Small Steps 7
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.
Acknowledgements : Again, many thanks to my beta, Joey51.
Chapter 7 : The Question
Trey placed a collect call in the afternoon, after Ryan had wiped Seth's ass at Play Station again, and Seth had gone to his room to sulk, or, possibly, to develop a new strategy. Ryan was betting on the sulking.
In typical Trey fashion, the discussion began with a terse, "I thought we agreed not to talk again?"
"Sorry," Ryan mumbled, suddenly wondering why this had seemed like a good idea.
Apparently, prison hadn't made Trey slower to decipher Ryan's moods, and that one word was enough to set off all of his older brother’s alarms. "Spill," Trey said.
So, Ryan -- at first haltingly, then more quickly -- filled Trey in on what had happened. He stuck to cold, manageable facts -- Oliver's back story, the call from Marissa, the fight, the gunshot. Oliver's surprise as he died.
Trey huffed, "They're always surprised," before asking Ryan why he had called.
"I don't know," Ryan admitted.
And, in truth, he really didn't know what he wanted from Trey. Advice from a brother who had spent more time in jail than free since his fifteenth birthday? Reassurance? Comfort? It wasn't as if the Cohens didn't provide all that, and more.
"You don't know?"
"I really don't. I picked up the phone, and it was your number I dialed."
"The number of your incarcerated brother, who you haven't spoken to in more than a year?"
"Yeah."
"You're a weird kid."
Ryan let out a strangled laugh, wondering how his brother would react to Seth. "One day, I'll introduce you to my friend," he said.
"The kid who gave you the comic book for me?" Trey asked, seemingly unsurprised by the non sequitur.
"Yes."
The two brothers fell silent. "Kid?" Trey asked after a while.
"Yeah."
"I don't have much time left, so I'm just going to ask… You feel bad about killing that nutter?"
That was Trey, Ryan thought ruefully. Never one to beat around the bush. Or to use a modicum of tact.
"Yep." He hadn't admitted it to anyone yet, but then no one had asked him the question -- they all kept saying that Ryan had done what he had to do, that he didn't have a choice, and while that may have been true, it didn't keep Ryan from feeling, well, bad. It didn't matter that he hadn't had a choice; circumstances hardly mattered when the end result was so devastating.
Ryan had always thought that he was doing the right thing by helping people. Now, he was beginning to doubt it. How many times had he made things worse, instead of helping? Would Luke have been involved in an accident if Ryan hadn't pressured him to break up with Julie? Would Seth have left his parents if Ryan hadn't tried to help Theresa?
Things were growing increasingly complicated. Back in Chino, there weren't that many consequences to consider. His actions then only affected himself, and sometimes his family, or Theresa. Now, there were so many people involved in his life, directly or not, that every decision he made always seemed to affect someone, if only by proxy.
"From what you said, you didn't have a choice," Trey pointed out, snapping Ryan out of his reverie.
"Yeah."
There was another silence, during which Trey probably used his older brother magical powers to read Ryan's mind, then, "What? Do you doubt that he would have killed you, if you hadn't killed him first?"
Ryan's breath caught in his throat and he hung up on Trey, almost reflexively. He then spent five minutes trying to catch his breath, as if he had just played a lengthy soccer match, and another ten minutes sitting on his bed, dizzy and confused, wondering what the hell was happening to him, because *this* didn't strike him as a particularly normal reaction.
* * *
Near the end of his first year in Newport, Ryan had found "his" spot on the beach -- the place where he felt most at ease, the place where he went when he wanted some time alone, when he wanted to think. It was not far from the lifeguard tower where he had announced to the others his decision to go back to Chino, but far enough that he could sit there unnoticed once it was dark and most people had gone home. Ryan considered the place to be his own, always feeling slightly peeved when someone was occupying it, even though it was a public domain and he had no ground to feel territorial about it.
Thankfully, tonight, the place was free, and Ryan was sprawled on the beach, staring at the sunset and absently tracing circles in the sand next to his thigh. The sky was aflame as the sun slowly disappeared behind the horizon line, and it was so beautiful that it took his breath away.
No matter how many times he saw this, Ryan would never get used to it. He had grown used to having an ocean nearby, but this, this pure beauty, it was still new to him.
