The end has only begun
by M. F. Luder
17. brown
Seth's sitting on the futon when Ryan pushes the door open. He blinks, looking up at the face. Ryan stands there, just stands here, with his hand on the door, his lips a thin line, blue eyes staring back at him.
He's certain Ryan's trying to tell him something with his eyes. Something. Something. Anything. Something he can't quite read. He can't read Ryan anymore. He used to. He used to be able to do so, to hear a hundred words with nothing but one look. To see Ryan and know what he wanted, what he needed, and to give him that.
Seth used to be able to do all those things, but somewhere along the way, somewhere in between Marissa's funeral and Ryan moving out, he lost that ability. He closes his right hand into a fist, tries to reach that part of his mind where the translations used to run free, and finds it empty, lost and bewildered. He swallows. Whatever it is that Ryan is trying to say, he can't hear it. He can't hear it anymore.
After a moment, Ryan lets go of the door and walks inside, black bag in one hand, and drops it in the middle of the bed. Ryan doesn't say anything, he doesn't have to, only makes his way to the bathroom.
Seth sighs as he hears the door closing, and a second later, the shower running. Seth closes his eyes, tells himself to breathe.
He doesn't need to ask Ryan about the new cut on his right cheekbone, or the bruise turning green on his left one. There's another new cut above Ryan's left eyebrow, and all of those are new since Seth last saw him.
Ryan went there, again.
Seth's chest is tight and he can feel the back of his eyes stinging. He closes both his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms with as much force as he has. The pain is good, the pain is very good, gives him something to focus on, and now he understands Ryan a little bit better. And yet that doesn't make it right. It was bad enough--
His breath turns into something weird in his throat, and he opens his mouth, breathes deeply and slowly as he leans forward, forearms on his knees. After a second, the water still running in the shower, he can breathe easily again.
It was bad enough to see Ryan getting the shit kicked out of him. It was bad enough seeing him on the floor, bleeding. Lying on the floor, smiling, like it was some sort of penance, for letting Marissa die instead of him. And there's more there than that, Seth knows. There's so much shit underneath what Ryan shows, that's eating him from the inside out. It's like Ryan's rotting, slowly, and Ryan himself is letting it happen.
It was even worse to stand before him and hear Ryan say those things, like he didn't care, like he didn't care about them. Being pushed back by him. It was--
He can't do that again. He can't just watch and let Ryan walk away. Seth's done it twice now, he doesn't think he'll survive one more time. He doesn't think either of them will survive one more time.
Ryan walks out of the shower after a while. He's wearing a pair of sweatpants and a white shirt. He didn't take much on his rush to get out of the house, and his mother didn't throw anything out. What Ryan's wearing now was left behind. Seth knows, he checked. He went through every single drawer and corner in the pool house, looking for what had been left behind, clinging to the hope that maybe, Ryan not taking much, meant he actually meant to come back.
Ryan picks up the bag and places it on the floor, right next to the bed, and just stands there. Ryan doesn't say anything, Seth doesn't think Ryan could.
The silence is tense and awkward and all those things they never were together. Even when they first met, it was easy in a surprising way. They just said hey and they were done, they were friends, they understood each other.
But that's not here, it's not now. That's long gone, in the three years in between, in the losses they both took. And Seth thinks he might hate Ryan a little bit for that. It's Ryan the one that's pretending they are nothing to one another.
Seth wanted to help. He wanted to be there for his friend, even more than he ever wanted to be there for Summer. He wants to try and comprehend Ryan, to listen to him, or not listen to him if Ryan doesn't want to talk. And he'll do that. He'll sit here and not say a word and they can not talk and Seth will do that. And it'd be easy and understandable and them.
Seth wanted to help Ryan more than he ever wanted to be with Summer. He doesn't think about that, he's decided not to think about that, not anymore. Whatever it is, whatever he knows that is, he won't look at it, he won't speak of it. It would lead him nowhere. Ryan's barely here as it is, and Seth's pathetically grateful for what little of his friend he can get. He won't push for more, even if he himself doesn't know what more he could want.
The TV is still in the pool house, along with the X-Box, and in any other given circumstances, Seth would ask Ryan for a game. Hell, in any other circumstances, the silence around them wouldn't feel like water collapsing around them, it wouldn't feel like they are dying, slowly, without words, without air.
"I'm..." He sighs, the words thick in his mouth, his very being thick in himself. "I'll just..."
Ryan nods, tersely, not saying a word. Seth understands. He doesn't like it, God, he fucking hates it, but he understands.
They have nothing in common now, not that they ever did. They are nothing but two people in the same room with no word to be spoken between them. They are nothing but two strangers. Seth thinks he can feel his heart cracking, slowly, like glass under pressure, but he's not sure. He's gotten used to that feeling this summer.
Seth nods, at himself, at Ryan stupidly, half waiting for something to be said. He's not surprised when no words are found.
He stands on shaky legs, doesn't look at Ryan, nor at the pool house in which he realized that losing his girlfriend to college didn't hurt half as much as losing Ryan to himself.
He closes the distance to the door, hand reaching for the doorknob. It doesn't shake, his voice doesn't breech his lips and he doesn't look over his shoulder at Ryan. Ryan, watching him leave, the symbolism an irony for them, and not saying a word about it.
He pushes the door opens, walks over the threshold and out of the pool house. He stands there, a second, a breath, before pushing the door closed with his elbow. He leans back against the glass and the pulled curtains, and breathes out, the very air leaving his lungs hurting him, making him ache in a way he thought he'd forgotten, back when he sat on his bed and watched Ryan leave to do the right thing, when he stood in the doorway of his house and watched Ryan leave once again, to grieve alone.
He can't do this again, Seth thinks. He can't do this, watching Ryan walk away, or walk away himself. He can't lose Ryan again. He'd rather lose himself, than do that again.
So he won't. Whatever it takes, Seth thinks. Whatever it is he has to do, he won't lose Ryan again. He refuses. Wherever it is Ryan wants to go to, from now on -- because Ryan will leave again, Seth just knows. He doesn't know how, but he knows. This isn't over, the pain over Marissa's death is far from being over. Ryan's far from being done. So if Ryan goes, Seth will go with him. And where Ryan stays, Seth will stay with him.
Seth doesn't have to say a word for that to be a promise, to Ryan and to himself.
Finished: January 6th, 2007.
