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Black Out
By Candle Beck
Seth wakes up when the thin line of sunlight coming through the crack in his curtains slides onto his face. His head feels all messy, moreso than usual, with fragments of dreams and songs ricocheting around at low speeds, confusing him.
He figures it’s a Saturday, what with the sunlight all high and bright and striping across his face. He tries to remember what happened yesterday, last night, but can’t. Something about streetlights in ranks like soldiers, standing in grass with no shoes on, an awful chemical taste in his mouth. Some other stuff, too.
It’s all very obscure and Seth thinks he might have dreamed a lot of it, but he can’t be sure.
There was vodka involved, though, that he’d stake money on. And possibly Red Bull—he seems to recall his heart beating very fast at one point. He’s hungover enough that his hair hurts, his throat is all slick, his teeth grimy. His mind is moving very slowly and with extreme caution, looking for safe places to step.
Seth rolls into a sitting position. His head is throbbing, and his neck is stiff like he slept on it wrong, his jaw aching, but other than that, he seems to be in order. His jeans are on the floor with the pockets turned out, and there must be five dollars in change scattered around, glinting silver coins like landmines.
Seth needs a timeline for last night, a sequence of events, a synopsis. He needs to read the blurb on the back of the movie box, see what the critics said about it. He wants to see the trailer, get an advance copy from a kid in Japan. There’s a blank space in his memory labeled, ‘Insert Footage Here.’
He could go crazy trying to remember, and there’s really no need for that. He can just ask Ryan.
Seth goes to take a shower and it’s not till he’s standing there waiting for the water to run hot, making faces at himself in the mirror, that he notices the smear of glitter on his hip, low enough to be covered by his boxers, in the flat triangle of skin between leg and stomach that they really should have a name for.
The glitter is silver and purple, a swipe about the size of a thumb, and Seth studies it curiously, brushing his fingers around its edges. He’s got no explanation for it, not a clue. Maybe he was attacked by a pre-teen girl. Or a pixie of some kind.
Seth watches his reflection shrug. Probably there are more important things to worry about. Can’t get distracted by details—that way madness lies.
He gets in the shower, turns his face up into the spray and when the water hits his eyelids, he sees a picture, a freeze-frame with white Polaroid edges, of Ryan’s face, half-lit and half-shadowed, looking tired with his hair all screwed up and falling onto his forehead, and on Ryan’s cheek, smudged on the side of his mouth, was silver-purple glitter, the very same.
It should have looked stupid, tough Ryan with a thirteen year old girl’s makeup on his face, but it really didn’t. It made him look. Expensive. Young. Glamorous. A casualty of the night, with marks left on him, stains and impressions, bruises maybe, under his shirt. It’s not a good night if you come out clean.
Seth shoves the image away, sure that it must be untrue, gets Ryan’s face out of his mind, and scrubs the glitter off, doing his best not to think of it as evidence.
He sighs. This feels like it’s going to be a very long day.
*
Ryan’s in the kitchen when Seth comes down, and the sight of him with his elbow on the table and his hand in his hair, washed over by sunlight the color of egg yolk, makes something else click like poker chips in Seth’s mind: Ryan against a plain stucco wall, sitting on the carpet with his knee up, his forearm balanced and his hand dangling off. Ryan with his head back against the wall, smiling sleepily with his mouth stained Kool-Aid red.
Seth blinks, and the after-image or whatever it was disappears with a pop that he would swear is audible. Something weird happens in Seth’s stomach, a curling warm thing way down under his ribs.
He clears his throat, and Ryan jerks his head up, looks at Seth with surprise and—what? Fear? No way.
Seth gives him a lopsided smile and slumps down across from him, pillowing his head on his arms. “Mornin’ryn,” he muffles.
Ryan doesn’t say anything, and Seth chews on the sleeve of his bathrobe, his mind still all unfocused and painted in watercolor. Impressionism, is what it is. You get all the way up close and you can see that it’s just smears of color, smaller than fingerprints.
“Rywha’ happen lassnigh?” Seth asks, then spits out his sleeve, lifts his head. “I beg your pardon. Let me try that again. Ryan, what happened last night?”
Ryan doesn’t meet his eyes, staring down at his hands. Seth checks to see if maybe Ryan’s got something written there, reminders or phone numbers, but there’s nothing.
“You don’t remember?” Ryan asks slowly, hooking his thumbs together.
Seth shakes his head, then grimaces sharply, as that aggravates his headache a lot. Little steel-toed boots high-kicking against the walls of his skull, chipping off bits of bone. Seth hums a brief refrain to fight it, and answers, “I know I got drunk. Definitely know that.”
