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Title: Next Stop
Fandom: The OC
Characters: Ryan Atwood
Prompt: 065 - Mobile
Word Count: 384
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ryan never stays in one place long anymore.
Author's Notes: 6th in the Runaway Series, comes after: 'Finality', 'Breakaway', 'A Gnawing Pain', 'Desperate Times', and 'Fake ID', and it'll make more sense if you read those first, but I think you can read it alone.
Next Stop
After the bar, Ryan stopped even trying to settle in one place. He found work where he could, working a few weeks on temporary job, the more dangerous the better, then picked a new destination and left. Even now, over a year since leaving Newport, he still occasionally saw the signs asking for information on his location, and when he did he quickly walked the other way. He didn't want to be found, didn't want them to know the things he had done for money.
He went back to Texas, working construction in Dallas, then further south to Corpus Christi where he got a job as a janitor in the mall. After that was New Orleans, where he spent 2 months building new houses and drinking every night, then he picked up a job in a North Carolina Diner, filling in until the regular waitress came back from having her baby.
He worked his way up the east coast, spending at most a few weeks at a time in any one place, and then, suddenly he was in New Jersey, walking down the street shivering as his jacket, the same thick one he'd had since the homeless shelter in Houston a year ago, was soaked almost entirely by the driving rain. He was hungry, cold, and had just put in a full day's work doing drywall in some restaurant that he would never be able to afford to eat at.
It was definitely time to move on. So all his clothes went back in his bag, his jacket was wrung out and went back on, and he gave the apartment key back to the super before heading to the bus station. Again. He'd figured out that pretty much every bus station was the same in America, and they felt more like home than anywhere else nowadays, with all the travellng he did. He bought a ticket, the only one he could afford with what money he had left, and boarded a bus for New York.
He figured he could find a shelter in the city, and find work somewhere. Maybe he could try stopping again, settling in one place and having a life again. He'd just make sure he didn't let himself drag anyone into his world, that way no one could get hurt.
THE END
Fandom: The OC
Characters: Ryan Atwood
Prompt: 065 - Mobile
Word Count: 384
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ryan never stays in one place long anymore.
Author's Notes: 6th in the Runaway Series, comes after: 'Finality', 'Breakaway', 'A Gnawing Pain', 'Desperate Times', and 'Fake ID', and it'll make more sense if you read those first, but I think you can read it alone.
Next Stop
After the bar, Ryan stopped even trying to settle in one place. He found work where he could, working a few weeks on temporary job, the more dangerous the better, then picked a new destination and left. Even now, over a year since leaving Newport, he still occasionally saw the signs asking for information on his location, and when he did he quickly walked the other way. He didn't want to be found, didn't want them to know the things he had done for money.
He went back to Texas, working construction in Dallas, then further south to Corpus Christi where he got a job as a janitor in the mall. After that was New Orleans, where he spent 2 months building new houses and drinking every night, then he picked up a job in a North Carolina Diner, filling in until the regular waitress came back from having her baby.
He worked his way up the east coast, spending at most a few weeks at a time in any one place, and then, suddenly he was in New Jersey, walking down the street shivering as his jacket, the same thick one he'd had since the homeless shelter in Houston a year ago, was soaked almost entirely by the driving rain. He was hungry, cold, and had just put in a full day's work doing drywall in some restaurant that he would never be able to afford to eat at.
It was definitely time to move on. So all his clothes went back in his bag, his jacket was wrung out and went back on, and he gave the apartment key back to the super before heading to the bus station. Again. He'd figured out that pretty much every bus station was the same in America, and they felt more like home than anywhere else nowadays, with all the travellng he did. He bought a ticket, the only one he could afford with what money he had left, and boarded a bus for New York.
He figured he could find a shelter in the city, and find work somewhere. Maybe he could try stopping again, settling in one place and having a life again. He'd just make sure he didn't let himself drag anyone into his world, that way no one could get hurt.
THE END
