Work Text:
Seth is really crap at nonverbal communication. Mom says it’s because he talks so much, but Seth disagrees because she means he talks so much that he never learned nonverbal skills. Seth thinks it’s because he talks so much, too, but he means that he talks so much because he didn’t have the nonverbal skills in the first place. He tried to explain this to Ryan once, but Ryan just lifted an eyebrow, which Seth interpreted as, “Your mom is right and it’s not that I’m too nice to say it, it’s just more fun to sit in silence and look at you like this and know that you know that I know that I’m smirking on the inside.”
Which, really, is the funny thing about it all, because Ryan is really good at the nonverbal stuff, and Seth would have thought they’d have trouble, like, communicating. But they really don’t. Even in a conversation where Seth does 95% of the talking, it still feels like a conversation. Ryan gets him, and he gets Ryan, and they end up saying sort of the same amount in the end, anyway.
Which just makes his current predicament all the more frustrating, in every sense of the word.
They’re on Ryan’s bed, and they lost their shirts about fifteen minutes ago. Seth’s mouth feels bruised from all the kissing, but that just makes the press of Ryan’s lips, the slide of his tongue that much better. They’ve done this before, the no shirts thing, but Seth still isn’t used to the feel of their bare chests pressed together. He’s not even used to the idea of this, of making out with a guy, with *Ryan* like this, rolling around on his bed night after night, until they’re both so breathless and sweaty and, well, hard that they’re shaking. All of which isn’t actually a predicament. It’s pretty freaking amazing, to be honest.
The predicament part is that they’re getting to that point pretty fast tonight. Ryan’s breath is rushing against Seth’s cheek when they take a quick break, and Seth knows his own heart is racing under Ryan’s hand on his chest. Which is also very distracting because, wow, nipples, and he really had no idea until a few weeks ago when Ryan first slid his hands up Seth’s shirt on this very bed and stroked his thumbs smoothly over them and yes, predicament.
Because any minute now, Ryan’s going to stop. He’ll pull away from Seth, gently of course, casually even, say something about the time or school tomorrow or being tired or once, to Seth’s utter disbelief, getting a headache. Seth will stammer and blink and blush and grab his shirt and bolt, and everything will be all chummy brothers until tomorrow night when they’re out here “studying” and then the kissing and making out again.
It’s really pissing Seth off.
It’s not like he’s not used to taking care of himself. He’s pretty damn good at it, at this point. Lots of practice will do that. But he shouldn’t have to be taking care of himself anymore, not since he and Ryan are…whatever they’re doing with the kissing and the nuzzling and the touching and once or twice, when it was really late and they were both tired and the kissing had turned from frantic and fast to long and deep, snuggling. But they haven’t talked about it.
Seth said it out loud to himself once, when no one was in the house, not even Rosa. He closed himself up in his bedroom and looked in the mirror and said, “Ryan Atwood is my boyfriend.” Which was really cool and weird, though not quite as cool as, “I’m Ryan Atwood’s boyfriend.” But Ryan’s never said anything about boyfriends, which really sucks. Seth would think they were just fuckbuddies or something, the idea of which is simultaneously mind-blowing and sort of painful, except for the fact that they don’t actually fuck. Seth is perfectly aware that taking comfort from the lack of sex, and using the fact that Ryan will only make out with him, as evidence that Ryan actually likes him a lot more than he’s letting on is pretty demented, but he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t know what the problem is, and it’s not exactly like he can just say, “Dude, why won’t you fuck me?” Which is the heart of his nonverbal problem. He’s been trying to communicate various things ranging from “I’m ready,” to “anytime would be good,” to, “dude, what’s your problem,” to, “fuck me already, god dammit,” with his body, but Ryan seems to be missing the subtler nuances. So, predicament.
But now he’s on his back, and he’s not sure when that happened, and Ryan is sliding over him and their bodies are lining up and Seth’s legs fall open without thought and Ryan’s hips move just so and oh…they’ve never done this before. Seth makes a totally embarrassing moaning noise and sucks Ryan’s tongue into his mouth. Ryan presses him into the mattress with his body, and the way he’s moving his hips in slow circles is setting off small nuclear bombs behind Seth’s eyes. He runs both hands down Ryan’s bare back and, not believing his own daring, wraps his legs around Ryan to pull him closer.
