Part Three
Oct. 13th, 2003 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hackthis_archiveTelegraph Avenue I: Come Pick Me Up
Telegraph Avenue II: The Boy with the Thorn in His Side
Telegraph Avenue III: You Got Me
Seth considered himself a reluctant morning person. He could get up for the things he couldn’t do without: sailing, Physics labs, tickets for Paul Weller. Left to his own devices, however, he would get up whenever he fell out of bed. Sometimes not even then, depending on where he’d left his sneakers the night before.
The morning after the night before, however, Seth woke up at some god-awful hour wracked by a sense of guilt that was second only to his hunger pains. Naturally, he had no intention of examining the guilt too closely since he hadn’t done anything wrong. He was single; Jamie was single. He had wanted it; Jamie had… pretty much set Seth’s brain on fire. Plus, Jamie was hot, and he had been coming on to Seth like a drunken hooker. Not that Seth had any experience with drunken hookers or had even noticed until Jamie had drawn him a diagram, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was that it was Friday morning, which meant that Seth didn’t have class, and he was wasting a perfectly good sleeping opportunity by being *awake*. There was no reason for him not to go back to sleep until the eleven a.m. Jerry Springer. And yet, he found himself sitting on the edge of his bed, scratching at his bare chest, and trying to figure out what the hell people did when they were awake at eight in the morning on a Friday.
Of course, sometimes Seth also wondered what the hell he’d done before college, and then he remembered Newport and Summer, high school and Ryan.
Eventually, he decided the proper course of action would require cereal and cartoons and possibly camping out on the sofa.
When he got to his feet, his knees crackled and his neck popped. Seth was tempted to see if he could make his elbows snap or something, because then he could be like a box of Rice Krispies. If he mentioned that to Ryan, he would probably shake his head and chuckle before going back to his books. Jamie might laugh a lot though, and Seth paused at the door when he realized that he’d actually wondered how Jamie would respond to something he’d done. He hadn’t done that with anyone besides Ryan or Summer since high school.
His stomach gurgled, again, and Seth shook his head. Grabbing an old gray hoodie from behind his door, he opened said door and stepped directly into the living room.
The apartment wasn’t the Four Seasons, but both he and Ryan had their own rooms, and there was a kitchen area. This was a vast improvement over their freshman dorm where every time someone knocked on the door, Seth hid the contraband hotplate under the bed because of his R.A. paranoia.
Seth rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and paused deliberately when he realized that Ryan was stretched out exactly where he’d planned on taking up residence for the morning. It wasn’t that Ryan was in his space as much as that it was Ryan, period.
Seth grinned. “I see the reports of your demise are greatly exaggerated,” he said as he staggered over to the sofa and dropped down on the arm.
The sofa poked Seth in a place he didn’t really want to be poked at that time, and he glanced at the television briefly. He pulled on the hoodie he’d been clutching in his hand as Ryan smirked around the mouth of cereal he was currently chewing.
“You’re the only guy I know who won’t talk with his mouth full,” Seth said, pushing Ryan’s feet away so he could sit on the sofa. For once, he didn’t flinch at sitting on the mystery stain, probably because he was still half-asleep. He snorted when Ryan rearranged his legs across Seth’s lap, but didn’t bother to push them away. Instead, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the sofa.
“Some of us don’t think that college is a chance to regress to infancy,” Ryan mocked, finally.
Seth cracked open one eye. “Somebody paid attention in their Psych class last year.”
“Somebody else hasn’t even been going to his *this* year.”
“I missed one class,” Seth protested.
“What about that class last Tuesday?”
“Dude, that was a poetry class. You’re supposed to miss those so you can go write haikus about redwoods and death by bees.”
Ryan snorted. “I don’t think Sylvia Plath would agree with you.”
“You do remember Sylvia stuck her head in a gas oven, right? I don’t really think she would be considered a good role model for kids these days.” Seth cracked open his other eye and turned to Ryan, who was fixing him with a wry grin over his bowl of cereal.
“All right. Lord Byron?”
“A crackhead who died of a cold.”
“Shelly?”
“His wife wrote Frankenstein, Ryan. She was either a Lex Luthor-wannabe, a born-again Christian or a necrophiliac. Or all three.”
Ryan tried not to laugh. “All right, English major. What about that book I saw you with the other day? Rimbaud?”
Seth sat up rigidly, and Ryan’s feet off Seth’s lap with a thump. “Dude, Rimbaud was practically River Phoenix in ‘My Own Private Idaho.’ Only crazier. He hooked up with Paul Verlaine and messed Verlaine's head up, then he left him and then Verlaine tried to kill him and *then* Rimbaud left him for like the fiftieth time, but only after he got sent to jail. Think like Angelina and Billy Bob, only without the blood vials.”
Ryan opened his mouth but nothing came out. Seth took a deep breath, exhaled, slumped back into the cushions and pointedly turned to the cartoon on television. There was absolutely no reason for him to be twitching as much as he was, but apparently Ryan had touched a nerve Seth hadn’t even known existed.
“Sorry, dude,” he said to the television after several silence filled seconds. “The whole story just seemed really messed up when I read about it. I mean, you try to devote your life to somebody and they turn around and treat you like shit. ”
He turned back to Ryan who was clutching his cereal bowl very tightly. His eyes were wary, and mentally Seth beat himself about the head with a rolled-up comic book. He was on edge about Jamie so he was taking it out on somebody else. Sometimes his skills left a lot to be desired.
