Fic: Little Girls
Title: Little Girls. Part 1
Rating: PG
Fandom: The OC (Sandy/Kirsten)
When Kirsten is thirteen years old, she tells her sister that she will only ever have daughters. She will never, ever subjugate herself to balls of mass terror, will never let herself raise the hellions that she currently goes to school with.
Kirsten likes her dolls too much, those pretty, china ones with the hand painted faces, Hailey tells her this. She also says that boys aren’t all bad, just the ones with the name Caleb or Jimbo, or the one’s that eat their boogers after swimming.
Kirsten screws up her face at that, scrunches up her nose and bites her lip, boogers are disgusting.
A source of protein maybe, Hailey shrugs.
Thing is though, all Kirsten has ever wanted was a little girl, but she doesn’t like her prospects, not when she’s 44 and stuck here with a house full of men, and a bellyful of little boy.
*
“It’s not like,” Seth starts, and he swishes the saliva in his mouth from side-to-side, runs a hand through his hair, “It’s not like I’m jealous or anything like that.”
“Right,” Summer says, she’s painting her toenails, colouring them a shade that Seth doesn’t think he will ever be able to pronounce.
“It’s just, I mean, they’re kinda old, y’know? I don’t like to think about my parents…” his face screws up a little, and he shudders overdramatically, “my parents mating, or whatever it is they do. I really, really don’t, I mean, does anyone want to think about that?”
“Most people do avoid the topic.” Summer says, her eyebrows are somewhere in her hairline, pink tongue sticking out the side of her mouth. If Seth looks really closely, he’ll be able to see the shadow her eyelashes cast on her cheek, the freckles that sit in the space in front of her ears.
“Isn’t it like, dangerous to have another kid at their age anyway?” He asks, “I mean, the Kirsten isn’t exactly as strong as she used to be, her hipbones could be failing, weak, y’know? Her uterus could be all…un-uterusy.”
“So,” Summer says, and she sits up too quickly, sticks the tiny brush back into the tube of nail polish, “in freshman year, I was friends with this chick called Simone, had the best bone structure, I am not even kidding here, anyway, her parents were all, y’know, divorced, and she was like, a total suitcase kid.”
“The point being…” He gestures a little, rolls his fingers and his eyes.
“I’m getting there, Cohen, patience is a blessing.”
“Virtue.”
“Whatever, look, so, her Dad was getting remarried to this total slut, and as soon as her Mum saw, she got all like, insanely up in his face about it, and they had this huge fight. Simone said that they like, never spoke again, and they ended up going to court because both of them wanted to keep Simone, anyway, her Mum won, and Simone has lived with her ever since.”
Seth blinks, blinks again, “You know, that was a really, really fascinating story, and I mean really fascinating, just-“
“The point is,” Summer starts, and her arms are folded over her chest, her forehead raised and her lips in the most delectable little pout, “The point is, asshole, that you are totally like Simone’s mum. You see someone you care about, in this case your parents, moving on and growing away from you, and your two seconds away from being up in their faces about it.”
“Hm, wow, Summer, I can honestly say that you have sussed me out. Seriously, your logic is unflawed-“
“What I’m saying, Cohen, is that you,” and she points, with one long, slender finger, “you are jealous of a kid who isn’t even born yet.”
*
“Richard,” Sandy says, and his fingers graze, the lightest touch, over her navel, her belly, her ribs.
Kirsten laughs, picks his fingers off her torso, and links them with her own, “that’s an awful name.”
“It was my grandfather’s name, y’know.”
“What would we call him for short? Rich, Dick?”
“Well, neither of those are at the top of the list.”
“I always liked Emmanuel.”
“Rowan.”
“Liam.”
“Eric.”
“Tobias.”
“Tobias,” Sandy says, tastes it on the tip of his tongue, “Tobias, get the heck outta your bedroom, you gotta go to school.”
Kirsten laughs again, pulls her fingers away from his, and latches onto his hair. “Tobias,” she says.
“It tests well, a good yelling name if ever I heard one, coz, you know, two-three syllables just work so much better than one. I mean, hear ‘Seth’, it’s just not a good yelling name.”
“Ryan is,” Kirsten says, “we don’t yell at him enough.”
“Hasn’t given us reason too.”
“Yes, he has, you and me, Sandy Cohen, we’re too nice.”
“Alas, it’s our kryptonite.”
Kirsten’s laughter bounces this time, off the walls, off the mirrors, off the picture frames, “too much Seth for you.”
“Always too much Seth.”
*
Ryan learnt when he was very young that, contrary to popular belief, feeling too much was in fact, very bad for your health.
It was a skill to, after that, become very, very immune to certain things, to build not only a shield, a fortification, but some sort of thirty-foot tall barrier, a mountain, a prison-wall, a blockade. To sift through situations, and figure out what deserves a reaction, and what deserves stoicism. What deserves thumping heart and angry fists and ruptured stomach, and what deserves the same tight lips and clenched fingers that entail in most circumstances.
Since moving to Orange County, this wall has grown thinner and thinner. There are holes in the foundations, mould creeps at the bottom, termites eat at the insides.
This situation, this one that has Sandy and Kirsten and a baby makes him feel more than he honestly believed it would.
Ryan has never had a little brother, he’s always been the younger one, the one that needs teaching, the one that doesn’t have a repertoire of experiences to draw from, the one that needs looking after. Ryan has never really been a big brother, it’s always been Trey, always been Trey to teach him shit, to look after him, to beat up the guys who pick on him, always TreyTreyTrey.
So now, with a baby on the way in this new family that he doesn’t deserve, Ryan can’t say he’s ready yet, not to be a big brother.
Keys are fiddling in the lock, tentative, staggering. Seth can’t hold his alcohol, Seth will never be able to hold his alcohol, so when he stumbles in, knocks over the lamp Kirsten had bought two days earlier, and collapses onto the couch, it isn’t as much of a surprise as it probably should have been.
“You know what, Ryan?” Seth slurs, his fingers clenched in the cushions littered over the sofa, “You know what?”
“You’ve had too much to drink.”
“Not that much, but, you know what?”
“What, Seth?”
“I am,” he says, and he raises his arms into the air, punches out a fist. “I am jealous,” he says, and it’s the most honest thing he’s said all day.
“I know,” Ryan says, “I know, and right now you need to go to bed.”
“’m not tired though, Ryan,” and Seth’s yawning, eyelids slipping, he’s exhausted and he’s drunk.
Ryan wanders over, slips an arm under Seth’s waist, pulls the other boy to his feet, “You’re not tired,” Ryan says, “but you need to go to bed.”
Ryan’s not ready to be a big brother, but maybe, maybe he already is one.
*
Continue to Part 2.