Family
Summary: Ryan ponders the meaning of family through time.
AN: I was looking through some old documents today and found this. I wrote it about 18 months ago, but after reading it today and tweaking with it a little, I kinda like how it turned out. I hope you do, too.
When Ryan was six, he thought he knew what family meant. For him, it meant his father Frank who worked at the garage he passed on his way to school everyday. When his father came home in the afternoon he almost always settled down in front of the TV with a beer in his hand. At that time his mother Dawn was at work. She started work late in the afternoon at a diner downtown, and wasn't home until after Ryan was in bed. Then there was his older brother Trey, who sometimes allowed Ryan to spend time with him and his friends, but mostly hated having his baby brother hanging around him all the time. Life wasn't perfect. They had their little problems, like any other family did too, but for the most part they were happy.
Two years later, however, Frank lost his job, and the family had to survive with only less than half the income they had had before. So now Frank stayed home during the days and quickly settled into a new routine. He'd sleep until noon, have a couple beers at home in front of the TV and at night head out to the local bar. He'd come home drunk and crash in bed. Whenever Ryan saw his father now, he was drunk and with Frank Atwood, drunk also meant mean. Ryan didn't even know what he had done wrong, but one afternoon Frank was particularly angry and as Ryan was the only one home, he was the one that suffered. It was the first time for Ryan that his father hit him, but it wouldn't be the last. Ryan understood that there were difficult times, that every family had to face, he just hadn't imagined to would be so painful.
Then at age ten, Frank was arrested, but unlike the other two times before when he had gotten of with probation, this time he went to jail for real. He got sentenced to ten years for armed robbery. It seemed that Ryan's world was thrown off balance. Over the past two years Frank had become more violent and hit Trey and Ryan more and more often. Ryan didn't know how to feel about Frank anymore. On the one hand he was glad that he wouldn't get hit anymore, but on the other hand he also missed his dad. As time went by and Frank never called or wrote to Ryan, Ryan felt like his dad didn't care about him anymore. But just when he thought, he might get used to only having Dawn and Trey as family from then on, Dawn brought home David and told the boys to be nice as David was family as far as she was concerned. After only two weeks David moved in with them. Trey wasn't too fond of him, but tolerated him for Dawn's sake, and Ryan copied his brother's behaviour. Another two weeks passed and David moved out again, so that Barry could move in. The same scheme continued with different men for a couple years, some were nice, other just ignored the boys and again others were mean and blamed them for everything that went wrong. No matter if they were nice or not, at some point Ryan gave up thinking of any of them as family.
Trey finally had enough of the coming and going of boyfriends and moved out as soon as he turned 16. Dawn had lost her job at the diner, when it was closed down because of hygiene problems and was now dependant on her boyfriend's money. She spent all day trying to keep them happy, that usually included drinking and smoking with them as well as a lot of time in her bedroom with them behind closed doors. Ryan hardly saw her anymore, and stopped counting on her. He still visited Trey as often as possible, but whenever he lay in bed late at night after a day of having seen neither Dawn nor Trey, he felt like he had no family left. So, fourteen year old Ryan learned that in a family, personal desires came before the needs of the whole family.
Shortly before Ryan's fifteenth birthday, Dawn's latest boyfriend AJ came along. Ryan had long been old enough to take care of himself and stayed away from home as much as possible, after all that's what was best, so you didn't have to deal with your family. Then came the fateful night in August when Trey decided to convince him, that family was important and that you had to stick together, so the two of them went out to steal a car. Trey landed himself in prison, and then Dawn (or more accurately AJ) threw Ryan out of the house. That night Ryan realized that disappointment was the only think you could count on when family was involved.
Two years later, Ryan stood at Newport bus station and watched Trey leave his life, most likely for good. He hadn't heard from his father in more than six years; his mother had waved goodbye to him two years ago and now the last of his family, his brother, who he had always been closest to, was leaving him as well. It had been like this all his life. Whenever it got difficult, they left. He hadn't been able to count on his family for years, but still the thought of not having one anymore saddened him.
On his eighteenth birthday the only thing that reminded Ryan to the Atwood's was Dawn's letter. He read it, her apologies and excuses, but then he cast a look at all the people that had showed up for his party. Granted most of them he didn't know, but then he saw the two couples, Sandy and Kirsten, and Seth and Summer. They were standing arms around their partners and looking at him anxiously. He gave them a small smile, threw the letter in the trash can and made his way over to them. After all he wanted to spend his birthday with people that cared about him, and that he cared about. They had stayed with him through thick and thin and not turned their back on him once life got difficult as all of his other family members had done. Ever since he had met the Cohen's, he had learnt to trust people again, to depend on them, and he had to admit that it felt kind of good.
It was Christmas or Christmukkah as the Cohen's still referred to it, and the whole family was together. Seth and Summer had flown in from Rhode Island, Sandy and Kirsten were still very much in love with each other, but much more laid back than they had been in Newport. Sophie was four and probably enjoyed the holiday the most. It was already very late when Ryan went to bed, but he couldn't resist checking on his little sister one more time. She was peacefully asleep in her bed. He looked at her content face and knew that he'd do anything for that little girl. Comforted by the knowledge that she was alright he went to bed. He was half asleep, when he heard his bedroom door being quietly opened. He pretended to be sleeping because he knew it was only Kirsten, who wanted to check on her kids before going to bed herself. She did it regularly, and most of the time Ryan slept right on through it. She came into his room, tucked his blanket closer around his shoulders and gave him a soft kiss on his hair. "I love you, sweetie. Get some sleep." She whispered, he had no idea how she could tell that he was still awake, but somehow she always knew. Ryan quickly fell asleep after that, with the knowledge that after all the troubles they'd been through, the Cohen's were probably a stronger family than any other. The family was together, cared for and loved each other, and after all that is what makes a real family. That was what made HIS family.