Summer Time - 20
Rating: No idea where this might end up so let's be safe. NC17
Beta: Thanks loracj I had a further tweak, so all mistakes are mine.
Disclaimer: I don't own The OC, Ryan or Benjamin McKenzie (unfortunately)
Story: This all takes place a few years after the end of S4
20.
Summer tightened her seat belt, turned her phone off, then looked for a play list on her ipod that might keep her distracted, at least for a little while. It was five hours from Washington DC to Los Angeles and she didn’t want to spend the whole flight thinking about Ryan. But she knew that she was fighting a losing battle.
She kept replaying over in her head the hurt in his voice when she’d told him that she wasn’t returning to New York before Christmas. She had decided to work right up to Christmas Eve, then fly directly to California.
He’d been disappointed, that’s for sure. But wasn’t that what she wanted?
Ever since Thanksgiving, she’d followed her father’s suggestion of keeping her distance from Ryan while he worked through his issues. She’d managed to stay away. And it was killing her.
She’d wanted him to miss her. What she hadn’t counted on was how much she would miss him.
They still talked every day, but hearing his voice wasn’t enough anymore.
She wanted to see him. To gaze into those blue eyes and lose herself. To smell that smell that was uniquely his. To watch the small lines around his eyes crinkle when he smiled.
She closed her eyes in an attempt to envision him, losing herself in the moment, but then quickly opened her eyes again as the image that came to mind was of him in boxers and wife beater on that first morning. It was a sight she’d never forget. But it wasn’t something that she should be thinking about on a crowded plane with no outlet. Not unless she wanted to attract attention to herself.
She had a lot to think about over the holidays. Ryan and what they did or didn’t have going on between them….what they did or didn’t feel for each other. But that wasn’t the only thing.
She’d been offered a promotion with GEORGE in a completely different capacity. One that would see her based almost entirely in the main office in New York City. It meant very little travelling, the idea of which appealed to her immensely. She didn’t enjoy living out of a suitcase anymore; the novelty had well and truly worn off.
But that meant that she’d be living with Ryan all the time. She didn’t know if she could do that without showing how she felt about him. It was difficult enough to manage it over a weekend; how would she handle it when they were together every day …. And night? And yet that was a part of why the job appealed to her. She could be around him more, instead of trying to cram in as much time as they could together before she had to leave again.
If he did have feelings for her and they could get past the Seth problem, it could be wonderful. But how was she going to find out if it would ever be a possibility?
If he didn’t have feelings for her, then she suspected that it would be excruciating to have to live with him platonically. Then again, she wasn’t sure if she could live without him anymore. She was barely getting by as it was, and that was with them talking every day. She couldn’t afford to make a mistake. He might leave and that would be the worst thing ever.
---
Ryan picked up his bag from the luggage carousel and headed for the exit door. Turning the corner, he almost ran smack into someone.
“Whoa. Easy there,” Sandy exclaimed, holding him by the shoulders to stop the collision.
“Sandy, what are you doing here?” Ryan asked, surprised. “I told Kirsten not to bother you, that I’d get a taxi. Aren’t you supposed to be at Sophie’s Christmas pageant?”
“Hey, I’m Jewish, what does it matter? Anyway, there’s been an unexpected development at home. I wanted to give you a heads up before you get there,” Sandy said. He grabbed Ryan’s backpack from him, leaving him with the heavier bag and steered him out the door towards the parking lot.
Ryan followed his lead through the crowd, but as soon as they were clear of the building, he turned to Sandy.
“What sort of development?”
He was worried. It wasn’t like Kirsten to change plans at the last minute.
“Just wait ‘til we get in the car and I’ll explain,” Sandy replied, taking the lead again for Ryan to follow. Ryan did exactly that and they covered the distance quickly. Once they were settled in the car and moving towards the exit, Ryan couldn’t wait any longer.
“Okay, so what’s going on?”
Sandy looked uncomfortable, but didn’t reply. Now Ryan was really worried. Maybe someone was sick and they didn’t want to tell him?
“Sandy, is everyone okay?”
Sandy felt guilty that he had Ryan so concerned. But he wanted to get clear of the airport before he told him, just in case he might want to turn around and fly right back to New York.
