DISCLAIMER – I do not own The OC, Marissa, or Ryan (although I wish I did!!)
A/N – Killed, my friends, does not, in this stance anyway, mean physically killing someone. It is a metaphor. I don't completely understand metaphors, myself, my friend is an expert at that, however, she is currently in Tasmania, and I am all by myself.
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The first time it happened, he must have been only seven years old.
That beautiful flower. He had been walking down the streets one day, alone and deserted. He had dug his hands deep into his pocket; he kept his head down, staring at the cracked pavement as he walked. Suddenly, a fleck of blue flashed in the corner of his eye. He had stopped. It was a flower. A beautiful, fragile little growth. He had crouched down next to it, looking at it with conjecture. He had never seen anything like this before. Not up close, anyway. He had seen a lot of flowers on TV, and in books, but he couldn't really be sure that they existed. He couldn't be sure that there truly was something so beautiful, so pure in this world. There never had been in his world. He stroked a petal of the flower, and he savoured the velvet smooth feeling that brushed over his finger. He wanted to keep his flower. He wanted to pluck it from the sidewalk and place it on his windowsill, so that maybe it could spread some of it's colour and innocence into his own grey life.
He picked it.
He thought that he was taking care of it well. He kept it in clean water; he made sure it had a certain amount of sunshine to keep it healthy, but not enough to burn the delicate petals. But it died anyway. One day, it slowly wilted over, its petal's curling at the sides, brown and rotting. Not one spec of colour was left. He had cried when he saw it. His mother had seen him, touching the dead flower, and she had laughed. "You killed it Ryan." She told him.
She was right, he thought. It was his fault. He had killed it.
Ryan Atwood killed beautiful things with his touch.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Ryan had always been attracted to beautiful things. Girls. Flowers.
But he couldn't let himself get to attached to them. Because he would touch them, and they would instantly start to wilt. They would die, they would shrink away. They would become nothing.
And it was all his fault.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Marissa Cooper had always been the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen. And that was why he was scared of her, reluctant to involve himself in a relationship with her. He didn't want the most beautiful thing in his life to wilt away, just like everything else, just because he allowed himself to become attached to her. It would be better if he stayed back, and watched her smile from behind the window.
It happened so fast he couldn't stop it. He kissed her. And they were together. It was as simple as that.
Not quite.
He loved her. He should have backed away when he realised it. It always happened. He started to love something, and that was when the decay began. He couldn't let that happen to Marissa. But he couldn't bring himself not to love her.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
"You…you got me flowers." Ryan said in shock as he stared at the vibrant blue flowers Marissa extended towards him.
"You do like them, don't you?" she asked nervously as he took the bouquet from her. "Because I remember you looking at them, remember when we were in the flower shop, and you just looked like you liked them so much..."
"I...I love them." He said softly, as he touched the flowers petals. They were the same flowers that he had picked that day on the sidewalk. The one he had killed.
"Good. Because I love you." Said Marissa shyly.
He looked at her, smiling. He took her hand in his face and kissed her soft lips gently, yet passionately.
Oh no.
He was falling. He was falling so badly.
"I love you so much..."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
The flowers died a few days later. They sat on his desk, wilted, brown.
Dead.
He didn't remove them. They reminded him. He killed beautiful things with his acid touch.
He wished he didn't love beautiful things. It killed him as he watched them die.
It was his only weakness.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
He had killed Marissa.
Was it all his fault this time, as well?
Yes.
It was always his fault.
He looked at himself in the mirror. He hadn't slept in days. His eyes had dark bags under them, his hair was shaggy and unbrushed and he hadn't shaved. He didn't see his reflection. He saw inside himself...He was cruel. He didn't mean to be. But it just happened. He was everything he had grown up hating.
Why couldn't he be beautiful, too?
He hated himself.
He hated himself for being such an idiot. For wasting all these years on his stupid, worthless obsession with all things beautiful.
All he had wanted was an escape. And escape from his own grey, worthless excuse at a life. He wanted to escape into something else, something that was perfect. Flowers. Marissa.
They were all perfect. Then he came. He killed them.
Marissa wasn't his anymore. He loved her so much that it hurt...his heart was taken only by her, no longer did other useless beautiful things pre-occupy his mind. Only her.
But she was wasting away. Slowly beneath him, her depression was spiralling out of control. It was all because of him.
She loved him.
He loved her.
And he was killing her.
Beautiful things never last. Not around him.
Ryan Atwood had always loved beautiful things.
More then anything, he loved Marissa Cooper.
Ryan Atwood killed beautiful things with his touch.
He could never let himself love another beautiful thing again.
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A/N – Well, I have successfully resulted in confusing myself. Have I confused you as well? Yes? No? Well, maybe I'm just a bit light headed. Did that make sense, anyone?