SLASH! yeah, I can write that!
This is set in S1. Just roll with it. S2 made me cry.
**
The thing about Theresa, and this was something that Ryan missed about Chino, is that she was completely out of her mind. She used to be. Before life kicked the personality out of her, and she became her mother. Ryan wasn’t ever anything near the wildest person in his crew, and Theresa was just the same level not the tamest. Theresa said, “How about trying it?” and Ryan took his first drink-a raspberry wine cooler, that he had to admit *did* taste sort of like really nasty Kool-Ade. Theresa laughed at him for being chicken, and Ryan took his first gravity bong hit out of a Pepsi bottle in a bathtub. Theresa asked him, “Are you afraid of my brother? Because it’s not like I’m going to tell him,” and Ryan didn’t tell her he was afraid of hurting her because she would have laughed at him--and the truth was he wanted what she was offering only just this side of more than hitting the lottery.
The Theresa who called him at three in the morning because shit was worse than ever wasn’t the girl who stole nitrous tanks-for fun, not because she wanted to be a total waster and huff it-or spray-painted her brother’s car hot pink and blamed it on Ryan. The three-in-the-morning Theresa had problems, the sort of problems that Ryan wasn’t immune to because they used to be his problems. Ryan knew he had to learn to say no, but he needed to practice that skill on someone who wasn’t Theresa.
“Yeah, I’ll be there.” He said that because it was the only answer. So, Ryan found himself at midnight sneaking around on the only people who’d ever up-held their end of any deal Ryan had made with adults, wishing like hell Seth didn’t have a life. Because then he wouldn’t have the spare keys to Kirsten’s ride.
The lights in the living room flickered from the television. Ryan thought he could handle this. Seth was up, so he wouldn’t have to root through his crap and find the keys. The problem was going to be Seth trying to tag along.
When he stepped into the house, two faces turned to him in the bluish glare off the t.v. Anna was cute, and he felt for her. She was going to lose; Ryan knew she needed a couple more years to be lethal, then Anna wouldn’t ever lose, but she needed the Seth lesson.
“Ryan.” Seth held out his Xbox controller.
“Nah, I need the keys.” He wished there was another way to do this, because he already had a bad feeling. Anna was a lot like the old Theresa. When Ryan was a kid he always thought smart girls were trouble, when he grew up a little he knew they were.
“And where would you be needing the keys to drive to at this hour, Ryan?” Seth sat his controller aside and stood up. Ryan’s problem saying no was about to come into play, he could feel it.
“Yeah, Ryan, where ya goin’?” Anna was all teeth and dimples, and the way she said his name made him squint. She was telling him something, but he didn’t know her well enough to know what. Probably something bad. It was always something bad.
“Theresa…”
“Dude, do the phones not come on until midnight in Chino? We gotta look into this. It’s like a whole conspiracy.” Seth had the keys in his hand, and he was headed for the door. Ryan wasn’t even getting a chance to shoot him down here.
“Seth!” Ryan hissed through his teeth, blanking his face in an effort to shut Seth down with a look. Seth just looked over his shoulder and winked. This was not good.
Anna rounded Ryan, patting him on the shoulder, and whispered, “Resistance is futile.” The tilt of her head and twist of her smile told him she was saying way more. This was so so not good.
*
Anna steered while Seth and Ryan pushed the car out of the driveway. Sometimes Ryan thought that all the effort to be stealthy was pointless since the Cohens always found out anyway, it wasn't like they ever really got into trouble.
Ryan drove. Anna and Seth squabbled over whether Jennifer Lopez or Ashanti sucked more. He really hoped that Theresa wasn’t in major trouble, because Seth would probably accidentally take the situation to DefCon five.
“Seth, remember what I told you about--”
“Don’t try out any new street slang on strangers.” He snapped his fingers. “I’m totally dope with that.”
“You’re such a dork.” Anna said it with a smile; Ryan watched her in the rearview. She was watching him back. He wished that it had been Summer in the living room, because no way would Summer have let Seth come along. And Summer was too dim to give him looks that vibed all wrong. He knew she wasn’t into him. This was something else. He hated something else.
Ryan knew as he passed Heather Chavez’s place up the block from Theresa that he might have been had. Both sides of the street were lined with cars, and her front yard hosted two trucks and about the entire neighborhood under seventy.
