To whom it may concern...
This is not slash. I swear. It's just that Ryan has accidental chemistry with everything. Innanimate objects, Seth, Kirsten at times. I'm very sorry if it seemed slashy. It was not meant to be slashy.
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Everything was going to be alright.
If Seth kept on telling himself that, it was going to be true.
He carefully dropped Ryan's head to the floor and shuffled over to the kitchen to get some towels.
A moan came from the floor. Where Eddie was.
Theresa looked up at him and took one of the towels from his hand. The white one.
The other was pink with little blue flowers on it.
"Here you go, buddy."
Ryan had fallen unconscious again, and Seth found an uneasy relief in wiping the blood away from Ryan's head when he wasn't awake.
At least this way, he didn't have to be in any more pain than he was already in.
The towel settled over the gash that was bleeding slugglishly on the back of Ryan's head. It became heavy as Seth pressed down on it.
Ryan's eyes sprung open and his eyes danced from left to right, his face crinkled in pain.
Seth pulled the towel away.
"Sorry, Ryan. Just trying to slow the bleeding."
Ryan shook his head and sat up, supporting himself with the bloody wall.
"You don't have to do that. It's ok. I'll go to the doctor eventually."
Seth didn't try to get Ryan to lie down again. That would be silly. What Ryan wanted to do, he would do, no matter what was trying to stop him.
"You'll go to the doctor now. I've got the cops coming here any minute now."
Ryan had his hand on the back of his head, and at Seth's words, he dropped it.
Seth tried to ignore the fact that it was slick with the sticky, red substance.
"Cops? No, Seth. No."
Ryan backed up against the wall. Seth watched as his breathing became increasingly erratic, his hurt ribs constricting his normal breathing habits to resume.
"Ryan, you need medical attention. And so does--"
He couldn't finish that sentence.
Oh god, what had he done? He had stabbed someone. He was going to jail, and he knew it. He deserved it.
"Did you--"
Seth looked at Ryan, who swallowed his nervousness and took a risked glance at the bloody mess on the living room floor.
Seth nodded, and Ryan sunk back down to the floor, shaking violently.
"You should've gone home..."
Seth laughed bitterly.
"And leave you here to fend for yourself?"
Ryan didn't look very amused. Actually, he didn't look amused at all.
Seth put his hands on his face, but pulled them away after a second.
Hands that had stabbed another man. Another person. Another living, breathing person.
Now Seth could hear the blade sliding into Eddie's stomach. The look of shock plastered on Eddie's face as Seth's eyes widened at what he had done.
The little whimper of fear that came from Seth as Eddie fell limply on top of him, dead weight on the feeble seventeen year old.
Seth closed his eyes, trying not to see Eddie on the ground. Eddie was bleeding because of him.
The visions parading themselves in front of his eyes when they closed were worse, so he opened them, panicked, and averted his eyes from Theresa and Eddie.
Ryan had blacked out again. Seth lay on the ground and covered his face with his hands again.
He hadn't realized that he himself was bleeding as well. There was a cut on his forehead, and a dull, throbbing pain in his cheek.
He looked at Ryan, head tilted and eyes closed, his breathing coming out in shuddering breaths, and realized that Eddie had shown mercy with Seth.
He hadn't shown mercy with Ryan.
But Seth hadn't shown mercy with Eddie, so what did that make him? The assailant?
He hadn't known what he was doing when he stabbed him. Now he remembered how he got the knife.
It had been dangerously close to his neck, and when Ryan had yelled something to Eddie, and he had looked away, it had been pure luck that Seth had gotten hold of the blade.
"Seth... What..."
Seth looked at his hand. He hadn't seen the cut on it.
Now that he knew it was there, it started hurting just as much as the slash on his forehead.
He could still see Eddie's eyes when the blade slid into his shirt, and then into his skin.
Eyes wide, mouth slightly open in shock.
"Seth... What..."
Seth could see himself after he had stabbed Eddie, a whimpering mess. He hadn't given his reaction much thought. As far as he knew, he had cold heartedly stabbed a man and kicked him off of his body.
