking. "I'll probably see you tomorrow."
"Yeah, sure," Seth says, mouth slowly working at the words, as if they are unfamiliar to him.
Ryan nods once again -- a stupid movement, slow as molasses, incomplete -- before turning around and jogging across the street. There's Jackson's truck when he walks in, and he's surprise he didn't hear the thing pull in when they were in the restaurant, the exhaust pipe is so old, it makes this whiny growling noise everyone in town is familiar with. It was his daddy's, sentimental value and all that, that stops him from buying a new one.
"Oil change and tuning. He says he was hearing something whining from under." Ryan looks up at Bobby, leaning against the doorframe leading to the small office, rag in hand. "I told him we can check it out, probably be done before we close down."
Ryan nods and gets what he needs, pulls the dolly to him and sits down on it. He pushes himself under the car with his feet, until he's under the truck, figures he might as well check the whole thing.
Not even two minutes later, he hears someone walking in. He frowns, cocks his head to the side enough to see out from under the car, and can see sneakers no one in town would wear.
He pushes himself out from under the car, then looks up at Seth upside down. Seth gives him a twitch of his lips, half a shrug of slender shoulders. "Sorry," he says, looks around and ends up sitting on the cold cement floor, back against one wall.
Ryan frowns, pushes himself to a sitting position and swirls around so he's actually facing Seth. "What, what happened?"
Seth shrugs, looks down at his feet, and Ryan looks at the way he toes the ground, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He wants to ask, but doesn't know why, doesn't even know the question least of all the answer.
"I don't know..." Seth says, shifts on the floor and shrugs again, looks at Ryan and Ryan thinks he sees something he shouldn't be seeing, something he shouldn't even recognize, only he does. Seth laughs, and the sound is hollow and dark and horrible, and Ryan doesn't want to hear that sound coming from this kid ever again.
"I'm in the middle of nowhere and I don't know what to do, which doesn't surprise me, really, only that it does and I'm kinda torn, because I should be writing. I've been writing this book for the last three years, since I got into Brown, only it's only a Word file and a hundred little sentences about things I want to be written in, only I don't even know where to start."
Words are easy for Seth, Ryan thinks, tilting his head to the side and hearing them make their way out of Seth's lips and into the thin air between them, chilling with the afternoon wind making its way through the wide open doors. Words are easy, and that's something to know.
"So I'm not writing that, that's for sure and I called Steve -- that's my boss, only not really. He's twenty nine, and did I tell you this is an online magazine, so of course my boss is twenty nine. So, I called Steve and he laughed for a good while before letting me know that he'll be calling Andrew -- the idiot writer that of course has to be from the middle of nowhere, only up north and not west -- to let him know I won't be there for another two days. So," he says, finally, and Ryan can almost feel the curl of his lips, the way they twitch but don't really move, "I don't really know what to do with myself."
Ryan leans back until he's resting on the side of the trunk, stilling the dolly with his feet planted on either side of it. He swallows and watches Seth snort, then chuckle deep in his throat before tipping his head back until it's resting against the wall.
He glances at the office, where Bobby is going through the books because there is not much work left to do and it's already a quarter to five. It doesn't take two people to run this place, but Bobby is getting older and after his fall two years ago, Laura has been slowly but surely trying to convince him to go home earlier, let Ryan open in the mornings more times than not. He turns to look back at Seth and sighs, figures, he can do this, it's okay. Bobby won't mind.
"You can stay, if you'd like," he says shrugging, glances over his shoulder to the right to the car, "but I gotta finish this. I mean, if you don't mind me working."
Seth nods rapidly, almost pathetically grateful, and then he's ducking his head, looking away, and Ryan can see a blush coloring his cheeks. The kid doesn't like this, wanting to stay so badly, and that Ryan saw it. He gets it. He's been there before.
"Okay," Ryan says, nods, and a moment later he's lying back down, pushing the dolly to the underbelly of the truck.
He licked the corner of his lips, where it was split, hissing as he did so. He shook his head and fuck if it didn't matter, not really. He could feel his head pounding, his cheekbone tender and the small cut on his eyebrow itching. He'd had worse.
Theresa said she can't ask her mom, not right now, she had this huge fight with Arturo over one thing or the other. And Eddie swore he didn't have room, his brother was staying with him. Carlos and Miguel were no different, and in the end, Ryan hit the side of the phone booth with his left hand, the pain hard and swift and good. He took in a deep breath and exhaled it through his mouth, leaned his head forward against the edge of the booth.
It wasn't the fucking end of the world. It wasn't. He'd... he'd done this before, too.
He turned around and picked up his backpack, slung it over one shoulder, got on his bike. He'd go down to the pier, to that small bar in the south corner. He could play a couple of tables, make some money from pool. He had thirteen bucks on him, the other ten Trey had asked him for to score some that night, which is now in the hands of the police. Twenty or thirty would be enough, to eat something today, maybe buy a beer. If by nightfall he still didn't find anywhere to crash, he could always go to the park. No one would bother him there.
Tomorrow, if Theresa's mom was still pissed and Eddie was being a pussy, then he could play some more, hang out at the beach. Just get away from his mom and bide his time. Just today and tomorrow, another night at the park won't kill him, and then on Sunday morning, Ryan was certain, it would be safe to go home. She would have cooled off.
"I'm from Newport, California. Hmm. It's a nice place, all things considered. Okay, no, not really. It's not a nice place at all. I hated it. Hated it with the heat of a thousand suns, like I once read somewhere. It was... it wasn't nice. It was horrible. I liked Berkeley better."
"Berkeley?"
"Yeah. I was born there. But then..." A pause, a shift. A shrug Ryan can almost see. "My grandma got sick and my parents had to move back to Newport and my torture began. I begged to be sent to boarding school for so long, it was almost a mantra."
"Oh."
"Yeah. Well. Um. Doesn't matter. Got away from it, in the end."
Silence, nice and slow and fitting, with Ryan breathing in and out, hands going through the motions he knows like second nature.
"Where are you from, anyway?"