“Whoa, block party!” Seth pumped his fist. Ryan looked out of the corner of his eye.
“No.” It was pointless, but he would try.
“So, I’m thinkin’, Ry, while you go and console Theresa, insert what you will for console, I think Anna and I will just check out the par-tay.”
Ryan didn’t think his stern reprimand was going to have quite the impact if he cracked up.
“It’s ok, Ryan, I’ll look out for him.” Anna’s tone was light, but Ryan didn’t buy it. She winked at him in the rearview. This was turning into a cluster-fuck.
“You two stay in the ca--” He didn’t even get the words out before they were both very much out of the car and almost skipping down the road. The lights were out at Theresa’s, which meant…
“You brought friends!” He spun around to see Theresa in a tank top and shorts, dangling a bottle by two fingers, laughing.
“This is the last time.” Now he was pissed. He should have known. Why did everyone from his old life have to pull him into shit? Why couldn’t they be happy for him?
She caught up with him and threaded her arm through his. He wasn’t enough of an asshole to yank away, but he wished like hell he was. “Seth brought his girlfriend?”
“One of them.” He looked over to gauge her reaction, because everyone was always shocked by that. Everyone who wasn’t Ryan. Ryan was surprised it was only two.
“Yeah, he’s got great hair.” She smiled, and he couldn’t help the answering one. Seth’s hair was pretty much like Theresa’s, but shorter.
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed. She offered him her beer, and he took it without protesting. She seemed sober. Totally sober. But Theresa knew how to have a good time without being fucked up. Being sober sometimes kept you out of jail.
*
They found Seth and Anna chatting with Mrs. Gonzalez, sipping beer out of cups, and laughing. Ryan was relieved. Mrs. Gonzalez was bat-shit crazy, but safe. Safe was good.
“This isn’t the real party,” Theresa whispered, clutching Ryan all the way around his chest and pressing her lips into his ear. Like she had to tell him that. Seth met his eye from fifteen feet away, his look was out of place, almost pensive, and Ryan hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those sorts of nights. Ryan hated depressed drunks. Shit, would the Summer madness never end? Ryan was over it.
Theresa abandoned him to fuck him over by inviting Seth and Anna to the “real” party-meaning the one with no one over thirty and lot and lots of drugs. Ryan knew he needed to get out of there, but he wasn’t sure how to do it without Seth making things really hard. Seth made most things way harder than he should have.
Theresa headed to the gate to the front yard with Anna and Seth trailing behind. They weren’t even bothering to ask him. He caught up with Seth and grabbed his arm. “We need to go.” The anger was there, ready, and Seth was better at reading people than most teenaged boys.
“One beer?” He made an imploring face, and Ryan caved. Ryan always caved; it didn’t take the face, just the fact that Seth wanted something.
“One beer.”
*
The party was exactly what Ryan expected, the sort of low-rent bacchanal he’d used to look forward to. Sometimes forgetting how shitty things were for a couple hours was worth the day after agony. Theresa ushered them into the backyard, and Ryan got caught by a couple of people along the way.
“Hey,” Ryan said.
“Hey,” Gina said. “Newport Beach?” She’d bleached her hair. It wasn’t a good look.
“Yeah.” He shrugged. He’d fucked her, so he had to at least make small talk.
“Hey, Gina, love your hair.” And, like used to always happen, Theresa was at his side with a possessive arm around his waist and a beer. And a veiled insult. Ryan covered his smile with his cup. Around the rim he could see Seth and Anna with identical cups in their hands looking uneasy as Theresa’s cousin, Jimmy, said something to them. He was sporting gang colors. That was new.
“See ya, Gina, I gotta go,” Theresa lingered behind, probably to lie about him for fun.
Jimmy had Anna and Seth pinned against the back of the house, crowding them and gesturing wide with his arms. Seth was trying to keep his shit together, and Anna looked hard. He wondered if she knew how to fight. He wouldn’t be surprised. But this wasn’t the place to experiment with his theories about girls from Pittsburgh. He drained his beer and crumpled the plastic cup in his hand. He knew it dented in a way that left a pretty sharp point.
“Jimmy,” he stood far enough away to not be a threat. Jimmy turned. His eyes were distant, the pupils blown. High. Very high.
“Ry, just talkin’ to your folks here. They a’ight.”
