let him win his spurs

Line of Best Fit by sunsetmog
Part 2/3. The O.C. Ryan/Seth.



~*~

Summer left on Tuesday morning, traveling on to Edinburgh and then to Paris and finishing back in London before leaving for California on Friday night.

Seth missed her straight away, missed the way she took over and loved him and shut him up and reminded him of how good things could be. But almost as soon as she'd driven away, he fell right back into his old life, because he'd missed that too. He'd missed Katie and Matt and having them both to himself, and the fact they didn't ask him difficult questions he didn't want to answer about before.

He went straight to a history lecture and bugged Professor Greenwood after the class had finished, asking him questions and telling him he'd read his books. Professor Greenwood smiled and wriggled his toes - still in socks and sandals despite it being winter, because apparently academic geniuses could also be crazy bad in the fashion department. In the evening Katie and Matt took him to the pub and they did the quiz in the downstairs bar. He even answered a question about Scott and Charlene's wedding in Neighbours in 1987 or whenever, because he'd been reading all about it on Wikipedia. Katie and Matt cheered and hugged him and Seth thought he really was where he should be.

Things got back to normal pretty quickly, and Seth loved it. They went by bus to Dundee University Union to see a pretty mediocre indie band play, and then they stayed out dancing and had to get a cab back home which cost them the best part of £75. They went early Christmas shopping in Edinburgh and drank at the bar in Fopp, buying CDs he already owned on vinyl, listening to the Clash on headphones by the cash register. He went to see the Strokes with Katie and some of the other guys from their hall, sitting squashed in the back of a Ford Fiesta for an hour and a half at two in the morning on the way back from Glasgow.

At the end of the first week in December, his mom rang. He was in his room with Matt and Katie, watching O Brother, Where Art Thou on his laptop when his cell started beeping from under his pillow. Katie asked why he kept his phone in such a stupid place; Seth grinned, showed her the finger and paused the film.

His mom had managed the time difference impeccably ever since Seth had arrived in Scotland, always timing her calls to catch Seth early in the evening. His dad was more haphazard with the calculations, more than once catching Seth drunk at half past one in the morning.

Kirsten asked him how he was and Seth told her all about his English paper - essay, Matt and Katie corrected exasperatedly, rolling their eyes at him and poking him with their feet - and how he'd got a seventeen without even reading the books properly because he'd forgotten the due date and had spent the weekend at the hall ball and in the pub nursing a hangover instead of in the library trying to read Virginia Woolf.

Seth had explained the marking system on more than one occasion, and tried to demonstrate the difference between GPA and firsts by means of emailing his parents a carefully labeled diagram, but he patiently explained one more time that it was a good mark, a first, after his mom asked, "And that's good, right, Seth?"

Seth knew that something was bothering his mom, because she didn't forget things like that, she was one hundred percent Seth-orientated, apart from when she wasn't. Seth didn't know how to find out if she was drinking again.

His mom took a deep breath and said, "Why do you never ask about Ryan?"

"Ryan?" Seth said.

Katie and Matt looked at him with undisguised interest. Seth wouldn't look at them, and instead concentrated his gaze on the comforter.

"He asks about you, Seth. Did something happen between the two of you? Did you fall out?"

"We didn't fall out, Mom."

"Something happened, Seth."

Seth rubbed his forehead tiredly. "Nothing happened, Mom." Seth knew that Katie and Matt were listening in, and it exhausted him. He knew they'd been incredibly good about not asking about Ryan after the barbecue on the beach, but he didn't think he could get away with it a second time.

"Seth, you and Ryan. You were so close. He wants to fix whatever went wrong between the two of you, and your father and I are inclined to agree."

Seth had spent so long trying not to think about Ryan that even just hearing his name mentioned was a relief. He wanted to say it out loud, hear it over and over. Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan. Ryan, who he was in love with, who wasn't here and was half the world away.

"Ryan wants to come over," Kirsten continued.

"He wants to come over?" Seth said stupidly.

"Yes, he's got some vacation to take from work and we've looked at the flights and we think he could maybe come and stay with you for a couple of days before you both fly home for Christmas."

Seth didn't like the sound of all the 'we's'.

"Have you all been planning this?" Seth asked, before he could help himself.

"Seth, no. Is that what you think? We - your father and I - want you and Ryan to fix this. Whatever it is that went wrong between the two of you, we want you to be friends again. Holidays are coming, Seth. I don't want to see my boys fighting."

