Chapter 2: Mrs Robinson
A/N: First of all I want to thank everyone who reviewed the first chapter. I was a little worried about this, but your praise helped a lot. Also as per the slight continuity issue regarding Theresa's pregnancy. I guess at the end of the season she was maybe 4, 5 months pregnant, so it would be hard for her to have her baby in July, like in my story, but please consider it dramatic license.
Disclaimer: Don't own em, and never will
Kirsten sat at the kitchen table, hands cradling a cup of steaming tea looking out at the pounding rain, coursing down the glass windows in thin rivulets of water. Kirsten couldn't make out Ryan's form through the sheets of rain, but she could see a tiny red point of light that told her that Ryan was smoking again. Not that she could blame him after the bizarre series of events that had thrown her world into turmoil this last week. Kirsten let out a shuddering breath overwhelmed at the rush of emotions that had overtaken taken her at the thought of Ryan. While Kirsten realized that as long as she lived, she would never be able to completely shake the feeling that by sleeping with Ryan, she had somehow taken advantage of him, of his vulnerability, and her need to feel something, anything. Even if was overwhelming sensations of shame and guilt. Yet despite herself, Kirsten found that her hands shook slightly around the coffee cup and an intense warmth suffused her when she thought about him. Kirsten shook her head, trying to clear her head of the vivid images, but she knew that her head would be filled with these images for a very long time.
Kirsten had prided herself on always having a plan, always knowing her next step. With Jimmy Cooper it had been safe, secure. Kirsten had genuinely loved Jimmy Cooper; still loved him in a way, but her relationship with Jimmy had also been a part of her plan. She knew what to expect, could see a future with him. Even the beginning of her relationship with Sandy was rational, planned. Kirsten realized that her relationship with Jimmy could not have lasted, not after he had gotten Julie Cooper pregnant. She and Jimmy had been having somewhat of a rough time, mostly because since she was in college, Kirsten had decided that it was time to rebel a bit, break out of the mould that her parents had set for her. That was how Kirsten rebelled, she didn't just do it on the spur of the moment, and she planned exactly how she was going to rebel. She was still in love with Jimmy; she just felt it was time to take a break. She had every intention of going back to him. Until Jimmy knocked up a Riverside trailer park girl. Kirsten had been devastated and decided after months of flirting to sleep with Sandy. Sandy Cohen had been wild, free-spirited. Yet despite his anti- establishment posturing and his liberal drug use, Sandy had been at heart a sweet Jewish boy who had the same conventional attitudes about family that she had. He worshipped her, Kirsten knew that and his sense of humour was particularly appealing to her. Jimmy, bless his heart, had not exactly been a quick wit. She had planned her seduction of Sandy, not that she really needed to do much work, days in advance. Candles, music, a sexy nightgown, everything. Her plan had gone exactly like clockwork. There was only one glitch. Kirsten had gotten pregnant. Her best-laid plans went out the window. A part of Kirsten desperately wanted this baby, but she knew if she had it, her life would change, her parents would disown her, and Sandy, well while Kirsten knew that he adored her, she knew that this was radically different from him wanting to raise a baby with her. So Kirsten did the only thing she could do, she had an abortion. Her mistake was confiding in her mother after she had. Her mother had never really forgiven her so she lived in a mail truck for next two years with Sandy. That was the best time in her life. She stopped planning, and starting living. But when her mother got sick, Kirsten felt obligated to return to Newport to help her father take care of her. She quickly got sucked back into her old controlled life. She got a job with her dad's company and she had Seth. Kirsten smiled in remembrance as she recalled how she and Sandy had painstakingly marked her ovulation days on the calendar. Seth had been the essence of a planned baby. And so up to the past year Kirsten's life had been the rational, planned life she had known and she had been comfortable with.
