A.N. I keep telling myself that I do this for fun. I don't own nothing OC related and so must be doing this for recreational purposes.

VAMPING THE OC

Part I

The Real Chino

The Uses of Silence

"Turn right at the next light."

The sound of Ryan's voice was as welcome as it was unexpected. Seth checked the clock on the dashboard. Seven minutes and forty-five seconds. That was how long it had been since the sound of a human voice had been heard in the truck. Being honest with himself, Seth had to acknowledge that this was how long it had been since he'd last said anything. Ryan had so far ignored all of his efforts to draw him into a conversation. It must be fifteen minutes since Ryan said anything.

Seth's first instinct was to take those brief driving instructions as signs of life in his passenger and not simply an indication that Ryan was just trying to get them to their destination. He probably just wants to get rid of me. The thought further darkened his mood andRyan's expression did nothing to lighten it. His face was as distant and closed to him as it had been since he'd tossed his bike into the back of the Range Rover and climbed in beside Seth.

Seth had never had the experience of making a friend. In this area of life he was as much a virgin as he was with the whole guy/gal thing. Ridicule had been his constant companion since grade school. Rejection had been added to the mix as he entered adolescence. The two had shadowed him ever since.

In the seventh grade during a fit of depression conjoined with a short lived passion for things medieval he'd created a heraldic device for himself - a Seth Cohen coat of arms. His device consisted of human footprints or from bottom to topon a sable band sinister. To complete his arms he'd adopted a motto which he placed on a ribbon at the bottom of his device: Run Away and Live to Fight Another Day. On either side of his device and holding it aloft he placed, like heraldic beasts, RIDICULE and REJECTION rampant.

One particularly bad Friday at Harbor had provided him with forms and faces for his beasts. REJECTION was a leopard, lithe and svelte, with claws extended and Summer's face. Across the device reared RIDICULE, a Chimera. Seth enjoyed the notion of placing Luke's handsome face atop an animal with the body of a goat and the wings of an eagle. The fire spitting from his mouth completed the picture for Seth.

When he turned fifteen, he decided that he'd been a dumb shit back then. Still he saved the device and carefully hid it and protected it with a password on the hard drive of his computer. It represented too much truth to be sent to the recycle bin. He'd spent his whole life running away from things both literally and figuratively. For after all, weren't the snarky put downs of Harbor and its students only a way of distancing himself from the one thing, friends, he wanted most but couldn't seem to acquire?

What did he know about friends or friendship? He didn't know what a person who'd take on the responsibility of him as a friend would be like. What kind of baggage would someone who liked Seth Cohen bring with him? He found the thought a little daunting. Would they need to be as unique as he knew he was? There certainly was no reason to believe that a normal person would see anything of worth in him.

Seth frowned as his fingers drummed on the steering wheel. He knew that a proclivity for long, brooding silences had not made it onto the top 100 list of desirable characteristics for a FOS (Friend of Seth). He was also positive that being the possessor of a big, dark, hairy monster of a secret – the kind that could get you mugged or worse on a city street – had also not made it onto that list. Seth had spent his middle school years creating and refining his FOS list. It had taken the bruising reality of his Freshman Year only a day to demonstrate its uselessness. His list had then joined his coat of arms behind a password on his computer.

Secrets, Seth reflected, in and of themselves weren't necessarily a negative in a friendship. He understood all too well how there could be humiliations too painful or too personal to want to share. Secrets could add spice to a relationship, as could a certain amount of mystery. They made a person more interesting - less boring. Seth hated boring, predictable people. Still he couldn't quite rid himself of the worry that maybe the ancient Chinese curse also extended to knowing interesting people.

I shouldn't have to worry about being seen with the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, should I? But he was willing to take on a car full of goons to protect me! In the world of the OC, where no one had ever been willing to even speak up in his defense, Ryan's actions were totally mind blowing. If all it cost him to spend more time with this kid was buying him a meal, Seth considered it a cheap price to pay to pretend for another hour that he had a friend.

Besides not knowing how to go about identifying a potential friend, or how to actually make one, he also didn't know how to be someone's friend. What would his responsibilities be to a person who was his friend? All of his knowledge on these subjects was secondhand, based on reading, buddy movies and television. In works of pop culture people like them, who had nothing in common, usually began their relationship disliking, if not actively hating, each other. Friendship then developed out of shared experiences. He thought it a poor omen for the future of their relationship that he'd liked this taciturn boy from Chino from the moment they'd met.

Seth told himself that the thing on the street with Vic had been a fluke. He didn't know why he'd refused Ryan's offer to cover his ass and stayed with him instead to face Vic. Temporary insanity caused by testosterone poisoning suggested itself to him.

He knew he had nothing to offer anyone and it was unlikely that someone like Ryan would ever think of him as a friend. Ryan had appeared at first glance to be the kind of kid who, in Seth's extensive experience, took an instant, active dislike to him and wasted no effort hiding those feelings. He'd been kinder than the run of the mill Harbor goon but Seth would not let himself make the mistake of confusing what was probably only pity for friendship. He was sure that Ryan wanted to dump him as soon as possible.

But, it was just creepy how well he seemed to understand Ryan. It wasn't unpleasant - just weird. Seth reflected that you shouldn't really know much of anything about someone after an acquaintanceship of only a few hours. Yet he'd found Ryan's reaction to the Range Rover so totally what he expected that he would have laughed if he hadn't been worried about Ryan's reaction.

