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wellownedbkup) wrote2008-12-07 02:57 pm
wellownedbkup) wrote2008-12-07 02:57 pm
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sinandmisery and shiplessheathen's finish-it-all-off ficathon.
Title: over rivers, farms and state lines
Fandom: The O.C. (Seth/Ryan)
Rating: PG
Summary: I find a map and draw a straight line over rivers, farms and state lines. The distance from and to where you’d be is only finger-lengths that I see. A lesson in running away.
From the start it's been this way. Seth trying his very best to get to know, to relate to Ryan. Instead it's just a lot of tripping over his own tongue, and stumbling over words, and Seth's okay with that, he's okay with his own awkwardness, and Ryan seemed to be too. Seth keeps trying though, even when he's pretty sure Ryan is already his best friend. He just really wants Ryan to see him as something different. Someone different to be exact, someone who wasn't going to up and leave him in an empty home to read a note written in lipstick and bad taste. He'd known Ryan less than a month and he already couldn't imagine life without him, Ryan had become a bigger part of his life than he had expected.
They're sitting in Seth's room when he first thinks of it, spools of multicolored thread on the floor around him as he maps out routes and possible trade winds. He picks green as their color, Kavalier and Clay, across the Pacific to Tahiti aboard the Summer Breeze. They're still strangers yet, carved of different materials but the same. Outsiders looking in on Newpsie life. Not quite fitting in, but getting in where they can. They don't talk about the unreasonable things that bring them here, the way Ryan's mother deserts him twice, or the way Seth has lived with these people all his life and they still don't know him.
They just wrap their threads along lines of a paper world and map out places they'll see. There are places only Seth knows and wants to see Ryan in, to better relive the memories after the fact. He’s been away before and come away far from sane each time. There was the one time he took his skateboard and tried to run away. Granted, he didn’t get far—he’d been too busy plotting to actually figure out the logistics of skateboarding from Newport Beach to San Luis Obispo. It seemed much shorter on his map, at any rate. But the distance between his house and the pool house had been completely a change when he was 7.
He’d only lasted 5 hours before he realized he needed food and other essentials and crept back into his room.
When he tries telling Ryan, it’s only because he knows that there’s something much deeper between them that he forgives the laugh that comes from the stoic boy from Chino. It is one of the few laughs that have ever been surprised out of Ryan, so Seth considers it more a small victory than anything negative. They’re brothers though, right, so he just shrugs and keeps mapping out the route. They’ll have to stop in Hawaii for supplies, unless they kept to the coast of Mexico for as long as possible. Seth can’t decide straight off and decides to map them both out, figuring the winds as he goes.
“Tahiti?” Ryan asks, still holding the self-same map that Seth handed him when they first had to say goodbye.
“Tahiti is magic, Ryan. It’s like Chrismukkah.”
“Chrismukkah?” Ryan manages to add addled to his repertoire of facial expressions around the Cohens. Seth wonders idly if his face had this much of a workout when he was still living with his mother. Surely he had perfected the blank poker face he used only in preference to his eyebrow raise of disdain and scorn. He ponders telling Ryan so, pointing out how well they’re helping him out, before he distracts himself with putting away his thread.
“Chrismukkah is the best of both Moses and Jesus. We celebrate it every year. It’s magic, you’ll see. And if you say you don’t believe in magic, you’ll put a nail in my coffin. I’m on the verge already, dude. Don’t put me in my coffin.”
Ryan just laughs and shakes his head, settling warm next to him on the bed.
Seth will always claim that that was the catalyst. The series of laughs that only Seth can provoke out of him. The pressure of Ryan’s arm pressed against his like a line of fire. Seth knows his limits—he’s awkward all the time; if he’s not awkward, he’s definitely putting his foot in it. But Ryan’s laugh, soft and warm, just gave him the courage to trample all over them and into Ryan’s personal space. It’s quick, the sneak attack kiss that Seth will never perfect, nor repeat, that was over as soon as it began. A brief pass of lip to lip contact, and Seth’s blush burning hot across his cheekbones as he looks anywhere but at his not-brother brother.