Until Ryan showed up. While she had of course been mildly surprised that Sandy had brought home a tough-as-nails felon from Chino, she hadn't been completely surprised. She figured it was only a matter of time until Sandy brought home a client. And considering his clients legal troubles, she had known that the client wouldn't exactly be the poster child for Christian living. No, what had really surprised her was the powerful bolt of sexual attraction that had gripped her when she first saw Ryan. The kid had oozed raw sexuality from every pore in his body. Kirsten had been caught flat- footed by this jolt of attraction that had surged through her and she didn't know quite how to deal with it. Perhaps her disgust at herself with her intense knee-jerk reaction to Ryan had been one reason why she demanded that Sandy take him home. When instead of bringing home the volatile youth that had crackled with sexuality, Sandy had brought home a frightened, scared little boy that had tried to be a man for far too long and at a far too young age, Kirsten had immediately forgotten her insane attraction and focused all her energy on providing a motherly, nurturing influence to him. And she had mostly succeeded. Only occasionally in the mornings when Ryan, clad in only a wife-beater, showing off a body that no sixteen-year old should have, would Kirsten be consumed by that initial spark of attraction. Only sometimes when she would spy Marissa leaving the pool house, cheeks flushed and hair tousled, did Kirsten wonder how sexually gifted Ryan was. In some ways, the discovery that Ryan, far from being a volatile felon, was a nice kid with a hero complex had helped Kirsten be more of a mothering influence on him, but in other ways it provided a deeper level of attraction. In any case, Kirsten had been able to deal with the pain of Ryan's departure back to Chino from a mothering perceptive. Even though sometimes the pain manifested itself as a feeling roughly akin to Kirsten feeling like a jilted lover.
The summer had been infinitely difficult. Seth's departure hit Kirsten hard, though she somewhat suspected it would happen. Half the time Kirsten felt anger at him leaving, the other half of the time she was gripped with sickening sensations of loss and worry. Kirsten wanted to rely on Sandy to be her rock. But Sandy had collapsed with a speed that had shocked Kirsten. The fierce light in his eyes that had first attracted Kirsten to him faded, dulled by nights of heavy drinking. With Sandy as a member of the walking dead, Kirsten increasingly felt that she had to be the rock. She was always the one to help Sandy to bed, to pick him up from increasingly seedy bars, to cover for him when he couldn't make to the office in the mornings after a bender, she was the one to mix him Bloody Marys to cure his hangovers in the morning. After a while Kirsten hadn't even had the effort to yell at him, to help him. Kirsten felt useless, which struck as odd because she never had to do so many things in her life. Caleb and Julie's marriage was already on the rocks, so Kirsten acted as a sounding board for both of them. She was always drained and exhausted. One night Sandy had narrowly escaped being arrested by the police for public drunkenness and that near miss had scared him straight. But instead of being the old Sandy again, Sandy threw himself into his work. While Kirsten was grateful that she didn't have to worry about Sandy in some strange bar, she almost preferred Sandy drunk. He had become so co-dependent on her, that it was a shock when Sandy became a workaholic; he had no need for her. Only a few words were exchanged between them, which was symbolic of how bad things had gotten. Never before this summer had Kirsten and Sandy suffered from lack of words. In a way she could understand this. Sandy was devoting so much of his mental and emotional energy to not falling apart again, to not let down his guard against the tsunami of grief and worry that always threatened to engulf both of them that he had very little energy to try and resuscitate a slowly dying marriage. Kirsten consoled herself with the thought that maybe when Seth returned, things would improve.
Kirsten had not expected the call from Ryan that night. She had never heard him like that before. Even when Marissa was falling apart, when Theresa broke the news about her pregnancy Ryan had bottled up all his emotions and seemed to be under control. When he had called, he had been unable to keep the wracking sobs from escaping. His raw pain had taken Kirsten's breath away and she immediately had gone to see him. She would never forget walking into the small but neat apartment that Ryan and Theresa had rented and seeing Ryan curled into a ball near the toilet, emitting a heartrending keening sound that had made the hairs on Kirsten's arms stand up in its sorrow. Kirsten had spent what seemed like hours holding Ryan, feeling matching sorrow at the life that had been cruelly taken away from Ryan, but also feeling strangely exhilarated. Exhilarated because she didn't feel useless anymore, exhilarating because Kirsten felt she finally had a purpose after the bleak summer. Kirsten felt alive once more through her overpowering desire to comfort him in any way she could. She began spilling out all of her frustrations and fears about Sandy and the future of their family and then it was Ryan's turn to hold her and it was his turn to have his shirt stained by tears. It was a cathartic experience for both of them. When Ryan's lips had accidentally made contact with Kirsten's lips, it felt wonderful and somehow natural. Everything, everyone in their lives just fell away, and their respective ages seemed not to matter. All that mater was that Kirsten was determined not to stop kissing Ryan. She needed him with every fibre of her being and it was the fact that she knew that he needed her that made her need him that much more. The sex had been breathtakingly passionate, tender, exhilarating, cathartic. Kirsten blushed as she remembered the long furrows her nails had made in his back, the sensations of his hands teasing her, caressing her.