Ryan nodded. “I like them.” He smiled and watched as Anna maneuvered Seth away from the wall.
“I think Gina was looking for you, man.” He tilted his head in the general direction of Gina and when Jimmy turned to look, grabbed the back of Seth’s shirt to keep him wandering off.
“See ya, Jimmy.” Ryan hoped he was confused enough to forget what was going on. He propelled Seth into the front yard with a hand on his back.
“Hey we haven’t even been here fifteen minutes…” No way, Ryan wasn’t going to let Seth talk him into staying.
“You had a beer, right?” Anna was two steps behind but keeping up.
“RYAN!” And, of course, Theresa would catch them, run across the yard, causing a fucking scene, and he didn’t stop. Fuck her. He wasn’t doing this to Seth, wasn’t fucking endangering his life because Theresa was bored.
“RYAN!” She ran up from behind and slammed into the driver’s door so he couldn’t open it. Some pretty mean shit was sitting in the back of his mouth just waiting for the wrong words out of her. She didn’t back down. She never backed down. “Let me drive you home.”
“What?” He gritted his teeth, because he knew immediately. And because it was Theresa, she wasn’t sorry. Not sorry, not going to apologize, because she was Theresa and he was Ryan, and he had never, once, told her no. “Just me, or them, too?’
“It’s no fun alone.” She smiled, and if he was another sort of guy he would have cold cocked her right in the mouth. Instead he handed her the keys.
He climbed in the passenger seat and stared out of the windshield.
“Um…Ryan?” Seth seemed to be out of wit. “Is this the part of the evening where we drive to Mexico for a donkey show?” At least anything Ryan considered wit.
“So, either of you guys ever do X?” He combed his hand through his hair and glared death towards Theresa, who did look almost sorry.
“I have.” Anna laughed, really laughed, and Ryan turned to see her doubled over herself. “Oh my god. This is so fucked up.” She looked over at Seth who had his hands raised in the air and was looking around with his baffled face.
“Could I get in on the joke? Because I think there’s a joke.” Seth met Ryan’s eye. How was this going to go? Ryan wasn’t sure at all. He hated being out of control.
“Theresa dosed our drinks. Because she’s funny like that.” He couldn’t help the sour face.
“Huh. I always wanted to try it, so cool. Can I smear butter all over my body later, or would anyone object?” He was trying to be cool with it, but Ryan could see Seth was a little scared. He was a good kid, the sort that Ryan had only ever seen on television and thought were totally fake. Seth was the real deal.
“I’d suggest something that doesn’t go rancid, like peanut butter!” Anna and Seth really were made for each other.
They were ten minutes from the house when Ryan had to crank up the air to frigid to stop from sweating his entire body into a pool in the footwell.
“I’m so hot I think I’m turning into the Human Torch!” Seth bellowed, and Ryan turned around to see him take off his overshirt. Ryan sighed. He could already see how this was going to go. Theresa was laughing when he turned to glare at her some more.
*
In the sort of typical symmetry of a cluster-fuck unfolding, Summer and Marissa stumbled into the pool house about the time Ryan said, “Seth, if you don’t drink the fucking water I am going to open your mouth and force feed it to you,” and Seth collapsed on the floor laughing.
“Where were you earlier?” Summer demanded, weaving a little. Ryan looked to Anna, who was laying on her back on Ryan’s bed running her hands over the comforter. “Oh, you’re here.”
“Are you, like, addressing me directly? This is some kind of vortex of insanity!” Anna replied. Marissa didn’t make it past the door; she took one look around and slinked off. That was going to be a whole thing. Ryan could see that, but, oddly enough, he just didn’t give a shit right then.
“Seth, seriously, drink this.” He sat down next to him and pressed the water bottle into Seth’s hand, then collapsed next to him, shoulder to shoulder. Seth leaned up and drank the water.
“Have you ever thought about the texture of cheese?” Seth asked. Ryan watched Summer’s shoes pass by. They were yellow. Bright yellow. Shoes didn’t need to be yellow.
“What kind of cheese? Cheddar, or something else, like brie?” Ryan said to Seth.
“Good question, my man, good question.” Ryan thought about the texture of cheese.
“I’m so out of here.” Summer exclaimed from far, far away. Ryan hoped she took all the yellow in the world with her.
*
“I dare you to kiss him.” Theresa was suddenly right there, in Ryan’s face.
