Ryan's brow furrowed in concentration as he looked once more between the weathered image, he'd saved from being forgotten on the floor after it had accidentally dropped from his mother's wallet earlier during an earlier trip to the supermarket and his own carefully copied sketch.
His Mommy was always saying complimenting him on his drawing abilities and when he'd heard his aunty Kara and aunty Linda talking about his Mommy's birthday coming up the next few days he had been trying to find just the right present to get her.
One he picked out all by himself.
His newest creation is only part of his present.
Now if he could only think of something else to put with it.
"Hey, kiddo."
Ryan hastily yet carefully covered up his creation as well as pulled one of his equally treasured comic books over the original albeit laminated image before his entering mother could see either of them on his desk.
"Dinners ready." His mother says peeking into the young boy's room. Her tired smile warmed Ryan's heart as he turns in his desk chair to give an answering "Okay, Mama".
Alex gives a nervous smile only to pause in her quiet retreat by a whispered "Mama?" from the boy before a pair of strong arms wrap tighter than she'd expected around her middle as he hugs her. Her hands tremble only a little as she lifts it to card her fingers slowly through the four-year-old's tousled hair as Ryan nuzzles his face against her stomach.
"Come out when you're ready, yeah?" Alex questions when the boy finally drops his arms a few beats later.
Ryan nodes once in quiet answer as his mother tries and fails to hide a tired yawn the same time her thick-framed reading glasses slide down her nose as she continues to smile warmly at him before giving herself a little shake and backing out of his room with a mumbled "Alright then" as she went.
Ryan tiptoes to his door wanting to be sure his mother adoptive thought she might be didn't decide to double back to see what he'd been trying to hide.
He knew she'd noticed but hadn't said anything about it.
She didn't. only dropped tiredly into her seat at the kitchen table to pull her laptop back towards herself to finish reading whatever file his 'Grandpapa bear' had sent over.
After satisfying himself of his mother's distracted state the boy goes back to check his hasty cover-up hadn't smudged the penciled outlined sketch, which he now needed to add color. He also needed to think of a way to put the original picture back in his mother's wallet before she realized it was missing. A hard job considering his target was still in his mother's pant pocket.
At first, he'd thought it was a picture of his mother with her two younger sisters or maybe one of her and her own mother or maybe of her and her father, but he'd never been brave enough to ask about it. That was until after a hasty tug to free one of the carefully clipped out coupons Ryan himself had helped collect from the morning paper the answer literally floated down to his feet.
The two girls were a few years older than Ryan was now. Ten maybe or eleven he guessed but couldn't be sure.
One he knew just by the eyes to be his adoptive mother. The other one however was a mystery.
She was pretty in her own way he guessed with lightly tanned skin and warm brown eyes that shined with captured prideful amusement. She looked small but strong for her age like his mother was always complimenting him for being.
The two had their arms around one another in a friendly kind of half embrace as they smiled widely for the camera.
The dark-haired dimple sporting sports player even showed a bloodied lip and blood-stained teeth despite the proud smile she showed to the camera. A battered hockey stock draped a crossed the smiling younger girl's shoulders giving away just what sport the mystery girl had been playing.
His mother wearing a dark zip up jacket, a lighter but still darker shaded shirt underneath and dark jeans whilst her companion and the one Ryan wanted to at least knew by name other than a loopy M. Sawyer accompanying the matching '+A. Danvers 4ever' written in fading ink on the bottom of the preserved picture wearing a sports jersey, the exact logo of the hockey team hidden behind a plushy dog the two seemed to be holding a different side of.
'Maybe we can get a dog?' Ryan hoped skimming his thumb over the pictured image of that cute plushy puppy.
"Ryan, sweetie your Dino nuggets and mac and cheese are getting cold." His mother called from the kitchen reminding him more than his grumbling stomach was about his currently missing dinner time.
Despite himself, Ryan brings the picture with him as he hurries out to the table with a guilty "Coming."
He does at least wait until they bother had cleaned their respective plates and he'd been allowed to sit on his mother's lap as she read over whatever it was, she'd been reading all this time that the boy had gathered enough courage to broach the topic at all.
"Mama who dis?" Ryan asks in a yawn because despite his obvious curiosity it was growing closer to the boy's bedtime and the warmed 'happy food belly' as his aunties Kara and Lind put a well-fed tummy wasn't helping his drooping eyes.
Given Alex was still attempting to split her focused between whatever it was her son was now asking about and the digitizes file she was meant to be reading before her too early in the morning debriefing with some military general that she just knew would try to intimidate her into going along with his 'cost saving' methods as her thick-framed glassed slid not so helpfully down her nose it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise to her when she grumbled "What about who?" wasn't exactly as tender as she attempted once again to balance her treasured little boy against her lap.
Ryan's chin immediately started wobbling with the start of unintended tears at the annoyed undertone of the answer when Alex's eye catch her son's with the smallest turn of the elder woman's head.
"Sweetie, I didn't mean…" Alex hastened to correct but Ryan had already wriggled away out of her slackened grip then farther off her lap and back to the ground with whatever it was the little boy had been asking about now pressed tightly between his favored superhero-themed actual figure and the child's PJ clade front.