It was soothing, and it helped him to forget the afternoon spent reading and doing school work, desperately trying not to think about Trey's question.
Near diner time, Ryan was finally feeling less shell-shocked, more able to process his talk with Trey. So, he warned the Cohens that he wanted to go for a walk, and wouldn't be home for diner. He didn't doubt Seth would find him eventually, but for now, he was alone, and was taking the opportunity to think, which was all he seemed to be doing this holiday, as Seth had remarked -- except he hadn't put it that way.
"You're brooding, man!" he had said as Ryan was leaving.
"Thinking," Ryan had corrected.
"Brooding," Seth had insisted, and Ryan had resorted to using The Glare on him. It was always effective in shutting Seth up.
Most times, Ryan didn't mind his friend's verbal diarrhea. It helped to keep Ryan grounded, even when he didn't understand what Seth was saying.
Then, sometimes, it distracted him when he was trying to follow through a thought or to figure something out, or just to absorb something that had been said to him.
"Do you doubt that he would have killed you, if you hadn't killed him first?"
And Trey had certainly given Ryan a lot to think about. Hence the need for solitude.
"Do you doubt that he would have killed you, if you hadn't killed him first?"
Ryan wondered how the hell Trey did it. Certainly, Trey had always been able to read Ryan's mind -- one of his rare talents, as a big brother -- but still, they hadn't seen each other in months. How could his brother be so spot-on? Was Ryan that predictable?
Because Ryan did wonder if, perhaps, he hadn't been too quick to shoot, and he didn't want to wonder.
It might lead to other unpleasant questions.
It might make him wonder if his visceral fear of seeing someone he loved being hurt didn't make him too hasty to act. Ryan didn't want to think that he had taken a life for the sake of his not-so-white knight tendencies.
He sighed, frustrated. He should really call Trey back, before his brother panicked and called the Cohens. He was perfectly capable of doing it. Trey's protective tendencies were not as widespread as Ryan's, but he had always been a brother hen to Ryan.
"Great," Ryan sighed. He sensed a presence mere seconds before a can of soda materialized in front of his face.
"Should I be worried to find you sitting alone in the dark, muttering to yourself?"
Ryan raised his head and nodded at Luke, accepting the can. Luke lowered himself on the sand, sighing happily.
"I missed this place," he said.
Ryan opened his drink and took a gulp, shuddering as he thought about the ridiculous amount of sugar he was absorbing.
"Still claiming ownership of this spot, then?" Luke asked conversationally.
"Hm."
"And still as talkative?"
"Yeah."
Luke laughed. "Come on man, you can do better. I've seen you do better. Once or twice."
Ryan smiled.
"Where's your other half?" Luke asked.
"Please, tell me you're talking about a hypothetical girlfriend," Ryan said.
"Sorry. Seth? Long lost brother? Or whatever?"
Ryan shook his head. "Home. Eating. Or nursing his ego after his spectacular defeat at Play Station."
Luke chuckled. "Right." He opened his own can of soda.
For a while, they remained silent, sipping their drinks, watching the sky as the night fell.
"Summer sent me," Luke announced at last.
That surprised Ryan. "Yeah?"
"Yes. She seems to think that you need to talk. Because, and I'm quoting, Cohen is worried, and when Cohen is worried, he talks even more quickly, and it's not that she's interested in what he's saying, but she likes to at least understand him. Just in case. So, she sent me."
Ryan bit back the incredulous, "And I'm supposed to talk to you?" that wanted to escape. He did consider Luke a friend, amazingly enough, but that didn't make them close by any means. They talked sports, chicks and cars, and sometimes in all the manly bragging, they exchanged two lines on serious matters. They didn't have lengthy heart-to-hearts.
"I tried to explain to her that we're guys, and guys don't talk, but you know girls. And, well, Summer."
Ryan nodded silently.
"So, we can either sit here, in silence -- believe me, after a few days spent with my two little brothers, I wouldn't mind -- or we can, well…"
"Have a girls' talk?"
Luke choked on his drink. "When you put it that way."
Ryan focused on the ocean in front of him, Trey's question replaying itself.
"Do you doubt that he would have killed you, if you hadn't killed him first?"
He let his thoughts wander, conscious of the unobtrusive, undemanding presence next to him.
