![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
myficsTitle: Sleepwalk [Part 8 of the "Heal" series]
Paring: Eventual Seth/Ryan, all other canon-things.
Rating: PG-13 for now.
Word Count: 2,040 (this chapter)
Summary: A hypothetical fourth season, continuing all current storylines, with eventual Seth/Ryan.
Disclaimer: Me = Poor. Josh Schwartz = Both very ballsy and extremely rich. Note the difference.
Spoilers: For everything. Literally.
Notes: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dancinbutterfly for her help/beta on this chapter, and also for kick-starting my muse. Also, I'm writing this to prove that Seth/Ryan is still possible, now more than ever, so it'll continue ALL the storylines from the season 3 finale, meaning it does not focus TOTALLY on Ryan/Seth, though it mostly will. Please enjoy.
Part One can be found HERE
Part Two can be found HERE
Part Three can be found HERE
Part Four can be found HERE
Part Five can be found HERE
Part Six can be found HERE
Part Seven can be found HERE
Will I stay this way forever?
Sleepwalk through my life’s endeavor?
- "Going Through the Motions" by Sarah Michelle Gellar/Buffy, The Vampire Slayer
Seth closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep, but it’s difficult. He keeps imagining he feels lips sliding against his own and he doesn’t know whether to be grateful or to scream, but when he opens his eyes, there’s nothing there. It occurs to him that it’s probably his subconscious telling him what he really wants, but he tries to push that thought away and go to sleep.
He dreams that he’s standing in the middle of Ryan and Summer, and his arms are made out of rope. They’re each holding one end and they both start to tug at the same time. Blinding pain shoots down both of his arms and it feels like they’re being ripped from his body. He would’ve thought that Summer would be no match for Ryan in this tug-of-war, but he’s forgotten Summer’s rage black outs and she’s holding her own. Neither one is giving an inch, just pulling at Seth until it feels like he’s about to be torn in two. He screams for one of them to let go, but neither does.
Then there’s a flash of red and his arms are gone and Summer and Ryan are each holding one. Instead of helping him since he’s now, you know…armless, they both pick up the fight and start smacking each other with his arms.
Seth wakes up and decides that he really shouldn’t eat pickles right before bed.
It’s a long two weeks of he and Ryan tiptoeing around each other, which is damn-near impossible in a space as small as the pool house, no matter what Ryan says about it having a kitchen and a bathroom.
They talk sometimes, mostly about Dawn or Marissa, sometimes about whatever pops into Seth’s head, but they never mention the kiss, and gradually things become less awkward between them.
Seth still sleeps on the floor because he knows that if he gets back in that bed, he’s going to kiss Ryan, and things will go right back to that place they were two weeks ago, and he can’t take that, but he also can’t not kiss Ryan.
He wakes up one morning to a tapping noise coming from the door. Summer’s standing there, free hand on her hip, and she’s looking pissed.
He steps outside, pulling the door shut behind him and before he can get three words out of his mouth she slaps him across the face.
“That’s for not calling me for two weeks,” she says simply.
“I—I’m sorry,” Seth says, and he is. Sorry for things she’ll never even know about.
“Look. I love you. And I get that Ryan needs help right now, and I get that you need to be here. Fine. But that doesn’t give you any right to ignore me, and I just…I just think that if you really loved me, you would visit me or call me or something.”
Seth opens his mouth to argue, but nothing comes out.
“I…I just wanted you to know that I’m breaking up with you,” she says finally.
Seth thinks he should probably jump off the nearest tall building because damn it all to hell, half of him is relieved.
“And that I’ve found someone else,” she finishes.
Seth’s eyes nearly bug out of his head and he hates himself for having the audacity to say, “You’re cheating on me?”
“No,” Summer says, touching the red spot on his cheek where her hand connected with his face. “I’m asking him out as soon as I leave here. I wanted to be sure this was really over first. If there was any hope we could save it…” she trails off and tears well up in her eyes. “But there isn’t, is there? You haven’t even tried to stop me.” She sighs and kisses him softly. “I’ll see you around, okay?”
“Wait, Summer, who is it?” Seth calls after her, but she doesn’t answer.
When he turns back to the pool house and sees Ryan standing there, frozen still with a hurt look on his face, his heart sinks even further. He tries to open the door, tries to go in and explain, but the door is locked and his key is on the table beside the bed, and this time, Ryan’s not letting him back in.
“Fuck,” Seth says, sliding down to sit in his once-familiar vigilante position outside the pool house door.
