OC Fic : Fork In The Road (5/9)
Title : Fork In The Road
Author : Helen C.
Rating : R (M)
Summary : AU. Dawn never left in the Pilot, and Ryan came back to Chino for a while. Years later, he and Seth meet in Los Angeles.
Spoilers : Everything is fair game.
Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Josh Schwartz. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
joey51 stayed up until some ungodly hour in the night to beta this, and that's one of the many reasons why she's the best beta ever. :) Thanks, Joey!
Chapter 5
Three weeks later
Ryan swipes the sweat from his forehead, irritated. The streetlights make him squint after three hours in a dark bar.
He feels warm and sticky and grimaces as sweat trickles down his back -- California will never be warmer than Texas, nothing will ever be warmer than Texas, but today, it's almost as bad.
For once, he's the first one to leave the bar. Sean will see to it that Josh goes home in one piece. There was tension in the air, thick and threatening, and the undercurrent of danger persuaded Ryan to go home early. A fistfight is the last thing he needs, and he's an Atwood in blood, if not by name. The last thing he needs is usually what he gets. Fucking karma.
As he looks for his keys, he hears a frantic voice, over the music pouring from the bar into the street. "No, seriously, guys, perhaps we should talk about it." Ryan frowns and unconsciously tilts his head as the voice almost, but not quite, triggers a memory. He can feel it, just out of reach -- something, an almost happy memory, laced with hope, and guilt, and shame. A rushed, "Okay, fine, whatever, take my wallet," brings him back to the here and now.
Ryan briefly hesitates. This is L.A., muggings happen every day, every hour. Chances are, the bad guys will just take the money and leave. In fact, if Ryan intervenes, he'll probably just make things worse.
He's still frozen in indecision when he hears the unmistakable sound of a fist hitting a face. Ryan shakes himself. He has never been one to look the other way, and he remembers all too well what it's like to be the one who needs help.
He runs to the voices, mentally praying that he won't become yet another good Samaritan, victim of his good nature and killed while trying to do a good deed.
The next ten minutes are a blur -- fists thrown, punches avoided, mad ducking and dodging, a sharp pain as a knife grazes his arm, a duller pain as a fist collides with his cheekbone, a breathless run, dragging the stranger by the sleeve of his shirt.
At firsts, he hears people following them, then the footsteps grow more distant, before fading completely.
Ryan keeps on running, still dragging a perfect stranger behind him.
Little by little, he grows more conscious of the wind on his face, of the way his heart is pounding in his ears, but it takes a long while for the thought to register.
You're far enough, you can stop running.
Then, finally, it hits Ryan that he's running like hell from people who broke pursuit several intersections ago.
He stops, so suddenly that his companion runs into him, and they both topple to the ground.
Ryan lies there for a while, catching his breath, eyes closed. He can't hear anything past the blood rushing in his ears. Either they ran really fast, really long, or he needs to start exercising some more.
When he doesn't feel like his chest isn't going to explode anymore, Ryan leans on an elbow and studies his surroundings.
Good news is, he instinctively made his way home, and he's about two streets from his apartment. Bad news is, the stranger seems to have passed out, which, given the stench of alcohol clinging to him, isn't all that surprising.
Ryan reached over and rolls the stranger on his back, eliciting a moan. "Wanna sleep."
He recognizes his lawyer's son immediately, and the surprise makes him jump to his feet and take a step back. Funny, he thought people only ever did that on TV, but apparently, it happens in real life too, given a sufficient shock.
He suddenly understands why people talk about "a blast from the past."
He certainly feels like he has just been punched.
The guy is still unconscious, and Ryan searches his memory for a name, coming up with Seth.
It seems about right.
"Hey," he says, crouching next to Seth again and nudging him.
"Mnpf," Seth says.
"You were more chatty back then," Ryan whispers.
He gets back up, ponders the situation for a while, before deciding that he can't possibly leave Seth here.
He's going to have to carry him home.
Ryan sighs, thinking back about Trey, who kept warning him that no good deed ever went unpunished, then he pushes the thought away.
He doesn't want to become the kind of person who doesn't help others when they're in danger. He has few standards, few expectations for himself, but this, at least, he clings to.
***
Seth wakes up with a pounding headache, and with a dry and bad-after-tasty mouth.
Yikes.
He has been told several times already that he needs to stop drinking because he can't hold his liquor worth a damn, and he's beginning to believe it.
Especially since, as a quick survey of the room tells him, he's in a bed, and it's not his.
He groans.
He probably doesn't want to know what happened last night.
Except…
Except, yeah, he's Seth Cohen, and he always wants to know.
Even when he doesn't want to know, he still, well, wants to know.
If there was a Nobel Prize for eavesdropping and sheer curiosity, he'd have earned it already.
Besides…
Besides, he's still fully dressed, shoes and all, and he's on top of the covers, and he's alone, so chances are, nothing bad happened last night.
Then, as the pounding becomes slightly less overwhelming, he's forced to revise that statement.
His left eye seems tender and a careful prodding of the area makes him yelp in surprise.
Ow!