“Sorry, Ry,” he repeated, turning his body so that he could look Ryan in the eye. “Bad night, and I have a paper for Creative Writing that, you know, I haven’t done, because procrastination is indeed my bitch. And okay, you’re right about the poetry class. I should go, but dude, it’s so boring Gandhi would fall asleep.”
Ryan nodded, but still didn’t say anything. Seth sighed. All that moping he’d been doing about not seeing Ryan, and this is what he did when they were finally together. No wonder the guy was always MIA.
“I see that, yet again, I have impressed you with my foot swallowing skills. Would the new Gotham Knights erase this from your mafia-like memory?”
Ryan’s lips twitched. “Are you trying to bribe me?”
“Hell, yes. Is it working?”
This time Ryan smiled. “You don’t have to give me stuff.”
“I know, but who else can I buy stuff for?” Seth thought briefly of Jamie, but shook it off. This wasn’t about Jamie. This was about he and Ryan.
“You used to have a girlfriend,” Ryan pointed out. “Speaking of Summer, she left you a voicemail.”
Seth groaned and threw his arm across his eyes. “You break up with somebody and still can’t get rid of them.”
“That’s what you get, *Sid*,” Ryan said, poking Seth in the ribs.
Seth’s laugh was muffled in the sleeve of his hoodie. “You’re a funny man, Ryan Atwood. You’re wasting time in college, SNL would pimp you like Adam Sandler.”
Ryan was quiet for several seconds but Seth could hear him chewing. Froot Loops was a very loud cereal. He poked Seth again and Seth lifted his arm away from his eyes and looked down. “You’re poking me with your *foot*? Dude, that is so unhygienic.”
Ryan laughed. “You’re calling *me* unhygienic? When was the last time you actually washed some dishes around here?”
Seth nodded towards the bowl Ryan was setting down on the coffee table. “Why would I need to do dishes when all the nourishment I require can be delivered by Domino’s?” Rolling out of his slump, Seth picked up Ryan’s recently emptied bowl and began pouring himself a new bowl of cereal.
“Besides,” he said taking the spoon out of the bowl, “you eat cereal so there’s always at least one clean bowl in the house.”
Seth topped off the bowl of cereal and then carefully added as little milk as possible. “You didn’t put this on your nose, did you?” he asked, waving the spoon around before he dug in using the recycled bowl and spoon.
“Okay, that’s just gross,” Ryan said as Seth began eating heartily.
Seth happily ignored him.
After pointedly prodding Seth with his foot again, Ryan grabbed the remote control from underneath the Uniform Architecture text on the coffee table, and began channel surfing. He stopped on the The Golden Girls.
“I knew there was a reason I liked you,” Seth said around a mouthful of cereal.
Ryan shook his head and slumped back in the sofa cushions. “I only turned it on because I know you like it.”
“Like I said, I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
When Ryan was silent, Seth glanced over and a smile played across his lips. Ryan was napping or sleeping or whatever. His eyes were closed, and he was curled up in the corner of the sofa; he seemed very peaceful.
Seth wondered if Ryan would still be so comfortable around him if he knew about Jamie. Seth had absolutely no reason to think that Ryan was homophobic. Considering all the times he’d stood up for Seth when people had made those kind of remarks about him, the likelihood was minimal, but it wasn’t as though they had ever talked about it. Seth couldn’t even figure out how to bring it up. He didn’t really think, “Hey, Ryan, I kissed a guy last night and liked it, does that bother you?” was the way to break the news.
“Huh?” he said when he realized Ryan’s eyes were open, and he was staring at him.
Ryan tugged on the gray hoodie Seth was wearing. “I said I wondered where that had gone.”
Seth looked down. That was right. This jacket didn’t belong to him. Huh. “Do you want it back?” he said, not making any move to take the hoodie off.
Ryan shook his head slightly. “Keep it,” he said closing his eyes again.
“Cool.”
Seth went back to watching the television for a bit. He hadn’t seen The Golden Girls in ages; it never seemed to get old. Sophia was a riot. She was like his grandpa, only male, and Sicilian.
He was just drinking the sugary dregs of his cereal when the phone rang, and he dropped the bowl. Thankfully it didn’t break, but Ryan woke up and Seth’s stomach grumbled again. This time he could only assume it was annoyance at the lack of a second serving.
Ryan answered the phone, and since he didn’t pass him the handset, Seth assumed it wasn’t Summer or his mom or Jamie.
Not that he was waiting for Jamie to call or anything, and he definitely didn’t eavesdrop on Ryan’s conversation. That much. From what he gathered though, somebody named Andy was building a tower of beer cans.
After Ryan hung-up, he turned back around and dragged his hand down his face as though thinking about something.
“A tower of beer cans as your first architectural achievement? Ryan, I at least expected something more practical, like a super-sized kegger,” Seth said.
Ryan looked up, confused.
Seth shook his head. “Your friend, Andy, the one building a tower of beer cans.”
Ryan blinked and then gave Seth a small smile. “Not quite, man. That was my TA from ‘Structural Integrity.’ He said we’re having a study session today at A&E for this exam on Wednesday. He wasn’t sure we were going to have it because not enough people had signed up.”
“Oh.” Seth couldn’t really think of much else to say. They’d only spent an hour together, but it had felt really nice. “I’d kind of been hoping we could hang out today,” he began.
Ryan nodded. “Me too, but I really need to go to this session.”
Seth bit his lip. This was college. This was not Do What Seth Wants All the Time. He just acted like it.
