Title: Asthma

Author: Erin Kaye Hashet

Rating: PG

Feedback: EKHashet at hotmail dot com

Spoilers: Through "The My Two Dads."

Archive: Anywhere, just let me know.

Summary: At this point, Sandy doesn't even miss breathing anymore.

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Josh Schwartz and the actors who play them.

Asthma

by Erin Kaye Hashet

"The minute you were born, I knew that I would never take another easy breath again without knowing you were safe."

"So I'm like asthma?"

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"Meerkats," the narrator intones, "go to great lengths to protect the young from threats, often endangering their own lives. On warning of danger, the babysitter takes the young, even those that are not her own offspring, underground to safety and is prepared to defend them if the danger follows. If retreating underground is not possible, she collects all young together and lies on top of them."

Smart animals, those meerkats, Sandy thinks. He has one arm around each son, and he pulls them both closer.

His hand still hurts. He can't even remember the last time he hit someone. He got into some fights growing up, but he's pretty sure he lost all of them.

But Frank pisses him off like nothing else, and honestly, Sandy did get some satisfaction out of seeing Frank, who towers over him, go flying backwards.

It's a rare person to whom Sandy can't be even a little bit sympathetic. It's helpful if a public defender has empathy for the people he defends, and after all these years, Sandy has developed a certain level of compassion for people who commit certain crimes. Drug use isn't hard to understand—he's met people who have been abused, lived in poverty, dealt with death and illness, and their desire to dull the pain is hardly unfathomable. It's also not hard to see how someone could become a thief when caught up in hard times or a web of mistakes, like Jimmy Cooper—or when caught up with the wrong crowd, as Ryan was. Assault and battery—hell, after tonight, Sandy himself is guilty of that. And while DUIs can have terrible, deadly consequences, even good people, like Kirsten, can make that mistake.

What Sandy cannot understand is how a man could abandon his family. He has no compassion whatsoever for an abandoner. It's unfathomable to him. From the minute Seth was born, he knew that his child was now the most important thing in his life. The first time he'd held his son, that feeling had consumed him, and he'd been overwhelmed with the knowledge that he would kill to protect this child whom he loved more than his own life. And the feeling has only doubled with the addition of Ryan to their family.

Frank has certainly done some bad things in the past—some forgivable, and some, like beating his wife and sons, heinous. But Sandy feels a level of hatred for him of which he'd previously never believed himself capable. For a lousy attempt at robbery, Frank abandoned the family he'd treated so badly and left them with nothing. Sandy cannot for the life of him understand what could make Frank ignore for so many years this kid Sandy has come to love so much. As it is, Sandy wishes he'd known Ryan longer. It's not his fault, but he wishes he hadn't missed out on the majority of the childhood of the kid who's become his son.

Ryan and Seth make mistakes sometimes, do stupid things, but they're fundamentally good people of whom Sandy is proud. It's easy to understand why Seth is the way he is, given that Sandy's familiar with his DNA and the way he was raised.

But he may never know everything about Ryan's past. So what makes Ryan the way he is? If he's honest with himself, Sandy would say he'd like to take credit for Ryan's better qualities, but he knows he can't. They're things he saw in Ryan right from the beginning: when, after stealing the car, he was more concerned with Trey's fate than his own, or when he made breakfast for the family without anyone asking him to, or the way he took Dawn out of the room when she was drunk on Casino Night, as if he was used to taking care of his mother. This is a kid who was abandoned by his parents, has a father who beat up him and Trey and Dawn, and has a criminal brother who sexually assaulted at least one person. And yet Sandy has never once seen Ryan refuse to help someone, ignore Seth's long rants, pass judgment on someone, or treat a woman with disrespect.

Qualities like that survived Ryan's horrible childhood. Or maybe they're a product of it. Either way, Frank voluntarily gave up the chance to see Ryan grow into the young man of whom Sandy is so proud. The idea of it makes Sandy so angry he can't breathe.

It's only been seven months since the night Sandy and Kirsten got the phone call every parent dreads: the your-child-has-been-in-a-car-wreck-but-we-can't-give-details-over-the phone call. The sit-in-panicked-silence-while-imagining-worst-case-scenarios call. The realizing-exactly-what-this-child-means-to-us-and-our-family-and-regretting-that-it-could-be-too-late-to-tell-him call. The call that they later found out meant that they had to deal with the horrible reality of Marissa's death—but not before they broke down in unrestrained tears of relief in the hospital, throwing their arms around their son, beginning to breathe again when they knew that Ryan still could.

And then they lost him again. Two years after that horrible summer when both their children had left them, Ryan left again. Marissa's death was awful enough, but in the months Ryan was gone, it was as if he'd died, too. It was the first time the house was absent of just Ryan, and that absence was like sitting in a chair and then realizing there was nothing to lean your back against. Sandy realized every day how much Ryan's presence in their house had come to mean to them. He kept staring at the pool house, as if by staring hard enough he could summon the image of Ryan lying on his bed reading. He would lie awake in bed at night, unable to breathe, thinking of any number of horrible things grief might drive Ryan to do.