When Ryan doesn’t say anything, Seth’s stomach plummets. He wishes he was anywhere else. Tahiti was a stupid idea, anyway. He’d have done better to say “Hey, let’s visit the icy wilds of Canada via bus!” Magic?! Totally a kid’s thing and wouldn’t make him any cooler to a guy who broke into cars with his real brother for fun. He can’t believe he could be so stupid again. He stands, ready to leave if it would get him away from this ridiculous situation. Kissing Ryan.
He doesn’t even wait for Ryan to stop him, like he would if they were living in some kind of romantic comedy. Just walks out before his brain catches up to his heart. There’s nothing like putting yourself out there. Especially when he’s still so obviously crushing on Summer. Summer, right. Seth jerks his thoughts back to the girl of his dreams, even as his feet lead him out to the pool. He knows that she’s never really looking at him. Casino Night had that all told—she never remembered his name and he’s known her his whole life. He was just a convenient lucky charm. He still thinks she’s beautiful.
Though she doesn’t quite compare to someone he can play Grand Theft Auto and Soul Caliber and eat Cap’n Crunch with.
God, he’s stupid sometimes.
“Seth, I wasn’t saying no to Tahiti.” Dark’s descended faster than even Seth could anticipate, so he doesn’t see the shadow that walks up behind him, though he recognizes the pale feet that linger in the water as Ryan sits next to him at the edge of the pool. Seth gives a quiet prayer up to whoever’s listening, hoping that the whole ill-opportune kiss will never be brought up again.
“Then you’ll go?” Seth tries his best not to sniffle at the end, like he’s been crying this whole time. Because he hasn’t been crying. Much. If he was a little angry at himself for thinking that maybe this kid from the outside world was a little like him, well, that was his own business. And if a few tears happened to slip out, well…. Again. Totally his own business.
“I didn’t say that.”
Seth slumps back. “No, I get it. You don’t have to let me down easy. I’m used to rejection.” The cringe that follows just doesn’t get hidden fast enough. Way to not hint at it, Seth.
“Seth.” Ryan’s voice is strained with exasperation, and has Seth looking up quickly. “Stop being so damn agreeable. I’m just saying that I usually get seasick. That day on the boat was a fluke.”
Elation, he decides, is his best look. It even looks good soaking wet from a flailing fall into the pool.
It’s just past 7 in the morning when Seth finds himself on the beach with his dad, watching the clock at an old Spanish watchtower and getting sand in all his creases. Sandy’s got his wetsuit peeled down and surfboard dug down into the sand. He doesn’t usually do this, he knows, but he has to get some parental advice at some point.
“I want to take Ryan to Tahiti when the wind shifts right.” He squints up at his dad, sun blinding him and sun knocking the chill of night off him. Sandy nods sagely and flops onto the sand next to his sun, giving himself a moment to formulate what he has to say. Which is good, Seth guesses, because it gives him a chance to kick himself over everything that he wants to say.
“Have you asked him?”
“He gets seasick. When I took him out that first day he stayed over, he was perfectly fine. A little stiff, yeah, but I don’t think they get much chance to sail in Chino, you know? So I figured that was all. Ryan may not be that great at sailing, maybe not as good as me, right? There’s that potential there where he could at least be better at it, since he was alright then. But then he says he gets seasick right after I—.“ Seth doesn’t want to be dishonest, but he wonders if the kiss should just be left out altogether. “Right after I ask him and I just really wish he’d go with me.”
He catches a glimpse of his father nodding. “I thought you were going to mention the kiss.” Seth chokes on the breath he was taking, mouth snapping shut when his dad chuckles. “Ryan talks to me sometimes, too. I think he’s always surprised to get out alive, but I’ve told him before that I’m just looking out for him.” Sandy turns his head, bushy brows coming together in a frown. “He was worried that it was his fault that you kissed him. That he pushed you into it.”
Seth just wants to crawl into a hole and die.
He’s beginning to understand that nowhere was someplace wearing his heart on his sleeve was going to get him. He should’ve realized it with Summer, but no one ever claimed he was a fast learner. Smart, yes, but not all that quick on the uptake. Hearing his dad tell him that Ryan talked about the kiss, and having The Talk yet again was embarrassment enough. It’s the knowing looks that come after, the way he’s left in the room with Ryan alone more often than not has him ready to reexamine his plans to skateboard to San Luis Obispo. He could hitch partway, anyway. And he’s bigger now, so the distance is less frightening than it was before.
