Chapter Text
“Cohen!” Summer squeals, a sudden bounce in her step as she quickens her pace, changing directions and heading eagerly towards a curly haired boy Clay has never seen before.
It was like a switch had been flipped and his friend had become a completely different person. She is lighter somehow, happier certainly, bubbly and soft in a way he’d never seen her act before. The Summer he knows is passionate almost to a fault and honestly a little scary.
Clay trails after her because, well, mostly because he’s too curious now not to.
The other boy, the boyfriend, presumably, beams at Summer as if she’d hung the sun and the stars in the sky, and Clay feels a pang of … something. He tries not to think about it too hard.
Summer, for her part, runs the last couple of steps and throws her arms around the other boy’s neck. He lifts her easily up off the ground, spinning them both around, before gently lowering her feet back to the cobble stone pathway.
The boy, wearing a lopsided grin, opens his mouth, presumably to say something mushy and Clay thinks that he really needs to get some friends who aren’t sickeningly in love. But Summer lets go of the boy’s neck, pulls back an arm and whacks him hard on the shoulder.
“Ow!” the boy moans dramatically, clutching his shoulder, “What was that for?”
“You said you were busy this weekend!” Summer complains, eyes narrowing into a glare. Clay, in his place, would have withered under Summer’s stare, but the other boy doesn’t seem at all bothered.
“And for all my efforts to provide you with a grand romantic surprise, all I get are bruises?”
Summer purses her lips, “Yes,” she says simply.
The boy pouts, “Really?”
Summer pauses, as if seriously considering this right before pushing up on her toes to press a brief kiss to his lips. When she pulls back, smiling, gooey eyed, Clay coughs.
“Oh,” Summer startles, twisting to face Clay, and leaning easily against the boy’s chest, tugging on his fingers until his arms slip around her stomach, “Seth, this is my friend, Clay; Clay, this is my boyfriend, Seth. He goes to RISD.”
“Sup,” Seth jerks his head at Clay.
***
Summer talks about her friends a lot.
Seth, or Cohen, comes up most often, of course, but at least Clay sort of knows him. It took him about two seconds to figure out that the two of them are the kind of high school couple that everyone just knows is going to make it. Like Justin and Jess.
It takes him ages to figure out who anyone else is.
For a while, he thinks Summer must have like ten different best friends because she has at least three different nicknames for each one and uses them interchangeably and without explanation. After a while he becomes fairly certain that Tay, Taylor and Townsend are the same person, and that Ry, Ryan, Chino and Atwood are all Seth’s brother. Kaitlin, at least, is always Kaitlin, so he supposes that’s something.
She talks about Seth and Ryan’s parents, who she clearly adores, and Taylor’s mom, who she decidedly does not.
But Clay will always remember with startling clarity the first time Summer ever utters Marissa’s name in his presence.
She’s telling some story, the details of which Clay doesn’t remember at all, and she says, “…and then Marissa…” and stops dead, frozen for a single, horrible moment. Clay recognizes that pause, has suffered through those fleeting seconds when you forget. Summer scratches once, anxiously, at the inside of her wrist, shakes herself, and continues.
They don’t talk about it. The semi-colons on the inside of both their wrists. They’re not that kind of friends. They study together, maybe sit together when they’re in the dining hall at the same time, wave when they walk past each other on campus.
They don’t talk about it, but Clay knows Summer understands. He had known it the second he met her, recognized something about the set of Summer’s shoulders, like the weight of the world rested there. It reminds him of home and friends who knew his grief like the back of their hand.
He, Justin, Zach, Jess, and Alex had gotten their tattoos together, the day after Alex, the youngest of them, turned eighteen. He hopes Summer had someone to go with her, too.
***
It takes him an embarrassingly long time to figure it out. Or maybe not embarrassing, because it’s not, he’s noticed, something people talk about. It’s not like he goes around telling people either, Clay only ever says my brother, Justin and leaves it at that. But the nickname thing maybe should have tipped him off.
It’s the middle of the spring semester when he spots Summer, laying on a blanket on the quad. It’s like something out of one of those life-at-an-American college movie scenes, the ones that hardly ever happens in real life. Really, it’s just once a year, on the first truly nice day of spring. She’s leaning lazily against a boy who is decidedly not Seth, but Seth is right there and seems decidedly unbothered so Clay figures this must be a regular occurrence. There’s another girl with them, one Clay’s never seen before, so he can only assume this is Taylor and Ryan.
And because, as Justin would say, he’s nosy and has no boundaries, he walks over to them.