Luke had been the only one to believe him about Oliver. And Ryan knew that a big part of it, if not all of it, had been due to Luke's feelings for Marissa, but whatever his reasons had been, it had been a huge help for Ryan to know that someone shared his suspicions.
"Do you doubt that he would have killed you, if you hadn't killed him first?"
Oliver's history indicated that he was more likely to hurt himself than others. On the other hand, that gun at been pointed at Ryan -- no doubt about that. And Oliver rushing Ryan with a knife had been pretty unambiguous, too.
Ryan sighed and put his empty can on the sand, making a mental note to pick it up when he left.
"Ryan?" Luke said.
"Why did you believe me about Oliver, that first time?"
He saw Luke gesture vaguely. "He was weird."
"Aside from that?"
"I don't know."
"I wondered, then, if it wasn't just that you were jealous of him and Marissa. Which would have been yet another sign that I was losing it."
Luke laughed without a sound. Ryan could see him shaking slightly from the corner of his eye. "Oh, I was jealous of him and Marissa, all right," Luke finally said. "I was jealous of *you* and Marissa, for that matter. But, I felt you were right, and there was something about him that wasn't quite right."
"Yeah." Ryan shook his head. "I knew he wasn't normal. But sometimes I wondered if everyone else wasn't right, you know? If I wasn't the one who was paranoid."
"Because when he drove the golf car straight at us, he was behaving normally," Luke said sarcastically.
Ryan picked up a handful of cold sand and let it filter through his fingers. "Oh, after a while, I usually remembered the golf car, yes. But for a few seconds, he had made me doubt myself." And now, it appeared that even dead, Oliver could still make Ryan second-guess himself. "Just fucking wonderful," Ryan thought.
Luke asked, "How did you know? After all, he played everyone." His voice took on a decidedly sarcastic tone as he added, "He even played Dr Kim -- all-powerful, all-knowing Dr Kim."
Ryan thought. How had he known? "At the beginning," he said, "I was just jealous. He kept making me feel stupid. Uneducated." He fought the slight remnants of hurt, as he remembered Oliver doing his best to embarrass Ryan, and the way all the others had smiled tolerantly. Ryan could almost hear them thinking, "Poor boy, coming from the bad part of town. No culture at all."
"That fucker," Luke said. "But I didn't see it that way then. I mean, he just seemed cool."
Ryan shrugged. All these petty attempts to make Marissa see how insignificant and "lower class" Ryan was seemed unimportant in light of what had happened later. "Whatever," he said.
Because after the night club incident, there had been that increasing sensation of being in danger whenever Oliver was around. Nothing definitive, not until the weekend in Palm Springs, just a vague feeling that something wasn't right. "It was his eyes," Ryan told Luke. "He kept a straight face, but in his eyes… I could see it."
"No one else did," Luke pointed out.
Ryan shrugged, unwilling to tell Luke about the number of times he had picked up subtle clues and left his house in Chino, because something told him that now was not a good time to be around. Had it saved his life? Perhaps.
Better being too careful and looking paranoid than being hurt.
"Am I…" He trailed off. Luke waited, patiently, and Ryan wondered when his friend had become so good at listening. "Am I too quick to take action?" Ryan asked finally.
"What?"
"You were shot by Donnie," Ryan reminded him. "And perhaps, if I hadn't fought with him, he would have just left, and no one would have been hurt."
Luke seemed to take a moment to consider the idea, and Ryan turned a little to the side to face him. No matter how much their relationship had improved, there was a tacit agreement that allowed them to be honest with each other when one of them screwed up. Ryan hoped that several months of absence hadn't changed that.
"Perhaps Donnie would have freaked out, and instead of a lost bullet, everyone in the vicinity would have been hurt," Luke said.
"But we don't know that," Ryan insisted.
"Fine. Why did you fight with him?" Luke asked.
Ryan tried to remember the split-second decision process. Why hadn't he tried to talk more? Was it because, in Ryan's life, words had never done any good to diffuse a tense situation? Was it because he trusted his fists and his reflexes more than his powers of persuasion? Or because… "He was going to shoot," he said.
