Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

September bleeds together in a hazy mess of too many questions and too many words desperately falling from Ryan’s mouth, as he tries to convince anyone to listen. Really listen . Not just placate him until they think he’s out of earshot so they can mumble something under their breath along the lines of “I don’t believe a word out of his mouth” or “These kids have got to be lying to save their asses.”

Yet, they keep asking. So, he keeps telling them. It’s driving him crazy.

Amidst the detectives that sneer and dismiss Ryan’s retelling of that night's events, there are the rare few who seem receptive. The ones who swallow something thick and clench their jaws just a little too tight. It’s always the local police officers or the ones from the neighboring counties. The ones who’ve seen something they haven’t found the guts to explain. They dart their nervous eyes between the camera in the corner of the interrogation room–pointed directly down at the table one of Ryan’s hands is cuffed to–and Ryan himself.

Of course, they don’t jump to his defense. That’d be too lawful of them. They just adjust their gaudy gun holsters and cross their arms over their chests like it’ll distance them from whatever lurks out there in the woods of Northkill. The counselors' stories line up quite a bit despite their almost immediate separation upon being brought into custody and that elicits a fear in them that they don’t know how to stomach.

When Ryan closes his eyes, he sees the night play out on the inside of his lids, even with the brightness of the fluorescent interrogation bulbs he’s grown all too familiar with filtering into the darkness. He presses the heels of his hands, dry and cracking, into his eye sockets till he sees spots. He’ll take the worsening headache over replaying images of an indescribable kind of carnage. He uses his free hand to take a sip of lukewarm water, pushing the urge to throw up down with it.

All of that. He remembers thinking. We survived through all of that, and this is where we’ve ended up.

Ryan doesn’t like to think about September because nearly half of it was spent lying on a metal bed frame, staring up at a stone ceiling, attempting to forget about the row of bars caging him in. 

The same day the bag of evidence hits the police station’s front desk, they’re released. He’s forcefully removed from his cell, like he was the pesky little problem they couldn’t wait to get rid of this whole time. As if his presence in their jail was just one massive inconvenience. Absolutely rich.

Each of the counselors gets processed and released separately. Ryan hears the muffled, bittersweet cries of Laura and Max reuniting several minutes before he hears the heavy sole of tactical boots trudging down the hall to release him. As he’s escorted to the front, he sends a thought to whatever poor bastard had to review that trail cam footage. He wonders if the cop in tow behind him got to see something so damning, so horrifyingly unfamiliar, that it has any impact on how tight he’s holding Ryan’s wrists. Once he’s uncuffed, he’s released from the grasp with an ill-willed push. He keeps the detrimental thought to shove back at bay, keeps it as fists in his pockets instead. He wants to do a victory lap and spit in every single cop's face on the way out, but he resists that urge too. 

He doesn’t see Laura and Max as he pushes the heavy station doors open, doesn’t see any of the others either, and doesn’t bother waiting around.

The moment he sinks into his grandmother’s passenger seat, the moment he smells the same perfume she’s worn since he was a baby, and feels her slender fingers tug his head into her shoulder, he starts sobbing. 

-

Teens Acquitted! Evidence Proves Shooting Was Self Defense

The group of summer camp teens charged with murder was released today after new evidence brought to light by podcast duo showed that the death of Kaylee Hackett was accidental, caused by self-defense.

There’s a copy of the newspaper neatly folded in the center of the dining table when he wakes up the next morning. He stares at the headline and it stares back, so proud of itself. There’s a part of his brain that still has a hard time processing his name printed under the word murder. He imagines all the articles he missed, the headlines that didn’t quite make the cut for a breakfast centerpiece, and grimaces thinking of what revealing insight they may have provided on the case. There’s a world of people who know his name and its association but will never know what he saw that night as much as they may believe they do.

By the time everything is cleared up it’s the end of September, a new fall semester already underway. He thinks back to the energy he expended on a choice he never made. All that anxiety built up over something that would’ve been pointless. At least the decision was made for him. Somehow the involuntary rejection of the animation school he spent years dreaming about attending isn’t the worst of his consequences. If you could believe it. He can’t imagine a business-as-usual semester after this summer anyway. It’s for the best, he thinks, now he can be here for his sister. At least, as here as his brain will allow him to be. 