The car ride back to Newport was complete torture. Kirsten knew she should feel overwhelmed with guilt, but all she could think about was the way he tasted, smelled. She had to concentrate on blocking these feelings from her mind, so she could keep driving in a straight line. Every filament in her being wanted to pull up to a Super 8 motel and make love to him again and again. She wanted to re-enter the private world that their passion for each other had forged. By Ryan's unwillingness to make eye contact with her, and his rigid, ramrod stiff posture she suspected he felt the same way. Yet she resisted. She thought being home again with Sandy would awaken her to the dangers of what she was doing, but instead the dullness in his eyes, made her crave the passion that she had seen in Ryan's eyes. But it was Summer; Seth's girlfriend that had made Kirsten decided to talk to Ryan about what happened. Not that Kirsten had told Summer about it. But Summer was also feeling abandoned and alone, and while Ryan was at work one day, Kirsten and Summer had spent a delightful afternoon talking about Seth's idiosyncrasies and wit. Kirsten realized that the damage to Seth would be just as great, if not greater than the damage to Sandy, if he ever found out about her and Ryan. So later that night, she had gone to the pool house to try and talk to Ryan. However, she never even opened her mouth. Ryan had just gotten out of the shower and his adorably tousled hair and sleepy eyes had made Kirsten take leave of her senses. Once again they made love and it was every bit as wonderful as the first time. If possible, it was even better the second time since Ryan now knew what made Kirsten cry out and thrash in ecstasy. Kirsten blushed deeply as she remembered the way she had called out his name in ecstasy. Since then, however Ryan had done his best to ignore her. Kirsten couldn't blame him, but after lying in bed with him after, and having the feeling of complete and total security in his arms, she couldn't help but feel a bit hurt. Kirsten realized that it was spiralling out of control, that the feelings she was developing for him were much too intense, but Kirsten couldn't deny her desperate wanting
A/N: First of all I want to thank everyone who reviewed the first chapter. I was a little worried about this, but your praise helped a lot. Also as per the slight continuity issue regarding Theresa's pregnancy. I guess at the end of the season she was maybe 4, 5 months pregnant, so it would be hard for her to have her baby in July, like in my story, but please consider it dramatic license.
Disclaimer: Don't own em, and never will
Kirsten sat at the kitchen table, hands cradling a cup of steaming tea looking out at the pounding rain, coursing down the glass windows in thin rivulets of water. Kirsten couldn't make out Ryan's form through the sheets of rain, but she could see a tiny red point of light that told her that Ryan was smoking again. Not that she could blame him after the bizarre series of events that had thrown her world into turmoil this last week. Kirsten let out a shuddering breath overwhelmed at the rush of emotions that had overtaken taken her at the thought of Ryan. While Kirsten realized that as long as she lived, she would never be able to completely shake the feeling that by sleeping with Ryan, she had somehow taken advantage of him, of his vulnerability, and her need to feel something, anything. Even if was overwhelming sensations of shame and guilt. Yet despite herself, Kirsten found that her hands shook slightly around the coffee cup and an intense warmth suffused her when she thought about him. Kirsten shook her head, trying to clear her head of the vivid images, but she knew that her head would be filled with these images for a very long time.