Ryan, on the other hand, still seems to miss out on the concept of personal space. He’s pressed against Seth’s side, controller in his hand as they try out the newest GTA version, a line of unbroken heat down his arm. And Seth? Well, Seth wants to be strong. Wants to act like this affection doesn’t faze him, despite being the closest he’s been to anyone outside of Rosa, who makes empanadas for him when she’s working for the Cohens. But that? Is more impossible than becoming a superhero just by wishing it hard enough. He’s been so lonesome for so long that he’s starving for the attention.
So he moves closer. Presses himself warmly against Ryan from ankle to hip, arms and shoulders battling for space uncomfortably. But other than a sideways glance, neither boy gives indication of wanting to move away. And they aren’t talking about it yet, this tension that ratchets while they pretend to be engrossed in the game, but Seth can feel it.
On the whole, he’d call this? A win.
Sunlight’s peeking in through the windowed wall of the pool house, far too bright in the reflections from the ocean and the pool to ever mean they’d stay asleep for long. Seth’s been up for an hour, staring up at the ceiling and not focusing on Ryan laying mere inches away. He’s been doing pretty well, he figures, as he’s been able to keep his mind solely on counting the number of pores in the drop ceiling tiles. He only stopped once to look at his not-brother. It would have been a crime not to see how the light turned him golden all over, how it reflected off the tiny hairs on his arms and his eyelashes like the light was coming from inside.
“Go back to sleep, Seth.” The grumble is half muffled by a pillow and rough with sleep still, but clear enough with intention as Ryan’s arm stretches over Seth’s hips and pulls him closer.
“I was thinking--.”
“Sleep, Seth,” Ryan breathes, nuzzling into the curve of his neck and resting a hand over his heart. Seth smiles and closes his eyes, figuring he could tell Ryan later about how Tahiti’s a little too far away and what’d he think of San Francisco instead?
sinandmisery and shiplessheathen's finish-it-all-off ficathon.Title: over rivers, farms and state lines
Fandom: The O.C. (Seth/Ryan)
Rating: PG
Summary: I find a map and draw a straight line over rivers, farms and state lines. The distance from and to where you’d be is only finger-lengths that I see. A lesson in running away.
From the start it's been this way. Seth trying his very best to get to know, to relate to Ryan. Instead it's just a lot of tripping over his own tongue, and stumbling over words, and Seth's okay with that, he's okay with his own awkwardness, and Ryan seemed to be too. Seth keeps trying though, even when he's pretty sure Ryan is already his best friend. He just really wants Ryan to see him as something different. Someone different to be exact, someone who wasn't going to up and leave him in an empty home to read a note written in lipstick and bad taste. He'd known Ryan less than a month and he already couldn't imagine life without him, Ryan had become a bigger part of his life than he had expected.
They're sitting in Seth's room when he first thinks of it, spools of multicolored thread on the floor around him as he maps out routes and possible trade winds. He picks green as their color, Kavalier and Clay, across the Pacific to Tahiti aboard the Summer Breeze. They're still strangers yet, carved of different materials but the same. Outsiders looking in on Newpsie life. Not quite fitting in, but getting in where they can. They don't talk about the unreasonable things that bring them here, the way Ryan's mother deserts him twice, or the way Seth has lived with these people all his life and they still don't know him.
They just wrap their threads along lines of a paper world and map out places they'll see. There are places only Seth knows and wants to see Ryan in, to better relive the memories after the fact. He’s been away before and come away far from sane each time. There was the one time he took his skateboard and tried to run away. Granted, he didn’t get far—he’d been too busy plotting to actually figure out the logistics of skateboarding from Newport Beach to San Luis Obispo. It seemed much shorter on his map, at any rate. But the distance between his house and the pool house had been completely a change when he was 7.
He’d only lasted 5 hours before he realized he needed food and other essentials and crept back into his room.
