OC Fic : Twelve Things That Never Happened to Ryan Atwood, 1a
Title : Twelve Things That Never Happened to Ryan Atwood (also known as The Series That Wouldn't Die)
Author : Helen C.
Rating : PG-13
Summary : Twelve things that never happened to Ryan. D'uh.
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. According to MS Word file properties, I started writing this series in December 2005. ::bangs head on desk::
AN2. Prepare yourselves for an overabundance of hurt!Ryan, angsty!Ryan, shootings, car accidents and other disasters. Most of the fics are unashamedly angsty and/or hurt/comfort. You've been warned.
AN3. This one is for loracj2; hope you'll enjoy this R/M offering.
AN4. Heartfelt thanks to joey51 for beta'ing this.
Twelve Things That Never Happened To Ryan Atwood
Helen C.
and they lived happily ever after…
Part One
I.
Because Seth can't shut up to save his life (or for any other reason), they don't go to TJ after all.
It's stupid, really. They're in Ryan's room, Seth is rambling animatedly about how awesome the TJ experience will be while Ryan wonders how and when his friend breathes, and then Sandy appears at the door. Ryan tries to signal for Seth to stop speaking but Seth only talks faster, cramming as many words as possible in the silence. He's talking about cockfights and drinking their worries away, so naturally, it doesn't take long for Sandy to realize that they never planned to go to ComicCon.
Sandy frowns and looks disappointed, which makes Ryan feel more guilty than he has in a long while, his guts twisting painfully to remind of everything he owes the Cohens. He really can't afford to screw up, and even if he could, well, he realizes now that leaving the country would have been a shitty thing to do behind his new guardians' backs.
Seth suddenly stops talking and turns, freezing when he sees his father standing there. Seth really can't shut up to save his life, so he tries to make up a story to cover up his blunder. Sandy shifts from disappointed to angry at the blatant lie and Ryan apologizes hurriedly, hoping Seth will get the hint and just stop talking altogether.
Seth does. There may be hope for him yet.
They both get grounded for two weeks-it would have only been one week if Seth hadn't said, "But we didn't actually do anything," which infuriated Sandy enough that he doubled the sentence.
One day Ryan is going to have a long, long talk with Seth about the necessity of keeping quiet. It's not like they won't have time to start Seth's education now that they're stuck in the house without access to the PlayStation or the TV.
At least, the Cohens allow them books (and Seth's comics, after some deliberation), so Seth can "start on Ryan's education in today's pop culture," whatever the hell that means. Ryan doesn't mind; he could face anything as long as he has books. Actually, he did face a lot of things thanks to books. The library was once a refuge for him in Chino, before Trey decided that it wouldn't do to have his brother become "a bookworm" and shamed Ryan out of going there. Fat lot of good listening to Trey did to him, in hindsight.
***
When school starts, the rumor is quick to spread among the prettiest and wealthiest of Newport. Marissa learned in TJ that Luke was cheating on her and dumped his sorry ass, stormed back to Newport to learn that her parents were getting divorced, and ran to Summer's house, crying hysterically.
"Big scoop," Summer says about Luke's cheating tendencies, but she keeps bringing Marissa coffee and chocolate, keeps nudging her and dragging her out shopping or to the beach, so Ryan supposes there's more to Summer than a bitchy bimbo. When he sees her put an arm around Marissa's shoulders and herd her through the halls, glaring at Luke, Ryan can see why Seth fell for that girl.
Given the turn Marissa's life has taken, Ryan isn't surprised when, a little before Halloween, she starts talking to him when they meet between classes, asking him if he's going to this party, or that one, and does he think they'll see each other?
"Sure," he says, shrugging, and tries to pretend he's unaffected by her bright smile and the way her eyes light up.
Luke sees them talking and spends the next two weeks sulking and shooting glares at Ryan. It all ends with a fight in the locker room after soccer practice, that lends them both stitches and a month in detention.
Sandy lectures Ryan on the necessity of avoiding getting into any more trouble, and Ryan looks down, knowing he deserves it but convinced that walking away would have just postponed the inevitable. Sooner or later, he and Luke were gonna have it out again. At least, it's done, and Ryan came out on top-Luke got three more stitches than Ryan, so he considers it his win-which should ensure that Luke will let him be now.
His PO threatens to send him to anger management classes if such a thing happens again, and Ryan promises not to fight anymore-a promise he made and broke countless times in the past but he means it this time. It must show because the man nods and sends him home after only a stern talking to.