Seth nodded slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We're not fighting, Mom."

"So, Ryan can come stay with you?" Kirsten asked him hopefully.

Seth lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. "Yep, Mom, Ryan can come and stay."

His mom told him she'd book flights and get back to him.

Seth put the cell back under his pillow and rubbed his forehead tiredly. "Ryan's coming to stay," he told Katie and Matt, and he leaned forward and put the movie back on.

He stared at the wall and wondered what it would be like to see Ryan again.

~*~

Ryan was due to arrive a couple of days before the Christmas vacation.

It gave Seth ten whole days to climb the walls.

He talked nineteen to the dozen about everything that wasn't Ryan, and finally Katie pushed him down onto the bed the day Ryan was due to arrive and told Seth to shut up.

Matt brought him a coffee from Costa and said, "You've turned weird, Seth. You've stopped being quiet."

Seth started to babble, extra-special Seth Cohen Newport style, and said something that sounded like this guy, my best friend, Ryan. He started talking about On the Road and a fire in a show home.

Matt and Katie looked at each other and said, "This is about Ryan, then."

Seth stared at them for a moment - as if it could be about anything else - and then laughed. Seth knew that he was self-involved, but he'd forgotten that the world didn't actually revolve around him. "Come on, let's go to the pub before I have to go to the station to meet Ryan."

They went to the pub opposite the Student Union and drank shots of tequila and double vodkas before stumbling to the taxi rank and hailing a cab to go to the train station to meet Ryan. Seth was supposed to be going by himself, but Seth had spent almost two weeks trying not to think about Ryan. Now Ryan was almost here and Seth was getting wasted in preparation.

They got to the train station with a couple of minutes to go before Ryan's train was due. Seth had been worried that Ryan might be concerned if no one was there to meet him, standing all alone on a deserted platform in the middle of a field with nothing but an air base to look at, but when they got to the platform they realized that Ryan's train was running a few minutes late.

Katie rubbed her cold hands together and said, "Good. Now we can sit inside and wait for his train."

Except Ryan's train was the last of the night and everything was all locked up. The station was deserted, apart from one lonely guard - well wrapped up against the cold - leaning against the wall outside the closed waiting room smoking a cigarette and ignoring all of the no-smoking signs.

Seth started to feel ill.

Katie and Matt eyed each other, and then him. Seth pretended not to notice.

Seth wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and kicked at the wall with his toe of his converse. It was getting colder, his breath coming in white huffs of air. He stamped his feet and suddenly Seth was far too drunk to deal with any of this.

"I don't feel well," he said, "too much blood in my alcohol system."

Katie rubbed his shoulder sympathetically. "Maybe you're coming down with something," she said, "You've only drunk the same amount as us and we're fine."

Seth swallowed thickly and thought of the quarter bottle of vodka (ready mixed with tonic, the devils) in his jacket pocket. Sure he'd only drunk the same amount as Katie and Matt.

The train pulled in and Ryan was one of the only passengers getting down onto the platform; he climbed out behind an old woman and her husband. He stood on the platform, huddled in a heavy coat and clutching his hold-all.

Seth saw him and choked on his own breath, coughing until his eyes watered. He leaned against the wall.

Then Ryan was in front of him, saying "Seth?" and "Are you okay?" and touching his shoulder.

Seth batted his hand away. "I'm fine," he said. Then, "It's good to see you, Ry."

Ryan nodded. "You too."

Then Ryan did a very un-Ryan-ly thing, and leaned in and hugged Seth. Ryan sometimes did extra cool hugs, like one arm slung across Seth's shoulder and holding tight for a moment, or a quick manly pat on the back, but this was an actual hug. With actual hugging.

Seth hugged him back tightly. Ryan smelled like Ryan, like California and Newport and home and his mom and dad. He breathed in.

Ryan was shaking hands with Matt when Seth vomited down the side of the ticket office.

Ryan dropped his bag and took Seth's elbow. "How much have you had to drink, Seth?" he asked, after a moment.

Seth looked at him through pink eyes and said, "Not enough to change anything," and threw up again.

Ryan swallowed and watched as Katie rubbed the back of Seth's neck until Seth felt well enough to stand.

"Are you okay, Seth?" Matt asked, after a moment.

"Sure," Seth said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Katie sighed. "We should get you back home."

In the cab, Seth fell asleep on Katie's shoulder and drooled on her coat.

