Ryden Oneshots

Louder Than Echoes

Summary: It’s strange. It’s been five years, and even though so many other things are different, the cabin still looks the same.

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It’s strange. It’s been five years. Five long, crazy, hectic years, and for some reason, in Brendon’s mind at least, to him, that means that everything should be different.

He knows that he is. Of course he is. He’s a little bit calmer, a little bit more comfortable with who he is, a little bit disillusioned in some ways, but in the ways that don’t really matter, because now all that’s left for him is the truth. It has been five years, but he likes the changes that time has brought for him.

Ryan too; Ryan has changed. It’s not all visible and it’s not all apparent to everyone, not like it is to Brendon, but Ryan is different too.

It’s been five years, and in that time, Brendon and Ryan have grown in so many ways, grown closer, certainly, and though at times they had pushed each other away, they always found their ways back once again to that middle ground. To that place where they were always waiting for each other.

It’s strange. It’s been five years, and even though so many other things are different, the cabin still looks the same.

Around it, the landscape is a little different. The trees are thinner, the leaves are less vibrant, and Brendon wonders vaguely as he stares out the car window, Ryan driving steadily down the small, winding road up to where they park, whether or not things have really changed or if they just seemed so much better back when he was younger.

But the cabin looks the same.

When Ryan pops the trunk and Brendon pulls out the suitcase, both mouths mirroring small smiles before they teasingly meet briefly, and they head up the pathway, he notices that the front door still even has that tiny mark in it where the red paint has been chipped away, exposing the light wood underneath.

It’s almost comforting.

“I’m glad we decided to come,” Brendon says as he hauls the suitcase in, dropping it down on the footrest of the big comfortable chair that Jon always used to call for himself, lazily curling up in it to read Cosmo.

“I’m glad we did too,” Ryan echoes, sinking down on the couch, his legs splaying out, and Brendon sits down next to him, leans against him immediately because it’s his place. It was his place then and it’s his place now. “I always knew that we’d come back.”

Brendon raises an eyebrow as he tilts his head up to look at Ryan, but Ryan’s eyes are closed, so he murmurs a questioning noise into the goose-bumped skin of Ryan’s arm.

“Well,” Ryan clarifies, “I always wanted to come back. Come back sometime when there wasn’t any pressure. When I could actually enjoy it. When we could enjoy it.”

“Yeah,” Brendon agrees, burrowing in further against Ryan’s arm until Ryan relents and wraps it around Brendon’s shoulders to pull him in closer. “It’s better this way,” he says, because it is. There’s no record deadline looming over them. No crazy theme ideas or public girlfriends or heated and hidden looks. There were times back then when the cabin had seemed overwhelming, stifling in how small it could be, but now, it seems gloriously open and free.

Brendon feels Ryan lean back further, shift to the side, and Brendon follows him until they’re lying side by side on the couch, Ryan’s upper body just barely lifted up against the arm of the couch as Brendon leans against him. It’s comforting, it’s familiar, Ryan’s body warm and steady against his, and Brendon takes a deep breath, already mentally congratulating himself in picking the cabin, picking this cabin, for the weekend. For their anniversary.