Title : Chains of Habit
Author : Helen C.
Rating : PG-13
Summary : Half an hour after the cab had dropped him off down the road, he was still trying to gather the courage to ring the bell. Five 500-words drabbles, because I'm addicted to that format.
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.
AN. Huge thanks to joey51for beta'ing this.
Part Three – Before
Every day, Ryan could feel Marissa slipping away from him.
Every day, she moved farther out of his reach.
Every day, he forgot another detail about her.
The way she smelled.
The way she smiled.
The way she talked.
How nice and supportive she could be sometimes.
How needy and spoiled and annoying she could be sometimes.
How she always gave people a chance, even when no one else would.
It was all fading away in the distance.
Everything but how light she had weighed in his arms as he carried her away from the burning car.
Everything but her face, frozen in pain and fear.
Everything but her last breath, loud in his mind.
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The first thing Ryan did when he reached Reno was get a fake ID.
He spent the next three days drinking himself into oblivion. Sometimes, when he was drunk enough, he could almost see Marissa looking at him worriedly, asking him to stop scaring her.
He didn't want to listen to her, but he didn't really feel any closer to her in a drunken stupor, so he slept it off, wishing his dreams didn't involve the smell of burned fuel and metal. Wishing he could dream about happier times.
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Four days after he arrived, he hit the street, trying to find a lead on Volchok's whereabouts. People like him moved a lot and had friends in strange places. Maybe Ryan would stumble across something, if he asked the right people the right questions.
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Ryan spent one hundred and fifty-six days slumming it.
Gambling and playing pool to pay his motel rooms.
Pretending he liked to drink until he passed out.
Smoking weed and snorting coke with the hardasses, to prove that he was worthy of their confidence.
Going back to who has was in Chino, long before the Cohens and Marissa took a chance on him.
Skipping town every two or three weeks, once it was clear that Volchok hadn't been around, and starting over somewhere else.
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Sometimes, Ryan wondered whether Sandy and Kirsten were worried about him.
Sometimes, he wondered whether Seth would be scared of him if he saw him now—all shell, nothing beneath.
Cultivating his attitude.
Becoming the tough man he had once faked he was.
Disgusting himself, and burying that disgust deep down, where it wouldn't hurt him.
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On the one hundred and fifty-seventh day, as he was about to leave Tucson, Ryan found a lead.
On the one hundred and fifty-eighth day, he bought a gun and a box of bullets.
On the one hundred and fifty-ninth day, he stood in front of the deserted warehouse where Volchok now lived, hesitating.
Stalling.
Then, his inner voice, the one that still sounded like Trey even after all this time, whispered, "So, are you going to go in? Or are you going to stand here like a stupid little bitch?"
Ryan thought about Johnny and Marissa, and then Volchok's smile when he had blackmailed him into stealing a car.
He entered.