A/n: This was written for Grasspaw. They wanted to see the Raydors each take care of Rusty through sickness, injury, or just a plain old bad day. Each person will have his or her own chapter.
This first one doesn't really fall into any of those categories, but for some reason this is how I saw Ricky and Rusty.
Walking down the street was something he didn't really do in Los Angeles, but the streets in Palo Alto were so much different. They were brighter somehow, and it was colder but not too cold just cool. Ricky had been dragging him all over the city showing him one great place after another. He would never tell Ricky, but it had been sort of…fun. Plus, Ricky was a good guy, how could he not be, Sharon did raise him. Ricky's words stopped him from thinking, "You up for just one more stop?"
"Yeah, sounds good." He checked the time on his phone, while wondering what Ricky had in store for them this time.
"Don't worry we will be home before mom gets dinner done." He just smiled his acknowledgement, and Ricky took off leaving Rusty to catch up.
A couple of blocks later, Ricky led him into a store that on the inside looked a little too swanky for the building that held it. He looked around and wondered why in the world they were there. The place had old books, a few records on one wall, and there was a section in the back that he couldn't really see. When he finally focused back on Ricky he was just smiling a weird little smirk. Rusty didn't really know what that look was supposed to mean; sometimes he really didn't understand Ricky.
"What are we doing here?" he asked Ricky.
"I found something a few weeks ago that I thought you might like," Rusty knew that he was giving Ricky a skeptical look, "Don't look at me like that. You're gonna love it, trust me."
"If you say so," he said while trying to force a smile onto his face.
Ricky led him to the back of the store, stopping to say hi to the clerk first. The exchange made him wonder if there was something going on between them, but he just shrugged to himself, it wasn't really any of his business. Finally at the back of the store, Ricky walked over to a shelf and said, "Which one do you like?" He was pointing at some leather bound somethings, and Rusty moved closer to look. It looked like there were fancy notebooks or something. The books were very nice, and when he picked it up he could tell they were well made. The covers all had different patterns, but one caught his attention. It was simple, neat, and clean. There was just a simple engraving of a pen. He suddenly became very self-aware of the fact that he had been running his hand over it for a couple of minutes and there was a smile on his face. He didn't want to look at Ricky because he felt ridiculous getting so excited over a notebook.
Ricky finally spoke, "I knew that was the one, but I wanted to be sure."
Rusty didn't really understand why Ricky was doing this. Since Sharon had her discussion with Ricky about the adoption, things had been ok between them. Neither one of them was really sure what they were supposed to act like as "brothers" but he thought they were doing an okay job. "I uh, it's great, thanks Ricky."
"When I saw you at Christmas, the notebook you had looked a little…rough. I just thought that this one would be tough enough for my kid brother." Ricky had a big goofy smile on his face when he said the last part, and that made Rusty smile too. Then, Ricky added, "One day you might put your writing to good use and write a book or something." Ricky put his hand on Rusty's shoulder and said, "Let's go see Sarah and get out of here."
He followed Ricky blindly to the register still in shock. The notebook was one of the nicest things he had ever owned, and maybe Ricky was onto something with the book writing. He didn't think that he wanted to write a book, but he had been narrowing down majors for college and he was leaning towards maybe…journalism…maybe. Also, maybe having an older brother wasn't so bad. Having someone closer to his own age than the members of Major Crimes to talk about things he wasn't ready to bring up with Sharon yet was sort of a relief.
When Ricky was done paying and flirting with Sarah, he handed Rusty the book and said, "Let's get home before mom flips out wondering why we aren't back yet."
"Glad it's not just me she worries about like that." They both kind of half-laughed, half-smiled as they walked out of the store.
As they walked down the sidewalk towards Ricky's place, Rusty got lost in his thoughts again. He didn't know how he had gotten so lucky with Sharon and Ricky…and even Emily, but he was sure glad that he had. As much as he hated to admit it he was going to have to thank Sharon for dragging him up here. He knew there was an ulterior motive behind it, meaning that she wanted to get out of LA and away from their normal routines. She was still worried about Stroh, and the fact that Rusty was out of college for the summer with all this free time to wander around without her was terrifying to her. God only knew how many times they had that discussion.
Rusty had continuously checked in with her everyday anytime he made a move, but he knew she still worried. Hell, if he wanted to be honest he was terrified too, but he just tried not to think about it. He just wanted to live a normal life; the life that Sharon had shown him he deserved. But he would do what he could to make her feel better about the situation, and if that meant she used up all her vacation dragging him across the country then he would let her.
"You good?" Ricky said as he pulled out the keys to his building.
"Yeah," Rusty nodded, and tried to concentrate, the walk back had seemed shorter than he remembered, "Uh, thanks Ricky for the notebook, it's really…nice, and really thanks."
"You're welcome, now let's go see what mom cooked," the last word came out a little cynical, and that made Rusty laugh. Sharon cooked, but she was no master chef, but at least tonight the company would be good.
Hope y'all enjoyed it. The next chapter is written, it's a bit longer, but I'm going to give it one more check before I post it. Sneak peak though…next stop is Sharon's parents.