You don’t realize how often you hear the sound of police sirens at night till it’s ingrained in your head that you’re the one they’re after. He’s counted since he’s been home. Five times. Five nights sinking back into his deceivingly plush mattress, fists still where they clench the sheets, making his breaths as few and far between as he can so he doesn’t miss the come and go of the siren wails.

He reflects on his wasted moments of freedom. Maybe if he pulls himself out of bed now he’ll make it down the hall in just enough time to apologize to Sarah for not being much of a brother before they bust down the doors and take him away. He doesn’t move. They won’t find him if he doesn’t move. 

He doesn’t let himself fully relax even when the howling sirens are out of earshot. How can he? Twigs could still snap under his weight and alert something far more awful than a wild pig.

-

On the night of the full moon, Ryan takes a drive. He doesn’t have a destination per say, just somewhere distant and secluded. He finds an empty church parking lot amidst the backroads and parks on the outskirts, a squeak sounding from the out-of-practice brakes as his car jerks to a stop.

Ryan gets out and hops onto the hood of the car. He disregards stability as he leans back against the windshield and stares up into the sky. The harvest moon sits high above him, dressed in a yellowish glow that extends its hue to the landscape below. He sits. He waits. He death-stares the moon and rolls up his sleeves to expose the former site of a bite he no longer possesses. He waits some more. 

The transformation he’s dreading never comes. Somewhere inside him a month's worth of panic dilutes but doesn’t dissipate. Logistically, he knows it shouldn’t. After all, they did their part to end what ailed the Hackett’s for years. It shouldn’t be a shock that his flesh isn’t pulling tauter by the second, straining against inhuman muscle and bone. 

It should be comforting. He’s not so sure comfort is something he can feel anymore.

Chapter Text

When Ryan was in elementary school he prided himself in being a reading level above the other kids in his grade. He didn’t have an eclectic collection of books under his belt, but he did get pretty good at reading the same ones over and over again. Silent reading time always resulted in him holed up in the very back corner of the library's fiction section. There was a small block of shelves labeled ‘Paranormal’ in an oozing font, meant to mimic dripping blood or possibly slime. Despite reading almost everything the shelf had to offer, he would still make his way back to it, opting to read the same bone-chilling stories for the same stomach-churning excitement they brought about.

He’d sit down on the library’s carpeted floor and hug his knees to his chest, a book held close like a secret. He didn’t care if he knew the end. He liked the familiarity. A woman in white, lingering beyond the gates of a graveyard. An unidentifiable trail of lights zooming across a desert sky. A monster lurking just beyond the tree line. They gave him goosebumps. As if these stories contained a kind of knowledge only he had access to. Like it was his responsibility to share them with whoever would listen, under the playground during recess or at the corner-most cafeteria table.

He didn’t outgrow that. It was the natural progression that when he started attending Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp, he’d find his place around the fire, reciting ghost stories by memory. 

As he got older, and his media comprehension grew with him, he only expanded that repertoire. He continued to consume spine-tingling stories, warnings of ghosts and monsters all backtracked by a haunting echo, designed to make sure you look over your shoulder before turning the lights out.

At some point he saw too much, accidentally cut through the veil and found himself in a different kind of supernatural territory. One of skepticism and questioning. One that pulled from what we can confidently explain to excuse the things we can’t. Somehow this fascinated him even more. The idea that for the extent of human history we’ve been conjuring up ghost stories to tell over a fire, stories of life after death, and cryptids creeping around just out of sight. He became a lot more interested in evidence, the ability to prove and disprove. The looming threat that a lack of evidence does not mean that there’s nothing out there. Just that it hasn’t been found yet or if it had then the ones who discovered it weren’t around to tell the tale. His newfound skepticism grew his love for the genre even more. 

It’s October when he realizes he doesn’t find these kinds of stories interesting anymore. The second he gets a new pair of headphones, ones that aren’t hanging on by wire and caked in dirt from hanging loosely off his shirt collar, he attempts to find some normalcy in his old routine. Whatever normal may have once meant to him has been thoroughly fucked.

There are two kinds of fear. The fun kind that keeps you on the edge of your seat in a theater, peeking out between the gaps in the fingers covering your eyes. Then there’s the real thing. The primal, survival kind of fear. ‘If I don’t act now, I will die’ fear. The fun kind stops being that fun once you’ve felt the other.