“Hey Clay,” Summer says, swatting at the boy’s hand as he tugs at a lock of her hair. There’s a semi-colon on his wrist too and Clay feels something inside him settle. “Quit it, Chino,” Summer snaps, fake annoyed, and then, “Sit, Clay.”
He sits. Mostly because Summer still kind of scares him.
She doesn’t bother introducing him, and he honestly thinks she might have forgotten they don’t already know each other.
Taylor takes pity on him, which tracks, actually, with what Clay knows about her, “I’m Taylor,” she says, “and that’s Ryan.”
“Nice to meet you,” Clay says awkwardly, and then the four of them get back to their conversation, that easy ebb and flow of people who have known each other forever, for whom time and space have no effect. Clay just kind of sits there listening.
“Kirsten and Sandy are not that bad,” Ryan is insisting, throwing a grape at his brother’s head.
Seth raises and eyebrow, “And what was dad wearing the last time he came to visit you?” he asks pointedly.
But Clay’s brain is too busy short circuiting to keep up with the argument, fake or otherwise, after that. Ryan says Kirsten and Sandy the way Justin says Lannie and Matt.
“You’re adopted,” he blurts before he can stop himself.
Four sets of eyes snap to him, and Seth is giving him the same kind of death glare Clay would give anyone who said fuck-shit like this to Justin. In other words, it’s well-deserved ire.
“Sorry,” he stammers automatically, because, contrary to popular, cough, Justin, cough, he does have some basic understanding of social cues, “Just … my brother’s adopted.”
The tension drains from the air, slowly, but it does. Seth and Ryan exchange a look, “Huh,” Ryan says.
Summer’s brow is furrowed, “Oh yeah, I totally didn’t even connect those dots,” and Clay does a double take because he hadn’t actually known Summer knew about Justin.
But then he’s distracted because Ryan is smirking, “Yeah, well, in your defense, you didn’t exactly know Seth existed before I showed up, so it’s easy to forget I wasn’t always there.”
Seth makes a face, “First of all, rude, second of all, rude.”
Taylor is giggling kind of manically, and only manages to stop when Seth shoots her a look, “Sorry,” she says, even though she doesn’t sound it.
Clay is definitely staring, because, like, that’s them, that’s him and Justin, so when Seth turns again and meets his gaze, it take Clay a second to get his tongue working again, “Best thing that ever happened to you?” he checks.
Seth blinks, glances at Ryan, nods, “Yeah.”
Clay nods back, “Me too.”
***
They’re all more or less friends after that. Clay follows Taylor and Ryan on Instagram, just so he can watch another couple be sickeningly in love apparently. He, Seth and Summer get dinner together sometimes, or Summer drags both of them to a party, where none of them end up having much fun at all.
“I’m the one who brought Justin home,” he tells Seth one night, mostly because it’s nice to have someone around who really gets it, “I hid him from my parents in my bedroom for like a week.”
Seth breaks into a grin, “I hid Ryan in one of my mom’s empty housing developments,” he says proudly.
Clay does a double take, “You’re kidding.”
Seth shakes his head, “Nope, and while technically it was my dad who brought him home, I’m the one who always went to drag him back.”
“Yeah,” Clay says, “me too.”
***
“You almost lost him, didn’t you?” Seth asks him one afternoon.
And Clay feels the familiar cold fear trickle down his spine again, “He’s fine,” he says, spits really, repeats over and over in his head until he almost believes it.
Seth shrugs, “So’s Ryan.”
When Clay thinks too hard about it, he can still hear the slow beeping of monitors, the wheezy, ragged breathes, he sees the circles under Justin’s eyes, the hallow cheeks, “Yeah.”
Seth’s got a haunted look in his eyes. Clay wonders what he sees and hears. “You wonder, how didn’t I see it, you know?” Seth mutters.
“Yeah.”
***
“You know my friend Seth?” he asks Justin on the phone that night.
He can hear the rustling of sheets on the other end of the line, “The one who’s basically you, except he’s getting laid?”
Clay rolls his eyes, “Sure, yeah, him,” this is as good a segue as anything, “about that, guess what?”
Justin sighs, “What?”
“His parents adopted his brother when they were both fifteen.”
“You’re kidding”
“Nope,” Clay responds, popping the p.
“Yo,” Justin exclaims, “that’s nuts, dude. They, like, totally copied us.”
Clay frowns, “I mean,” he says, “Considering the way time, you know, works, I’m pretty sure it would be the other way around.”
“Shut the fuck up, Jensen,” Justin groans, “This isn’t science class. They totally stole our thing.”
Clay rolls his eyes, “Sure, whatever, JJ.”