Rating: PG
Summary: Sort of fluffy-angst (oxymoron!) about Sandy growing up in the Bronx. Because y'all. Don't be fooled by the eyebrows that he's got/ He's still/ He's still Sandy from the Bronx/
Disclaimer: I don't own the O.C. or the characters. Josh Schwartz does. Le sigh.
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"Did too." said Sandy to his little brother as he blew a bubble with his gum, crossing his arms and leaning against the white picket fence outside Mr. Abraham's house. He would probably come out soon with a broom and tell them to get off his property, but that didn't really matter. Not really, anyway.
"Did not!" David replied, glaring at his hero of a big brother with a skeptical --yet vaguely hopeful-- glint in his eye.
Sandy spat out his gum on the grass and checked behind him through the holes in the fence to check that he hadn't been seen.
Mr. Abraham's broom really, really hurt.
He turned his attention back to his curly haired brother, brown eyes conflicted with respect and doubt. "Did too." His tone made it clear their yes/no game was over.
David opened his eyes wide. "You know where she keeps the presents? Really?" Sandy raised his chin and nodded in response. He could sense the dreams forming in David's mind, of the many gifts hidden in their mother's closet, behind the shoe-boxes way in the far right corner.
"Tell me, tell me!" yelped David, tugging at his brother's fraying black shirt and looking up hopefully.
"Nah."
David's shoulders slumped and his face fell, and Sandy picked him up and spun him around in the air. "Just kidding, Davy. You knew I was gonna tell you, don't make me seem so mean." David grinned and hugged his brother.
"I love you, Sandy." Sandy pushed him off, trying in vain not to enjoy the words. "Yeah, yeah, whatever."
They walked off, David on Sandy's shoulder because his shoes were too old and he got blisters from them. "Sandy?" David questioned, resting his forearm on Sandy's floppy, black haired mop. His hair covered his bothersome eyebrows, but not the light blue eyes that his mother called lovely. Sandy hated them. David and Mama's eyes were dark brown, Ayla and Daddy's hazel.
He was the only different one.
"Yeah, Davy?" His eyes darted up, as if expecting David to lean over and look him in the eye. "Why do mama and daddy always fight?"
Sandy sighed. David always asked that. Sandy always said the same thing. "'Cause they love each other, Davy." David frowned and took his forearm off Sandy's head.
"We don't fight that much, Sandy." David stated curiously, looking at the corner store and the new lollipops on display while sucking his thumb subconsciously.
"Well we're not mom and dad, kid. We're brother and brother." David playfully slapped his brother on the head. "Don't call me kid, Sandy. I'm not a kid."
"Sure you're not," said Sandy, rolling his eyes in mock annoyance. "Now let me tell you about the presents."
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"Mama, I don't know what you're talking about." said Sandy innocently as his mother held up the new pair of black leather shoes, fancy tissue paper still attached to them. Sandy's current shoes were coming undone, the leather worn through in the front. He looked down at them, not wanting to get the stare of death from his mother.
"You found out where they were, didn't you Sanford. You found them and you couldn't resist." Sandy tilted his head and looked up, trying to seem confused. "Found what, mama?" His mother scoffed and shook her head.
"You keep on lying, you're gonna get yourself in even more trouble, Sanford Cohen." Ooh. She was using last names now. She meant business. Sandy squinted his eyes, trying to think of the better option. Letting himself take the fall for David now or waiting until later.
Exactly why his brother took the blue wrapping paper, ripped it off in one clean sweep, and pulled out the shoes before freaking out and leaving them there, Sandy didn't know, but he knew that he couldn't let him take the fall for something he didn't even know he was doing.
So once again, the only question was what time for confessing was better. Now? Or later?
Now worked, but he liked causing a little trouble. Still... it would be nice to get some presents for his eighth birthday. As it was, the longer he waited, the quicker his pile of gifts would disappear.
Not that there were all that many to begin with, but that wasn't the point.
"Fine, mama." he said, looking at his worn shoes again. "I opened the present. I just wanted to see what it was. I'm sorry." He tried to look remorseful for the wrongdoing he was innocent of when he finally looked up again, but his eyes were drawn to something else.
Ayla was peeking at the unfolding events from behind the door of his mother and father's bedroom, and she disappeared when Sandy shook his head almost imperceptibly at her in an effort to get her not to say what she wanted to. She had opened her mouth very wide, her lips sucked in to scream: "Mama! Mama! It was David!" but then Sandy silently told her not to and she backed off.
Ayla was Sandy's princess. Well, she was daddy's princess, but she was Sandy's princess too. Sandy always took her anywhere she wanted whenever she wanted. He also let her jump on his back when she asked for piggy-back rides and reluctantly let her sloppily paint his toenails with mama's nail polish, but that was a secret between the two that would mean exile for Sandy if it came out.