He puts his headphones in and opens his phone to scroll through the backlog of podcasts he’s missed and his thumb continually pauses over the play buttons. He actually doesn’t want to hear about a woman’s decomposing body found in the woods and he doesn’t want to hear some overzealous internet personalities address it with the slightest fraction of respect. There’s an emotional distance between these hosts and the stories they cover that allows them to dig too deep, get too personal, and forget they’re talking about a victim in something so beyond their understanding. 

He imagines how they’ll cover Kaylee Hackett; imagines how their voices will fall into a sinister whisper as their mouths curl around her name for dramatic effect. He tugs his headphones out from his ears and pulls them from his shirt. 

Podcasts may not be for him anymore. 

He winces when he sees the movie poster for the newest slasher flick of the season. A group of teens stranded in the woods while being hunted down by a murderous camp director. Their press team is probably having a field day with the Hackett’s Quarry case. 

He decides that maybe movies aren’t for him anymore either. 

He has to get a new email address. The one he’s had throughout high school, which he had no plans of abandoning going into adulthood, got out to the wrong group of people. Unfortunately, he didn’t catch it before being bombarded by requests for interviews, pleas for his appearance and cooperation in the filming of amateur documentaries. There’s a laughable implication under it all that he could somehow be ready to talk about any of it again. That it doesn’t fill the back of his throat with bile. He’s spent the past month trying to scrub a rehearsed script of that night’s details from the divots of his brain, but these guys honestly think a typo-ridden email where they refer to it as his ‘survivor story’ is going to convince him to ‘come forward with unique insight’. 

Maybe documentaries aren’t for him either.

If someone were to ask, he'd tell them he doesn’t have the time to watch or listen to the stuff he used to these days. If they were to point out that Ryan currently has nothing but time on his hands, he’d shift the focus. He simply lost interest. He grew out of that stuff. 

Lost a bit of himself too. Grew out of it.

-

Eggs. Milk. Detergent.

His grandmother sends him on a grocery run to, in her words, “get him back out there”. To remind him that, despite it all, the world hasn’t stopped spinning. It sits steady on its axis. The people outside his immediate circle have barely even felt a jostle. He doesn’t know why she has to phrase it like he’s a 40-year-old divorcée.

Grocery stores fall far down on his list of favorite places to be in the world. Too many people, too loud, too bright. A biweekly sensory overload. The fact that it’s a Wednesday night, long after most families have sat down for dinner, does make the experience a little more tolerable. The general deadness of the store’s parking lot is giving him hope that he can navigate through the sections without the occasional awkward aisle interactions. 

Thankfully he has the list his grandma gave him, written on the back of some faded department store receipt. It’s short and he knows the store layout by heart. He’ll be in and out, he reminds himself as he crosses the threshold of the automatic doors. He has his headphones in but they aren’t playing anything, just muffling the noise of the space around him. 

He pulls out the crumpled list from his back pocket and upon smoothing it out notes an addition at the bottom, scrawled out in his sister’s recognizable handwriting. Sour gummy worms :P.

Eggs. Milk. Detergent. Sour gummy worms.

He’s successfully able to avoid accidentally bumping into another shopper while turning the aisle corners or getting the back of his heels clipped by the wheels of someone’s shopping cart. His detour for the candy worms only takes a minute or two, but it does bring about a different inconvenience of sorts. 

Hooking a right out of the candy aisle, towards the registers, means putting himself directly in front of the seasonal section. 

Halloween is in eleven days. As a kid, he would make a countdown, the way some kids do for Christmas or birthdays. A part of him still wakes up with the urge to jump out of bed and mark another day off his calendar. He remembers a younger version of himself, standing in this exact spot or one close to it, having begged his grandparents all grocery trip long to let him go look at the Halloween stuff. When he’s old enough they’ll let him buy a really scary costume, one of the big kid ones.

Of course, it’s one of those holidays that loses its magic with age. He stopped planning months in advance for what his costume would be the coming Halloween years ago. He hasn’t stripped his pillow of its case to carry around as a candy sack since he was 13 at most. 