"Chino."
"Oh, California, right?"
"Yeah."
"Weird. I can't believe we never met."
Ryan wants to snort but doesn't.
"I don't even know your last name, you know?"
"Atwood."
"Nice meeting you, Ryan Atwood."
Ryan smiles at the iron and inside of the truck, calm and collected and more fitting than the silence. "Nice meeting you, Seth Cohen."
"I hated high school."
"Almost everyone hates high school."
"Oh, no…. almost everyone doesn't like high school, and most people have a horrible experience, sure, I get it, but I hated it. It was... it was torture, I tell you."
"I thought torture was Newport."
"Well, it's like saying what came first, the egg or the stupid chicken, you know? One thing can't be bad enough without the other. High school might not have been so utterly disgusting if it had happened somewhere that wasn't Newport. I could almost prove that theory." A pause, an intake of breath. "Did you like high school?"
Ryan's hands still for a second, and then he shakes his head, even though Seth can't see him. "No." He never finished it, he doesn't say. He never made it to sophomore year, too focused on Austin and working for whatever would pay enough to eat that week. He swallows. "Not really."
"Yeah, thought so."
He went back on Sunday morning, around ten, after having three stale donuts from that shop down at the pier. He knew the guy that works there, Steven, a friend of Eddie's from school, he thought. There went a dollar, and now he only had seven left from that game he won last night, from those two brothers.
His neck itched from two days without taking a shower, and washing his face in the gas station's bathroom just doesn't cut it. He'd changed t-shirts but not sweatshirts, and he could feel himself smelling two days past rotten.
Two days, more than enough, even AJ probably forgot all about it and his bruised cheekbone was almost completely healed by now.
AJ's truck wasn't parked on the front lawn like usual, at least at this time of day. He should be sleeping off last night's bender, along with his mom. Ryan frowned, then let his bike fall against the steps to the front door, taking out his keys.
He opened the door and there was nothing inside. No couch or TV, no bottles piled up on the counter in the kitchen, no residue of lines on the table that wasn't there. Nothing.
He went through the hallway to the two adjoining rooms, both their doors wide open. Nothing inside. The mattress outside had to be one that used to be in his bedroom, where Trey and him slept. He went back out, leaned his forehead against the top cupboard in the kitchen. There was a letter on the counter.
He closes his fingers around it, then closed his eyes and hit his forehead against the cupboard, hard. Then again, and again, and a fourth time. The dog two houses down from his wasn't barking, and Lucia's two year old twins from across the street weren't crying. The street was quiet for once.
Everything was quiet.
"I used to go sailing."
Ryan doesn't think he's ever met anyone who's gone sailing. "Really?"
"Yeah. I used to teach, too. To kids, mostly, as a bit of a summer job. It was good. They were nice, the kids, I mean. They were nice. Hmm. Yeah." Ryan can almost hear Seth shrugging. "I haven't gone sailing since senior year. Wow. Four years. That's a hell of a long time."
"What, why?"
A pause, silence, and Ryan works on the car with the wind as background, Seth's breathing blending with it, becoming one. There's the clatter of the wrench almost falling from his fingers when he tries to loosen a screw.
"I sold my boat. It was... it was called Summer Breeze. It was named after this girl. Uh, I liked her. I really liked her." The same laugh Ryan wishes he had the power to take away, to make Seth forget the need for that kind of laugh. "It was stupid, I should have known. She never gave me the time of day, that's for sure, never mind her best friend was my next door neighbor. I just got tired of it, sold it. Kept the money for Brown, wanted to buy something that would show her, only I never knew what that could be."
Sorry, Ryan thinks, would not in a million years begin to cut it.
"I haven't thought about her in three years. Huh. Weird."
Ryan doesn't know what to say, so he says nothing.
"You don't know the difference between Marvel and DC?"
Ryan laughs, and almost lifts his head and gives himself a concussion. "No, Seth. I don't."
"But, dude! How? It's not... Dude! It's almost insanely ludicrous, that you don't know the difference."
"I thought you were majoring in English. Shouldn't you speak better?"
"I speak good."
Ryan laughs, and this time he does lift his head and it hurts like a son of a bitch. "It's well."
"I knew that. And just so you know, I'm teaching you the difference even if it's the last thing I do, I swear to God."
Another pause, a breath. "I'd like that."
It's almost six by the time he's done with the truck, and Barbara walks in with a smile on her face, her eyes looking for her car and finding it in a second. "Oh, is it ready or I got to call Mark to pick me up?"
Ryan throws the keys to Barbara, who catches them with the swift movement of her wrist in mid air.
"Thanks," she says, rushing to her car and getting inside. He wipes his hands as he watches Barbara get inside, turn on the engine and hears it purr without a complaint, happy to have been taken care of. Barbara is beaming by the time she gets out of the car, smile on her lips.
"Ryan, thanks," she says again, and he can almost see the desire to hug him, but he shrugs and then wraps his hands tighter around the rag. She nods back at him.
"I might should charge you double," Bobby says from his place by the truck, "for what you're putting that car through, kid."
Barbara rolls her eyes and Ryan hides a smirk as he ducks his head, Seth glances between Barbara and Bobby. And it's weird, in a way, to see them through a stranger's eyes. To maybe see the whole town through a stranger's eyes. It's been almost four years since he found his way here, since that August in oh five when he just couldn't take it anymore, was fed up with Austin and Dallas, with Texas itself, and needed to get out, and headed up north which was as good as anything else. He'd had Lawton, or Oklahoma City in mind. Only, it didn't happen that way, and then he was stranded in the middle of nowhere, making his way down a dirt road, literally making his way down when Joseph stopped and asked if he needed a ride.
"Bobby--"
"How many times have I told you, huh? It ain't gonna kill ya to treat them better."
"I came here, didn't I?"
"Two months too late, that's what you did." Bobby snorts, shakes his head once and Barbara laughs, taking a step closer to him, rummaging in her purse for her wallet.
Ryan hears the phone ring and makes his way to the office again, taking off his cap and letting it fall onto the desk. "Hello."
