Ryden Oneshots

Guide Me Home

.:. Rating : R .:.

Summary: “It was the first time I slept outside.” (Idea spurred by the interview with Ryan where he talked about camping. Obviously I played with details).

Ryan can hear the crickets from inside the tent clearly. It’s just a low hum, but it’s keeping him awake. Well, that’s not completely true, but it definitely isn’t making sleep come any easier. His mind is racing, and the high pitch trill of the crickets is only making the fragmented thoughts run together, pour out faster and faster until Ryan doesn’t quite follow his own thoughts and he’s lost in a jumble of confusion and anxiety, mixed with that tiny underlying emptiness that sometimes seems to be too much.

He sighs and opens his eyes, thinking that maybe the dull blue of the tent, so dark in the middle of night, might help to calm his thoughts. At least with his eyes open he doesn’t see the words filter past his eyelids, cursive and fancy or jagged and marred with ink blots.

Ryan vaguely wonders if it’s normal that his mind is usually just a mass of words, feeding through his thoughts like ticker tape.

The ceiling of the tent, that sweeping blue tarp, helps a little, but with his thoughts settling, Ryan begins to notice more irritations. The crickets are still chirping, of course they are, but he pays them no mind. Instead, he slowly gets up, carefully pushes the comforter to the side, and crawls quietly on his knees until he reaches the side of the tent. Slowly, with one finger dragging in front along the raised tracks, Ryan unzippers part of the tent door.

Instantly he feels better as fresh air filters in. Ryan sighs and quietly scoots back along the large comforter on the ground, settling down before pulling the other one overtop of himself, mindful not to pull the covers over too far and hog them.

It feels strange to him to be outside yet still enclosed in this plastic canopy. It feels wrong somehow, and suddenly Ryan has the strongest urge to get up and drag the comforter outside, sleep on the ground, warm himself next to the fire, look up at the stars and drift off in the open night air.

It’s his first time camping, his first time sleeping anywhere other than a bed, or a mattress on the floor, or the backseat of car. He turns a little to the side, and the bottom of the tent crinkles a little as he moves to look at the person next to him.

A tiny beam of moonlight is filtering in from the outside, pouring through the small opening in the tent, and it illuminates the softened and lax expression of a sleeping Brendon.

Ryan smiles, remembering how Brendon had started a fire all by himself, so proud what he had learned during his brief time in Boy Scouts, and how he had strummed his guitar, sang lowly, smoothly along to old songs that they all knew, fingers plucking away at the strings, Brendon stopping every so often to lick the pads of his fingers again since they seemed to be perpetually sticky from the s’mores. He remembers Jon’s easy laugh and Spencer’s look of pure disappointment as one of Spencer’s marshmallows caught fire, the flames engulfing the marshmallow quickly, and he laughs now quietly to himself, replaying Spencer’s huff.

It was everything that he thought camping would be: sing-alongs, s’mores, stupid ghost stories, talking late into the night until the fire died down to still-hot coals and their eyes drooped, but now that Ryan is lying in his and Brendon’s tent, with that cheap, ugly plastic all around them, it feels wrong.

He tries to lie there for a little bit longer, thinking that maybe the urge to go outside will subside, but after a couple of minutes, he just sighs and starts to quietly get up. It’s stupid, he knows it is, but it’s his first time camping, maybe his last time camping, and he’s going to do it right. He’s going to sleep under the fucking stars.