He doesn’t remember ever feeling this spiteful towards it though. Maybe he stopped participating in some of the more juvenile traditions, but he developed new ones. Buying a bulk bag of candy and treating himself to a horror movie marathon. Volunteering to scare some kids at the city’s annual haunted hayride. 

He wasn’t as all in as he once was, but by no means did the holiday fill him with a sort of festering dread. Nothing like the nagging resentment the lead up to October 31st has brought him this year. It’s all too much. A tad suffocating. A little like a crowded grocery store.

Whatever forces are at work have to be playing a prank on him. Directly ahead, hanging eye level amongst a wall of creature costumes, is a werewolf mask. The empty eye holes meet his gaze with the same unamused stare he gives them back. He scowls.

Funny. 

It looks more like a lion than anything, just with a more pronounced snout and thick rubber teeth. The fur around its face is a dingy brown, matted from its cheapness. Its mouth is stuck open in a hollow scream. Same , Ryan thinks, me too, man.  

The longer he stares at it the more he commiserates with the beast, stapled to a backing piece of thin cardboard, and hung up on a wall for display. He couldn’t tell you why he decided to toss the mask into his basket. Maybe it’s for a younger Ryan, getting his scary costume now that he’s a self-proclaimed big kid. 

Maybe he doesn’t want to watch it get left behind. Who knows how many people are in the market for an objectively terrible wolf mask this Halloween? Maybe he’s just playing along with the joke.

When he gets home, he sets the list’s contents on the kitchen counter and sneaks his extra purchase up the stairs into his room. He handles the mask like alcohol, like contraband shoved under his arm and hidden by the weight of his jacket. He rips it from the packaging and pulls it on the second his door is closed behind him. He has a hard time maneuvering around the room in the mask, his vision obscured by an open snout and some overhanging fur, but eventually he’s able to fiddle with his desk lamp to flick it on and find himself in his wall mirror. 

Looking at himself now, it isn’t cathartic. It doesn’t make him feel good or fulfill something within him. He isn’t sure why he thought it could’ve. He does chuckle though. Bitterly, because it's funny. 

He wonders if Dylan would think it’s funny too. 

Dylan.

His stomach twists. He smells burning maple wood and tastes shitty beer on a goofy smile. He closes his eyes to chase the memory but all he sees is viscera. 

He doesn’t need to look like a monster to remember the things he did. He’d call them monstrous. 

He pulls the mask off and shoves it under his bed, somewhere he doesn’t have to see, a spot to collect dust in. Maybe he’ll forget about it for a few years only to find it down the line when it’s just ‘one crazy summer’ in his memory. 

His eyes find his face in the mirror again. Somehow it’s harder to look at himself without the mask on.

The joke isn’t funny anymore.

Chapter Text

October wasn’t necessarily the calm before the storm. The wind was picking up the whole time, causing whatever waves he was managing to stabilize himself on to begin their unsteadying crescendo. The dark clouds were always threatening to break open into a drizzle. 

He really should’ve expected this. The forecast called for it. November is a torrential downpour. It’s capsizing and being sucked under the hull into unnavigable murky water.

It’s his favorite time of year. While Spring is colloquially the season for new beginnings, Ryan’s always felt that sentiment more in the freshly fallen snow. Always thought that the cycle should begin with a bare frost-bitten tree rather than one freshly budded and blooming. 

He’s always loved layering up for a walk, tucking his chin down into the collar of his jacket and letting his nose take the bulk of the wind chill. There’s a guilty pleasure in staying out for so long that he comes home sniffling, exposed skin freezing to the touch. 

He hasn’t gone outside this month, not even a quick dip onto the back porch. He can count on one hand the few times he’s stepped out of his bedroom. The space between his bed and the door feels too big, expands right before his eyes anytime his brain considers going anywhere. That’d be exhausting. He only has so much energy to budget around and he’s already spending more than he can afford to on thinking, definitely splurging on lying down and breathing. God, is he so sick of feeling.

Someone from high school reaches out to Ryan a couple of days into November to tell him that the changing leaves make them think of him. It’s no one particularly special, just some buddy he used to hang out with here and there. They were friendly but Ryan wasn’t exactly the type to make ‘ best ’ friends. It’s a sweet sentiment though, would be even sweeter if it wasn’t followed by the immediate mention of Hackett’s Quarry. They heard about everything that happened through the grapevine and are here for him if he ever needs to talk. 