When they got back to their hall, Matt helped Seth upstairs and Katie unlocked Seth's door. Ryan followed slowly after them.

Seth kicked the blow-up air bed he'd bought for Ryan to sleep on for the next couple of days. He stumbled forwards, collapsing on his bed and trying to breathe through his pillow. He felt ill.

Through the muffle of his brain, he heard Katie say, "We only had a few drinks, not enough for him to be like this."

Seth laughed, thinking of the bottle in his coat pocket.

Matt said tiredly, "He must have been doubling up whenever he went to the bar."

"Does he often get like this?" Ryan asked, quietly.

"No," Katie said. "Hardly ever."

"He was worked up over you arriving," Matt said, and Seth suddenly wanted another drink. "There's a bin under his desk," he said, "you know. If he needs to be sick."

There was a long pause. Seth concentrated on breathing into the pillow. Ryan said, "It's okay. I know what to do with drunk people."

Seth wanted Ryan never to have seen him like this, because now Seth was just like Ryan's mom and his mom and Trey and Marissa and Eddie and every other person Ryan came near. Everything Ryan touched turned to drink, and now Seth had gone and done this.

Seth rolled over and said, "I'm not like Mom."

Ryan just said, "Seth," and looked at him with those big eyes of his.

Seth wanted to say, you left me, you dick. You left me way before I left you and moved half way around the world. You left me months before that and I hated it that whole time because I'm lonely when I'm not with you. Instead he said, "I feel sick," and rolled over and threw up into the trash can.

Ryan said, "Seth," again, but Seth was done thinking. He rolled over to face the wall and fell asleep.

~*~

Seth woke up early the following morning. His head was pounding and his humiliation felt complete, so he did what he always wanted to do when he was hungover and embarrassed - he stumbled to his feet, taking his comforter and his cellphone with him, and slid out the door. He took refuge at the very top of the hall, on the attic floor where he wouldn't disturb anyone. Let alone Ryan.

He called Summer from his cellphone, trying not to think of Ryan still sleeping, curled up in a sleeping bag and a tartan blanket of Katie's. Seth hadn't even stayed awake long enough to see if Ryan was hungry and wanted a pizza or needed to know where the bathroom was. He put his head in his hands and waited for Summer to answer.

She was with people, Seth could tell from the noise in the background. "You're busy, I'll- I'll go."

"Don't be a dumbass, Cohen, I'm just going outside."

Seth pinched the bridge of his nose. "I love you," he said, tiredly.

Summer snorted. "What the hell has gotten into you?"

Seth stayed quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "Ryan's here. I was drunk and I threw up at the train station - twice - and then they brought me home and I threw up again. They were talking about how I managed to get so drunk but I didn't tell them about the bottle I had in my coat pocket, and all I could think was that I wasn't like everybody else, I wasn't like my mom and Ryan's mom and Marissa and everyone else who's been around Ryan and turned to drink. I was just- I couldn't do it, I couldn't stand up and look at him and not tell him that I missed him and that he left me, because I've always got to be careful what I say with Ryan. Everything always comes out of my head, it always does, but it can't with Ryan. It just can't."

Summer didn't say anything.

"Summer?" Seth said finally, when he couldn't think of anything else to say and Summer still hadn't said anything.

Seth had forgotten that no one knew Seth Cohen better than Summer, apart from maybe Ryan. But that was sort of the point.

She said, "I sort of thought you were still in love with me," and she sounded sad.

Seth didn't say anything, which would have been kind of a first with Seth except for the fact that this had been Seth Cohen for months now, and the verbal diarrhea had kind of gotten away from him. He'd sort of thought he was still in love with Summer too for a while, and maybe he was, maybe he always would because Summer was Summer and she once dressed up as Wonder Woman and he couldn't ever imagine her not being around. "Summer, I-" he started.

Summer stopped him. "You're in love with Ryan. That's it. That's why you're there. I couldn't figure it out before."

Seth tried to explain that that wasn't it; that he wasn't in love with Ryan. That that wasn't why he'd had to leave.

"Seth," Summer said. "Stop it."