“Yeah.”
Seth waits, but Ryan doesn’t elaborate, just sits there with his eyes down, arms loose like his strings have been cut, pale shoulders and his wife-beater curving shadows. There’s a dusk-colored mark on Ryan’s neck, just above his collarbone. Seth squints at it like it’s a hieroglyph, the shape of a mouth.
“Dude, did you get lucky?” Seth asks excitedly, wanting details and measurements. Ryan winces, snatches a look at Seth with his eyes wounded. Seth is taken aback. “What?”
“You really don’t remember?”
He shakes his head. “Already told you, man. But you remember, right? Or were you off somewhere getting busy? Did you abandon me?”
Ryan winces again, and Seth’s confusion is huge now, it’s the size of a bear. He cradles his head in one hand, dreaming about coffee. “You should explain stuff to me now,” Seth tells Ryan.
Ryan lifts his eyes and Seth is struck again, that picture of Ryan’s face, glitter on the side of his mouth, and the angle’s all wrong, the shadows are in different places, because Ryan was . . . looking up at him? Even moreso than usual, from his knees, and Seth can think of a million different reasons why Ryan might have been on his knees last night, but none of them feel familiar.
“You got drunk,” Ryan says carefully. “We were over at some kid’s house. I don’t know who. Somebody. You got. Really drunk.” He pushes his fingers on the table, making little squeaky noises. “I lost track of you. Then I found you. Then we came home.”
He stops talking, and Seth hikes his eyebrows up, which for some reason makes his head hurt even worse. “Are you, like. Are you not telling me something?”
Ryan’s shoulders draw up like wings, curving in, and he shakes his head, whispering almost too low to hear, “I can’t believe you don’t remember.”
More interesting by the second, and Seth leans forward. “Remember what? What’d I do? What’d you do?”
Ryan tears his hand through his hair. “Nothing,” he says with his voice dull. “We came home. That’s all.”
Seth studies him and doesn’t believe him and that’s entirely new, he’s not used to not believing Ryan. He starts to feel sick, a slow nauseating roll in his stomach.
“Why won’t you tell me?”
Ryan looks at him, bruises under his eyes and his bottom lip chewed almost to bleeding. Seth’s never seen him like this; fear and doubt are Seth’s trademarks, and it’s important to stay consistent.
“Ryan?” He wants to reach out, touch Ryan’s shoulder or curl his fingers in Ryan’s wife-beater and pull it out, or do a bunch of other things that Seth can’t find a decent explanation for.
Ryan jerks his head to the side and opens his hands carefully on the table. He’s trembling—none of this makes any fucking sense.
“Nothing happened.” He meets Seth’s eyes, solid and steady, and Seth is abruptly terrified, because that’s what Ryan looks like when he’s lying, and Ryan doesn’t lie to Seth.
“Dude-”
“Nothing happened,” Ryan says forcefully, making Seth want to check for steel under his skin, ice water in his veins, protective coating and superpowers. But Seth can’t breathe.
“Don’t lie to-” Seth tries, but Ryan’s moving then, harsh arc of his arm and his fist slamming into the table, almost splintering it, which fits with the superhero image, and makes Seth jump and nearly bite his tongue in half, and something gives way in his chest.
“Nothing happened, Seth,” Ryan says, the third time because it’s a charm, and Seth sinks back, his eyes feeling like they take up his whole face, all the light in the world flooding in at once and making him fiercely, desperately blind.
Ryan stands, his chair scraping like the floor’s a blackboard. He’s got that kicked-puppy look back on his face, Seth’s first memory of him but something he hasn’t seen it in better than a year, and it makes him want to pull Ryan down to the carpet, videogames and cereal with marshmallows in it, pull Ryan down and fix him again, pull Ryan down and hold him in place with a hand on his forehead and a hand on his chest, pull Ryan down and lick his neck and bite his mouth until.
Seth’s heart stops, and he falls out of his chair, landing hard on his shoulder and barely able to rasp Ryan’s name, but he’s too late and Ryan’s gone.
To be continued . . . right now!
Swear to God
By Candle Beck
Yeah, it comes back to him. That was probably inevitable.
It comes back in shards, comic book panels, sense memories and visuals no bigger than playing cards. The smell of tequila and lime, pool-deck cement wet with chlorinated water, salt in his eyes and pencil lead all over his fingers. Seth remembers laughing until he cried, rolling his forehead on the wall and being held up by someone’s hands on his hips. Seth remembers a lot of stuff.
