Chapter Text
He actually heard Jake's car before everyone else did. He always was able to hear most out of all 4 of them from his bedroom up at the top of the house.
Figures that as soon as he started packing for the fair as his mother asked him to do that the quote on quote "favorite kid" would make his way home. Hungover of course, but given he was the oldest and the most prospective, that didn't matter.
Jake was a born farmer. Ryan on the other hand...was not. Clearly, but they attempted at least to try and make him not feel like the odd one out of all of them, even if the muttered Spanish he heard during church from others mentioned him so many times.
While Jake had taken everything up in his stride, Ryan just...hadn't. He couldn't plough a field, was barely able to ride a horse and also couldn't hunt or kill anything other than the plants he continually tried to grow in the flower boxes attached to his bedroom windows every season before winter and while it barely snowed in California, they always ended up dead anyway.
Speaking of things that would most likely end up dead, he watched out said windows with a scowl as Jake's red hunk of shit blazed it's way through the gates and into the driveway, a cloud of dust following the roar of it's motor as it screeched past the fences and set off the chickens again, feathers flying past both the barn and his father with their pigs (one of which they were escorting to the fair for show purposes this year as well) as it did so.
God, he hated that car. He was pretty sure despite currently being engaged, that Jake honestly loved that money pit more than he loved Kelsey, that was for damn sure. His brother and their neighbour had been together since high school, but the way he looked at that machine was more than he'd ever looked at her once.
He'd been working on it pretty much since the last State Fair, determined now he was of age (and of stupidity in their father's opinion) to enter the race and win himself a trophy and a name for himself. His 'last yahoo' or something before he married and took over the farm from his father and mother, who would be taking off for the coast once that went through.
Seemed like only yesterday he was still in high school and now, he was 19. Guess time flies when you get old, that or you get so bored and mundane you don't notice.
It wasn't that Ryan minded being in such a small town, but sometimes...sometimes he wished he just wasn't there at all. He just wanted to be...lost, in a way. Lost in a big city somewhere with a thousand new places to do and see and do, holding the hand of a man with kind eyes that loved him for who he was and not what everyone wanted him to be.
That was also a big point of contention, not just with his parents lately but in the town itself. In a town and farming community as small as theirs, people found out information quickly and true to natural form, most people do not like what they hear. Arcadia was one of many.
He tried not to focus on that however, as he packed his jeans and undershirts in one side of his suitcase before starting on his underwear and overshirts. They didn't matter, they never mattered. They could say what they pleased, he hopefully wouldn't be here much longer.
(He couldn't live with Jake and Kelsey forever after all as they needed to start a family without people like him around. He knew that, didn't mean he'd have to like being kicked out.)
The fair would be an opportunity to have an almost small holiday for a while, something to do and something new to see outside of the paddocks and picket fences that had bordered his life for the past 18 years, a time to figure out "what next?". He definitely needed it.
"Ryan?" His mother called from downstairs, making him turn his head as he zipped up his suitcase finally after putting the last piece of clothing he'd wanted to wear over that 4 or 5 days they'd be gone for. "Ryan, hun, if you're finished packing, can you come downstairs and help me with the pickles and mincemeat?" That woman had to be telepathic.
"Coming, Ma." Ryan called back down and placed the suitcase next to his bedroom door with a huff before jogging down the stairs.
Just as he reached the kitchen where his mother stood over a pot she was packing liberally with the aforementioned mincemeat, the phone was ringing. His mother, having been closest, wiped her hands off and answered it as he went to take a seat at the dining room table.
"Would you like your name on the labels to be Mrs. Steven Bergara, mother?"
"Oh, no, hun. Just Mrs. Linda Bergara for now. With your father entering that hog of his, they might just get us mixed up somehow with our luck." She appeared in the hallway with the phone to her shoulder a moment later as Ryan finished sticking the now handwritten label onto both the pickle jars and then, the mincemeat. "It's actually Kelsey is on the phone, so could you please go and find your rebel of a brother for her? It sounds important."
"Sure, Ma. I'll see if he's in the shed working on that hunk of junk."
"Oh, I don't know what that boy's gettin' into whanting to race that thing, but I don't like it." His mother flustered and honestly, Ryan wished he could do the same. "You and I both." He agreed before he headed out the back door, boots sinking down a little into the mud.
That asshole better be in that shed. He wasn't traversing the whole damn farm for him.
