shallowness (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shallowness) wrote2023-12-24 03:34 pm
shallowness) wrote2023-12-24 03:34 pm
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Reposted ficlet: Do Atwoods dream of French dictionaries? (The O.C.)
Title: Do Atwoods dream of French dictionaries?
Fandom: The O.C.
Rated: PG.
Characters/Pairing: Ryan, Kirsten. Past Ryan/Marissa, Ryan/Taylor implied.
First posted: February 2007.
Summary: Ryan had a weird dream. Coffee and Kirsten don’t really help.
Notes: Missing scene for 4.04 ‘The Metamorphosis’. All mistakes are mine, but the characters are not. 380 words.
Do Atwoods dream of French dictionaries?: shallowness
He’s used to the dreams about her. The dreams of her alive, smiling in the sunlight or crying, shouting, whatever, but living. After them he wakes to a dull ache. The ache is sharper, honed by guilt when he dreams of her dying. But the response is the same, he wakes, controls his heartbeat and then he goes to the kitchen and makes himself a coffee.
This morning, Kirsten is there. He nods at her, but the greeting makes her smile fade.
“Are you okay, Ryan? You look—“ A pause and her fingers cross around her mug. “Pale.”
It’s Kirsten speak – Mom speak – for bad enough to worry about. Her concern’s a heavy weight, but one he missed when it wasn’t there.
“I had a weird dream,” he says, dropping the admission abruptly, and turning from her to reach for a mug.
“Oh.” And he can hear her parsing and analyzing. Not a bad dream, a weird one. She’s wondering if he dreamed about Marissa, guessing based on his appearance.
As he pours the coffee for himself, flashes come back to him. He was cage fighting, and Volchok was there, directly opposite him, taunting him in French, and sometimes he was Trey, and Ryan was turning to Taylor, who was just outside the cage, but she wouldn’t translate for him, she was too into filming the fight.
“I was looking for something,” he tells Kirsten, and it isn’t a lie, he remembers this part, it came after. “You know, I was in some kind of maze.”
“What was it?” she asks, sympathy warmer than his coffee’ll be. “What were you looking for?”
“A book,” he says flatly.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, weird, huh?” She steps back, and he wishes he’d told her the whole truth. Well, not the cage fighting part, but that the book was a dictionary. But even he can figure out on his own where that came from. He snagged one from Sandy’s study to help him with Taylor’s divorce papers. But explaining all this to Kirsten is too much.
And he’s off balance, the kitchen is familiar, but the dream wasn’t. Ryan can’t even remember the last dream he had that wasn’t about Marissa. He excuses himself from the kitchen and Kirsten doesn’t try to stop him.
FIN
Fandom: The O.C.
Rated: PG.
Characters/Pairing: Ryan, Kirsten. Past Ryan/Marissa, Ryan/Taylor implied.
First posted: February 2007.
Summary: Ryan had a weird dream. Coffee and Kirsten don’t really help.
Notes: Missing scene for 4.04 ‘The Metamorphosis’. All mistakes are mine, but the characters are not. 380 words.
He’s used to the dreams about her. The dreams of her alive, smiling in the sunlight or crying, shouting, whatever, but living. After them he wakes to a dull ache. The ache is sharper, honed by guilt when he dreams of her dying. But the response is the same, he wakes, controls his heartbeat and then he goes to the kitchen and makes himself a coffee.
This morning, Kirsten is there. He nods at her, but the greeting makes her smile fade.
“Are you okay, Ryan? You look—“ A pause and her fingers cross around her mug. “Pale.”
It’s Kirsten speak – Mom speak – for bad enough to worry about. Her concern’s a heavy weight, but one he missed when it wasn’t there.
“I had a weird dream,” he says, dropping the admission abruptly, and turning from her to reach for a mug.
“Oh.” And he can hear her parsing and analyzing. Not a bad dream, a weird one. She’s wondering if he dreamed about Marissa, guessing based on his appearance.
As he pours the coffee for himself, flashes come back to him. He was cage fighting, and Volchok was there, directly opposite him, taunting him in French, and sometimes he was Trey, and Ryan was turning to Taylor, who was just outside the cage, but she wouldn’t translate for him, she was too into filming the fight.
“I was looking for something,” he tells Kirsten, and it isn’t a lie, he remembers this part, it came after. “You know, I was in some kind of maze.”
“What was it?” she asks, sympathy warmer than his coffee’ll be. “What were you looking for?”
“A book,” he says flatly.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, weird, huh?” She steps back, and he wishes he’d told her the whole truth. Well, not the cage fighting part, but that the book was a dictionary. But even he can figure out on his own where that came from. He snagged one from Sandy’s study to help him with Taylor’s divorce papers. But explaining all this to Kirsten is too much.
And he’s off balance, the kitchen is familiar, but the dream wasn’t. Ryan can’t even remember the last dream he had that wasn’t about Marissa. He excuses himself from the kitchen and Kirsten doesn’t try to stop him.
FIN