The funny thing is Ryan also heard about everything that happened at Hackett’s Quarry through the grapevine. He hasn’t stopped hearing about it actually. Everyone seems to know more about it than him too. 

Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp exists in this weird limbo. It’s strange how someone can go from knowing their favorite place in the world like the back of their hand to only getting secondhand information about it from family and unsolicited texts. He wonders if it’s even still there. He’s heard whisperings that they’re demolishing it. Any day now he expects to hear something about how they’re turning it into a strip mall. Maybe a terribly insensitive theme park. Who’s to say? Maybe it’ll just sit out there forever, blood-splattered buildings caving in on themselves from their rotting wood. 

The message is a nice gesture but it’s not something Ryan really cares for at the moment. He’s not interested in sugarcoating anything for anyone. Not interested in hiding details or covering up the parts that left nasty scar tissue. This high school buddy doesn’t really know what they’re offering when they ask to be his ear to borrow. The things he needs to talk about are the bits that make him turn over and fold in on himself at night. Frankly, he doesn’t even know where he’d begin. The beginning feels too far away.

He doesn’t respond, doesn’t have the energy to. The amount of people regularly checking in on Ryan falls down to zero pretty quickly. Luckily for him, Ryan of the past put himself in a fairly isolating situation.

He had Kaylee though. 

They grew apart with age, became different people whose lives revolved around different circumstances. There’s this weird phenomenon about growing up though. Your childhood best friend stays your best friend long after you’ve stopped talking. Maybe it’s an unwillingness to let go of the people you both used to be. You’re still in each other's orbit but the paths you follow diverge more and more with the passing years.

She knew him though, really knew him, and he didn’t know jack shit about her.

Somewhere in the corner of his room, shoved in between the pages of a hardcover journal, there’s a thread bracelet. Ryan wore it for years. It’s a miracle that the strands haven’t all frayed and come undone from one another, but the color has dulled with age and years’ worth of lake water soaks. 

Kaylee Hackett made it for him at the end of his very first week at camp. She never would stand for his whole loner thing. She’d roll her eyes and grab him by the arm to go sit with new kids any chance she got. She’d elbow him and make him tell ‘one of his stories’ to the bright-eyed newcomers. No one was left out when Kaylee was around. No one felt weird around Kaylee because Kaylee made sure she was the weirdest person in the room. 

She was a strong swimmer too, always the first to jump in before Chris changed the rules about swimming in the lake. Ryan should’ve known something was wrong when she started waiting at the end of the dock. He should’ve realized something was wrong when she got defensive the last time someone tried to push her in. 

He noticed the year her giggling stopped reverberating through the lodge rafters. He noticed and he didn’t say anything.

This year as the sailing instructor, being on the water for most of the Summer, he didn’t really see her all that much. The times that he brushed by her during dinner or passed her on the trails were accompanied by polite smiles and friendly waves, but nothing too grand. The gestures were hollow anyway. If he wanted to show he cared about her in any real capacity he would’ve checked in on her years ago, wouldn’t have cut the loose braid around his wrist and tucked it away to be forgotten about. 

Now all he sees is a cloud of red blooming in pool water, poorly disguising the figure of a facedown Kaylee Hackett.

He grieves her as a friend. but he also grieves her as a brother. The police never found Caleb Hackett. Every other member of the family was accounted for, either dead or in custody, but despite the traces of him, Caleb was long gone by the time police swept the campgrounds. It’s probably a good thing, but a part of Ryan hopes he’s settled at the bottom of the lake. Lifeless under a pile of dirt and rubble the cops just happened to miss on their walkthrough. 

He and Ryan were never as close but he knows that there were few things in the world Caleb cared for as adamantly and sincerely as his sister. Ryan’s an older brother too. He doesn’t imagine that kind of pain lightly. It’s for the best. He can pretend Caleb didn’t wake up to a nightmare.

Ryan has to remind himself that he’s responsible for a large chunk of that pain. After all, he’s the one who stared Chris Hackett directly between his inhuman eyes, illuminated in the glow of a dull flashlight, and pulled the trigger. 