"If that boy is still there, you best be bringing him home for dinner. He ain't nothing but skin and bones."
Ryan sighs, looking over his shoulder at Seth, leaning against the threshold, arms folded on his chest. He doesn't blame Seth for not wanting to stay there, considering Bobby's probably giving Barbara the spiel about how she's torturing her car, that's what she's doing, she knows perfectly well, while Barbara rolls her eyes and chuckles under her breath. He turns around, half sitting on the edge of the desk. "He's here."
"Good. Bring him on over. I'm fixing chicken-fried steak."
"Mrs. Landingham--"
"No, no. I don't want to hear no nothing about it. Bring him on. He's so skinny, a hard wind 'ld probably blow him away. Hmpf. I wouldn't be surprised."
"I don't really think--"
"He staying down there with Emily? That old place is drafty, and him with no meat on his bones. He better come stay with us."
"Um, I don't see where--"
"It's not like this place ain't big enough. You don't take so much space as a mouse; I told you before."
"Mrs. Lan--"
"And you best be here by seven. I don't want dinner to be getting cold. My biscuits and gravy ain't no good if'n they're cold."
Ryan sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. It's not like he can say no to the woman, though it's not like he hasn't tried before. "Of course, Mrs. Landingham. Seven."
"Good. You be careful drivin' home. You hear?"
He nods, says that he does hear, he'll be careful, and a second later he's hearing the dial tone where Mrs. Landingham voice used to be.
He hangs up the phone, and can hear Bobby and Barbara still going at it out in one of the bays of the garage. He can feel the corners of his lips curling upward, and watches the way Seth tilts his head, confusion plainly in his eyes, and more than a little bit of curiosity.
"So," Ryan says with a shrug, a lift of his eyes eyebrows. "You got any plans for dinner?"
That's chapter one. *bounces* I'm awaiting comments, as you might all know. So, yeah. Click that, that, you know what I'm talking about! And let me know what you think. *bounces some more*
This story is not yet finished. It's getting betad, but it's not yet finished. God. I need to finish it. *takes in a deep breath* I'm working on it, that's good. And comments might help my muses focus. *nudge, nudge*
That said, on with the story. *g*
Title: A Shadow Across
Chapter: Chapter one
Pairing: Ryan/Seth.
Spoilers: AU to the whole show. *g* I'm evil like that.
Author's note: Written and winner of NaNo2007.
Special thanks: To 60schic for the amazing beta. Thanks babe!
one | two | three | four
A Shadow Across
I.
May, 27th. 2009
The sky is light blue, and tinged with thick clouds as Ryan tilts his head back, hand shielding his eyes. The sun should be up, bright and early, and it feels weird that it's late May, the 27th, a Wednesday, and the best they can hope for is a warm mid morning. He remembers, four years ago, mid March, and the sun breaking through the dark clouds, warm from mid morning until about four in the afternoon, when the chilly wind would pick up and he'd be forced to put on a jacket.
He shakes his head, a curl at the left corner of his lips, and takes a turn right, and then another right, into Bobby's garage.
He spends the afternoon tuning Barbara's brakes and changing the oil in her eight year old Toyota Yaris, because she always waits until the last possible minute, days after the green light has started to flicker, to finally bring it in. Ryan's heard Bobby tell her that a million times in the four years he's been here, and he's certain the man's probably told her a million more before that.
Barbara sighs, squeezes Ryan's hand as it rests on the edge of the hood of the car. She'll be back when the bank closes.
"I can have it done in two hours, three maybe." Ryan says with a nod. "I'm pretty sure Bobby has the parts out back."
She frowns. "Why, I didn't--"
Ryan ducks his head, grins to himself. "It's been two years now since the last change. Bobby thought you'd be coming here soon enough."
Her eyes narrow, and he can see her lips falling into a pout even as her eyes darken. She can turn into a girl with nothing but a look. Everyone always makes fun of Barbara inability of take good care of her car.
"Yeah, yeah." She snorts. "Thanks, sugar."
Ryan nods, glances at her sideways as she walks out of the garage.
"You might should have told her we didn't have no parts," Bobby says with a snort, a shake of his head.
Ryan rolls his eyes, turns around and leans against the side of the car, watching Bobby clean his hands in a rag that's almost as dirty as the hands. "You have the parts."
The man snorts. "That don't mean nothing, boy. That woman should learn to treat her car better, that's what she should do. She's only had that thing for seven years. I remember her, driving in with her brand new car--"
Ryan sighs, leans back comfortably, folds his arms over his chest, rests his right ankle against the opposite one. He knows Bobby, and this story takes a while. He's heard it a hundred times.
"--bought back in the city, happy as a clam. Oh, I remember. I told her that day, I told her, you need to learn to treat a car better than the last one."
Ryan chuckles. The last one, he knows, was a dark green bug that had to be fifty years old, a gift from her grandfather. She crashed it nine times (eleven, people say, but Ryan isn't counting the two times she went over the ditch coming from a party) in the four years she had it. The last time, the way the story goes, her parents told Bobby to tell her that it was done for good. They then told their darling daughter that she could walk to work, for all they cared, because they weren't buying her a car.
It takes her seven years and marrying Mark -- a pretty decent lawyer she met in Oklahoma City and who fell so much in love with her that he didn't seem to think twice about leaving his practice and moving over here to open a small consulting firm that deals with nothing more exciting than wills and transfer titles of trucks, nothing even close to the mergers he used to be a part of -- to finally afford a car. Bobby keeps saying, one of these days, Mark's gonna come here just like her daddy did years ago, and ask him to tell her that the car is done in for good, she better start wearing flats to work.
The call comes in just as Bobby is really starting to get into it, counting all eleven times Barbara crashed her car, how from the first time, when she couldn't even get it out of the goddamn garage, who crashes a car getting out of the goddamn garage, he knew that girl was gonna be trouble on wheels. He picks it up because Bobby hates people calling, doesn't know why someone would call, because he's here from nine to six, unless a car needs longer and the person is in a rush, and that's never, and he's been here from nine to six the last forty years, since he took over from his pop when he was sixteen, so it ain't like people don't know he'll be here.
