FIC: The Ideal Crash : Four : Versatile
Sorry there hasn't been a part of this for so long. The characters were being uncooperative. Also, sorry that I'm so behind on replying to comments. I suck.
This is an OC/QaF crossover. I do not own the characters. Brian/Justin, Ryan/Seth, minor Brian/Seth. Overall R.
Four : Versatile
Seth hasn’t had sex since that very first night, but he has been back to that diner. Guys have hit on him, and he’s felt the first flutterings of interest in his groin, but it’s not enough. Somehow the thought of going home with these strangers - or even following them into the alley out back, as he’s seen some guys do - is too weird for him, in a way that going home with Brian never was.
Brian was the initial experiment. In Seth’s mind, it was okay to take that risk, because it was a necessary risk. Going home with these random guys, these guys with names like Fred and Joey, just seems excessive.
Seth isn’t gay. Or, not totally, because he’s noticed that the thought of the girl’s locker room still gives him a hard on, and there’s nothing masculine about Summer in a towel. He’s decided he must be bisexual, which is not an entirely comforting thought. At least if he were gay he wouldn’t have to worry about girls anymore.
He’s nearly told Ryan like a hundred times, but the idea of sitting them down and coming out seems a bit melodramatic. He thinks about maybe just laying a big ol’ wet one on his friend’s lips and then saying to his shocked face, “You mean you don’t feel the same?”
Instead, he comes out over Playstation.
When Seth says, “Dude, have I told you that I’m kinda into guys yet?”, Ryan crashes his deck. His little virtual skater emits a spray of blood across the pavement, and Seth laughs.
“You serious?”
“Yeah. That’s cool, right?”
Ryan doesn’t know if he’s freaked out or not, so he just shrugs. “Yeah.” There’s an extensive silence as they fiddle with their controllers and try to diffuse the awkwardness of the conversation. “What about Summer?”
“Huh?”
“Summer. Your lifelong imaginary girlfriend.”
“What about her?”
“You said you’re into guys.”
“I didn’t say I’m not into girls.”
“Oh.”
“You’re the first person I’ve told.”
Ryan feels unsettled, pressured, as if he’s nearing a deadline he has no hope of meeting. He feels like telling Seth to slow down, to stop and play videogames and be non-sexual, just for a couple of months, but he doesn’t really know why. Just that suddenly Seth is growing up way too fast.
He remembers the kid he met, how young Seth seemed. Innocent, though Seth would hate for him to think that. In Ryan’s mind, that innocence did not translate well into man on man sex.
An image of Seth’s pale gossamer skin exploded into Ryan’s mind, and he shivers
“Things aren’t going to get all weird, are they?” Seth’s controller lies limp in his hands. Ryan wishes Seth would stop staring at him.
He just grunts. He knows it’s not a good idea to make promises he doesn’t know if he can keep.
--
Justin runs into them a few days later in a park not far from his place. He assumes they’ve been to school, because he sees a pair of backpacks flung on the grass not far away. He walks up to Ryan, who is sitting on a bicycle, carefully lighting a cigarette.
“Hey,” he says. They both watch Seth grind along a concrete ledge.
“Hey,” Ryan returns. He offers his deck to Justin, who slides a smoke free and raises it to his lips. Ryan watches him, comments, “You don’t seem like the smoking type.”
“Don’t I?” Justin takes the proffered lighter, sparks. “I don’t smoke all the time. Just occasionally. Thanks.”
They sit in not entirely uncomfortable silence, watching as Seth stacks, curses, and begins the trick again.
“How long have you been living with the Cohens?” Justin asks when the silence seems to have stretched on long enough. He takes a pull of his cigarette, feels the smoke sliding down his throat, holds, and exhales.
“A while,” Ryan responds. He doesn’t look away from Seth. “A few months.”
“I left home my senior year,” Justin offers. “I was 17, too.”
“Yeah?” Ryan is surprised. Apart from the gay thing, Justin seems like he should have stepped out of a sitcom family.
“Yeah. My dad kicked me out. Sort of. He gave me an ultimatum. Go back to being the perfect little breeder or get the fuck out of his house. So I left.”
Ryan remembers those first few hours of mind numbing fear and worry (I can’t do this anymore, Ryan) and wonders if making the decision to leave would have made it easier. Made him feel stronger, and less like the runt of the litter that nobody wants.
He wonders where Justin went after he made that momentous decision. Ryan has spent a lot of time wondering what would have happened to him in the Cohens hadn’t taken him in, let him be a part of their family. He has nightmarish images of crappy telemovies where the hero gets involved in drugs and prostitution just to make ends meet, and although that’s the worst case scenario, the best case scenario - working in construction out in Texas - isn’t that much better.