“Huh?” What was she doing there anyway? Ryan had his hand totally buried in Seth’s hair, and his main focus kept swapping between the way the hair felt like the way water looked moving in a stream and the fact that his jeans were really heavy on his skin.
“I dare you to kiss Seth.” Theresa said again, or Ryan thought it was again. Hadn’t she said that already? His skin buzzed like it was going to walk right off his body on a billion little, centipede feet.
“Why?” Ryan remembered kissing Theresa, remembered her hair. It never felt like a stream in motion.
“Because you want to kiss someone, right?” And that was very true. Kissing someone seemed like a great idea. The best idea. He rolled on his side, keeping his hand in Seth’s hair, and looked down right into Seth’s eyes. Which blinked.
“Are you about to kiss me?” Seth’s mouth moved, pink and white and red further inside. Ryan felt…everything. He was going to explode from the world inside him. He needed to bleed some of it out, somehow, just scoop enough out to keep him from…he was a spiral, a never ending spiral.
Lips dragged over his, pressing and widening his into opening, and the spiral inverted into the open mouth. The other mouth that wasn’t his but was his at the same time, and Ryan was the spiral and he was the two sets of lips and he was the universe.
*
Anna left a note. Mainly it was a quadratic equation with Seth and Ryan’s names above and below it with her name signed at the bottom, but Ryan figured it meant “I’m ok, and I went home to dance naked and spray myself with silly string. Lunch on Monday?” Because that’s what she told Seth when he called her.
Theresa was just gone. And since she wasn’t high, Ryan figured she could take care of herself. She always did.
“Man we were really fucked up.” Seth said as they played Grand Theft Auto.
“You really like saying that.” Ryan refused to beat up hookers, and thought this game probably lead to the unraveling of social norms.
“Yeah, I kinda do.” Seth hit a hooker in the head with a bat.
*
Ryan found the tape when he was trying to set the VCR up to tape Stargate for Seth. He didn’t even know the Cohens had a video camera. How did Theresa know? Did she steal anything? He was fucking pissed. Not about the contents of the tape. He was sort of disappointed that his memory of those events was…somewhat fuzzy.
//Ryan leans over Seth and pauses, just hangs in the air for a while. Seth watches, his mouth open, and finally leans up and presses his mouth to Ryan’s, kisses him while Ryan remains braced over Seth on one arm, his other hand flexing and unflexing in Seth’s hair. Seth works Ryan’s mouth open, and when he does, Ryan collapses, boneless, on Seth’s chest, his free hand slipping into the waistband of Seth’s pants, sliding back and forth, back and forth, as Seth rolls them over. Ryan lands on his back, both arms falling to his sides on the floor, his eyes closed so hard they’re wrinkled up. And Seth…has no shame. He strips off his shirt, then works Ryan out of his, presses his chest in Ryan’s and picks Ryan’s hands off the floor, placing them on his exposed back. Ryan’s hands wander further down, shoving into the back of Seth’s pants, pressing them further together, as Seth kisses him, tongue and lewd noises totally in play.//
There’s a soundtrack. Oh, yeah. Theresa and Anna debated avidly what would happen next. There was also squealing. Loud squealing. And clapping. That must have been Anna, since Theresa had to be the one working the camera. Ryan hated smart girls.
“Wow, I’m a total slut.” Ryan ducked his head at Seth’s voice behind him. “Is this going to be a weird thing now?”
Ryan watched them on the tape. Watched Seth sucking on Ryan’s thumb.
“That depends.” Ryan’s voice broke.
“On what?” He couldn’t turn around and look at Seth. He knew he had to be panicking. Seth was a panicker.
“If you want to do it again.” And Ryan had said some tough things in the past, but he was about to choke.
“And if I do, that would be weird and you’d totally hate me, so I should say I am completely disgusted by this display of homosexual desire…” Ryan moved before he could out think himself, and Seth’s hair still felt like water in motion, but this time he got to initiate the kiss.
~Not even near the end, but what you get.
Beta by Anna, who didn’t set me on fire for making her read it. Even though she thought about it.
Inspired by the Boykissing vid. And Megolas who issued a challenge so I could have an excuse to write this even though I am still totally lame and would have written it anyway because Ryan and Seth were so made for this plot oh my god I love them!
Can you tell I’m working my way back through S1?