The coach gives a long speech on team spirit and threatens to make Luke and Ryan clean the bathroom with a toothbrush for the rest of the year if they don't start playing together instead of against each other. Things calm down after that. Not that Ryan thinks the coach is serious, but he doesn't want to find out the hard way, and Luke seems to feel the same way.
Ryan starts taking Marissa out and on their fourth date, they meet Luke, who's shamelessly flirting with a preppy girl named Taylor Townsend. "They deserve each other," Marissa says, her only words on the subject.
***
The year flies by. For once, things are going smoothly for Ryan-he goes to school and finds it surprisingly easy to actually work on assignments now that he doesn't have to care for Dawn and her good-for-nothing boyfriend of the day. Having a house he doesn't dread coming back to at the end of the day makes more of a difference than he would have thought back in Chino.
And as promised, there are no more fights-Luke actually finds his way into the group once his father makes his coming out, cementing the truce.
"How did this happen?" Seth asks once.
Ryan can only shrug and refrains from pointing out that Seth's own tendency of picking up strays once saved his life. They don't need to have these heavy discussions to know where they stand.
Everyone at Harbor knows that Seth-and-Summer and Ryan-and-Marissa are attached at the hip and rarely go anywhere on their own.
"Are we boring?" Summer asks once when they're eating at their usual diner, after their no-less usual Friday evening movie.
"Yes," Ryan, Seth and Marissa reply as one.
"That's bad," Summer sighs.
Ryan thinks that the last time his life wasn't boring, it involved Juvie, cops, losing his whole family and landing on the Cohens' doorsteps, but he knows that talking about Chino tends to make for horribly awkward conversation stoppers, so he just says, "Happy people have no stories."
"Very nineties of you," Seth says, his tone indicating that he's about to launch in a long-winded explanation.
"Nineties?" Ryan asks puzzled.
"Therapy? Mid-Nineties? Singing, 'Happy people have no stories.'" Seth mock-shudders.
Ryan was talking about Tolstoy but bites back his comment, knowing what Seth would say to that.
"We're sad," Summer concludes, and no one disagrees.
II.
Ryan spends most of 2005 longing for the times when the four of them were sad and boring. As soon as Trey gets out of jail, his eyes wilder and his fuse shorter than when he entered, a permanent ball of dread forms in Ryan's stomach. There's a constant metallic taste in his mouth, it seems that his heart keeps pounding in his ears, blocking out Sandy's questions about how he's doing and Trey promises that he's not going to screw things up this time.
He smiles at Sandy and says, "I'm fine." He nods at Trey and says, "Sure, I know."
He wishes he could tell his brother that he trusts him, but Trey would see through the lie, so he doesn't. All he can do is wait until Trey crashes and burns again, hoping this time, no one will get hurt in the process.
It's like watching the cars driving by, knowing one of the drivers is going to lose control of his car and cause a gigantic pileup, and being powerless to prevent it.
Summer and Marissa share looks they think he can't see when he fails to reply to them. Seth tries to distract him, to keep him entertained, to draw him into the world, but Ryan can't focus on much anything besides what Trey is doing. He hates himself for not trusting his brother, but a lifetime of disappointments can't be ignored.
Then, Seth, Sandy and Ryan go spend a weekend in Miami, and when they come back, the feeling that something is about to go dramatically wrong is even stronger than before. Trey smiles and shows him the apartment he got thanks to Marissa's help, and talks about this place that looks like maybe they're gonna hire him, and Ryan ignores his gut-feeling and tries to be genuinely happy for his brother, feeling like the worst asshole in the world when he can't quite manage it.
It's only weeks later, when Marissa collapses into his arms, sobbing, that Ryan realizes that his instincts were right, and that he should really have told Sandy that inviting Trey over was a bad idea. But Trey is… was, his brother. Bothers stick together.
Up until a point.
Ryan holds Marissa while she cries herself to sleep in his arms, gently sets her down on his bed, and drives to Trey's place, his eyesight whiting out in anger.
He barely registers the gun pointed at him, doesn't hear his own scream of rage as he rushes Trey and hits and kicks him, releasing his pent-up anger, all the months of worrying without knowing why and the years of loving and hating his brother in equal measures.