Kirsten had prided herself on always having a plan, always knowing her next step. With Jimmy Cooper it had been safe, secure. Kirsten had genuinely loved Jimmy Cooper; still loved him in a way, but her relationship with Jimmy had also been a part of her plan. She knew what to expect, could see a future with him. Even the beginning of her relationship with Sandy was rational, planned. Kirsten realized that her relationship with Jimmy could not have lasted, not after he had gotten Julie Cooper pregnant. She and Jimmy had been having somewhat of a rough time, mostly because since she was in college, Kirsten had decided that it was time to rebel a bit, break out of the mould that her parents had set for her. That was how Kirsten rebelled, she didn't just do it on the spur of the moment, and she planned exactly how she was going to rebel. She was still in love with Jimmy; she just felt it was time to take a break. She had every intention of going back to him. Until Jimmy knocked up a Riverside trailer park girl. Kirsten had been devastated and decided after months of flirting to sleep with Sandy. Sandy Cohen had been wild, free-spirited. Yet despite his anti- establishment posturing and his liberal drug use, Sandy had been at heart a sweet Jewish boy who had the same conventional attitudes about family that she had. He worshipped her, Kirsten knew that and his sense of humour was particularly appealing to her. Jimmy, bless his heart, had not exactly been a quick wit. She had planned her seduction of Sandy, not that she really needed to do much work, days in advance. Candles, music, a sexy nightgown, everything. Her plan had gone exactly like clockwork. There was only one glitch. Kirsten had gotten pregnant. Her best-laid plans went out the window. A part of Kirsten desperately wanted this baby, but she knew if she had it, her life would change, her parents would disown her, and Sandy, well while Kirsten knew that he adored her, she knew that this was radically different from him wanting to raise a baby with her. So Kirsten did the only thing she could do, she had an abortion. Her mistake was confiding in her mother after she had. Her mother had never really forgiven her so she lived in a mail truck for next two years with Sandy. That was the best time in her life. She stopped planning, and starting living. But when her mother got sick, Kirsten felt obligated to return to Newport to help her father take care of her. She quickly got sucked back into her old controlled life. She got a job with her dad's company and she had Seth. Kirsten smiled in remembrance as she recalled how she and Sandy had painstakingly marked her ovulation days on the calendar. Seth had been the essence of a planned baby. And so up to the past year Kirsten's life had been the rational, planned life she had known and she had been comfortable with.
Until Ryan showed up. While she had of course been mildly surprised that Sandy had brought home a tough-as-nails felon from Chino, she hadn't been completely surprised. She figured it was only a matter of time until Sandy brought home a client. And considering his clients legal troubles, she had known that the client wouldn't exactly be the poster child for Christian living. No, what had really surprised her was the powerful bolt of sexual attraction that had gripped her when she first saw Ryan. The kid had oozed raw sexuality from every pore in his body. Kirsten had been caught flat- footed by this jolt of attraction that had surged through her and she didn't know quite how to deal with it. Perhaps her disgust at herself with her intense knee-jerk reaction to Ryan had been one reason why she demanded that Sandy take him home. When instead of bringing home the volatile youth that had crackled with sexuality, Sandy had brought home a frightened, scared little boy that had tried to be a man for far too long and at a far too young age, Kirsten had immediately forgotten her insane attraction and focused all her energy on providing a motherly, nurturing influence to him. And she had mostly succeeded. Only occasionally in the mornings when Ryan, clad in only a wife-beater, showing off a body that no sixteen-year old should have, would Kirsten be consumed by that initial spark of attraction. Only sometimes when she would spy Marissa leaving the pool house, cheeks flushed and hair tousled, did Kirsten wonder how sexually gifted Ryan was. In some ways, the discovery that Ryan, far from being a volatile felon, was a nice kid with a hero complex had helped Kirsten be more of a mothering influence on him, but in other ways it provided a deeper level of attraction. In any case, Kirsten had been able to deal with the pain of Ryan's departure back to Chino from a mothering perceptive. Even though sometimes the pain manifested itself as a feeling roughly akin to Kirsten feeling like a jilted lover.
The summer had been infinitely difficult. Seth's departure hit Kirsten hard, though she somewhat suspected it would happen. Half the time Kirsten felt anger at him leaving, the other half of the time she was gripped with sickening sensations of loss and worry. Kirsten wanted to rely on Sandy to be her rock. But Sandy had collapsed with a speed that had shocked Kirsten. The fierce light in his eyes that had first attracted Kirsten to him faded, dulled by nights of heavy drinking. With Sandy as a member of the walking dead, Kirsten increasingly felt that she had to be the rock. She was always the one to help Sandy to bed, to pick him up from increasingly seedy bars, to cover for him when he couldn't make to the office in the mornings after a bender, she was the one to mix him Bloody Marys to cure his hangovers in the morning. After a while Kirsten hadn't even had the effort to yell at him, to help him. Kirsten felt useless, which struck as odd because she never had to do so many things in her life. Caleb and Julie's marriage was already on the rocks, so Kirsten acted as a sounding board for both of them. She was always drained and exhausted. One night Sandy had narrowly escaped being arrested by the police for public drunkenness and that near miss had scared him straight. But instead of being the old Sandy again, Sandy threw himself into his work. While Kirsten was grateful that she didn't have to worry about Sandy in some strange bar, she almost preferred Sandy drunk. He had become so co-dependent on her, that it was a shock when Sandy became a workaholic; he had no need for her. Only a few words were exchanged between them, which was symbolic of how bad things had gotten. Never before this summer had Kirsten and Sandy suffered from lack of words. In a way she could understand this. Sandy was devoting so much of his mental and emotional energy to not falling apart again, to not let down his guard against the tsunami of grief and worry that always threatened to engulf both of them that he had very little energy to try and resuscitate a slowly dying marriage. Kirsten consoled herself with the thought that maybe when Seth returned, things would improve.