There’s no one he hates thinking about more than Chris Hackett. A silver bullet through the skull is quite the generous payment for all the times he went out of his way to be there for Ryan, huh? To offer him advice and worldly wisdom; to be of service to one of his oldest campers, a friend to his kids. 

There was that one summer, Ryan must’ve been 9 or 10, where Chris took 15 minutes out of his day to sit down with Ryan and teach him how to tie a new knot from the Junior Sailor’s Handbook. Sometimes Chris wouldn’t know it himself, so they’d learn together. When he came back the next year Ryan was three times faster at tying knots than anyone else at camp, Chris included. He’d practice with the strings of his hoodie during the off-season. Ryan’s last summer as a camper was punctuated by the offer to come back as a counselor. It was sort of a no-brainer what activity he’d be responsible for.

Chris Hackett believed in him to an annoying degree. He knew Ryan’s moral backbone better than anyone, in part because he helped shape it.

‘You just have to keep everyone inside. Can you promise me you’ll do that?’

Ryan’s attempts to keep to his word were meager at best. Just because Mr. H isn’t around anymore doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel his disappointment, rather disdain, in every bone in his body. It’s the worst in his arms where he still feels the painful reel back of the gunshot. It exists just below the surface of his skin like a bruise and, when he looks down, he expects to see his body covered in welts of purple and yellow. He’s been told it’ll fade with time, but only he feels the true nastiness of it, all stemming from the palms of his gun-wielding hands.

Ryan watches the crisp leaves outside his window lose their grip and abandon their branches. Everything just feels a little worse than usual.

 -

‘ is this ryan?’

It’s the end of November, a couple weeks after the last inquiring text from someone he used to know checking up on him after all this time. It’s around 10 pm and he’s lying in bed, not because he’s attempting to cash in early for a good night’s sleep, but mainly because he never really got out of bed in the first place. 

Well, that’s not entirely true. He stood up once or twice to stretch his legs and walk aimlessly around the limited space for a couple of minutes, got up to drag his eyes over a shelf of books he has no interest in reading again and remind himself for the fourth time that week that he can’t let himself fall out of practice with drawing.

He fumbles to find his phone in the darkness, loses it in the mess of his sheets for a second but looks for the screen light to spot it amongst the bedding. He rolls over onto his side and scans the banner notification. It’s not a number that he has saved or has any recognition of. He thinks about not responding but there’s a feeling in his gut, something hopeful that stirs there. If it’s not someone he wants any engagement with he’ll just block them and move on. He types out his short response and hits send.

‘ depends. who’s asking?’

He doesn’t have time to lock his phone or close out of his messages app before another text comes in.

‘lol okay, ryan’

What? 

Ryan scoffs and adjusts his body so he’s sitting up in bed. He sets his phone down just for a minute to rub at his exhausted eyes and feels the vibration of another text notification beside him. He doesn’t bother reading the preview message before unlocking his phone, but he’s not sure it would have prepared him even if he had. 

Eight unknown numbers stare back at him in a group chat, including the one who had reached out minutes before.

‘it took some light threats but i finally got him boys’

‘Heeeey!!!! Ry Guy!’

‘hii ryan !’

‘Happy to see you, man’

‘omg Ryan!’

The greetings keep coming in. Ryan’s sleep-deprived brain takes a moment longer than it probably should, to piece together the situation he’s been roped into by unknown texter #1.

‘and with that we have ourselves a complete bunch of hacketeer’s.’

Ryan sets his phone down despite the stream of celebratory messages coming in. Stares at the chat as it moves up with incoming texts from a distance like it’s somehow safer that he’s not directly reading it.

He never really put much consideration into the idea that anyone from the group would want to stay in touch with everyone involved. Once they were separated by the cops that was it. There wasn’t any time to exchange phone numbers, no time for pleasantries or closure. Of course, now that they’re cleared of charges, there isn’t really a threat in place for them talking to one another. He knows this yet still he glances towards his window; half expecting to see a camera pointed in from the other side to catch him in the act.

‘ryan, do you know how hard you are to track down? you’re literally a cryptid I swear! texted like 3 other random dudes named ryan before i got to you.’

Ryan reaches down and picks up the phone, holds it hesitantly in his hands like it’s going to start counting down to self-destruct any second.