He has a fleeting moment of panic as Trey pins him down to the floor and squeezes his throat and fuck, it hurts so much to die this way, and Ryan just wants it to be over.
Then, all of sudden, he can breathe again and it hurts even more, the air burning its way through his lungs as he gasps in long, shuddering breaths.
He starts seeing again and he almost regrets it when his eyes fall on Seth and Summer, huddled in each other's arms near the door, and Marissa, already in tears, a gun pointing at where Trey is lying, bleeding. Dying.
***
Ryan doesn't really start thinking again until much later, at the hospital, with Sandy sitting next to his bed and holding his hand.
"You okay?" Sandy asks as soon as Ryan opens his eyes.
And it's a stupid question, but less stupid than Ryan's subdued "Yeah."
He's not even remotely okay, and the rest of the summer, spent deflecting questions from a skeptical DA and more skeptical cops-"And you really didn't go there planning to kill your brother?"-only make matters worse.
The icing on the cake, of course, is Trey waking up and accusing Ryan of shooting the gun himself. That's the last nail in the coffin of their relationship, Ryan thinks as he showers under the watchful eyes of the guards and the other inmates. It should hurt, losing his brother that way, but Ryan hasn't allowed himself to feel since Marissa told him what Trey tried to do. Ryan can still hear her shaky words. "It's Trey… He tried to… When we were alone…"
Sandy gets him out and Ryan spends weeks showering compulsively, refusing to think about Trey's hands on Marissa, or about the way they tried to kill each other, or about the betrayal, or about anything at all.
III.
Things get from bad to worse in 2006.
Marissa and Ryan's relationship disintegrates under the weight of what Trey did, and isn't it fucking typical that Trey once again managed to spoil something Ryan had? For a long time, they try to hang on to what little is left of them, pretending the summer didn't happen, pretending Trey's hands were never on Marissa, never around Ryan's neck, never ripped them apart.
Then, Marissa finds another lost boy to help, and Ryan wishes he could be less bitter about the fact that she probably won't be burned as badly by gentle, easy-going Johnny as she was by him. He still remembers what he told her in the model home-"We're not from the same world." It took Trey to show her what Ryan meant, but surely, now, she gets it.
Things in Newport are never easy. When Johnny dies in front of Marissa, he's the one she calls in the middle of the night, crying, before Julie takes the phone away from her and coldly informs Ryan that she has the situation under control.
We're not from the same world.
Ryan sometimes wonders if anyone is from the same world as Marissa.
"I think you're not giving yourself nearly enough credit," Sadie tells him, a few weeks after Johnny's funeral. She looks worried whenever he talks like that, but at least she lets him talk and doesn't look too horrified when he lets something slip, and he's damn grateful that Johnny had a cousin who's actually good at listening. "I think you both did the best you could, but what happened to both of you… Well, it's not wonder your relationship cracked under the pressure."
Ryan shivers, remembering that horrible moment in the ER, with doctors shooting orders over Trey's motionless body, and Sandy's worried face swimming under his eyes until everything faded to black.
He sleeps with Sadie that night and when he leaves in the morning, she tells him to stop feeling guilty for being in love with Marissa.
"I'm not-" he tries. He's not. He loves Marissa, but he doesn’t think he can be with her at the moment. He probably shouldn't be with anyone at the moment.
She smiles sadly. "Of course, you are. It's okay."
I wasn't thinking about her last night, he wants to say. The words stay stuck in his throat and he leaves hurriedly, her resigned smile following him home.
***
Things are awkward between Marissa and Ryan in their last months of high school, but they manage to remain friends in the wake of the Johnny fiasco.
"I'm not ready for college," Marissa tells Ryan as they're heading to Harbor's graduation ceremony.
Ryan is still adjusting to the fact that he's even graduating from high school himself. Fuck, he doesn't feel ready for college either. His trying day in Berkeley only went to show how out of place he felt, despite the warm welcome and the stories of other students who came from difficult backgrounds.
"Hey," Marissa says, and Ryan smiles, eyes on the road.
"Me neither," he says. But she knows that already, just like he knew before she spoke that she's scared as hell. They both went through too much to be able to hide these things from each other.
"I just… I know this should be something great to look forward to, but all I feel is…" She trails off, staring off into the distance. He waits patiently for her to articulate something they both feel. "It's like I'm not ready, like I'm not… I don't know, normal enough to be able to face college."
