hackthis_archive | The O.C. season two fic.

1. Was Memphis Belle always as gay as it appeared on telly this morning? Clearly it came out before I knew about slash or was even out of puberty, but wow, gay.

2. I am doing some de-friending based on a shifting of my fandom interests. It's nothing personal because you're all fabulous, but I think I've pretty much given up the ghost on Smallville.

3. I slept for a total of two hours last night. Talk about feeling the pain. I think goldfish have longer attention spans than me right now.

4. My darling

lalejandra is having a bad day, so I wanted to try and write something to make her feel better, but I'm drier than the Sahara right now. Nevertheless, I have rallied admirably.

The O.C

My Boyfriend Left Me For Some Chick Who Got Pregnant By Somebody Else Because He’s Got a Martyr Complex, and I Had to Go to Portland to Get Over It by Seth Cohen

Portland is not Tahiti. It's not even close. As a matter of fact, Portland’s about as far from Tahiti as Seth can get without going to the Arctic and freezing his ass off; and he’s being hysterical again, but who wouldn’t be hysterical, what with living with Luke and his gay dad and his gay dad’s boyfriend. It’s like a TV show on NBC or Showtime or something: My Not-Really-Good-Friend Luke and His Gay Dad, a spec script by Seth Cohen.

*

Seth can’t tell if Portland has been good for Luke or not, but he seems pretty happy and scruffy, and he’s kind of dressing like Tommy Hilfiger’s does the emo thing which is a little strange. If anything, Luke’s gotten even dorkier than he was before, but apparently he’s playing water polo at his new school, and he’s got friends, which is better than Seth’s got right now. When Luke goes out with his friends, he always makes sure to drag Seth along.

*

Luke’s gay dad is actually pretty cool for a dad. Not like Seth’s dad, but for a dad who was run out of Newport for liking other guys, yeah, he’s pretty cool. As a matter of fact, when Seth showed up on his doorstep, and Luke stared at him as though he’d grown two heads, Luke’s dad nudged Luke and asked if he was going to invite Seth in.

That earned him a lot of points in Seth’s book.

*

How Seth wound up in Portland is – well, it’s anybody’s guess really, because he was going to go to Tahiti. He had the map and everything, and then he took a right turn out of Newport instead of a left, because he really couldn’t get to Tahiti on the beef jerky and Corn Pops he’d brought along. It took him a whole day just to get to San Francisco, because, well, it seemed like the place to go for a swinging bi-sexual man who’d left his girlfriend and boyfriend behind.

Correction: for the coward who’d been left by his boyfriend and couldn’t dump his girlfriend to her face. Not that anyone could really blame Seth for not dumping Summer to her face, because only a very, very stupid man would ever dump Summer to her face.

Anyway, he docked at the Marina in San Francisco looking and smelling a little worse for the wear, and he had lunch in Pacific Heights because nobody left for Tahiti without enough cash to eat some burgers when they got there. And then... and then he got a cab to the BART station and went to SFO, and Alaska Airlines was running this $39 one-way special to Portland. Not that Seth wanted to go to Portland, but it was the next available flight out of town, and the guy at the ticket counter was really hot. Plus, Seth had left most of his stuff on the Summer Breeze, and everything was just too much.

So he left.

Again.

*

And that was how he ended up in Portland.

It took him a little longer to find Luke though -- there were a lot of Wards in the phone book.

*

He’d been at the Ward’s place for a week when he called his mom and dad, because that was just a conversation he did not want to have, but Mr Ward said he couldn’t stay any longer unless he called them and told them where he was. At least he didn’t say that Seth had to come out to them, which was cool because Luke’s dad had picked up on that one way before Luke had.

It had taken Luke two days just to believe that Seth was still dating Summer, and he had been too busy laughing his ass off to catch the part about Ryan and Theresa and Marissa and Eddie and Julie and Seth’s granddad, and for the first time ever, Seth really, really envied Luke.
Not because he was a water polo player who shaved his chest and got dumped by his anorexic girlfriend for Seth’s boyfriend, but because his dad was cool and smart and lived with his gay boyfriend, Bradley, in a really nice house with a guest room just for Seth and his bag of tee shirts and comics and his iPod.

*

Seth’s mom cried the entire time they were on the phone, and his dad yelled until Seth put the phone down and left the room to get some ice cream from the freezer. When he came back Mr Ward was on the phone, and Seth couldn’t hear anymore yelling so he assumed his Mr Ward was on the phone with his mom sobbing in his ear. He felt kind of bad about that, but better Mr Ward than him.

Mr Ward didn’t say a lot besides ‘sure’ and ‘I see’ and ‘okay,’ and when he hung up he said it was okay for Seth to stay.

*

Every time Luke asks him if he’s going to go back, he shrugs, because really there’s nothing for him to go back to. He’s lucky that Luke’s easily distracted by video games and comics and Seth’s half-hearted attempts at friendship.

Luke is no Ryan, which is actually a good thing, because if Seth left Portland, he’d have to find someplace else to go, and now that Ryan’s back in Chino and Summer’s probably sent a death squad after him his options are a little slim. At least he likes Portland, with its rain and trees and cool girls and guys. He could've ended up some place a lot worse.

He didn't really want to go to Tahiti anyway, and he’s not sure what it would take to get him to go back to Newport at this point, probably a miracle.

-end-