“Not a problem,” he said decisively. “You go and do your thing. Learn. Build buildings. Make me an Eiffel Tower out of beer cans anyway.”
Ryan got up from the sofa and picked up his Uniform Architecture text. “We’ll hang out tonight and get dinner from that Chinese food place on University, okay?” he asked.
Seth choked on nothing at all.
“Sure,” he said, waving Ryan off when he leaned in to pound on Seth’s back. “Whatever you want.”
*
Once Ryan left for his study session, Seth poked around the house for a bit. He took a shower, considered doing some laundry, realized he still had enough cleanish boxers for another few days and tossed the idea aside. After another bowl of cereal, a few stale crackers, and a telenovela on Univision, he dug up his copy of A Season in Hell, grabbed his backpack and left for the library.
He hadn’t actually planned on going to Doe, but he couldn’t really think of anything else to do with his day. Normally he’d hang out with Tom or Maria at the Peet‘s Coffee on Arch, but he hadn’t been able to track them down and sitting around in the apartment was driving him crazy.
The sky was the usual East Bay gray when he left the apartment, and Seth whistled the Brady Bunch theme song as he walked up Telegraph to the campus. In typical Friday fashion there seemed to be tons of people hanging around and doing nothing, probably working off those Thursday night hangovers.
Doe was rather sparsely populated, and for once Seth had no problem finding someplace to study. He dropped his bag on an empty table, tripped over the garbage can next to the table, sat down hastily, and then spent several minutes scrounging around in the bottom of the bag for his iPod.
He had to pull out all his books and leaky pens to locate the earphones for the iPod and wound up getting blue ink all over his hands. He wiped his hands off on the back of The Bell Jar before scrolling through the mixes on the iPod. He‘d intended to listen to the ‘Slack or Study’ mix but chose ‘Ryan’s Educational Mix’ instead.
The opening bars of Nas’ ‘I Can’ had Seth bobbing his head as he searched for a blank page in his large spiral notebook. Grabbing a black ballpoint pen from his mess of items, Seth scrawled ‘Creative Crap’ on the top of the page and tried to figure out what the hell he was going to write his weekly missive on.
His Creative Writing TA forced them to turn in a three-to-five page paper every Monday on the subject of their choice, and normally Seth had absolutely no problem coming up with a topic that interested him. In the last six weeks he’d written about the Summer Breeze, his collection of Sandman comic books, his first week of college and several other random topics. He never tended to be intellectual in his scratchings, but the TA, Judy, had insisted that it was the “emotional creativity” that counted. She said she preferred random stories, and Seth was all about the random action.
The iPod clicked and whirred, and the Doves ’The Last Broadcast’ filled Seth’s ears with a strange sense of calm. Shifting in his seat, Seth leaned back and tapped his pen against his forehead. A thousand topics began to trickle down into his conscious, and Seth leaned forward and began scratching in earnest on the lined paper.
He had a full paragraph on Ryan before he stopped and re-read what he had written. Lines about Chino and the pier filled the top half of the page, and Seth scratched the entire thing out, dismissing it as too sappy and open. This was Creative Writing, not Psychology. There was no reason for Judy to know about how Ryan had come into Seth’s life. Seth wasn’t even sure if he could begin to describe the changes Ryan’s presence had brought anyway. He didn’t really think he wanted to try; something told him the written words wouldn’t sound right anyway.
Shaking his head, Seth glanced around and caught sight of Laura from his 20th Century lit class. He was tempted to go over and ask her if she’d managed to finish The Grapes of Wrath yet, but he dismissed the idea out of hand and looked back at the paragraph on his page.
Even in college everything seemed to come back to Ryan, eventually, and it really sucked a big one that they hadn’t been able to spend the day together. The Student Union was having a free screening of the Matrix Trilogy, and Seth had wanted to go. It didn’t matter that they already had the trilogy on DVD. Watching a movie on their tiny 23’ television was not the same as seeing it on the big screen.
The opening drums of The Stones ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ pulled Seth out of his reverie, and he glanced down at the notebook. He’d been doodling all over the page. There were some joined circles that looked like Ryan’s bike, a group of squiggles that could’ve been the Hawaiian islands, and Jamie’s name. More than once.
Seth made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, and glanced around guiltily. Nobody looked at him, but Seth felt rather obvious all the same. It wasn’t as though he’d been waiting around the house for Jamie to call. He *had* wanted to spend the day with Ryan, and thinking about Jamie and Ryan at the same time made his head hurt.
The more he thought about it, he didn’t really feel guilty about kissing Jamie; confused, yes, guilty, no. He did feel guilty that he hadn’t told Ryan about it though. It wasn’t cheating, obviously, because they weren’t involved, but the whole thing just seemed wrong. Like Seth was being disloyal.
Except that none of it mattered since Jamie hadn’t called. Hence there was no reason for Seth to feel guilty or disloyal or to worry about coming out to Ryan since there was nothing to talk about. Right.
Seth banged his head on his notebook with a thud, and this time when he lifted his head someone *was* looking at him.
He gave Laura a sheepish grin and waved. She gave him a nonplussed nod and went back to her books.
Shaking his head, Seth looked at the scribblings on the lined page. He needed to start again. Ripping the page out, Seth balled it up and tossed it in the general direction of the garbage can.
Power chords assailed Seth’s eardrums as Nirvana’s ‘In Bloom’ geared up, and he rubbed his pen against his lips thoughtfully. The lyrics bounced around his head as he thought about the morning he’d spent with Ryan. He kept coming back to his outburst regarding Rimbaud and Verlaine, at a loss to explain his passion over the messy ending of two guys who were long dead.
