Title: Untitled Silly Putty Fic
Author: kevo
Disclaimer: I've been playing with these boys for years, but they're still not mine.
Pairing: Seth/Ryan
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,632. Ish.
Spoilers: General series. Nothing specific.
Summary: Seth makes a grand, and sticky, romantic gesture.
Author's Note: This is a sequel I did years ago for the first story I ever wrote, "Untitled Rain Fic," in honor of my then two-year anniversary as a fanfic writer. And also because I was really, really into this thing of Silly Putty I had at the time. I don't know why I never posted this on FF.N, but it's here now! Mad love to my friend Rachael for beta'ing.
"I love Silly Putty."
Ryan opted not to respond to this statement.
He and Seth were in the pool house. Ryan had his text book and his notes in front of him. He was attempting to go over the last chapter they'd done in Physics. It had given him a fair amount of trouble in class, and he wasn't really looking to fall behind. The studying, however, was proving to be a bit difficult, with the curly-haired boy lying beside him as a distraction.
Not too long ago, Seth was a distraction Ryan could easily ignore. Or at least that's what he used to tell himself. Now there was no ignoring the effect Seth's presence had on him.
That was because two months ago Seth and Ryan kissed.
It had been awkward, and a little embarrassing. More accurately, it was embarrassing for Ryan, because he'd been crying. It was during a thunderstorm, and those always reminded Ryan of Chino, and his childhood (in particular the more unsavory aspects of it). Seth had been there to comfort him. Which was how the kissing happened.
And the rest was history.
Things in their lives changed rather quickly after that. In the short amount of time that passed, the two became a couple. They were out, to their friends and family and all of Newport, so fast it made Ryan's head spin to think about it. He'd wanted to wait, to be more certain, but getting caught making out in the men's room at school, by a teacher, during class time, had sort of sped up the process.
The strangest thing, Ryan thought, wasn't how different their lives were with this new twist on their relationship, but how much they were the same. They'd become closer in their time as an Official Out and Gay Couple, sure, shared more than ever before. And then there was the whole sex thing. But other than that, not much had shifted in their dynamic.
Ryan tried not to question it. He tried to be happy.
He tried.
So here they were, two months later. Ryan looked over at his boyfriend. Seth was rolling a bit of powder blue Silly Putty between his hands, its matching plastic egg container lying discarded on the blankets.
"Did you ever play with this stuff when you were a kid, Ryan?" Seth mused.
"Yeah, I did," Ryan sighed. "I wasn't that deprived, Seth."
Seth looked down sheepishly. "Oh, right."
For a minute, Seth was quiet.
Very un-Seth-like.
This was something new about their relationship that Ryan was not so happy about. Seth was much more sensitive about the things that Ryan said now. Which sounded great in theory, sure. But Ryan was starting to feel like the delicate, waifish girlfriend in their relationship. And that was not something Ryan wanted to be.
To break the tension, Ryan mumbled, "I had a Slinky and everything," hoping Seth would find something in the words to get his train of thought back on track.
Of course, Seth, master of awkward conversations, did.
"Oh, Silly Putty is SO much cooler than Slinky, Ryan," he attested. "I mean, sure, Slinky rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs. Big deal. But this stuff? You can make little sculptures out of it. You can stick it to things. You can even do that thing, where you press it on a newspaper and it picks up the ink, except that's not so much a great idea, because then it gets all dirty."
Ryan grunted in response.
"Another great thing," Seth continued, "is that it bounces."
He rolled the clay into a ball and threw it at the pool house's French doors. It hit the glass window and did in fact bounce back. Seth failed to catch it, and instead had to root around for it on the bed.
"We should do tests or something," Seth suggested. "What with you working on Physics and all. Figure out what surfaces Silly Putty can and cannot be bounced off of, stuff like that. For example, what kind of reaction would be produced if bounced off of, say, a boyfriend?"
To illustrate his point, Seth tossed the ball gently at Ryan. It hit, and fell. No bounce.
"Ahh, Ryan, you're not bounce off-able," Seth observed.
"Bounce off-able's not a word," Ryan muttered.
"It's a technical term, it doesn't have to be a word," Seth countered. "Like 'malleable' is a word."
"Malleable is a word."
Seth frowned.
"What's up, buddy?" he asked, concerned. "You're all bad-moody."
"I'm not… that," Ryan said plainly. "I'm just trying to study."
"That's not it," Seth argued. He sat up and focused on Ryan intently. "No, you've been having these mood swings for a while now. What gives?"
Ryan took a deep breath, and held it.