‘how’d you know it was me?’ He types out in response, lingering over the send button for a moment to ponder an outcome where he just removes himself from that chat, turns off his phone and adds changing his number to his lengthy to-do list. He takes a deep breath and presses send anyway. He’s not that douchey.

‘oh it’s the whole mysterious ‘what’s it to ya?’ attitude that was a dead giveaway. i probably wouldn’t have believed you even if you said no since my list of possible ryan erzahler numbers was dwindled down to uno.’

Fair, Ryan thinks.

‘This whole group chat thing is gonna get real annoying real fast if I don’t have anyone’s number saved.’

‘worried you’ll send a dick pic to the wrong girl?’

‘OH so this is where were at?? Just moving right past the hi how are yous and directly into bullying me huh??’

‘everyone send your names pleeaaasseee’

Ryan finds out that the number that originally texted him before subsequently adding him to the chat belongs to Kaitlyn. He narrows his eyes. Of course. From there the numbers roll in, everyone taking turns to say their names so they all can save them to their contacts accordingly

Kaitlyn...Laura…Jacob...Abi…Emma…Max…Nick……Dylan

Dylan.

He’s the last text to roll in and the shock of seeing his name there is enough to make Ryan want to toss his phone out his window and onto the iced-over sidewalk outside. He doesn’t understand how one little name backed in text bubble blue can make the roof of his mouth go sticky. The collar of his t-shirt suddenly feels too tight. Too warm.

Fucking Dylan. The same Dylan who smells like cheap aerosol cologne and can’t keep his mouth shut to save his life. The Dylan who crossed paths with him every morning all summer while heading to their respective turfs, Ryan to the docks, and Dylan to the radio hut. Gangly Dylan, limbs clumsy and long, tripping over every walking trail. Goofy Dylan who tosses his head too far back when he laughs too loud. ‘Rise and shine campers!’ Dylan. The same Dylan who visibly tenses when he hears Ryan’s voice in a room behind him.

His stomach flips.

The Dylan whose hand he cut off. Dylan whose blood he was splattered in for three days before the cops at the station let him have a shower.

The Dylan he was supposed to be nicer to. The Dylan he was supposed to give his phone number to.

Fuck. That Dylan.

Despite being sent over last, it's the first of the group’s numbers Ryan adds to his contacts. To make up for something.

‘Slow typing there Dylan…’

‘Jacob, not funny’

‘no it’s okay. it’s actually pretty fucking funny’

‘How’s one handed life treatin ya, bud!?’

‘how’s the perpetual poison ivy on your dick treating you?’

‘Low blow. You know damn well Jacob doesn’t know what perpetual means.’

Ryan doesn’t say much, just enjoys watching the back and forth. For the first time all month, Ryan laughs in the quiet of his bedroom.

Chapter Text

After a couple of months of self-isolation, there is something cathartic in having the group who endured it all with him at his fingertips. A steady flow of human interaction whether he likes it or not. It’s quite the change of pace, his catalog of conversation expanding past just his sister poking her head in to check on him or to remind him that dinner’s almost ready.

 No one brings up the common ground that put them in the group chat in the first place. They keep it a pretty light place, sending funny posts they saw or dumb thoughts they had throughout their days. Ryan doesn’t have much input most of the time. Luckily some of the louder members of the group carry the conversation on his behalf. They update each other on their lives and plans for the coming semester, most of them followed the same footsteps and forgo-ed their fall semester altogether.

Ryan didn’t really expect the chat to last more than a few days if he’s being honest. They aren’t exactly a friend group that makes a whole lot of logistical sense. Ryan assumed they would lose touch even without the traumatic events of the camp's final evening. Despite some of their personalities being so fundamentally different from one another, there is an unspoken common ground they’ve all gained through their shared experience. A little bit of that first-year college kid ambition has been replaced with something a little more realistic, maybe a tad cynical. Even Jacob isn’t raving about all the parties he’s going to attend or all the girls he’s gonna sack. Granted, he is still obviously and annoyingly stuck on Emma.

Ryan’s kind of annoyed at himself for how much he likes having the chat there to lean back on.

Occasionally one of them will send a selfie along with a life update. It’s always a little jarring to see how much they’ve all changed in such a short amount of time. It’s only been four months, but he swears some of them look nearly a year older since he last saw them. 