Seth shook his head. "It's not the only reason I left." He rubbed his forehead tiredly and tried to explain. "Ryan's my best friend. He's my savior, I guess, if you like. He changed everything for me and he changed me and my parents want him in our family. Ryan loves girls and I love girls and there was you and I still love you, but I sort of love boys too, and sometimes I kind of want to just, maybe, touch him and see what it would be like just to kiss him. But that isn't love. I don't love him like I loved you. It's just me being weird. He changed Newport for me and without Ryan, Newport's nothing. I was lonely before he turned up, and I was lonely after he didn't have time for me anymore, but the bit in the middle was the best thing that ever happened to me. And you were part of that best bit, Summer."

There was a long moment. Summer said, "You've got it bad, Cohen." She sounded sad and Seth hated himself for making her.

"I haven't," he tried to tell her. "It's me, it's not Ryan. It's Newport. It was everything going wrong and me being a total loser before Ryan came along. You didn't even know who I was, Sum. You all used to ignore me in the hallways. I could go a whole summer vacation without speaking to another kid. But then Ryan came along and people started to be friends with me. Because of him. He changed everything. I was a loser."

"Seth." Summer said, "You're not a loser. Okay, actually, you kind of are, but you're my loser and that makes you sorta cool, okay, dumbass?" And then she sort of got angry, back to the Summer that Seth knew better, "And what's with all the self-loathing, Cohen? I get enough of that from Marissa."

"I'm hungover as fuck." Seth told her. "Being maudlin comes with the job."

"Yeah. Well. Being maudlin doesn't suit you." She paused. "But maybe liking Ryan sort of does."

Seth smiled. "I've left him all alone. He'll probably think I've bolted."

"Go and apologize for being a dick, Cohen."

Seth missed her. He told her.

Summer sighed. "I miss you too. Even if you've been gay for Ryan all this time and I totally missed it."

"Summer, I'm not gay for Ry-"

"Shut up, Seth. You totally are." She sighed down the phone. "Go and apologize for being such a fucking idiot last night. Let me go to sleep."

"Are you with Zach?" Seth asked.

"Yep." Summer laughed. "At least now he can stop being jealous of you."

"Summer-"

"Seth. Just. Stop thinking. Okay? Oh. And I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"You know. Not hanging out with you before Ryan arrived. Letting things get that bad for you."

Seth swallowed. "I love you."

There was a pause, and Summer said, "I kinda love you too, Cohen." And she hung up.

Seth rubbed his forehead, picked up his comforter and headed back downstairs. He slid into his room, trying not to wake Ryan who was stretched across the airbed in the middle of Seth's floor. He got his wash bag and his towel and was out of the door without making too much noise, which was pretty much the Seth equivalent of quiet as a mouse.

He spent fifteen minutes in the shower feeling sick and leaning against the wall trying to figure out how this whole mess was going to sort itself out. Finally, more awake, he washed and shaved and went back to his room wearing a pair of track pants, his wrestling t-shirt (hustle, loyalty, respect) and a hoodie he wore instead of a robe.

Ryan was awake, one arm underneath his head, watching the door.

Seth closed the door and flicked the latch locked. "Hey," he said.

"Hey."

"You okay?" Seth asked finally.

Ryan rubbed his eyes awake. "I should be asking you that. You feeling okay this morning?"

Seth sniffed. "Feeling about as sick as I deserve. Malevolent monkeys are playing drums in my head."

Ryan nodded. "Damn those malevolent monkeys."

Seth laughed and lay down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. After a moment, he said, "I'm sorry about last night."

Ryan shrugged, Matt's borrowed sleeping bag crinkling and shrugging with him. "It's okay."

It clearly wasn't okay, but Seth wasn't in any sort of mood to point that out. He sighed and rolled over onto his side, watching Ryan. He asked about the flight over and if Ryan had gotten any free peanuts and whether he'd saved any for Seth (who always loved airplane peanuts) and what movies they were showing and if Ryan had liked Edinburgh.

Ryan rummaged in his backpack for a pack of peanuts and passed them to Seth. "Here," he said. "I saved you some. And I was only in Edinburgh for an hour, and most of that was the bus from the airport."

Seth knew perfectly well that this was the first time Ryan had left the States, and it was the longest flight he'd ever made and he'd done it - the whole thing - to come and see Seth. He didn't know how to say that though, or ask why, so he just asked stupid questions about airport security and something about making a playlist for his iPod to take into the cabin with him on the flight back to Newport (Seth almost called it home there for a second, but he found himself stumbling over the words at the last moment) and about the movies because they were probably going to be the same on the way back over, and Seth thought he'd better stock up on DVDs to watch on his laptop.