He remembers that it wasn’t a pre-teen girl, actually, but just a regular teen girl, a friend of a friend of a friend that neither of them knew, fancy silver-purple gloss on her lips, who came up and wound her arms around Ryan’s neck, a half-full red plastic cup in her hand sloshing precariously over his shoulder, and she’d cooed at him, “so pretty, you’re so pretty,” while trying to kiss him. Ryan had turned his head to the side, grimacing, the line of his jaw taut, and she hit his cheek, the corner of his mouth, right there, so that explains that.
And he remembers making fun of Ryan all the rest of the night, his voice falsetto and cracking, “Ryan, so pretty, what a pretty boy,” petting Ryan’s shoulders and back, snickering noisily, until Ryan shoved him off hard enough to spill his drink.
Seth remembers being on the floor of the bathroom for a long time, but he couldn’t throw up no matter how hard he tried, his stomach was a stone, stubborn and immovable. And he’d nearly wept, his cheek on the tile, curled around himself as the world careened.
Ryan was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, smoking a cigarette so coolly, smoke rings rising as easily as soap bubbles, and Seth tried to catch them on his fingers as Ryan laughed. He’d wanted to take a drag, be cool like Ryan was cool, be stupid and dangerous for once instead of clever and scared, but Ryan wouldn’t let him.
because your parents would kill me, seth, and i kinda like your parents.
Seth dreamt of a funeral, Ryan’s funeral, except Ryan was standing beside him at the open grave, solemn and dark in his Blues Brothers suit, hands folded behind him. Seth knew it was Ryan’s funeral, though, because his mother was sobbing brokenly into his father’s chest, the way you only cry when your child has died, and Seth wanted to tug her sleeve, look, mom, he’s okay, he’s right there, but Ryan must have been a ghost because Seth was the only one who could see him.
Seth woke up and he was still on the bathroom floor, cold lines imprinted on his face, and Ryan was still smoking, maybe even the same cigarette, maybe Seth hadn’t missed a thing.
Then there was some stuff missing, and then there were five guys throwing back shots in the kitchen, so perfectly synchronized they could have been an Olympic team, and then there was a game of checkers on the coffee table that followed no known rules, and Seth was the undefeated champion, and then there was white powder on his fingertips and his tongue was completely numb and Ryan had a violent grip on his wrist, jerking him away right when he was starting to have fun.
Ryan hauled him into a spare bedroom, pushed him to sit on the bed and paced in front of him, dragging his hands through the air in something that looked like slow motion but was probably just Seth being really drunk. And Seth was staring at the glitter on Ryan’s face and not listening, because Seth never listened when Ryan lectured him.
if i ever see you anywhere near that shit again, i swear to god-
Seth’s heart was jackrabbiting away, too much for his poor tired ribs to take, his eyes full of silver and purple and neon blue. He remembers thinking, ‘oh what a pretty boy,’ and for once it wasn’t a joke at all, and also not at all true. Ryan wasn’t pretty, terrible word for it.
Seth mouthed along with Ryan, swear to god, and when Ryan came to a stop in front of him, Seth reached out and touched Ryan’s wrist cuff, went from leather to skin to leather again, the metal buttons slick like pennies. Ryan looked down at him expressionlessly, and Seth stood up so he would have the high ground.
And then. Something.
what’re you doing, man?
Sweat on the back of his neck, cotton in his mouth, skin and bone under his palms, a bright sharp tearing thing behind his eyelids, and the next thing Seth remembers is Ryan on his knees.
That, he remembers pretty well.
Disbelief was the theme of Seth’s life. Ryan’s face was pressed against his stomach, Ryan’s hands slid up his chest, bunching his shirt and scratching little white marks with his nails, and Ryan’s mouth was open, seventeen million degrees and leaving blisters behind, and Seth was never gonna believe anything ever again, because if this was real, nothing else could be.
He didn’t put his hands on Ryan, he was scared of jinxing it, not when Ryan was unbuckling his belt and yanking his jeans off his hips, not when Ryan was licking the place where his leg met his body, not when Ryan closed his teeth on the waistband of Seth’s boxers and pulled it out so that it would snap back. Seth’s hands were twisted together behind his back, keeping a safe distance. He was panting, moaning deep in his throat, shuddering hard, pretty much falling apart.
But he looked down when Ryan looked up, and Ryan’s hair was falling like straw into his eyes, making them water. Ryan’s mouth was wet and that almost broke Seth, but he was able to pass his hand over Ryan’s face, push Ryan’s hair up and rest his palm lightly on Ryan’s forehead, so that Ryan’s vision would be clear again.
