A/N: Beachtree, the cuts from Seth shaving was the original plan. Then I decided this tactic would be better...god knows why.

Anyway, I want to thank you all for your wonderful reviews. I'm trying to get this to go somewhere, but I admit I'm kind of losing interest, probably because I have no idea where to take it. Eh, I'll figure something out. Eventually.

The End of Paralysis

Chapter Three: Substitutions in the Family Unit

That night Ryan slumped, exhausted, over the toilet. He didn't have the strength to wipe the trickling sweat from his face or the tears of strain from his eyes. It'd been a while since he'd been able to keep his food down.

He stayed there, still, and closed his eyes. He tried not to think. If he thought too much, for too long, it always came back to his brother's head on the wall.

Or the bruise on his cheek.

Or the cut on his foot.

"Hey, kid. That's not a very nice resting place is it?"

Two arms pulled him away from the bowl, onto a warm shoulder, and he heard the toilet flush.

There was a hand on his back. He started and pulled away.

"Easy, easy…" Sandy's voice soothed and Ryan heard running water before the feeling of a cool cloth against his face. "We need to take you to the doctor, don't we?"

Ryan shuddered and tried to pull away again. The words were patronizing and this was Sandy. Sandy was being patronizing. Sandy thought he was small, weak, helpless and his son, Seth, thought Ryan was a time bomb.

Tic tic fucking tic.

Ryan coughed and gagged and cringed when the remains of his stomach splattered across his guardian's chest. Sandy didn't let him go, because Sandy never did.

Sandy was all-encompassing, all-knowing. Sandy was God of the boys of the Cohen household. Father, father, father…

Ryan heard the poolhouse door open.

"Ry, are you okay? Dad, is he okay?" Seth.

"He'll be fine, son." Sandy.

"Go. Away." Ryan.

Footsteps retreating, then turning, then walking back. Shift, shift. Up one, down on. The Seth-Cohen-is-repentant dance.

"Look, Ryan, I'm-"

"GO AWAY."

Although it wasn't actually a yell, the rage glittering in Ryan's voice made the croak deafening, demanding, not-to-be-unheard. Footsteps retreating. Door closing.

"Kid, I know you're angry, but Seth was just worried about you. You've been through so much lately…"

Ryan used his remaining strength to push Sandy away. He couldn't listen to this, couldn't listen to Sandy defend Seth. He'd rather crawl away on his hands and knees than be subjected to this bullshit. Sandy didn't know what it was like. Didn't know what it was like to have to throw your pride out the window every night so you could stalk up to your foster brother's room because you were too goddamned pathetic to sleep alone now that your real brother was dead. No, he didn't know what it was like, thinking you had someone left to confide in, to take you in because they just wanted to. Someone who trusted you as completely as you did them.

Hey, Ryan, if you had a tattoo, where would it be?

Ryan thought it had just been one of Seth's whacky what-if questions until Seth had pointed to his arm and said, "What about there?" and talked about how cool it would look there and then, thinking he was cool, thinking he was stealth, said, "Let me see your arm."

Why, Ryan had asked, because he wasn't in the mood for a hand-drawn Seth Cohen original on his arm and Seth was like, just do it and Ryan had said no. Ryan had said no.

Seth Cohen was a lover, not a fighter, Ryan had always mused. That is, until he had found himself tackled by a scrawny mass of seventeen-year-old boy, his shirtsleeves being tugged up so Seth could get a good look at his undefiled skin.

What the hell, Seth?

Oh, Ryan, thank God.

"Where did the blood come from?" Sandy asked now as Ryan clenched his fists and his jaw and breathed deeply, his body slack against the bathroom wall.

Ryan looked at him with tired eyes and nodded towards his own foot. It was always the darkest of the dark when he left his bed for Seth's. Sometimes he missed things on the floor. Sometimes he would knock his toe against the nightstand, or stand on a stray textbook or get his foot caught on a carelessly tossed aside article of clothing. This particular time which had caused oh so much controversy he had actually made it outside with no blunders.

Then he had stepped on some broken glass by the pool - unseen and forgotten remnants of the clumsy dropping of a Snapple bottle two days earlier.

He told Sandy this.

Sandy's mouth made an 'O' shape, but no sound came out. They sat in silence for a long time and after a while, Ryan allowed Sandy to touch him again.

Finally, Sandy said, "I guess we should get you some slippers, huh kid?"