Ryan thinks briefly about his life with Dawn and Trey, back when college was something that happened to others, in another world, but not to Ryan or to anyone he knew. The Cohens worked hard to get him to believe in the future, yet part of him still doesn't. He can't help thinking that something will go wrong today, that someone will tell him he doesn't have a right to be there, standing with these wealthy kids who've shared his life for three years and don't know anything about him.
Is he really a guy who got into Berkeley, or is he still that fifteen-year-old kid who stole a car and got on Luke's wrong side within five minutes of meeting him?
Marissa is waiting for him to answer, as if that would fix anything, so he offers, "Maybe it'll be better when we're actually there?"
He doesn’t think so and he can tell from the sideway look she throws him that she doesn't either.
The road is deserted and Ryan drives down the slope, occasionally glancing at the sea on his right. He'll miss seeing the ocean from his room. He was never much of a beach person, but he got used to the ocean's presence during his first year in Newport.
He's bringing the car around yet another sharp turn and when the sunlight reflects on a windshield, it takes him a few seconds to realize that a car is heading straight toward them.
Marissa shrieks, "Ryan!"
He slams on the brakes, but it doesn't do any good-he saw the car too late, or it was going too fast, and suddenly the whole world is reduced to screeching metal as his body is being jerked around.
He feels himself floating, his body free of gravity, for a few endless moments.
Then, another impact shakes him badly enough that he can feel something in his leg snap and finally they're standing still again, and there no sound and no light at all.
He should move, get out of the car, but he can't make his body obey his mind's commands, so he just sits there, waiting.
He should be scared, but he can't manage that either. He's just empty, waiting for whatever's next.
He can faintly hear sirens in the distance and he wants to ask Trey if he's all right, but for some reason he has the feeling that it's not an appropriate response to what's happening.
He remembers why when he hears a frightened, female voice. "Ryan?"
Marissa.
"Are you okay?" the voice insists.
No, he doesn't think he is. "Are you?" he asks, but she doesn't seem to hear him.
"Oh, my God, Ryan! Are you okay?"
The last thing he thinks about before everything fades to black is that in light of the fact that he's dying, college doesn't seem so scary anymore. He wants to say so to Marissa-maybe it'll reassure her a little-but he can't get the words out. He can feel his hand being squeezed, can hear panicked words near his head, then he feels himself sink.
Part Two
Author : Helen C.
Rating : PG-13
Summary : Twelve things that never happened to Ryan. D'uh.
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. According to MS Word file properties, I started writing this series in December 2005. ::bangs head on desk::
AN2. Prepare yourselves for an overabundance of hurt!Ryan, angsty!Ryan, shootings, car accidents and other disasters. Most of the fics are unashamedly angsty and/or hurt/comfort. You've been warned.
AN3. This one is for loracj2; hope you'll enjoy this R/M offering.
AN4. Heartfelt thanks to joey51 for beta'ing this.
Twelve Things That Never Happened To Ryan Atwood
Helen C.
and they lived happily ever after…
Part One
I.
Because Seth can't shut up to save his life (or for any other reason), they don't go to TJ after all.
It's stupid, really. They're in Ryan's room, Seth is rambling animatedly about how awesome the TJ experience will be while Ryan wonders how and when his friend breathes, and then Sandy appears at the door. Ryan tries to signal for Seth to stop speaking but Seth only talks faster, cramming as many words as possible in the silence. He's talking about cockfights and drinking their worries away, so naturally, it doesn't take long for Sandy to realize that they never planned to go to ComicCon.
Sandy frowns and looks disappointed, which makes Ryan feel more guilty than he has in a long while, his guts twisting painfully to remind of everything he owes the Cohens. He really can't afford to screw up, and even if he could, well, he realizes now that leaving the country would have been a shitty thing to do behind his new guardians' backs.
Seth suddenly stops talking and turns, freezing when he sees his father standing there. Seth really can't shut up to save his life, so he tries to make up a story to cover up his blunder. Sandy shifts from disappointed to angry at the blatant lie and Ryan apologizes hurriedly, hoping Seth will get the hint and just stop talking altogether.
Seth does. There may be hope for him yet.
They both get grounded for two weeks-it would have only been one week if Seth hadn't said, "But we didn't actually do anything," which infuriated Sandy enough that he doubled the sentence.
One day Ryan is going to have a long, long talk with Seth about the necessity of keeping quiet. It's not like they won't have time to start Seth's education now that they're stuck in the house without access to the PlayStation or the TV.
