Ghost Towns In The Ocean ☀︎ Ryden

13 | kill the messenger

august 27th

- i got a side shave!! in my hair!!! and i look real fucking good (not to sound vain but) i'm very happy w life rn and it's almost my birthdayy and school is gonna start and i'm gonna be a sophomore so people won't pick on me anymore. life is good.

this chapter is named after kill the messenger by jack's mannequin who are THE BEST FUCKING BAND i love andrew mcmahon and every single thing he does. what a guy. he deserves the world.

━ i'm gonna send a little rain to pour down on you, rain that makes the flowers bloom, rain to leave you all alone that keeps eyelashes falling and wishes washed away...

"This is like..." Ryan waved his arms around and kicked his legs a bit while Brendon floated somewhere near him, arms outstretched like a starfish. "A sensory deprivation tank."

"Like in Stranger Things?" Asked Brendon. His voice sounded distant, but Ryan wasn't going to risk himself by sitting up to see where Brendon had gone. Sitting up. In water.

"Stranger Things?" Brendon was quiet until he realized that Ryan was being clueless again.

"It's this TV show, it's really cool. You've really missed a lot." That hurt Ryan in unimaginable ways but was met by simple silence from him. It wasn't just the unsophisticated energy that made Brendon seem so young, it was also the naivety. Sometimes, his words didn't seem to connect with his brain and he said anything that came to his mind. And Ryan lay under the glossy moonlight in the clear lake water and considered everything that he may have missed in the time that he tuned out from the world.

"I like Grey's Anatomy." He said in this quiet voice that seemed a little otherworldly and trailed off into nowhere land.

"You're sick." Brendon's voice seemed to be getting farther and farther away. The moon wasn't full but it was shining bright; Ryan had forgotten the essential information that included all of the phases of the moon, and he wondered about life up there. About life in the giant pine trees that had been living for longer than he could ever dream of, stretching around the lake and giving it protection. The light of the moon shone down onto the lake and made the water sparkle like there was a certain type of magic that the night brought that the sun just couldn't-couldn't manage.

It was like that time where Jon had been sick and Ryan had stayed over to make cup after cup of ramen and watched everything they could find on Netflix and they had binge watched My Little Pony and the night princess horse, whatever, had been locked away because all the ponies liked the sun better and all fell asleep at night so the night pony came back to bring eternal night and everyone was terrified but, why? Why had they been so scared of the nighttime?

Maybe it was the dark, and the way that it housed the unknown. No one liked the unknown. Not even Ryan, sometimes. Of course, he was curious and of course, there was more he wanted to experience and more he wanted to know that he didn't but still. The nighttime was beautiful. It didn't matter if it was raining at night, because there was no option for sunshine.

Sunshine was overrated.

It was a miracle that the sun shone at night. It was a miracle that anything that happened actually happened. That human bodies existed, that space was a real thing, that human bodies had been in space. Existential, suddenly, and Ryan was gasping for breath, thrashing around in the cold water; terrified.

He didn't know how to swim. The unknown.

"Ryan?" Brendon's voice was as solid as ever again and Ryan made a terrible choking noise somewhere in his throat that brought Brendon's body over to him, warm and familiar in the pool of unknown beneath Ryan. Kicking and fighting an unknown enemy, Ryan tasted brackish lake water in his mouth and spat. "Ryan, fuck-" Brendon was there, his face in the moonlight, he seemed to stop time. Ryan felt his body go slack and Brendon caught him there, holding his body up. "Hold onto me," he said, and Ryan could have never complained about an instruction like that. Arms wrapped around Brendon's back, Ryan tucked his face into his shoulder. Brendon pedaled water while Ryan breathed. There was just the sound of water again.