by vega
Summary: "Ryan Atwood wants to be inside." Ryan. Kirsten.
Spoiler: The story takes place in the backdrops of "The Girlfriend" and "The Escape."
Disclaimer: The characters and other matters related to the O.C. are not mine.
"When you long with all your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone feels from birth to death."
-Denton Welch
Ryan enters the poolhouse and finds that his things are gone. There's a shiver sliding down his spine. He quickly recalls the last few days, wonders if there's been a particular mishap of his doing that would put an end to the remarkable tolerance that the Cohens seem to reserve for him. He remembers many mishaps, most of them with his direct involvements. No wonder, he thinks. Sandy and Kirsten have been miraculously patient with him, but there can always be so much, and he's not their son.
But just when he's about to entertain the extreme case scenario and rake his brain to remember any place he can stay overnight, Seth comes in, a quirky smile in its place. "So, you ready to be in or what?"He isn't sure if Seth, in his usual oblivious self, even sees the sudden barrenness of the room. "In for what?" he asks, numbly.
"In. As in, you're moving in. Into the mansion." Seth apparently sees that none of his words seem to ring a bell in Ryan. "Uh, the poolhouse has to be renovated and your things now have a room inside? They haven't told you yet?"
Relief and strange anxiety are only two emotions Ryan can recognize. "Uh, no."
"Huh." Seth shrugs. "Okay, well, so that's what happened. C'mon. Mom's like, cooking again, and it's all very disturbing. Gotta tell you, one thing I'm not happy about you here? She cooks way more now."
So it is. Moving in is infinitely easier than he's ever expected. He follows Seth and walks into the dining room. That simple.
He's almost inside. He can feel it.
Staring isn't going to help the situation, Ryan knows. But then he doesn't see any other way to mend this thing, this thing he has done to Marissa, and he sits on the staircase, eyes drifting to the direction of her gate. Of course, knowing what exactly he has done wrong would help, although he does have a good guess and he doesn't think he regrets his quality time with Gabrielle. It just was, and he isn't going to apologize for it, not even to the girl he supposes he might be in love with.
Ryan Atwood must be really doing well if he was to worry about a girl rather than what his place might be in this town, in this family, where his mother is, how his brother is, all these things that matter, that break his heart. He must be indeed doing so well. So well that he can't think straight.
The night is quiet enough that even as he drowns in his own misery he can clearly hear the muted sound of the glass door sliding open. He turns a little and sees Mrs. Cohen emerge through it. Her eyes are away, somewhere far else that is not here, on the darkness that can't be found in the beaches of Orange County.
When he's about to wonder what kind of reasons Kirsten Cohen could have to take a break from a party she's throwing, she sees him. There's an automatic grin, and with only a minimal pause, she makes her way to him. "Not going well?" she asks, her voice light.
He can't think of any answer that might be appropriately polite. "Not particularly."
"Hence the brooding, I see," a faint smile is tugging at her lips. "I remember those times."
"Do you also remember it's not that fun to be brooding?" he sulks, just a little.
The smile doesn't disappear, and there's a humor in her voice feigning seriousness, "Got it. No teasing about teenage angst, then."
She puts a fine front, but Ryan is not oblivious to the many emotional swirls the Cohens seem to periodically go through. The last special swirl involving her father Caleb has been leaving noticeable marks that even Seth doesn't seem to be able to ignore. Maybe all families are really the same, with the little and big problems threatening to tear them apart. Yet Ryan isn't going to ask how she is doing. He's not sure if he has a right to. Instead, he chooses sinking in his own misery. At least it's comfortable in familiarity.
To his surprise, she doesn't take his silence as her cue to leave. When she takes a seat by his side, her expression is soft and sympathetic. "What is it, Ryan?"
She is trying, as hard as she always does to be good to him, and he doesn't want to reject her efforts. Opening up is difficult, but his hesitance is only rendered by the slight wish that he does want an advice from a proper adult after all. "How do you take back a mistake you made?"
A look of surprise quickly passes through her face before she ponders on the issue indulgently. "You can't, not really. But you can try to make up for it."
"I don't know how."
"You will know when the time comes."