Ryan rolled over. "Jennifer Lopez should stick to making music."

"I thought non-sequitors were my thing." Seth grinned.

"The lady next to me lent me some earbuds. We watched Maid in Manhattan on her DVD player. I didn't know how to ask her to stop."

Seth laughed. "Out of Sight, dude. That was a good film."

Ryan hm-hmmed non-committedly, which was probably Ryan-speak for I haven't seen it. Seth didn't press it.

"How's the job?" Seth asked after a moment.

Ryan ran his fingers through his hair. "Fine, yeah. Everything's good."

Seth thought that might be a little short, even for Ryan. "Okay. Good." And that was probably a little short for Seth. Still. Maybe they'd both changed.

"You should get dressed," Ryan said, leaning back on his pillow - a rolled up sweater, Seth realized, and he figured he should probably go out and buy an extra pillow today. "It's cold and I need a shower."

"You know where the bathroom is, right?" Seth said, and he wondered how and when things got so awkward between the two of them.

Seth put on a sweater and jeans and buried his face in the pillow whilst he waited for Ryan to finish in the shower. Seth's hangovers weren't usually that awful, but this morning seemed to be an exception. He had a headache and those monkeys were still banging drums in his head and he wanted to go to sleep - but his brain wouldn't stop and he couldn't quite believe that Ryan was actually here. Real life seemed to be intruding onto his fantasy life, and Seth didn't much like that. Or maybe he liked it too much. Seth realized that if he could figure that out then life would probably be a whole lot simpler.

Once Ryan was back from the shower - all damp hair and warm skin - Seth finally took a look at his watch and realized they'd slept so late they'd missed hall food, so he took them both off for a late lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe rip-off. They ended up sitting under some early-nineties British pop star's orange velvet suit and Seth banged his head on some eighties low-fi rocker's scruffy guitar. They had burgers and fries and Seth hoovered three large Cokes while Ryan barely finished one. Still, Ryan probably wasn't as dehydrated as Seth, what with the alcohol and the vomiting and whatever.

Seth was on caffeine overload and ended up talking about Katie and Matt and how they were his best friends here. He talked about going to the Student Union on Friday nights and walking on the beach on Sunday afternoons and happy hour in the pub on Thursday evenings. He hushed his voice appropriately and said he'd been to the rugby at Murrayfield to see Wales beat Scotland with Katie and her friends. He tried to explain some of the rules to Ryan, about tries and running with the ball and throwing backwards. Ryan looked baffled, although Seth thought that was probably more likely to be due to the realization that Seth was explaining the rules of a sport to Ryan. He tried not to, but he ended up talking about when Summer came to stay and how they'd ended up at a bonfire on the beach and how there were no fights and no one got shot. He talked about the meal with Summer's dad and how it wasn't as excruciating as when they were dating, but it still rated as one of his top five worst evenings ever.

He didn't take a breath until Ryan just leant over the table and said, "Seth. Shut up."

Seth stopped talking mid-sentence and wondered what Katie and Matt would make of the new wind-up-and-go Seth Cohen. He wondered what Ryan would make of Seth's new, quieter self.

He paid for the meal with his visa card and they walked down to the beach, sitting on the rocks and looking out to sea. Seth pulled his coat tight around him and fished around in his pocket for his gloves. He'd lent Ryan one of his hats, a black beanie with a skate logo on the front.

Ryan still looked cold. He huddled into his jacket, pulling up the collar.

"We'll have to get you a scarf," Seth said, vaguely amused.

"Yeah. Maybe."

Seth nodded. "Definitely. It's pretty warm today." It wasn't, but Seth wanted Ryan to think he was surviving.

"Do you really like it here, Seth?" Ryan asked after a minute of staring into the middle distance.

Seth kicked at the rock aimlessly with the toe of his sneaker. "Does it look much like Orange County?"

"Not much." Ryan admitted.

Seth shrugged. "Yeah."

"Seth-"

"Ryan. I'm doing okay."

Ryan looked at him. "You were drunk last night. Really drunk."

"Everybody drinks." Seth realized that that was the wrong thing to say right about the moment he started to speak, but there wasn't much he could do to stop it coming out. "Ry-"

Ryan raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Me drinking that much. It doesn't happen very often. Check with Katie and Matt. I'm not taking after Mom. I couldn't."

Ryan swallowed and let out a shaky breath. "You scared me."

