A/N: I lied again. I started writing this chapter and felt like the first part needed to stand on its own again, so I'm splitting the last chapter into two once more. I think this is my last lie related to this story.
I've also tweaked the order of events slightly from the Season 2 finale. Seth and Sandy have a dust-up about Kirsten going to rehab before Caleb's funeral, and their later heart-to-heart takes place after the funeral.
Chapter 4
And then, of course, there's the other other thing.
"You've gone through a lot lately," Dr. Max has told him a few times, and Seth has been perversely glad to have so much emotional cannon fodder to hide behind, to be able to shrug and scratch his head and play hapless detective with Dr. Max while they unpack everything, the other other thing looming large in the background.
His mom is in rehab and his grandfather is dead and Trey is in a coma and Marissa shot someone-Trey, to be specific-and Ryan is nursing untold injuries in the pool house and his dad acts painfully cheerful all day and then stays up all night marathoning nature documentaries in his room.
And all that-as it turned out-made great material for therapy. Seth could delve into any one of those subjects and Dr. Max couldn't accuse him of avoiding painful emotional content.
His life was all about the painful emotional content at the moment.
Maybe the other other thing wasn't even the problem, wasn't the reason he was finding himself in the darkest depths of the ocean these days.
Maybe he wasn't really avoiding anything.
ooooooooooooooooo
Seth squinted at himself in the mirror and readjusted his hair as best he could.
Not that it seemed to help the overall picture. As often as he'd had to wear suits throughout his life, he'd never gotten over feeling fairly ridiculous in them, like some ludicrously gangly primate, all spastic arms and legs.
He wondered if he'd ever wear a suit and not feel like he was thirteen-years-old and on his way to his bar mitzvah.
It probably wasn't the best choice to get ready in the pool house with its accompanying and unforgiving full-length mirror, but Seth had figured that the camaraderie might be helpful that morning.
And to be fair, the awkwardness quotient in the Cohen main house was a little suffocating at that moment.
"Hey, man."
Ryan approached, looking uncomfortable-but at least like an actual adult male-in his own suit. He held out a somber-colored tie to Seth. There was a probably identical one draped around his neck but not yet knotted.
"From Hailey." Ryan shot Seth a grim look.
Seth nodded slowly, taking that in.
His mom wasn't the one on tie duty. Things were possibly even more dire than they seemed.
Seth looped the tie around his neck and tried to ignore his own reflection, as well as the million thoughts ping-ponging around his brain, the mental hashing and rehashing of his fight with his dad, trying to weigh out how serious this whole "ship Mom off to rehab" mission actually was.
He couldn't think about any of that.
His entire world was that tie.
"So is there anyone I'm going to have to meet at this thing?" Ryan asked, setting to work on his own tie.
Ryan had really come up in the Newport scene, Seth mused. In the early days, he never could've tied a tie and maintained a conversation at the same time. Now he could probably cook a full eggs and bacon breakfast with one hand and complete a flawless Windsor knot with the other.
"Sorry, what?" He blinked out of his daze.
"I just wasn't sure if there'd be more family members to meet." Ryan looked a little abashed.
"Oh."
It had been a decidedly mixed bag, Ryan meeting members of the Nichol clan.
"No one important, I think." Seth's brow furrowed as he mentally ran through the list. "I mean, no one who's going to want to talk your ear off, or really care about meeting you." He shrugged. "Probably just a third cousin or two." He paused. "Hopefully only the one illicit love child."
Ryan snorted at that.
"So your grandfather didn't have much family?" Ryan fiddled with the tiny buttons on his shirt cuffs.
Seth hated those tiny buttons.
"Not really, I guess." Seth felt the pulse in his neck quicken just a hair.
"No siblings or anything?"
"Oh uh, no. Well, yeah." He paused. "He had a younger sister who died." He bit his lip. "And..."
And that was where he fucked up.