Will he? Generally Ryan Atwood sports a cynical attitude toward a grown-up advice that lacks realism and leaks ideals of the privileged, but he wonders if he should just trust her words and wait it out. Maybe this is what you are supposed to when you're inside.
And maybe, being inside means you have to give more than silence. He decides to find out. "Mrs. Cohen, is everything okay?"
"You should really call me Kirsten," she says brightly, but her grin is stiller, somehow. "And yes, it's all fine."
The idea of calling her 'Kirsten' right to her face feels still awkward. Seth and maybe even Sandy Cohen feel close without the awkwardness, but Mrs. Cohen is still a distant figure, someone to whom he needs to justify his presence here.
But he nods anyway, feeling like he has to say something more. "It's just, well, Sandy mentioned something about moving away, so I wasn't sure." The dialogue he had with Sandy that morning had distinct characteristics of a monologue about a house they used to live in and the jobs where Sandy no longer has to be a fake. The sentences have been buried by Sandy's enthusiasm and Ryan only indulgently nodded at his guardian's apparent (and frequent) perkiness rather than necessarily understanding what they actually meant.
Kirsten visibly stiffens this time. "Sandy told you about moving?" Her soft sigh is devoid of bitterness but there's also a trace of disappointment. "Of course he did. He finds you much easier to talk to than his other family."
She notices his look, so she quickly straightens her expression. A forced grin takes place instead. "I don't think we're moving, Ryan. At least, not in any near future. But if we seriously consider moving, your choice would never be out of consideration. If you're not comfortable with the idea of moving away, then it's likely we won't."
The idea of moving away from O.C. unsettles him a little. He's begun enjoy the overabundance of sunshine and the beach where you can kick rich kids instead of pebbles, and there's Marissa. There's always Marissa.
But Kirsten is telling him his opinion will matter, and Ryan believes her. That's a testament of a lot of trust this family seems to put in him and he's still not sure how he can show his appreciation. "Thanks."
A feeble word, but Kirsten smiles anyway.
She has a lot of different smiles. For no reason at all, he wonders why none of them look genuinely happy. Why mothers are like this. If all mothers like this.
"Did you ever...?" he blurts out to Kirsten but stops himself just in time. He swallows the question until its bitter residue is all he can taste inside.
Kirsten turns to him, her eyes asking a question. Ryan just shakes his head. If he asks this, he'd be saying too much, he'd be asking too much understanding, and he doesn't want that.
"Nothing," he breathes. "Nothing at all."
He can tell she wants to ask, so he is infinitely glad when Seth pushes open the door and interrupts them. Seth always makes for a fine diversion and this instant is no exception.
"The greatest thing in my life just happened which you'll never, ever, guess," Seth says, half a challenge and half a declaration.
Like a whirlwind, Seth takes over the scene and Ryan, peripherally aware of Kirsten quietly slipping away from them to give her kids some space, pretends not to notice the void. "Summer kissed you?" Ryan guesses absently.
Seth stops dead. His head is funnily tilted, his steam gone out. "Just how do you do that?"
Ryan can't resist a smile at Seth's incredulous face, can't resist the chuckles. Three seconds later, Seth's steam is back in full force, but this time Ryan only half listens to the eleven different takes on how-Summer-kissed-me. Instead, he watches Mrs. Cohen, Kirsten, disappear into the glass door again, leaving a trace of a wistful smile.
He thinks about moving. Moving to a place where people would look at him with the Cohens and naturally think he's one of them.
He thinks about being inside.
Work is as tedious and hectic as everyday, and Kirsten walks on the eggshells only she seems to sense around her father. Thicker eggshells this time, as if his birthday party has brought some resolution. It may have, but eggshells haven't disappeared and their weight is still heavily upon her shoulder when she drives home.
She passes the familiar streets with familiarly lacquered boutiques that glitter in twilight. For outsiders, even this street is a beauty, freedom. For her, not as much. She doesn't loathe this, not necessarily, but there's something fundamentally exhausting about all of this, something about the familiarity that chokes rather than comfort. She wouldn't think it's necessarily her fault, Sandy's, or his new job's, yet she feels the strain. Something might have to give.
Then in these streets, she notices something different, something out of place.