That hurts!
Just as Seth is about to start feeling sorry for himself, the door bangs open, making him jump to his feet -- or rather, making him try to jump to his feet. Unfortunately, his legs don't cooperate, and he manages to actually trip himself while lying down, ending in an undignified pile of misery on the floor.
Wonderful, he looks ridiculous and he still doesn't know where he is… or with whom.
With his luck, he's in the lair of a serial killer, and he just pissed the man off by yelping.
It's L.A., anything's possible.
Still on the floor, his eyes go up from the man's bare feet to his light blue jeans to his white T-shirt, his bandaged arm, to his familiar-yet-not-familiar face.
It takes him a moment to place it.
Ryan?
Seth's aware that he's gaping, but last time he was conscious, he was in a bar, with a friend, making bad puns about the barman, and, oh, yes, Ryan was presumed dead.
And now, Seth's in an unfamiliar place, with his sort-of-best-friend from a few summers ago.
When the hell did that happen?
"You okay?" Ryan asks, his voice lower and hoarser than Seth remembers.
He nods, and makes a conscious effort to close his mouth.
"You yelled," Ryan insists, frowning slightly.
"Do I have a shiner?" Seth asks.
If he had been asked, even yesterday, what he'd say if he ever saw Ryan again, he would have sworn that "Do I have a shiner?" wouldn't even have been in the top fifteen -- although, if he remembers correctly, Ryan kind of had a habit of walking around with one of these.
Still does, apparently, Seth amends as he notices the bruises on Ryan's face.
Ryan's lips twitch. "'Fraid so."
"Oh."
There's a tense silence as they study each other.
"This is awkward," Seth says once his barely existent tolerance to silence is exhausted.
Again, Ryan almost smiles. Apparently, the years haven't made him more loquacious.
"You're Ryan," Seth announces needlessly, because presumably, Ryan knows who he is, if only in an administrative sense.
"And you're Seth," Ryan returns, un-phased.
"Hm."
Seth kind of nods, then freezes as a wave of nausea assaults him. Very slowly, he sits up, then gets to his feet, because really, looking stupid in front of Ryan is all well and good, but this lolling around on the floor has lasted long enough.
There's another silence, less filled with tension than the first one.
This time, Ryan's the one who breaks it.
"So," he says.
Much as he's relieved that Ryan's willing to talk, Seth raises a finger in warning.
Ryan must have developed telepathic abilities, which is all kinds of cool, and he says, "Bathroom door's behind you."
Bless telepathy, Seth thinks, making a run for it. He'd never have been able to open his mouth without making a mess.
***
"Toast?" Ryan offers to Seth when he enters the kitchen.
To Ryan's amusement, Seth pales another shade.
"No, thanks."
Seth collapses on the seat next to Ryan, while Ryan eats his not-quite-burned toast and drinks his coffee, favoring his left arm. The cut isn't too deep, so he put antiseptic on it and bandaged it himself, praying that the knife was clean and he didn't catch anything nasty.
For a good five minutes, they stay silent, Ryan eating his breakfast and observing Seth, who seems to be suffering from one hell of a hangover.
"Yeah," Ryan finally says as he finishes his coffee. "This is weird all right."
"Yeah." Seth makes to touch the bruise on his face, but his fingers stop just short of the skin. "How did I end up here?"
"You were mugged," Ryan explains. Seth's eyebrows shoot up, prompting Ryan to elaborate, "I heard you, so I came see if I could do something. There was a fight, clearly," he adds, gesturing to his own bandaged arm.
There's a flash of worry in Seth's eyes. "Just a scratch," Ryan hastens to add. "We made a run for it, then you passed out drunk."
He gets up to put the dishes in the sink, letting Seth absorb the story.
When Seth speaks again, it's so softly that Ryan almost doesn't hear him.
"Thanks."
Ryan half-turns to Seth, shrugs briefly. "No problem, man."
Seth seems about to add something, and before he can, Ryan asks, "You live in L.A.?" He doesn't need Seth's gratitude, and he doesn't want to dwell on last night's events.
What happened, happened, and they're both alive.
"Yup," Seth says. "Fled the hell that was Newport at eighteen. I still go back to see the 'rents, sometimes."
Ryan has a brief flash of Sandy Cohen's concerned eyes, of his wife's guarded smiles. "How are they doing?"
Seth shrugs. "Same old. She works for the devil, he still defends the underdog."
Ryan nods.
"You disappeared," Seth says then, in an accusing tone. "You just… I called, for Christmas, to invite you over, and your mom said you weren't in and you'd call back, but you never did, and we thought you had other stuff to do, so we didn't insist."
Ryan shakes his head. "I never got your message," he says. "Or, well, I don't think so. I still don't remember some stuff that happened the week I disappeared."
Seth looks down at his clenched hands. "We decided to give it a few days, then Dad was going to go check on you, but before he could, your PO told him you hadn't gone back to school. And no one ever heard about you again. Dad hired a private investigator, but apparently, the trail was too cold, you'd been gone for too long already." He stops, while Ryan stares at the tabletop, trying to absorb the fact that his lawyer hired a PI to look for him. "What happened?" Seth asks plaintively.
