Disclaimer: These are not my characters.

NB: This is not graphic, but it is SLASH. If you do not like slash, please do not read it.

Ryan, waking first the next morning, remembers Seth's thwarted attempt to talk to him and knows he is in way over his head. He wants Seth, even loves him in a way, but does not honestly think he can define it the way Seth would like. Part of the problem is that his relationship with sex is kind of bizarre. Because it was his parents' only real connection, he associates it with domestic stability. Here, where he is happy and safe, he can offer Seth no greater proof of devotion.

Which is not exactly the same as being gay. He likes Seth more than any girl at the moment, likes sleeping with him more than anyone so far, but women are…women are the actual thing. Other boys are sex and friendship, but women are inevitability, like gravity, like going home. He wants to make Seth happy but is starting to worry that ultimately Seth wants something Ryan cannot offer. This is the kind of mistake Ryan is used to making, an impetuous, person-focused failure to think ahead. He was so careful not to make it with Marissa that he completely missed himself making it with Seth. And this is so much worse.

Two days later, sitting at the counter in the kitchen eating cereal, Seth says, without looking up, "So, Ryan. What do you think about coming out?"

Ryan stands a few feet away, leaning over the newspaper. "What, Cotillion? It seems kind of stupid. I mean, a formal introduction to people you already know because there are only twenty of you---"

"No. Coming out of the closet."

Ryan looks at him blankly.

"I mean, I'm, uh, I'm talking about us."

Ryan's face freezes into an expression Seth has not seen since the day in juvie. He looks implacable and brittle and mournful all at once.

"Okay, man, sorry, I should never have brought it up. I just---"

"No, it's…"

"I mean if it's too soon, or if it's about me, or if it's just much too heavy to think about… I totally get that. God, I'm not even sure I… 'Cause it's really just you, or you know, you so far. Maybe it's too soon to tell whether---"

"Seth."

"What?"

"I'm not gay."

"Oh. No. Well then. No point in coming out, I guess." He sits for a few minutes, pours more cereal into his bowl, then says, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I'm…sure."

"Huh. So then," Seth moves his hand back and forth between them in a rapid, off-hand motion, "this is just---"

Ryan grabs his still-moving hand, says, "I like this. I like this a lot." No one else is home and when Ryan kisses him, Seth can't help himself, he leans into it and moans, thinking somewhere in the back of his brain that he has to gather some shreds of fucking dignity and just back the hell off. After what is probably well over a minute, he manages to yank away.

"Right. You like this, but, totally not gay. Interesting. Confusing, for those of us trapped in the game, but definitely helping to reinforce the sexy mystery. So, ah, yeah. Keep up the good work."

Ryan watches him, exasperated and sad and a little lonely, wishing talking were as easy for him as it is for Seth. Although that raw dovetailing of glibness and sincerity pretty much breaks his heart.

Finally Seth says, "I don't understand. Isn't this what being gay…is? I mean, we're having sex, right? And we're both guys. And forgive me if I presume, but I'm pretty sure we're both liking it…"

Ryan says nothing.

"So…" continues Seth, leadingly. "I mean. What the hell?"

There is no explanation and Ryan continues to look at him with a mournful intensity that makes Seth want to stab him. And hug him.

"All right," Seth says finally. "I can see this is going nowhere. I think I'll just, uh, yeah." And he removes himself to the living room. Ryan hears the television click on, follows to stand in the doorway for a while, but Seth does not look up. Eventually, he gives up and gets ready for work.

When he returns that night, Kirsten is the only person home. He walks into the kitchen and finds her leaning against the counter eating ice cream out of the carton. This is such a radical departure from house rules that he just stares at her.

She looks at him without embarrassment and asks, "What the hell is going on with you and Seth?"

"What? What do you mean? Is he all right?"

She sets the ice cream down and folds her arms across her chest. "You tell me."

"I, uh…" She is looking at him with a clinical iciness that he has not seen before. He remembers Seth's warning about her inner teenager and feels vulnerable, as though the usual barriers between her thoughts and his have ceased to exist. "We had kind of a fight this morning."

"About what?"

He looks nervous, shrugs, fails to meet her eyes. "It was just a fight. It wasn't about anything."

"Right." The trauma in his face is so naked that she feels almost sadistic when she says, "An important life lesson, Ryan, is that romantic attachment is almost impossible to camouflage. No one hides it well. You hide it particularly poorly."

"God, I'm so sorry."

Kirsten is not usually an avoider of conflict, but she knows she will not survive the conversation in which she says, "Sandy! They're sleeping together!" and he says, "Honey. They're experimenting. You need to calm down." She also knows it's not entirely Ryan's fault. As much as Seth may expect to be bullied or ignored, he also expects, at the end of the day, to get what he wants. He has an enormous sense of entitlement, as an only child, as a rich boy. Which is more her fault than Sandy's. She wanted him to have all the things she had without the baggage, the guilt, the stentorian parent lording it over you that you could never have built all of this from scratch.