She pulls over and stops the Rover where a shadowed alley is just visible. Her hand opening the window quickens. "Ryan?"
Her shout is heard and a group of kids in the middle of the alley freezes collectively. Most noticeably, of course, Ryan. And right across him--Luke. Of course.
She gets out, her stern look firmly in place. The boys are all watching her in frozen stage, as if they are too entranced by the sound of her voice to move a muscle. She ignores them all until she reaches Ryan and Luke. They both avoid her eyes.
"Ryan, get in the car. Go home, all of you," she orders firmly. "Luke, you too." Luke complies after mumbling an apology to her, and other boys are beginning to break off, scrambling off to wherever they've come from. She's glad she can still exercise authority over them. She doesn't think she has any over her son.
She gets into the car, Ryan right behind her. Her anger lasts mere few seconds, and one glance at Ryan's expression, she sees he's regretting every moment in that alley. She can already venture a few guesses what and why of this fight. Sandy has tipped her in on the crush, Marissa Cooper, Luke's girlfriend. Kirsten, too, has been young once. She doesn't miss the rebellion of the youth, the confusion, but she remembers the days.
"I'm sorry," Ryan offers just as they drive away, "I know you said no fights."
His voice is low and properly apologetic, but it's strained enough for her to notice the that, yes, he is sorry to break the promise, but not for getting it out with Luke. That's Ryan. She's glad she's come to understand that much about the boy. "You're right, Ryan. We said no fights. And since this obviously has been a fight, there should be a penalty."
He listens, no complaint, waiting to receive whatever he deserves. He's so much like Sandy, she thinks. And the boy, just like Sandy, has a lot of possibilities.
"Gardening," she decides. "I've been meaning to look at the begonia again. They've been dried up. This Saturday, when you're not working."
He turns to her a little, his eyes no longer downcast. He's trying to choose his words and apparently having a hard time with it. He finally settles with, "You do gardening, too?"
"I like doing it. Had no time for it lately, so I would like to get back at it."
"Is there anything you can't do?"
She almost smiles. "Cooking. As you already well know."
There's a short pause as he looks away. "The first day, when you cooked, it was the best meal I've ever had." It isn't a flattery or even a statement calculated for sympathy. Ryan Atwood might be a troubled kid in a bad situation, but he doesn't lie, and his pride doesn't allow him the room for other people's pity and sympathy. It'd be almost easier on him if he did, she thinks.
"That's good," she tells him, biting down sympathy slipping into her voice, "because you'll have to help me tonight anyway. Since Seth finds everything you do so fascinating, maybe I can rope him into helping me, too."
Seth, her son, doesn't talk to her about anything any more, and even when she's seen this moment coming (after that fateful moment on his eleventh birthday, when he told her in embarrassment that he didn't need his mother to fuss about the party when he could correctly manage by himself), the soft bitterness seems always present whenever she thinks about her son.
"Yeah," Ryan answers without hesitance. "Sure."
They pass two more blocks without a word. The silence between them is getting less uncomfortable, and she's glad. Comfortable silence probably means familiarity, and they're at least that familiar around each other.
"You're not going to ask why?" Ryan, surprisingly, breaks the silence first.
"Why what?"
"Why. The fight."
"Well." She wonders how much of this knowing part she has to let on. With Seth, absolutely no crush related material should be mentioned in front. With Ryan, she's still trying to find her footings. "Maybe next time you and Luke should find another way to communicate," she suggests as gently as possible. "Marissa wouldn't want it to be this way between you two, would she?"
That isn't a proven point--teenage girls might actually like two boys fighting over them. Kirsten doesn't know Jimmy's daughter well enough to make that judgment call, but she hopes it isn't true.
"He hurt her," Ryan says curtly.
Kirsten has been learning about Ryan Atwood little by little everyday, she knows he's overtaken by the boyish urge to take care of the people around him, always trying to be protective. "Well, I think you can still protect the people you care about without getting to the point of violence."
Kirsten cringes at how she sounds. God, when did she come to sound so old? So lecturing? The kid has an impulsive streak that borders on recklessness but he's more responsible than any other kid of his age that she's seen, and he deserves the trust. If it were Seth, he would've groaned and walked out on her by now. Ryan isn't Seth.