When he tries telling Ryan, it’s only because he knows that there’s something much deeper between them that he forgives the laugh that comes from the stoic boy from Chino. It is one of the few laughs that have ever been surprised out of Ryan, so Seth considers it more a small victory than anything negative. They’re brothers though, right, so he just shrugs and keeps mapping out the route. They’ll have to stop in Hawaii for supplies, unless they kept to the coast of Mexico for as long as possible. Seth can’t decide straight off and decides to map them both out, figuring the winds as he goes.
“Tahiti?” Ryan asks, still holding the self-same map that Seth handed him when they first had to say goodbye.
“Tahiti is magic, Ryan. It’s like Chrismukkah.”
“Chrismukkah?” Ryan manages to add addled to his repertoire of facial expressions around the Cohens. Seth wonders idly if his face had this much of a workout when he was still living with his mother. Surely he had perfected the blank poker face he used only in preference to his eyebrow raise of disdain and scorn. He ponders telling Ryan so, pointing out how well they’re helping him out, before he distracts himself with putting away his thread.
“Chrismukkah is the best of both Moses and Jesus. We celebrate it every year. It’s magic, you’ll see. And if you say you don’t believe in magic, you’ll put a nail in my coffin. I’m on the verge already, dude. Don’t put me in my coffin.”
Ryan just laughs and shakes his head, settling warm next to him on the bed.
Seth will always claim that that was the catalyst. The series of laughs that only Seth can provoke out of him. The pressure of Ryan’s arm pressed against his like a line of fire. Seth knows his limits—he’s awkward all the time; if he’s not awkward, he’s definitely putting his foot in it. But Ryan’s laugh, soft and warm, just gave him the courage to trample all over them and into Ryan’s personal space. It’s quick, the sneak attack kiss that Seth will never perfect, nor repeat, that was over as soon as it began. A brief pass of lip to lip contact, and Seth’s blush burning hot across his cheekbones as he looks anywhere but at his not-brother brother.
When Ryan doesn’t say anything, Seth’s stomach plummets. He wishes he was anywhere else. Tahiti was a stupid idea, anyway. He’d have done better to say “Hey, let’s visit the icy wilds of Canada via bus!” Magic?! Totally a kid’s thing and wouldn’t make him any cooler to a guy who broke into cars with his real brother for fun. He can’t believe he could be so stupid again. He stands, ready to leave if it would get him away from this ridiculous situation. Kissing Ryan.
He doesn’t even wait for Ryan to stop him, like he would if they were living in some kind of romantic comedy. Just walks out before his brain catches up to his heart. There’s nothing like putting yourself out there. Especially when he’s still so obviously crushing on Summer. Summer, right. Seth jerks his thoughts back to the girl of his dreams, even as his feet lead him out to the pool. He knows that she’s never really looking at him. Casino Night had that all told—she never remembered his name and he’s known her his whole life. He was just a convenient lucky charm. He still thinks she’s beautiful.
Though she doesn’t quite compare to someone he can play Grand Theft Auto and Soul Caliber and eat Cap’n Crunch with.
God, he’s stupid sometimes.
“Seth, I wasn’t saying no to Tahiti.” Dark’s descended faster than even Seth could anticipate, so he doesn’t see the shadow that walks up behind him, though he recognizes the pale feet that linger in the water as Ryan sits next to him at the edge of the pool. Seth gives a quiet prayer up to whoever’s listening, hoping that the whole ill-opportune kiss will never be brought up again.
“Then you’ll go?” Seth tries his best not to sniffle at the end, like he’s been crying this whole time. Because he hasn’t been crying. Much. If he was a little angry at himself for thinking that maybe this kid from the outside world was a little like him, well, that was his own business. And if a few tears happened to slip out, well…. Again. Totally his own business.
“I didn’t say that.”
Seth slumps back. “No, I get it. You don’t have to let me down easy. I’m used to rejection.” The cringe that follows just doesn’t get hidden fast enough. Way to not hint at it, Seth.
“Seth.” Ryan’s voice is strained with exasperation, and has Seth looking up quickly. “Stop being so damn agreeable. I’m just saying that I usually get seasick. That day on the boat was a fluke.”