"Yeah." Luke took a sip of his soda. "I'm gonna take your word for it, because I wasn't observing the kid that well. I was too busy staring at the gun he was holding, and thinking, 'Oh shit!' But, if you say so… Well, good enough for me."
Ryan nodded. He didn't think he had made a mistake that night.
Which only left him --
"Was Oliver going to… you know?" Luke asked.
Ryan thought. Oliver's words, his undying obsession with Marissa, and the fact that Ryan was the one Marissa had called. No wonder Oliver still saw him as a rival, even though Marissa had said they had broken up.
Ryan saw Oliver's body, losing blood.
Then, Marissa took Oliver's place.
Even if Ryan hadn't come when Marissa had called, Oliver certainly would have killed himself, and Marissa. He hadn't been listening to anyone but himself That Night.
Ryan saw the knife, heading toward him. He couldn't even remember if it had seemed fast or if time had slowed, like it did in movies. All he remembered was seeing the knife, still red with Oliver's blood, rushing toward him.
His eyes were burning. He rested his arms on his knees and buried his head in the crook of his elbows. "Shit," he said.
Luke didn't reply. They sat in silence for a while.
"I'm sorry," Luke said at last.
"Everyone keeps saying that," Ryan replied, his voice muffled by his sweater.
"You okay?"
"Everyone keeps saying that too."
"It was a shitty thing to happen."
Ryan laughed briefly, a bitter laugh that sounded embarrassingly like a sob. "Understatement of the century."
"So? Are you okay?"
Ryan rubbed his eyes on his sleeve before raising his head. He spotted a blinking light in the sky and followed it, not daring to look at Luke. "No. I killed someone. And I don't think I'm going to get over it any time soon."
Apparently, Luke didn't have anything else to say to that.
There was another good thing about Luke; he seemed to have learned that when he didn't have anything to say, remaining silent was the best course of action.
* * *
Seth joined them almost an hour later. In the meantime, Luke had gone to fetch a blanket, more sodas and chips from his car. He and Ryan were eating the last ones when Seth announced his presence in his typical manner. "Hey, there's a party I wasn't invited to? Wait. I'm never invited."
He collapsed next to Ryan, and waved his hand at Luke. "Hey, man." He took the last unopened soda and helped himself. "You missed one hell of a dinner, Ryan. And the 'rents are worried. They didn't say anything, but I'm good at spotting clues."
Ryan felt an incredulous laugh bubbling under the surface, thinking of Anna and Summer, and Seth's usual tendency to keep on talking until he had dug his grave so low he was close to emerging in Australia.
Luke didn't have that problem, and collapsed on the blanket, laughing.
Seth looked at him disdainfully. "I am." He turned to Ryan. "When are you planning to go back?"
Ryan lay down, watching the stars above. "Soon."
"Okay. I'm just saying, the 'rents are worried. Not frantic yet, but quietly worried."
Ryan tuned out Seth's rambling. Luke whispered, "I liked the quiet."
"Welcome to my world," Ryan replied.
* * *
When Seth and Ryan entered the kitchen, Kirsten and Sandy were watching TV -- Kirsten curled up in Sandy's arms. They were arguing quietly about the movie -- an old black and white thing Ryan couldn't possibly identify.
Sandy spotted them first. "Hey! The kids are back!"
"Yeah, so you can stop sitting on each other's laps and keep your distance," Seth said. "This is so detrimental to my mental health."
"You'll survive," Kirsten said without missing a beat. "Did you eat?" she asked Ryan.
"Yeah," he said. He didn't mention that what he had eaten was made of so many artificial ingredients, it would probably survive a few centuries unharmed.
"Good."
She detangled herself from Sandy and sat more properly. Seth went to the couch and flopped between them, forcing them to move even farther apart, and Ryan smiled as they glared at Seth.
"Do you want to watch TV?" Sandy asked Ryan.
"No, thanks."
Kirsten met his gaze. "Trey called," she said.
Ryan bit back a growl. He should have known his brother wouldn't let it rest. "I'll call him back tomorrow," he said.
She looked at Sandy, and nodded. "Tomorrow. Okay. You're sure you don't want to --"
"No, I'm beat. I should go sleep." There was a pointed pause, then he shrugged. "'Night," he said.
A chorus of "good night" answered him and he left the room, praying that his brother hadn't worried them too much.