She was three. Smart as hell and the baby of the family. David was five. He was always following Sandy around in his waking hours, and it killed Sandy that his little brother went to a different school than him because he was too young to go to Monte Negro.
"You couldn't have waited three days, Sanford? Three days? Just wait until your father gets home. He's going to be in such a nasty mood." She paced back and forth and glared at her son, pointing an accusatory finger at him.
"Sorry, mama."
Sophie shook her head. "You'll be sorry when you don't get a birthday party at all this year, Sandy." Her tone had softened, because she was feeling a lot worse now at hinting the removal of her loving son's birthday party. He never made anything about himself except his birthday, and even then he passed the cake around to everyone before himself, and he always gave one present to each of his siblings. Last year Sophie had tried giving Sandy two cheap gifts so that he could give those to David and Ayla instead of the more expensive presents, but the plan had backfired.
Sandy had ended up with a teddy bear and a shirt two sizes too small for him, and David and Ayla had ended up with new shoes and a hardcover book they couldn't even read.
The lock on the door clicked back and the squeaky door was pushed open. "Daddy! Daddy!" squealed Ayla, running down the stairs and throwing herself into the arms of her chuckling father. "Hey princess." Sandy kept his eyes averted.
"Joseph, come here and see what your son did." Sophie said loudly to the figure at the bottom of the stairs, while Sandy kicked an imaginary spot of dirt on the ground.
The loud footsteps and creaking of the old floor came closer, and Sandy looked up. Sophie held the shoes up for Joseph to see.
"He opened his present. He found out where I kept them and he opened it, Joseph." She pointed at her offender and glowered at him for a second before turning her attention back to her husband.
Joseph didn't seem particularly perturbed. He never did, Sandy thought. He was almost always a very tranquil person, and he knew how to calm people down, talk to them and simmer down a situation. Sandy always imagined him as a hostage negotiator. He didn't know why. He seemed like he'd be the kind of person who would talk down someone with a gun and get them to put it down. Sandy wanted to be like that one day.
Joseph sighed, put Ayla on the ground, and knelt down in front of Sandy. "Why did you do it, Sandy? Was there a particular reason, or did you do it just for the hell of it?"
There was a hint of anger in his father's voice that Sandy wasn't used to hearing from him except when he and his mother were fighting, and he thought that his father would resort to spanking him again like he did when Sandy stole his father's lighter to see what it looked like, and accidentally broke it.
"I don't... I mean, I just wanted to see what it was." Sandy said with a frown, as he swallowed the effort the lie took and glanced up at his father.
Joseph glared, but didn't scream like Marty's dad always did. "Why couldn't you wait? Are you not telling me something?" His glare switched directions from Sandy to Ayla and finally on David, who had been hiding in the room he and Sandy shared but had made a quick appearance at the arrival of his father.
"No. No, dad. There's nothing else. I'm sorry."
Sophie, completely oblivious that Joseph's glare had become a steady beam focused on David, paced from her bedroom door to the top of the staircase and back again. "I was thinking he shouldn't have a birthday at all, Joseph. What do you think? For what he did?"
Joseph's glare flickered, then faltered, and finally disappeared. "Sophie, don't say that." he whispered, pressing his palms on his knees as he stood. "The poor kid doesn't even end up keeping half his gifts, just let him have his day."
Sophie didn't understand. She was always so preoccupied with her thousands of thoughts that it never failed to amaze Sandy that she barely ever burst out in anger. Right now, he guessed she was thinking of the Welfare rally on Saturday and her work for the Environmentalist Legal Fund she volunteered for, as well as what her son had done.
She had no idea that in a matter of a few seconds, Joseph had detected the piece of tape stuck on David's finger and the look of guilt plastered on his face as he stared, dumbstruck, at his brother, unaware of his father's glare burning into him.
"Joseph, are you going to condone that he do things like this? Sneak around and find secrets and just expose them like this?" It was obvious the fight wasn't really about Sandy anymore. It quickly progressed until they were using, as Sandy liked to tell Ayla, their outdoor voices.
Sandy scooped Ayla up in his arms when she got a little too close to the people who's voices were progressing to the level of shrieks and yells, and gently pushed David into his room, closing the door behind him.
"Sandy, what's going on?" asked David, running towards the door to open it and get out. Sandy grabbed him and set him down beside Ayla. "They're talking."
David's lip started trembling, and Ayla joined in. Sandy picked them both up, one at a time, and put them on his bed. "Don't cry, you guys. Please, don't cry." The last thing they needed was Ayla's piercing shrieks of sadness when their father was this angry. He sat Ayla down on his lap and bounced her up and down in a comforting motion that helped him feel better more than it did her.