And Ryan doesn't walk away. "I don't know any other way," he says, almost tragically.
Cute, really cute. Tragedy signifies every single moment of the youth. "You will think of something," she promises.
No answer. A brief side glance tells her he's looking through the window at the streets that now belong to him like he's a perpetual drifter. It's only been a few weeks, but he looks more alien than ever. She's always thought it was the town not accepting him, not vice versa, but she might have been making a mistake. Maybe Ryan isn't as all right as she and Sandy always think he is.
The quietness is getting to her. She thinks about turning on the radio but immediately abandons the idea. She's going to deal with the silence. She would have to. If there are more things in parenting than providing a safe home, it means she might have to bear such silence as well as the words.
"Did you ever...?" Ryan trails off.
She remembers the exact same line from him, the unfinished question from nights before. "What, Ryan?"
"I just want to know if I'm doing things right," he says, his eyes on the streets, never on her.
She doesn't think this is the question he's been trying to ask, but at least he's opening up to her, and she is glad at least for that. But this is a different kind of eggshell she's walking on now, and this time there is a higher risk involved. It isn't about her, her father and her husband hurting each other or hurting her. These eggshells are thinner because she can potentially hurt this kid. Who has already had enough of hurting.
"You don't need anyone's approval that you're dong things right. Not mine, not your mother's, not Sandy's. The Ryan I've come to know the last few weeks doesn't need any of that because you'll find your way and do what's right for you. You're a good kid, and I'm glad my son has you. I'm glad I have you."
She doesn't have to turn to face him. She can feel that his happiness is small, gradual, and just glimmering but it's there, like his tentative smile that seems infectious. But she cautiously holds her smile.
It's incredible to think she's made him this happy only with a few encouraging words, and she doesn't want to be glad for it. This is too much power, the kind of power she no longer has over her husband or her son. She can't hold the power to break and shatter. It can't be true.
Yet Ryan smiles a lot over the dinner. There are no silence, no Sandy, and no eggshells. Only her son and Ryan laughing and smiling.
She lies to herself: I'm not glad.
"I couldn't take my eyes away from her. No one could."
Sandy tells this grand story of his first moment seeing his wife as he drives to his firm. He's dropping Ryan off at the hospital, so Ryan becomes an unexpected listener to this narrative. Ryan guesses that Sandy wouldn't be telling this to Seth. In fact, at the very hint of the grand story Seth has gone back into the mansion, not into the car, his eyes rolling up and high. Ryan doesn't mind, though. The idea of these parents being young and shining and reckless intrigues him.
"You see, Ryan, she was shining in the crowd. She always has been. A lot of people wanted to love her."
Like Marissa's dad. Seth has been supersensitive about that, and even Ryan has been privy to their private moment back at the house he's burned down.
"I fell in love with her in that instance."
Ryan wonders if Sandy should be telling to him instead of Kirsten herself. Ryan isn't deaf enough to be oblivious to the stilled silence that lately suffocates Cohen household.
"And of all the people, she chose to love me."
So she did. So they got married and had Seth and had this beautiful home and adopted him. Soft and generous, Kirsten seems like a perfect mother without even trying to be. He knows his character is not an exemption from the time old cliché of wanting a mother and that definitely has been his downfall many times concerning his own mother.
His mother. It's always been his mother.
Ryan suddenly feels like a boy version of the Match Girl. Seeing but unable to have. It's not even close to Christmas and Orange County's Christmas should be far from cold, but he feels this chill. Something he can't articulate.
He visits Marissa everyday in the hospital. He's found the way to make up for his mistake. The mistake with Marissa. With Gabrielle. Only, he doesn't think he cares. He's almost in, but he doesn't want to care.
This is a problem, he realizes.
One night she finds herself sitting on the same staircase and fingering her coffee mug when Ryan rushes in, a lit cigarette between his fingers. When he spots her, he freezes.
"I'll quit," Ryan promptly apologizes.