He knew what was wrong. Sort of. But he wasn't great at expressing himself. How could he tell Seth what he was feeling without mucking it up or sounding like an idiot? How could he convey his insecurities about love and relationships to his boyfriend?
Ryan exhaled.
"I…I just don't know about this."
Seth's face crumpled. Ryan immediately felt like an ass.
"Are you having second thoughts? About us?"
"No, no!" Ryan said quickly. "It's... It's not that I'm unsure about us. More like I'm unsure about, well… you?" He groaned. "This isn't coming out right."
"Apparently not," Seth said. "Unless you're trying to break up, I don't underst-"
"No, I don't want to break up!" Ryan interrupted. "I'm just worried that one day you're gonna want to."
Seth stared.
"Okay, now I really don't understand."
"You've got relationship ADD, Seth," Ryan told him. "Look, I was there for the whole Summer/Anna debacle."
"Hey, no fair using SAT words in a fight!" Seth shouted.
"My point is, you're notorious for not knowing what you want. And I do. Know what I want."
There was a long silence after Ryan was done. He tried not to look at Seth. He didn't want to know what the other boy was thinking. At least, he didn't think he wanted to know. The temptation became too great. Ryan glanced at Seth, quickly, then looked away. Seth had looked confused. And, if Ryan wasn't mistaken, a little calculating. It was in his eyes, the way they darted from side to side.
Whatever Seth was thinking, he wasn't about to verbalize it. And Ryan felt like enough of a moron already.
"I'm going to sleep," he said, closing his books pointedly. "We can talk about this tomorrow. Or not. Whatever."
Without an answer, without a word, Seth exited the pool house. Ryan was asleep in minutes.
It wasn't until he woke up the next morning that he got the answer he was seeking.
The first thing he noticed when he woke up was that all of the shades on all of the doors had been raised. Harsh, bright sunlight was filtering in through the windows. The second thing Ryan noticed was the odd shadowy patterns in the streams of sunlight.
That's when he saw what was on the doors.
On each of the ten windows there was a message.
Spelled out in Silly Putty.
Seth + Ryan 4EVA!
"Do you wanna play?"
Pseudo-Incest is Best, Put Your Not-Really-Brother to the Test!
Ryan [greater-than symbol] LIFE
United We R Unstoppable
SC+RA (and there was a heart around these initials)
Taste the Rainbow!
BIG GAY LOVE!
Then, on the door at one end were the words I LOVE YOU with an arrow underneath stretching back and forth between the door at the other end, which bore the message THIS MUCH!
As if he'd been waiting for Ryan to wake up, Seth appeared at the door, smiling behind the words "Do you wanna play?" He entered.
"What do you think?" he asked, grinning from ear to ear. "D'you like the bit of redecorating?"
Ryan smiled in spite of himself.
"How did you – Where did you get all this Silly Putty?" he wondered, baffled.
"I had to hit a lot of stores, Ryan," Seth answered frankly. "There's only so much putty in those tiny, tiny eggs. But, y'know, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few plastic eggs with toy clay inside them."
Climbing out of bed, Ryan placed his hands on his hips and looked around at his boyfriend's work.
"When did you do this, last night?"
Seth bobbed his head giddily.
"Did you get any sleep?"
"Who needs sleep when you've got Silly Putty?" Seth preached.
Ryan nodded. "So, you used Silly Putty as a romantic gesture."
"It's a metaphor, Ryan," Seth explained.
"For you being weird?"
"No, I think that's pretty clear without a metaphor," Seth shot back. "No. It's like I said, man: You're not bounce off-able."
"Still not a word," Ryan murmured.
Seth growled and grabbed Ryan's hands. He looked into the other boy's eyes.
"I don't have relationship ADD," he said forcefully. "At least, not with you. Not gonna happen. You and me, man. This is it. I'm stuck on you. Okay?"
Ryan looked Seth over seriously. Even through the usual Seth Babble, he seemed pretty serious. A kind of seriousness Ryan rarely saw in him. Ryan smiled.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, okay."
Seth and Ryan hugged tightly, surrounded by Seth's grand romantic gesture.
"You know," Seth said softly in Ryan's ear. "Silly Putty can be used to make molds. Of certain objects, or, uh… appendages."
Ryan smirked.
"Is that right?"
"Yep."
"Something tells me we're going to need a lot more than one egg," Ryan opined.
"Well," Seth sighed, "not for nothing, but I did use a fair amount to write that message. Some might even call it a lot."
Ryan pulled back far enough to capture Seth's mouth with his own, briefly but passionately.
"I do so love Silly Putty."
END NOTES: I do miss these boys -kevo