At least, the Cohens allow them books (and Seth's comics, after some deliberation), so Seth can "start on Ryan's education in today's pop culture," whatever the hell that means. Ryan doesn't mind; he could face anything as long as he has books. Actually, he did face a lot of things thanks to books. The library was once a refuge for him in Chino, before Trey decided that it wouldn't do to have his brother become "a bookworm" and shamed Ryan out of going there. Fat lot of good listening to Trey did to him, in hindsight.
***
When school starts, the rumor is quick to spread among the prettiest and wealthiest of Newport. Marissa learned in TJ that Luke was cheating on her and dumped his sorry ass, stormed back to Newport to learn that her parents were getting divorced, and ran to Summer's house, crying hysterically.
"Big scoop," Summer says about Luke's cheating tendencies, but she keeps bringing Marissa coffee and chocolate, keeps nudging her and dragging her out shopping or to the beach, so Ryan supposes there's more to Summer than a bitchy bimbo. When he sees her put an arm around Marissa's shoulders and herd her through the halls, glaring at Luke, Ryan can see why Seth fell for that girl.
Given the turn Marissa's life has taken, Ryan isn't surprised when, a little before Halloween, she starts talking to him when they meet between classes, asking him if he's going to this party, or that one, and does he think they'll see each other?
"Sure," he says, shrugging, and tries to pretend he's unaffected by her bright smile and the way her eyes light up.
Luke sees them talking and spends the next two weeks sulking and shooting glares at Ryan. It all ends with a fight in the locker room after soccer practice, that lends them both stitches and a month in detention.
Sandy lectures Ryan on the necessity of avoiding getting into any more trouble, and Ryan looks down, knowing he deserves it but convinced that walking away would have just postponed the inevitable. Sooner or later, he and Luke were gonna have it out again. At least, it's done, and Ryan came out on top-Luke got three more stitches than Ryan, so he considers it his win-which should ensure that Luke will let him be now.
His PO threatens to send him to anger management classes if such a thing happens again, and Ryan promises not to fight anymore-a promise he made and broke countless times in the past but he means it this time. It must show because the man nods and sends him home after only a stern talking to.
The coach gives a long speech on team spirit and threatens to make Luke and Ryan clean the bathroom with a toothbrush for the rest of the year if they don't start playing together instead of against each other. Things calm down after that. Not that Ryan thinks the coach is serious, but he doesn't want to find out the hard way, and Luke seems to feel the same way.
Ryan starts taking Marissa out and on their fourth date, they meet Luke, who's shamelessly flirting with a preppy girl named Taylor Townsend. "They deserve each other," Marissa says, her only words on the subject.
***
The year flies by. For once, things are going smoothly for Ryan-he goes to school and finds it surprisingly easy to actually work on assignments now that he doesn't have to care for Dawn and her good-for-nothing boyfriend of the day. Having a house he doesn't dread coming back to at the end of the day makes more of a difference than he would have thought back in Chino.
And as promised, there are no more fights-Luke actually finds his way into the group once his father makes his coming out, cementing the truce.
"How did this happen?" Seth asks once.
Ryan can only shrug and refrains from pointing out that Seth's own tendency of picking up strays once saved his life. They don't need to have these heavy discussions to know where they stand.
Everyone at Harbor knows that Seth-and-Summer and Ryan-and-Marissa are attached at the hip and rarely go anywhere on their own.
"Are we boring?" Summer asks once when they're eating at their usual diner, after their no-less usual Friday evening movie.
"Yes," Ryan, Seth and Marissa reply as one.
"That's bad," Summer sighs.
Ryan thinks that the last time his life wasn't boring, it involved Juvie, cops, losing his whole family and landing on the Cohens' doorsteps, but he knows that talking about Chino tends to make for horribly awkward conversation stoppers, so he just says, "Happy people have no stories."
"Very nineties of you," Seth says, his tone indicating that he's about to launch in a long-winded explanation.
"Nineties?" Ryan asks puzzled.
"Therapy? Mid-Nineties? Singing, 'Happy people have no stories.'" Seth mock-shudders.
Ryan was talking about Tolstoy but bites back his comment, knowing what Seth would say to that.
"We're sad," Summer concludes, and no one disagrees.
II.
