Title : Small Steps
Author : Helen C.
Rating : PG - 13
Summary : Oliver is back, and makes a mess of things again. Set in season 2.
Spoilers : Everything that's been aired up to The Rainy Day Women is fair game.
Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Josh Schwartz. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Many, many thanks to Joey51, who beta'd this for me!
Chapter Five : The Talk
Three days after Oliver's death, Kirsten and Sandy were still trying to come to terms with what had happened.
Their days began as they always had. Sandy and Kirsten ate breakfast in the kitchen. They read the newspaper. As it was the holidays, the boys slept in—Seth, always; Ryan, often.
The days were quiet. The boys played video games, lazed around in the pool, half-heartedly did some homework. Kirsten kept her eyes and her ears open while she worked a little around the house, prepared her list for shopping, or whatever would help her to get over her work withdrawal.
Ryan didn't go out at all. Luke came over and spent a few hours with him almost every day, and Seth sometimes went out for a while with Summer. There ended the comings and goings of the teenagers. Kirsten had grown used to more noise and activity from them. She didn't know if she found such quietness soothing or alarming. Nor did she care. She spent too many hours every day, analyzing every nuance of what Ryan said or did, every nuance of what she and Sandy said or did in return. This constant scrutinizing was slowly driving her mad.
"Should we be worried?" Sandy asked, interrupting Kirsten's musings.
"Excuse me?"
"About Ryan," he said. "Should we be worried that he doesn't talk more about what happened?"
She managed to restrain a sigh, but just barely. She didn't have the answers Sandy was looking for—with Ryan, there was always a fine line between giving him the space he wanted and ignoring issues. In this case, she was flying blind.
"Ryan will talk when he's ready," she kept saying. "All we can do is remind him that we're here." And they did try to make sure that they were present enough, but not overbearing. And days passed, and Ryan still answered their questions with his trademark, "I'm fine," or, "It's okay." And then he redirected the discussion.
No one really believed that Ryan was as fine as he claimed to be—Kirsten didn't think that Ryan himself believed it—but what were they supposed to do? Push him to talk and run the risk of making things worse, or wait and see?
Damn it, she was tired of tip-toeing around the problem.
She spent a lot of time thinking about the first time Oliver had been around. Now, she regretted that they had never talked about it with Ryan. For the first few days after the hotel incident, Ryan had made it clear he didn't want to talk and wouldn't appreciate being pressured. Then, shortly after the Valentine's Day Party, he had begun to relax around the Cohens again. They had all been so relieved that they rushed to move on.
Had it been a mistake to let it go?
Had they misread Ryan again?
Had he been mad at them all this time, and simply decided that there was no point in pushing the issue?
She opened her mouth to share her doubts with Sandy and closed it again without saying a word. He was looking at the poolhouse, his unease apparent. She didn't want to add to his worries.
She made a mental note to try and find an opening to talk about it with Ryan, though. Oliver's "Second Coming," as Luke had tastelessly put it, might still be off limits, but surely, it had been long enough since Oliver's first breakdown. The subject was probably safe now.
"Kirsten?" Sandy asked, startling her.
"Yes?"
"You didn't answer. Should we be worried?"
"I don't think so," she said carefully.
"It's been three days."
"I know."
"Should we insist? Should we mention therapy?"
Kirsten shook her head. Ryan seemed as fine as possible. He also seemed slightly… off. Not noticeably so; if he went back to Harbor the next day, she doubted anyone would see the difference. She likely wouldn't have seen it herself, one year ago. But she saw it now. Ryan was more withdrawn, more silent. He didn't smile as much as he had in the last few months, and Kirsten felt profoundly saddened by the loss of these smiles—the ones that reached Ryan's eyes, the ones that said more about the fact that he felt safe with the Cohens than words ever would.
"I think it's too soon to insist," she decided. She didn't even bother answering the "therapy" part of the question. With Seth, yes, she would have suggested it. In Ryan's case, it was more likely to worsen the problem than to fix it, at this point. Therapy would be the last resort option. It was too soon to think about it.
"He's barely said two words," Sandy pointed out. "Not since that night." He added a mumbled, "When he was exhausted and in shock."