“Everyone’s fine. We just thought that you should know that we have a guest joining us for Chrismukkah.”
Ryan watched the play of emotions cross Sandy’s face, and he knew this wasn’t going to be someone he liked; otherwise Sandy wouldn’t be so hesitant to tell him.
“Who is it?” he asked clearly, needing to know.
“Taylor. Seth invited her,” Sandy explained quickly. It was like pulling off a band aid. Get the hurt over and done with and then deal with it.
All Ryan could think was so much for any hope of having a nice visit with his family. He had been prepared for things with Seth to be tense, but having Taylor there too was more than he wanted to have to deal with. Seth knew that Ryan wanted nothing to do with her so why would he ….
Of course. This was his version of revenge because of Ryan’s living arrangements. Seth had invited her because he knew that Ryan didn’t want her there. He wanted to spoil Ryan’s holiday and make him feel uncomfortable in his own home.
“I know the two of you had a falling out, but hopefully you can put it aside for a few days,” Sandy said, interrupting Ryan’s thoughts.
Ryan cringed. ‘Falling out’ didn’t exactly describe it accurately. But Sandy and Kirsten didn’t know the full details and he wasn’t about to tell them.
“I think you should take me back to the airport. I’ll just wait for the next flight back to New York. I really don’t want to be around them.”
Sandy sighed. This was exactly the response he’d been afraid that he’d get. It was the reason that he’d decided it was more important to forgo the concert and intercept Ryan at the airport rather than let him arrive on the doorstep and find out. He knew that Ryan would have jumped back in the cab and left.
“But what about the rest of us? It would break Sophie’s heart if you weren’t there for Chrismukkah.”
Ryan cringed at the word. Suddenly it didn’t hold the charm that it once did.
“Not to mention what it would do to Kirsten. She loves you, kid. And with you away on the other side of the country, she misses you. I sort of like to hang out with you, too, every now and then,” Sandy said, the last added with a shrug of nonchalance that was totally fake.
He turned to Ryan with his best lost puppy face and Ryan had to smile. But he felt like he was stuck. He had no choice.
“Okay. But I’m not promising how long I’ll stay. If it gets to be too much, then I’m outta there.”
“Don’t worry. Kirsten and I will run interference for you. We want you there a lot more than we want Taylor.”
Ryan sighed unhappily. This was a complication that he hadn’t been expecting.
“Why is she even there? Shouldn’t she be with her mother or something?”
“She says her mother is in Fiji with her new boyfriend. Apparently, she and Seth have been spending some time together recently, so he asked her to join us rather than spend her holiday in the empty Berkeley dorms.”
Ryan doubted it was that simple but it did sound innocent enough. Then again, he doubted that Sandy knew that Seth and Taylor spending time together was most likely time in bed. This was all very convenient for Seth, however. It allowed him to be the good guy in his parents’ eyes because he was helping out a ‘friend’. It also meant that he could make Ryan’s holiday visit miserable. It was win win for him.
There was really nothing else for Ryan to say. He would have to wait and see how things played out. There was also a part of him that didn’t want to give Seth the satisfaction of chasing Ryan away. This was his home too, and he should be able to spend his holidays there. He was going to have to try to stick this out.
---
A few days went by and things were barely manageable. Taylor’s interest in Ryan was blatantly obvious, but Sandy was true to his word. He and Kirsten and even Sophie had run interference at all times, saving Ryan from her unwanted attentions, and stopping him from telling her exactly what he thought of her, which he knew would do nothing for harmony in the house. What irked him even more, but gave him added strength of will, was Seth’s obvious enjoyment of Ryan’s discomfit. He really didn’t want to let Seth win.
He managed to talk to Summer each day, but their conversations were short and stilted. It wasn’t enough anymore to talk to her over the phone. There were things that they needed to talk about and he wanted to do it face to face. They were both due back in New York on New Year’s Day. She had promised that once she was there, that she’d stay until the end of the week. That would give them time to clear a few things up. Ryan was both looking forward to it and dreading it. He didn’t want to risk upsetting the precarious balance that they had between them. But any time at all spent with her was better than no time. He had reached the point where he knew that he wanted to spend all his time with her, and what they’d been having just wasn’t enough.
