Fic - The OC - Another Day (Chapter Two)
Aug. 30th, 2006 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missmara13Title: Another Day (Chapter Two)
Author: Mara
Rating: R
Warnings: Language(F-word is used at leats twice this chapter... lol). Discussion of Suicide and Depression. AU. Spoilers for Seasons 1 to 3, especially the Seaosn 3 finale. Possibly sex and violence in later chapters.
Summary: Ryan tries to move on with his life, but it's not always easy. Good thing he still has the Cohens and Summer to help him.
Notes: The sequel to the 'Broken' Quartet (Numb, Sinking, Fallen, and Clarity). I recommend reading those 4 stories (actually more like 4 chapters of a single story...) before reading this, but I think you'll catch on even if you don't read them.
Chapter Two
Chapter Two
"So..." Seth began as he and Ryan got out of the rover at the tree lot after a silent ride. "Not so much with the talking even though you said we were gonna, huh?"
"Why are you so pissed at me?" Ryan replied. "I know I did one of the most selfish things out there, but really, you're one to talk when it comes to being selfish."
"I was scared, Ryan," Seth said. "I mean, Summer says she's gonna go say goodbye to you before she has to go catch her flight, but then we hear her yelling and we get out there and you're... you looked like you were already dead. It scared the hell out of me."
"Well, seeing Marissa all the time was scaring the hell out of me," Ryan replied. "I seriously thought swallowing those pills was the best option. Now I know it wasn't, but at the time..."
Seth nodded. "But..."
"What?"
"I don't want us to start getting along again, and get back where we were, and then..." Seth said, trailing off as he started towards a promising looking tree, not wanting to finish the thought.
"I'm not gonna do it again," Ryan said, catching Seth's arm. "Seth, I'm not. I know I'm not who I was, but... I'm better, maybe not one hundred percent, but I'm better. And having my best friend, my brother, around is gonna help me get even better. Not having you around is making it all so much harder."
"But mom and dad always act like..."
"Yeah, well, I laid into your dad about that," Ryan said. "I'm not gonna break, but the more they act like I am, the more I worry that I will. It's a viscious cycle."
"Like the Lord Of The Rings movies," Seth said with a nod. "By the time you finish the last one, you gotta go back and rewatch the 1st to remember how it all started, but then you figure you might as well watch the rest of the trilogy, and then what do you know? You gotta go back again."
Ryan chuckled and nodded. "Yeah, just like Lord Of The Rings," he said with a shake of his head. "I missed this," he added after a moment.
"Really? Because earlier it sounded like you hated my..."
"Babbling?" Ryan supplied. "I don't hate it, I just... I wish sometimes you'd stop talking and notice that maybe someone else needs to talk."
"So... do you need to talk?" Seth asked after a long moment.
"Nothing much to talk about," Ryan said, shrugging. "Well, except for the fact that the model for my art class seems to think I'm lucky that she's willing to sleep with me."
"Is she at least hot?" Seth asked.
Ryan laughed. "In a skanky slutty kind of way," he replied. "And she won't take 'not if you were the last woman on earth' for an answer."
"Are there any girls flirting where it's a good thing?" Seth asked.
"Nah," Ryan said, shrugging. "I think most of them are spotting my 'I'm not interested' vibe. Delia is just... really, really, really dense."
"You haven't like taken a vow of celibacy, have you?" Seth asked. "Because, dude, I think mom and dad are hoping to get grandkids from both of us someday."
Ryan rolled his eyes. "I'm trying to go over one hurdle at a time. Starting college is hurdle one."
"What's hurdle two?"
"Upping my course load next semester so that I still stand a chance of getting my degree in 4 years instead of taking much longer," Ryan said. "Then next fall..."
"You're really thinking ahead, huh?" Seth asked.
"Dr. Harrison keeps saying I should," Ryan replied. "I need to start thinking further ahead than the next few weeks or months. So I am. Which is why, as long as the new course load isn't too much, I want to get an apartment in LA."
"What about your meds?" Seth asked quietly. "I mean, I believe you that you don't plan on doing it again, but..."
"I'm gonna talk to your folks sometime over break about letting me have more control over my meds. Like maybe let me have a couple doses where I can get them myself without them needing to unlock the box. Show that I can handle it without doing anything stupid. Then, just stop locking them up all together. Or maybe we can work something out so that next fall, I have a weeks worth of meds with me, and I come home every weekend and get another weeks worth before going back. Then I can't overdose even if I have a bad day and I'm tempted, and they can still have a garuntee of seeing me every week to check on me."