"Sandy…" Logic didn't apply to this situation. She couldn't decide that three days of mourning were fine, but that four weren't. She needed to trust her gut feeling, and her gut feeling was telling her to give Ryan a little more time. "Let's try to relax, all of us, and trust him."
He opened his mouth to protest. She didn't let him speak. "I really think we need to let him decide when he wants to talk. And accept the fact that Seth and Luke will probably hear more than we do at first."
"If you're sure."
Sandy still looked dubious. She didn't blame him. The fact that it was Oliver, who had already come so close to destroying the relationship they had with Ryan, made her nervous too.
They hadn't believed Ryan then. They should have, she acknowledged. They should have known that Ryan, while not above fighting every now and then, didn't use his fists to beat someone up just for the hell of it. They were learning to know each other then. Their relationship was still fragile—uncomfortable and tentative. Fate had certainly chosen a very bad time to add Oliver to the mix, Kirsten thought.
But then she supposed there was no such thing as a good time for something like that to happen—just like there wasn't a good time to have to kill someone in self-defense.
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Three days after Oliver's death, Ryan was still trying to come to terms with what had happened.
He was very thankful for the holidays in general, and spring break in particular. While he was functional enough to deal with the Cohens and Luke, he didn't think he would have been up for the teenage drama of Harbor High.
The Cohens said that it was normal, that he could have as much time as he needed to deal with That Night—that was how Seth had referred to it; That Night, spoken in a hushed tone, and Ryan could even hear the capital letters in Seth's voice. When Seth said That Night now, everyone knew which night he was talking about. Not the night when he and Ryan went to L.A.. Not the night they spent in Vegas. Not even the night they all stayed home and studied. But the night Ryan killed someone.
Which wasn't to say that Ryan didn't feel better—better being a very relative term. Really, after That Night, there had been nowhere to go but up. So, yes, he felt better than he had then. That still wasn't saying much, Ryan mused, as he unashamedly lazed around on one of the pool seats.
To the outside world, he supposed he looked normal. Luke, at least, didn't seem to find him weirder than usual. The Cohens were another story. They kept hovering, always asking him how he felt, what he was thinking about. Thankfully, they allowed him to evade their questions, and left him in peace when he asked them to. "We're here if you want to talk," they said.
It wasn't that he wanted to keep them at arm's length. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to them, or that he preferred leaving them in the dark. They were so obviously worried, so obviously careful around him that Ryan actually wanted to appease them. He just didn't know how he could possibly explain how he felt. Hell, he wasn't even sure how he felt.
Tired, yes. Unable to focus on anything for a reasonable amount of time. His thoughts kept taking him back to That Night. Kept reminding him of the look on Oliver's face when the gun went off.
But the largest implications were still vastly lost on Ryan. He knew he had killed someone, an irrevocable action that would probably change him profoundly. But he didn't feel it yet. He knew what had happened, and he was now waiting for the proverbial penny to drop. Waiting for the time when it would come crashing down on him. So many clichés at his disposal to translate the fact that while he was now thinking normally, he was far from feeling normally.
Ryan had learned early on that it always dawned little by little—"it" covering pretty much every crappy thing that could happen. His mother's abandonment hadn't sunk in immediately. It was little things that brought it home. The vague sensation that something wasn't right when he woke up, and was still too drowsy to recognize his surroundings. The fact that she wasn't there when he came back from school, to ask him how the girls in his life treated him. Or to insult him.
Small things missing, adding up to create a bigger void, and who looked straight inside the void at the risk of being swallowed by it? Ryan thought it was safer to tiptoe around said void, measuring its dimension, the place it was now taking in his life, before going further and accepting it.
So, for now, he tried to avoid thinking about the cold handcuffs on his wrists, or the feel of the gun's handle in his hand. Guns and handcuffs had played a big part in two of the worst nights of his life. Ryan supposed it wasn't surprising that he now associated violence and fear, guilt and failure, with the coldness of metal.
His thoughts were taking a sinister turn, he decided.
