Finally -- more fic from me!
Okay, so it's not technically fic. It's a very unfinished and random Theresa/Ryan-ish one shot, along with a finished Theresa/Ryan one shot. I have a lot of stuff I never put in my journal or on ff.net, so I'll be doing that today. Sorry if I clog up your friends page!
Untitled/Unfinished
Ryan always knew Theresa was going to make a great mother. Her smile, the glow she had to her was just...maternal. She was practically his mother.
Dawn’s hair was crispy and fried, and when Ryan brushed it for her it was rough. Her make-up that she bought from CVS along with a few cartons of cigarettes was scattered in the bathroom, and sometimes Ryan would find a hot pink lipstick or metallic purple eye shadow in the kitchen or somewhere else odd. Dawn’s hands were warm, though, when she tucked him into bed every once in a while, even if he was in the ninth grade and had learned how to tuck himself in. When Dawn did it, it was nice. It showed that she wasn’t too high or drunk to forget she was a mother for a few minutes.
Theresa was a better listener, nurturer, friend than Dawn. Theresa took care of Ryan. Ryan took care of Theresa. It was a two-way street.
==
Theresa touched her stomach, then sighed.
“I think they want more ice cream,” she stated. She’d been calling the baby they for a while now. It was too early to decide if it was a he or she, and calling the baby it made the baby seem like an object. The baby was more than an object.
Ryan looked up from Theresa’s issue of People that he’d been reading. “Do they want me to run out and get another pint?” he said, pretending to be grumpy but he isn’t, because he’s always liked playing games with Theresa.
“They might like that,” Theresa replied with a soft smile, careful not to be too happy because she didn’t want Ryan to think she liked to see him away from the Cohens. It’d feel wrong - more wrong than taking him away from them.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Ryan answered,
Close the Box
When Ryan and Theresa were in the third grade, Theresa teased him about never smiling or laughing. One day after school, they sat in the sticky hot sunshine in Theresa’s backyard and wrote a way to make each other smile.
They both never mentioned it again because they both figured it was stupid and embarrassing.
Theresa opened the shoebox she kept in her closet and took out the faded piece of paper. She looked over the tilted writing in navy blue Sharpie marker.
She sighed, wondering if any of them would’ve worked that summer.
She decides on no, because Ryan didn’t seem to care about anything but Newport that summer. Despite how much he tried to cover it up, Theresa saw.
Theresa saw everything about Ryan Atwood other people couldn’t. People like his mother, Seth, or Marissa.
She saw the way he shut his eyes tightly after a sip of lemonade on a hot day, or always used a paperclip instead of staples on papers. She told herself that doesn’t mean love, it means a long friendship.
And she saw the way he smiled, just a ghost of one, when he got into the cab.
And Theresa decided that she couldn’t make him smile. Only they could. And she tried not to hate them for it, she really did. But she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t fair.
Theresa crumpled the piece of paper and threw it across the room.