Ryan spends most of 2005 longing for the times when the four of them were sad and boring. As soon as Trey gets out of jail, his eyes wilder and his fuse shorter than when he entered, a permanent ball of dread forms in Ryan's stomach. There's a constant metallic taste in his mouth, it seems that his heart keeps pounding in his ears, blocking out Sandy's questions about how he's doing and Trey promises that he's not going to screw things up this time.
He smiles at Sandy and says, "I'm fine." He nods at Trey and says, "Sure, I know."
He wishes he could tell his brother that he trusts him, but Trey would see through the lie, so he doesn't. All he can do is wait until Trey crashes and burns again, hoping this time, no one will get hurt in the process.
It's like watching the cars driving by, knowing one of the drivers is going to lose control of his car and cause a gigantic pileup, and being powerless to prevent it.
Summer and Marissa share looks they think he can't see when he fails to reply to them. Seth tries to distract him, to keep him entertained, to draw him into the world, but Ryan can't focus on much anything besides what Trey is doing. He hates himself for not trusting his brother, but a lifetime of disappointments can't be ignored.
Then, Seth, Sandy and Ryan go spend a weekend in Miami, and when they come back, the feeling that something is about to go dramatically wrong is even stronger than before. Trey smiles and shows him the apartment he got thanks to Marissa's help, and talks about this place that looks like maybe they're gonna hire him, and Ryan ignores his gut-feeling and tries to be genuinely happy for his brother, feeling like the worst asshole in the world when he can't quite manage it.
It's only weeks later, when Marissa collapses into his arms, sobbing, that Ryan realizes that his instincts were right, and that he should really have told Sandy that inviting Trey over was a bad idea. But Trey is… was, his brother. Bothers stick together.
Up until a point.
Ryan holds Marissa while she cries herself to sleep in his arms, gently sets her down on his bed, and drives to Trey's place, his eyesight whiting out in anger.
He barely registers the gun pointed at him, doesn't hear his own scream of rage as he rushes Trey and hits and kicks him, releasing his pent-up anger, all the months of worrying without knowing why and the years of loving and hating his brother in equal measures.
He has a fleeting moment of panic as Trey pins him down to the floor and squeezes his throat and fuck, it hurts so much to die this way, and Ryan just wants it to be over.
Then, all of sudden, he can breathe again and it hurts even more, the air burning its way through his lungs as he gasps in long, shuddering breaths.
He starts seeing again and he almost regrets it when his eyes fall on Seth and Summer, huddled in each other's arms near the door, and Marissa, already in tears, a gun pointing at where Trey is lying, bleeding. Dying.
***
Ryan doesn't really start thinking again until much later, at the hospital, with Sandy sitting next to his bed and holding his hand.
"You okay?" Sandy asks as soon as Ryan opens his eyes.
And it's a stupid question, but less stupid than Ryan's subdued "Yeah."
He's not even remotely okay, and the rest of the summer, spent deflecting questions from a skeptical DA and more skeptical cops-"And you really didn't go there planning to kill your brother?"-only make matters worse.
The icing on the cake, of course, is Trey waking up and accusing Ryan of shooting the gun himself. That's the last nail in the coffin of their relationship, Ryan thinks as he showers under the watchful eyes of the guards and the other inmates. It should hurt, losing his brother that way, but Ryan hasn't allowed himself to feel since Marissa told him what Trey tried to do. Ryan can still hear her shaky words. "It's Trey… He tried to… When we were alone…"
Sandy gets him out and Ryan spends weeks showering compulsively, refusing to think about Trey's hands on Marissa, or about the way they tried to kill each other, or about the betrayal, or about anything at all.
III.
Things get from bad to worse in 2006.
Marissa and Ryan's relationship disintegrates under the weight of what Trey did, and isn't it fucking typical that Trey once again managed to spoil something Ryan had? For a long time, they try to hang on to what little is left of them, pretending the summer didn't happen, pretending Trey's hands were never on Marissa, never around Ryan's neck, never ripped them apart.
Then, Marissa finds another lost boy to help, and Ryan wishes he could be less bitter about the fact that she probably won't be burned as badly by gentle, easy-going Johnny as she was by him. He still remembers what he told her in the model home-"We're not from the same world." It took Trey to show her what Ryan meant, but surely, now, she gets it.
Things in Newport are never easy. When Johnny dies in front of Marissa, he's the one she calls in the middle of the night, crying, before Julie takes the phone away from her and coldly informs Ryan that she has the situation under control.