“I’ve lived in six houses in two years,” Justin grins, not seeming particularly upset about that fact. “The same little circle of people the whole time. At least this one feels permanent.”
Ryan feels a bolt of fear, his stomach turning at the thought of leaving the Cohens. Leaving Seth. Justin must read this on his face, because he immediately sets about explaining. “That was about circumstances, though,” he says quickly, “Nobody kicked me out, or anything. I can go back to any of them whenever I need to. They’re good people. Like Seth’s family.”
Ryan nods, once. He feels uncomfortable having this conversation with Justin. He’s relieved when Seth wanders over to them, holding a scrunched up sweater to his bleeding elbow.
“Hey, Justin,” he looks and sounds sheepish. He meets Ryan’s eyes and grins a little. “I stacked.”
“I noticed.” Ryan gently takes hold of Seth’s wrist, positioning the arm so he can see the damage. “Doesn’t look bad.”
Justin stares at the bits of gravel embedded in the graze. The sight of blood still makes him shaky. “You should wash it, or it’ll get infected.” He nods his head in the direction of his house. “I live just over there. C’mon.”
--
Seth is rifling through a pile of loose sketches. He’s never really had a talent like this. He wants to. He wants to with a burning, jealous desire, and it’s not fair that Justin has his own superhero when Seth can barely write his own name.
“Dude,” he says.
“What?” Justin asks, emerging with three cans of soda and a packet of chips.
“Dude,” Seth repeats, waving his hand in the direction of a full page sketch of Rage, face contorted in anger.
Ryan smiles at Justin, takes the proffered soda. “To translate, he’s impressed.”
“Dude.”
“Oh,” Justin shrugs. “They’re pretty basic.”
“Basic?” Seth repeats, holding up a sketch of an anonymous villain lurking in the shadows. Justin has seen the same figure in his nightmares. “Dude, these rock.”
“They’re just preliminary sketches.” Justin nods back at the computer he hooked up on the other side of the room. “I’ll reproduce them later.”
“You do a lot of work on computer?” Ryan asks, stepping towards the machine. He’s fascinated, because he’s never really thought about the way comics were made. They’re Seth’s thing, really, but Seth is Ryan’s thing so he tries to pay attention.
“I have to.” Justin is fixated on his soda, clacking it open and tracing his finger around the mouth of the can. “I have trouble with my hand.”
“What -”
“This guy hated fags enough to want me dead.”
Justin’s voice is without inflection, but there’s a seething anger which bubbles and boils behind his eyes. Ryan recognises that fury. He used to wake up every morning and feel it in his stomach, his veins. For a while, the soft voice of that anger was with him everywhere he went.
It surprises him that Justin knows that anger. This privileged middle class kid, and he’s not supposed to know anything about that, according to the kids in Chino. Anger is reserved for kids whose mothers work night shifts to pay for food, whose fathers and brothers and aunts and cousins are in jail or half-dead from malnutrition.
Ryan thinks about what Seth told him. Ryan thinks, for the first time, that Seth might get hurt, really fucking hurt, and he’s filled with something close to terror. There are things that Ryan can’t protect him from, no matter what he does. Even if Ryan stops the punch or the kick or the swipe of a knife, he can’t stop some asshole’s words from pouring forth, he can’t stop Seth from knowing that there are people out there who think he should rot in hell.
Ryan thinks that the sort of person that could look in Seth’s warm smiling eyes and think of hellfire and crucifixion is the sort of person born without a soul.
“Sorry,” Justin says after a moment. “You want some chips?”
--
Seth is sitting on the couch when he feels a presence wash over him, like ectoplasm, only warmer.
The voice is mocking but somewhat familiar, and Seth feels a moment of ‘hol-y shit’ settle over his brain.
“Aw, look. Justin’s brought home his little friends.”
And holy SHIT, it’s Brian. Brian. Only this time it’s not a leather jacket and liquid jeans, it’s an expensive suit and a red silk tie, and it’s not him staring at Seth with those intense eyes, it’s him leaning over and kissing Justin on the temple. It’s Brian’s hand touching the nape of Justin’s neck, Brian’s arm sliding over Justin’s shoulder, and Brian being Justin’s fucking boyfriend.
Holy Shit.
Justin’s grinning at him and Brian’s attention has shifted, shifted so his eyes settle on Seth’s face. There’s a moment of cloudy confusion on his face before his eyes clear and he says smoothly, “Hi, Steve.”
Steve. Fucking Steve.
Seth is reminded absurdly of Summer, and he smiles slightly. “It’s Seth.”
“Hi, Seth.”
Justin is looking back and forth between their faces, and Seth can’t read the expression on his face.