And that’s how it happened. With Seth’s hand on Ryan’s forehead, Ryan’s hair soft and sweat-damp over his fingers. That’s how it happened.
Three days have passed, and it’s the only thing Seth can think about.
*
Ryan’s gone in the morning when Seth comes down for breakfast on the fourth day. Seth takes his bagel around the side of the house and blinks at the spot where Ryan’s bike lives. The chain is unhooked, threaded through the chainlink, and they told him from the start that locking up his bike was unnecessary, because nothing gets stolen in Newport Beach, but Ryan couldn’t sleep knowing his bike was just sitting there unprotected.
Seth sits at the patio table and thinks about getting blinded by the sun, how it’d probably be like what happens to your eyes after a flashbulb goes off, the white spots with shimmering black edges, except forever.
His dad brings him some coffee and asks where Ryan is, and Seth smiles, lies without thought, “Group project, dad, early meeting at the library, that kid is turning into such a nerd,” and Sandy laughs, says he hopes it rubs off, and Seth’s thinking of Ryan’s thumbs chocked into the hollows of his hips, Ryan’s chin scraping under Seth’s belly button.
He cuts first period and sits in the hallway across from Ryan’s locker, Jolly Ranchers in his pockets and a can of Pepsi at his knee. Seth hasn’t slept in a really long time—sugar and caffeine are driving him slowly insane.
It’s not escaped his attention that he and Ryan have not been in the same room, save family dinners, since Saturday morning. Ryan sees him coming and takes off, the nearest exit, the best path of escape. Seth’s exhausted by the familiarity of it all, because for the sixteen years of his life before Ryan, his entire world consisted of people avoiding him. When Ryan starts shoving Seth down and kicking him in the ribs and calling him queer, that’ll be almost nostalgic.
And also kind of hilarious, in a are-you-fucking-kidding-me sorta way, but Seth still won’t be able to fight back. Fighting back is not really Seth’s style. Not when cowering is still an option.
Anyway, they haven’t spoken or made eye contact or, like, shared the same oxygen, and it’s past time for that to stop. It’s not fair to be Seth’s best friend and then just disappear like that. No matter what happened or whose idea it was or why the image of Ryan’s up-turned face won’t leave Seth’s mind, they should be able to deal with it. They’ve dealt with worse, Seth’s almost sure.
The bell rings and the doors clap open, and Seth is motionless as everybody floods in front of him, casting him sidelong looks and just as quickly dismissing him. The hall is full and loud, lockers slamming metallically, wolf whistles and a stereo blasting 50 Cent (Seth can hear his mom in his head, “Why is that man named after money?”) for a minute before one of the teachers comes out and enforces the ‘no music in the halls’ rule.
Seth doesn’t see him coming, just all of a sudden he blinks and Ryan’s back is there, maroon shirt flickering through the broken filmstrip of passing students. Seth isn’t sure if Ryan noticed him, but then he sees how Ryan’s shoulders are pulled up defensively, sees how quickly Ryan’s hands are moving, jamming a book into his locker and digging after a certain notebook, and figures probably Ryan knows exactly who’s at his back, just like always.
Seth pulls himself to his feet, and his feet are asleep, and he nearly falls over. He catches himself on somebody’s arm, and gets elbowed into the wall for his trouble, biting his tongue hard enough to make it bleed.
“Thanks yeah, exactly what I needed right now,” Seth mumbles, stamping his feet and wincing, swallowing blood. He looks up and Ryan’s staring at him across the rush of people. Seth tries to smile, raises his hand in a lame little wave.
Ryan grimaces, and Seth is confused until Ryan takes a water bottle out of his bag and crosses to him, Frogger-dodging the crowd.
“Your, uh. You’ve got blood on your teeth,” Ryan says without meeting his eyes, handing Seth the water bottle.
Seth takes a drink, swishing it around in his mouth until the copper taste is mostly gone. He takes as much time as possible, because as long as he’s got Ryan’s water, Ryan won’t leave.
Ryan’s staring at the floor, his hands in his pockets. Seth makes an aborted move to give the bottle back, but Ryan doesn’t notice, and Seth feels stupid, then stupid some more. He kills the rest of it, just for something to do, and the hall is thinning out, a spill of white paper on the floor, a dirty joke being told way too loudly.
