Author's Note: I recently watched the first season of Quantico. By recently, I mean I finished it less than twenty-four hours ago. I've been scouring the web for stuff written about these two, but I've not been having much luck. So, instead of mourning over the fact that there's only a handful of fanfics written about Alex and Ryan, I decided to add some of my own work to the mix. I hope you enjoy. Also, just so you know, the title comes from a quote attributed to Jackie Chan by numerous sources. The quote is: "Family is not whose blood is in you. It's who you love, and who loves you back."
Disclaimer: I do not own Quantico, ABC, or any other organization affiliated with the production of this show or any other. All rights belong to their respective owners.
It wasn't something Alex Parrish was used to, being taken home to meet the family of someone she was involved with. She usually didn't stick around long enough to learn their names. Ryan Booth was different, though. He always had been. So, when he approached her six months after her graduation from Quantico – and five months into take two of their romantic relationship – and asked her to accompany him home to California, she didn't even hesitate before saying yes.
His family life was an unknown to her in many different ways. While he'd never hidden his background from her – not entirely, at least – he'd never been exactly open about where he came from, either. All she knew was that he had three younger sisters and a scumbag of a father. It wasn't exactly much information to go on when preparing for one's first introduction to the family of one's significant other.
She left New York City late one Friday night, telling the floor's secretary that she would be out of reach for the weekend. Nadia simply smiled and nodded as the young special agent spoke. Unlike those who outranked Alex, the twenty-year-old law student had been telling her to get a social life from the very moment they met. She wasn't likely to get in the way of that now that Alex had finally been successful.
She met Ryan at the airport. Why he was in town was not something she knew, and she certainly wasn't going to ask, not now that they were in such a healthy place. Their practical screaming match at the bar before graduation was almost entirely forgotten after their decision to try, once again, to work things out. She didn't want to have to make him lie once again by asking too many questions he'd be forced to let go unanswered.
"Hi," she greeted as he walked towards her, standing gracefully from her uncomfortable chair to press a light kiss against his cheek. "Nadia knows I'll be out of dodge for the next few days. The office shouldn't be calling me."
Ryan smiled at her words. "That's good." He took the handle of her rolling suitcase in one hand, then hefted his own duffle higher on his shoulder. "C'mon, Parrish," he said teasingly, causing her to roll her eyes. "Let's get the fun part of this over with."
It didn't take any longer than usual for them both to make it through Security. Their flight was announced soon after, and they found themselves seated near the middle, almost in exactly the same seats they'd been in during their first meeting. This time, of course, they sat directly next to each other, not on either side of an aisle. They also had much more to discuss than they'd had during that fateful first interaction.
Their nonstop flight from New York to Los Angeles took less than seven hours. Alex dedicated every precious second to learning everything she needed to know about the family she was preparing to meet.
"So," she said once again, flashing the stewardess who handed her a bottle of water a grateful smile and then turning back towards Ryan, "Your mother's name is Charlotte."
Ryan nodded patiently, kindly pretending as if he'd not been asked that same question by the same person fifteen minutes earlier. "And my sisters are Sylvie, Hallie, and Gracie," he added after a moment.
"You're the oldest, though." Alex said the words definitively, but they still came across to many as a question.
"Yes," Ryan confirmed. "I'm sixteen months older than Sylvie."
"And none of them are married?" Alex asked once again, looking for confirmation.
Ryan sighed quietly, although he continued to look on with amusement and fondness in his eyes. "No, Alexandra, none of them are married," he told her. "Why are you panicking? It's my family, not the final exam before you advance at Quantico."
"Might as well be," Alex muttered under her breath, causing Ryan to chuckle quietly. "My family's easy. There's my mother, and that's it. You have siblings and aunts and uncles and friends, and I have no idea what I'm doing."
"I won't let you drown in there," Ryan promised her seriously. "It's my family, babe. It's not like they're going to greet you with the Spanish Inquisition."
Alex really, really hoped he was right about that.
Sylvie was the one sent to the airport to pick them up after their flight arrived. She was a kind woman, beautiful and blonde with the kind of spark in her eye that Ryan also possessed. Her face broke out into a huge smile when she caught sight of them both, and she was across the terminal to hug her brother almost before Alex could blink.
"Hi," she greeted cheerfully as she pulled away, turning towards Alex with a welcoming smile. "You must be the girl we've all heard so much about. My brother here wouldn't shut up about you when he was home for Christmas a few months back. It's so nice to be able to put a face to the name."
Alex smiled nervously. "It's nice to meet you, too. He talks about all of you a lot, too."
"Well, you shouldn't believe anything he says in reference to any of us, because it's all lies. We're perfect angels." Sylvie smirked when Ryan simply rolled his eyes at her words. "Let's get your luggage and get out of here. Mom's got some concoction on the stove that's been heating up the entire house since this morning. I'm pretty sure it's dinner. You wouldn't want to miss out on that."
Ryan winced quietly. "I take that to mean she's trying her hand at experimentation in the kitchen again."