*
Julie finally agrees to go to one of the “You Can Heal” meetings and when she gets there, Gwen takes her hand and smiles. “I’m glad you came, Julie,” she says, leading her over to the group. “Everyone, this is Julie.” She introduces everyone, but there are so many names that Julie immediately forgets them all. “Julie lost her daughter, Marissa, a month ago,” Gwen tells them.
Julie takes a seat next to Gwen and the group leader asks Julie if she’d like to talk about what she’s been feeling since she lost Marissa, and at first Julie shakes her head no, but after a few moments, she agrees.
She tells the group about what a great daughter Marissa was, and about what a horrible mom she still is. She tells them about sleeping with Luke and how Marissa forgave her anyway. She tells them about how it was Marissa’s graduation day and Ryan drove off the road. She tells them that the cops are looking for some other guy, but how she doesn’t buy Ryan’s story. She mentions Kaitlin and how Marissa’s death has effected her, how Kaitlin won’t come out of her room, about how it used to be Marissa’s room, and about how much it hurts to see Neil with Summer because she’s reminded every day that she lost her daughter and other people still have theirs. Someone in the group points out that even though Kaitlin could never take Marissa’s place, they still have each other, don’t they? Julie starts explaining, but the group leader stops her and sends a sharp look at the member who asked. Someone suggests that she spend more time with Kaitlin, but Julie merely sighs and says, “It’s not the same,” and feels like an absolute bitch.
But hearing everyone else talk does sort of help, especially when Gwen speaks and talks about Johnny and how Marissa and something named “Chili” helped her, and it’s nice to hear someone say such nice things about her daughter.
When she gets home from her meeting, she kisses Neil on the cheek and calls out for delivery, shouting upstairs to find out what Summer and Kaitlin want.
Summer wants to thank her for asking, but she’s leaving to go on a date soon.
Kaitlin wants Julie to leave her the fuck alone.
*
Sandy can’t believe it. He honestly can’t believe it. He nearly drops the phone in relief.
Volchok has been found. He’s currently being held in a jail in Minnesota, awaiting extradition back to California for vehicular homicide.
Sandy asks how long it’ll take to get the trial started and he’s told that they don’t know, but they’re guessing around the end of October.
When he gets home he goes out to the pool house to tell Ryan and Seth, but Seth is sitting outside the pool house. He opens his mouth to ask, but Seth just says, “Don’t wanna talk about it.”
He knocks on the door but Ryan won’t let him in so he pulls out his cell phone and calls the phone in the pool house. Ryan finally answers and Sandy says, “We caught him.”
Ryan’s eyes go wide and he slumps down on the bed, clicking the phone off. Slowly, Sandy watches as Ryan disappears under the covers, returning to a position he hasn’t been in for two weeks.
Sandy resists the urge to throw his phone down and stomp on it and drags himself back into the house, wondering what the hell he did wrong now.
*
Summer checks her hair once more in the mirror before heading outside and climbing into Luke’s car.
As they drive down the highway, she remembers when she was ten years old, just before Marissa and Luke kissed for the first time on the back of the bus on the way back from the Museum of Tolerance.
“That field trip sounds boring,” Summer said, looking up from where she was painting her toenails on the bed.
“It’s the Museum of Tolerance, Sum. I think it’s supposed to be. Like…by law,” Marissa said as she applied the lipstick they’d stolen from her mom.
“So…” Summer said slyly. “Are you going to kiss Luke?”
“What? Ew! No! He’s like…a boy! He has cooties!”
“Yeah, but he likes you.”
“He does not.”
“I can totally tell, Coop. He likes you and he wants to kiss you and give you his boy-germs.”
“Well, I’m not kissing him,” Marissa said finally.
“Why? I’d kiss him.”
“Ew, Summer!”
“What? He’s cute!”
Marissa just rolled her eyes and went back to applying her lipstick.
“Besides, girls are so much cooler than boys anyway. All boys want to talk about is dirt and bugs.”
“I dunno,” Summer shrugged. “I think boys are pretty cool sometimes. Even if they do have cooties.”
Summer put the nail polish away, opting to doodle “Summer Ward” on her Trapper Keeper instead.
“Hey,” Luke says. “Where’s your mind?”
“Oh,” Summer says, snapping back to the present. “Nowhere. Just thinking about something.” She offers a small smile.
“Thinking about Cohen?”
“No, actually,” Summer says. “Just remembering the Museum of Tolerance field trip.”
“From fifth grade?” Luke laughs.
Summer nods. “It was the first time you and Marissa…”
“Kissed, yeah,” Luke finishes for her.
