Disclaimer: I don't own The O.C. At the moment I don't own much of anything.
The Bees
When Summer was a little girl she used to catch bees.
She didn't, like, do anything with them, just held them in her tightly clasped hands, feeling their wings beating anxiously against her until she felt guilty and opened her hands.
Summer once told Seth about her bee-catching days. He was the only one she'd ever told and he was suitably impressed. He'd gone on and on about her hand-eye coordination and tried to get her to play videogames with him. Summer rolled her eyes and said that to the best of her memory catching bees hadn't been all that challenging.
Seth had dragged her out into his backyard and made her catch him bees off of a yellow-flowered shrub.
Summer zeroed in on a bee who was focused on gathering pollen. She cupped her hands and moved towards the bee, capturing both flower and insect.
Holding a bee in your hands feels a bit like Summer imagines holding a beating heart might feel.
Seth didn't believe she'd caught the bee until she let it escape. He made her catch bees for an hour, marveling that she hadn't been stung yet.
"I've never been stung."
Seth left not long after that. Summer doesn't think his leaving has anything to do with her catching bees, but knowing Seth, it could.
Thinking about Seth is depressing, and waiting for Coop to finish registering for classes is boring, and listening to Zach is irritating.
Summer can't help noticing that the shrub nearby is buzzing with bees.
Almost without conscious thought Summer stands, walks over to the shrub, zeros in on a bee and –
"Ow! Fucking bee!" Summer pulls the stinger out of her hand automatically, before the pain really registers.
She had known, theoretically, that being stung by a bee would hurt, but nothing prepared her for the agonizing white-hot, lip-biting, tear-inducing pain. Or the near instant swelling, or hot flushed skin.
As Summer pressed an icepack against her tender flesh she might have pondered the poetic irony of getting stung, if she ever thought about poetic irony. But she didn't, so it wasn't, and that was fine. Certainly getting stung, the impulse to catch bees, had nothing to do with Seth Cohen. Being stung certainly wasn't a metaphor for his betrayal or her broken heart. Because this is real-life and real-life isn't metaphorical. Not that Summer's the sort of girl to think of metaphors any more than she thinks of poetic irony. Being stung for the first time while thinking about Seth was purely coincidental. Summer knows this.
Still it hurts. Her hand's throbbing too and Summer can blame her frustrated tears on that. Her tears have nothing at all to do with the fact that while Zach is being perfectly nice, he's not Seth Cohen. They don't, they aren't, so everything's fine.
A/N: For the record, I really don't advocate catching bees with bare hands. Or at all. You are not fictional!Summer. You will likely get stung and it definitely will hurt. So, no catching bees, 'kay?