Title: Lonely.
Rating: G
Summary/AN: Just another Seth post Marissa's death one-shot, more about what he did in the weeks following. I'm on an O.C oneshot spree. haha.
Her name is raised beneath his fingers as he ghosts a hand across the tombstone; warm to the touch from a day spent in the sun that has finally just started to dim.
"Sorry I haven't been around in a few weeks, everything was just so crazy with Summer leaving yesterday," he lowers himself down to the grass, legs tucked under his body. "She really wanted to come see you, but you know, it's still really hard for her. We had a big teary goodbye at the airport. It was very chick flick, you would have swooned."
Summer had kissed him hard in the airport, pressing her forehead against his as she whispered "you've been my hero these past few months Seth." He's never been the hero, that's Ryan's gig. Seth's always taken pride in being the faithful sidekick, the comic relief; the guy that warns the hero when a storm is brewing and makes the appropriate phone calls once something bad has happened. Except Ryan's gone, living in the backroom of a bar because she died in his arms and Seth knows this isn't something even a Sandy Cohen speech could fix.
Ryan left and Julie locked herself in her bedroom, self-medicating on pain killers left behind by Summer's step-mom. She spent the first few weeks sprawled on her bed; searching the backgrounds of old family photos for answers that didn't exist there. Dr. Roberts tried his best but in the end usually wound up just stumbling over his words. So he threw himself back into his work and was gone most of the time. He couldn't bring Marissa back, not even close, but he could fix bumpy noses and implant fake calf muscles. So he did.
But alone in that big house, outside Julie's locked door, were two girls struggling to breathe between their tears.
No matter how smart mouthed she got, how worldly and uncouth she pretended to be, Seth would never see Kaitlin the same again. He would never be able to look at her without seeing her as they all did the day of the funeral; standing in front of the chapel, all shaking legs and sharp shoulders in a dress from her sister's closet, too skinny for her own good with wide, glassy eyes lined in black.
Summer's bottom lip had seemed to quiver all the time, her tiny hands constantly fidgeting on zippers and buttons, her delicate fingers trembling in Seth's hands.
So he stepped up. He was there to make them eat when they had forgotten. He forced Kaitlin to finish entire slices of pizza before he left her alone and he held Summer's hair back those first few days when everything she swallowed seemed to find it's way back up. He took out the trash and tipped the deliverymen who never seemed to stop showing up with flowers and baskets of fruit that were somehow supposed to make everything better.
Sometimes he wiped their tears; sometimes he cried right along with them.
He couldn't save Ryan, still can't. No, that is a beast of a different species that can't be agitated just yet. But those girls, the love of his life and the smaller, sadder version of a girl who had been one of his first real friends, he could help them.
He made them laugh. He narrated the core four's entire high school experience to Kaitlin. He gave her a glimpse into the large portion of her sister's life she had missed out on: crazy Oliver and sexy Alex and the Dirty Dean. He included the less dramatic as well, like all of the terrible movies she and Summer drug him and Ryan to and the silly hats she always seemed to be wearing. Eventually Summer joined in too, her smile finally resurfacing as she told tales about her best friend, random little things she remembered from childhood and how hard they'd laughed the time they got caught passing notes in history. Kaitlin clung to every word and eventually, when her bratty retorts and sarcastic commentary began to work their way back into her vocabulary, Seth was less scared of leaving her alone.
Summer started laughing again and finally around mid July got excited about college. He followed her around for hours as she shopped for dorm furniture; happy to watch her do just about anything until the very last second she disappeared into Gate 12 at the airport.
In the mean time though, he started to visit Marissa. As far as he knew he was the only one, besides Julie, to spend any lengthy amount of time at the grave. He knew that Ryan and Summer weren't ready, so he came in their place. The two of them had done so much for him, were the two single most important people in his life outside of his parents. It was the least he could do.
"Kaitlin is getting ready for her first day at Harbor," he explained, "hopefully her experience is slightly less dramatic than ours," he grinned, knowing somehow that she could see him, "And she's been hanging out with Luke's brothers. You Cooper women sure do have a thing for the Wards."
He reached into his backpack and retrieved a worn, paperback copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. It had been her favorite, his too. He began flipping through the pages and then stopped, sighing as he glanced back up at the tombstone, squinting as one of the sun's final rays of the day landed on his face.
"I know you're not really here but I like to pretend you know? Last time Summer and Ryan were gone we commiserated about being the two loneliest people in Newport. I don't want to be lonely on my own, ok?"
He waited a beat, as if expecting an answer and then settled back until he was lying against the ground and opened the book. His voice was quiet and tired as he began to read aloud, his words floating into the dusk.
"They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn..."