The Refrigerator
By Sister Rose
The characters of "The O.C." belong to Fox, and no infringement of those rights is intended in this fictional work.
Set during Season One.
Heavy on the angst and melodrama
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Seth watches the refrigerator. The cool, monstrous monolith is his surest gauge to the internal temperature of Ryan Atwood.
Seth thinks he could – if he were a nerd, which of course he is not – program a computer to chart the course of Ryan and the refrigerator and his mom.
But he's not a nerd, no way, nuh-uh, none of that. He's just a guy watching out for his brother. He's just a guy who happens to have noticed that if he wants to know how Ryan is feeling about Mom, he should just watch the refrigerator.
If things are going well, Ryan walks right up and opens the refrigerator, maybe even fossicking through the bottled offerings. If things aren't going well, Ryan waits for Seth before opening the refrigerator.
And if the relationship isn't going well at all, if Ryan thinks Mom is angry, then Ryan won't approach the refrigerator. He walks on the other side of the counter and waits for Seth to pass him milk for the cereal. Sometimes, Ryan won't even walk into the kitchen, as if that's too close to the refrigerator.
During the Luke's Gay Dad crisis, Ryan had once forgotten himself so far as to offer Marissa a drink from the refrigerator. Though Seth pretended to be more interested in the secret Ryan and Marissa were hiding, he knew exactly how big a step that was. Ryan had offered a guest a drink, just as if he had a host's responsibility. Just as if he had forgotten he hadn't always lived here as a member of the family. Just as if he were really Seth's brother.
Seth thought then the corner had been turned, that Ryan had accepted his place in the Cohen family. But then came Oliver. And the sneaking and the spying. And the pissing off Mom.
And Ryan quit opening the refrigerator. Then he quit coming into the kitchen. Then he quit coming into the house, because there was no way to get inside the house except past the refrigerator. And Seth knew Ryan didn't want to get that close to the stern stainless sentinel of the Cohen family.
Seth knew that, even if his parents didn't.
Seth worried more than he ever told his parents or Ryan. But then Dad took food to the poolhouse. And Mom took coffee. And Ryan started eating again. That's when Seth decided it would be OK for him to lay off bugging Jesus and Moses about the refrigerator and how the family really needed a new one.
Seth still watched Ryan and the refrigerator, but it became more a habit than anything else. Ryan acted as if everything was normal. He quit avoiding the refrigerator. He didn't walk around it. He started acting as if he were a guy with no food hang-ups at all. He even learned how to order food like a Cohen.
That's why it was such a shock when Ryan left.
He hadn't skirted the fridge. He had been eating bagels and cream cheese and cold cereal in the morning. He had coffee. He had milk. Ryan had given every single signal Seth relied on to say he intended to stay. And then he left.
So Seth left, too. When you can't trust the refrigerator, it's hard to stay. Ryan already knew that, and now Seth did, too.