But God dammit, Ryan freezes up at that and then starts pulling away, and Seth flops his head back onto the pillows. He thinks he just might cry.
“It’s getting late—“Ryan begins, rolling off Seth and moving towards the edge of the bed.
“Dude, why won’t you fuck me?” Seth blinks. Huh. Maybe he *can* just say it.
Ryan freezes with his back turned and his head bent. There’s a long, painful silence. Right. That’s why he couldn’t just say it. He’d forgotten that.
“Seth,” Ryan starts finally. But then he just stops, and Seth hangs there waiting, propped up on one elbow. He’s not getting anything from Ryan like this, not when Ryan is hiding his face.
“I mean,” Seth says, deciding he might as well just go for broke. “I totally get it if you don’t want to. I mean, I wouldn’t want to have sex with me, either. I mean, that would be sort of cool if I could, I’d be like a contortionist, and now that I’m thinking about it I do actually have sex with myself sort of a lot if you loosen the definition a little and, uh, just forget I said that last part. But my point is, I get it if you don’t want to. I just wish you’d, like, tell me so I’d know for sure. Not that I mind the making out thing, because it’s really cool. Really, really cool, it’s just…” Seth trails off, blinking. Ryan has turned around during the little ramble, and he’s watching Seth with soft eyes. Seth’s breath stutters in his chest and he swallows hard. If he had to put a word to it, which he does because he’s Seth Cohen, he’d say that look is adoring.
“I do want to,” Ryan says quietly.
Seth blinks. “Well, then, what’s the hold up?” he asks, making a sweeping gesture towards himself. “I’m here, you’re here. I, uh, I went and got condoms if that’s the problem.”
Ryan’s eyebrows shoot up. “You did?”
Seth blushes. “Uh, yeah.” He pauses, then admits, “I drove like an hour on the freeway before I found a drugstore. I don’t even know where I was.”
Ryan laughs a little, and the tension eases for a moment. But Seth is, after all, Seth Cohen, and now that the conversation has started, he’s got to finish it.
“Seriously, dude, what’s the hang up? You, uh, you said you want to--which is pretty amazing by the way. I mean, if it’s me you’re worried about I’m totally ready and all that stuff. Way ready. Overready, even. I’m like a teapot about to boil over, ready.”
Ryan dips his head a little, and Seth shuts up fast. He knows that little drop of chin, the way Ryan’s eyes shift inward. He’s getting ready to say something important, one of those things Seth is pretty sure he’s the only person ever to hear. He’s seen that look a few times now, and he knows how hard Ryan has to work for this. “I’m not,” Ryan says finally. “Ready, I mean.”
Seth stares. “But you’ve, like, done it. Someone came along and, uh, poured you out before you boiled over and okay, the teapot metaphor really isn’t working here, but you know, how can you not be ready?”
“I have ‘done it,’” Ryan says, and there’s that invisible smirk again for just a second. But Seth doesn’t have time to enjoy it because he’s too busy imagining himself hunting down all the girls, and boys, at least one boy he knows for sure, and doing…something unpleasant to them. “I just…” Ryan drops his head again and blows out a quick breath before meeting Seth’s eyes. “I haven’t with you.”
“Okay,” Seth says slowly. “This, this is sort of the problem.”
Ryan rubs a hand across his face. “It’s not a problem,” he says. “It’s…I want to…I just want to wait.”
“What for?” Seth asks stupidly.
Ryan gives him a look, and it’s full of something, just heavy with it, and for once Seth just doesn’t get it. He reaches for Ryan, who doesn’t resist, but doesn’t really help either as Seth pulls him back down onto the bed.
“Okay, you’re just going to have to tell me,” Seth says, scooting close and putting his arms around him. “Because maybe the virgin is just missing something here, but…is that it? You don’t want to because I’m a virgin? Because I could totally take care of that. Uh, not me personally, but I could, like, find somebody. Or, well, pay somebody, but that’s—“
“Seth.” Ryan’s arms come around him, and Seth moves even closer until they’re touching, all along their bodies. “I really want to wait. It’s important to me.”
