Shift

Chapter 12:Thursday Noon—The chapter written with severe writer's block.

By Calcium Yeah

A/N: I read reviews with a huge smile on my face. Seriously. Technically this is up before the weekend is over. Techincally.

A/N:My friend has me paranoid about the characterization & I'm not sure anymore....

"Don't make me do the whole cliché 'are you mad?' thing." Seth's eyes kept averting from the road, attempting to size up Ryan's emotions and failing miserably. The façade of confidence had all but broken away when he'd caught up to an impatient Ryan outside and was greeted with silence. Ryan shifted in his seat, and licked his lips looking like he was holding in whatever he felt like saying. "Okay. I get it...Okay? I just wanted this to be about us having fun without all this...stuff sitting on top of us the whole time. I wanted things to be special and not like every other—." Seth stopped himself.

Ryan shifted and breathed through his nose in an obvious effort not to let what was almost said have an effect on him. "I'm just not that public. I can't be that public."

"I wasn't trying to drag you out of the closet or anything. I'm not planning on telling anybody."

"There's nothing to tell."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Seth had no idea what the comment meant and Ryan didn't respond to his question, "Being ignored. Well, I know how to handle that. That's familiar."

They drove on in silence until they reached the Cohen driveway. Seth spent the time trying to figure out how Ryan had gone from coming in his mouth to brooding silently as far from Seth as possible. Could Ryan really be pissed about some people looking at them in the theater? Maybe he shouldn't have tried to act like the past two days hadn't happened. Ryan probably thought he was insane, probably thought he was messed up after everything with Luke. That was more than likely right. Luke had messed him up, he just blew Ryan Atwood in a movie theater and he was thinking about someone else.

"I want to make this work." As he parked, Seth's eyes showed how worried he was that he'd done something wrong, that his past experience hadn't given him the skills to pull off in reality what he planned in his head.

"It'll work."

"No, I mean for real, not just telling me what I want to hear. Let's just do it over. We'll go in the pool house this time, and I'll be serious, no joking around. We'll do whatever you want."

"Seth, it was fine. I just need to get used to—everything."

"But, you don't have to, we can just do what you're used to—."

"What am I used to Seth?" Ryan snapped and Seth had the unnerving sense of déjà vu as he remembered the earlier days with Luke when every encounter left Luke volatile and elicited a beating for every orgasm. He must have flinched because Ryan made an obvious effort to relax his tine. "I'm not used to anything, Seth."

"But, you said that—before, you lied," Seth was genuinely confused.

"It doesn't mean—can we not talk about this?" Ryan sounded agitated.

"Fine, then just let me try to do something so we don't leave things like this."

"Like what? Everything went fine. Do you want to cum or something? Is that what this is about?"

"You know I don't care about that. I want you to be happy with me."

"Shit, Seth. Will you just be fucking normal? You want to be with me, okay, I'm glad, but you have sex to fucking cum. Stop serving me. I'm not—I'm anyone else."

"I do want to be with you, "Seth just managed to remain calm as he spoke, "and I may have some hang ups, you know, from being raped repeatedly for five months, but I'm not having sex to serve you. And I'm not having sex to 'fucking cum'. I'm trying to be with you." The tears almost inched out on "be", but Seth held them and could no longer speak. He could see Ryan was uncomfortable. Could have been the words; could have been Seth's blatantly choked back tears.

"I'm trying to make things alright for you."

"Don't make it that," Seth managed to get the words out in a whisper.

"It's just always there, okay? No matter how much we pretend it's not. Everything you do is affected by him." As Ryan spoke, Seth decided to just let his tears go.

"So, you're making me pay for that? I'm trying not to let him affect us, I'm putting it behind me. That's what this was supposed to be about."

"I thought it was about having fun."

"Ryan, stop being a dick! Everything I say, you're picking apart like you just want things to go wrong. What, did you decide to put me to a test and ended up finding out I was too posttraumatic to meet up with your little predetermined standard? Is that why you're avoiding Marissa? Because she's too 'up and down'? Now I'm too up and down."

"There's no standard Seth. There's you."

"What are you talking about? Say what you're talking about! I'm tired of telling you everything and knowing nothing about you! Stop with the riddles and just tell me. What do you want from me?"

"I don't know. I've never even had an girlfriend before, I go out & bang a chick, never even looked at a guy. Then this twist of fate puts me in this place where I fall in love with some weird ass rich kid—."

"Upper middle class." The tears stopped as Seth registered Ryan's words, but he sniffled and pouted to prevent himself from bursting into a huge grin.

"I don't want to mess this up." Ryan seemed unaware of what he'd just admitted.

"I think what we did wrong...what I did wrong was try to push everything down, right?" Ryan nodded, "And in order to be therapeutic, you have to work through things to get over them."

"You're going somewhere weird again."

"I just think that I need to work though it. So, instead of blocking my thoughts out, I need to just let them come. So, this time when I'm sucking you off, I'm just going to let my thoughts run where they may. It'll be very therapeutic."

"This is a weird day."

"And you never took your shirt off." Seth noted as he moved closer.

A/N I may redo this whole chapter. I had severe writer's block. I can't track their emotions anymore. I'm printing out the whole story to get a better idea of what I need to do. Definitely need feedback on this chapter (and 11).