“No way,” Justin says suddenly. “No fucking way.”
This is an OC/QaF crossover. I do not own the characters. Brian/Justin, Ryan/Seth, minor Brian/Seth. Overall R.
Four : Versatile
Seth hasn’t had sex since that very first night, but he has been back to that diner. Guys have hit on him, and he’s felt the first flutterings of interest in his groin, but it’s not enough. Somehow the thought of going home with these strangers - or even following them into the alley out back, as he’s seen some guys do - is too weird for him, in a way that going home with Brian never was.
Brian was the initial experiment. In Seth’s mind, it was okay to take that risk, because it was a necessary risk. Going home with these random guys, these guys with names like Fred and Joey, just seems excessive.
Seth isn’t gay. Or, not totally, because he’s noticed that the thought of the girl’s locker room still gives him a hard on, and there’s nothing masculine about Summer in a towel. He’s decided he must be bisexual, which is not an entirely comforting thought. At least if he were gay he wouldn’t have to worry about girls anymore.
He’s nearly told Ryan like a hundred times, but the idea of sitting them down and coming out seems a bit melodramatic. He thinks about maybe just laying a big ol’ wet one on his friend’s lips and then saying to his shocked face, “You mean you don’t feel the same?”
Instead, he comes out over Playstation.
When Seth says, “Dude, have I told you that I’m kinda into guys yet?”, Ryan crashes his deck. His little virtual skater emits a spray of blood across the pavement, and Seth laughs.
“You serious?”
“Yeah. That’s cool, right?”
Ryan doesn’t know if he’s freaked out or not, so he just shrugs. “Yeah.” There’s an extensive silence as they fiddle with their controllers and try to diffuse the awkwardness of the conversation. “What about Summer?”
“Huh?”
“Summer. Your lifelong imaginary girlfriend.”
“What about her?”
“You said you’re into guys.”
“I didn’t say I’m not into girls.”
“Oh.”
“You’re the first person I’ve told.”
Ryan feels unsettled, pressured, as if he’s nearing a deadline he has no hope of meeting. He feels like telling Seth to slow down, to stop and play videogames and be non-sexual, just for a couple of months, but he doesn’t really know why. Just that suddenly Seth is growing up way too fast.
He remembers the kid he met, how young Seth seemed. Innocent, though Seth would hate for him to think that. In Ryan’s mind, that innocence did not translate well into man on man sex.
An image of Seth’s pale gossamer skin exploded into Ryan’s mind, and he shivers
“Things aren’t going to get all weird, are they?” Seth’s controller lies limp in his hands. Ryan wishes Seth would stop staring at him.
He just grunts. He knows it’s not a good idea to make promises he doesn’t know if he can keep.
--
Justin runs into them a few days later in a park not far from his place. He assumes they’ve been to school, because he sees a pair of backpacks flung on the grass not far away. He walks up to Ryan, who is sitting on a bicycle, carefully lighting a cigarette.
“Hey,” he says. They both watch Seth grind along a concrete ledge.
“Hey,” Ryan returns. He offers his deck to Justin, who slides a smoke free and raises it to his lips. Ryan watches him, comments, “You don’t seem like the smoking type.”
“Don’t I?” Justin takes the proffered lighter, sparks. “I don’t smoke all the time. Just occasionally. Thanks.”
They sit in not entirely uncomfortable silence, watching as Seth stacks, curses, and begins the trick again.
“How long have you been living with the Cohens?” Justin asks when the silence seems to have stretched on long enough. He takes a pull of his cigarette, feels the smoke sliding down his throat, holds, and exhales.
“A while,” Ryan responds. He doesn’t look away from Seth. “A few months.”
“I left home my senior year,” Justin offers. “I was 17, too.”
“Yeah?” Ryan is surprised. Apart from the gay thing, Justin seems like he should have stepped out of a sitcom family.
“Yeah. My dad kicked me out. Sort of. He gave me an ultimatum. Go back to being the perfect little breeder or get the fuck out of his house. So I left.”
Ryan remembers those first few hours of mind numbing fear and worry (I can’t do this anymore, Ryan) and wonders if making the decision to leave would have made it easier. Made him feel stronger, and less like the runt of the litter that nobody wants.
He wonders where Justin went after he made that momentous decision. Ryan has spent a lot of time wondering what would have happened to him in the Cohens hadn’t taken him in, let him be a part of their family. He has nightmarish images of crappy telemovies where the hero gets involved in drugs and prostitution just to make ends meet, and although that’s the worst case scenario, the best case scenario - working in construction out in Texas - isn’t that much better.