Clamping his pen between his teeth Seth scrabbled around for his copy of A Season in Hell, and flipped open to the first page. The opening line of the poem struck an inspirational note, and Seth shoved all his books back in his bag, grabbed his iPod and headed for the computer lab. He didn’t need to plan this paper out at all.
Ninety minutes later Seth had typed out four real pages on the lab iMac; he hadn't even had to mess with the fonts or the margins or anything.
The paper itself, was devoted to fantasy versus reality, and what it was like when he’d started dating Summer and realized that his ideal version of her would never match up to the reality.
Oddly enough the piece didn’t seem nearly as personal as his initial idea of writing about Ryan.
Satisfied that this effort was indeed worth an ‘A’ or at least a ‘B+’, Seth saved the paper on a spare disc and then opened up his e-mail to send himself a copy, just in case. He’d learned the hard way that discs had a way of getting lost, or dropped in the fountain, or broken when they were used to prop open heavy doors.
There were several new messages in Seth’s inbox, and the fact that the first one was from Jamie didn’t make Seth‘s heart race at all. Okay, maybe just a little bit. Or more than a little bit.
He clicked on the link not sure what to expect. Clearly this wasn’t a phone call.
---
From: jamie.miller@berkeley.edu
To: seth.cohen@berkeley.edu
Subject: Leftovers.
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2006 06:12:48 -0700 (PDT)
If you leave leftovers on the kitchen counter overnight, ants will come. True story.
Maybe McDonalds tonight instead? I also know a greasy hamburger joint by Rasputin, too. They serve their fries in buckets. We can get two: one to throw at random people and the other to eat.
J
---
Seth laughed. He and Ryan knew all about the Berkeley ants; they were clearly the most well fed ants in all of northern California.
Seth grinned at the computer monitor and then glanced around for no discernible reason. Again, no one was watching him. He wasn’t expecting anyone to be watching him either, and yet, he wanted people to see how happy he was. It was a good feeling, infectious, but not like when he had a cold and Ryan got sick, too.
Seth hit the reply key, but couldn’t quite figure out what to say. At any other time he would’ve been all over Jamie’s invitation, but he had plans with Ryan and there was no easy way to turn Jamie down.
Instead Seth went back to his in-box and clicked on the next e-mail, which was from Summer.
---
From: summer.roberts@ucla.edu
To: seth.cohen@berkeley.edu
Subject: Stop avoiding me.
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2006 11:03:37 -0700 (PDT)
Sid:
I know you got my message; don’t pretend you don’t listen to your answering machine. If you keep avoiding me bad things will happen to you, and I should know. Magrite, who reads my tarot cards, said someone in my life is about to have bad things happen to them. Call me, dork.
Love,
Summer
p.s. What do you want for your birthday?
---
Seth sighed, there was no escaping Summer when she wanted to talk to him. He already knew that she was probably trying to find out what Ryan was up to so that she could report back to Marissa. The Ex-Girlfriend Hotline never seemed to die as far as he could tell. Of course that wasn’t always a bad thing, because it worked both ways, and strangely enough, Seth had actually been genuinely happy for Marissa when she’d started dating Dave, the yuppie from Boston.
The real stumper in Summer’s e-mail was the birthday present thing. Seth hadn’t forgotten that he was turning 20; he just hadn’t been thinking about it that hard. However, he knew if he didn’t give her a specific idea of what he wanted, he’d wind up with more Gucci boxers, which he had to admit had not been a bad present the first two times. Of course the first time he’d received them they had been dating, and he’d known they were more for her than him. Last year they’d just been a joke, but they were incredibly comfortable, so who was he to complain?
He typed out a quick response promising to call and asking specifically for black boxers since the white ones always ended up gray in the wash.
The third message was from Ryan, and Seth knew before he clicked on it that it couldn’t possibly be good news since it hadn’t been there the day before.
---
From: ryan.atwood@berkeley.edu
To: seth.cohen@berkeley.edu
Subject: Dinner
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2006 16:12:21 -0700 (PDT)
Hey,
I don’t think I can make it. I have to cover for Max at work. Gina’s going to try and get in early from Walnut Creek, but I just don’t know yet.
Sorry. Maybe tomorrow?
Ryan
---
Seth sighed. It was always something. He knew that Ryan was on scholarship and that he worked hard for every penny he had so Seth shouldn’t have begrudged him that. Except sometimes he did, because Seth’s parents were more than willing to pay for anything Ryan wanted, and he was so fucking stubborn that he wouldn’t accept. College wasn’t supposed to be a time to worry about money, but this was just another case of Ryan being Ryan and as much as Seth hated it, he had to respect that.
Shaking his head, Seth typed out a quick response saying he would see Ryan at home. Then he went back to his in-box and clicked on Jamie’s e-mail again.
Apparently he was free for dinner after all.
-On to part four-
Notes: The title song is The Roots (feat. Jill Scott) ‘You Got Me’. It’s a damn good song. Just saying.
Also,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ethrosdemon and I went 20 rounds over this section, but she stuck with me and made it wayyyy better. This one is for you, babe, thanks.
*I’m sorry I’m behind on answering comments (out of town), but thanks to everyone who’s responded thus far. It means a lot to me that you’re enjoying the story.*
Telegraph Avenue II: The Boy with the Thorn in His Side
Seth considered himself a reluctant morning person. He could get up for the things he couldn’t do without: sailing, Physics labs, tickets for Paul Weller. Left to his own devices, however, he would get up whenever he fell out of bed. Sometimes not even then, depending on where he’d left his sneakers the night before.