But it's Zoe, who's been left in charge of the police station again (it's just her and Matthew now, and Matthew tends to do the patrols alone) and she got a call on the radio from Joseph about a boy being stranded along the dirt road that runs parallel to the 54.
"Joseph says he would have given the boy a ride," Zoe tells Ryan over the phone, a smile in her voice and Ryan nods, leans back against the side of the desk. "But the kid took one look at that big ass of a trunk Joseph has and shook his head, started muttering under his breath about serial killers and never seeing the light of day again and him being too thin to actually put up too much of a fight."
He hears her laugh, a nice sound on this not so sunny day, and nods along, because, yeah, he would be afraid of Joseph -- all six four and over two hundred eighty pounds of black man -- and that truck that is older than Ryan is at the moment, if he were to meet the man over the side of the road. He was, actually. So long ago. And so he doesn't fault the kid for not wanting to jump into the truck. The kid had no way of knowing that Joseph loves kittens more than he loves pie, and that's saying a lot.
"It's okay," Ryan says, takes off his cap and wipes off his forehead with the back of his hand before putting it back on, backwards. "I'll head over there. Where did you say it was?"
It takes Ryan less than forty minutes to get there, mostly because the tow truck is as old as Bobby himself, and the thing doesn't do more than twenty on a good day. He's still thirty feet away when he notices the color of the plates, realizes it's not a local. Not that he wouldn't have, five minutes later, when he's putting the truck in park and jumping out. And apparently, the kid doesn't know to recognize the familiar thud thud thud sound of a tire that's about to blow, if the strips of rubber the road has been showered with is any indication.
He lifts his eyes from the rubber on the pavement to really look at the kid for the first time. Ryan can see dark eyes and dark curls, clear skin, nice face. He's wearing loose fitting jeans, a dark long sleeve t-shirt and a short sleeve t-shirt over it. He's sitting in the passenger seat, door wide open, feet firmly planted on the ground. His hand is shielding his eyes, even though the sun is not yet high in the sky, still hiding behind thick clouds.
The kid glances at him doubtfully, then over his shoulder at the tow truck, before shifting to the car door. Ryan can't help but smile inwardly, thinks about the kid wondering about his chances of closing the door fast enough, of it holding against him if Ryan really wanted to hurt him. It probably wouldn't.
"Hey," Ryan says, his tone calm and collected, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He's been told he does friendly like the best of them. Pretend has always been easy for him.
The kid narrows his eyes slightly, his right hand tightening on the edge of the door, where the window is completely rolled down. "Hey."
He falls silent for a second, doesn't know exactly what to say. "Do you need some help?"
The kid seems to hesitate for a second, before shrugging and nodding as he does so. Ryan nods back.
It was stupid, actually fucking stupid, of Trey to think that he could hotwire a car while being high and drunk. But he did. And Ryan followed. That was ten times even more stupid.
It was August 7th, a Thursday, and it was late and the only reason Ryan was still at that bar with Trey was because they had been betting at pool and winning. And then out of the twenty three bucks he earned, Trey asked for ten to score some. Ryan gave it to him.
The next morning, Ryan walked down the hallway, the cuffs tight around his wrists. He didn't mind, he didn't know why. The guard opened the door to the cell, interrogation room, whatever.
He could still hear the sirens wailing around him, the smell of beer on Trey's clothes, Trey's laughter loud in his ears. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and this feeling of wrongness from the moment Trey chose the car to when they hit that power thing. He screamed No, no, no, but it was useless, Trey was too drunk to care, to make a quick turn, to even choose the right time and place and car to steal. This wasn't the first time they'd done this, just the first time they'd gotten caught.
He walked into the place, sat in one of those stupid small stools. The man stood up before him, gave him a quick grin, a patronizing gaze.
"Hello," the man said, with his big blue eyes and sun bleached hair. "I'm Richard Care, your public defender."
Ryan gave him a quick glance, up and down, then grimaced. The man snorted.
"Where's my brother?"
It doesn't take long to get the gray sedan up on the truck, and the kid just stands back and watches, arms folded over his chest, his bag being hugged tight against his chest. Ryan wonders about that.
"My name's Ryan, by the way," he says with shrug of his shoulders, taking a step back and securing the car so it won't slide down on the way into the garage. And that only happened once.
The kid nods, shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "Nice meeting you. Seth. Seth Cohen."
Ryan nods again, smiles, this time more natural on his lips. He jumps into the cab of the truck, and leans to open the passenger door. Seth just stares at it as if he has never seen one before. Ryan watches Seth almost take a step back.
"It's okay. The town is only a little over half an hour from here." He thinks about adding more, that there's the garage there and there's Nellie's restaurant, nice and homey and maybe some lunch and a soda is just what he needs, but he doesn't know if that'll help or not. The kid looks too scared to be good for his health.
After a moment, Seth nods, and jumps into the cab of the truck. "Thanks," Seth says, his voice low, looking down at his lap before glancing up as Ryan pulls off the side of the road. "Hmm. Thanks."
Ryan nods. "Sure, don't mention it."
They fall into silence for almost five minutes before Seth breaks it. "So, um. That guy, he said he'd call someone."
"Joseph, yeah. He called Zoe about it, let her know you were stranded. She called us."
"Us?"
"Bobby's garage. I work there." Ryan takes a right, and then catches the 54. "I take it you took a wrong turn."
Seth sighs, and then groans before leaning his head back. Ryan smiles for some reason. "Yeah, yeah. It's so stupid. That car is supposed to have GPS, you know? But either it's a very old model or a very new model, and I'm really leaning toward the first one, because I must have hit something and it all went weird on me and when I clicked it on again, it just wouldn't start. It kept saying, Recalculating."
Ryan chuckles, low in his throat, smiling slightly, and for a moment he thinks Seth will fall quiet once again, but Seth only laughs along and shakes his head.