Kirsten had not expected the call from Ryan that night. She had never heard him like that before. Even when Marissa was falling apart, when Theresa broke the news about her pregnancy Ryan had bottled up all his emotions and seemed to be under control. When he had called, he had been unable to keep the wracking sobs from escaping. His raw pain had taken Kirsten's breath away and she immediately had gone to see him. She would never forget walking into the small but neat apartment that Ryan and Theresa had rented and seeing Ryan curled into a ball near the toilet, emitting a heartrending keening sound that had made the hairs on Kirsten's arms stand up in its sorrow. Kirsten had spent what seemed like hours holding Ryan, feeling matching sorrow at the life that had been cruelly taken away from Ryan, but also feeling strangely exhilarated. Exhilarated because she didn't feel useless anymore, exhilarating because Kirsten felt she finally had a purpose after the bleak summer. Kirsten felt alive once more through her overpowering desire to comfort him in any way she could. She began spilling out all of her frustrations and fears about Sandy and the future of their family and then it was Ryan's turn to hold her and it was his turn to have his shirt stained by tears. It was a cathartic experience for both of them. When Ryan's lips had accidentally made contact with Kirsten's lips, it felt wonderful and somehow natural. Everything, everyone in their lives just fell away, and their respective ages seemed not to matter. All that mater was that Kirsten was determined not to stop kissing Ryan. She needed him with every fibre of her being and it was the fact that she knew that he needed her that made her need him that much more. The sex had been breathtakingly passionate, tender, exhilarating, cathartic. Kirsten blushed as she remembered the long furrows her nails had made in his back, the sensations of his hands teasing her, caressing her.
The car ride back to Newport was complete torture. Kirsten knew she should feel overwhelmed with guilt, but all she could think about was the way he tasted, smelled. She had to concentrate on blocking these feelings from her mind, so she could keep driving in a straight line. Every filament in her being wanted to pull up to a Super 8 motel and make love to him again and again. She wanted to re-enter the private world that their passion for each other had forged. By Ryan's unwillingness to make eye contact with her, and his rigid, ramrod stiff posture she suspected he felt the same way. Yet she resisted. She thought being home again with Sandy would awaken her to the dangers of what she was doing, but instead the dullness in his eyes, made her crave the passion that she had seen in Ryan's eyes. But it was Summer; Seth's girlfriend that had made Kirsten decided to talk to Ryan about what happened. Not that Kirsten had told Summer about it. But Summer was also feeling abandoned and alone, and while Ryan was at work one day, Kirsten and Summer had spent a delightful afternoon talking about Seth's idiosyncrasies and wit. Kirsten realized that the damage to Seth would be just as great, if not greater than the damage to Sandy, if he ever found out about her and Ryan. So later that night, she had gone to the pool house to try and talk to Ryan. However, she never even opened her mouth. Ryan had just gotten out of the shower and his adorably tousled hair and sleepy eyes had made Kirsten take leave of her senses. Once again they made love and it was every bit as wonderful as the first time. If possible, it was even better the second time since Ryan now knew what made Kirsten cry out and thrash in ecstasy. Kirsten blushed deeply as she remembered the way she had called out his name in ecstasy. Since then, however Ryan had done his best to ignore her. Kirsten couldn't blame him, but after lying in bed with him after, and having the feeling of complete and total security in his arms, she couldn't help but feel a bit hurt. Kirsten realized that it was spiralling out of control, that the feelings she was developing for him were much too intense, but Kirsten couldn't deny her desperate wanting