He concentrated on the sun warming his skin, the soft noise of the water lapping on the walls of the pool and the general quietness of the neighborhood. He still had a hard time believing just how silent it was around here. There was always noise in Chino—people arguing, music coming from the houses, car horns, police sirens. The first nights he had spent at the Cohens, it had taken hours for him to fall asleep without those familiar reference marks. And the same thing had happened when he had come back in the fall.
Once he was used to it, though, the silence was soothing.
The sensation of being observed derailed his train of thought.
He opened his eyes and spotted Marissa near the edge of the pool.
She was radiating awkwardness, much like she had after the first "Oliver climax," as Seth had dubbed it—before deciding that it was probably an unfortunate choice of words.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey."
Ryan could almost hear his brother's mocking voice. "Hey is for horses."
After a tense silence, Ryan asked, "How are you doing?"
He hadn't talked to her since That Night, but Kirsten had kept him updated. Seeing Marissa now, shrunk on herself, he thought he should have called her. But he hadn't wanted to talk to Julie Cooper, who was filtering Marissa's calls. Ryan didn't know if the woman blamed him for what had happened, and wasn't particularly anxious to find out.
Marissa smiled weakly. "I'm fine. Mom finally let me out for a while."
"Okay."
"Well, technically, she's with Kirsten in the kitchen."
Ryan sent a brief prayer to every deity currently on duty, hoping divine intervention would be enough to keep Julie away from him. He didn't need that much reality right now.
He slipped from his seat into the water, swam to the edge, then climbed out. He hadn't taken a towel with him, so he made a vague gesture in the direction of the poolhouse. "I'll be back in a sec," he said.
Marissa nodded and sat down to wait.
When Ryan came back, still in his swimming trunks but with a t-shirt hastily thrown on—in case divine intervention wasn't sufficient and Julie came by—Marissa was fidgeting with the hem of her skirt. He sat next to her and leaned back, trying to recapture his earlier contentment. It was long gone, though.
They were silent for a very long time, long enough to make Ryan uncomfortable, and he was the strong and silent type. "So," he finally said.
"So…" Marissa trailed off.
Ryan sighed inwardly. Was he supposed to do all the work here? "How are you doing?"
She shrugged, crossed her arms over her waist. Ryan knew all about defensive body language, but he didn't think he had ever seen such a by-the-book representation of it. "Fine," she said.
"Freaked out, insecure, neurotic, emotional," he mumbled.
She looked at him, surprised. "What?"
"That's what my brother used to say, when I told him I was fine. He said fine stood for freaked out—"
"Insecure, and so on," she completed. "I think I must have said that to Caitlin once. But I don't remember where I got it from."
Ryan shrugged. "Maybe older siblings just know annoying stuff like that. Genetics."
She chuckled, looking a little more relaxed. "Yeah."
"I thought about calling," he offered. "But I figured you needed some time."
"That's okay."
"Your mom kept you under key until now, then?"
She smiled. "Yeah. I think she was freaked. And we needed to have the house cleaned. We went back yesterday."
Ryan wondered how he would feel if it had happened in the poolhouse, and he had to go back every day. He shivered. "That must have been…" He wasn't sure what word could adequately describe the situation. But then, Ryan had always thought that words were rarely adequate, as a rule.
"Intense," Marissa finished. "It was. She's dragging me to a stupid therapist again," she complained.
Ryan thought that it was probably a good thing, but refrained from saying so. As Seth had once said, Marissa didn't handle bad news very well. But she didn't want to hear that from Ryan. She didn't want to hear it from anyone, really.
"The Cohens haven't talked about that yet, but I'm sure it's on their mind," he offered.
"Perhaps my mom is busy convincing Kirsten."
At his grimace, she hastened to add, "Sorry, I was joking. I'm… I'm sure she's not."
He forced a smile. "Yeah."
"I'm sorry I called you," she said. "That night."
No capital letters in her tone, Ryan noted. "Why?"
"I know we're not together anymore, and it's not your job to help me when I screw up. I knew he'd be mad if I called you. I just didn't know who else… I'm sorry."
"When you screw up?" Ryan repeated, lost. Surely, Marissa understood that the situation was different from all the times she had called problems on herself through her thoughtlessness. Then the light dawned. The penny dropped, so to speak. He sucked in a breath. "Marissa, did you know he was out?" His voice sounded wrong—too clipped, too hard. Metallic, even.