The morning after the night before, however, Seth woke up at some god-awful hour wracked by a sense of guilt that was second only to his hunger pains. Naturally, he had no intention of examining the guilt too closely since he hadn’t done anything wrong. He was single; Jamie was single. He had wanted it; Jamie had… pretty much set Seth’s brain on fire. Plus, Jamie was hot, and he had been coming on to Seth like a drunken hooker. Not that Seth had any experience with drunken hookers or had even noticed until Jamie had drawn him a diagram, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was that it was Friday morning, which meant that Seth didn’t have class, and he was wasting a perfectly good sleeping opportunity by being *awake*. There was no reason for him not to go back to sleep until the eleven a.m. Jerry Springer. And yet, he found himself sitting on the edge of his bed, scratching at his bare chest, and trying to figure out what the hell people did when they were awake at eight in the morning on a Friday.
Of course, sometimes Seth also wondered what the hell he’d done before college, and then he remembered Newport and Summer, high school and Ryan.
Eventually, he decided the proper course of action would require cereal and cartoons and possibly camping out on the sofa.
When he got to his feet, his knees crackled and his neck popped. Seth was tempted to see if he could make his elbows snap or something, because then he could be like a box of Rice Krispies. If he mentioned that to Ryan, he would probably shake his head and chuckle before going back to his books. Jamie might laugh a lot though, and Seth paused at the door when he realized that he’d actually wondered how Jamie would respond to something he’d done. He hadn’t done that with anyone besides Ryan or Summer since high school.
His stomach gurgled, again, and Seth shook his head. Grabbing an old gray hoodie from behind his door, he opened said door and stepped directly into the living room.
The apartment wasn’t the Four Seasons, but both he and Ryan had their own rooms, and there was a kitchen area. This was a vast improvement over their freshman dorm where every time someone knocked on the door, Seth hid the contraband hotplate under the bed because of his R.A. paranoia.
Seth rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and paused deliberately when he realized that Ryan was stretched out exactly where he’d planned on taking up residence for the morning. It wasn’t that Ryan was in his space as much as that it was Ryan, period.
Seth grinned. “I see the reports of your demise are greatly exaggerated,” he said as he staggered over to the sofa and dropped down on the arm.
The sofa poked Seth in a place he didn’t really want to be poked at that time, and he glanced at the television briefly. He pulled on the hoodie he’d been clutching in his hand as Ryan smirked around the mouth of cereal he was currently chewing.
“You’re the only guy I know who won’t talk with his mouth full,” Seth said, pushing Ryan’s feet away so he could sit on the sofa. For once, he didn’t flinch at sitting on the mystery stain, probably because he was still half-asleep. He snorted when Ryan rearranged his legs across Seth’s lap, but didn’t bother to push them away. Instead, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the sofa.
“Some of us don’t think that college is a chance to regress to infancy,” Ryan mocked, finally.
Seth cracked open one eye. “Somebody paid attention in their Psych class last year.”
“Somebody else hasn’t even been going to his *this* year.”
“I missed one class,” Seth protested.
“What about that class last Tuesday?”
“Dude, that was a poetry class. You’re supposed to miss those so you can go write haikus about redwoods and death by bees.”
Ryan snorted. “I don’t think Sylvia Plath would agree with you.”
“You do remember Sylvia stuck her head in a gas oven, right? I don’t really think she would be considered a good role model for kids these days.” Seth cracked open his other eye and turned to Ryan, who was fixing him with a wry grin over his bowl of cereal.
“All right. Lord Byron?”
“A crackhead who died of a cold.”
“Shelly?”
“His wife wrote Frankenstein, Ryan. She was either a Lex Luthor-wannabe, a born-again Christian or a necrophiliac. Or all three.”
Ryan tried not to laugh. “All right, English major. What about that book I saw you with the other day? Rimbaud?”
Seth sat up rigidly, and Ryan’s feet off Seth’s lap with a thump. “Dude, Rimbaud was practically River Phoenix in ‘My Own Private Idaho.’ Only crazier. He hooked up with Paul Verlaine and messed Verlaine's head up, then he left him and then Verlaine tried to kill him and *then* Rimbaud left him for like the fiftieth time, but only after he got sent to jail. Think like Angelina and Billy Bob, only without the blood vials.”
Ryan opened his mouth but nothing came out. Seth took a deep breath, exhaled, slumped back into the cushions and pointedly turned to the cartoon on television. There was absolutely no reason for him to be twitching as much as he was, but apparently Ryan had touched a nerve Seth hadn’t even known existed.
“Sorry, dude,” he said to the television after several silence filled seconds. “The whole story just seemed really messed up when I read about it. I mean, you try to devote your life to somebody and they turn around and treat you like shit. ”
He turned back to Ryan who was clutching his cereal bowl very tightly. His eyes were wary, and mentally Seth beat himself about the head with a rolled-up comic book. He was on edge about Jamie so he was taking it out on somebody else. Sometimes his skills left a lot to be desired.
“Sorry, Ry,” he repeated, turning his body so that he could look Ryan in the eye. “Bad night, and I have a paper for Creative Writing that, you know, I haven’t done, because procrastination is indeed my bitch. And okay, you’re right about the poetry class. I should go, but dude, it’s so boring Gandhi would fall asleep.”