“Why?” Seth asks, and he knows he’s whining now.
Ryan bends his head and presses his face into Seth’s neck for a moment, then looks up, his face oddly vulnerable. “I want to wait because it’ll be different with you,” he says, looking straight at Seth. “I want it to be…special.”
Seth lets out a long, shaky breath. “Dude, that’s…” he pauses, searching for words.
“Really girly?” Ryan suggests.
“Totally.” Seth kisses him then, because he’s still a little short on things to say. Ryan kisses him back, and Seth gets lost for a long minute in the press of their mouths and the way Ryan sucks on his upper lip as one kiss flows into another.
“Seriously,” he says finally, as they part. “That’s really…thanks, I guess. For thinking…I don’t know.”
“You don’t mind waiting?” Ryan asks.
“Well, yeah I mind,” Seth says, feeling a grin forming. “But, I mean, it’s for a good cause and all, and now that I know there’ll actually be something at the end of the waiting, it’s cool.” He can’t stop smiling, and he feels warm all over. Somehow, when Ryan said ‘special’ it sort of sounded like that’s what he thinks of Seth, too.
“And you don’t mind that it’s totally, you know.” Ryan makes an expressive face, and Seth can totally read him now.
“Girly, weird and sort of…romantic? No. No, I don’t mind at all.”
“Okay,” Ryan says, going for Seth’s neck again. “Okay. Good.”
Seth lets him nuzzle partly because it feels really good, and partly because he knows Ryan needs to hide his face for a minute while he pulls it together again. Seth doesn’t know why this is so hard for Ryan. Well, he *knows* but it’s only in the most abstract way, ideas about neglectful parents and raising himself and lots of other stuff. He does know what it feels like to be the one that Ryan tries for.
“So,” Ryan says, looking up finally. “When you,” he smirks straight out this time, “have sex with yourself, do you think about me?”
Seth jumps and his skin goes prickly and hot all over. “I, uh, that is I don’t know if that’s really something--what do you thi--I mean, yeah. Yeah, sometimes.”
Ryan’s eyes have gone very dark, and Seth can’t look away. “What do you think about?” Ryan asks.
“Stuff,” Seth says decisively. His face gets even hotter as a movie reel plays out behind his eyes, all the things he’s imagined doing with Ryan, to Ryan, Ryan doing to him in this bed.
Ryan smiles slowly. “I think about you,” he says. “In the shower sometimes. And after you leave at night.”
“Oh…my God,” Seth says. “What…what do you think about?”
“Stuff,” Ryan says, predictably, but infuriatingly.
Seth pouts, and Ryan bites his protruding lip gently.
“I hate to say this,” Ryan says, after the next bit of kissing winds down, “but you really should go. It’s past midnight.”
“Yeah,” Seth says. He lingers a moment, taking a few last kisses, before he rolls away and reaches for his shirt. “So, I’ll, uh, I’ll see you tomorrow night?” Which is totally stupid, because he’ll see Ryan all day tomorrow from the breakfast table straight on through school. But Ryan seems to know what he means.
“Absolutely,” Ryan says.
Seth slides his shirt on and heads for the door. He glances back at Ryan, who hasn’t moved from the bed. The sight of him sprawled there, in only a pair of very old jeans with an obvious mound at the crotch makes Seth sort of dizzy. “Thanks,” he says suddenly, impulsively.
Ryan lifts an eyebrow, and Seth shrugs.
“For, you know. For telling me.”
Ryan smiles, the shy one that Seth is pretty sure is only his, too, and Seth returns it before he ducks out. The pool is a shimmer of moonlight as he crosses to the house. The night is silent but for the rhythmic breaths of the ocean, and Seth pauses a moment, just breathing it in. He’s wound up so tight he knows he won’t be able to sleep until he…has sex with himself, and the thought that Ryan is probably doing the same out in the pool house will make the whole process pretty damn easy. Ryan who hasn’t said much, but who’s most likely had a lot of sex with a lot of people, and who wants to wait like a character from an after-school special, just for Seth. Because he couldn’t tell Seth why until Seth made him, and they both know now that won’t be good enough.
Seth turns towards the house, a spring in his step. He never would have thought he’d be so happy to not be having sex in his life.