Disclaimer: The O.C. is property of Fox.

Author's Note: Have yourself a merry little Christmukkah, Easter, Summer… Let your hearts be light. Next season, all your rating stunts / lame cameos / love triangles will be out of sight…

The Worst Chrismukkah Ever: Chapter Four

If Ryan were ever forced to pinpoint what it was he liked best about living with Cohens, he'd look no further than his surrogate family. But coming up a close second was his bed. Roomy, squishy, warm, made up with ridiculously high cotton count quilt set, it epitomized the feeling of comfort, safety and relaxation that the Cohens and their kindness had given him. After the weirdness of the day, he had been quietly content to make his excuses shortly after the distinctly unfestive, slightly awkward Thai dinner with just Sandy and Kirsten and retreat into its sanctuary once more.

Burrowing down deeper into the fluffy pillows, he pulled the covers round close hoping he would nod off again soon. Moments later, a soft knocking on the door put paid to that idea. Ignoring a second, louder round of knocking, Ryan hyperbolized his breathing, in case Seth, as it so typically was at so late an hour, exhibited his usual persistence and came into the poolhouse anyway.

Silence.

Ryan counted to twenty, with no intrusion from the outside world and only the quiet hum of the air conditioning for company. Just when he thought his night visitor had left, he heard the door open.

"I'm asleep, Seth," Ryan grunted into his pillow. So much for sanctuary.

"It's Kirsten."

As he attempted to rouse himself from his sleepy stupor, it occurred to Ryan that Seth was unlikely to be venturing any further than the bathroom. Suddenly, a flash of worry hit him as he thought about his foster brother.

"What's going on? Is Seth okay?"

"Seth's fine," said Kirsten as she crossed to the side lamp and turned it on. "Can you get dressed? I want to show you something."

"At ten past eleven?" he asked, fumbling for his watch on from his bedside table. Adjusting to the light, Ryan squinted at Kirsten, noting the wry smile that played across her lips, the suspiciously Machiavellian glint in her eye.

"Meet me at the car in five minutes," she said, heading out the poolhouse as quickly as she had entered. "And wear something warm, it's gotten chilly out."

As Kirsten pulled the door closed behind her. Ryan sat sleepily up and reluctantly pulled back the covers, his arms and legs goosepimpling in protest. "This better be good."

"Seth?" You asleep son?" Sandy whispered into the musty darkness of Seth's bedroom.

"I wish," he croaked feebly in reply, feeling massively sorry for himself. In his vain attempts to get comfortable, his bed seemed to have shrunk to the size of a peanut and a very clammy peanut at that. "Did I hear the car a minute ago?

"Your mother and Ryan have gone out for a while," said Sandy as he entered the room, "They'll be back in a couple of hours or so."

"Uh, okay?" replied Seth confusedly, "Anywhere exciting? Should I be jealous?"

"Just a drive up the coast."

"So probably not."

Sandy smiled, pleased to see Seth was feeling well enough to mock, "Fancy spending some quality time with your old Dad?"

"Sure," he replied honestly, "That sounds nice."

"You up to coming downstairs?"

"I think so. I don't feel sick anymore, just tired."

"Even better. Then how about you Meet Me in St Louis?"

"I'd like that," Seth said, his thoughts cheering at the prospect of some one-on-one time with his dad. "I shall go pee and take the next trolley directly."

"A little more than I needed to know, but works for me. Five minutes?"

"Five minutes."

Sandy nodded and left Seth alone in the dark of the bedroom. There was something distinctly fishy about their sudden desire for late night drives and classic movie screenings; his parents were Up To Something. As tired as he felt, he couldn't help but smile as he pulled his comforter around him, bundled up a pillow beneath it and trotted out the door. He loved it when they got devious. With any luck, it was genetic.

"Hey, you're not falling asleep on me are you?"

"No," Ryan answered Kirsten, opening his eyes reluctantly. He shifted in his seat, trying to coax his sleepy body back to the land of the living.

"Good. We're almost there."

Ryan looked out into the darkness, squinting as he tried to make sense of the unfamiliar coastal road. The sea to his left, land to his right. North. So Vegas was out. "You going to tell me where we're headed yet?"