Ryan flicks his head to the side, getting his hair out of his eyes, and Seth’s hand itches for Ryan’s forehead. But Ryan’s cutting his eyes down the hall and saying roughly, “right, see you later,” and turning to go.
Seth catches his arm, feels it tense in his hand. “Wait,” he says. “Um.” Ryan won’t look at him, his clean profile like something off a coin, lucky heads up, and Seth hears himself saying, “I remember, man.”
Ryan’s head jerks back and then he is looking at Seth, at last, but not like he should be, his eyes as blue as paint and lit with fear. Seth goes back and back and back, trying to find the last time Ryan had looked like that, but all he can think of is oil-dark guns and chalky pills and those first few months when Ryan was convinced it was only a matter of time before he was sent away again.
And it kinda kills Seth, to think that he’s made Ryan look like that again, scared like that again, but before he can take it back, Ryan’s jaw hardens and he says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ryan tries to pull away, and Seth holds on, his pulse loud in his ears. “Don’t do that, it’s not fair,” he says a bit desperately. “I remember now, okay, we can figure it out.”
Ryan yanks his arm out of Seth’s grip. “There’s nothing to figure out,” he tells Seth, his eyes fixed on the top button of Seth’s shirt, the flush on his neck crawling up towards his face. “I’ve got class.”
“So do I, you think I don’t, I’ve been sitting here for at least three hours,” Seth spills out, his hand scratching at Ryan’s shoulder, and Ryan keeps flinching away.
“You have not. It’s only second period.”
“Okay I lied, I’m sorry, very very sorry, but dude, please. Please.” Seth watches Ryan’s throat swallowing, and he has to close his eyes for a second, get himself under control, because Ryan’s throat had moved, oh god yes it had, it had nearly wrecked Seth that night.
When he opens his eyes again, Ryan’s biting his lip and shaking his head slowly, and Seth thinks maybe he’s fucked this up, somehow and after everything, he’s found a way to make Ryan want to get rid of him, but then Ryan says in a warning tone, “Not here. Not here, not fucking now.”
Seth bobs his head foolishly, taking what he can get. “No, of course not, you’re right. But, later? Say later, will you? Because I don’t think. I don’t think I can go on like this much longer.” Ryan’s eyes hit Seth’s with a sharp little crack, bloodshot and overly dry, and it’s like looking into a mirror, honestly, and Seth almost has to take a step back.
Ryan nods carefully, and reaches out, all hesitant and gun-shy, almost touching Seth’s wrist before he loses his nerve and pulls back. “Home, okay?”
Seth nods. “Home,” he echoes.
Then Ryan blinks fast and turns away, the neatly-combed back of his head and the crisp line of his collar, and he gets smaller and smaller down the hall, like something seen in the rearview mirror, never once looking back, and it’s not until he’s around the corner that Seth can move again, and he takes off, the fire exit and an alarm exploding at his back, but of course by then Seth’s running, much faster than he’s ever run before, out into the perfect day, and he comes back to himself on the beach, his hands in the ocean and nowhere left to go.
*
He gets home before the cartoons are over, and goes right to the poolhouse. He sits on Ryan’s bed, but then thinks maybe that would look wrong, like, presumptuous, and moves onto the floor.
It’s been an unimaginably long four days, and his fingers on the Playstation controller are slow, numbed, and he wouldn’t be surprised to find himself falling asleep there in front of Ryan’s bed, were he awake and able to form opinions. The light from the television scatters around him, and the same eighty seconds of a pop-punk song play in a loop, the opening music of the game.
He doesn’t dream about funerals, which is a step up, but he does dream about cliffs and knives and soaked wet highways, a bunch of stuff like that, until he’s shaking in his sleep and trying to curl into a tight ball, knees close to his chin, his arm under him, pinned to the floor.
seth hey seth what’re you doing man wake up wake up.
Seth’s eyes should by all rights be glued shut, he should be blind now forever and ever, but they open easily, and there’s a geometrically perfect red circle where the bone of his wrist pressed into the carpet, and Ryan’s sitting on the bed, looking drawn and worried.
Seth rolls over, sits up, gets his hand halfway through his hair before it snags. Ryan doesn’t say anything and Seth gets to remember old Ryan again, quiet cautious Ryan who only spoke when spoken to and flinched away from sudden touches.
Seth is feeling pretty retro himself, scared to death and totally lost as to what to do next, just like how he used to be.
There are dark patches under Ryan’s eyes, something thin and small in the set of his mouth. Seth pictures his hand sliding up Ryan’s leg, starting at his shoe and pushing onto his jeans, tough denim and the ruler-line of Ryan’s shin.