Even when he's caught smoking, Ryan still has a stilted grace, holding into a strange dignity that isn't bravado. She would've smiled if she doesn't feel disappointed that he only sees her as the lecturing mother. He isn't a kid as much as she isn't his real mother. Ryan is almost a man, so different from her Seth, and other than providing a safe home and a family, she isn't sure anything else she can do for Ryan, Ryan who isn't a kid.
For no reason at all, she stands up, walks up to him and takes the cigarette. She's almost tempted to try it, but the scent alone reminds her why she doesn't smoke. She wonders if it has finally hit her, the dreaded mid-life crisis, if that is the reason for this wandering. If it has, at least it shouldn't take a form of stealing a cigarette from a minor.
She returns it to Ryan, and he immediately puts it out.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I just...a difficult day."
There has been the ground rule about smoking and drinking, but she can't think of the penalty for having loyalty and a crush. With Marissa in hospital, Ryan and Seth are frequently over there, and Ryan's every waking hour that he can spare is for Marissa. Kirsten doesn't expect Julie to treat him kindly but he's bearing it rather admirably. But then again, it doesn't seem right to let this pass. For one thing, there shouldn't be any difference how she treats Ryan from how she treats Seth. For another, if this has been Seth, he'd be grounded for a month.
"I'll plant more begonia?" Ryan suggests innocently, reading her mind.
She almost laughs. "And weeding," she tells him in mock seriousness. "Only if you keep your word on quitting."
"Done."
She says nothing. He says nothing. For a moment, there's only the cool breeze whispering in between.
This silence is different now. Charged. Edged. And not at all uncomfortable. She wonders what this means.
"Is everything okay?" his question is no longer tentative. It's stopped being tentative some time ago. They must've become a family, at last, she thinks.
Sandy's coming home a lot late now, working in the firm with Rachel. Jimmy is getting divorced. Jimmy's daughter might have to get into a rehab program. And there's Ryan, a part of her family. Things are changing.
She is waiting here because Sandy isn't home when he's supposed to be. She's waiting because this isn't the first time Sandy isn't home when he's supposed to be. Wonders if this is how it has been for Sandy before, waiting for her to come home.
"Everything is fine," she tells Ryan. "There's nothing to worry about."
"Sure," he says.
Compatible lies. She doesn't point out his cigarette pack that stays inside his pocket, and he accepts her answer as genuine.
Little, compatible lies. They are only little lies. They have to be.
"I think I found the way. The way to make up for the mistake."
After the withering beige begonia is taken out and replaced with a bright amber, Kirsten looks up at Ryan. "Did it work?" She would like to learn it, too. The way to change things back into how it was before. The magic trick. Because she feels the need to know more than ever.
"I haven't tried yet," he confesses, his eyebrow furrowed and eyes concentrated on the roots of the flowering plants. "I don't think I want to."
She almost asks, why not. Why not? But the timing is lost. Seth comes back with a bucket of water, his every step a complaint, and Ryan's shoulders are tense enough to suggest that he doesn't want to discuss it in front of Seth. Then why did he bring it up at all?
But he never looks up, never looks at her, as if the soil fascinates him to no end. She watches him, his hands that seem tougher than life, his hidden eyes. Has she really thought Ryan was like Sandy? They're so much different. She wishes she can just watch him like this, under the brilliant sunlight, just to figure him out. But soon enough, she runs out of the excuses to stare at him, so she goes back to her garden and her beautiful house. Her beautifully perfect house that is beginning to show the cracks.
That night, she looks up the old photo albums, looks up the house Sandy wanted to go back to, his old smiles.
It's futile. She can't give up either. The past or the present. She only realizes now that they haven't been congruent for a long time.
Through the window, she can see the amber begonia under the moonlight.
She closes the window.
They ask him to work on Saturday. He tells them he can't because he's feeling sick. He tells himself it's a good idea to get away from all the crabs once in a while. Instead, he works on the garden again, where he finds her. She smells like begonia.
Days and nights later, he still finds himself watching Kirsten, just beyond his periphery. The way she goes on about little things.
You are crazy, he thinks. Ryan Atwood has gone mad, finally.
She's just beyond his periphery, and yet, still. He can't take his eyes away.
One night, when Sandy is home early and Seth is actually helping with dinner for a change, she finds Ryan sitting on the staircase again and thinks: a full circle. "Ryan?"