"Of course," Sylvie replied exasperatedly, though the fond smile on her face invalidated her negative reaction. She turned to Alex. "Don't worry. If it's too bad, we'll find a way to smuggle in a pizza. It's a process we've grown used to in recent years."
Alex smiled slightly at the other woman's words. "Will your other sisters be over for dinner too?" she asked after a moment.
"Hallie, definitely," Sylvie told her as they made their way towards the baggage claim. "Gracie will probably make an appearance at some point, too, although that really depends on whether or not she finishes grading her students' essays in time."
"What did she have them write about this week?" Ryan asked as he grabbed their bags from the luggage carousel. He then followed his sister and his girlfriend towards the exits.
"Abraham Lincoln," Sylvie informed him as she made her way through the door. She caught it just in time to prevent in from slamming in Alex's face. "You know he's her favorite president."
Ryan nodded at her explanation, then made his way through the door and checked behind him before allowing it to close. "Hallie's doing all right, isn't she?"
Sylvie smirked. "You were always the one who could get the middle child to talk, Ryan. That was never me. Outwardly, she seems fine. She always says work is good. And maybe work is good, I just…" The woman trailed off after a moment. "I just want to make sure there's nothing wrong, that's all."
"I see you're still carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, baby sister," Ryan said after a moment.
"Oh, please, like you're any different." Sylvie smiled as she turned towards her brother, dangling a key in front of his face. "I already rented you a car," she informed him before he could ask any questions. "I just wanted to make sure Alex didn't come to California to meet us for the first time and arrive to nothing more than an empty airport."
"Thank you," Alex said, speaking up for the first time since they'd exited the airport.
Sylvie smiled brightly in her direction. "Of course. Ryan, you still know your way home, right?" She beamed when he nodded. "All right, then. I'll see you there."
The drive to Hawthorne took less than half an hour, and it didn't take them long to arrive at the address where her boyfriend's mother still resided. Ryan's childhood home was not what she was expecting. It was nice, beautiful even, with a very vintage feel to it despite its obvious plantation-style markers. Alex was still staring up at it when Ryan circled around to the other side of their vehicle to help her out of the car.
"This place is beautiful," she murmured, still awestruck.
Ryan smiled fondly at her. "It is," he agreed, taking her hand in his and guiding her towards the front door. Before he could knock or let them in, however, it flew open to reveal a woman with dirty blonde corkscrew curls and eyes just like his own.
"Hi, baby boy," Charlotte Booth greeted enthusiastically, wrapping the eldest of her four children in her arms. She squeezed him tightly for several moments before letting go and turning towards the woman with him. "And you must be Alex." She was greeted similarly, although the embrace wasn't quite as tight. That seemed fair. She'd known the woman for three seconds, not three decades.
"All right, Mom, let her breathe," another woman said from deeper in the house. After a few moments, the only brunette in the family mix appeared behind her mother's shoulder. Hallie Booth smiled politely in Alex's direction, looking like both the capable lawyer she was, and the little sister Ryan described her to be. "Nice to meet you, Alex," the other woman greeted, extending a well-manicured hand in Alex's direction. "My brother talks about you a lot. In fact, he never really shuts up after you're brought up in casual conversation. Which, by the way, are the conversations he usually starts. You sure you know what you've gotten yourself into with this one?"
Ryan released a long-suffering sigh when Alex smirked slightly at his sister's words. "You remember when you asked me why I hadn't brought her home yet, Mom? This is why," the former Marine informed his mother, who simply smiled at her children's antics.
"Ooh, are we already picking on Ryan?" another voice sounded from the porch. "Count me in, Hal."
Ryan shook his head fondly at he turned to face the newest member of their group. "Hi, Gracie."
"Hi, big brother," Gracie Booth greeted with just as much fondness. She stepped forward to hug him, then turned towards Alex to do the same. "You're Alexandra," she guessed, smiling when Alex nodded. "Alex, right? My brother's kind of obsessed with you. You might want to go ahead and run."
"So I've been told," Alex responded, patting Ryan comfortingly on the arm when he rolled his eyes and huffed quietly.
"Oh, the others beat me to it? Damn. It was supposed to be a group effort." Gracie followed them into the house when Charlotte made it clear that she wasn't a fan of letting the house warm itself with outside air. "Hal," she called as she made her way into the kitchen, pulling three beers from the fridge and offering two of them to her brother without comment, "how many idiots do you build cases against a week?"
"Several," Hallie responded, smiling slightly at the sight of her brother uncapping his girlfriend's beer bottle and then handing it over without pause. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I think their children might be in my class. Do you know how many of those kids said Abraham Lincoln was involved in the American Revolution? The American Revolution began eighty-five years before the Civil War, Hal. Eighty-five years." Gracie took a sip of her beer, although it seemed more to numb her pain than anything else. "It was almost eighty-six, if you count from the Battle of Lexington and Concord to the Battle of Fort Sumter. Just a week short."