Ryan shrugs. "AJ was having a bad day, I guess," he says. "I went home for a while, and I woke up a few hours later, on the side of the road." He smiles ruefully. "I still don't really remember what happened. I suppose he beat the fuck out of me, and drove me there while Mom was unconscious."
Seth looks shocked. Ryan sympathizes. He was pretty shocked when it happened, too. No matter what his younger years had taught him about the ugliness of the world, being left for dead and dropped like a piece of trash on the road was still disturbing in too many ways to understand.
He tries not to dwell on it, even now, and when he allows himself to think about it, he often feels the urge to lock his apartment door, crawl into a dark corner, and forget about the world for a while.
"Why didn't you call?" Seth asks.
Ryan shakes his head. "Been there, done that," he whispers. Louder, he explains, "I didn't want to go into foster care. Bad experiences there. And Dawn… well, whatever."
It still hurts to admit that his mother didn't want him anymore, wasn't even concerned that her sixteen-year-old son was on the street and had nowhere to go.
"We could have --" Seth starts.
"Don't." Ryan doesn't want to wonder what would have happened if he had called the Cohens. Michael has been great to him, and it's too late to change what happened.
Seth nods, defeated.
"You still haven't told me what you're doing with your life," Ryan point out, hoping to put the discussion on the rails again -- as long as the rails lead them far away from Dawn.
"Neither did you," Seth points out.
Ryan smiles. "Very true."
"We have all day to play catch up," Seth says, brightly, before adding in a more subdued tone, "That is, unless you want me to leave, which I'd totally understand." For a fleeting moment, Ryan sees the younger Seth, the one who seemed to expect Ryan to turn down his offer to play video game.
"Sure," he says, surprised himself at how good the idea sounds.
***
"So, what happened then?" Seth asks.
Ryan, who has been talking for half an hour, telling Seth exactly how he ended up in Austin, takes a long gulp of soda.
"We need more pizza if you insist on learning every little detail," he says.
"Yeah, whatever. The story, man!"
Ryan bites back a smile.
They have discussed the possibility of going to the police to file a deposition about last night's events, but Seth can't remember anything, and Ryan couldn't recognize Seth's aggressors if his life depended on it, and Seth has decided that it would just be too much of a hassle for very little results.
Then, they got settled on the couch and Seth started asking questions.
The years haven't changed that, at least. Seth is certainly as curious now as he was then.
As Seth seems about to insist, Ryan starts talking again. "Well, Michael took me into town, and paid me a drink. We talked. I told him what had happened. He agreed to help me find a job, and not to tell anyone I was, you know, an underage runaway."
"Just like that?"
"I think he always felt bad for leaving me with Dawn. He told me once that he would have left her months earlier, if not for Trey and me."
Seth looks pained at the thought -- as was Ryan when he had that particular talk with Michael.
"In the beginning, it was supposed to be just that -- I'd crash on his couch a few nights, the time to find my own place, and then I'd leave him alone."
"It didn't turn out that way, right?" Seth asks, pointing to a photo on the TV -- Michael and his wife, a baby, and Ryan, all beaming to the camera.
"No. Once I had my place, his wife insisted I come over to diner. At first, she was just being polite, you know?"
Seth nods.
"Then, I got to know them, and they got to know me. She was pregnant, and I guess she felt bad for me. She wondered, you know, what if it was her kid who was living on the streets?"
And little by little, Ryan had started spending more time with them -- helping Michael fix his car, helping Alicia to unload the groceries, letting them help him get his GED.
And the mutual dependence had grown into affection, into long evenings spent in the setting sun, cold drinks handy, talking about meaningless stuff, into days spent baby-sitting Natalie, reading to her and listening to her babbling.
Ryan smiles sadly. "I miss them," he says aloud, forgetting for a moment that he's not alone in the room.
"Then why do you -- ?"
"Live here?" Ryan finishes. "I'm not sure, actually. I just… I needed a change of scenery, for a while."
Seth, amazingly, doesn't push.
Ryan stretches. "Okay, pizza time," he decides. "Then, my turn to ask questions."
***
After the pizza, Ryan turns on the TV, and with MTV in the background, listens to Seth's account of what happened in Newport after Ryan "went away."
Seth talks a lot, and still uses ten words where one would be enough, so the discussion lasts a long time.
Ryan learns, first, that Seth's only love married another man, and he gets the feeling that Seth still isn't over her.
He learns that Marissa -- Ryan vaguely remembers the skinny, beautiful girl who bummed a cigarette and seemed impressed by his bad boy routine -- OD'd in Tijuana, after catching her boyfriend cheating on her. A heartbreak seems a strange reason to off oneself, but Ryan doesn't comment. What does he know about other people's pain?
He learns that Mr. Welcome-to-the-OC-bitch had problems of his own and fell from grace when his father came out of the closet and left town.
It's a strange experience, Ryan thinks, to hear about the lives of these people he met once, briefly, and has barely thought about since.