Ryan doesn't stare at the direction of the Cooper residence. He doesn't react to her intrusion. He stares at his feet.
"Ryan?" Softly again, because she doesn't really want to interrupt him.
The cigarette between his fingers burns ominously in the dark. "Did you ever...?"
This is the third time he's begun a question and trailed off without actually asking, and Kirsten has finally learned not to ask. She sits down by his side and waits.
There's a weight on his shoulder, like the very act of attempting to ask the question is physically hurting him. "Did you ever hear from her?"
For a second, she thinks of the pronoun 'her' as Marissa, but soon realizes how stupid that idea has been.
She does think about lying. Or not answering. Or anything from having to do this to him, to say the final words.
"No, Ryan," she has to say, because lying to him seems like a crime even when she doesn't want to see the hurt look on him again, "I haven't heard from your mother. Yet." The last word is added consciously, which Ryan has to notice.
He grins a little, painfully self-deprecating. "Guess we shouldn't hold our breath, huh?"
But he is holding. On the teeter but still holding. He might look fine, he might even be dealing, but he'll forever hold his breath. It's aching for her to watch. "No one says you have to give up on her, not if you don't want to. Maybe she will surprise us all." Such an obvious lie, and they both know, but she can't kill his hope just yet. It's the hardest task, knowing the right lie to say at the right time.
He stands up, putting out his cigarette. "Never again." He's looking away and, in the dark, she can't read his expression at all. "I'm not going to freeze to die on Christmas eve because I want something I can't get."
She's not sure if she's following. She hopes she doesn't look as worried as she feels. "Ryan?"
"I really would like to be, but I'm not your son." Every word clearly enunciated and engraved, he's talking to himself than to her.
And she is lost. "I know that, but Ryan, you're important to us anyway--"
He shakes his head and stops her words. "Not for the lack of trying, but I don't think I can be your son. I don't think I want to be."
He looks up, his eyes meeting hers for the first time this night, and suddenly, she knows. She should be puzzled and confused. She should be asking him, 'Why not?' She shouldn't understand him, she shouldn't understand why.
But she does.
So she doesn't ask.
He enters the mansion and finds the dinner is ready for the night. Clean tablecloths are draped over the Ikea table (or perhaps they're antiques--he still has no potent ability to distinguish the hand-me-downs from European original brand of this and that) and candles are lit. There isn't a spot of dust anywhere on the utensils and, not for the first time, Ryan fights the urge to look around to see if there's a photographer anywhere to take in all of this.
Sandy is home early, and he's definitely happy. Five minutes into dinner, he mentions that his workload has been reduced so that he can do a lot of other things, like spending time at home and doing pro bono. There's something else too, which he apparently can't wait for the post-dinner family tea time. "Ryan, you probably noticed that the poolhouse renovation has been finished."
Yes, he has noticed. Ryan suddenly wishes this isn't going where he thinks it is. "Yeah, I did."
"And I was thinking, you don't have to return to the poolhouse. If you like, you can stay in the room you're staying now. That is, if you want to."
If he stays in, he'll inside. The sense of belonging might be all he craves, yet he's plauged by the desire to decline the offer. Being inside will be in exchange for losing this, this transitory tension, this ambiguous whatever that doesn't help anyone, that can potentially ruin everything. He does everything except looking at her across the room. Her busy hands, her dropped eyes, her strained, fraile shoulders. He can see without watching.
"I'd love to," he tells Sandy after a long moment of hesitation and heartbreak that he hopes to be taken as overwhelming gratitude.
"Hey, cool, so then we can totally do overnight stuff together," Seth says, as if Ryan in the poolhouse has stopped them from spending many nights doing nothing.
"Ah-ah," Sandy objects, drawing his index finger, "No video games after midnight, didn't you promise, Seth?"
"Only because you want to play." Seth is pouting in the special way he has. "Shouldn't there be a rule of non-monopoly regarding my games?"
The standard Cohen banter that Ryan has come to love is heading into a full play, yet he can't hear a word of it. Because there are no words from her. Because she's turned her words, affectionate and appropriate and meaningless, into silence.
Ryan Atwood wants to be inside.
And it's a lie.
.end.