“I’ve lived in six houses in two years,” Justin grins, not seeming particularly upset about that fact. “The same little circle of people the whole time. At least this one feels permanent.”
Ryan feels a bolt of fear, his stomach turning at the thought of leaving the Cohens. Leaving Seth. Justin must read this on his face, because he immediately sets about explaining. “That was about circumstances, though,” he says quickly, “Nobody kicked me out, or anything. I can go back to any of them whenever I need to. They’re good people. Like Seth’s family.”
Ryan nods, once. He feels uncomfortable having this conversation with Justin. He’s relieved when Seth wanders over to them, holding a scrunched up sweater to his bleeding elbow.
“Hey, Justin,” he looks and sounds sheepish. He meets Ryan’s eyes and grins a little. “I stacked.”
“I noticed.” Ryan gently takes hold of Seth’s wrist, positioning the arm so he can see the damage. “Doesn’t look bad.”
Justin stares at the bits of gravel embedded in the graze. The sight of blood still makes him shaky. “You should wash it, or it’ll get infected.” He nods his head in the direction of his house. “I live just over there. C’mon.”
--
Seth is rifling through a pile of loose sketches. He’s never really had a talent like this. He wants to. He wants to with a burning, jealous desire, and it’s not fair that Justin has his own superhero when Seth can barely write his own name.
“Dude,” he says.
“What?” Justin asks, emerging with three cans of soda and a packet of chips.
“Dude,” Seth repeats, waving his hand in the direction of a full page sketch of Rage, face contorted in anger.
Ryan smiles at Justin, takes the proffered soda. “To translate, he’s impressed.”
“Dude.”
“Oh,” Justin shrugs. “They’re pretty basic.”
“Basic?” Seth repeats, holding up a sketch of an anonymous villain lurking in the shadows. Justin has seen the same figure in his nightmares. “Dude, these rock.”
“They’re just preliminary sketches.” Justin nods back at the computer he hooked up on the other side of the room. “I’ll reproduce them later.”
“You do a lot of work on computer?” Ryan asks, stepping towards the machine. He’s fascinated, because he’s never really thought about the way comics were made. They’re Seth’s thing, really, but Seth is Ryan’s thing so he tries to pay attention.
“I have to.” Justin is fixated on his soda, clacking it open and tracing his finger around the mouth of the can. “I have trouble with my hand.”
“What -”
“This guy hated fags enough to want me dead.”
Justin’s voice is without inflection, but there’s a seething anger which bubbles and boils behind his eyes. Ryan recognises that fury. He used to wake up every morning and feel it in his stomach, his veins. For a while, the soft voice of that anger was with him everywhere he went.
It surprises him that Justin knows that anger. This privileged middle class kid, and he’s not supposed to know anything about that, according to the kids in Chino. Anger is reserved for kids whose mothers work night shifts to pay for food, whose fathers and brothers and aunts and cousins are in jail or half-dead from malnutrition.
Ryan thinks about what Seth told him. Ryan thinks, for the first time, that Seth might get hurt, really fucking hurt, and he’s filled with something close to terror. There are things that Ryan can’t protect him from, no matter what he does. Even if Ryan stops the punch or the kick or the swipe of a knife, he can’t stop some asshole’s words from pouring forth, he can’t stop Seth from knowing that there are people out there who think he should rot in hell.
Ryan thinks that the sort of person that could look in Seth’s warm smiling eyes and think of hellfire and crucifixion is the sort of person born without a soul.
“Sorry,” Justin says after a moment. “You want some chips?”
--
Seth is sitting on the couch when he feels a presence wash over him, like ectoplasm, only warmer.
The voice is mocking but somewhat familiar, and Seth feels a moment of ‘hol-y shit’ settle over his brain.
“Aw, look. Justin’s brought home his little friends.”
And holy SHIT, it’s Brian. Brian. Only this time it’s not a leather jacket and liquid jeans, it’s an expensive suit and a red silk tie, and it’s not him staring at Seth with those intense eyes, it’s him leaning over and kissing Justin on the temple. It’s Brian’s hand touching the nape of Justin’s neck, Brian’s arm sliding over Justin’s shoulder, and Brian being Justin’s fucking boyfriend.
Holy Shit.
Justin’s grinning at him and Brian’s attention has shifted, shifted so his eyes settle on Seth’s face. There’s a moment of cloudy confusion on his face before his eyes clear and he says smoothly, “Hi, Steve.”
Steve. Fucking Steve.
Seth is reminded absurdly of Summer, and he smiles slightly. “It’s Seth.”
“Hi, Seth.”
Justin is looking back and forth between their faces, and Seth can’t read the expression on his face.
“No way,” Justin says suddenly. “No fucking way.”