He'd had a system in place that worked. So what that Dr. Max seemed to think that pretending that Steven was dead was some kind of problematic form of avoidance and/or denial, that it created conflict within him, so that when he woke up from a nightmare and thought "It's fine; he's dead," another part of him knew it was a lie and remained anxiously and painfully aware of his continued existence in the world?
So what?
And anyway, it seemed colossally stupid that he'd choose that moment to abandon his system, when his parents were imploding and he was five minutes out from leaving for his grandfather's funeral, and he'd started his morning by finding a brochure for rehab in his dad's desk, when not a thing in his life felt certain or steady.
But Ryan was steady, and that was kind of a problem.
It could be too easy to tell Ryan the truth, or some truth-adjacent version of things.
Seth was sure that Ryan wasn't like, a fundamentally incurious person, but he didn't ask many questions and always seemed careful to not say or ask a thing that someone would rather he wouldn't.
And it wasn't like Ryan had asked about Caleb's family tree because he was particularly interested. He was probably just making conversation to give Seth something to do other than worry and ruminate and catastrophize about said rehab brochure.
When he trailed off on that 'and', Ryan looked at him and raised his eyebrows in that way he did, inviting him to say more, if there was more to say.
"And uh, he had a brother," Seth added. "He's in prison." He was surprised at his own ability to continue to breathe, to continue to squint in fake consternation at his tie, to keep his voice casual and disinterested.
"Oh yeah?" Ryan's eyebrows rose further. "What for?"
He hadn't counted on any follow-up questions.
Which was kind of stupid.
Ryan was careful with his parents, but Seth and his bull-in-a-china-shop approach to conversations didn't exactly invite the same level of sensitivity and restraint.
"I dunno. Some boring financial thing, I think." Seth scowled at the crooked knot he'd created and undid his tie to give it another go. "I was little when it happened, so they never gave me the full story."
"Hmm." Ryan made a noise of mild interest. "No one's ever mentioned him before."
"Yeah well, black sheep of the family, I guess." Seth shrugged.
They worked in silence for a few moments, Ryan moving on from his cufflinks and Seth still struggling with his tie.
"Is he gonna be there today?" Ryan asked.
"Who?"
"Caleb's brother."
"What? No." Seth shot Ryan a confused look. "I don't think prison just hands out day passes."
"Sometimes they do, for funerals," Ryan said absently, smoothing down his hair. "They let my dad out for his grandmother's funeral. She raised him, so I think they took pity on him." He crossed over to the nightstand to grab his watch.
"Oh." Seth bit down on his lip until he could feel pain, forcing himself to breathe in and out and be something in the vicinity of a normally functioning human being, although the room had started to slowly rock and tilt in a distinctly unusual fashion. "I guess I don't know then."
Ryan fastened his watch onto his wrist.
Seth wondered how long he'd have to remain in the pool house to be able to accurately say he'd played it cool.
He started to count in his head, but couldn't get past ten without losing track of where he was.
He fixed his gaze onto the ceiling fan and wondered if the vein throbbing in his neck was as deafening for Ryan as it was in his own ears.
After some interminable amount of time, he cleared his throat.
"I uh-" Seth faltered, swallowing a lump in his throat. "I'm gonna go."
"You okay, man?" Ryan eyed him warily.
"Yeah, yeah, of course. I just uh..this tie really isn't working for me." Seth slid the tie off his neck and tossed it on the bed in disgust. "I'm gonna see what else Hailey's got."
"Let me know when it's time to go?"
"Will do."
Seth reached the main house in three long strides and threw open the door into the kitchen. He drew back as both of his parents and Hailey whirled around to look at him.
He had clearly interrupted something.
"Dad, I need to talk to you." Seth was aware that his voice was tight and weird and foreign to his own ears.
He wondered if he was shouting. It felt like he was shouting over the deep bass of that stupid vein in his neck.
"Can it wait, Seth?" His dad checked his watch, harried. "I-
"It can't."