As Ryan had climbed into the passenger seat, there had been the tilt of the head, the squint, and the sardonic half smile as he took in the DVD system built into the truck's roof and the copy of Finding Nemo in the storage bin between the front seats. That small smile had been the last reaction Seth had had out of Ryan. He was dismayed by how much he felt this withdrawal. Maybe, if being shut out hurt this badly after so short a period of time, he didn't want a friend.

As he drove, Seth wondered how anyone who wasn't asleep or dead could go so long without speaking. He found the concept unnatural and unsettling. For the sake of his sanity, he decided to give Ryan one more chance.

"That's interesting," he commented, as the SUV made the turn at the indicated light.

"What?"

"I said that's interesting. I mean the way people are always shortening the things they say. Always using the bare minimum of words that will convey their meaning," Seth explained. "You said, 'turn right at the next light,' but you actually meant turn right at the next traffic light. But I understood you. I just think it's interesting how people use shortcuts to convey information and use non-verbal ways to communicate. There's a world of information to be gleaned by non-verbal means."

"Yeah, but the people I've known who do it talk a lot less than you do," Ryan observed dryly. "They aren't afraid of silence either. They know silence has its uses." Ryan didn't look at Seth; but Seth saw him shift in his seat and make a show of adjusting his seat belt.

Seth didn't buy it. His guess was that Ryan had finally sorted out in his mind the night's events and was willing to talk now. It was none too soon for Seth. A myriad of questions churned in his mind. Seth knew that he had to allow this almost stranger time; but the need for patience, never one of his virtues, and the silence were frying his nerves.

"I'm not afraid of silence," Seth said primly. "It mystifies me, yes. It does not frighten me. I suppose, in theory, a shared silence might serve some useful function in relationships; but as for me, every minute not spent talking is a minute lost to me forever to listen and learn things about others or to contribute something to those around me."

Ryan snorted loudly. "When does that listening part happen?"

"Okay, maybe I'm a little deficient in the listening department and maybe that was a little pretentious." Seth spotted the barest trace of a smile on Ryan's face. It was gone almost as soon as it flickered into existence. "I'm a friendless, only child of a pair of workaholic parents whom I rarely see. What do you expect? I have a lot of pent up conversational needs. When I find a sympathetic listener, I unload on them. Anyone brave or dumb enough to be my friend will have to be prepared to endure years of stored up babble." He risked a quick glance at Ryan to see if he'd gotten a reaction from him.

Seth stared thoughtfully into the distance. "I guess I never considered or cared much about what it was like for the person on the receiving end. Sorry." Seth donned his best sympathy inducing, pathetic, whipped puppy face and directed it at Ryan. "I know you said to wait for Gwennie's but is there any chance you'd let me ask just one question? I'm suffering a meltdown over here."

"One!" Ryan agreed emphatically.

Seth had so many questions bottled up inside of him that he didn't know how to limit himself to just one. He feared that if he opened his mouth everything might spill out and he'd drown Ryan in a flood of interrogatives. It worried him that all of the questions that he wanted to ask about this evening's events seemed to be interrelated; and he feared that they each had a stinger in them for Ryan. He needed to proceed cautiously with empathy. He didn't want to scare Ryan back into his silent shell. The need to show concern for someone else's feelings was a foreign concept for him. Maybe worrying about this stuff is part of what being a friend is. A question about his family should be safe.

"So you have a brother named Trey. I always thought I'd like to have a brother. Do you have any other family?"

Seth watched in dismay the play of expressions across Ryan's face. There was a brief shadow of what might have been sadness but it was quickly blotted out by anger. A blank mask then dropped down that gave nothing away.

"There's just Trey and me and our…" Ryan hesitated fractionally, "folks."

In for a penny, in for a pound, Seth thought. "Do you still live with them."

"No." Ryan spit out.

Seth noticed by the light of the dashboard console that Ryan's left hand was squeezed into a fist - a fist that he was squeezing so tightly that the blood had disappeared from his knuckles, leaving them starkly outlined against the back of his tanned hand.

"My dad's been in jail for ten years for armed robbery and my mom isn't around anymore."

Seth caught the defiant look Ryan shot him as he said this. He thinks I'll be shocked about his father. In truth, it was the other part of his statement that surprised Seth more. "What do you mean 'isn't around anymore'?" He blurted out before he could stop himself.

"I went to our old house as soon as I had a chance but she was gone. She and her boyfriend moved out of our house in the middle of the night while I was in Juvie. No one knew where she went. When I asked around about her the landlord tried to get me to pay the rent she skipped out on. Haven't heard from her; haven't tried to find her; don't want to find her." Ryan said flatly.

Urgent need to change subject, Cohen. "So it's just you and your brother then?" Ryan's bark of laughter dismayed Seth. "What did I say?"

"Trey's in jail for grand theft auto. With all his priors, he'll be lucky to be out before our Dad." Ryan pushed the armrest back into the seat angrily. "Great family, huh?" He pointed suddenly. "That's Gwennie's up ahead."

A.N. Well, I missed the posting date I set for myself for this chapter. Sorry. The next chapter, "Gwennie's," should be up the week of the 14th. I'll give myself a little more wiggle room. Nothing OC related beyond eating at P F Chang's got done during my stay in Seattle. I heartily recommend the lemon scallops.

For some reason I backslid into my old writing style in this chapter. I really do know how to write clear, simple, uncomplicated sentences and will attempt to do better in the future. I find it very time consuming, however, to go back and untangle myself when this happens. So, in the interest of getting back on schedule, I posted anyway. Sorry, again.