***
As Seth pauses to take a breath, he shoots a look at Ryan, to make sure the guy isn't too bored by his Newport-related news bulletin.
Ryan seems interested, if only vaguely, so Seth goes on, telling the tale of his high-sea adventures, a few months after Ryan's disappearance, and about the humiliation he felt when the Coast Guards forced him to go home, and the anger he felt when his parents, good-intentioned, clueless Newpsies that they are, sent him to a therapist and back to Harbor.
"It was hell," he confides. He catches himself before Ryan can react. "I mean, obviously, not as bad as you had it, but still… everyone knew I had run away, and I had been caught, and they all just…"
Seth remembers how he briefly hoped, back then, that his status as a troublesome teenager would buy him a few points with the in crowd. He also remembers how quickly that hope was crushed -- five minutes into his first day back, Luke yelled in a crowded homeroom, "Hey, Cohen, did you find life on your own too hard to handle? Is that why you went back to Mommy?"
The in crowd laughed, the neutral crowd didn't react, and Seth resigned himself to two more years of the same shit.
"And my parents sent me to that stupid shrink, who decided that I needed to make more efforts to fit in, and pumped me full of pills. I guess they thought they'd done their duty as parents."
He doesn't want to sound whiny, not when Ryan's mom left him to fend for himself at sixteen, in horrible circumstances, but damn it, it hurt when his parents decided that the best way to deal with Seth was to put him into therapy.
"I've never understood it," Ryan says thoughtfully. At Seth's quizzical look, he adds, "Why you weren't popular, I mean."
"Scrawny Jewish kid," Seth says, shrugging.
"Yes, but…" Ryan shifts slightly, eyeing the now cold leftover slices of pizza. "You were good-looking, you had a good sense of humor, and a comic obsession isn't that weird, honestly." He looks at Seth sheepishly. "I don't get it."
Seth snorts. "It was the same people in first grade, you know. The first day, Luke decided I was a loser. He was a blond hair, blue-eyed boy, I was just Sandy Cohen's son, the new kid in school. Newport is a small town; the kids had known each other since they were born. Luke decided I was a loser, and even at seven, no one went against Luke." He feels a little ashamed, but he admits, because he thinks Ryan will understand, "I was *so* glad when the fucker got himself catalogued as a pariah too. I would have gone out and celebrated, except I didn't know anyone to party with."
Ryan smiles. "He made your life hell for years. I get that. I'd kick AJ when he's down, if I ever got the chance. Assuming he's still around."
"Yeah." Seth reaches for the beer that's growing warm on the table and takes a swallow before going on, "I think mom blamed you a little for my disappearing, if you can believe it. I guess she thought that if you hadn't run, I wouldn't have either."
Ryan chuckles. "Yeah, right. You were already talking about Tahiti the day we met. Besides…"
Seth shrugs. "It was the last straw," he admits. "You leaving, I mean. No one else made life in Newport bearable. But, if I hadn't met you, I'd just have left sooner…"
Ryan looks uncomfortable all of a sudden, and Seth has a brief flash of panic. This is it, he thinks. He put the responsibility on Ryan's shoulders, and now, Ryan is going to politely tell him to leave and grow up, and that will be it.
"You've got to understand," Ryan says softly. "I never thought anyone would look for me, or even realize I was gone. Well, except for a few friends I had, and perhaps my PO and the cops, but…" He has an embarrassed smile. "I was just an underage car thief in a huge ocean of criminals. I thought, what did it matter if I vanished?"
Seth looks at the TV blankly, trying to figure out what to answer to that. What the hell could he say to a guy who just admitted that the only people who would notice his absence would be the people paid to keep him on the line, and people he obviously couldn't rely on when he had problems?
Seth has felt alone all his life, and the loneliness has always been compounded by the fact that he thought he was the only one who felt that utterly alone.
But he realizes now that perhaps, Ryan knows where Seth is coming from.
On that at least, they can relate.
***
Much later, after Seth is gone and Ryan has tidied up a little and gone to bed, Ryan can't remember which one of them suggested that they meet again "for a beer or something."
All he knows is that the idea makes him feel enthusiastic, and it has been years since he has been enthusiastic about anything.
He has to admit that it was nice seeing Seth again, and hearing about what happened when he left. And, also, to hear that some people did, indeed, look for him.
He briefly wonders what would have happened if he had allowed Sandy Cohen to find him, then dismisses the thought as irrelevant. The Cohens would have handed him over to social services, and even if they hadn't, even if they had allowed him to stay in Newport, Ryan suspects that he would always have felt like a charity case -- forced to accept their help until he was old enough to finally live by himself. Besides, from what little he remembers about people there, he's sure he would never have been really accepted. Tolerated, at best…
At least Michael allowed him his independence, while keeping an eye on him to make sure he was fine.
At least Michael and his family and most of their friends didn't look down on him because he came from nowhere and didn't own anything.
Still, it was nice seeing Seth, and talking with the guy. Ryan supposes they're both older and wearier than they were back then, but he still can see flashes of the kid he once knew.
That's comforting, he decides, as he slips into sleep.