She hid her head in her hands. "I'm sorry," she repeated, her voice muffled. "He was… he seemed normal."
Ryan refrained from snarking that she had thought Oliver was normal before, too.
"He emailed me when he was released," Marissa explained. "He said he wanted to apologize. We met, he did, and we kept in touch. He seemed…"
"Normal," he finished when she trailed off. She nodded, clasped her hands on her knees, still refusing to look at him.
"Then he showed up unannounced, the day of, well, that day. He looked weird. Kept saying he could make me happy, if I'd only let him try. Kept saying we were meant to be. And all I could think of was, 'How could I be so stupid?' and I panicked, and I called you." She closed her eyes, her face a perfect picture of distress. "I'm sorry. And now you're going to hate me, and I can't blame you for that."
Ryan bit back a retort. Marissa, just like Dawn, thought everything in Ryan's life began and ended with her. Marissa, just like Dawn, was always sorry. Marissa, just like Dawn, couldn't stand people being mad at her. Ryan sighed wearily, but gave her what she wanted—he was too tired, too shaky to withstand an argument. "I'm, well, not glad you did, obviously, but I'm glad he didn't kill you. Or me, for that matter."
"Still, I—"
"Marissa, it's okay," Ryan insisted, hoping she wouldn't make things even more difficult. "I know I strongly implied I didn't want to clean up your messes anymore, but I was talking mostly of drugs and alcohol. When a lunatic keeps you hostage, feel free to call."
She had a strangled laugh. "When?"
"I mean 'if,' obviously. If another lunatic ever comes around, feel free."
She was almost laughing at that point, her previous guilt seemingly forgotten. "Was your life like that before I came along?" Ryan asked when she calmed down.
"There were fewer lunatics," she said. "There were also more drugs." When she hung her head, he reached over and took her hand.
"It's okay," he lied. "He was very good at manipulating people. And we did decide to be friends. I could have done without him dying, but I'll deal." He shrugged. He liked Marissa, but for the first time ever, he was glad they weren't dating anymore. She was always so demanding, so quick to pick up whatever new shiny thing she saw, before dumping it as soon as she was tired of it. And Ryan was tired of dealing with everyone's problems, on top of his own. It wasn't that he minded doing so, most of the time, but he was damn tired all the same.
She looked at him. "Good. Okay."
"You'll be fine too."
"I suppose," she said.
It was easier this way, Ryan thought. They would act as if nothing had happened, they would become vague acquaintances, and with luck, there wouldn't be any huge fight and destructive arguments between the two of them anymore. He could like Marissa, if he wasn't too involved in her life.
They stayed silent for a while, hand in hand. "He was going to kill me, wasn't he?" Marissa asked at last, her voice trembling.
He squeezed her hand. He could have lied to her, reassured her, but she wasn't stupid. What Oliver had said about how he and Marissa would have all the time in the world, about the fact that no one would separate them again, had to have stuck with her. "Yes, I think so," he said.
She didn't add anything. After five minutes, Julie and Kirsten came from the kitchen.
Julie marched to Ryan, who released Marissa's hand and began to rise. Julie motioned him down, looked at him for a while, then said, "Thanks." She grimaced, making a good impression of a person swallowing lemon juice. Ryan wondered if Julie knew that Marissa had been in contact with Oliver, and instantly concluded that yes, she knew. Otherwise, she would never have thanked him—Julie's way of saying, "I know you know. Let's keep it to ourselves, shall we?" Julie gave him a dismissive glance and turned to Marissa. "Come on, sweetheart; we have to go."
Marissa followed her mother, whispering, "Thanks again," to Ryan.
Ryan nodded and watched them go, while Kirsten sat on the chair Marissa had just vacated.
As Julie was starting the car, Marissa waved shyly at Ryan. He nodded in her direction, then smiled hesitantly at Kirsten.
"That was interesting," she said.
"That's one way to put it," Ryan deadpanned.
"Julie Cooper showing gratitude."
"Scary would be another way to put it," Ryan said. He leaned back on his seat. "Julie's making Marissa go to therapy," he said, looking at the blue sky, the pool, the horizon line, the ground, anywhere but in Kirsten's direction.
