Guys, the FEELS. I can't get over last night's episode. I can't. The mothership feels are here to stay.
This tag was inspired by Rusty's line that made me tear up. Originally (i.e. at 2 a.m. last night) I had intended for a slightly different story direction, but as usual it took a life of its own.
One Day
Rusty was glowing.
He didn't know what it was, but that was what it felt like: a glowing warmth that spread from his chest into his throat and made his eyes burn. He'd handed Sharon the papers and taken off before it could get worse, because he didn't think Sharon would appreciate him flipping out when she was just done telling him that he wasn't only trouble.
No – that wasn't what she'd told him. She'd told him that she was thankful.
Lucky.
She might've used the word "miracle", although he was pretty sure he'd misunderstood that part because even Sharon couldn't really think that. Only... but no, Rusty just couldn't understand it when she said those things. It wasn't that he didn't believe her, he just didn't understand her. She was the miracle.
And she thought she was lucky to have him. Him.
The fire in his chest burned all the way to work.
Once there, he found himself trying harder at every little thing. The coffee orders didn't bother him. He volunteered to help one of the stage hands clean the set, and he struggled with a grimy fake wall and moved four oversized armchairs and felt happy about it. He felt like he wanted to do – everything. Anytime someone asked something of him that day, he felt like they were doing him a favor.
He felt like he wanted to stick a pole in the ground and grab the tip and tip the whole world upside down by it. And somehow even that wouldn't be accomplishment enough.
He remembered what it was like to try so hard to be good, to want so badly to do things, anything, just to show that he was worth something. That had burned, too, inside him... But this, this... drive that he was feeling now, this was something else. This felt good in his chest. Even if the need to prove himself was so hot that it ached. It was a good kind of ache.
A few months later, around 5:20 p.m. when the servers finally started running again, he clicked open his first decision letter, and it started with "Congratulations". He turned the screen around so Sharon could see, too. Her eyebrows flew up and she put both hands before her mouth and she gave him a happy look, and Rusty thought that she must've been proud...
But...it was the same look she gave him all the time.
She'd looked like that at his graduation party (the one he hadn't wanted at first, but Sharon was always right, of course). She'd looked like that when he'd gotten a small raise on his job, even though his job was stupid and unimportant and the raise was like, twelve dollars. She looked at him like that a lot – when he got good grades at St. Joe's, when he fist-pumped silently into the air after getting a better score on his practice SATs. When he helped Buzz with busywork, after hours. When he played chess.
She looked at him like that when he said 'thank you' to someone.
Or when he made scrambled eggs.
She looked at him like that when he didn't do anything.
Later that same evening, they sat shoulder to shoulder on the couch and tallied his options, Sharon leaning into him for enthusiastic nudges as the column of 'yes's grew. He didn't even think she realized she was doing it. Her eyes were dancing and her fingers were twitching happily as she rubbed her hands together, and he was probably gonna have a bruise on his arm the next day from all the nudging and bumping.
He ducked his head when she did it again, and when she reminded him for the fiftieth time that if he wanted to go to college out of state, he could, he rolled his eyes and pulled a face at her.
"I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't, Rusty," (he knew better by now than to think that just because he was pulling faces, Sharon would be deterred from her path), "only that you make your choice based on what you want, and not on extraneous considerations."
If he wasn't mistaken, she was about to launch into the 'I've paid for Ricky and Emily's college, too' dissertation – however much he'd tried to explain it, Sharon had never gotten how paying for his college was any different. Or how anything about him was any different.
Eventually, he'd stopped trying to explain it altogether.
He still hadn't figured out what he could do that would make Sharon proud enough to make up for...anything, really. Maybe if he became like, President or something. Then he could pass all the laws that Sharon wanted. That would make her happy, right?
That probably wasn't how being president worked.
Rusty just really needed, some day, to be in a position where he could give Sharon everything she wanted, for a change.
He sighed. "It's not the "extraneous considerations"..." At least now that he'd gone through the SATs he knew what 'extraneous' meant.
"I hope not." He knew that tone. "Rusty, I've put my other two children through their college years just fine, and we're not exactly under financial hardship now, either. I can afford to send you to college wherever you want to go, alright?"
"Yeah, I know Sharon, I get it..." Honestly. They'd been through it only about a million times before.
She smiled at him, and shifted in her seat. "You don't have to decide right now. Just keep in mind that all these options are equally open to you. Let me worry about working out the finances."