Ryan nodded, but still didn’t say anything. Seth sighed. All that moping he’d been doing about not seeing Ryan, and this is what he did when they were finally together. No wonder the guy was always MIA.
“I see that, yet again, I have impressed you with my foot swallowing skills. Would the new Gotham Knights erase this from your mafia-like memory?”
Ryan’s lips twitched. “Are you trying to bribe me?”
“Hell, yes. Is it working?”
This time Ryan smiled. “You don’t have to give me stuff.”
“I know, but who else can I buy stuff for?” Seth thought briefly of Jamie, but shook it off. This wasn’t about Jamie. This was about he and Ryan.
“You used to have a girlfriend,” Ryan pointed out. “Speaking of Summer, she left you a voicemail.”
Seth groaned and threw his arm across his eyes. “You break up with somebody and still can’t get rid of them.”
“That’s what you get, *Sid*,” Ryan said, poking Seth in the ribs.
Seth’s laugh was muffled in the sleeve of his hoodie. “You’re a funny man, Ryan Atwood. You’re wasting time in college, SNL would pimp you like Adam Sandler.”
Ryan was quiet for several seconds but Seth could hear him chewing. Froot Loops was a very loud cereal. He poked Seth again and Seth lifted his arm away from his eyes and looked down. “You’re poking me with your *foot*? Dude, that is so unhygienic.”
Ryan laughed. “You’re calling *me* unhygienic? When was the last time you actually washed some dishes around here?”
Seth nodded towards the bowl Ryan was setting down on the coffee table. “Why would I need to do dishes when all the nourishment I require can be delivered by Domino’s?” Rolling out of his slump, Seth picked up Ryan’s recently emptied bowl and began pouring himself a new bowl of cereal.
“Besides,” he said taking the spoon out of the bowl, “you eat cereal so there’s always at least one clean bowl in the house.”
Seth topped off the bowl of cereal and then carefully added as little milk as possible. “You didn’t put this on your nose, did you?” he asked, waving the spoon around before he dug in using the recycled bowl and spoon.
“Okay, that’s just gross,” Ryan said as Seth began eating heartily.
Seth happily ignored him.
After pointedly prodding Seth with his foot again, Ryan grabbed the remote control from underneath the Uniform Architecture text on the coffee table, and began channel surfing. He stopped on the The Golden Girls.
“I knew there was a reason I liked you,” Seth said around a mouthful of cereal.
Ryan shook his head and slumped back in the sofa cushions. “I only turned it on because I know you like it.”
“Like I said, I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
When Ryan was silent, Seth glanced over and a smile played across his lips. Ryan was napping or sleeping or whatever. His eyes were closed, and he was curled up in the corner of the sofa; he seemed very peaceful.
Seth wondered if Ryan would still be so comfortable around him if he knew about Jamie. Seth had absolutely no reason to think that Ryan was homophobic. Considering all the times he’d stood up for Seth when people had made those kind of remarks about him, the likelihood was minimal, but it wasn’t as though they had ever talked about it. Seth couldn’t even figure out how to bring it up. He didn’t really think, “Hey, Ryan, I kissed a guy last night and liked it, does that bother you?” was the way to break the news.
“Huh?” he said when he realized Ryan’s eyes were open, and he was staring at him.
Ryan tugged on the gray hoodie Seth was wearing. “I said I wondered where that had gone.”
Seth looked down. That was right. This jacket didn’t belong to him. Huh. “Do you want it back?” he said, not making any move to take the hoodie off.
Ryan shook his head slightly. “Keep it,” he said closing his eyes again.
“Cool.”
Seth went back to watching the television for a bit. He hadn’t seen The Golden Girls in ages; it never seemed to get old. Sophia was a riot. She was like his grandpa, only male, and Sicilian.
He was just drinking the sugary dregs of his cereal when the phone rang, and he dropped the bowl. Thankfully it didn’t break, but Ryan woke up and Seth’s stomach grumbled again. This time he could only assume it was annoyance at the lack of a second serving.
Ryan answered the phone, and since he didn’t pass him the handset, Seth assumed it wasn’t Summer or his mom or Jamie.
Not that he was waiting for Jamie to call or anything, and he definitely didn’t eavesdrop on Ryan’s conversation. That much. From what he gathered though, somebody named Andy was building a tower of beer cans.
After Ryan hung-up, he turned back around and dragged his hand down his face as though thinking about something.
“A tower of beer cans as your first architectural achievement? Ryan, I at least expected something more practical, like a super-sized kegger,” Seth said.
Ryan looked up, confused.
Seth shook his head. “Your friend, Andy, the one building a tower of beer cans.”
Ryan blinked and then gave Seth a small smile. “Not quite, man. That was my TA from ‘Structural Integrity.’ He said we’re having a study session today at A&E for this exam on Wednesday. He wasn’t sure we were going to have it because not enough people had signed up.”
“Oh.” Seth couldn’t really think of much else to say. They’d only spent an hour together, but it had felt really nice. “I’d kind of been hoping we could hang out today,” he began.
Ryan nodded. “Me too, but I really need to go to this session.”
Seth bit his lip. This was college. This was not Do What Seth Wants All the Time. He just acted like it.
“Not a problem,” he said decisively. “You go and do your thing. Learn. Build buildings. Make me an Eiffel Tower out of beer cans anyway.”
Ryan got up from the sofa and picked up his Uniform Architecture text. “We’ll hang out tonight and get dinner from that Chinese food place on University, okay?” he asked.