"I told you, it's a surprise," Kirsten said, glancing away from the road momentarily to steal a glance at Ryan.

"Uh-huh."

"You don't like surprises?"

"Depends on the surprise," Ryan responded, unaware as Kirsten's flinched a little at the inadvertent but nonetheless slightly curt edge to his tone. Like holidays, surprises were another thing that Atwoods didn't exactly excel at. I'm sorry I forgot your birthday. Your brother's moving out for a while. A.J.'s going to be living with us now. We're going start fresh in Chino, I hear it's nice. Daddy's not going to be coming home yet. I'm sorry kiddo; I just don't have the money for the trip, maybe next year. Hello there young man, is your father in?

"If I remember right, it should be just round this next corner," said Kirsten, mentally crossing her fingers, as their destination swung into view, "Bingo."

"All I see is a-," Ryan looked at Kirsten quizzically, "We're going to church?"

Kirsten pulled the car off the main road, heading up a rougher track to the small picturesque New England style church and the softly glowing old-fashioned lampposts that illuminated it.

"You know that midnight carol service I used to go to with my mom?" Kirsten said nervously, swinging the car into one of the few remaining empty spaces remaining in the pebbled yard by the church's side.

"This was the church?" Ryan asked. Even now, his ability to be taken aback by just how well the other half lived still surprised him.

Kirsten nodded, "It's a little hokey, I know-"

"- No, I like it. It's beautiful."

Kirsten looked over at him, saw his fascinated face as he studied the church's old-fashioned bell tower, its sloping roof and sharp regular angles, so unlike the Spanish style architecture of Newport. Eighteen months ago, she didn't know kids like Ryan knew words like beautiful, at least, not beyond the abstract. To hear him use it so unselfconsciously convinced her that tonight was worth the risk; this was the boy she itched to get to know, to release from his box.

"Yeah, it is."

"Like an Edward Hopper painting or something."

"That's exactly what I used to think," Kirsten remembered. She pointed down the cove to the south, "If you look over there, there's even a lighthouse."

Following her sightline, Ryan looked out into the darkness. Sure enough, a small beam of brilliance winked out to sea, "Do people live in it?"

"I think so. At least they used to. The Robinsons? Robertsons? I don't remember; they were mostly just church friends of my mom's, not friend friends."

"I always liked the idea of living in a lighthouse. Or a windmill. Course, I'd probably be too chicken to go past the second floor, but still…" Ryan joked with a small shrug and a smile in Kirsten's direction, before retreating again, "I like the quiet."

Kirsten looked over the unnervingly pensive figure beside her and her confidence waned. The brilliant plan she and Sandy had cooked up earlier that evening suddenly seemed to be a chronically stupid idea; a mistake of Everestine proportions. After all, when she was seventeen, it was all her mother could do to get her to come out to one carol service a year and that was awkward enough. Short of wearing indecent PVC clothing and blaring gangsta rap from the stereo, there was not much she could have done to make the evening social equivalent of Chinese Water Torture.

"I'm sorry, Ryan," she bumbled trying to explain, "I thought this, coming out, God I don't know what I was thinking. You've just seemed so up and down lately, today especially, and we, I, thought it would be good to get some time out of the house, especially after spending last week cooped up indoors. Then this afternoon, talking about my mom and the carols and the oranges, it just… well, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Ryan looked away from the lighthouse, back to Kirsten, saw her anxiety, the way her furrowed brow twitched nervously just like Seth's. He smiled.

"It was," he said simply, "It is."

He unfastened his seat belt and opened the door, "You coming?"

"I was drunk last night, dear Mother! I was drunk the night before! But if you forgive me Mother; I'll never get drunk anymore!"

"How can Mom not like this movie," Seth said, from under his mass of comforter, shifting his position so that his head rested more comfortably on the pillow that lay on Sandy's lap, "Judy Garland, great songs and a socially frustrated moppet; it's a classic."

"Because she's a cruel women, with a slush puppy where her heart should be," joked Sandy as Tootsie nagged Esther into performing the infamous Cake Walk with her.

"Like Professor Coldheart," Seth croaked, "I'll get those Fuzzy-Wuzzies!"

"You've lost me."