Chapter 8
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.
Acknowledgements : Again, many thanks to my beta, Joey51.
Chapter 7 : The Question
Trey placed a collect call in the afternoon, after Ryan had wiped Seth's ass at Play Station again, and Seth had gone to his room to sulk, or, possibly, to develop a new strategy. Ryan was betting on the sulking.
In typical Trey fashion, the discussion began with a terse, "I thought we agreed not to talk again?"
"Sorry," Ryan mumbled, suddenly wondering why this had seemed like a good idea.
Apparently, prison hadn't made Trey slower to decipher Ryan's moods, and that one word was enough to set off all of his older brother’s alarms. "Spill," Trey said.
So, Ryan -- at first haltingly, then more quickly -- filled Trey in on what had happened. He stuck to cold, manageable facts -- Oliver's back story, the call from Marissa, the fight, the gunshot. Oliver's surprise as he died.
Trey huffed, "They're always surprised," before asking Ryan why he had called.
"I don't know," Ryan admitted.
And, in truth, he really didn't know what he wanted from Trey. Advice from a brother who had spent more time in jail than free since his fifteenth birthday? Reassurance? Comfort? It wasn't as if the Cohens didn't provide all that, and more.
"You don't know?"
"I really don't. I picked up the phone, and it was your number I dialed."
"The number of your incarcerated brother, who you haven't spoken to in more than a year?"
"Yeah."
"You're a weird kid."
Ryan let out a strangled laugh, wondering how his brother would react to Seth. "One day, I'll introduce you to my friend," he said.
"The kid who gave you the comic book for me?" Trey asked, seemingly unsurprised by the non sequitur.
"Yes."
The two brothers fell silent. "Kid?" Trey asked after a while.
"Yeah."
"I don't have much time left, so I'm just going to ask… You feel bad about killing that nutter?"
That was Trey, Ryan thought ruefully. Never one to beat around the bush. Or to use a modicum of tact.
"Yep." He hadn't admitted it to anyone yet, but then no one had asked him the question -- they all kept saying that Ryan had done what he had to do, that he didn't have a choice, and while that may have been true, it didn't keep Ryan from feeling, well, bad. It didn't matter that he hadn't had a choice; circumstances hardly mattered when the end result was so devastating.
Ryan had always thought that he was doing the right thing by helping people. Now, he was beginning to doubt it. How many times had he made things worse, instead of helping? Would Luke have been involved in an accident if Ryan hadn't pressured him to break up with Julie? Would Seth have left his parents if Ryan hadn't tried to help Theresa?
Things were growing increasingly complicated. Back in Chino, there weren't that many consequences to consider. His actions then only affected himself, and sometimes his family, or Theresa. Now, there were so many people involved in his life, directly or not, that every decision he made always seemed to affect someone, if only by proxy.
"From what you said, you didn't have a choice," Trey pointed out, snapping Ryan out of his reverie.
"Yeah."
There was another silence, during which Trey probably used his older brother magical powers to read Ryan's mind, then, "What? Do you doubt that he would have killed you, if you hadn't killed him first?"
Ryan's breath caught in his throat and he hung up on Trey, almost reflexively. He then spent five minutes trying to catch his breath, as if he had just played a lengthy soccer match, and another ten minutes sitting on his bed, dizzy and confused, wondering what the hell was happening to him, because *this* didn't strike him as a particularly normal reaction.
* * *
Near the end of his first year in Newport, Ryan had found "his" spot on the beach -- the place where he felt most at ease, the place where he went when he wanted some time alone, when he wanted to think. It was not far from the lifeguard tower where he had announced to the others his decision to go back to Chino, but far enough that he could sit there unnoticed once it was dark and most people had gone home. Ryan considered the place to be his own, always feeling slightly peeved when someone was occupying it, even though it was a public domain and he had no ground to feel territorial about it.
Thankfully, tonight, the place was free, and Ryan was sprawled on the beach, staring at the sunset and absently tracing circles in the sand next to his thigh. The sky was aflame as the sun slowly disappeared behind the horizon line, and it was so beautiful that it took his breath away.
No matter how many times he saw this, Ryan would never get used to it. He had grown used to having an ocean nearby, but this, this pure beauty, it was still new to him.