Elation, he decides, is his best look. It even looks good soaking wet from a flailing fall into the pool.
It’s just past 7 in the morning when Seth finds himself on the beach with his dad, watching the clock at an old Spanish watchtower and getting sand in all his creases. Sandy’s got his wetsuit peeled down and surfboard dug down into the sand. He doesn’t usually do this, he knows, but he has to get some parental advice at some point.
“I want to take Ryan to Tahiti when the wind shifts right.” He squints up at his dad, sun blinding him and sun knocking the chill of night off him. Sandy nods sagely and flops onto the sand next to his sun, giving himself a moment to formulate what he has to say. Which is good, Seth guesses, because it gives him a chance to kick himself over everything that he wants to say.
“Have you asked him?”
“He gets seasick. When I took him out that first day he stayed over, he was perfectly fine. A little stiff, yeah, but I don’t think they get much chance to sail in Chino, you know? So I figured that was all. Ryan may not be that great at sailing, maybe not as good as me, right? There’s that potential there where he could at least be better at it, since he was alright then. But then he says he gets seasick right after I—.“ Seth doesn’t want to be dishonest, but he wonders if the kiss should just be left out altogether. “Right after I ask him and I just really wish he’d go with me.”
He catches a glimpse of his father nodding. “I thought you were going to mention the kiss.” Seth chokes on the breath he was taking, mouth snapping shut when his dad chuckles. “Ryan talks to me sometimes, too. I think he’s always surprised to get out alive, but I’ve told him before that I’m just looking out for him.” Sandy turns his head, bushy brows coming together in a frown. “He was worried that it was his fault that you kissed him. That he pushed you into it.”
Seth just wants to crawl into a hole and die.
He’s beginning to understand that nowhere was someplace wearing his heart on his sleeve was going to get him. He should’ve realized it with Summer, but no one ever claimed he was a fast learner. Smart, yes, but not all that quick on the uptake. Hearing his dad tell him that Ryan talked about the kiss, and having The Talk yet again was embarrassment enough. It’s the knowing looks that come after, the way he’s left in the room with Ryan alone more often than not has him ready to reexamine his plans to skateboard to San Luis Obispo. He could hitch partway, anyway. And he’s bigger now, so the distance is less frightening than it was before.
Ryan, on the other hand, still seems to miss out on the concept of personal space. He’s pressed against Seth’s side, controller in his hand as they try out the newest GTA version, a line of unbroken heat down his arm. And Seth? Well, Seth wants to be strong. Wants to act like this affection doesn’t faze him, despite being the closest he’s been to anyone outside of Rosa, who makes empanadas for him when she’s working for the Cohens. But that? Is more impossible than becoming a superhero just by wishing it hard enough. He’s been so lonesome for so long that he’s starving for the attention.
So he moves closer. Presses himself warmly against Ryan from ankle to hip, arms and shoulders battling for space uncomfortably. But other than a sideways glance, neither boy gives indication of wanting to move away. And they aren’t talking about it yet, this tension that ratchets while they pretend to be engrossed in the game, but Seth can feel it.
On the whole, he’d call this? A win.
Sunlight’s peeking in through the windowed wall of the pool house, far too bright in the reflections from the ocean and the pool to ever mean they’d stay asleep for long. Seth’s been up for an hour, staring up at the ceiling and not focusing on Ryan laying mere inches away. He’s been doing pretty well, he figures, as he’s been able to keep his mind solely on counting the number of pores in the drop ceiling tiles. He only stopped once to look at his not-brother. It would have been a crime not to see how the light turned him golden all over, how it reflected off the tiny hairs on his arms and his eyelashes like the light was coming from inside.
“Go back to sleep, Seth.” The grumble is half muffled by a pillow and rough with sleep still, but clear enough with intention as Ryan’s arm stretches over Seth’s hips and pulls him closer.
“I was thinking--.”
“Sleep, Seth,” Ryan breathes, nuzzling into the curve of his neck and resting a hand over his heart. Seth smiles and closes his eyes, figuring he could tell Ryan later about how Tahiti’s a little too far away and what’d he think of San Francisco instead?
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thanks for writing such an amazing intro to this!