Sirens. Getting closer to the house.
God, what was going to happen now?
Ryan stirred slightly, but his eyes remained clamped shut.
Seth wished that he could do that. Just zonk out and wake up when everything was fine again.
Ryan opened his eyes, short, wheezing breaths escaping from his mouth.
"Tell them I did it..."
He looked at Eddie out of the corner of his eyes for a moment, and then he looked back at Seth.
Seth frowned and shook his head slowly.
"You've got a record, Ryan. I don't. If there was no other reason than that, I'd still take the blame."
Ryan frowned and swallowed again, his eyes flickering closed and then opening a few seconds later.
"But you're also my friend, Ryan, my brother in fact, and I won't let you go to jail because of me."
Ryan's mouth hung open for a second before he painstakingly put his hands on the ground and pulled himself up, grimacing.
"Anyways, we both know that secrets and lies never work out for anyone."
Ryan laughed at that.
"Very true, Seth."
Now it was Seth's turn to back up against the wall. He pulled his knees up to his chest as the sirens got closer.
And closer. They were walls, closing in on him. Seth's eyes were shut as tight as he could close them. Suddenly, he felt claustrophobic, and he wanted to find the nearest door and bolt.
But then he opened his eyes and looked at Ryan, reaching for the towel on the ground as he wheezed and grimaced.
Ryan didn't groan in pain.
He didn't whimper like a baby. And that made Seth feel like a little shit head.
"Here, dude. I've got it."
He crawled forward, grabbed the towel, and flung it at Ryan, who grabbed it and placed it, neatly folded, on the back of his head.
"Sorry it's pink, man. I know, it's a bit minty."
Another laugh. Seth was glad he could do something right.
He looked at Theresa. She wasn't looking at him, but that was only because she was pressing down on a towel.
Seth knew he should be helping her, but he couldn't be near Eddie right now. That was something he was too scared to do.
"Listen, Seth."
Seth sat down again and took a long look at Ryan. Ryan, who was still grimacing in pain as the towel pressed harder into the gash on the back of his head.
"I wanna... I need to tell you... Thanks, man. I mean it. I was getting a little scared there."
Seth nodded. He knew that.
"Yeah, I know. I won't tell anyone, though. I'll keep your bad boy reputation intact."
Ryan didn't laugh. He gave Seth a small smile, and he took the towel away.
It wasn't pink anymore.
Ryan shrugged and dropped it. He fell onto his side and curled up, his knees at his chest as he hugged them tightly.
A knock at the door.
Seth stood up and went for it, turning the doorknob slowly to the left. He was shaking, and he held his right hand with his left to steady it. This was it.
"Hiya."
This sucked. He was going to jail. He knew it.
The officers pushed past him and forked out, a few going to the left, where Eddie and Theresa were, a few going to the right, where Ryan was.
Seth stood immobile in the center of the room.
Cops and medics swirled incessantly around him, attending to things, trying to get stretchers into the room, looking at Seth.
One of them pulled him outside, despite his protests.
"Name?"
Seth blinked and looked up, narrowing his eyes at the sun.
He didn't think the sun would be able to shine after what had just happened.
"Name?"
He hadn't noticed the cop, pen and paper in hand, standing impatiently in front of him.
He hadn't noticed Theresa sitting on a step nearby, a similar looking cop in front of her.
"Uh... Seth. Seth Cohen."
The cop nodded, made a note.
A few seconds passed before the cop looked up from his paper.
"You know any of the names of the people in there?"
Seth nodded absentmindedly, distracted by the sound of Theresa crying.
"The one on the right is Ryan Atwood. He's my... brother."
The cop frowned skeptically, but eventually he gave a nod and wrote something else on his paper.
"The other one is Eddie..."
Holy shit. Seth hadn't realized that he didn't know Eddie's last name.
He didn't know the last name of the person he stabbed. How much of a monster was he?
"I... I don't know his last name."
Another nod, another scribble on his paper.
"Do you happen to know what happened here?"
Boy did he know.
"Yeah, actually. Yeah, I do."
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