Chapter 6
Author : Helen C.
Rating : R (M)
Summary : AU. Dawn never left in the Pilot, and Ryan came back to Chino for a while. Years later, he and Seth meet in Los Angeles.
Spoilers : Everything is fair game.
Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Josh Schwartz. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
joey51 stayed up until some ungodly hour in the night to beta this, and that's one of the many reasons why she's the best beta ever. :) Thanks, Joey!
Chapter 5
Three weeks later
Ryan swipes the sweat from his forehead, irritated. The streetlights make him squint after three hours in a dark bar.
He feels warm and sticky and grimaces as sweat trickles down his back -- California will never be warmer than Texas, nothing will ever be warmer than Texas, but today, it's almost as bad.
For once, he's the first one to leave the bar. Sean will see to it that Josh goes home in one piece. There was tension in the air, thick and threatening, and the undercurrent of danger persuaded Ryan to go home early. A fistfight is the last thing he needs, and he's an Atwood in blood, if not by name. The last thing he needs is usually what he gets. Fucking karma.
As he looks for his keys, he hears a frantic voice, over the music pouring from the bar into the street. "No, seriously, guys, perhaps we should talk about it." Ryan frowns and unconsciously tilts his head as the voice almost, but not quite, triggers a memory. He can feel it, just out of reach -- something, an almost happy memory, laced with hope, and guilt, and shame. A rushed, "Okay, fine, whatever, take my wallet," brings him back to the here and now.
Ryan briefly hesitates. This is L.A., muggings happen every day, every hour. Chances are, the bad guys will just take the money and leave. In fact, if Ryan intervenes, he'll probably just make things worse.
He's still frozen in indecision when he hears the unmistakable sound of a fist hitting a face. Ryan shakes himself. He has never been one to look the other way, and he remembers all too well what it's like to be the one who needs help.
He runs to the voices, mentally praying that he won't become yet another good Samaritan, victim of his good nature and killed while trying to do a good deed.
The next ten minutes are a blur -- fists thrown, punches avoided, mad ducking and dodging, a sharp pain as a knife grazes his arm, a duller pain as a fist collides with his cheekbone, a breathless run, dragging the stranger by the sleeve of his shirt.
At firsts, he hears people following them, then the footsteps grow more distant, before fading completely.
Ryan keeps on running, still dragging a perfect stranger behind him.
Little by little, he grows more conscious of the wind on his face, of the way his heart is pounding in his ears, but it takes a long while for the thought to register.
You're far enough, you can stop running.
Then, finally, it hits Ryan that he's running like hell from people who broke pursuit several intersections ago.
He stops, so suddenly that his companion runs into him, and they both topple to the ground.
Ryan lies there for a while, catching his breath, eyes closed. He can't hear anything past the blood rushing in his ears. Either they ran really fast, really long, or he needs to start exercising some more.
When he doesn't feel like his chest isn't going to explode anymore, Ryan leans on an elbow and studies his surroundings.
Good news is, he instinctively made his way home, and he's about two streets from his apartment. Bad news is, the stranger seems to have passed out, which, given the stench of alcohol clinging to him, isn't all that surprising.
Ryan reached over and rolls the stranger on his back, eliciting a moan. "Wanna sleep."
He recognizes his lawyer's son immediately, and the surprise makes him jump to his feet and take a step back. Funny, he thought people only ever did that on TV, but apparently, it happens in real life too, given a sufficient shock.
He suddenly understands why people talk about "a blast from the past."
He certainly feels like he has just been punched.
The guy is still unconscious, and Ryan searches his memory for a name, coming up with Seth.
It seems about right.
"Hey," he says, crouching next to Seth again and nudging him.
"Mnpf," Seth says.
"You were more chatty back then," Ryan whispers.
He gets back up, ponders the situation for a while, before deciding that he can't possibly leave Seth here.
He's going to have to carry him home.
Ryan sighs, thinking back about Trey, who kept warning him that no good deed ever went unpunished, then he pushes the thought away.
He doesn't want to become the kind of person who doesn't help others when they're in danger. He has few standards, few expectations for himself, but this, at least, he clings to.
***
Seth wakes up with a pounding headache, and with a dry and bad-after-tasty mouth.
Yikes.
He has been told several times already that he needs to stop drinking because he can't hold his liquor worth a damn, and he's beginning to believe it.
Especially since, as a quick survey of the room tells him, he's in a bed, and it's not his.
He groans.
He probably doesn't want to know what happened last night.
Except…
Except, yeah, he's Seth Cohen, and he always wants to know.
Even when he doesn't want to know, he still, well, wants to know.
If there was a Nobel Prize for eavesdropping and sheer curiosity, he'd have earned it already.
Besides…
Besides, he's still fully dressed, shoes and all, and he's on top of the covers, and he's alone, so chances are, nothing bad happened last night.
Then, as the pounding becomes slightly less overwhelming, he's forced to revise that statement.
His left eye seems tender and a careful prodding of the area makes him yelp in surprise.
Ow!
That hurts!