"Stupid, right? So then I rummaged in the glove compartment for a map or something that would actually let me know where I was and I found this Oklahoma map that's all yellow and wrinkly and I tried reading it, but apparently I suck at that too, because I couldn't tell one way from the other and I kept trying to remember if the sun goes down in the east or the west and I couldn't, so I just took a right somewhere and, like, an hour later that stupid tire blew."
Ryan shrugs, doesn't know what to say to that. The roads are tricky in these parts, mostly because besides the 40 and the 183, they tend to swirl up against one another, and unless you really know your way around, one can get lost.
"Maybe I should have gone with that guy. Joseph, right?"
Ryan nods. "Yeah, Joseph. He's nice. He just looks threatening."
"I was sure he was gonna kill me and eat me and all that." He grimaces, glances at Ryan before grimacing again. "Sorry. You probably know him and--"
His eyes on the road, Ryan shrugs. "Joseph's looks the part, yeah. It's not your fault." He glances at Seth from the corner of his eyes.
Ryan watches Seth surreptitiously, noticing the way his finger lingers on the edge of the bag as if it is protecting his life, almost. A moment later, Seth takes out his cell phone from his pocket, opens it, and Ryan half hides a smile.
"I'm sure this is going to sound all kinds of stupid," Seth says with a grimace on his lips, self-deprecating. "But, my cell phone doesn't have any signal. Do you know what's up with that?"
Ryan doesn't look away from the road, but a grin is on his lips. "There are no cell towers around here and some patches of the road around the town, but in the town itself, yeah, sure, you'll get a signal there." He glances at Seth from the corner of his eye, notices the way the kid has one hand around the cell phone, like it's saving his sanity. "You tried to call, huh?"
Seth nods, looking out the window, and Ryan frowns and stares back at the road. "Yeah," Ryan hears him say, not turn around this time. "It took two and a half hours for that man, Joseph, to come through. I was afraid to walk away from the car, I'm not good with directions."
Ryan smiles. Smart thing, too, because he could have gotten lost, and he doesn't want to think about what could have happened.
He feels Seth's eyes on him, and when he glances to the right, Seth's looking directly at him, smile on his face. Ryan can feel his face softening.
"Thanks," Seth says, and Ryan shrugs.
Bobby checks the car, because Ryan's supposed to be changing Barbara's brakes, and so he only hears Bobby tell Seth that the tire is out, for good, and he'll have to order one from the city because he only has spares for trucks and tractors this time of the year.
"Oh," Ryan hears Seth say from his spot under Barbara's Toyota. "Okay. Sure. Um, how long do you think it'll take?"
"I can go there tomorrow morning, be back before dark." Ryan hears Bobby say. "I could have the car back to you the following day, kid. Friday, bright and early."
Ryan pauses in adjusting the brake pads.
"Friday. Okay. Good. I'll pay extra, of course. Thanks."
Ryan sighs, and then blinks at the bottom of the car; Barbara really did a number on the brake pads. Another couple of weeks and the timing belt would have blown. He doesn't shake his head because he would end up hitting it on something and then cursing up a storm, and Bobby doesn't like that because he says the missus then ends up giving him the evil eye, as if she can tell -- she probably can, Ryan, I'm telling you; women are weird like that -- that they've been cursing or Bobby had a smoke with Pete when he came by.
It takes him another twenty minutes to feel pleased with the work, and then he's sliding from under the car, letting his feet hit the farthest wall because so far in the garage there's only Barbara's Toyota and the sedan. He's lying there, on the dolly, arms folded over his chest, when he blinks and cocks his head to the side, only now seeing Seth sitting on the ground, back against the wall, legs stretched before him.
"Hey," Ryan says, jumping to his feet, wiping his hands on the rag in the back pocket of his jeans. "I thought you'd," he says, shrugging before finishing the sentence.
Seth blinks and looks up, as if he hadn't noticed Ryan had been under the Toyota. He glances at his car, then back at Ryan and shrugs. "Yeah, I should leave, right? It's just that..." He says, trailing off, turning his head around to look out of the wide open doors of the garage, out into their main street that's empty and will be empty until six when most shops close and people head home. Seth turns around once again, and Ryan catches his eyes. "Um, is there somewhere around here where I could stay?"
He's never been one to take breaks, not even when there are no cars to work on, not even when Bobby had suggested he might want to go to the restaurant across the street for lunch instead of staying in the garage.
"Sure," he says, his voice low, cleaning his hands once again on the rag. "I can show you."
He got a phone call, got to call his mom, got to tell her that he had been picked up and Trey wasn't even going to make bail and could she come and pick him up?
She did, four hours later. Ryan sat on the curb outside the police station, men walking in and out giving him a sideways glance, snorting under their breath. Ryan clenched his jaw and waited.
She arrived around four in the afternoon, the car making stupid noises even as she pulled into the street, car half parked on the pavement and half on the sidewalk.
"Unbelievable! What kinda family I got, huh? What the HELL did I do to deserve this family? You want to tell me that?"
He rolled his eyes and walked toward her, stopped as he reached the passenger side door.
"You're gonna end up rotting in jail," she spat, and he looked away, down and away. "Just like your Dad's doing, just like his your brother's gonna."
She got in the car and Ryan sighed, pulling the door open and getting in before she continued to yell.
He didn't say a word.
There's not much to show off in Shadow's Willow, not really, but it's still three in the afternoon and though Ryan had a sandwich for lunch, when he asks Seth if he's hungry, he can hear Seth's stomach growling.
He sees Seth snort, duck his head and shake it at the same time.
"Sorry," Seth says with a shrug, a chuckle. "I figured I could drive through lunch and be in Ponca by the end of the day, maybe even earlier."
Ryan frowns, titling his head as they cross the street to Nellie's restaurant. He hasn't really asked Seth if he likes roasted chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes, but he figures everyone has to love Nellie's cooking.
He pauses as his hand touches the glass pane of Nellie's restaurant. "You're going to Ponca city?"