“You wanted to talk,” Ryan says, startling Seth. “So talk.”
Seth nods, his mouth dry. “Okay sure. Sure.”
He tries real hard, but can’t think straight and can’t figure out the right words, and so he just widens his eyes helplessly at Ryan, his hands twitching.
“Seth, talk.”
Squeezing his hands into fists, Seth forces his throat open, forces his voice out and does what he does best, “Yeah, just give me a second or a minute or however much time you got. Because this is different, man, this is new. It’s gonna take some time. I don’t want you to think I know what’s going on or what it means, because I really definitely don’t, and it’s important that you know that. It’s important. Listen. I don’t mean to say anything or anything. About you, or if that’s something you do sometimes, then that’s cool. It’s not like I think it’s wrong, I just didn’t remember. Swear to god, I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to mess with you. I didn’t mean any of it, Ryan, and I can’t. I can’t talk like this. I can’t get it out of my head. Never gonna sleep again and never gonna think about anything else, not unless you tell me what’s going on, because you know better than me, don’t you? You knew what you were doing. You were good at it, I meant to tell you, you’re really very good at that. Christ. I don’t know, dude, I never expected this. Give me a million years to guess how I’d lose you and I’d never have thought it’d be like this.”
Ryan just sits through it, listening impassively, which is what he does best. Seth runs out of breath, comes to stop and fears for his life.
“I don’t,” Ryan begins slowly, winding his hands together between his knees. “I don’t do that. Not usually. Not hardly ever.”
“But you did,” Seth answers. “Why did you, if you. If you don’t?”
Ryan cuts his eyes to Seth’s briefly, just a momentary piece of blue in the air. He looks young and injured, and Seth wants to take him upstairs and cover him up with the good blanket and keep him safe for awhile, make him better.
“I was drunker than I thought I was. I didn’t know until you, you touched me. You put your hands-” Ryan stops, takes a deep breath. “Put your hands on me,” he whispers. “And I didn’t think I’d do that, because I haven’t in years and I don’t usually. I stopped doing that.”
“How come?”
Ryan winces, ghosting his hand over his face. “I got the shit kicked out of me enough without being a cocksucker, too.”
Seth is somehow taken aback, to hear Ryan say it out loud like that and be suddenly aware that this is what they’re talking about, what they’ve been talking around, that’s the name for it and the only one that fits, and of all the things he never thought would happen to him, of all the things.
Ryan still refuses to hold Seth’s gaze, staring resolutely at Seth’s Asics. Seth tries to clear his mind of the bad bad images brought about by that dirty word in Ryan’s low voice, and says:
“But everything’s different now. You can do what you want now.”
After a long, long moment, Ryan shakes his head. “Look, I don’t—I’m not like that. I mean, maybe sometimes, but hardly ever, so it doesn’t really count. You just. You caught me on an off night.”
He lifts his eyes then, firm and trustworthy and Seth loses his breath because Ryan’s lying again.
“Ryan,” Seth says almost too quietly to hear, so stunned he’s about to fall over.
“I’m not like that, Seth, and neither are you,” Ryan tells him sharply.
“I might be.” Seth swallows, and Ryan’s eyes fly wide. “If you were, I might be.”
Ryan stares at him, and Seth holds perfectly still, holds his breath and makes his heart beat slower and tries to force himself out of existence, anything’s better than waiting for Ryan to tell him no.
“You were drunk,” Ryan says softly.
“I was. I’m not anymore.” Seth bites the inside of his cheek, and puts his hand on Ryan’s leg, palming his kneecap for a split second before Ryan wrenches away, and it’s like being punched in the chest.
Ryan’s shaking his head, over and over again. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
And fuck if that’s not true, but fuck if Seth will admit it. He gets on his knees and moves closer, Ryan frozen in the headlights, and skims his hands along the outsides of Ryan’s legs, hooks his fingers in Ryan’s belt.
“Swear to god I do,” he whispers, and leans forward.
Ryan exhales tightly against Seth’s mouth, and then Seth sees his shoulders fall in his peripheral vision, sees Ryan give up and give in, and then Ryan’s kissing him, fisting a hand in Seth’s hair and pulling his head back, a better angle, a better everything. One of Seth’s hands curves around to Ryan’s back, under his shirt, quick warm skin and colored lights going off like bottle rockets behind his eyes.
Ryan smiles, his teeth bared against Seth’s cheek, and Seth breathes out, Seth starts his heart up again.
Seth holds on with everything he’s got.
THE END