Title: Filament and Flash Bulbs (1/6)
Author: Heath07
Rating: PG-13/R-ish-swearing, sexuality
Summary: AU Ryan/Summer Getting away from Newport was the only thing on her mind... Being pegged a hero was not his plan...
Feedback: Yes, please.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, they belong to FOX and Josh Schwartz and a bunch of other people...
Notes: Please do not write a review just to tell me either Ryan or Summer should be with someone else. There will be 6 parts to this piece of fiction.
A day before her sixteenth birthday she bought a map and closed her eyes while she chose a destination. She waited until it was dark before making her great escape. It wasn't easy to sneak out of her window wearing three inch heals, but she'd managed. She'd been determined and she wasn't going to let a pair of Manolo Blahnik's get in the way of freedom.
The bus ride had been hell. It was a hot Californian summer-not that there was any other kind-and that made the lack of air-conditioning all the more dreadful. Half-an-hour on the road and the whole bus smelled worse than the boys' locker room at school-Tanner Perry had brought her there to make-out after baseball practice, suffice it to say, it was not the ideal setting to make-out in. Didn't these people believe in deodorant...or showers, for that matter? A baby didn't stop crying the entire ride and the woman beside her kept poking her with a knitting needle and telling her how much she reminded her of her dead sister. Freaks. All of them.
No wonder her step-monster was always heavily medicated. The world was full of crazy people.
When the bus came to a stop and what little tolerance she had for people in general was completely gone, she decided she was far enough away from home not to be recognized.
Summer Roberts was beginning her new life.
And since starting a person's life over was a scary thing, the best way to go about it was to get rip-roaring drunk and stir up some trouble. That's why the first thing she did in Chino was find the closest bar.
The place she chose was dank and dirty. Smoke hung in the air and clung to the walls in thick tarry streaks. The tables were scattered. The music was loud. The people were...normal. The salt of the earth. Not the typical crowd she associated with, to say the least. She didn't expect to see neatly trimmed men wearing designer suits or fancy women with perfect manicures and colourful, short skirts, carrying Prada bags with a short-haired Chihuahua inside anytime soon. Here, the women wore their nails long and painted them streetwalker red. A month ago she would have took one look at the place and turned right back around and out the door. Now, though, she found it comforting. It was a place to hide.
Taking a seat at the bar, she waited for the bartender to take her order and tried to blend in. She felt the stares but she'd lived in Newport long enough to know that it was best to ignore them Resting her purse on the seat beside her, she propped her head in her hand and took her first breath of freedom. The top of the bar was sticky and scratched, it desperately needed a sanding and a new coat of varnish. She tried to be open, tried not to turn up her nose
A woman-long, slim features, a sharp nose and feline eyes-flirted with a patron at the end of the bar not yet noticing her. Summer didn't make it a priority to get her attention, instead opted to wait. When she finally looked over and pried herself away from the man, Summer could tell her presence was an inconvenience.
"What'll it be?" By the woman's clipped tone, she knew she'd been right. The intense blue cat eyes were a direct contradiction to her own dark ones. They were hardened and suspicious and she found it unsettling.
"Vodka, straight up." She didn't waver, figuring if she ordered like an expert no one would question her age.
The woman nodded and poured her drink. The glass was as dirty as the man at the end of the bar.
Eyeing the glass with distain, she looked up long enough to catch the attention of the bartender again. "Can I get another glass?" The eyes turned cold and she knew she'd gone too far. She always had to act like a fucking princess.
"You got I.D.?" the woman asked, annoyed. "I'm not gunna lose my liquor license over some snotty little rich girl."
She squirmed uncomfortably in the stool while the woman stared her down. Clearly, blending in was going to be a problem.
Summer felt someone come up behind her. She looked up startled. It was a man. His clothes were neat and clean-she could smell cheap aftershave-and his skin was weathered. There was something about him that seemed trustworthy. Had he been in a suit she might have changed her mind. There was something about men in suits that she didn't trust, probably because of all the men her father did business with -they dressed in expensive suits and slicked back hair and had shifty eyes. "It's all right, Layla, give 'er another one. On me." The man set down a twenty in front of her.
She would have refused had she not just realized that she didn't have the money to pay for the drink in the first place. This was not a time to let her pride get in the way.
The brim of the stranger's baseball cap was torn and flopping over one side. His eyes were hidden in shadow, even so she could tell they were light blue. She stared at his hands over the money. They were large, dry and cracked, his nails just a little bit dirty. She could suggest a good moisturizer, but she didn't think men like him used such frivolities.
She smiled at him. He smiled back and tipped his hat.
"Buy a couple on me, sweetheart. You probably need it more 'an I do."
Summer detected a hint of a Southern accent. He was like a real live cowboy. Only...he was broken. Used up. Moved to the city and had the cowboy ripped out of him, but they couldn't take away the Southern manners. She imagined up his life story: he'd been a wheat farmer and spent his weekends riding bulls until he missed a payment with the bank and the government took his land to plant tobacco fields, he couldn't find work after that so he packed up his wife and four starving children and moved to Chino... Even if it was far-fetched, Summer liked to believe at least some part of it was true...she'd always had a flare for the dramatic.