"You're never home! All you do is worry about other people's kids, Sophie! You never worry about your own! You don't even know why he took the damn shoes out, because you don't care! You don't even care that he didn't--" Something hit a wall and shattered, and Ayla and David started. Sandy put a hand on David's shoulder and one on Ayla's. Despite his mind's protests, tears were starting to crawl into his eyes.
"Sandy, why are they screaming?" asked Ayla, as quietly as she could. She still couldn't pronounce the letter 'r', and it always came out as a 'w', which the whole family found adorable. Sandy took his hand off David's shoulder. He put both hands over Ayla's ears.
"They're not screaming anymore, Ayla. They're not screaming anymore." Sandy rocked back and forth, his hands still on Ayla's ears. He wanted more than anything to put them on his ears, but he couldn't. He couldn't leave Ayla to understand what was going on.
David looked at Sandy and then at his own small hands, before putting them on his ears.
There was a final barrage of screams before someone stomped down the stairs and the front door slammed shut. Sandy waited through a few silent seconds before taking his hands off of Ayla's ears. David followed his lead. "Why don't you guys color something? Here." Sandy handed them each a piece of paper and set it in front of them on the ground with a pencil each.
Sandy counted to sixty before walking over to the door and pushing it open a crack. The squeaking betrayed his attempt at stealth, and he saw his father, still standing at the top of the stairs, spin around and look at him.
Sandy didn't know what to do. He wanted to slam the door like his mother did, hide in his room, and cry.
He couldn't do that, though. He had to be brave for Ayla and David. Sandy glanced behind him to see if they were still coloring. They were.
He snuck out of the room, but kept the door open, just in case. He glanced around the hall, trying to spot whatever was broken in the fight. He decided that his father must have cleaned it up already.
Joseph's eyes were red and watery, just like Sandy's, but he quickly wiped at his eyes when he caught Sandy looking at them. He knelt in front of his son again and held his hand out, pulling back slightly before he actually touched Sandy.
Sandy hated that about his father. Aside from rare spankings and the sparse hug here and there, he never touched his eldest. Sandy had no idea why, but sometimes his little boy mind drew to the conclusion that his father thought he wasn't good enough for the family.
Ayla was smart and David was good at sports, but what was Sandy?
"Hey, Sandy." Joseph's hand was an inch away from his cheek now, but he curled it into a fist and pulled it back. "I'm sorry about that, kid. Your mother and I were just angry. We didn't mean any of those things."
Sandy nodded and swallowed. "Are you going to tell mama about what David did?" he said, his voice trembling slightly. He bit on his bottom lip to stop the childish tears that wanted to fall down. Joseph smiled sadly, reaching out to the solitary tear that had fallen down Sandy's cheek before pulling away again and standing up.
"No, Sandy. I'm not gonna tell her. But you need to learn that people need to deal with the consequences of their actions. I know you were only trying to protect David, but you need to let him face the music or he's never going to grow up." He tried to look into the room where both children were silently playing, but he couldn't see them so he focused on Sandy again.
Joseph sighed. "Daddy? Do I still get a... uh... birthday party?" asked Sandy, looking down at his wrecked shoes in shame of where his thoughts had gone.
Joseph smiled and walked over to the master bedroom door where the shoe-box and the shoes lay abandoned on the ground. He brought them over to Sandy. "Of course, Sandy. Here. Now that they're open, I suppose there's no point in waiting." He set the shoes down in front of Sandy, who looked up.
"Are David and Ayla ok?" asked Joseph, still not able to see his other two children. Sandy nodded. "I gave them some paper and a couple of pencils. They're coloring." Joseph knelt down again. He looked into Sandy's sad blue eyes and his lip trembled at the brave little boy. Suddenly, he pulled Sandy close to him and hugged him, hands clutching at his hair. "You're so good, Sandy. You know that?" Sandy shook his head while his father choked on a sob. "I couldn't ask for better from you. I love you so much." Joseph gripped Sandy tighter for a second before letting go and flattening Sandy's black hair where he had mussed it.
Sandy smiled despite himself and the tears that were still threatening to spill over. Joseph coughed and wiped at his eyes. "Well, don't worry. Your mother just went to go get some groceries, kid."
Sandy nodded as his father turned to go to his room. "Daddy?" Joseph turned around and looked at him. "Yeah?"
Sandy glanced at the front door before settling his gaze on his father. "Why do you and mom always fight?" His voice was quiet, and he hoped David hadn't heard him, since Sandy was supposed to know this. Joseph let out a breath he was holding and gave Sandy a forced smile.
"Because we love each other, Sanford."
Sandy smiled. He knew it.
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This story isn't like the awesome "Charity Begins at Home" by Connell. It's not flowing. It's just certain events that were special to Sandy, not his whole childhood. Because I can't commit. To anything. Sorry, Eric. (Kidding, romie, I haven't talked to him at all.)