It was soothing, and it helped him to forget the afternoon spent reading and doing school work, desperately trying not to think about Trey's question.
Near diner time, Ryan was finally feeling less shell-shocked, more able to process his talk with Trey. So, he warned the Cohens that he wanted to go for a walk, and wouldn't be home for diner. He didn't doubt Seth would find him eventually, but for now, he was alone, and was taking the opportunity to think, which was all he seemed to be doing this holiday, as Seth had remarked -- except he hadn't put it that way.
"You're brooding, man!" he had said as Ryan was leaving.
"Thinking," Ryan had corrected.
"Brooding," Seth had insisted, and Ryan had resorted to using The Glare on him. It was always effective in shutting Seth up.
Most times, Ryan didn't mind his friend's verbal diarrhea. It helped to keep Ryan grounded, even when he didn't understand what Seth was saying.
Then, sometimes, it distracted him when he was trying to follow through a thought or to figure something out, or just to absorb something that had been said to him.
"Do you doubt that he would have killed you, if you hadn't killed him first?"
And Trey had certainly given Ryan a lot to think about. Hence the need for solitude.
"Do you doubt that he would have killed you, if you hadn't killed him first?"
Ryan wondered how the hell Trey did it. Certainly, Trey had always been able to read Ryan's mind -- one of his rare talents, as a big brother -- but still, they hadn't seen each other in months. How could his brother be so spot-on? Was Ryan that predictable?
Because Ryan did wonder if, perhaps, he hadn't been too quick to shoot, and he didn't want to wonder.
It might lead to other unpleasant questions.
It might make him wonder if his visceral fear of seeing someone he loved being hurt didn't make him too hasty to act. Ryan didn't want to think that he had taken a life for the sake of his not-so-white knight tendencies.
He sighed, frustrated. He should really call Trey back, before his brother panicked and called the Cohens. He was perfectly capable of doing it. Trey's protective tendencies were not as widespread as Ryan's, but he had always been a brother hen to Ryan.
"Great," Ryan sighed. He sensed a presence mere seconds before a can of soda materialized in front of his face.
"Should I be worried to find you sitting alone in the dark, muttering to yourself?"
Ryan raised his head and nodded at Luke, accepting the can. Luke lowered himself on the sand, sighing happily.
"I missed this place," he said.
Ryan opened his drink and took a gulp, shuddering as he thought about the ridiculous amount of sugar he was absorbing.
"Still claiming ownership of this spot, then?" Luke asked conversationally.
"Hm."
"And still as talkative?"
"Yeah."
Luke laughed. "Come on man, you can do better. I've seen you do better. Once or twice."
Ryan smiled.
"Where's your other half?" Luke asked.
"Please, tell me you're talking about a hypothetical girlfriend," Ryan said.
"Sorry. Seth? Long lost brother? Or whatever?"
Ryan shook his head. "Home. Eating. Or nursing his ego after his spectacular defeat at Play Station."
Luke chuckled. "Right." He opened his own can of soda.
For a while, they remained silent, sipping their drinks, watching the sky as the night fell.
"Summer sent me," Luke announced at last.
That surprised Ryan. "Yeah?"
"Yes. She seems to think that you need to talk. Because, and I'm quoting, Cohen is worried, and when Cohen is worried, he talks even more quickly, and it's not that she's interested in what he's saying, but she likes to at least understand him. Just in case. So, she sent me."
Ryan bit back the incredulous, "And I'm supposed to talk to you?" that wanted to escape. He did consider Luke a friend, amazingly enough, but that didn't make them close by any means. They talked sports, chicks and cars, and sometimes in all the manly bragging, they exchanged two lines on serious matters. They didn't have lengthy heart-to-hearts.
"I tried to explain to her that we're guys, and guys don't talk, but you know girls. And, well, Summer."
Ryan nodded silently.
"So, we can either sit here, in silence -- believe me, after a few days spent with my two little brothers, I wouldn't mind -- or we can, well…"
"Have a girls' talk?"
Luke choked on his drink. "When you put it that way."
Ryan focused on the ocean in front of him, Trey's question replaying itself.
"Do you doubt that he would have killed you, if you hadn't killed him first?"
He let his thoughts wander, conscious of the unobtrusive, undemanding presence next to him.