Summer felt her heart pull tight. The man reminded her of her grandfather on her mother's side. He was dead now. Had been for a long time. He'd been in the rodeo and travelled a lot. She hadn't gotten to see him much, but she recalled loving his visits. He always smelled like tobacco when he hugged her. A warm, familiar smell. She still had the ten gallon hat he'd brought her before he passed tucked away somewhere in her closet. It was pink and had an eagle feather at the side. It was the ugliest thing she'd ever seen. It'd never got much wear, but she counted it amongst one of her most valuable items.
Summer's father had always hated her grandfather. He wanted to forget where her mother came from. That she wasn't born of money. The poor had no place in Newport. And neither did she anymore.
"Thanks."
"See ya tomorrow, Layla."
"Night, Randy." Layla smiled at Randy and then turned her back on Summer, returning to the man at the end of the bar.
After that no one bothered her and she proceeded to drown her sorrows with half-a-dozen shots of Absolut Vodka 80 proof.
Drinking away her problems wasn't such a foreign concept to her. All the Newport brats did it at least once in their lives. There were too many expectations. Too much pressure. And not enough love to keep up the charade.
She was a spoiled little party girl. That was easy enough to admit to herself. Admitting that she hated who she was? That was much harder. So, she drank. And it eased the pain. Dulled it. And she kept drinking to try to make it go away.
It was when she'd lost all her inhibitions and the clock above the racks of alcohol and fogged glasses had struck midnight that she hopped up on the bar, the catcalls and whoops of laughter only serving to encourage her. Even Layla seemed to derive some sort of amusement out of Summer's antics.
Her hands smoothed over her breasts, lingered a minute and then moved on toward her barely covered thighs. Her hips rushed back and forth to the music. Head swinging to and fro with the hard beat. All eyes were on her. She felt sexy. On display. Illuminated. She'd always liked being the centre of attention.
The music got louder and so did the men.
"Take it all off, honey," a man called from the back of the smoked-clouded room.
She ignored him. The rhythm had taken over. The alcohol had numbed everything. And she was lost.
Ryan Atwood had too many bad habits to break.
Drinking. Smoking. Fucking random girls. All bad things to do. Things he would never give up.
A flame sparked from the match he struck against the grainy underside of the table. He used the fire to light his cigarette and then immersed it into the empty beer bottle in front of him. It was a bad habit and he knew he should quit. But he wouldn't.
He'd put in a full day down at the garage and then had headed out to the bars with the rest of the guys. Most of them had all ready gone home to their girlfriends and wives, so he was left alone. Not that he minded too much; he'd always been a loner.
A scan of the room brought about old faces, familiar faces and one new one.
He stopped.
Stared.
The girl at the bar looked unfamiliar. He'd never seen her before. He'd remember if he had. She wasn't the type to go unnoticed or the type to be in the seedy part of Chino in an even seedier bar.
Not with a body like that, young and tight. And not with lips the colour of blood, dark and rich, and skin, tanned and supple, breasts popping out of a barely done up shirt and a nice round ass concealed under a mini-skirt. It was almost indecent and on a lesser girl it would have been. Somehow she carried if off without appearing trashy. Not like one of those pinup girls--their lips filled with too much collagen and their breasts pumped with silicon, fake as a three dollar bills--the boys kept in the back beside the work schedule despite his boss, Randy's, attempt to disallow such material out of respect for his wife and his new found religion. This girl, however, was all real. Sometimes he thought about those pictures before he went to sleep and then dreamt about them. Tonight, though, he'd be thinking about someone else when he went to sleep. About her.
Dollar signs were written all over her and half the bar knew it. You don't just walk into a bar and act like Miss Prissy asking for special treatment because you don't know how things worked. She had that spoiled vibe and he could tell that Layla was more than a little jealous of all the attention she was getting. Poor Layla, always having the spotlight stolen from under her.
A fast song exploded from the radio and she climbed on the bar, evocatively swaying to the beat. Who she danced for he didn't know. It wasn't for anyone in this room, that was for sure. Maybe for herself. Maybe she got off on that sort of attention. Ryan smirked to himself. Maybe later he could get off with her...
He watched her flaunt her body, her clothing outlining every asset. She radiated like filament and flash bulbs, lighting up the room; an electric current that flowed through the air. Unconsciously, he licked his lips. She was underage, that he could tell. A runaway, probably...if the bags by the door were any indication. Just another teen rebelling...which wasn't too far off from why he was there. Still, there was something about her.
Her dark eyes were closed, her eyelashes unmercifully long against her pale cheek. Her lips were slightly parted. Her body rotated, sinuously moving to the hard beats from the radio.
And God help him if he didn't want to jump up there, throw her down on the wet bar top, peel her shirt to her waist, separate her thighs and...
Her eyes popped open and she looked right at him. Held him. Toyed with him for a while, winked and looked away.
Before he could let in reason, his mouth started to water, his jeans got a little too tight. Maybe he could do more than just dream about her tonight...
The strains of cheering caught his attention; worried him.