And she is aware, right now with an immediacy that springs from the same mood that drives Seth to mutter to Ryan in despair, "My mom is listening to groin funk," that you cannot choose whom you love. It's like weather, like standing in a downpour. But there are acts of will. You can choose to walk away. Not without trauma, maybe, but you can. Some people can. She did, once. You have to choose, though, and she knows Seth, in all his righteous innocence, would never choose like that, against his own desire. But Ryan would. If he thought it was the right thing to do. Which is why she has ambushed him tonight, Sandy and Seth safely out of the house, three fingers of single malt steadying her nerve.

She says, "I don't want to be having this conversation any more than you do. Unfortunately, someone needs to have it. And with Seth it will be an emotional explosion and with Sandy it will be endless discussion and an earnest desire to figure out a way to make it okay. And believe me when I tell you that this will never, ever, be okay. So. That leaves us."

"What do you want me to do?"

She looks at him in disbelief. "What the hell do you think I want you to do? I want you to back the fuck away from my son."

"Right." He pauses uncomfortably, gathers himself. "I know. This is so totally not okay. I know that. The thing is, that's really not what he wants."

And now she explodes. "I don't care what he wants! And I sure as hell don't care what you want. My god! Are you completely out of your mind? What can you possibly be thinking to do this under our roof? You're supposed to be brothers! The whole thing is…indescribably sickening."

They are quiet for a moment. Then he asks, "How long have you known?"

"Probably from the beginning. But I only understood what I was seeing last weekend."

"Right." He remembers. She had come in from a late flight to find them asleep on the couch, gently shaken them awake, and sent them off to bed. There was nothing explicitly wrong. They were both fully dressed. There was no post-coital musk hanging in the room. But somehow their soft sleepiness, the way they had stood up together, still touching, and parted with a kind of tender regret, had been far more damning than any random evidence of experimentation. "Yeah," he says. "I remember."

She picks up her ice cream again and stabs at it. He notices there is also a glass of brown liquor on the counter next to her. Scotch, maybe. She never drinks hard alcohol.

"So. I can be out of here tomorrow."

"Oh, right. Good plan. Just run away. Leave everyone else to deal with your disasters. I can't imagine where you learned that strategy." He looks shocked. "Well I've got some news for you, Ryan. You can't run away anymore. You made a commitment to this family. We made a commitment to you. You are sure as hell going to stay here and put an end to this. I want things to be normal again. I want Seth's life to be normal again."

"But I… How?"

"You break this off with Seth without breaking his heart. You behave like an actual teenaged boy and not a deranged sexual predator. You do not say one thing to Sandy."

"I'm not sure I can. With Seth, I mean." He sounds heartbroken. She remembers how young he is and is amazed by how much she does not care.

"You don't have a choice. I want my family in one piece." She stops and when she starts again she sounds more sad than angry. "I know you think you know something about…what you want. But this is just…wrong. It's impossible even to talk about it. And not being able to have someone you think you want may feel bad, but it won't kill him. Or you. And if you don't fix this, I will. Kill you." Then she puts the ice cream down on the counter, picks up the glass of whiskey, and walks out of the room.

Ryan waits until the next afternoon to tell Seth.

He says, "Your mom knows. About us."

"What? How? She told you that?"

"Yeah. She was…pretty upset."

"So what do you want to do?"

"What do you mean, do? She knows. It's over. The whole thing is over. We have to just…let it go. I don't know. Act normal."

"Normal. What the hell does that mean?"

"Not fucking your foster brother, maybe?"

"Nice. That's really nice, Ryan."

"Well, what the hell did you think was going to happen?"

Seth says nothing.

"Did you seriously think they would be okay with this?"

"Maybe."

"Not one bad thing has ever happened to you, has it?"

"Not until now."

"Great. Fine. Not until now."

"Okay, so I'm kind of getting how you feel from this, which is, well, kind of devastating, but anyway, whatever, so I'm thinking, do we really even need to keep having this conversation? I mean, you're making it pretty clear that you think all this stuff is non-negotiable, and well, fine, if that's how you feel, I'm not going to argue with you---"

"I don't think it's non-negotiable! It is non-negotiable! The whole thing is just…crazy. We're supposed to be brothers, Seth. It's like the definition of not okay."

"Yeah, well, you know what, Ryan? What I think is not okay is that I'm not important enough for you to try to figure out another solution."

"Solution?" Then he stops, starts again, "What do you mean, important enough?" And then more gently, "Is that what this is about? Did you think...did you think we were going to be...in love?"

There is a very long pause.

Finally Seth says, "I refuse to answer that on the grounds that it's no longer relevant. And also, it'll just make me feel bad and look pathetic. So this is the thing," he stands up, "I am now officially leaving this conversation. I'll, uh, see you around." And he leaves.

Ryan stares after him, wretched and exasperated. This was not exactly the disaster he had anticipated, back when he had been worried about how he was going to screw up. He would never have been smart enough to think of something so apocalyptic, so much more ruinous than violence.