Luke had been the only one to believe him about Oliver. And Ryan knew that a big part of it, if not all of it, had been due to Luke's feelings for Marissa, but whatever his reasons had been, it had been a huge help for Ryan to know that someone shared his suspicions.
"Do you doubt that he would have killed you, if you hadn't killed him first?"
Oliver's history indicated that he was more likely to hurt himself than others. On the other hand, that gun at been pointed at Ryan -- no doubt about that. And Oliver rushing Ryan with a knife had been pretty unambiguous, too.
Ryan sighed and put his empty can on the sand, making a mental note to pick it up when he left.
"Ryan?" Luke said.
"Why did you believe me about Oliver, that first time?"
He saw Luke gesture vaguely. "He was weird."
"Aside from that?"
"I don't know."
"I wondered, then, if it wasn't just that you were jealous of him and Marissa. Which would have been yet another sign that I was losing it."
Luke laughed without a sound. Ryan could see him shaking slightly from the corner of his eye. "Oh, I was jealous of him and Marissa, all right," Luke finally said. "I was jealous of *you* and Marissa, for that matter. But, I felt you were right, and there was something about him that wasn't quite right."
"Yeah." Ryan shook his head. "I knew he wasn't normal. But sometimes I wondered if everyone else wasn't right, you know? If I wasn't the one who was paranoid."
"Because when he drove the golf car straight at us, he was behaving normally," Luke said sarcastically.
Ryan picked up a handful of cold sand and let it filter through his fingers. "Oh, after a while, I usually remembered the golf car, yes. But for a few seconds, he had made me doubt myself." And now, it appeared that even dead, Oliver could still make Ryan second-guess himself. "Just fucking wonderful," Ryan thought.
Luke asked, "How did you know? After all, he played everyone." His voice took on a decidedly sarcastic tone as he added, "He even played Dr Kim -- all-powerful, all-knowing Dr Kim."
Ryan thought. How had he known? "At the beginning," he said, "I was just jealous. He kept making me feel stupid. Uneducated." He fought the slight remnants of hurt, as he remembered Oliver doing his best to embarrass Ryan, and the way all the others had smiled tolerantly. Ryan could almost hear them thinking, "Poor boy, coming from the bad part of town. No culture at all."
"That fucker," Luke said. "But I didn't see it that way then. I mean, he just seemed cool."
Ryan shrugged. All these petty attempts to make Marissa see how insignificant and "lower class" Ryan was seemed unimportant in light of what had happened later. "Whatever," he said.
Because after the night club incident, there had been that increasing sensation of being in danger whenever Oliver was around. Nothing definitive, not until the weekend in Palm Springs, just a vague feeling that something wasn't right. "It was his eyes," Ryan told Luke. "He kept a straight face, but in his eyes… I could see it."
"No one else did," Luke pointed out.
Ryan shrugged, unwilling to tell Luke about the number of times he had picked up subtle clues and left his house in Chino, because something told him that now was not a good time to be around. Had it saved his life? Perhaps.
Better being too careful and looking paranoid than being hurt.
"Am I…" He trailed off. Luke waited, patiently, and Ryan wondered when his friend had become so good at listening. "Am I too quick to take action?" Ryan asked finally.
"What?"
"You were shot by Donnie," Ryan reminded him. "And perhaps, if I hadn't fought with him, he would have just left, and no one would have been hurt."
Luke seemed to take a moment to consider the idea, and Ryan turned a little to the side to face him. No matter how much their relationship had improved, there was a tacit agreement that allowed them to be honest with each other when one of them screwed up. Ryan hoped that several months of absence hadn't changed that.
"Perhaps Donnie would have freaked out, and instead of a lost bullet, everyone in the vicinity would have been hurt," Luke said.
"But we don't know that," Ryan insisted.
"Fine. Why did you fight with him?" Luke asked.
Ryan tried to remember the split-second decision process. Why hadn't he tried to talk more? Was it because, in Ryan's life, words had never done any good to diffuse a tense situation? Was it because he trusted his fists and his reflexes more than his powers of persuasion? Or because… "He was going to shoot," he said.
"Yeah." Luke took a sip of his soda. "I'm gonna take your word for it, because I wasn't observing the kid that well. I was too busy staring at the gun he was holding, and thinking, 'Oh shit!' But, if you say so… Well, good enough for me."