"You remember entirely too many dates," Ryan informed his sister teasingly.
"And your mind translates numbers into words," she fired back. "I have no idea what 10-4 means, but I bet you could tell me without even thinking about it."
"When used by the FBI, it means that the person on the other end of the line understands what you're telling them and is waiting for more information before reacting in any way," Alex answered instinctively, causing all three Booth women to glance curiously in her direction. She shrugged sheepishly. "They taught us a lot of law enforcement code at Quantico."
"I like her," Hallie said definitively, taking another drag from her bottle. "Don't scare this one off, big brother."
"I don't think I'm the one in this room who should be afraid of scaring her off," Ryan muttered under his breath, causing his mother to glare in his direction. He smiled apologetically. "Sorry, Mom, but you know it's true."
"Just because it's true doesn't mean you have to say it," his female relatives said at exactly the same time. He shook his head exasperatedly when he heard Sylvie make her way into the room.
"So, I think I've got us covered. We have sides for whatever Mama's making on the stove right now, and I also bought enough boxed pizza to feed an army." Sylvie placed the bags and boxes on the counter, then hugged her mother and siblings tightly.
What Charlotte was cooking turned out to be pasta primavera, but serving it proved to be a disaster when they all came to the collective realization that it'd somehow managed to burn in the pot. And the smell of burnt pasta? Not an entirely pleasant one.
Ryan helped his sisters pop the pizzas and breadsticks into the oven. When the girls ducked out, eager to catch up on whatever show they were all watching, he returned to the table to sit with his mother and his girlfriend, leaning down to press a kiss to the top of Alex's head as he passed by and settled next to her.
Charlotte smiled at the two of them. "Alex, my son tells me you're working in New York City?"
Alex nodded. "Yes, ma'am. I'm part of the Violent Crimes Task Force at the New York field office."
"Mm," Charlotte hummed quietly. "It sounds like difficult work. I get spooked when I see the Most Wanted list on television. I can't imagine chasing the people on it down in real life."
"It's not always fun," Alex admitted with a wry smile. "But it still needs to be done."
Charlotte nodded. "And this task force, is there one of them here in California?"
"Mom." Ryan's voice was quiet, but the warning was clear. He didn't want his mother that involved in his personal life. He certainly didn't want her involved enough to ask his girlfriend to pick up her life and move across the country to be closer to him. He'd never even thought of asking her to do that himself.
"It's fine," Alex assured him, patting him lightly on the shoulder. "There is, yeah. One runs out of the offices in Los Angeles." She cleared her throat after a moment's pause. "They actually offered me a job a few weeks back. I still haven't given them an answer."
Ryan froze in his seat, causing Charlotte to eye him curiously. After a moment, she sighed quietly and stood from her seat. "Well, I think I'll go see if the girls are interested in beating me at a game of Scrabble. I don't know why I even try with Hallie anymore. I sent the girl to Cornell." With those words, she walked from the room, leaving the two special agents in her home alone for the first time since they'd arrived.
Ryan's words were careful, calculated. "You didn't tell me about the job offer here in California."
"Because the last time I tried to make a decision for us, you told me I should do what was best for me, and you'd do what was best for you," she pointed out quietly. "I wasn't exactly in the mood for a repeat of that conversation."
"We had that conversation six months ago," he pointed out logically, leaning back slightly in his chair.
"Yeah, and it took us six weeks to speak to each other again," she fired back. "Look, I don't even know if I want this job, but what I do know is that it's not just because of you that I'm considering it. The offices in New York City are never going to run out of agents, Ryan. It's where everyone wants to go after Quantico. And while there's not a shortage here in California…" She trailed off, shaking her head. "I just feel like, maybe, I could make a difference here, one that I can't make up there. Be closer to my mom, figure out some things with her. Your being here is not the reason I'm considering it, all right?" She smiled when he eyed her dubiously. "Fine. Your being here is not the only reason I'm considering it."
Ryan nodded, then leaned in to press a quick kiss to her lips, one she reciprocated wholeheartedly. "I'm sorry for getting upset," he apologized against her skin, causing her to sigh delightedly. He looked at her seriously when he pulled back. "I just don't want to go back down that road, you know? I don't want to get used to lying to you again, or having you lie to me. I didn't like it the first time around."
"I know." Alex sighed quietly. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. This would affect your life, too. I mean, I'd be around much more if we were both working in Los Angeles. You deserve a say in what I decide."
Ryan stared at her disbelievingly. "Alex, if you think for even a minute that your being closer to me is a drawback to you moving out here, then you should probably go ahead and see if Sylvie's office has any therapy appointments available this weekend." He smirked at her when she simply rolled her eyes. "I want you around, all right? I always want you around." He pressed a kiss to the side of her head. "If you want to take this position, then take it, all right? Just don't do it for me."
She turned her head to press her lips against his, causing him to inhale in surprise as the kiss began. "Don't worry," she said confidently after she'd pulled away. She rested her head on his shoulder. "I'm doing this entirely for me."