Another sigh. "Yeah, okay..." He adjusted the laptop on his knees. "But I think...uh, I – I think I want to stay in-state."
Sure, Northwestern sounded fine and UNC had great dorms and whatever, but California was where he wanted to be, and by California he meant LA, and by LA he meant 'near Sharon'.
It felt like he'd only just found her, sometimes. Even now, that they were legally mother and son, he woke up some mornings barely able to believe it. And he definitely wasn't ready to move on, yet. This, what he had now... it was literally all he'd ever wished for. Ever since he was a little boy, as early as he could remember, he'd wished for his mom and him to be okay, to be happy – and then, later, he'd wished for his mom to love him, and even later, for her to be there for him...
It had taken a while to see it, but he'd gotten his wish to the letter. His mother – his other mother, the one who still thought he was wrong in so many ways, she still didn't see it, but to Rusty it was plain now that the universe had somehow given him exactly what he'd asked for. Sharon.
He hadn't even known he'd been asking for her, until long after she'd come along.
But now that he did know... he wanted to stay and show Sharon that he could be the person she saw in him, the one that made her think she should be thankful. He wanted to show her just how much it meant to him to have her. He wasn't sure that she knew that, yet. And he didn't want to be letting go until he was really, really sure that she got it. That she understood how she wasn't the lucky one, here.
At the current rate, he estimated it would take about the rest of his life, and maybe an extra four hundred years.
Sharon nudged his knee with hers, until he met her eyes. "Something's bothering you...?"
He shook his head. "No."
She was silent for a few moments, watching him with that soft gaze. Then she hummed quietly.
"College is a big transition. It's normal for it to feel... maybe, a little scary...?" She gave him another small smile when he shrugged. "You don't have to make any decisions tonight. We can talk about this later, see what you think you're ready for." Her brow creased slightly. "I hope you don't feel that I'm putting too much pressure on you, Rusty, that's not my intention – "
"No," he hurried to correct her. "No, that's not it. It's just..." He cleared his throat. "Uh, I really think I'd rather stay around here... like, maybe even go to college right here in LA..."
Sharon had tilted her head, listening. She was giving him that warm look again, and he had no idea what to make of it.
"Unless...like, if – if you don't think that's a bad idea, or something...?" After all, she had her own life to pick up, and kids were supposed to leave home for college, and her other two had, and...
"I don't think that's a bad idea at all," Sharon said quietly. She squeezed his arm, and waved to the laptop that held his list of options. "Rusty, I just want you to understand that you have the freedom to choose whatever would make you happiest. If that's staying in LA... that would be...that's an idea that I can absolutely live with," she finished with a hint of a smile that belied her thicker voice.
Rusty looked down, then back up again. "Even if it means having to worry about me for another four years?"
She huffed, at that. "I'm afraid you're stuck with me worrying about you for a lot longer than that, young man. So yes."
He rolled his eyes. Sharon leaned forward again, to nudge him one last time.
"Take another few days to think about it," she suggested. "There's time. If you're sure that staying in or near LA is what you'd like, we can discuss the remaining," (another glance at the laptop), "three options, and see which one is the best fit."
"UCLA is the only state school," he pointed out, "so going there would cost – ow, okay, okay...!" He rolled his eyes at her again and moved himself and his laptop out of range of her throw-pillow-wielding arm. Once he was at the far end of the couch, he considered it safe enough to add, "Fine. But don't blame me when you have like, no retirement funds or whatever."
She snorted. "I'll keep that in mind."
Rusty pulled another face, and went to click closed his college spreadsheet.
Maybe he could get a job that like, made a lot of money. Like Ricky. Maybe he could invent some like, software or something, too, and then sell it and buy Sharon like, a vacation house in the mountains or something. (She was always going on about the mountains, and skiing. Maybe he could buy her a mountain.)
Or the President thing. Then he could go on national television and let her know that he loves her, and everyone would have to air it. She'd have to understand, then, right?
His neck prickled, and he turned around to see Sharon watching him from the kitchen counter.
She was giving him that look again. The one that said she was proud.
He wasn't even president of anything yet.
He smiled at her, and closed the laptop with a loud click, then put it on the coffee table. One day, he thought. Just wait.
These two and their overwhelming amazing love and feels will be the death of me.
Thank you for reading!