Ryan nodded. He didn't think he had made a mistake that night.
Which only left him --
"Was Oliver going to… you know?" Luke asked.
Ryan thought. Oliver's words, his undying obsession with Marissa, and the fact that Ryan was the one Marissa had called. No wonder Oliver still saw him as a rival, even though Marissa had said they had broken up.
Ryan saw Oliver's body, losing blood.
Then, Marissa took Oliver's place.
Even if Ryan hadn't come when Marissa had called, Oliver certainly would have killed himself, and Marissa. He hadn't been listening to anyone but himself That Night.
Ryan saw the knife, heading toward him. He couldn't even remember if it had seemed fast or if time had slowed, like it did in movies. All he remembered was seeing the knife, still red with Oliver's blood, rushing toward him.
His eyes were burning. He rested his arms on his knees and buried his head in the crook of his elbows. "Shit," he said.
Luke didn't reply. They sat in silence for a while.
"I'm sorry," Luke said at last.
"Everyone keeps saying that," Ryan replied, his voice muffled by his sweater.
"You okay?"
"Everyone keeps saying that too."
"It was a shitty thing to happen."
Ryan laughed briefly, a bitter laugh that sounded embarrassingly like a sob. "Understatement of the century."
"So? Are you okay?"
Ryan rubbed his eyes on his sleeve before raising his head. He spotted a blinking light in the sky and followed it, not daring to look at Luke. "No. I killed someone. And I don't think I'm going to get over it any time soon."
Apparently, Luke didn't have anything else to say to that.
There was another good thing about Luke; he seemed to have learned that when he didn't have anything to say, remaining silent was the best course of action.
* * *
Seth joined them almost an hour later. In the meantime, Luke had gone to fetch a blanket, more sodas and chips from his car. He and Ryan were eating the last ones when Seth announced his presence in his typical manner. "Hey, there's a party I wasn't invited to? Wait. I'm never invited."
He collapsed next to Ryan, and waved his hand at Luke. "Hey, man." He took the last unopened soda and helped himself. "You missed one hell of a dinner, Ryan. And the 'rents are worried. They didn't say anything, but I'm good at spotting clues."
Ryan felt an incredulous laugh bubbling under the surface, thinking of Anna and Summer, and Seth's usual tendency to keep on talking until he had dug his grave so low he was close to emerging in Australia.
Luke didn't have that problem, and collapsed on the blanket, laughing.
Seth looked at him disdainfully. "I am." He turned to Ryan. "When are you planning to go back?"
Ryan lay down, watching the stars above. "Soon."
"Okay. I'm just saying, the 'rents are worried. Not frantic yet, but quietly worried."
Ryan tuned out Seth's rambling. Luke whispered, "I liked the quiet."
"Welcome to my world," Ryan replied.
* * *
When Seth and Ryan entered the kitchen, Kirsten and Sandy were watching TV -- Kirsten curled up in Sandy's arms. They were arguing quietly about the movie -- an old black and white thing Ryan couldn't possibly identify.
Sandy spotted them first. "Hey! The kids are back!"
"Yeah, so you can stop sitting on each other's laps and keep your distance," Seth said. "This is so detrimental to my mental health."
"You'll survive," Kirsten said without missing a beat. "Did you eat?" she asked Ryan.
"Yeah," he said. He didn't mention that what he had eaten was made of so many artificial ingredients, it would probably survive a few centuries unharmed.
"Good."
She detangled herself from Sandy and sat more properly. Seth went to the couch and flopped between them, forcing them to move even farther apart, and Ryan smiled as they glared at Seth.
"Do you want to watch TV?" Sandy asked Ryan.
"No, thanks."
Kirsten met his gaze. "Trey called," she said.
Ryan bit back a growl. He should have known his brother wouldn't let it rest. "I'll call him back tomorrow," he said.
She looked at Sandy, and nodded. "Tomorrow. Okay. You're sure you don't want to --"
"No, I'm beat. I should go sleep." There was a pointed pause, then he shrugged. "'Night," he said.
A chorus of "good night" answered him and he left the room, praying that his brother hadn't worried them too much.
Chapter 8