"You've really thought this through," Seth said.
"Yeah, well, I want to get to the point where I'm normal," Ryan replied. "I hate driving back and forth everyday because it takes so long and it's lonely, and it gives me no time to do anything fun because by the time I get home, eat dinner, and work on assigments, I'm exhausted. If I live in LA next year, I won't have the commute, so I can actually have some fun on occasion. Make friends and hang out with them."
"You haven't made any friends?" Seth asked, frowning. "I know you're Mr. Silent Treatment, but..."
"Everyone wants to hang out and go to parties," Ryan said. "I can't, so no one really wants to try. But I hang out with Summer and her friends, eat lunch with them most days, coffee with Summer every afternoon after my last class and before she has to go to her last class. So it's not like I'm all alone. I'm doing good, I like UCLA, I like my classes."
"Good," Seth said.
Ryan rolled his eyes good naturedly and shoved Seth's shoulder. "How about you? How's Newport College?"
Seth sighed. "You really wanna know?"
"Of course I do," Ryan said.
"I'm about to flunk out," Seth admitted. "I've been partying more than studying, and... and I've been drinking some, and occasionally smoking..."
"Seth," Ryan said, clearly not happy with what he was hearing.
"That's not the worst part," Seth said. "And I know you're tired of my talking about Summer, although admittedly, it's been a long time since my last long babble about her..."
"What about Summer?" Ryan asked.
"I kinda... see, there was this party, and this hot girl in a really little dress, and..."
"Seth," Ryan said, his voice stern. He'd guessed where this was going, and didn't want to hear the rest, but at the same time he'd rather hear it straight from Seth so he could figure out how to do damage control. "What did you do?"
"I kinda slept with her," Seth admitted. "A couple of times."
Ryan crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against a power pole. "You cheated on Summer."
"I didn't mean to..."
"You accidentally cheated on Summer a couple of times?" Ryan asked. "What is wrong with you?"
"I just... she's in LA, and I'm here..."
"You're like a two hour drive apart!" Ryan protested. "Did you cheat on her when she was at Brown?"
"No!"
"She was on the other side of the country then, so why were you able to stay loyal then and not now?"
"Are you telling me she's not messing around with some guy in LA?" Seth protested. "I know she has male 'friends'..."
"Yeah, Paul, who's gay and has a crush on me!" Ryan said, then blushed as several people turned to stare. "God Seth, Summer hasn't even looked at another guy. At least not that I've seen or heard, and Cara and Paul gossip so damn much I'd know if they'd seen or heard anything! But you've been cheating on her? How long?"
"Ry..."
"Were you cheating on her last year?"
"I told you I..."
"You told me you didn't while she was at Brown. What about when she came back to California. Since she's been at UCLA and you've been at NC. When did it start?"
"Last spring," Seth said. "It was a different girl, though!"
"So you've cheated with two different girls?"
"Three total," Seth admitted, hanging his head. He knew he was in the wrong here, but he wanted Ryan to take his side. "You don't understand how hard it is..."
"Stop right there," Ryan said. "Don't tell me I don't know how hard it is to be away from the person you love."
"I know you're still hurting over Marissa..."
"I'm not talking about her being dead, Seth," Ryan interrupted. "Don't you remember when I went back to Chino to be with Theresa and the baby? I spent months without getting to see or talk to Marissa. I shared a bed with Theresa every night because there wasn't room in the house for me to sleep anywhere else. But I never once even though about having sex with Theresa. The most I did was kiss her cheek every morning and every night. And I was a lot further away from Marissa than you are from Summer. Maybe not physically, but emotionally I was a world away. I didn't think I would ever be able to be with Marissa again, I thought I would eventually marry Theresa, and be a dad to her baby, and I'd never come home to Newport. But I didn't cheat on Marissa. You lasted months with Summer on the other end of the country, but you couldn't even last that long with her being two hours away?" Ryan asked.
"I screwed up..."
"You got that right," Ryan said, pushing away from the pole to look at trees. "God, Seth. How could you do this to her?"
"You'd not going to tell her, are you?" Seth asked.
"She deserves to know," Ryan said. "But... god... she's my best friend, and I don't want to hurt her like that..."
"I thought I was..."
