AH collections

Violet & clementine

Jeremwood
Word count: 3461
Chapters: 1

Maybe the number etched into Ryan's skin is the amount of times he hears a song, and his soulmate is a DJ he snaps at in a bar one night. Maybe it's the amount he'll eat a specific food, and he meets her when the pen he's signing his credit card slip with dies and a patron at the next table over helpfully offers a pen from her purse. Maybe it's the number of people he makes small talk with on public transit, and a handsome man with his heart on his sleeve will make Ryan miss his stop so they can keep talking. Whatever his soulnumber means, he knows it's something better done in a big city than in a town in Georgia. Anywhere is better than his birth home.

It doesn't take long before shit gets fucked in Los Santos.

It's not that he's one of a hundred thousand homeless teenagers in America. In any other major city, sure. But Los Santos is practically rolling put the red carpet for teenagers too sure of their immortality to turn down the overnight shift at the gas station, or the convenience store, or, in his case, the adult toy store. There are a surprising number of 24/7 porn and toy stores in Los Santos. Unlike unfortunate teens in New York, or Chicago, Ryan has a job, he has an apartment, he has friends in the form of neighbours who do meth and invite him over on occasion. He doesn't partake, they're not exactly keen on sharing their stash, but they can be interesting to talk to.

Where things go wrong is when he finds out one of the ranges of dildo are packed with cocaine. After pondering it for a while Ryan steals a crate to sell for extra money. It doesn't go well. His manager ends up tracking him down and Ryan just barely saves himself. It's something out of a cop drama on prime time; he tackles the guy and gets the gun out of his hand. Ryan's not even eighteen when he shoots a man in the head. A man who he'd been arguing with about the merits of Trey Parker and Matt Stone the last time he saw him.

He could move back home. The argument could be made that in buttfuck Georgia he never would have had this happen to him. But he never would have had that opportunity to offload some coke either, and what if 672 is the number of dollar bills he gets from street dealing? Given the prospect of true love, and intense adrenaline pumping adventures, Ryan just can't move back in to his parents house.

At eighteen he kills his methy neighbours. They sketch out, they've taken bad shit and it's the only way to not get stabbed in the face by the Mrs, while Mr tries to light the room on fire. His gun only has three bullets left in it, and anyone who watches the news, and sees the Most Wanted billboards change weekly knows that three won't be enough.

The fourth person he kills is some asshole who tries to mug him. Judging by the last expression the mugger makes, he half expected things to go down this way. Ryan knows better than to leave the body on the sidewalk. He's lucky to have not been particularly associated with the deaths on his hands already, but at some point that luck will end. Good thing there's a lot of open land on the outskirts of Los Santos. A shallow grave and a hungry coyote and all his problems are solved.

He gets caught anyway, despite his precautions. He gets caught by a guy who gets out of the car to piss only to find a two foot deep hole, a growing mound of dirt, a guy with blisters from the shovel, and a corpse. Cue Los Santos style morality: instead of getting out his phone and calling the cops, or running away, scared that he'll be next, the guy decides to blackmail him. Ryan has to kill someone for him or the gigs of video he took over the hour of completing the burial will be emailed to the cops. Sure the LSPD don't try hard to do their job, but with something dropped in their laps like that, they have to follow up, just for the easy credit.

Ryan makes the obvious choice. He teaches himself via the internet how to break into a house and then he waits in the closet 'til he can shoot the target. Once. Or twice. Or a dozen times in the gut. What? He's very frustrated by the situation.