Chapter Six: Mothers, Mayhem, and Microchips
Ryan Marquez had discovered three undeniable truths about suburban life:
Nobody actually understands their sprinkler system.All neighborhood gossip travels faster than light.Family drama, when observed from a safe distance, is absolutely fascinating.
And today? All three truths were very, very relevant.
It began with his mom, Lucia, looking out the front window while sipping her morning coffee.
"Uh-oh," she said.
"What?" Ryan asked, glancing up from his tablet, which was displaying a basic facial recognition script he'd been tweaking.
Lucia tilted her head, frowning. "Some woman in a velvet poncho just hugged Jay Pritchett like she hadn't seen him since Woodstock. And Gloria looks like she wants to throw her through a window."
Ryan walked over and peeked through the curtain.
Sure enough, an older woman with dramatic flair and loud jewelry was enthusiastically hugging Jay, who looked both horrified and mildly resigned. Gloria stood frozen, her jaw tight and smile thinner than printer paper.
Ryan blinked. "Is that…"
Lucia nodded. "Dede."
"Ah," Ryan said thoughtfully. "The Incident lady."
"The original incident lady."
Within twenty minutes, the phone calls began.
From across the street, Claire could be seen pacing the front lawn with her phone clamped to her ear, waving her arms like a madwoman.
Phil was trying to assemble a charcuterie board out of string cheese and crackers.
Alex looked like she was seriously debating becoming a hermit.
And Ryan?
He was loving every second of it.
Later that afternoon, the Marquez family was invited over to the Dunphys' house under the pretense of "community bonding," which was code for "we need extra adults to absorb the chaos."
Lucia brought lumpia and lemon bars. Carlos brought a bottle of wine. Ryan brought a basic emotion-tracking AI script on his phone that he planned to use to quantify the inevitable meltdown.
"Let me guess," Alex said, greeting him at the door, "you're here to observe the disaster like a scientist studying lava flow."
Ryan smirked. "It's not every day you witness a social detonation."
"Just don't stand too close when she explodes."
The living room was a pressure cooker. Gloria sat on the couch beside Jay, smiling so tightly Ryan feared her face might crack. Mitchell and Cam were seated nearby, Cam holding Lily protectively like Dede might launch herself at them. Claire was pacing again. Phil kept trying to defuse tension by offering everyone oddly named cheeses.
And then there was Dede—vibrant, volatile, and just a little too loud.
"Oh! You must be the Marquez family!" she said, bounding over with open arms.
Lucia, ever graceful, returned the hug. "We've heard so much about you!"
Carlos smiled politely. "Mostly good things. And the rest... very entertaining."
Ryan offered a wave. "Hi. I'm the resident science experiment."
Dede gave him a curious look. "And you look like you're plotting something. I like that."
"He's always plotting," Alex muttered beside him.
Dinner was an eclectic affair. Chicken piccata, tamales, a tray of lumpia, and Phil's questionable cheese plate. The dining table was a cacophony of competing personalities, interrupted every few minutes by Gloria glaring at Dede, Mitchell nervously correcting Cam's dramatic exaggerations, and Phil telling increasingly awkward jokes to break the tension.
"I don't want to say this meal is intense," Phil declared, "but I feel like I should be wearing a helmet."
"Careful," Ryan whispered to Alex. "That joke has a 67% chance of triggering Claire."
She grinned. "You ran predictive analysis on this dinner?"
"I built a model based on past episodes—er, events."
Alex rolled her eyes. "You're such a nerd."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
Claire finally exploded halfway through dessert.
"Mom, you can't just show up here and pretend like nothing happened! You tackled Gloria at our wedding. Tackled her. In a fountain."
Dede raised her eyebrows. "I was in an emotional place."
"You were drunk and wearing a feather boa!"
Ryan leaned toward Alex and whispered, "And here comes the lava."
Alex was already half-smiling. "Three… two… one…"
"I APOLOGIZED!" Dede shouted, rising dramatically from her seat. "And I brought you all cookies! That's called healing!"
"You brought cookies shaped like grenades!" Mitchell cried.
Cam added, "Mine had barbed wire icing."
"I was being metaphorical!"
Jay finally stood. "Alright, alright, enough!"
Everyone froze. Even Toby the corgi, who had been chewing a slipper in the corner, stopped mid-bite.
Jay sighed, rubbing his temples. "We all have our flaws. Some of us are dramatic. Some of us are control freaks. Some of us think cheese is a diplomatic solution."
Phil raised a hand. "Guilty."
"But we're family. We yell. We screw up. And then we show up again. That's the deal."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Then Gloria, still seething, said, "Next time she shows up with grenades, I'm throwing her in the fountain myself."
And with that, laughter broke out around the table.
Not full, happy laughter—but the awkward, weary kind that follows a storm. The kind that says we're still standing, even if we're limping.
Outside on the porch later, Ryan and Alex sat with plates of leftover dessert and cool air brushing their faces.
"Your family is…" Ryan began.
"I know."
"I mean, I've studied entropy, but this?"
Alex laughed. "It's like living in a sitcom."
Ryan glanced at her. "You ever feel like the only sane person in the room?"
"Every day."
"I get that."
A comfortable silence passed between them. Not the awkward kind—but the kind that stretched like a blanket. Familiar. Warming.
"You handled today pretty well," she said.
"I just stayed quiet and collected data."
"Still," she added, turning toward him, "you're good at staying calm when everyone else is freaking out."
He looked at her, really looked at her, and said, "I like observing things. But I think I like observing you the most."
Alex blinked.
Then smiled. Just a little.
"Okay, that was smooth."
"I've been practicing."
"You're better at equations than flirting."
"I'm hoping you'll help me improve."
She nudged his shoulder. "You're such a nerd."
"You keep saying that like it's a dealbreaker."
"It's not."
Another quiet beat.
Then Alex looked down at her lap and said, "You're kinda my favorite person too, you know."
Ryan's chest fluttered.
He tried to play it cool. "Even more than Hawking?"
She gave him a sideways glance. "Hawking didn't build a robot that brought me lemonade last week."
"I can teach it to recite Shakespeare if that helps."
She snorted. "Please don't."
The stars overhead flickered quietly, the chaos inside the house settling down as laughter echoed from the kitchen.
Ryan looked up.
In a world where he knew the timeline, the characters, even the major events—this was something he hadn't predicted.
Not just family dysfunction or science projects.
But this connection.
Something real.
And even with Tony Stark's genius brain pulsing in his head, he knew one thing with absolute clarity:
He was falling for Alex Dunphy.
And for once, he was totally okay not having a plan.