"He hates me," Seth told Summer.

"Cohen, The Valley is on and you're still talking. I just might hate you, too."

"It was completely and utterly inexcusable. I mean I like…raped his arm, or something. I mean, Summer, I tackled the guy. It wasn't like, 'Gee whiz, Ry, are you cutting?' 'Golly gee, Seth, no.' It was totally rape."

"Did he say 'no'?" Summer sounded bored.

Seth thought for a moment, sniffled.

"I think he might have."

"You're a sick bastard, Cohen," the brunette girl assured him in a voice laced with disinterest. Seth sneezed. Summer wrinkled her nose. "Ew! In more ways than one. Why are you here again?" Her eyes widened as she looked at her boyfriend's hand. "Gross, Cohen, is that snot?"

A tissue box was thrown at Seth's head, along with the words, "Use those. And wash your hands or don't touch me."

"I wasn't at school today," Seth whined, burying his head into the crook of her tiny neck. "I wanted to see my Summer."

He felt her hand, little and condescending, patting his arm, but it rested there for just a second and the light touch was enough to assure him that she still loved him. He had interrupted her TV-watching and infested her room with his sick germs, but she still loved him. Did Ryan still love him? Summer didn't tell Seth to go away…well, she did, but she didn't really mean it. Ryan obviously meant it. Ryan had shouted it, his voice adamant, almost desperate. Go away.

Seth had been told to go away many times before. He knew he was an annoying kid with a big mouth and a slippery tongue, and as such, he had an extensive past of "go away" and undoubtedly, an equally extensive future. Kids at school had told him to go away, his girlfriend had told him to go away, hell….his own parents had told him to get lost on more than one occasion. Even though that was probably a good thing, because they had always looked rather flustered and…ew, Seth didn't even want to go there.

But this was Ryan.

Ryan was his best friend, his brother, his partner in crime backslash world domination backslash zany hijinks and Seth had just ruined his only carefree relationship with an almost ludicrous accusation.

"Maybe you should go talk to him?"

Summer's suggestion brought Seth out of his reverie. He was surprised that she had taken her eyes away from her show long enough to take notice that he was elsewhere, but then he realized that the end credits were on.

Ah, yes. That was his Summer. Best season ever.

"Maybe…I'm not sure if he would listen to me." He jumped when he felt a powerful blow of a slap make contact with his arm. "Ow! What was that for?"

"Don't be a dumbass, Cohen. Chino loves you. Anyone with a pair of eyes can see that…well, a pair of working eyes. Because you know…there's always blind people." Summer paused, as if wondering if that had been a politically correct statement and then she shrugged, obviously deciding that she didn't care if it had been or not. "And loving you? Not easy. Well, it is easy, but you can be a bit much sometimes. And he lives with you! Like, I can't even wrap my mind around how someone can live with you and not beat you into a bloody pulp…I mean, and Chino! We all know how he likes to converse with his fists, Cohen. Let's think about that for a minute-"

"Let's not!" Seth interjected. "I get it, I get it. I'll talk to him."

"Does that mean you're leaving?" Summer asked excitedly.

"Summer, the show's over!"

"Yeah, but the longer you're in here, the more time you have to get my room all…germy and Cohen-y. So go home."

"Well, you'd have to drive me…"

Another blow to the arm. "You didn't drive yourself?"

"Ow! No…my mom drove me. She said she didn't want me driving while I was sick."

"Cohen…it's a cold."

"She's overprotective!" Seth shot back defensively. "So…can you give me a ride?"

Kirsten washed a dish before inserting it into one of the dishwasher racks. Double the clean. Sandy was still out in the poolhouse with Ryan. Had been for about an hour now. Seth was at Summer's. The house was quiet and kind of cold.

She wondered what it must be like to be Ryan. Sad, she knew. Lonely. Constantly uncomfortable. Kirsten was constantly uncomfortable, too.

She took a sip of wine and it warmed her momentarily.

Before Ryan, it had been the three of them. Sandy, Seth, and herself. She would constantly think about the similarities between Seth and Sandy, and wondered where she fell into the equation. Sandy plus Kirsten equals Seth. Sandy and Seth were both dark-haired and they both liked to talk. They both loathed Newport black-tie gatherings and they both loved Ryan immediately.