Seth nods, frowning as he does so, walking after Ryan into the place. Ryan says hello to Mr. Clark and Mr. Lopez talking at the corner of the counter, and then at Nellie smiling back at him, notepad in her hand. They take a seat in one of the booths, the place almost empty after the lunch rush.
"Ryan, nice seein' you getting out of that garage." Nellie smiles at both of them as they sit, and then she turns to regard Seth. "And this must be the boy Joseph run into, huh?"
Ryan can see Seth's lips pressing into a thin line, and he understands him. He had become resigned to it three years ago, when after already living here for almost a year, he realized he was still being called boy. He still was half the time.
"Nice to meet you," Seth says, cold in his politeness, even though it goes right past Nellie. She grins and nods and hands them a menu that no one really uses, everyone has been eating here since forever.
Nellie grins, because she can't not, and then tells them she'll give them a minute to decide what they want, and the apple pie is fresh.
"It's a small town," Ryan says as part of his explanation, a shrug of his shoulders. "Gossip and wildfire, and I bet you that the moment you walked into the garage, everyone knew you were there."
Seth nods, and picks up his menu and focuses on it so intently, Ryan's left to frown at the dark curls on top of Seth's head. This is one weird kid, Ryan can't stop himself from thinking, and then half a smile forms at the corner of his lips.
It takes Seth almost ten minutes to choose the chicken and gravy and mash potatoes, say something about home cooked meal and how he never really had it, considering his mother was never one to cook. Seth's lips press tight on that sentence, and Ryan doesn't ask, just shrugs and asks for a slice of pie for himself, considering he already had lunch. Seth takes one look at the pie and asks for one for himself. Ryan nods and digs in, Seth follows shortly.
It's only after they've had lunch -- Seth had lunch, and second servings of the chicken because he was starving and airport food was not breakfast, anyone knows that -- that Ryan remembers what Seth said before going in.
"You're going to Ponca City?"
Seth frowns for a moment, at the non sequitur, and Ryan can feel a dark blush rising on his cheeks because that's not him, even talking this much is not him. "Yeah," he says, nodding as he does so. "Yeah, I'm working for this magazine. Online magazine and the pay doesn't even cover my gas bill, but it's work, and they want me to interview a new, up and coming writer in his hometown. Why?"
Ryan rubs the back of his neck with his right hand, not sure how to say this without making Seth feel like an idiot. He knows he would. "Ponca is up north from the city. We're west. It's about two hundred miles from here; you could get there in three hours," he says, shrugs, and he can see Seth cursing under his breath.
He watches Seth turn around, back to him, and he thinks Seth might be tempted to pull at his hair if he wasn't biting back really nasty words. Ryan chuckles, because he doesn't know what else to do, and the image is really funny, and maybe in years to come, Seth will be able to laugh about being stranded in the middle of nowhere that one time he had to interview an up and coming writer.
It takes Seth a minute to calm down, and Ryan just stands there, waits him out, leaning against the mail box at the side of the street, arms folded on his chest.
"Okay, okay. It's okay. I can work with this. I can. I'm supposed to be writing, damn it, this could be a chapter. The day I turned around and ended up in the middle of nowhere, chapter. I can totally work with this."
The corner of Ryan's mouth curls into a smile, and he nods along, not knowing what else to do, finding amusement in doing it just the same.
"So." Seth says, finally turning around, looking back at him. Ryan notices the dark eyes, the pull at the corners, the way his eyebrows lift and then lower. "I took a wrong turn."
Ryan nods, because that looks a hell of a lot nicer than saying, "Hell yeah." He shrugs. "You were supposed to take the 35, but took the 40 instead."
He wants to say, anyone can make that mistake, but he'd be lying, and he thinks Seth would know that too.
Seth grimaces before snorting, muttering something along the lines of, of course, of course that would happen to me. Ryan stays quiet until Seth sighs one final time, before shrugging and jerking his head across the street, to the garage.
"I gotta get back. There's a small bed and breakfast across Main Street, down one corner to your left. It's mostly Emily with five rooms on the second and third floor, but it's nice and clean, and the only place close by." He doesn't know what else to say, and Seth just looks back at him, blinking. "I'll probably see you tomorrow."
"Yeah, sure," Seth says, mouth slowly working at the words, as if they are unfamiliar to him.
Ryan nods once again -- a stupid movement, slow as molasses, incomplete -- before turning around and jogging across the street. There's Jackson's truck when he walks in, and he's surprise he didn't hear the thing pull in when they were in the restaurant, the exhaust pipe is so old, it makes this whiny growling noise everyone in town is familiar with. It was his daddy's, sentimental value and all that, that stops him from buying a new one.
"Oil change and tuning. He says he was hearing something whining from under." Ryan looks up at Bobby, leaning against the doorframe leading to the small office, rag in hand. "I told him we can check it out, probably be done before we close down."
Ryan nods and gets what he needs, pulls the dolly to him and sits down on it. He pushes himself under the car with his feet, until he's under the truck, figures he might as well check the whole thing.
Not even two minutes later, he hears someone walking in. He frowns, cocks his head to the side enough to see out from under the car, and can see sneakers no one in town would wear.
He pushes himself out from under the car, then looks up at Seth upside down. Seth gives him a twitch of his lips, half a shrug of slender shoulders. "Sorry," he says, looks around and ends up sitting on the cold cement floor, back against one wall.
Ryan frowns, pushes himself to a sitting position and swirls around so he's actually facing Seth. "What, what happened?"
Seth shrugs, looks down at his feet, and Ryan looks at the way he toes the ground, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He wants to ask, but doesn't know why, doesn't even know the question least of all the answer.
"I don't know..." Seth says, shifts on the floor and shrugs again, looks at Ryan and Ryan thinks he sees something he shouldn't be seeing, something he shouldn't even recognize, only he does. Seth laughs, and the sound is hollow and dark and horrible, and Ryan doesn't want to hear that sound coming from this kid ever again.
"I'm in the middle of nowhere and I don't know what to do, which doesn't surprise me, really, only that it does and I'm kinda torn, because I should be writing. I've been writing this book for the last three years, since I got into Brown, only it's only a Word file and a hundred little sentences about things I want to be written in, only I don't even know where to start."