Seth remembered the Vegas night right after Ryan had moved in with them, when his mom had drunk too much and collapsed in front of everyone. He remembered Ryan's steadfast endurance. His skin burnt. "I didn't mean to. I'm sorry, Ry."

"Why did you do it?" Ryan asked, burying his hands in his coat pockets. "How? Even your friends didn't know how you managed to do it."

Seth didn't want to talk about this. "I was a bottle of vodka ahead of them," Seth admitted, finally. "They didn't know about it."

"But why, Seth?"

"Cos you were coming, and I didn't know what to do." He shrugged. "I figured it'd be harder to fuck everything up if I was drunk."

Ryan managed a smile. "Seth-logic stinks."

"Yeah."

Ryan watched the water lap across the sand and didn't say anything.

Seth fiddled with the button on his jacket and wondered whether he'd already said too much.

~*~

On the way back from the beach, they went via the Edinburgh Wool Mill and bought Ryan a black wool scarf and a pair of gloves. He said he was fine wearing Seth's hat and didn't need another. Seth didn't push it.

They spent the rest of the afternoon in Matt's room playing Playstation, leaning up against the edge of the bed and going old school and playing Mario Kart. Katie joined them after her class, and they had competition after competition, fighting over the controllers and Seth elbowing Ryan out of the way and Katie blocking the screen in order to finish first.

"You fight dirty, Cohen." Katie said, in surprise, after Seth had executed a particularly cool elbow jab to both Ryan and Matt in order to finish first.

Seth grinned.

Ryan nodded. "You guys ever seen him play The Sims? He's much more competitive in that, his houses always have to be the best, the best decorated, his sims always have to be most successful-"

"Dude." Seth said in mock-surprise. "That was supposed to be our secret. And like you can talk. You spend the whole time building houses and never actually playing the game."

Ryan laughed. "There are no secrets. Only future ammunition."

Seth narrowed his eyes. "Is this going to be war?" he asked.

"He's watched A Cinderella Story at least five times." Ryan told them, licking his lips and grinning.

Matt wrinkled his nose. "Is that the one with Russell Crowe?"

Katie snorted. "It's the one with Chad Michael Murray and Hilary Duff."

Seth put his head in his hands. "I'm never telling you anything ever again."

Ryan elbowed him. "It's good to see you, man."

Seth elbowed him back. He didn't know how to tell Ryan that having him here was just about the best thing ever because Seth without Ryan was just Seth, and nobody wanted just Seth. Not when they could have Seth and Ryan. Or something. Instead, he just grinned and said, "Ryan used to be in musicals."

Ryan shook his head. "You'll pay."

Seth ruffled Ryan's hair. "Missed you too, dude."

~*~

Seth had a paper due in on the last day of term, so the following afternoon he signed Ryan into the library and they ended up sitting at a desk in the far corner of the second floor. Ryan read On the Road at Seth's behest and listened to a mix playlist on Seth's iPod of British indie music whilst Seth tried to read about tenth century church reform.

Two hours in, Seth was climbing the walls in boredom and Ryan wouldn't stop reading.

"Come on, let's just go." Seth said.

"Finish your paper," Ryan told him.

"Haven't started it yet," Seth grumbled. He had, but that wasn't the point. He was bored and wanted to go.

"Sooner you start, sooner it'll be done." Ryan said, sounding eerily like Seth's mom.

Seth elbowed him. "Shut up."

"Get on with it." Ryan said, and he smiled.

Something warm uncurled itself in Seth's belly, and he found himself grinning goofily back.

Ryan watched him for a moment. His eyes were soft. "Do your paper, Seth."

"Essay, Ryan. When in Rome."

"Essay, paper. Do it."

Seth did it.

~*~

Two hours later and Ryan was on his third trip through Seth's indie playlist and was clearly getting bored. Waving Jack Kerouac at Seth, he said, "We should do this. Drive cross country."

Seth saved his document and stared in disgust at his laptop. His essay was almost done, a couple hundred more words and that should be it. "Really?"

"Sure. It'd be cool. We could do it in the summer, stay in motels and see the country."

"Just the two of us?"

"Why not?" Ryan stole a piece of Seth's notebook to use as a bookmark. "If you want to, that is."

"If I want to? Dude. Sure I do." Seth grinned helplessly.