"She told me."
He shouted the question in his head, hoping Kirsten would hear it and wouldn't make him actually spell it out for her. He wasn't disappointed—he was rarely disappointed by the Cohens. "Sandy and I talked about it. Well, mostly Sandy." She hesitated. "We haven't made a decision. Yet."
He nodded. "I just… this seems to become such an automatism. You have a problem, bam, go to a therapist. Magical solution." Although the solution hadn't been magical at all in Oliver's case.
"You mean, especially around here?" Kirsten asked.
He shrugged apologetically. Sometimes, the habits and customs of the rich and beautiful people of Newport still bewildered or amused him. Their relationships with their therapists were an endless source of surprise for Ryan. Some of these people seemed to require therapy to face the hardships of a broken nail. "Oh, I assure you, very few people in Chino have enough money to afford a nervous breakdown," he said.
She opened her mouth and he hastened to add, "I know, that's not the way it works. I know, they probably have them, they just don't do anything about it, until they snap. But I don't think I really need it." After all, Ryan reasoned, once upon a time, there weren't any therapists, and people just dealt with life's sucker punches on their own. And they survived, too.
Kirsten smiled. "Fine. I was expecting you to say so. I just wanted to say, don't wait until it's too late."
He looked at her then and saw the barely-concealed worry, and the dark circles under her eyes—she didn't seem to be sleeping very well these days. Thanks so much, Oliver, he thought. "I won't," he said. "It's usually hard to miss it, when I lose it," he added, self-consciously.
She patted his knee. "Good. Seth and Sandy called; they're on the way."
He got to his feet. "I'll go take a shower, then."
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Ryan sat up with a gasp, Marissa's name on his lips. This time, Oliver had shot her, and Ryan hadn't been able to move. He had just stood there, frozen. Probably his worst nightmare ever—seeing someone he loved in danger, and being unable to help.
Marissa had looked surprised in his dream, before she died. And there had been blood, lots of it, all over everything.
Great. Just great. He was never going to be able to sleep again this morning, and it was only six. He and Seth had played video games until two in the morning, which meant that Seth wouldn't be up for hours.
Ryan pondered for a while. Did he want to go to the kitchen? Not really.
Did he want to even get out of the pool house? Not really—not when the nightmare was still so close, not when he could still feel Marissa's warm, sticky blood on his hands.
Not for the first time that week, Ryan indulged in some wishful thinking.
If only he had called the police instead of entering the house.
If only he had forgotten his phone at home.
If only he hadn't listened to Marissa's shaky voice, hadn't agreed to help her.
If only, if only, if only…
But then, Marissa would probably be dead, as well as Oliver.
And Ryan wouldn't have killed anyone. He wouldn't have had to be dragged to the police station again, and he would be asleep right now. His most urgent problem would be the upcoming semester at Harbor, and the Cohens wouldn't look like death warmed over from lack of sleep.
He wouldn't be haunted by Oliver's eyes, wouldn't ponder useless "what ifs" early in the morning.
He lay back down, arms thrown across his face. Trying not to think about "what ifs" or "might have beens"—certainly, what had been was enough to contend with.
Marissa was fine, if a little more perturbed than she had been before.
Oliver was the one who had died, leaving behind parents who probably wouldn't even notice, and who else? From what Ryan knew, the guy had lost all his friends in his first breakdown, and Ryan hadn't heard about any other family.
Once upon a time, Ryan had been that alone. His brother and Theresa had been the only people he had mattered to. Once upon a time, very few people would have mourned Ryan.
For a brief moment, he felt sad, thinking about how lonely that life had been. He could almost feel sad for Oliver too—absent parents, no friends, and a crush on Marissa. Yeah, Ryan could relate. Sort of. And none of it made up for the fact that Oliver had been nuts, had tried to kill Ryan, had tried to kill Marissa, and had made Ryan a killer.
Ryan shivered. He still didn't feel the weight of what he had done, but the moment was fast approaching when he would.
And he had no idea what to do to avoid that, or to soften the blow.
Ryan didn't consciously pick up the phone. He only realized he was calling Trey when the connection was established and the phone began to ring.