It was getting late and he’d just gotten into bed when the door opened to reveal Taylor standing there in her nightgown. She was obviously on her way to bed too.
“We need to talk,” she said, moving into his room and closing the door.
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“You didn’t even reply to my letter.”
“Why would I? I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”
“You don’t mean that. You’re just trying to punish me because I was sleeping with Henri Michel.”
“Correction. When I saw you, you definitely weren’t ‘sleeping’.”
Taylor was getting angry with his avoidance techniques. She wanted this out with him once and for all. And the volume of her voice automatically increased along with her anger level.
“So I was fucking him! There, are you pleased? Is that what you wanted to hear? But it meant nothing.”
“It meant something to me.”
“Well I’m sorry. But I was just keeping myself amused. You lived on the other side of the fricking world. Did you honestly expect me to remain celibate while we were apart?”
“I was.”
Taylor was surprised. But she couldn’t back down now.
“Okay. But I said that I’m sorry. Isn’t that enough? Can’t we just go back to where we were?”
“No, we can’t. I don’t know why you don’t understand, Taylor, but I’m not interested anymore. I actually wonder now what I ever saw in you.”
Ryan couldn’t make it any plainer than that. He braced himself for a cloudburst of tears or a tantrum, but instead Taylor’s face broke into a huge self satisfied grin.
“You wonder what you ever saw in me?”
She undid the tie around her nightgown and opened it to reveal her naked body.
“This is what you saw in me. And you can’t tell me that you’re not interested in this,” she said, sashaying toward the bed, a predatory sparkle in her eye.
“Get out, Taylor. I don’t want it or you,” Ryan said, his voice rising. He moved to the far side of the bed, away from her, in yet another attempt to get his message across.
The movement seemed to at last get through to her.
“What do you want then? I can change. I can be whatever you want. I don’t have to be with other guys if you don’t want me to.”
“Taylor, you can do whatever you want. It doesn’t matter to me.”
As Ryan said it, he realised that it was true. He had no feelings left for her, except perhaps pity. Anything else had died a long time ago.
“So you don’t care that I’ve been screwing Seth?”
She was angry now. She was offering him everything, and he wasn’t willing to give an inch.
“That’s your choice,” Ryan said.
“It’s not my choice. I’d never choose him over you,” she said forcefully, her voice growing louder with each word. “He’s got a pencil dick and comes in two seconds. I only slept with him to make you jealous.”
“Then I’m sorry for you that you wasted your time, because for me to be jealous, I’d actually have to care about you and I …”
The door flew open and Kirsten stood there, steam almost visible coming out her ears. Obviously, in the quiet house, their voices had risen to a point where they’d carried through the walls.
“Get out!” she yelled at Taylor. “Get out now and never set foot in this house again.”
“But Kiki …” Taylor started, quickly pulling her gown together to try to cover her nakedness and scrambling to pick up the tie from the floor to secure it.
“Don’t Kiki me. Get out before I physically throw you out.”
“But you’re supposed to be on my side. You want us to get back together. Remember?”
“What I want is for my son to be happy and he could never be happy with someone like you. I’m just sorry that I hadn’t realised what you were really like. Did you really sleep with Seth? Just to make Ryan jealous?”
“It’s not a big deal … let me assure you,” Taylor said, her tone indicating that sex with Seth wasn’t memorable.
“You were dating his brother,” Kirsten pointed out, her disbelief evident.
“No, I wasn’t. We weren’t together. Not anymore. And I’m not the bad guy here. It was Seth’s idea. He told me it would make Ryan jealous.”
Kirsten shook her head. She was apparently still trying to absorb all this new information.
“Just go and pack your things, and Seth will drive you back to the dorm. And don’t bother coming back,” Kirsten said, brooking no argument.
Taylor looked to Ryan, hoping that he would intervene on her behalf, but that wasn’t going to happen. He agreed with Kirsten one hundred percent, and he couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t happy about Taylor’s ouster.
“Remember to shut the door on your way out,” he commented, barely suppressing a smile.
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