“Yeah. Two days before that, we were in her room after school and she told me she would never kiss you because you had cooties.”
“She seemed to enjoy it at the time…” Luke says awkwardly.
“I know, it’s just…that day. In her room? I told her that I thought you were cute and she said ‘ew, no.’ Did you know that? That I liked you before she did?”
“No,” Luke says quietly.
“Yeah, I did. I was always jealous. I thought Marissa had the perfect life.”
“She didn’t,” Luke sighs.
“No, she didn’t.”
“And I certainly wasn’t the perfect boyfriend…”
“Speaking of which,” Summer says, turning to face him. “If you treat me like you did her, with the cheating and stuff, I will kill you. I just want you to know that.”
Luke swallows audibly and Summer can’t stop the grin that spreads across her face.
*
Ryan’s heart is pretty much in his knees now. Seeing Seth kiss Summer, actually seeing it, right there where they both knew he could see nearly killed him, but now finding out that Volchok has been caught has sent him careening back into a state he hasn’t been in for two weeks. He crawls back under his covers and waits for something else to go wrong, but really there’s nothing left.
So now he’s facing a trial and he has no idea how he’ll keep up with class work at Berkeley and attend a trial, especially mid-semester because he’ll need to concentrate on his midterms.
Ryan knows that he could ask Sandy to see if he could defer his acceptance to the spring semester, but he’s not sure if he wants to do that. It would be him and Seth all alone for an entire semester while Seth pines away for Summer and Ryan can’t handle that, he just can’t, but it’s really his only choice. He finally sighs and grabs his phone, calling Sandy.
Sandy’s got a slight slur to his voice when Ryan asks him about it, but he promises to call his friend Paul Glass the next day and see what he can do. Ryan thanks him and apologizes for hanging up on him, and then dives right back under the covers, trying not to feel like he’s going back in time to when he used to lay like this and pretend Seth wasn’t sitting just outside his door.
He closes his eyes as the light outside fades and wishes that he had a time machine to go back and change everything that’s happened since graduation.
Um...there's chapter 8. I know this chapter was a bit um...on the...blah side. I had to get a lot accomplished so that I could move forward because we're FINALLY ready, I think, to start moving towards...well, you know. :) So...anyway, leave me a comment, please, and make me feel guilty and write more. *MWAH*
Paring: Eventual Seth/Ryan, all other canon-things.
Rating: PG-13 for now.
Word Count: 2,040 (this chapter)
Summary: A hypothetical fourth season, continuing all current storylines, with eventual Seth/Ryan.
Disclaimer: Me = Poor. Josh Schwartz = Both very ballsy and extremely rich. Note the difference.
Spoilers: For everything. Literally.
Notes: Thanks to
dancinbutterfly for her help/beta on this chapter, and also for kick-starting my muse. Also, I'm writing this to prove that Seth/Ryan is still possible, now more than ever, so it'll continue ALL the storylines from the season 3 finale, meaning it does not focus TOTALLY on Ryan/Seth, though it mostly will. Please enjoy.Part One can be found HERE
Part Two can be found HERE
Part Three can be found HERE
Part Four can be found HERE
Part Five can be found HERE
Part Six can be found HERE
Part Seven can be found HERE
Will I stay this way forever?
Sleepwalk through my life’s endeavor?
- "Going Through the Motions" by Sarah Michelle Gellar/Buffy, The Vampire Slayer
Seth closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep, but it’s difficult. He keeps imagining he feels lips sliding against his own and he doesn’t know whether to be grateful or to scream, but when he opens his eyes, there’s nothing there. It occurs to him that it’s probably his subconscious telling him what he really wants, but he tries to push that thought away and go to sleep.
He dreams that he’s standing in the middle of Ryan and Summer, and his arms are made out of rope. They’re each holding one end and they both start to tug at the same time. Blinding pain shoots down both of his arms and it feels like they’re being ripped from his body. He would’ve thought that Summer would be no match for Ryan in this tug-of-war, but he’s forgotten Summer’s rage black outs and she’s holding her own. Neither one is giving an inch, just pulling at Seth until it feels like he’s about to be torn in two. He screams for one of them to let go, but neither does.
Then there’s a flash of red and his arms are gone and Summer and Ryan are each holding one. Instead of helping him since he’s now, you know…armless, they both pick up the fight and start smacking each other with his arms.
Seth wakes up and decides that he really shouldn’t eat pickles right before bed.