As thankfully expected, Ryan located his wayward older brother underneath the chassis of 'The Red Rocket' (as cleverly dubbed by Jake himself), a toolbox in hand and what sounded like a wrench cranking something. Ever the younger brother, Ryan didn't make a noise and simply walked up to where he was under the car and kicked him in the shin.
It had the desired effect, Jake jumping 5 feet off the ground like a snake had been found in one of his work boots before there was a loud metal ting, the latter having obviously hit his head, given while Ryan laughed, he wheeled himself out, a grease mark where he was rubbing it with a scowl up at him. "Sometimes I wonder why I asked for a little brother all those Christmases ago. I just have just asked for a football instead."
"Oh boo hoo." Ryan rolled his eyes as his chuckling died down. "A football would have most likely been more useful than me, I guess. Ma just wanted me to tell you that Kelsey's on the home phone. Needs to speak to ya."
"Shit, well, why didn't you say that first instead of scaring the bejesus outta me?" Offering out a hand, Ryan helped Jake to his feet cleanly. "We're still picking her up and taking her with us in the truck down to the fair, right?"
"Don't know." Ryan shrugged. "Ma didn't say. Just told me to come and get you."
"Right, thanks little guy." Jake smirked and then headed off in the direction of the farmhouse. Ryan soon followed him, but saw his father calling him over and obeyed, moving to where he stood in front of the pigpen. "Hey Dad. Getting Blueboy all fed up for the trip?"
"You bet I am." Steven Bergara looked proudly upon his most prized pig for the year. A sleek, yet even sized New Hampshire boar, one of the best he'd ever bred. Usually they didn't enter pigs in the contest, as they were a dairy farm originally, but Jake had insisted they branch out into different areas of farming as his time to take over started coming faster.
So instead of just milk, they now had pigs, chickens and goats. He was sure Jake would increase the variety of animals as time went on as he got his hands into it, but it was a good start into what Jake was calling a "modern farm". Whatever that meant.
Ryan just turned his attention back to Blueboy, watching as the black and pink patterned animal slurped his breakfast from out of his trough. "Think he'll be okay travelling?"
"So long as the vet gets here soon with his sedatives." His father grumbled, looking out to the driveway and the road beyond it. "I wish I knew what was keeping that fella. We'll have a late start and miss the whole fair by the time that old doom spreader gets here."
"Let's hope not, last thing we need." It really was. Ryan couldn't really think of anything right now that could be any worse than missing...oh Christ. He heard the very hum of an ATV and mentally swore in about 3 languages as he saw the cursed image of Steven Lim riding his prized machine around the nearby frenceline from where his family's land was next to theirs.
Scratch that, this was worse than missing the fair. He watched as his father waved to him and he waved back, before he pushed off from the fence and moved in his direction.
"Hey, how's my favorite neighborino?" Steven grinned at him as he came up to stand a foot away from the fence line. "Excited about leaving town?"
"Something like that." Please, just kill him now. It wasn't that he didn't like Steven. He was a nice neighbour to have around and he was actually a nice guy. His whole family is nice enough. He was just...weird. Like /really/ weird. "It's only for 4 days or something. Not like much will have changed by the time we get back anyway. What about you?"
"Sorry, but no State Fair for me this year." Big surprise there. Not.
"You're kidding?" he tried to put some surprise in his voice at least as Steven nodded back.
"Nope, the prices are starting to get too high and given Dad's back has just had surgery and stuff, we can't afford to go to a silly event like that without a reason, once a year or not."
He shrugged, shoulders rolling as his hand gripped the handles of the 4 wheeler. "Plus, on top of that, I have to take care of our cows and start installing machines while my Dad's out of action so he can't keep saying no to me about it. Dragging him out of the old style is taking forever, so I'm hoping he sees my point when I show him the milker and other stuff in action."
Of course Steven would say something like that. The man was obsessed with both modernization and business, especially when it came to his parents farm, given he'd only just come back to it after attending college the lucky son of bitch, why did he even ask?
"Yeah, guess you just have too much stuff on your hands. Should have guessed."
He would have said more, but both the appearance of the vet and his mother waving to him from the window of the farehouse signalled he needed to get out of there while he was still awake. Anymore farm talk with Steven and he'd never stop. "Well, good luck with all that, man. Maybe I'll see you when we get back from Pasadena."
"Hopefully, see you round dude." Revving the 4 wheeler from the mud caked around it's tyres, Steven raced off, leaving Ryan standing alone against the fence, hands in his pockets as he started the short trek back to the farmhouse.
Hopefully, things would get better the further away from Arcadia they got. He was banking on it.