Just as Seth is about to start feeling sorry for himself, the door bangs open, making him jump to his feet -- or rather, making him try to jump to his feet. Unfortunately, his legs don't cooperate, and he manages to actually trip himself while lying down, ending in an undignified pile of misery on the floor.
Wonderful, he looks ridiculous and he still doesn't know where he is… or with whom.
With his luck, he's in the lair of a serial killer, and he just pissed the man off by yelping.
It's L.A., anything's possible.
Still on the floor, his eyes go up from the man's bare feet to his light blue jeans to his white T-shirt, his bandaged arm, to his familiar-yet-not-familiar face.
It takes him a moment to place it.
Ryan?
Seth's aware that he's gaping, but last time he was conscious, he was in a bar, with a friend, making bad puns about the barman, and, oh, yes, Ryan was presumed dead.
And now, Seth's in an unfamiliar place, with his sort-of-best-friend from a few summers ago.
When the hell did that happen?
"You okay?" Ryan asks, his voice lower and hoarser than Seth remembers.
He nods, and makes a conscious effort to close his mouth.
"You yelled," Ryan insists, frowning slightly.
"Do I have a shiner?" Seth asks.
If he had been asked, even yesterday, what he'd say if he ever saw Ryan again, he would have sworn that "Do I have a shiner?" wouldn't even have been in the top fifteen -- although, if he remembers correctly, Ryan kind of had a habit of walking around with one of these.
Still does, apparently, Seth amends as he notices the bruises on Ryan's face.
Ryan's lips twitch. "'Fraid so."
"Oh."
There's a tense silence as they study each other.
"This is awkward," Seth says once his barely existent tolerance to silence is exhausted.
Again, Ryan almost smiles. Apparently, the years haven't made him more loquacious.
"You're Ryan," Seth announces needlessly, because presumably, Ryan knows who he is, if only in an administrative sense.
"And you're Seth," Ryan returns, un-phased.
"Hm."
Seth kind of nods, then freezes as a wave of nausea assaults him. Very slowly, he sits up, then gets to his feet, because really, looking stupid in front of Ryan is all well and good, but this lolling around on the floor has lasted long enough.
There's another silence, less filled with tension than the first one.
This time, Ryan's the one who breaks it.
"So," he says.
Much as he's relieved that Ryan's willing to talk, Seth raises a finger in warning.
Ryan must have developed telepathic abilities, which is all kinds of cool, and he says, "Bathroom door's behind you."
Bless telepathy, Seth thinks, making a run for it. He'd never have been able to open his mouth without making a mess.
***
"Toast?" Ryan offers to Seth when he enters the kitchen.
To Ryan's amusement, Seth pales another shade.
"No, thanks."
Seth collapses on the seat next to Ryan, while Ryan eats his not-quite-burned toast and drinks his coffee, favoring his left arm. The cut isn't too deep, so he put antiseptic on it and bandaged it himself, praying that the knife was clean and he didn't catch anything nasty.
For a good five minutes, they stay silent, Ryan eating his breakfast and observing Seth, who seems to be suffering from one hell of a hangover.
"Yeah," Ryan finally says as he finishes his coffee. "This is weird all right."
"Yeah." Seth makes to touch the bruise on his face, but his fingers stop just short of the skin. "How did I end up here?"
"You were mugged," Ryan explains. Seth's eyebrows shoot up, prompting Ryan to elaborate, "I heard you, so I came see if I could do something. There was a fight, clearly," he adds, gesturing to his own bandaged arm.
There's a flash of worry in Seth's eyes. "Just a scratch," Ryan hastens to add. "We made a run for it, then you passed out drunk."
He gets up to put the dishes in the sink, letting Seth absorb the story.
When Seth speaks again, it's so softly that Ryan almost doesn't hear him.
"Thanks."
Ryan half-turns to Seth, shrugs briefly. "No problem, man."
Seth seems about to add something, and before he can, Ryan asks, "You live in L.A.?" He doesn't need Seth's gratitude, and he doesn't want to dwell on last night's events.
What happened, happened, and they're both alive.
"Yup," Seth says. "Fled the hell that was Newport at eighteen. I still go back to see the 'rents, sometimes."
Ryan has a brief flash of Sandy Cohen's concerned eyes, of his wife's guarded smiles. "How are they doing?"
Seth shrugs. "Same old. She works for the devil, he still defends the underdog."
Ryan nods.
"You disappeared," Seth says then, in an accusing tone. "You just… I called, for Christmas, to invite you over, and your mom said you weren't in and you'd call back, but you never did, and we thought you had other stuff to do, so we didn't insist."
Ryan shakes his head. "I never got your message," he says. "Or, well, I don't think so. I still don't remember some stuff that happened the week I disappeared."
Seth looks down at his clenched hands. "We decided to give it a few days, then Dad was going to go check on you, but before he could, your PO told him you hadn't gone back to school. And no one ever heard about you again. Dad hired a private investigator, but apparently, the trail was too cold, you'd been gone for too long already." He stops, while Ryan stares at the tabletop, trying to absorb the fact that his lawyer hired a PI to look for him. "What happened?" Seth asks plaintively.