We're not from the same world.
Ryan sometimes wonders if anyone is from the same world as Marissa.
"I think you're not giving yourself nearly enough credit," Sadie tells him, a few weeks after Johnny's funeral. She looks worried whenever he talks like that, but at least she lets him talk and doesn't look too horrified when he lets something slip, and he's damn grateful that Johnny had a cousin who's actually good at listening. "I think you both did the best you could, but what happened to both of you… Well, it's not wonder your relationship cracked under the pressure."
Ryan shivers, remembering that horrible moment in the ER, with doctors shooting orders over Trey's motionless body, and Sandy's worried face swimming under his eyes until everything faded to black.
He sleeps with Sadie that night and when he leaves in the morning, she tells him to stop feeling guilty for being in love with Marissa.
"I'm not-" he tries. He's not. He loves Marissa, but he doesn’t think he can be with her at the moment. He probably shouldn't be with anyone at the moment.
She smiles sadly. "Of course, you are. It's okay."
I wasn't thinking about her last night, he wants to say. The words stay stuck in his throat and he leaves hurriedly, her resigned smile following him home.
***
Things are awkward between Marissa and Ryan in their last months of high school, but they manage to remain friends in the wake of the Johnny fiasco.
"I'm not ready for college," Marissa tells Ryan as they're heading to Harbor's graduation ceremony.
Ryan is still adjusting to the fact that he's even graduating from high school himself. Fuck, he doesn't feel ready for college either. His trying day in Berkeley only went to show how out of place he felt, despite the warm welcome and the stories of other students who came from difficult backgrounds.
"Hey," Marissa says, and Ryan smiles, eyes on the road.
"Me neither," he says. But she knows that already, just like he knew before she spoke that she's scared as hell. They both went through too much to be able to hide these things from each other.
"I just… I know this should be something great to look forward to, but all I feel is…" She trails off, staring off into the distance. He waits patiently for her to articulate something they both feel. "It's like I'm not ready, like I'm not… I don't know, normal enough to be able to face college."
Ryan thinks briefly about his life with Dawn and Trey, back when college was something that happened to others, in another world, but not to Ryan or to anyone he knew. The Cohens worked hard to get him to believe in the future, yet part of him still doesn't. He can't help thinking that something will go wrong today, that someone will tell him he doesn't have a right to be there, standing with these wealthy kids who've shared his life for three years and don't know anything about him.
Is he really a guy who got into Berkeley, or is he still that fifteen-year-old kid who stole a car and got on Luke's wrong side within five minutes of meeting him?
Marissa is waiting for him to answer, as if that would fix anything, so he offers, "Maybe it'll be better when we're actually there?"
He doesn’t think so and he can tell from the sideway look she throws him that she doesn't either.
The road is deserted and Ryan drives down the slope, occasionally glancing at the sea on his right. He'll miss seeing the ocean from his room. He was never much of a beach person, but he got used to the ocean's presence during his first year in Newport.
He's bringing the car around yet another sharp turn and when the sunlight reflects on a windshield, it takes him a few seconds to realize that a car is heading straight toward them.
Marissa shrieks, "Ryan!"
He slams on the brakes, but it doesn't do any good-he saw the car too late, or it was going too fast, and suddenly the whole world is reduced to screeching metal as his body is being jerked around.
He feels himself floating, his body free of gravity, for a few endless moments.
Then, another impact shakes him badly enough that he can feel something in his leg snap and finally they're standing still again, and there no sound and no light at all.
He should move, get out of the car, but he can't make his body obey his mind's commands, so he just sits there, waiting.
He should be scared, but he can't manage that either. He's just empty, waiting for whatever's next.
He can faintly hear sirens in the distance and he wants to ask Trey if he's all right, but for some reason he has the feeling that it's not an appropriate response to what's happening.
He remembers why when he hears a frightened, female voice. "Ryan?"
Marissa.
"Are you okay?" the voice insists.
No, he doesn't think he is. "Are you?" he asks, but she doesn't seem to hear him.
"Oh, my God, Ryan! Are you okay?"
The last thing he thinks about before everything fades to black is that in light of the fact that he's dying, college doesn't seem so scary anymore. He wants to say so to Marissa-maybe it'll reassure her a little-but he can't get the words out. He can feel his hand being squeezed, can hear panicked words near his head, then he feels himself sink.
Part Two