"You're my brother," Ryan said. "And usually I'd say you're my best friend, too. But... I don't like you very much right now, Seth." He turned away and looked closer at a tree. "This one looks good," he said, waving the lot owner over.
"Are you gonna stop talking to me?" Seth asked, sounding more than a little pathetic.
"I haven't decided yet," Ryan said as he took the receipt for the tree and accepted the lot owner's help in getting the tree to the rover.
"Ryan, come on, we're brothers..." Seth tried.
"And you're dating Summer fucking Roberts, the girl you've obsessed over since the first time you saw her, but you decided to cheat on her," Ryan snapped in return. "She's pretty much my closest friend, the only person who knows as much about my life as Sandy and Kirsten do, and when she finds out what you've done it's going to break her heart. So yeah, I'm pissed at you. But more important, I'm trying to decide whether I should just let this play out until Summer inevitable gets her heart broken because you can't keep it in your pants, or if I should tell her now because it might hurt less coming from a friend then if she hears about it from some random fucking newpsie princess."
"I'm sorry," Seth said.
"I'm not the one you need to make things right with," Ryan said as he finished securing the tree and got into the rover, slamming his door shut.
Seth quietly got in the passenger side and looked over at Ryan. "I shouldn't have told you. I just thought... it's the kind of thing we used to talk about, and we're talking again... except now we're not."
Ryan sighed. "Look, I'm not gonna take sides, Seth. I'm not gonna defend you, but I'm not gonna condemn you. I want to get through break without everything going to hell, so I'm going to try and pretend I don't know about this right now, at least until I decide what to do. But if Summer asks me a question that connects to this, if she asks if your cheating, or if there's something she needs to know, I'm going to tell her. But I'm also going to tell her that your my brother and I can't hate you. I can't even bring myself to hate Trey after all he did. So... for now... let's just pretend this part of our conversation never happened."
"What if mom and dad ask?" Seth said.
"I'll tell them to talk to you," Ryan said as he turned on the radio, effectively ending the conversation, and pulled out of the parking lot.
To Be Continued...
Author: Mara
Rating: R
Warnings: Language(F-word is used at leats twice this chapter... lol). Discussion of Suicide and Depression. AU. Spoilers for Seasons 1 to 3, especially the Seaosn 3 finale. Possibly sex and violence in later chapters.
Summary: Ryan tries to move on with his life, but it's not always easy. Good thing he still has the Cohens and Summer to help him.
Notes: The sequel to the 'Broken' Quartet (Numb, Sinking, Fallen, and Clarity). I recommend reading those 4 stories (actually more like 4 chapters of a single story...) before reading this, but I think you'll catch on even if you don't read them.
Chapter Two
Chapter Two
"So..." Seth began as he and Ryan got out of the rover at the tree lot after a silent ride. "Not so much with the talking even though you said we were gonna, huh?"
"Why are you so pissed at me?" Ryan replied. "I know I did one of the most selfish things out there, but really, you're one to talk when it comes to being selfish."
"I was scared, Ryan," Seth said. "I mean, Summer says she's gonna go say goodbye to you before she has to go catch her flight, but then we hear her yelling and we get out there and you're... you looked like you were already dead. It scared the hell out of me."
"Well, seeing Marissa all the time was scaring the hell out of me," Ryan replied. "I seriously thought swallowing those pills was the best option. Now I know it wasn't, but at the time..."
Seth nodded. "But..."
"What?"
"I don't want us to start getting along again, and get back where we were, and then..." Seth said, trailing off as he started towards a promising looking tree, not wanting to finish the thought.
"I'm not gonna do it again," Ryan said, catching Seth's arm. "Seth, I'm not. I know I'm not who I was, but... I'm better, maybe not one hundred percent, but I'm better. And having my best friend, my brother, around is gonna help me get even better. Not having you around is making it all so much harder."
"But mom and dad always act like..."
"Yeah, well, I laid into your dad about that," Ryan said. "I'm not gonna break, but the more they act like I am, the more I worry that I will. It's a viscious cycle."
"Like the Lord Of The Rings movies," Seth said with a nod. "By the time you finish the last one, you gotta go back and rewatch the 1st to remember how it all started, but then you figure you might as well watch the rest of the trilogy, and then what do you know? You gotta go back again."
Ryan chuckled and nodded. "Yeah, just like Lord Of The Rings," he said with a shake of his head. "I missed this," he added after a moment.
"Really? Because earlier it sounded like you hated my..."