It’s a long two weeks of he and Ryan tiptoeing around each other, which is damn-near impossible in a space as small as the pool house, no matter what Ryan says about it having a kitchen and a bathroom.
They talk sometimes, mostly about Dawn or Marissa, sometimes about whatever pops into Seth’s head, but they never mention the kiss, and gradually things become less awkward between them.
Seth still sleeps on the floor because he knows that if he gets back in that bed, he’s going to kiss Ryan, and things will go right back to that place they were two weeks ago, and he can’t take that, but he also can’t not kiss Ryan.
He wakes up one morning to a tapping noise coming from the door. Summer’s standing there, free hand on her hip, and she’s looking pissed.
He steps outside, pulling the door shut behind him and before he can get three words out of his mouth she slaps him across the face.
“That’s for not calling me for two weeks,” she says simply.
“I—I’m sorry,” Seth says, and he is. Sorry for things she’ll never even know about.
“Look. I love you. And I get that Ryan needs help right now, and I get that you need to be here. Fine. But that doesn’t give you any right to ignore me, and I just…I just think that if you really loved me, you would visit me or call me or something.”
Seth opens his mouth to argue, but nothing comes out.
“I…I just wanted you to know that I’m breaking up with you,” she says finally.
Seth thinks he should probably jump off the nearest tall building because damn it all to hell, half of him is relieved.
“And that I’ve found someone else,” she finishes.
Seth’s eyes nearly bug out of his head and he hates himself for having the audacity to say, “You’re cheating on me?”
“No,” Summer says, touching the red spot on his cheek where her hand connected with his face. “I’m asking him out as soon as I leave here. I wanted to be sure this was really over first. If there was any hope we could save it…” she trails off and tears well up in her eyes. “But there isn’t, is there? You haven’t even tried to stop me.” She sighs and kisses him softly. “I’ll see you around, okay?”
“Wait, Summer, who is it?” Seth calls after her, but she doesn’t answer.
When he turns back to the pool house and sees Ryan standing there, frozen still with a hurt look on his face, his heart sinks even further. He tries to open the door, tries to go in and explain, but the door is locked and his key is on the table beside the bed, and this time, Ryan’s not letting him back in.
“Fuck,” Seth says, sliding down to sit in his once-familiar vigilante position outside the pool house door.
Julie finally agrees to go to one of the “You Can Heal” meetings and when she gets there, Gwen takes her hand and smiles. “I’m glad you came, Julie,” she says, leading her over to the group. “Everyone, this is Julie.” She introduces everyone, but there are so many names that Julie immediately forgets them all. “Julie lost her daughter, Marissa, a month ago,” Gwen tells them.
Julie takes a seat next to Gwen and the group leader asks Julie if she’d like to talk about what she’s been feeling since she lost Marissa, and at first Julie shakes her head no, but after a few moments, she agrees.
She tells the group about what a great daughter Marissa was, and about what a horrible mom she still is. She tells them about sleeping with Luke and how Marissa forgave her anyway. She tells them about how it was Marissa’s graduation day and Ryan drove off the road. She tells them that the cops are looking for some other guy, but how she doesn’t buy Ryan’s story. She mentions Kaitlin and how Marissa’s death has effected her, how Kaitlin won’t come out of her room, about how it used to be Marissa’s room, and about how much it hurts to see Neil with Summer because she’s reminded every day that she lost her daughter and other people still have theirs. Someone in the group points out that even though Kaitlin could never take Marissa’s place, they still have each other, don’t they? Julie starts explaining, but the group leader stops her and sends a sharp look at the member who asked. Someone suggests that she spend more time with Kaitlin, but Julie merely sighs and says, “It’s not the same,” and feels like an absolute bitch.
But hearing everyone else talk does sort of help, especially when Gwen speaks and talks about Johnny and how Marissa and something named “Chili” helped her, and it’s nice to hear someone say such nice things about her daughter.
When she gets home from her meeting, she kisses Neil on the cheek and calls out for delivery, shouting upstairs to find out what Summer and Kaitlin want.
Summer wants to thank her for asking, but she’s leaving to go on a date soon.
Kaitlin wants Julie to leave her the fuck alone.
Sandy can’t believe it. He honestly can’t believe it. He nearly drops the phone in relief.
Volchok has been found. He’s currently being held in a jail in Minnesota, awaiting extradition back to California for vehicular homicide.
Sandy asks how long it’ll take to get the trial started and he’s told that they don’t know, but they’re guessing around the end of October.
When he gets home he goes out to the pool house to tell Ryan and Seth, but Seth is sitting outside the pool house. He opens his mouth to ask, but Seth just says, “Don’t wanna talk about it.”