"Care Bears, Dad. Remember? You took me to the second movie and started my whole complex about chandeliers? Thought they had children trapped in them?"

"Oh, that's where that came from? Always thought it was kind of weird."

"Well, you know me Dad, weird is my middle name."

"And here I was thinking it was Ezekiel."

"Ezekiel is weird."

"And it suits you very nicely," said Sandy, twisting his son's hair between his fingers absent-mindedly, pleased that at the very least, Seth's temperature seemed to be on its way down.

"Gee, thanks."

"And besides, it was my grandfather's name."

"I didn't know that."

"Sure you did, you've heard me talk about Popzekel before."

"Oh, like Pop-Zekiel? I thought it was like Pop-sicle," Seth grinned as he worked it out, "That's so cool."

"We Cohens have always been ahead of our time," Sandy said with a yawn, smiling as a moment later Seth compulsively followed suit. Back on the television, two child stars, one burning brightly, the other beginning to fade, sang and danced for their St Louis audience, oblivious as their California audience gradually joined their song,

"If you li-ke me, like I li-ke you,

And we li-ke both the same-

I'd like to say, this very day,

I'd like to change your name.

'Cause I lo-ve you and lo-ve you true,

And if you lo-ve me-

One lives as two, two live as one,

Under the bamboo tree!"

As the song ended and Tootsie and Esther broke into their cute hat and cane dance, the California two fell back into silence. Snuggling deeper into his blankety cocoon, Seth tried to ignore how glad he was his mom had whisked Ryan away for the evening. Thankful as he was to have him, sometimes Seth missed being an only child and having his parents all to himself.

In the days when Seth was the only adolescent rattling around the house, he'd spent most of his time emo-ing in his bedroom, at odds with the world. It was only during the last year and a half he'd begun to realize how much he took his parents and their relatively normal lives for granted and he couldn't believe that he'd opted for solitude when he could have had their undivided attention.

Yet it wasn't just the one-on-one time that Seth missed, it was little things. Before Ryan came along, his mom bought Lucky Charms just for him. Now the lectures about squeezing honey on to bowls of processed sugar puffs and what were laughably called marshmallows were delivered for two and, Seth noticed, had increased in length accordingly. Or occasionally he'd stumble into the living room and come across Ryan and his dad hollering at ESPN, exchanging theories and jibes about various players' prowess or lack thereof and he'd feel a stab of jealousy. How had Ryan managed to connect with his dad like this when he had not? How dare he?

But worse than the cereal doctrines and the courtside commentaries, Seth pondered glumly, as he his dad twitched his legs, the knowledge that if Ryan hadn't come along when he had, he'd have probably of drifted further away from his mom and dad than he had already. Given how miserable he'd been that summer, it probably wasn't too healthy to dwell on it, but it was pretty obvious pop psychology; somehow having to split the 'rents had made him appreciate them more.

Hell, if he really wanted to play Freud or Jung or whoever, when he got right down to it, maybe that was why Seth couldn't help but push conversations like the one he'd had with Ryan earlier; subconsciously he was trying to convince himself that Ryan deserved a better life than the shrouded one before, that he was worthy of his parents' affections. A wondrously selfish sentiment, possibly, but there it was.

"You nodding off on me?" Sandy asked softly, noting Seth's protracted silence, "We haven't even gotten to the snowmen yet."

"I was just thinking."

"Uh-oh," teased Sandy good-naturedly, "Too much thinking is what is got your mother driving halfway up to Big Sur at midnight."

"Big Sur?" grunted Seth, "Dad, it's a forty minute drive."

"Hyperbole, son. The staple of the Cohen rhetoric," Sandy said, ruffling Seth's hair a little, teasing it gently between his fingers. "What were you thinking about?"

"Nuh, it's okay."

"Okay. You've contracted Ryan-itis, but you're okay," Sandy chuckled to himself at the pun, "Rhinitus, Ryan-itus, get it?"

"Yeah, I think Ryan patented that joke already," Seth rasped, as the phlegmy frog residing in his throat made its presence felt once more and he coughed painfully, "Eurgh, ow."

"Choke up chicken. You okay?"

"I think I pulled something earlier," Seth said, ignoring his aching side as his