Seth choked on nothing at all.
“Sure,” he said, waving Ryan off when he leaned in to pound on Seth’s back. “Whatever you want.”
Once Ryan left for his study session, Seth poked around the house for a bit. He took a shower, considered doing some laundry, realized he still had enough cleanish boxers for another few days and tossed the idea aside. After another bowl of cereal, a few stale crackers, and a telenovela on Univision, he dug up his copy of A Season in Hell, grabbed his backpack and left for the library.
He hadn’t actually planned on going to Doe, but he couldn’t really think of anything else to do with his day. Normally he’d hang out with Tom or Maria at the Peet‘s Coffee on Arch, but he hadn’t been able to track them down and sitting around in the apartment was driving him crazy.
The sky was the usual East Bay gray when he left the apartment, and Seth whistled the Brady Bunch theme song as he walked up Telegraph to the campus. In typical Friday fashion there seemed to be tons of people hanging around and doing nothing, probably working off those Thursday night hangovers.
Doe was rather sparsely populated, and for once Seth had no problem finding someplace to study. He dropped his bag on an empty table, tripped over the garbage can next to the table, sat down hastily, and then spent several minutes scrounging around in the bottom of the bag for his iPod.
He had to pull out all his books and leaky pens to locate the earphones for the iPod and wound up getting blue ink all over his hands. He wiped his hands off on the back of The Bell Jar before scrolling through the mixes on the iPod. He‘d intended to listen to the ‘Slack or Study’ mix but chose ‘Ryan’s Educational Mix’ instead.
The opening bars of Nas’ ‘I Can’ had Seth bobbing his head as he searched for a blank page in his large spiral notebook. Grabbing a black ballpoint pen from his mess of items, Seth scrawled ‘Creative Crap’ on the top of the page and tried to figure out what the hell he was going to write his weekly missive on.
His Creative Writing TA forced them to turn in a three-to-five page paper every Monday on the subject of their choice, and normally Seth had absolutely no problem coming up with a topic that interested him. In the last six weeks he’d written about the Summer Breeze, his collection of Sandman comic books, his first week of college and several other random topics. He never tended to be intellectual in his scratchings, but the TA, Judy, had insisted that it was the “emotional creativity” that counted. She said she preferred random stories, and Seth was all about the random action.
The iPod clicked and whirred, and the Doves ’The Last Broadcast’ filled Seth’s ears with a strange sense of calm. Shifting in his seat, Seth leaned back and tapped his pen against his forehead. A thousand topics began to trickle down into his conscious, and Seth leaned forward and began scratching in earnest on the lined paper.
He had a full paragraph on Ryan before he stopped and re-read what he had written. Lines about Chino and the pier filled the top half of the page, and Seth scratched the entire thing out, dismissing it as too sappy and open. This was Creative Writing, not Psychology. There was no reason for Judy to know about how Ryan had come into Seth’s life. Seth wasn’t even sure if he could begin to describe the changes Ryan’s presence had brought anyway. He didn’t really think he wanted to try; something told him the written words wouldn’t sound right anyway.
Shaking his head, Seth glanced around and caught sight of Laura from his 20th Century lit class. He was tempted to go over and ask her if she’d managed to finish The Grapes of Wrath yet, but he dismissed the idea out of hand and looked back at the paragraph on his page.
Even in college everything seemed to come back to Ryan, eventually, and it really sucked a big one that they hadn’t been able to spend the day together. The Student Union was having a free screening of the Matrix Trilogy, and Seth had wanted to go. It didn’t matter that they already had the trilogy on DVD. Watching a movie on their tiny 23’ television was not the same as seeing it on the big screen.
The opening drums of The Stones ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ pulled Seth out of his reverie, and he glanced down at the notebook. He’d been doodling all over the page. There were some joined circles that looked like Ryan’s bike, a group of squiggles that could’ve been the Hawaiian islands, and Jamie’s name. More than once.
Seth made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, and glanced around guiltily. Nobody looked at him, but Seth felt rather obvious all the same. It wasn’t as though he’d been waiting around the house for Jamie to call. He *had* wanted to spend the day with Ryan, and thinking about Jamie and Ryan at the same time made his head hurt.
The more he thought about it, he didn’t really feel guilty about kissing Jamie; confused, yes, guilty, no. He did feel guilty that he hadn’t told Ryan about it though. It wasn’t cheating, obviously, because they weren’t involved, but the whole thing just seemed wrong. Like Seth was being disloyal.
Except that none of it mattered since Jamie hadn’t called. Hence there was no reason for Seth to feel guilty or disloyal or to worry about coming out to Ryan since there was nothing to talk about. Right.
Seth banged his head on his notebook with a thud, and this time when he lifted his head someone *was* looking at him.
He gave Laura a sheepish grin and waved. She gave him a nonplussed nod and went back to her books.
Shaking his head, Seth looked at the scribblings on the lined page. He needed to start again. Ripping the page out, Seth balled it up and tossed it in the general direction of the garbage can.
Power chords assailed Seth’s eardrums as Nirvana’s ‘In Bloom’ geared up, and he rubbed his pen against his lips thoughtfully. The lyrics bounced around his head as he thought about the morning he’d spent with Ryan. He kept coming back to his outburst regarding Rimbaud and Verlaine, at a loss to explain his passion over the messy ending of two guys who were long dead.
Clamping his pen between his teeth Seth scrabbled around for his copy of A Season in Hell, and flipped open to the first page. The opening line of the poem struck an inspirational note, and Seth shoved all his books back in his bag, grabbed his iPod and headed for the computer lab. He didn’t need to plan this paper out at all.