Ryan grinned back. "Good." And he disappeared off to find atlases on the library search engine. Whilst Seth was hastily putting the finishing touches on what could only be an average essay at best, Ryan was photocopying maps of states using Seth's photocopying card. By the time Seth was finished, Ryan had a huge pile of papers and was sliding them into Seth's laptop bag to keep them flat.

Seth clapped Ryan on the back. "Dude, this is going to be the best summer ever."

Ryan grinned at him. "Yeah."

~*~

Back in Seth's room, they spread the maps across Seth's floor and started to Google for towns and flicked through their civic websites on Seth's laptop. Ryan took a red pen and circled places he wanted to visit; Seth took a green pen.

By the time they were finished, the photocopied pages were covered in red and green circles and stars. Seth laughed. "We're gonna need more than a summer."

Ryan grinned, leaning back against Seth's bed. "Yep. Months and months of Seth and Ryan time at this rate."

Seth wriggled. "Seth and Ryan time? You missed that?"

Ryan rolled his eyes. "Which part of you're my best friend, Seth, don't you get?"

Seth thought, the part where you miss Ryan and Seth time? He leaned over to his laptop and skipped to the next song, which to his embarrassment was Never Forget by Take That - part of the ever growing mountain of music on his laptop that he wouldn't have even given headspace to if he'd still been back in Newport. It was part of Katie and Matt doing their level best to educate him and bring him up to date with modern British culture - and considering that Take That were apparently having some kind of resurgence in popularity after a decade broken up, it seemed only proper that Seth should have at least some of their tracks in his collection, especially as Take That were regulars at the Student Union on a Friday night and it was in Seth's best interest to know exactly who the DJ was playing.

Seth leaned back against his bed. His knee touched Ryan's. "I missed it," he started, "us. Ryan and Seth time. It was kind of a staple part of my diet, but I sort of thought you wouldn't miss it, cos, you know, you kind of had a life before you met me."

Ryan narrowed his eyes. "Seth-"

"You had other stuff going on. I didn't."

Ryan nudged Seth's laptop with his toe. "Didn't mean I didn't miss us hanging out though."

Seth sighed. "Sometimes I think being friends is just like being in The Sims. You know it's been a couple of weeks and the numbers keep on ticking down and one of these days the heart is going to go, and then the little smiley face goes and you're just left with ringing them up and talking in Simlish about the weather because one of these days the counter is going to hit zero and then what happens?"

Ryan wrinkled his nose. "I'm sorry I didn't email you."

"I didn't email you either." Seth said. He nudged Ryan's knee with his own again. They were talking in circles, and Seth was sick of it. He wanted to say that he just didn't know what to say, that he didn't know how to make this better. He didn't know how to say that he was having the most fantastic time here without making it sound like he was having a fantastic time without Ryan. He didn't know how to explain why he left, why he'd wanted to leave, why everything got so bad that he had to leave because he couldn't stay. How to make it sound like he had to leave without making it sound like he had to leave Ryan. How he had to move on because there was nothing for him in Newport anymore, nothing for him in California anymore, but how moving on was hard if the person you valued the most was back there, living their own life. Not needing you. He wanted to say it all, to get it all out there and dealt with. Instead, he said, "I wanted to, I just didn't know what to say."

Ryan looked at him. "Me neither."

His laptop started to play How Good it Can Be by The 88.

There was so much he wanted to say. He wanted to kiss Ryan so badly it hurt. He moved his knee away and fiddled with his laptop, changing the song to something by Fiona Apple. No one would accidentally kiss their best friend to the dulcet tones of Fiona Apple. He leaned back and said, "How about the summer after next we do Europe? We could backpack."

Ryan paused for a moment and then said, "Would we have to do some weird-ass Ernest Hemmingway trail?"

Seth mused. "Probably. But we could go places Ernest Hemmingway never went. I like the idea of Croatia."

"Croatia?"

"Yeah, we could island hop. Matt showed me his pictures."

Ryan grinned. "Sure. It'd be fun."

Seth smiled and traced a pattern onto the carpet, suddenly warm.

~*~

Time passed too quickly. They planned their summer in intricate detail, factoring in local attractions and making timetables and getting more maps. They went to the bookstore (bookshop Katie and Matt said, exasperatedly, watching the two of them in barely veiled amusement) and bought guides to the USA and started adding pencil marks and tabs and their own bookmarks.

"We're really doing this, huh?" Seth asked.

Ryan nudged him and smiled. "We really are."

on to part three.