He knocks on the door but Ryan won’t let him in so he pulls out his cell phone and calls the phone in the pool house. Ryan finally answers and Sandy says, “We caught him.”
Ryan’s eyes go wide and he slumps down on the bed, clicking the phone off. Slowly, Sandy watches as Ryan disappears under the covers, returning to a position he hasn’t been in for two weeks.
Sandy resists the urge to throw his phone down and stomp on it and drags himself back into the house, wondering what the hell he did wrong now.
Summer checks her hair once more in the mirror before heading outside and climbing into Luke’s car.
As they drive down the highway, she remembers when she was ten years old, just before Marissa and Luke kissed for the first time on the back of the bus on the way back from the Museum of Tolerance.
“That field trip sounds boring,” Summer said, looking up from where she was painting her toenails on the bed.
“It’s the Museum of Tolerance, Sum. I think it’s supposed to be. Like…by law,” Marissa said as she applied the lipstick they’d stolen from her mom.
“So…” Summer said slyly. “Are you going to kiss Luke?”
“What? Ew! No! He’s like…a boy! He has cooties!”
“Yeah, but he likes you.”
“He does not.”
“I can totally tell, Coop. He likes you and he wants to kiss you and give you his boy-germs.”
“Well, I’m not kissing him,” Marissa said finally.
“Why? I’d kiss him.”
“Ew, Summer!”
“What? He’s cute!”
Marissa just rolled her eyes and went back to applying her lipstick.
“Besides, girls are so much cooler than boys anyway. All boys want to talk about is dirt and bugs.”
“I dunno,” Summer shrugged. “I think boys are pretty cool sometimes. Even if they do have cooties.”
Summer put the nail polish away, opting to doodle “Summer Ward” on her Trapper Keeper instead.
“Hey,” Luke says. “Where’s your mind?”
“Oh,” Summer says, snapping back to the present. “Nowhere. Just thinking about something.” She offers a small smile.
“Thinking about Cohen?”
“No, actually,” Summer says. “Just remembering the Museum of Tolerance field trip.”
“From fifth grade?” Luke laughs.
Summer nods. “It was the first time you and Marissa…”
“Kissed, yeah,” Luke finishes for her.
“Yeah. Two days before that, we were in her room after school and she told me she would never kiss you because you had cooties.”
“She seemed to enjoy it at the time…” Luke says awkwardly.
“I know, it’s just…that day. In her room? I told her that I thought you were cute and she said ‘ew, no.’ Did you know that? That I liked you before she did?”
“No,” Luke says quietly.
“Yeah, I did. I was always jealous. I thought Marissa had the perfect life.”
“She didn’t,” Luke sighs.
“No, she didn’t.”
“And I certainly wasn’t the perfect boyfriend…”
“Speaking of which,” Summer says, turning to face him. “If you treat me like you did her, with the cheating and stuff, I will kill you. I just want you to know that.”
Luke swallows audibly and Summer can’t stop the grin that spreads across her face.
Ryan’s heart is pretty much in his knees now. Seeing Seth kiss Summer, actually seeing it, right there where they both knew he could see nearly killed him, but now finding out that Volchok has been caught has sent him careening back into a state he hasn’t been in for two weeks. He crawls back under his covers and waits for something else to go wrong, but really there’s nothing left.
So now he’s facing a trial and he has no idea how he’ll keep up with class work at Berkeley and attend a trial, especially mid-semester because he’ll need to concentrate on his midterms.
Ryan knows that he could ask Sandy to see if he could defer his acceptance to the spring semester, but he’s not sure if he wants to do that. It would be him and Seth all alone for an entire semester while Seth pines away for Summer and Ryan can’t handle that, he just can’t, but it’s really his only choice. He finally sighs and grabs his phone, calling Sandy.
Sandy’s got a slight slur to his voice when Ryan asks him about it, but he promises to call his friend Paul Glass the next day and see what he can do. Ryan thanks him and apologizes for hanging up on him, and then dives right back under the covers, trying not to feel like he’s going back in time to when he used to lay like this and pretend Seth wasn’t sitting just outside his door.
He closes his eyes as the light outside fades and wishes that he had a time machine to go back and change everything that’s happened since graduation.
Um...there's chapter 8. I know this chapter was a bit um...on the...blah side. I had to get a lot accomplished so that I could move forward because we're FINALLY ready, I think, to start moving towards...well, you know. :) So...anyway, leave me a comment, please, and make me feel guilty and write more. *MWAH*
