Disclaimer: Still don't own anything. Which is a shame, because I would have taken much better care of them that Josh and FOX did.

The Beginner's Guide to the Family of Ryan Atwood

Sometimes, Luke felt sorry for Ryan.

Not often, because the guy graduated from Berkeley with honours and a job at a prestigious architect's bureau already lined up where he now earns more money than anyone their age really should. And he has a ridiculously close relationship with Mr. and Mrs. Cohen who love him to pieces. And a little blonde girl who's hero-worship of him surpasses even Seth's in the early days, who just happens to be the best chick-magnet ever and who loves him even more than her parents do. And yeah, he has Cohen, too, even though Luke sometimes isn't sure if that should count as a good thing. And he hasn't gotten arrested for years, which isn't bad either.

But yeah, despite all that, there were times when Luke feels genuinely sorry for the guy. Like right now.

They were at some kind of semi-formal party. Ryan had been required to attend because his boss wanted to brag with him, and since Luke would have to go on a stupid trip in a couple of days and wanted to spend some time with Ryan (in a purely friendly, hanging-out-with-a-buddy-way, thank you very much) before leaving, he had tagged along. The food at these things was usually good, the drinks were free and the heat of summer in San Francisco meant that there would be a lot of women wearing only as much clothes as absolutely necessary, so he had been willing to do some small talk.

The evening had started out well enough and only gotten better when a couple of hot chicks had zeroed in on them. They had gotten along rather well and Luke had been happy to realize that the girl hanging on to his arm (Karen, he reminded himself) didn't seem interested in Ryan at all. Not that he usually had trouble getting some action, but going somewhere with Ryan held the risk of ending up merely the wingman. Which was another reason why he usually didn't feel sorry for him. At all.

But after about half an hour, everyone at their table knew where the other's had gone to college, where they were living now and what their respective jobs were. Which meant that really, it was king of inevitable that the subject would come up. Still, when the red-head (Mia? Maria?) turned towards Ryan with a smile (and a slight shift in position that probably allowed the guy a nice view down her almost-but-not-quite indecently deep cleavage) and asked:"And what about your family?", Luke did feel for him. And he almost didn't snicker at all.

Because really, there was no way Ryan would be able to answer that question without either omitting a lot (which according to Ryan was not ok, because it wasn't honest; and despite Luke's repeated attempts to make the guy understand that you didn't always have to be 100 percent honest, especially when trying to get laid, the guy had far to high expectations of himself), telling the girl that he didn't really want to discuss that topic (which Luke was sure wouldn't go over well, because women always seemed to believe it was a personal insult when you didn't want to talk to them) or totally freak the chick out. Because apart from all the things Ryan simply didn't ever seem willing to discuss, there was the extreme weirdness-factor. There was strange, there was the Brady-bunch, and then there was Ryan Atwood's family.

Even Luke sometimes lost count of all the different ways the guy was related to people.

First, there was Ryan's first family. The Atwoods.

There was Dawn, the alcoholic biological mother, who lived somewhere in Arizona, with a boyfriend who was also an alcoholic. As far as Luke knew, they had both been sober for a while and spend a lot of time taking care of giant snake. He didn't get the snake-part, but he was glad about the sober-part, because it meant that Ryan brooded less, which was always a good thing in Luke's book.

Anyway, explaining why Ryan only talked to the biological mother about once every two months would have made it necessary to delve into the whole "repeatedly-abandoned and left to fend for myself"- thing, so Luke got why Ryan wouldn't want to talk about that to some woman he had only just met, no matter how hot.

Then there was Frank, the violent alcoholic biological father, who as far as Luke knew was at the moment back in jail. He wasn't so sure about that because getting Ryan to talk about the guy required considerable amounts of liquor, but since Ryan would be more freaked about keeping Paul and Julie safe if Frank had gotten out again, he was more or less positive that the guy was still safely locked up.

And yeah, it really wasn't hard to see why Ryan wouldn't want to talk about him.

Last in the line up of "original" Atwood family was Trey. The big brother who had gotten Ryan arrested (and even if that had turned out well, it wasn't exactly a positive part of their relationship), but who must have been nice to Ryan at some point because the guy still cared about him despite everything. "Everything" being the fact that Trey had tried to rape Ryan's then-ex Marissa, had tried to kill Ryan and then, after a two-months coma and an unsuccessful attempt to get his brother sent to prison for attempted murder, had taken of to God-knows-where. Ryan had said something about Vegas once, but Trey was even more of a forbidden topic than Frank, so Luke wasn't sure if that was still true.

Again, easy to see why Ryan wouldn't want to relay any of that to a virtual stranger.

Then, there were the Cohens.

Mr. Cohen, who had gone from Ryan's lawyer to his surrogate dad. Who had gotten him out of Chino and brought him to Newport, where the guy had proceeded to thoroughly turn pretty much everybody's lives (Luke's own included) upside down. Who, even though Luke knew from vague, not-really-sober-anymore talks with Ryan had not always been there for the then extremely messed up teenager, had turned out to be more of a father to Ryan than Frank-who-must-not-be-mentioned ever was.

Mrs. Cohen, who after some reluctance in the beginning had welcomed Ryan into the family. Who Ryan had lived in a house with (or well, on an estate with) for four years, not counting trips back to Chino and a five-month's stay in a bar, but hadn't really gotten that close to until they had moved and Ryan had started college. Funny, how they had somehow bonded over taking care of Sophie and Ryan helping Mrs. C. with the plans for her gallery. Now, Luke sometimes had to remind himself that Ryan wasn't the woman's biological son, especially when it was just her, Ryan and Sophie. It wasa freaky how much they looked alike.