Ryan shrugs. "AJ was having a bad day, I guess," he says. "I went home for a while, and I woke up a few hours later, on the side of the road." He smiles ruefully. "I still don't really remember what happened. I suppose he beat the fuck out of me, and drove me there while Mom was unconscious."
Seth looks shocked. Ryan sympathizes. He was pretty shocked when it happened, too. No matter what his younger years had taught him about the ugliness of the world, being left for dead and dropped like a piece of trash on the road was still disturbing in too many ways to understand.
He tries not to dwell on it, even now, and when he allows himself to think about it, he often feels the urge to lock his apartment door, crawl into a dark corner, and forget about the world for a while.
"Why didn't you call?" Seth asks.
Ryan shakes his head. "Been there, done that," he whispers. Louder, he explains, "I didn't want to go into foster care. Bad experiences there. And Dawn… well, whatever."
It still hurts to admit that his mother didn't want him anymore, wasn't even concerned that her sixteen-year-old son was on the street and had nowhere to go.
"We could have --" Seth starts.
"Don't." Ryan doesn't want to wonder what would have happened if he had called the Cohens. Michael has been great to him, and it's too late to change what happened.
Seth nods, defeated.
"You still haven't told me what you're doing with your life," Ryan point out, hoping to put the discussion on the rails again -- as long as the rails lead them far away from Dawn.
"Neither did you," Seth points out.
Ryan smiles. "Very true."
"We have all day to play catch up," Seth says, brightly, before adding in a more subdued tone, "That is, unless you want me to leave, which I'd totally understand." For a fleeting moment, Ryan sees the younger Seth, the one who seemed to expect Ryan to turn down his offer to play video game.
"Sure," he says, surprised himself at how good the idea sounds.
***
"So, what happened then?" Seth asks.
Ryan, who has been talking for half an hour, telling Seth exactly how he ended up in Austin, takes a long gulp of soda.
"We need more pizza if you insist on learning every little detail," he says.
"Yeah, whatever. The story, man!"
Ryan bites back a smile.
They have discussed the possibility of going to the police to file a deposition about last night's events, but Seth can't remember anything, and Ryan couldn't recognize Seth's aggressors if his life depended on it, and Seth has decided that it would just be too much of a hassle for very little results.
Then, they got settled on the couch and Seth started asking questions.
The years haven't changed that, at least. Seth is certainly as curious now as he was then.
As Seth seems about to insist, Ryan starts talking again. "Well, Michael took me into town, and paid me a drink. We talked. I told him what had happened. He agreed to help me find a job, and not to tell anyone I was, you know, an underage runaway."
"Just like that?"
"I think he always felt bad for leaving me with Dawn. He told me once that he would have left her months earlier, if not for Trey and me."
Seth looks pained at the thought -- as was Ryan when he had that particular talk with Michael.
"In the beginning, it was supposed to be just that -- I'd crash on his couch a few nights, the time to find my own place, and then I'd leave him alone."
"It didn't turn out that way, right?" Seth asks, pointing to a photo on the TV -- Michael and his wife, a baby, and Ryan, all beaming to the camera.
"No. Once I had my place, his wife insisted I come over to diner. At first, she was just being polite, you know?"
Seth nods.
"Then, I got to know them, and they got to know me. She was pregnant, and I guess she felt bad for me. She wondered, you know, what if it was her kid who was living on the streets?"
And little by little, Ryan had started spending more time with them -- helping Michael fix his car, helping Alicia to unload the groceries, letting them help him get his GED.
And the mutual dependence had grown into affection, into long evenings spent in the setting sun, cold drinks handy, talking about meaningless stuff, into days spent baby-sitting Natalie, reading to her and listening to her babbling.
Ryan smiles sadly. "I miss them," he says aloud, forgetting for a moment that he's not alone in the room.
"Then why do you -- ?"
"Live here?" Ryan finishes. "I'm not sure, actually. I just… I needed a change of scenery, for a while."
Seth, amazingly, doesn't push.
Ryan stretches. "Okay, pizza time," he decides. "Then, my turn to ask questions."
***
After the pizza, Ryan turns on the TV, and with MTV in the background, listens to Seth's account of what happened in Newport after Ryan "went away."
Seth talks a lot, and still uses ten words where one would be enough, so the discussion lasts a long time.
Ryan learns, first, that Seth's only love married another man, and he gets the feeling that Seth still isn't over her.
He learns that Marissa -- Ryan vaguely remembers the skinny, beautiful girl who bummed a cigarette and seemed impressed by his bad boy routine -- OD'd in Tijuana, after catching her boyfriend cheating on her. A heartbreak seems a strange reason to off oneself, but Ryan doesn't comment. What does he know about other people's pain?
He learns that Mr. Welcome-to-the-OC-bitch had problems of his own and fell from grace when his father came out of the closet and left town.
It's a strange experience, Ryan thinks, to hear about the lives of these people he met once, briefly, and has barely thought about since.