"Ry, I'm sorry…." Alex tries once more as she bluntly yet slowly closes her laptop now turned fully in her retreating son's direction. Not that she knew it would do much good given the watery look in her little boy's stormy grey eyes.
"Sorry Mommy." If she were able Alex would let out a strangled shout of frustration at the look of upset pain on her son's face as Ryan redirects his gaze to his mismatched sock clade feet after sliding an all too familiar picture face down onto the table closest to her elbow before mumbling something about brushing his teeth before making a hasty retreat towards the apartment bathroom.
"Way to break my heart again Sawyer." Alex sighed flipping the picture over so her younger eight year old self and that of the former friend turned crush turned ghosted heartbreaker was now smiling goofily up at the ceiling. "Only this time you hurt me by making me hurt my son." She sighed pulling out her cell phone to send a quick text to the group chat she had with her sisters.
SOS. Ry's upset with me, one or both of you get over here and be 'Cool aunties' while I think of a way to fix this.
Almost at once the twin
Poststickerstealer is typing and SnowieSnowbird is typing messages pop up along with those three annoying little dots.
'You upset my RyRy. Lucky, I like you to not toss you into containment or worse' came up first making Alex smile at Linda's protective side as she waited for Kara's following and no doubt agreeing answer to finish being typed up.
'Already out the window and on my way too, but I'm with Lin on this Alex. I know how much Ry loves you and how much you love him but he's still that same scared little boy we found in the CADMUS lab. Don't let work stress you so much you forget you have a life outside of the DEO.
Alex was already hanging her head in shame as her eyes landed once more on the closed door to the apartment bathroom. She could still hear the water running and the low hum of Ryan's toothbrush as she types an answer of her own
This wasn't about work.
The sneaky boy found our picture. He asked about…..Her
She didn't need to type out the name for her sisters to know who she was talking about as she hits send.
Her
The one woman who wasn't related to any of them that had slowly but defiantly worked her way under Alex's carefully crafted armor and burrowed so deeply into her heart even now the sting of her ghosted exit from Alex's life stung just as painfully as when it had first happened just after the girl that was her pen pal, turned third best friend turned first love crush had turned fourteen by Alex's then carefully kept timeline.
Only once had the two actually met in person.
The time Maggie's juniors' hockey team had faced off against Linda's for the deciding match of the young adult league.
Maggie even took a deliberately thrown elbow to her jaw by her own teammate during the match in order to save the act happening to Alex's younger sibling even before she knew who the other team's captain was.
Linda even invited Maggie along for victory pizza at the snacks bar with the rest of her team whilst the rest of Maggie's own sulked back to their parents in defeat.
Maggie having opted to go help a grumpy Alex beat the claw machine in the ice rinks arcade thus winning the very puppy plushy the two girls cradled in shared victory as Eliza snapped the now mocking image.
For the next year and a half, the dog had been mailed back and forth between the two with every letter 'For safe keeping' until that ominous week right before Valentine's Day the year Alex was sure Maggie had just turned fourteen.
It had also been Sawyer's turn to watch over Gertrude, so Alex hadn't even to reclaim the dog that was by right hers considering how much of her allowance had been lost to win the thing, to begin with.
Maggie always takes the side of 'No she's mine. I was the one controlling the claw. You just put in the last quarter.' In their teasing trade of playful banter.
Just as traitor tears were about to slide down Alex's cheeks the bathroom door opened and a still sulking Ryan shuffled back towards his bedroom the same moment there came a knock at the front door.
"Mind getting that for me kiddo? I need to clean up the dishes." Alex asks already seeing her son changing directions out of the corner of her eye.
If she'd been looking any closer, she would have seen the boy was also carrying her cellphone with him having spent the last few minutes scrolling his mother's eBay account looking for any kind of match for the dog in the picture he'd left on the kitchen table.
"I need your help." Ryan says before either of his aunts could do more than kneel down to his level after being let inside. "I wanna get Mama a present. But I don't have money." The boy says keeping his voice low as he looks between the mirror looks of pride from his aunts. "How can I make dis much in." he paused pointing first to the dollar amount posted with the gift option he'd pulled up then counted the remaining days on his phone free hand "six days?" he finished turning the phone around to show them the account listing he'd selected.
Detective Dimples203GCDP
The picture underneath the seller's tag name was despite two of the three occupants being cropped out of it was one the sisters knew all to well but what drew at least Kara's reporter's eye was the caption accompanying the selling details.
"It pains me to do this, more than anyone can begin to understand, but I need all the money I can scrape together at the moment. Just promise me, whoever buys her, please give her a good home."
"RyRy we'll lend you whatever you need to alright?" Linda decides as Kara's fingers flew towards the 'Buy Now' button.
Ryan's answering "No I do it myself" loud enough to draw Alex's worried attention from the direction of the kitchen before Ryan drags his two aunties towards his room again making his mother even more nervous about calling the twins over so late at night.
"Rao Mags, what the hell have I done?" Alex sighs her eyes drifting back to the picture she'd finally decided to hang on the door to the refrigerator as Ryan's bedroom door was not so gently closed behind her guilty-looking sisters.