Ninety minutes later Seth had typed out four real pages on the lab iMac; he hadn't even had to mess with the fonts or the margins or anything.
The paper itself, was devoted to fantasy versus reality, and what it was like when he’d started dating Summer and realized that his ideal version of her would never match up to the reality.
Oddly enough the piece didn’t seem nearly as personal as his initial idea of writing about Ryan.
Satisfied that this effort was indeed worth an ‘A’ or at least a ‘B+’, Seth saved the paper on a spare disc and then opened up his e-mail to send himself a copy, just in case. He’d learned the hard way that discs had a way of getting lost, or dropped in the fountain, or broken when they were used to prop open heavy doors.
There were several new messages in Seth’s inbox, and the fact that the first one was from Jamie didn’t make Seth‘s heart race at all. Okay, maybe just a little bit. Or more than a little bit.
He clicked on the link not sure what to expect. Clearly this wasn’t a phone call.
---
From: jamie.miller@berkeley.edu
To: seth.cohen@berkeley.edu
Subject: Leftovers.
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2006 06:12:48 -0700 (PDT)
If you leave leftovers on the kitchen counter overnight, ants will come. True story.
Maybe McDonalds tonight instead? I also know a greasy hamburger joint by Rasputin, too. They serve their fries in buckets. We can get two: one to throw at random people and the other to eat.
J
---
Seth laughed. He and Ryan knew all about the Berkeley ants; they were clearly the most well fed ants in all of northern California.
Seth grinned at the computer monitor and then glanced around for no discernible reason. Again, no one was watching him. He wasn’t expecting anyone to be watching him either, and yet, he wanted people to see how happy he was. It was a good feeling, infectious, but not like when he had a cold and Ryan got sick, too.
Seth hit the reply key, but couldn’t quite figure out what to say. At any other time he would’ve been all over Jamie’s invitation, but he had plans with Ryan and there was no easy way to turn Jamie down.
Instead Seth went back to his in-box and clicked on the next e-mail, which was from Summer.
---
From: summer.roberts@ucla.edu
To: seth.cohen@berkeley.edu
Subject: Stop avoiding me.
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2006 11:03:37 -0700 (PDT)
Sid:
I know you got my message; don’t pretend you don’t listen to your answering machine. If you keep avoiding me bad things will happen to you, and I should know. Magrite, who reads my tarot cards, said someone in my life is about to have bad things happen to them. Call me, dork.
Love,
Summer
p.s. What do you want for your birthday?
---
Seth sighed, there was no escaping Summer when she wanted to talk to him. He already knew that she was probably trying to find out what Ryan was up to so that she could report back to Marissa. The Ex-Girlfriend Hotline never seemed to die as far as he could tell. Of course that wasn’t always a bad thing, because it worked both ways, and strangely enough, Seth had actually been genuinely happy for Marissa when she’d started dating Dave, the yuppie from Boston.
The real stumper in Summer’s e-mail was the birthday present thing. Seth hadn’t forgotten that he was turning 20; he just hadn’t been thinking about it that hard. However, he knew if he didn’t give her a specific idea of what he wanted, he’d wind up with more Gucci boxers, which he had to admit had not been a bad present the first two times. Of course the first time he’d received them they had been dating, and he’d known they were more for her than him. Last year they’d just been a joke, but they were incredibly comfortable, so who was he to complain?
He typed out a quick response promising to call and asking specifically for black boxers since the white ones always ended up gray in the wash.
The third message was from Ryan, and Seth knew before he clicked on it that it couldn’t possibly be good news since it hadn’t been there the day before.
---
From: ryan.atwood@berkeley.edu
To: seth.cohen@berkeley.edu
Subject: Dinner
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2006 16:12:21 -0700 (PDT)
Hey,
I don’t think I can make it. I have to cover for Max at work. Gina’s going to try and get in early from Walnut Creek, but I just don’t know yet.
Sorry. Maybe tomorrow?
Ryan
---
Seth sighed. It was always something. He knew that Ryan was on scholarship and that he worked hard for every penny he had so Seth shouldn’t have begrudged him that. Except sometimes he did, because Seth’s parents were more than willing to pay for anything Ryan wanted, and he was so fucking stubborn that he wouldn’t accept. College wasn’t supposed to be a time to worry about money, but this was just another case of Ryan being Ryan and as much as Seth hated it, he had to respect that.
Shaking his head, Seth typed out a quick response saying he would see Ryan at home. Then he went back to his in-box and clicked on Jamie’s e-mail again.
Apparently he was free for dinner after all.
-On to part four-
Notes: The title song is The Roots (feat. Jill Scott) ‘You Got Me’. It’s a damn good song. Just saying.
Also,
ethrosdemon and I went 20 rounds over this section, but she stuck with me and made it wayyyy better. This one is for you, babe, thanks.*I’m sorry I’m behind on answering comments (out of town), but thanks to everyone who’s responded thus far. It means a lot to me that you’re enjoying the story.*
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Date: 2003-10-14 03:34 pm (UTC)No, this isn't on the main street, it's on the side street (if you're going up Telegraph to the campus it's off on your right behind Rasputin's). I think it might be across the street from the park (the one next to the faculty parking). It's not a big place, it's actually a hole in the wall with standing room only. They just serve burgers and fries, but they are really fucking good. I wish I could remember the name of it, but it's not coming to me right now.