***
As Seth pauses to take a breath, he shoots a look at Ryan, to make sure the guy isn't too bored by his Newport-related news bulletin.
Ryan seems interested, if only vaguely, so Seth goes on, telling the tale of his high-sea adventures, a few months after Ryan's disappearance, and about the humiliation he felt when the Coast Guards forced him to go home, and the anger he felt when his parents, good-intentioned, clueless Newpsies that they are, sent him to a therapist and back to Harbor.
"It was hell," he confides. He catches himself before Ryan can react. "I mean, obviously, not as bad as you had it, but still… everyone knew I had run away, and I had been caught, and they all just…"
Seth remembers how he briefly hoped, back then, that his status as a troublesome teenager would buy him a few points with the in crowd. He also remembers how quickly that hope was crushed -- five minutes into his first day back, Luke yelled in a crowded homeroom, "Hey, Cohen, did you find life on your own too hard to handle? Is that why you went back to Mommy?"
The in crowd laughed, the neutral crowd didn't react, and Seth resigned himself to two more years of the same shit.
"And my parents sent me to that stupid shrink, who decided that I needed to make more efforts to fit in, and pumped me full of pills. I guess they thought they'd done their duty as parents."
He doesn't want to sound whiny, not when Ryan's mom left him to fend for himself at sixteen, in horrible circumstances, but damn it, it hurt when his parents decided that the best way to deal with Seth was to put him into therapy.
"I've never understood it," Ryan says thoughtfully. At Seth's quizzical look, he adds, "Why you weren't popular, I mean."
"Scrawny Jewish kid," Seth says, shrugging.
"Yes, but…" Ryan shifts slightly, eyeing the now cold leftover slices of pizza. "You were good-looking, you had a good sense of humor, and a comic obsession isn't that weird, honestly." He looks at Seth sheepishly. "I don't get it."
Seth snorts. "It was the same people in first grade, you know. The first day, Luke decided I was a loser. He was a blond hair, blue-eyed boy, I was just Sandy Cohen's son, the new kid in school. Newport is a small town; the kids had known each other since they were born. Luke decided I was a loser, and even at seven, no one went against Luke." He feels a little ashamed, but he admits, because he thinks Ryan will understand, "I was *so* glad when the fucker got himself catalogued as a pariah too. I would have gone out and celebrated, except I didn't know anyone to party with."
Ryan smiles. "He made your life hell for years. I get that. I'd kick AJ when he's down, if I ever got the chance. Assuming he's still around."
"Yeah." Seth reaches for the beer that's growing warm on the table and takes a swallow before going on, "I think mom blamed you a little for my disappearing, if you can believe it. I guess she thought that if you hadn't run, I wouldn't have either."
Ryan chuckles. "Yeah, right. You were already talking about Tahiti the day we met. Besides…"
Seth shrugs. "It was the last straw," he admits. "You leaving, I mean. No one else made life in Newport bearable. But, if I hadn't met you, I'd just have left sooner…"
Ryan looks uncomfortable all of a sudden, and Seth has a brief flash of panic. This is it, he thinks. He put the responsibility on Ryan's shoulders, and now, Ryan is going to politely tell him to leave and grow up, and that will be it.
"You've got to understand," Ryan says softly. "I never thought anyone would look for me, or even realize I was gone. Well, except for a few friends I had, and perhaps my PO and the cops, but…" He has an embarrassed smile. "I was just an underage car thief in a huge ocean of criminals. I thought, what did it matter if I vanished?"
Seth looks at the TV blankly, trying to figure out what to answer to that. What the hell could he say to a guy who just admitted that the only people who would notice his absence would be the people paid to keep him on the line, and people he obviously couldn't rely on when he had problems?
Seth has felt alone all his life, and the loneliness has always been compounded by the fact that he thought he was the only one who felt that utterly alone.
But he realizes now that perhaps, Ryan knows where Seth is coming from.
On that at least, they can relate.
***
Much later, after Seth is gone and Ryan has tidied up a little and gone to bed, Ryan can't remember which one of them suggested that they meet again "for a beer or something."
All he knows is that the idea makes him feel enthusiastic, and it has been years since he has been enthusiastic about anything.
He has to admit that it was nice seeing Seth again, and hearing about what happened when he left. And, also, to hear that some people did, indeed, look for him.
He briefly wonders what would have happened if he had allowed Sandy Cohen to find him, then dismisses the thought as irrelevant. The Cohens would have handed him over to social services, and even if they hadn't, even if they had allowed him to stay in Newport, Ryan suspects that he would always have felt like a charity case -- forced to accept their help until he was old enough to finally live by himself. Besides, from what little he remembers about people there, he's sure he would never have been really accepted. Tolerated, at best…
At least Michael allowed him his independence, while keeping an eye on him to make sure he was fine.
At least Michael and his family and most of their friends didn't look down on him because he came from nowhere and didn't own anything.
Still, it was nice seeing Seth, and talking with the guy. Ryan supposes they're both older and wearier than they were back then, but he still can see flashes of the kid he once knew.
That's comforting, he decides, as he slips into sleep.
Chapter 6