Seth Cohen, who Ryan had saved from a life spend as a lonely uber-geek. Who had become Ryan's best friend pretty much at once, who had turned him into a freaking comic-book hero. Who was one of the most exhausting people Luke knew, but who could occasionally be a pretty cool and nice guy and who definitely loved Ryan a lot (maybe, Luke sometimes thought, even more than he loved his wife).

Summer, who was now a Cohen (and who would have thought back in ninth's grade when she skipped from boyfriend to boyfriend that it would be Seth Cohen of all people who ended up actually getting her to stay?), who cared about Ryan in a very bossy, but genuine friend/ love-of-her-dead-best-friend's-life/brot her-in-law kind of way. Who was always busy saving the world but still managed to be around enough to remind Luke why he had never (weird golf-trips non-withstanding) made a play for her. She was nice and all, but he preferred his arms unbruised. Rage blackouts were definitely scary.

And of course, Sophie Rose Cohen, the afore-mentioned chick-magnet extraordinaire. The Cohen that Ryan would probably be most willing to die for in a second. The five year old that was convinced that there was nothing her beloved big brother couldn't do and who would prove that she had studied Ryan enough to learn the patented Atwood glare of doom whenever you so much as hinted at the guy not actually having hung the moon.

Really, there was nothing wrong with talking about the Cohens, expect that talking about them to someone who didn't have the background-info would require Ryan to explain the whole surrogate/ foster-family-thing. So, the Atwoods being something not up for discussion, that could be a little difficult. Not to mention that Ryan deemed all that crap private anyway.

And then, it got really complicated. Because of course, the Cohens had other family members as well.

On the one hand, there were Mr. Cohen's sibling and their partners and children. These, Luke knew, had been a rather recent addition to Ryan's family, since Mr. Cohen had only really gotten close to them again after his mother, the fearsome Sophie Cohen, had died. But there wasn't much weirdness, so again the only reason why Ryan wouldn't talk about them to strangers was the surrogate-thing.

On the other hand, there was Hailey Nichols, Mrs. Cohen's sister who was currently living somewhere in Europe. As far as Luke knew, there was almost no weirdness to Ryan's relationship with his "aunt" Hailey, if you were able to ignore the fact that she had for a time dated the father of Ryan's then-ex. And apparently, she had hit on Ryan once before she knew who he was (unfortunately, Ryan had not been drunk enough to reveal any details). But apart from that, she was the regular foster-aunt.

To make up for that relative normalcy, there was also Lindsay. Lindsay, who Ryan had started dating before finding out that she was Mrs. Cohen's half-sister, the result of the late Mr. Nichols cheating on his wife a few years before her death. Which meant that for a while, Ryan had dated his (though not blood-related, thank God) aunt. And while Seth still got a kick out of it, Luke could totally understand not wanting to discuss that.

Not that it had been the only time Ryan had dated a not-blood-related relative. After all, there had been a time when Marissa's mother had been married to Mr. Nichols. Which had made Marissa Mrs. Cohen's stepsister, and Ryan's quasy-foster-aunt. Yet another reason why talking about Marissa was not an option. Not that Ryan really needed any more reasons than the whole on-again, off-again relationship which had ended in a fatal accident and Ryan starting a career as a cage-fighter (and yes, after her had gotten over the news of Marissa's death, Luke had had a good laugh about that). But still, it fitted nicely into the line of almost-rapes, life-savings, dead guys on cliffs, sudden lesbianism and other assorted dramas.

Anyway, those were the Cohen's relatives. But because Ryan's family just wasn't complicated enough, there were also the Coopers.

Mrs. Cooper-Nichols-almost-Roberts-almost-Bul lit-almost-Atwood, who had once been Ryan's sorta-step-grandmother, as well as his almost mother-in-law (not that they had ever thought about marriage back then, but still, Luke knew that now, Julie Cooper regarded Ryan as the only boy her oldest daughter had ever really loved and to her, that was now the closest to a son-in-law she could get). To make matters more complicated, she had then almost become the stepmother of Summer Roberts, now Summer Cohen and Ryan's sister in law despite Ryan not really being Seth's brother. And because even that wasn't yet complicated enough, Julie Cooper had also almost married Ryan's biological father. And even though that hadn't worked out (luckily, as Ryan obviously thought), Julie Cooper was the mother of Ryan's half-brother Paul. Even ignoring the fact that the boy was young enough to be Ryan's kid (because that didn't seem to bother him, either with Paul or with Sophie), the fact that Ryan now shared a half-brother with his dead ex-girlfriend and said girlfriend's baby-sister was more weirdness than anyone would be able to handle at once.

Which meant that Julie, Kaitlin and Paul weren't up for public discussion either.

Luke often thought that it was a very good thing indeed that Daniel, Theresa's kid-that-might-have-been-Ryan's had turned out to be Eddie's (and by now actually looked it, since his formerly blond hair had turned dark and he had become as tanned as his mother). Because really, Ryan's family was already impossibly complicated enough without adding a family of twenty-some close and a whole bunch of not so close relatives of Theresa to the mix as well.

Anyway, all in all, he got why Ryan hated to be asked about his family. And he felt sorry for the guy after the question had been uttered. So, after a more-or-less well concealed snort of amusement, he decided to ignore the responding glare, be a good friend and to take pity on him. "I already know about his family. Why don't we talk about something more interesting? You two, for example. I'm sure your lives are much more exciting."

Ok, so that was not exactly likely, given that he thought it impossible to have a more complicated family than Ryan or a much more eventfull, crisis-ridden youth, but he had never claimed to share Ryan's aversion to lying. And really, if they both managed to get laid tonight, Ryan would totally owe him and not be able to berate him.

Judging from the grateful look the other man threw his way, he actually knew that.

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