"Babbling?" Ryan supplied. "I don't hate it, I just... I wish sometimes you'd stop talking and notice that maybe someone else needs to talk."
"So... do you need to talk?" Seth asked after a long moment.
"Nothing much to talk about," Ryan said, shrugging. "Well, except for the fact that the model for my art class seems to think I'm lucky that she's willing to sleep with me."
"Is she at least hot?" Seth asked.
Ryan laughed. "In a skanky slutty kind of way," he replied. "And she won't take 'not if you were the last woman on earth' for an answer."
"Are there any girls flirting where it's a good thing?" Seth asked.
"Nah," Ryan said, shrugging. "I think most of them are spotting my 'I'm not interested' vibe. Delia is just... really, really, really dense."
"You haven't like taken a vow of celibacy, have you?" Seth asked. "Because, dude, I think mom and dad are hoping to get grandkids from both of us someday."
Ryan rolled his eyes. "I'm trying to go over one hurdle at a time. Starting college is hurdle one."
"What's hurdle two?"
"Upping my course load next semester so that I still stand a chance of getting my degree in 4 years instead of taking much longer," Ryan said. "Then next fall..."
"You're really thinking ahead, huh?" Seth asked.
"Dr. Harrison keeps saying I should," Ryan replied. "I need to start thinking further ahead than the next few weeks or months. So I am. Which is why, as long as the new course load isn't too much, I want to get an apartment in LA."
"What about your meds?" Seth asked quietly. "I mean, I believe you that you don't plan on doing it again, but..."
"I'm gonna talk to your folks sometime over break about letting me have more control over my meds. Like maybe let me have a couple doses where I can get them myself without them needing to unlock the box. Show that I can handle it without doing anything stupid. Then, just stop locking them up all together. Or maybe we can work something out so that next fall, I have a weeks worth of meds with me, and I come home every weekend and get another weeks worth before going back. Then I can't overdose even if I have a bad day and I'm tempted, and they can still have a garuntee of seeing me every week to check on me."
"You've really thought this through," Seth said.
"Yeah, well, I want to get to the point where I'm normal," Ryan replied. "I hate driving back and forth everyday because it takes so long and it's lonely, and it gives me no time to do anything fun because by the time I get home, eat dinner, and work on assigments, I'm exhausted. If I live in LA next year, I won't have the commute, so I can actually have some fun on occasion. Make friends and hang out with them."
"You haven't made any friends?" Seth asked, frowning. "I know you're Mr. Silent Treatment, but..."
"Everyone wants to hang out and go to parties," Ryan said. "I can't, so no one really wants to try. But I hang out with Summer and her friends, eat lunch with them most days, coffee with Summer every afternoon after my last class and before she has to go to her last class. So it's not like I'm all alone. I'm doing good, I like UCLA, I like my classes."
"Good," Seth said.
Ryan rolled his eyes good naturedly and shoved Seth's shoulder. "How about you? How's Newport College?"
Seth sighed. "You really wanna know?"
"Of course I do," Ryan said.
"I'm about to flunk out," Seth admitted. "I've been partying more than studying, and... and I've been drinking some, and occasionally smoking..."
"Seth," Ryan said, clearly not happy with what he was hearing.
"That's not the worst part," Seth said. "And I know you're tired of my talking about Summer, although admittedly, it's been a long time since my last long babble about her..."
"What about Summer?" Ryan asked.
"I kinda... see, there was this party, and this hot girl in a really little dress, and..."
"Seth," Ryan said, his voice stern. He'd guessed where this was going, and didn't want to hear the rest, but at the same time he'd rather hear it straight from Seth so he could figure out how to do damage control. "What did you do?"
"I kinda slept with her," Seth admitted. "A couple of times."
Ryan crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against a power pole. "You cheated on Summer."
"I didn't mean to..."
"You accidentally cheated on Summer a couple of times?" Ryan asked. "What is wrong with you?"
"I just... she's in LA, and I'm here..."
"You're like a two hour drive apart!" Ryan protested. "Did you cheat on her when she was at Brown?"
"No!"
"She was on the other side of the country then, so why were you able to stay loyal then and not now?"
"Are you telling me she's not messing around with some guy in LA?" Seth protested. "I know she has male 'friends'..."
"Yeah, Paul, who's gay and has a crush on me!" Ryan said, then blushed as several people turned to stare. "God Seth, Summer hasn't even looked at another guy. At least not that I've seen or heard, and Cara and Paul gossip so damn much I'd know if they'd seen or heard anything! But you've been cheating on her? How long?"
