Ryan, My "Little" Brother (Rewrite) - Part 2

[tekuno]

This is a rewrite of BigBearMan94's original concept, done with his permission.

Original Story
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 4.5 | Part 5

This story is now complete. (Thanks for reading!) Each section ends with a link to the next section, but here are links to all the parts of the rewrite for handy navigation

Rewrite
One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Epilogue

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I got engrossed in writing this story, and decided I had enough for another part already, given how short the first one was, so here you go. Still no growth, yet, but we'll get there soon in part 3. (I needed to establish some more stuff.)

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Ryan, My "Little" Brother
A Rewrite of BigBearMan94's Original Story (With Permission)
Part 2

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The next day was Saturday. The weather was still horrible, but I wanted to get Ryan out of the house for a while, so we dropped "Pikatchu Does Altomaire" or whatever the title of his DVD was in the mail and then I took him to the local aquarium. (Normally I would have taken him to a movie, but there was nothing showing which he hadn't already seen, and since Dad had always insisted on taking Ryan to the library on Saturdays I didn't want to invite trouble by going there.)

After an hour and a half of looking at fish, and ten minutes in the gift shop where Ryan decided he didn't want a plush dolphin or turtle but DID want a plastic moray eel with spring-loaded jaws, we went to a sandwich shop and ate.

"So, what are we going to do this afternoon?"

"Well, I'm going to get started on sorting out Dad's stuff from his bedroom." Ryan looked startled. "I know it sounds kind of heartless, but if I get it cleared out, then I can move into that bedroom and you can move into mine, which is bigger than that little one you have. And then we'll have an extra room upstairs which we can use for something else. And besides, there's stuff in Dad's bedroom which needs to be sent to relatives. And there might be stuff which has to be gotten rid of quickly, too." And, I added in the privacy of my head, if Dad had any caches of stuff I don't want you to find, like condoms or alcohol, I can dispose of them and stop worrying.

"Oh." Ryan was obviously upset about clearing away traces of Dad, but for some reason he calmed down quickly. I could almost SEE an idea form in his head, but he didn't want to tell me about it. "Then I'm going to play 'Pokemon: Paisley' and stay out of your way."

"Thanks. It'll probably go more quickly if it's just me. I know you want to help, but I'm going to be moving some furniture around, and you just aren't as strong as I am." This was a standing family joke, actually, from a few years back. I had been trying to show off to Ryan in the basement, overestimated my strength, and ended up dropping the end of the sofa I had picked up so hard that the frame broke and the whole thing to be thrown away. Ryan grinned at the joke, and then got sort of a hungry look.

That afternoon I bundled up lots of clothing to give away to charities, ran Dad's last hamper of dirty clothing through the wash so it could be included, discreetly took Dad's box of condoms and put it in my own dresser, threw out Dad's personal grooming tools, took the pictures off the wall to be rehung elsewhere or sent to relatives who might appreciate them, and in general started the process of turning Dad's old room into my new room. It was terribly depressing work, but I stuck with it to get it out of the way, and at the end of the afternoon I had the contents of the room all boxed, bagged, thrown out, or moved to the hallway or the garage. Ryan was quiet the whole time. When I came out to the living room, he looked up from his video game and grinned at me.

"All done?"

"For today, yeah. How about some dinner, Champ?"

"Great!"

"Okay, then, tuna casserole it is."

"What? Yuck!"

"You have a better idea?"

"Um... how about pizza?"

"Yesterday you said you never wanted to have pizza again!"

"I got better."

"Well, anyway, we can't afford to keep getting stuff out every night. If we're not going to have tuna casserole, then you need to think of something I can make instead."

"Tacos!"

"Okay, I can accept that answer. But we'll have to go out and do some grocery shopping. I don't think we have any ground beef or taco shells. Can you hold out long enough?"

"Sure! I'll go with you and help!"

I was a little leery of Ryan's idea of 'help', but he seemed cheerful and that was a big improvement, so off we went. When we got into the store, he stopped short.

"Whoops! I forgot to lock my car door!"

"Well, then, you'd better run back and fix it. I'll start at the other end of the store and work my way back, so you can find me easily."

It took a suspiciously long time for Ryan to show up, but he found me as I was considering whether to get a 12-pack of taco shells (which we would finish that night, since I was planning on eating a lot of tacos) or a 24-pack and have leftovers. He was grinning ear-to-ear, and insisted on pushing the grocery cart.

The next day, the weather was finally warm and sunny again. In the afternoon, I made Ryan go out and play basketball with his friends while I moved my stuff into Dad's old bedroom. In the evening, I had another workout, and then spent a couple of hours calling relatives to find out who wanted which pictures and personal items, and then printing shipping labels.