It had taken Kirsten a while, but she eventually realized that Ryan was the missing piece. If she were Sandy, Ryan would be Seth. He had just come to her damaged; not bloody-out-of-the-womb damaged, but bloody-from-some-junkie's-fist damaged. And Kirsten just didn't know how she felt about that.

The night he had found Trey, Kirsten had wrapped her arms around Ryan and rocked him to sleep. He hadn't cried, just sat motionless in her arms, his eyes open but empty and she had known that he was somewhere else. She had stayed with him, fallen asleep with him in his bed, and when she had opened her eyes, he had been gone.

At the time, she had been scared, afraid that he had gone over the edge, but she and Sandy had checked every room in the house and finally found him in the fetal position in Seth's bed.

That's when she realized that this wasn't about mothers, but brothers and she never showed it, but a large part of her wanted it not to be about brothers, but mothers.

Kirsten took another sip of wine.

Ryan still had a bruise on his cheek. She had decked Dawn at the funeral. Everyone, including herself, had been surprised. Ryan was hers. Not Dawn's. Dawn didn't get to hurt Ryan anymore.

Kirsten and Dawn both had blond hair and liked the drink.

"Kirsten?" Sandy stepped in, Ryan at his feet. "Is Seth here?"

"I took him over to Summer's. Ryan, sweetheart, do you think you can keep some soup down? I'll make you some soup…"

But Ryan was shaking his head and Sandy was leading him to the barstool. "You should eat something. I'll man the stove. I mean, you're already sick enough without Kirsten botching up something from a can…"

"Sandy!"

But Ryan cracked a small smile and that made it somewhat worth it, so Kirsten settled for smoothing back his blonde hair and feeling his skin for the slightest temperature variation and planting small kisses on his cheeks and forehead. She was delighted when he didn't pull away.

"He stepped on some leftover glass from that Snapple bottle Seth dropped yesterday," Sandy told his wife, setting a pot on the stove. "That's what the blood on the floor was about."

"We should sue the Snapple lady for physical and emotional damage," Kirsten joked.

"She's on Celebrity Fit Club," Ryan mumbled. "I don't think she's the Snapple lady anymore."

"Kid, can you handle chicken broth?" Sandy asked from the pantry.

Ryan wrinkled his nose. Kirsten laughed.

"Oh, I think he can."

Ryan opened his mouth to argue, but that's when they heard the front door opening. A few seconds later, Seth was in the kitchen, looking wearily from Sandy at the stove, to Kirsten to Ryan.

"Hey, fam," he said quietly.

"Hey, kiddo," Sandy replied, reaching a hand over to pat his son on the shoulder. Seth flinched.

"Easy, Dad. I'm fragile. And Summer hit me a couple of times and it really hurt."

"Kinky."

"Dad, ew."

Kirsten smiled at the lighthearted exchange, unconsciously running a hand once more through Ryan's hair, stifling a smile when he rested his head on her shoulder. Trey had left his little brother to walk in on a gruesome scene, but Kirsten couldn't help but reflect that the purpose it had served kind of resembled that of a meat-hammer's. It was a tenderizer. Ryan was tender now, fragile and vulnerable, and more willing to relax into her embrace. It made her ill to admit it, but she liked him better this way.

"Ry?" Seth asked hopefully.

Ryan didn't respond, didn't look at Seth.

Kirsten watched her son fidget for a few minutes before asking, "Mom, do we have any Nyquil? I feel really gross. Like gross to the point where if I sneezed, I'd fill this whole kitchen with snot and that includes whatever Dad's making in that pot. Hey, btw, what is that?"

"B.T.W.?" Sandy asked, looking hilariously befuddled.

"By the way," Ryan answered from Kirsten's shoulder. "Seth says too many words to speak them sometimes. And I don't want the chicken broth anymore."

"Well, at least he can talk about me," Seth said, his voice on the brink of bitter. "That's a step forward. And why would you want chicken broth in the first place?"

Ryan remained silent as Ryans tend to do.

"Nyquil's in the pantry, sweetheart," Kirsten interjected before things could get even more tense. "Don't take too much."

"What am I? Seven?" Seth grumbled.

By the end of the night, Seth was blissfully passed out in his bed, a quarter of the chicken broth had been downed (the other three-fourths poured down the drain while no one was looking), Sandy and Kirsten had had three chats about their children between three sessions of intercourse, and Ryan had stumbled up the stairs, half-asleep, to join his foster brother in slumber.

tbc.