"Ry..."
"Were you cheating on her last year?"
"I told you I..."
"You told me you didn't while she was at Brown. What about when she came back to California. Since she's been at UCLA and you've been at NC. When did it start?"
"Last spring," Seth said. "It was a different girl, though!"
"So you've cheated with two different girls?"
"Three total," Seth admitted, hanging his head. He knew he was in the wrong here, but he wanted Ryan to take his side. "You don't understand how hard it is..."
"Stop right there," Ryan said. "Don't tell me I don't know how hard it is to be away from the person you love."
"I know you're still hurting over Marissa..."
"I'm not talking about her being dead, Seth," Ryan interrupted. "Don't you remember when I went back to Chino to be with Theresa and the baby? I spent months without getting to see or talk to Marissa. I shared a bed with Theresa every night because there wasn't room in the house for me to sleep anywhere else. But I never once even though about having sex with Theresa. The most I did was kiss her cheek every morning and every night. And I was a lot further away from Marissa than you are from Summer. Maybe not physically, but emotionally I was a world away. I didn't think I would ever be able to be with Marissa again, I thought I would eventually marry Theresa, and be a dad to her baby, and I'd never come home to Newport. But I didn't cheat on Marissa. You lasted months with Summer on the other end of the country, but you couldn't even last that long with her being two hours away?" Ryan asked.
"I screwed up..."
"You got that right," Ryan said, pushing away from the pole to look at trees. "God, Seth. How could you do this to her?"
"You'd not going to tell her, are you?" Seth asked.
"She deserves to know," Ryan said. "But... god... she's my best friend, and I don't want to hurt her like that..."
"I thought I was..."
"You're my brother," Ryan said. "And usually I'd say you're my best friend, too. But... I don't like you very much right now, Seth." He turned away and looked closer at a tree. "This one looks good," he said, waving the lot owner over.
"Are you gonna stop talking to me?" Seth asked, sounding more than a little pathetic.
"I haven't decided yet," Ryan said as he took the receipt for the tree and accepted the lot owner's help in getting the tree to the rover.
"Ryan, come on, we're brothers..." Seth tried.
"And you're dating Summer fucking Roberts, the girl you've obsessed over since the first time you saw her, but you decided to cheat on her," Ryan snapped in return. "She's pretty much my closest friend, the only person who knows as much about my life as Sandy and Kirsten do, and when she finds out what you've done it's going to break her heart. So yeah, I'm pissed at you. But more important, I'm trying to decide whether I should just let this play out until Summer inevitable gets her heart broken because you can't keep it in your pants, or if I should tell her now because it might hurt less coming from a friend then if she hears about it from some random fucking newpsie princess."
"I'm sorry," Seth said.
"I'm not the one you need to make things right with," Ryan said as he finished securing the tree and got into the rover, slamming his door shut.
Seth quietly got in the passenger side and looked over at Ryan. "I shouldn't have told you. I just thought... it's the kind of thing we used to talk about, and we're talking again... except now we're not."
Ryan sighed. "Look, I'm not gonna take sides, Seth. I'm not gonna defend you, but I'm not gonna condemn you. I want to get through break without everything going to hell, so I'm going to try and pretend I don't know about this right now, at least until I decide what to do. But if Summer asks me a question that connects to this, if she asks if your cheating, or if there's something she needs to know, I'm going to tell her. But I'm also going to tell her that your my brother and I can't hate you. I can't even bring myself to hate Trey after all he did. So... for now... let's just pretend this part of our conversation never happened."
"What if mom and dad ask?" Seth said.
"I'll tell them to talk to you," Ryan said as he turned on the radio, effectively ending the conversation, and pulled out of the parking lot.
To Be Continued...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 05:05 am (UTC)Seth cheating on Summer...this should be fun.
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Date: 2006-08-31 06:03 am (UTC)Seth is so screwed when Summer finds out... and so are the girls he cheated with! lol
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 02:29 pm (UTC)Your characters are nicely drawn. Seth's a self-absorbed ass -- surprise, surprise! (I'd love to seem him grow up someday, but I find his cheating on Summer plausible.)
Glad you've given us Ryan and Summer as good friends -- that they've both honored their relationship with Seth. Now? With Seth's betrayal? Interesting...
And I'm very pleased we're seeing a healthier Ryan, who is finally standing up for himself.
Thanks.