Words are easy for Seth, Ryan thinks, tilting his head to the side and hearing them make their way out of Seth's lips and into the thin air between them, chilling with the afternoon wind making its way through the wide open doors. Words are easy, and that's something to know.
"So I'm not writing that, that's for sure and I called Steve -- that's my boss, only not really. He's twenty nine, and did I tell you this is an online magazine, so of course my boss is twenty nine. So, I called Steve and he laughed for a good while before letting me know that he'll be calling Andrew -- the idiot writer that of course has to be from the middle of nowhere, only up north and not west -- to let him know I won't be there for another two days. So," he says, finally, and Ryan can almost feel the curl of his lips, the way they twitch but don't really move, "I don't really know what to do with myself."
Ryan leans back until he's resting on the side of the trunk, stilling the dolly with his feet planted on either side of it. He swallows and watches Seth snort, then chuckle deep in his throat before tipping his head back until it's resting against the wall.
He glances at the office, where Bobby is going through the books because there is not much work left to do and it's already a quarter to five. It doesn't take two people to run this place, but Bobby is getting older and after his fall two years ago, Laura has been slowly but surely trying to convince him to go home earlier, let Ryan open in the mornings more times than not. He turns to look back at Seth and sighs, figures, he can do this, it's okay. Bobby won't mind.
"You can stay, if you'd like," he says shrugging, glances over his shoulder to the right to the car, "but I gotta finish this. I mean, if you don't mind me working."
Seth nods rapidly, almost pathetically grateful, and then he's ducking his head, looking away, and Ryan can see a blush coloring his cheeks. The kid doesn't like this, wanting to stay so badly, and that Ryan saw it. He gets it. He's been there before.
"Okay," Ryan says, nods, and a moment later he's lying back down, pushing the dolly to the underbelly of the truck.
He licked the corner of his lips, where it was split, hissing as he did so. He shook his head and fuck if it didn't matter, not really. He could feel his head pounding, his cheekbone tender and the small cut on his eyebrow itching. He'd had worse.
Theresa said she can't ask her mom, not right now, she had this huge fight with Arturo over one thing or the other. And Eddie swore he didn't have room, his brother was staying with him. Carlos and Miguel were no different, and in the end, Ryan hit the side of the phone booth with his left hand, the pain hard and swift and good. He took in a deep breath and exhaled it through his mouth, leaned his head forward against the edge of the booth.
It wasn't the fucking end of the world. It wasn't. He'd... he'd done this before, too.
He turned around and picked up his backpack, slung it over one shoulder, got on his bike. He'd go down to the pier, to that small bar in the south corner. He could play a couple of tables, make some money from pool. He had thirteen bucks on him, the other ten Trey had asked him for to score some that night, which is now in the hands of the police. Twenty or thirty would be enough, to eat something today, maybe buy a beer. If by nightfall he still didn't find anywhere to crash, he could always go to the park. No one would bother him there.
Tomorrow, if Theresa's mom was still pissed and Eddie was being a pussy, then he could play some more, hang out at the beach. Just get away from his mom and bide his time. Just today and tomorrow, another night at the park won't kill him, and then on Sunday morning, Ryan was certain, it would be safe to go home. She would have cooled off.
"I'm from Newport, California. Hmm. It's a nice place, all things considered. Okay, no, not really. It's not a nice place at all. I hated it. Hated it with the heat of a thousand suns, like I once read somewhere. It was... it wasn't nice. It was horrible. I liked Berkeley better."
"Berkeley?"
"Yeah. I was born there. But then..." A pause, a shift. A shrug Ryan can almost see. "My grandma got sick and my parents had to move back to Newport and my torture began. I begged to be sent to boarding school for so long, it was almost a mantra."
"Oh."
"Yeah. Well. Um. Doesn't matter. Got away from it, in the end."
Silence, nice and slow and fitting, with Ryan breathing in and out, hands going through the motions he knows like second nature.
"Where are you from, anyway?"
"Chino."
"Oh, California, right?"
"Yeah."
"Weird. I can't believe we never met."
Ryan wants to snort but doesn't.
"I don't even know your last name, you know?"
"Atwood."
"Nice meeting you, Ryan Atwood."
Ryan smiles at the iron and inside of the truck, calm and collected and more fitting than the silence. "Nice meeting you, Seth Cohen."
"I hated high school."
"Almost everyone hates high school."
"Oh, no…. almost everyone doesn't like high school, and most people have a horrible experience, sure, I get it, but I hated it. It was... it was torture, I tell you."
"I thought torture was Newport."
"Well, it's like saying what came first, the egg or the stupid chicken, you know? One thing can't be bad enough without the other. High school might not have been so utterly disgusting if it had happened somewhere that wasn't Newport. I could almost prove that theory." A pause, an intake of breath. "Did you like high school?"
Ryan's hands still for a second, and then he shakes his head, even though Seth can't see him. "No." He never finished it, he doesn't say. He never made it to sophomore year, too focused on Austin and working for whatever would pay enough to eat that week. He swallows. "Not really."
"Yeah, thought so."
He went back on Sunday morning, around ten, after having three stale donuts from that shop down at the pier. He knew the guy that works there, Steven, a friend of Eddie's from school, he thought. There went a dollar, and now he only had seven left from that game he won last night, from those two brothers.
His neck itched from two days without taking a shower, and washing his face in the gas station's bathroom just doesn't cut it. He'd changed t-shirts but not sweatshirts, and he could feel himself smelling two days past rotten.
Two days, more than enough, even AJ probably forgot all about it and his bruised cheekbone was almost completely healed by now.
AJ's truck wasn't parked on the front lawn like usual, at least at this time of day. He should be sleeping off last night's bender, along with his mom. Ryan frowned, then let his bike fall against the steps to the front door, taking out his keys.
He opened the door and there was nothing inside. No couch or TV, no bottles piled up on the counter in the kitchen, no residue of lines on the table that wasn't there. Nothing.