But they kept trying. Once they tracked him down, they did all they could to try to get him back, mindful that they no longer had any legal claim to him. Care packages. Letters. "We're worried about you." "We love you." "Please come home." "We miss you so much." And all this while having to see Ryan with the products of the cage fights: cuts and bruises that Sandy swore made his own face throb.

They were successful at getting him back, and Ryan, thank God, is well on his way to okay. But the months that Sandy's children were away were among the most miserable of his life, and the thought that Frank has been separated from his sons for years and never once experienced that feeling is infuriating.

Of course, Sandy's own father has done the same thing.

When he first met Ryan, Sandy told him they were cut from the same deck, but they're not. Not really. His childhood wasn't perfect, but it was nowhere near as bad as Ryan's. He said that before he met Dawn, who was nothing like his own mother. Sure, Sophie wasn't around for him much growing up, but she was busy with work, not getting drunk and dating drug addicts, and Sandy had left her when he was old enough, not vice versa. And she hadn't tolerated an abusive husband—in fact, the one time Sandy had seen his father hit her, Sophie had screamed at her husband to leave or she would call the police.

He left, so she never had to make that call. Sandy was nine then, and he hasn't seen his father since. He doesn't even know if he's alive or dead. And he has no idea what he'd say to him if he was alive. Really, it's easier to just think of him as a horrible abandoner who'll never come back.

Sandy lives in the gray area every day, defending good people who went down the wrong road, but some things are just easier in black and white. He wishes Frank had stayed there. At dinner, Frank had been personable and funny and nice. Infuriated as he was, Sandy can't say he wasn't a tiny bit relieved when he found out Frank wasn't really dying. It turned him right back into the asshole Sandy was fond of thinking of him as.

Sandy would like to think that tonight he acted totally out of concern and love for Ryan and a desire to protect him, but he knows that jealousy factored in. Kirsten had known Dawn right from the start, and knew what Dawn was like. But Sandy had always figured on Frank remaining nothing more than some unpleasant figure from Ryan's past. Not an accountant working for Kirsten and having dinner at their house. After they'd lost Ryan over the summer, he didn't want anyone who could take him away from them again. And now that Ryan's eighteen, they no longer have any legal claim to him.

Actually, love and jealousy aren't mutually exclusive.

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After the movie ends and Kirsten and Seth have gone to bed, Ryan remains in the kitchen with Sandy. Sandy makes a mental note to ask Seth what this visiting-Dr.-Roberts deal is, but that's an issue for tomorrow.

After three and a half years, he still can't explain what it was that drew him to Ryan. But the first time Sandy saw him, before he had any idea that Dawn would throw him out, before he knew exactly how bad things were for Ryan at home, he had a feeling he'd be getting to know this kid. He'd given clients his card before, but until Ryan, none had ever called for any reasons besides questions about their cases. It hadn't just been Ryan's obvious intelligence, or his concern for his brother, or that he clearly hadn't really wanted to steal the car. It had been as if Sandy had known what was going to happen. He'd almost been expecting Ryan's call.

"Any key lime pie left?" Sandy asks.

"Over here." Ryan indicates the plate on the counter, and Sandy cuts himself a slice.

"This is great pie," he comments.

Ryan laughs. "In retrospect, hard to believe that's what Taylor was worried about."

Sandy smiles. "She and Kirsten seemed to enjoy the cooking together."

"They did a good job." Ryan pauses, as if he's trying to decide whether or not to say something. Then he speaks. "You know," he says, "Taylor and I wouldn't be together if it weren't for you."

Sandy looks up, taken aback. "How's that?"

"You remember when you came by the restaurant with your friend?" Ryan says. "And Taylor had just asked me to help with her divorce, and I didn't think I could handle it. But then you said that helping people out of jams is what I do…and I just thought, no, that's what you do." He gives a little half-smile. "But then I thought, why would I not do something that makes me like Sandy? And, well, the rest is history."

Sandy's breath stops for a minute. He has to close his eyes before he can speak. "That's…that's really good to know, kid," he says, his voice breaking, and he moves toward Ryan to give him a hug.

He's only known Ryan for three and a half years, and Ryan was already almost an adult by the time Sandy met him. And yet Ryan, who is nothing like Frank, resembles Sandy in so many ways. Maybe Sandy had already seen this that day in juvie. Either way, there's no question that the young man he's hugging is his son.

He feel Ryan pull away, and say the words that are so hard for him. "I love you, Sandy."

Sandy is punching people and Ryan is expressing his feelings. Have they crossed into some kind of parallel universe?

"I love you, too," he says, placing a hand on Ryan's shoulder and looking him in the eye. "Very much."

"I know," says Ryan, and gives him a huge smile before heading to the poolhouse to go to bed.

Something about that smile touches Sandy deeply. He's happy. After all he's been through in the past few years alone, Ryan is happy.

Sandy thinks of his wife and sons, and is suddenly so overcome with love for his family that he can't breathe.

At this point, he doesn't even miss breathing anymore.

The End

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