"Okay." His dad heaved an annoyed breath and he and Hailey exchanged some kind of communication via facial expression that Seth didn't have the bandwidth to translate, but probably Hailey was supposed to babysit his mom, because that was a thing that was somehow also happening.
His dad hurried him into his office and shut the door behind him.
"Can we make this quick? We really don't have time right now."
His dad looked pissed off and exhausted and like he was bracing himself for Round 2 about the rehab brochure.
Seth swallowed, trying to blink away the dark spots crowding his vision. He slouched back against the wall and opened his mouth, wincing when some unholy squeak slithered out.
"Seth, what-"
"Ryan's dad went to his grandmother's funeral," he finally blurted out.
"What? Seth-" His dad looked confused, frustrated, like Seth was about to launch into one of his bits.
"They let people out of prison sometimes, like for funerals." Seth crossed his arms across his chest, blinking many times in rapid succession. "Like for family."
The look of dawning understanding/horror on his dad's face and the sudden and full force of his dad's undivided attention made Seth want to launch himself into the sun.
"Oh Seth." Sandy shook his head. "No, no, of course not. They would never-" He reached out and touched Seth's shoulder. "I would never let that happen, okay?"
"Are you sure?" He could hear his voice hitch and his jaw tremble, could feel himself exposed for just how utterly weak and feeble and helpless he continued to be, all of the things that made his stomach clench and hurt and roil with nausea.
"I'm sure." His dad's brow creased in concern and pity. "I would never let that happen, you understand me?"
Seth nodded numbly.
" You were worried...I mean you thought-" His dad's voice sounded funny now too, soft and strained.
"No." Seth shook his head vigorously. "No, I mean I figured they wouldn't. I just-" He trailed off, unable to complete the thought, to land the plane with anything resembling grace or nonchalance.
His dad nodded knowingly and gently squeezed his shoulder.
"Are you gonna be okay?" He asked, searching Seth's face. "We can just sit for a minute."
"I'm fine," Seth rasped out. "We've gotta go, right?"
"They can wait," his dad offered. "Really. Why don't we just sit for a few minutes."
"It's fine," Seth forced a thin-lipped smile. "Let's just go."
oooooooooooooooooo
It had never really occurred to Seth that they would or could ever be in the same room again. He had nightmares about it, and moments when he'd been convinced that he'd seen Steven down by the pier or in the stacks at the library or at the mall, but his parents had assured him so many times that it wasn't possible, that Steven would never see the light of day and-more importantly-Seth would never have to see him.
It was just a nightmare, they'd assure him. It was just an irrational fear, a thing that would never and could never happen.
And it probably was irrational. Maybe they would've let him go to the funeral if he'd actually committed some boring financial thing. Once Seth wasn't aggressively spiraling out, he'd felt childish and stupid for thinking-even momentarily-that they would've let him go out and like, mingle with the kid he'd victimized for years.
But part of Seth still felt like he'd narrowly dodged running into him out in the world, like if he hadn't asked his dad, Steven would've been there waiting for him.
It was an irrational fear and it was never going to happen, but also, it was like it already did happen.
Like he'd caught that glimpse across the church and it wasn't the passing resemblances and the mistaken identities at the pier or the library or the mall, but it was Steven who crossed the church, whose eyes took in Seth and who he was now, and everything his life was now: Summer and Ryan and his parents and his stupid spastic limbs in his stupid ill-fitting suit and his stupid body that wasn't and would never be entirely his.
And it was Steven who opened his mouth to speak, and it was Steven's voice that he could hear in his head, couldn't stop hearing in his head.
When he was having dinner with his dad and Ryan-
"Hello, Seth."
or talking to Summer-
"Hello, Seth."
or having sex with Summer-
"Hello, Seth."
and it would take a concerted effort to hear what they were saying or to manipulate the Chopsticks in his hand or to feel the warmth of Summer's skin against his, or to breathe in and out normally, or to complete even a single thought.
"Hello, Seth."