Most of the next two weeks went by surprisingly normally, considering everything. I finished taking over the master bedroom and bathroom -- in a way, it felt creepy to be in Dad's place after he died, but it wasn't like he died in his bed, or even in the house, and it also made me feel, well, ADULT for the first time. Even if the "master bathroom" was a tiny room with a shower stall instead of a bathtub and shower, it was still all mine, rather than the larger bathroom I had had to share with Ryan up until then.

Ryan moved into my old room. It made me laugh to see him carefully take down each Pokemon poster and re-hang them in the new room. I considered taking a picture -- someday, he was going to grow out of it, and a photo of his Pokemon Central bedroom would make great blackmail material as soon as he started dating, but somehow I just didn't have the heart. Kids should be kids while they can; they'll grow up soon enough.

When I got home from work on Friday, two weeks after the visit with the lawyer, I was surprised to find the mailbox empty. After all those name changes when I took over ownership of the house and bank accounts and responsibility for the bills, there had been confirmation mailings arriving in bulk every day, to say nothing of the huge volume of disgusting predatory "someone just died so buy our expensive stuff" junk mail, every single day.

I went looking for Ryan to see if he had brought in the mail -- something which he never, ever did unless asked -- and got another surprise. He wasn't in his bedroom or the living room or the kitchen; when I found him, he was actually working out in the basement!

Or, at least, trying. For someone who had shared a house with a bodybuilder for years, Ryan had an amazingly bad grasp of how to use free weights.

"Oh, hey, Champ, have you decided to muscle up like me at last?" I flexed an arm at him jokingly, but he was completely serious.

"Yeah. I've decided I'm going to get big and strong like you. And then when I'm big, I can get a job and help out."

"A very noble ambition, Champ, but you're not going to get anywhere like that. In fact, you might hurt yourself. Your arm muscles don't pull that way, so you aren't really getting any benefits out of waving the weights around in that direction. Want me to walk you through a few exercises?"

"Would you? That would be great!"

I gave Ryan a standard beginner's runthrough of exercises. Apparently he had paid more attention to me when I had been exercising in the past than I would have thought, because he had me show him a lot of other exercises as well, the kind that beginners usually don't try. If I hadn't been using light weights and empty bars, just demonstrating everything would have been a fairly tiring workout all by itself.

When we were finished -- Ryan, having actually DONE all the exercises, was sweaty and shaking, but happy -- I remembered why I had come downstairs in the first place.

"Say, Ryan, did you take in the mail?"

"Oh, yeah. It's on the kitchen counter by the toaster."

"If you're going to start doing that, could you leave it on the table by the front door?"

"Sure."

"Let me make you a protein shake, since you did so much, and then you go take a shower before you start to smell."

"Okay!"

Ryan chugged down the protein shake and then made a horrible face.

"Yeah, I know. I've often wondered whether the stuff would taste any better if they didn't try to make it chocolate or vanilla flavored. But it's effective. Look at me!"

I put up a double biceps pose and smirked at Ryan. Ryan put up his little kid arms -- they couldn't have been 11 inches around -- in response, and grinned.

"Pretty soon it'll be me telling you that!"

Then he headed off to the shower.

Part 3

[musclemonkey]

Very nice! It'll definitely be interesting to see where you take the story. Thanks for having the initiative to pick this up.

[tekuno]

I started rereading this after posting a link to it elsewhere and noticed a serious flaw in this part. Anyone else see it?

[rododoro3]

I'm not sure we're talking about the same flaw, but why did Ryan make up an excuse to leave the grocery store? Wouldn't he have ordered it at home?

[tekuno]

Originally Posted by rododoro3

I'm not sure we're talking about the same flaw, but why did Ryan make up an excuse to leave the grocery store? Wouldn't he have ordered it at home?

He had to make an excuse to get away from his brother somewhere, why not the grocery store?

No, the problem is that Alex tells Ryan they had to share a bedroom up until now (which means the house has 2 bedrooms, one for the father/parents and one for the kids), but then he says (and the narrative agrees) that he's going to move into the father's old room and Ryan can move into Alex's old room (which means that there are 3 bedrooms, and the kids never had to share one).

Oops. I'm really surprised nobody caught that at the time -- it's just the kind of continuity error which you guys tend to pick up! (In fact, I was so surprised that I posted the message you were responding to without thinking -- I should have just quietly corrected it.)

I'll fix it now. Everyone just coming in, this was all your imagination. There were no errors here. Really!

(Edit) Aaaaaand I now see that I misread it, so there wasn't a problem after all. It's the BATHROOM that he was sharing with Ryan. Oh, for crying out loud!