He went through the hallway to the two adjoining rooms, both their doors wide open. Nothing inside. The mattress outside had to be one that used to be in his bedroom, where Trey and him slept. He went back out, leaned his forehead against the top cupboard in the kitchen. There was a letter on the counter.
He closes his fingers around it, then closed his eyes and hit his forehead against the cupboard, hard. Then again, and again, and a fourth time. The dog two houses down from his wasn't barking, and Lucia's two year old twins from across the street weren't crying. The street was quiet for once.
Everything was quiet.
"I used to go sailing."
Ryan doesn't think he's ever met anyone who's gone sailing. "Really?"
"Yeah. I used to teach, too. To kids, mostly, as a bit of a summer job. It was good. They were nice, the kids, I mean. They were nice. Hmm. Yeah." Ryan can almost hear Seth shrugging. "I haven't gone sailing since senior year. Wow. Four years. That's a hell of a long time."
"What, why?"
A pause, silence, and Ryan works on the car with the wind as background, Seth's breathing blending with it, becoming one. There's the clatter of the wrench almost falling from his fingers when he tries to loosen a screw.
"I sold my boat. It was... it was called Summer Breeze. It was named after this girl. Uh, I liked her. I really liked her." The same laugh Ryan wishes he had the power to take away, to make Seth forget the need for that kind of laugh. "It was stupid, I should have known. She never gave me the time of day, that's for sure, never mind her best friend was my next door neighbor. I just got tired of it, sold it. Kept the money for Brown, wanted to buy something that would show her, only I never knew what that could be."
Sorry, Ryan thinks, would not in a million years begin to cut it.
"I haven't thought about her in three years. Huh. Weird."
Ryan doesn't know what to say, so he says nothing.
"You don't know the difference between Marvel and DC?"
Ryan laughs, and almost lifts his head and gives himself a concussion. "No, Seth. I don't."
"But, dude! How? It's not... Dude! It's almost insanely ludicrous, that you don't know the difference."
"I thought you were majoring in English. Shouldn't you speak better?"
"I speak good."
Ryan laughs, and this time he does lift his head and it hurts like a son of a bitch. "It's well."
"I knew that. And just so you know, I'm teaching you the difference even if it's the last thing I do, I swear to God."
Another pause, a breath. "I'd like that."
It's almost six by the time he's done with the truck, and Barbara walks in with a smile on her face, her eyes looking for her car and finding it in a second. "Oh, is it ready or I got to call Mark to pick me up?"
Ryan throws the keys to Barbara, who catches them with the swift movement of her wrist in mid air.
"Thanks," she says, rushing to her car and getting inside. He wipes his hands as he watches Barbara get inside, turn on the engine and hears it purr without a complaint, happy to have been taken care of. Barbara is beaming by the time she gets out of the car, smile on her lips.
"Ryan, thanks," she says again, and he can almost see the desire to hug him, but he shrugs and then wraps his hands tighter around the rag. She nods back at him.
"I might should charge you double," Bobby says from his place by the truck, "for what you're putting that car through, kid."
Barbara rolls her eyes and Ryan hides a smirk as he ducks his head, Seth glances between Barbara and Bobby. And it's weird, in a way, to see them through a stranger's eyes. To maybe see the whole town through a stranger's eyes. It's been almost four years since he found his way here, since that August in oh five when he just couldn't take it anymore, was fed up with Austin and Dallas, with Texas itself, and needed to get out, and headed up north which was as good as anything else. He'd had Lawton, or Oklahoma City in mind. Only, it didn't happen that way, and then he was stranded in the middle of nowhere, making his way down a dirt road, literally making his way down when Joseph stopped and asked if he needed a ride.
"Bobby--"
"How many times have I told you, huh? It ain't gonna kill ya to treat them better."
"I came here, didn't I?"
"Two months too late, that's what you did." Bobby snorts, shakes his head once and Barbara laughs, taking a step closer to him, rummaging in her purse for her wallet.
Ryan hears the phone ring and makes his way to the office again, taking off his cap and letting it fall onto the desk. "Hello."
"If that boy is still there, you best be bringing him home for dinner. He ain't nothing but skin and bones."
Ryan sighs, looking over his shoulder at Seth, leaning against the threshold, arms folded on his chest. He doesn't blame Seth for not wanting to stay there, considering Bobby's probably giving Barbara the spiel about how she's torturing her car, that's what she's doing, she knows perfectly well, while Barbara rolls her eyes and chuckles under her breath. He turns around, half sitting on the edge of the desk. "He's here."
"Good. Bring him on over. I'm fixing chicken-fried steak."
"Mrs. Landingham--"
"No, no. I don't want to hear no nothing about it. Bring him on. He's so skinny, a hard wind 'ld probably blow him away. Hmpf. I wouldn't be surprised."
"I don't really think--"
"He staying down there with Emily? That old place is drafty, and him with no meat on his bones. He better come stay with us."
"Um, I don't see where--"
"It's not like this place ain't big enough. You don't take so much space as a mouse; I told you before."
"Mrs. Lan--"
"And you best be here by seven. I don't want dinner to be getting cold. My biscuits and gravy ain't no good if'n they're cold."
Ryan sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. It's not like he can say no to the woman, though it's not like he hasn't tried before. "Of course, Mrs. Landingham. Seven."
"Good. You be careful drivin' home. You hear?"
He nods, says that he does hear, he'll be careful, and a second later he's hearing the dial tone where Mrs. Landingham voice used to be.
He hangs up the phone, and can hear Bobby and Barbara still going at it out in one of the bays of the garage. He can feel the corners of his lips curling upward, and watches the way Seth tilts his head, confusion plainly in his eyes, and more than a little bit of curiosity.
"So," Ryan says with a shrug, a lift of his eyes eyebrows. "You got any plans for dinner?"
That's chapter one. *bounces* I'm awaiting comments, as you might all know. So, yeah. Click that, that, you know what I'm talking about! And let me know what you think. *bounces some more*