He’s drawing one day, at least he’s attempting to, wanting to pick it back up after several months out of practice. He could blame his slacking off on the events of the past summer, but it’d sort of be a lie. He’d abandoned his sketchbook to collect bookshelf dust weeks before camp even started. Abi’s been a big inspiration though, regularly sending progress photos of the art she’s been working on to the group. 

He’s twirling a pencil in his hands, graphite staining his fingertips as he mulls over what to start sketching on the paper before him, when his phone vibrates on the desk beside his arm.

Some conversation happening between the guys in the chat has been loosely holding his attention, something about comparing their ability to grow facial hair that he has an insignificant amount of interest in, so he assumes it’s just a part of that when he glances over to check the notification.

Dylan

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He drops his pencil onto his sketchbook and scoops up his phone with frankly pathetic haste. He’ll make fun of himself for it later. For now, he takes a deep breath to prepare himself and expels it on the unlock of his phone.

He hasn’t seen Dylan since the pool house, not since his hair was matted down to his forehead with sweat and the side of his face was covered in Nick’s and his own blood. They didn’t exchange many words after he decided to leave with Laura. He remembers turning to Dylan, giving him a reminder that everything was going to be okay to ease his worry-weathered expression. It was partially a reminder for himself too. Dylan didn’t say much in response but the small, solemn smile he tossed Ryan’s way before he turned to leave with Laura held an unsaid thank you. An unsaid ‘we’ll be okay’ and a ‘please, come back’. He got to see the others when they were all taken to the police station for booking, but Dylan was escorted directly to the hospital to tend to his more severe injuries.

It’s not that Dylan looks significantly different from how he remembers him looking in his head, but he does look significantly different from the last time Ryan saw him. First of all, he’s not drenched in the products of a bloody evening. He looks to be laying back in bed, propped up by a pillow with his phone resting on his stomach to snap a pic from an unflattering angle. It’s absolutely unfair because he manages to look anything but unflattering. His hair is longer than Ryan’s ever seen it, not by a lot, but just enough that it falls over his forehead in waves and sticks out from behind his neck. It’s sticking up here and there, rumpled by his pillowcase. His big dumb brown eyes look directly into the camera, proud of himself as he points out his facial hair growth. That’s what really gets Ryan. Dylan has facial hair now, an unmarried mustache and beard, patchy in its growth but somehow so fitting where it hits on Dylan’s jaw. He has his headphones on, but they’re tangled where the wires rest on his chest.

Ryan is fucked. He sets the phone down like the case is too warm, not necessarily burning his hand but nearing that point where touching it feels like a bad idea. He uses an anxious pointer finger to save the photo to his gallery and adds it as a contact picture for Dylan. That’s the only reason. It doesn’t mean anything that he doesn’t have contact pictures for any of the others and has never bothered to save their photos for that purpose. If he adds it to his favorites album and revisits it frequently over the next several days that is absolutely no one’s business but his own. If he keeps the screen face up and open to the picture for reference while he gets back to drawing, that was just inspiration striking. He doesn’t revisit the photo in the odd hours of the morning because that would be weird, and Ryan is the most normal dude around.

The vibes of the chat may stay relatively good but there is something unsaid passed between them in the form of fun facts and life updates. Max brings up how he’s a vegetarian now. He can’t stand the texture of meat anymore, the way it chews and gets stuck in his teeth. Even the most well-done steak makes him near violently ill.

Nick gets it. Sometimes when he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror he jumps. He has to calm down and remind himself that he always had a little bit of gold in his eyes. It’s not just suddenly back.

Laura still has trouble seeing out of one of her eyes, despite it being physically healed. Apparently, werewolf magic can’t fix everything. It’s impaired her ability to drive, but that’s okay, being in cars gives her major anxiety these days anyway.

Kaitlyn hits up shooting ranges to blow off steam. The sound of a gun should bother her, but she finds a strange sort of comfort in it. There’s an adrenaline she gets from always being ready.

Before this summer none of them were ever really concerned by what phase the moon was in at any given time of the month. These days it’s just second nature. They share this sort of hyperawareness, always just a little bit tenser when the moon is big and bright above them, getting fuller with each passing day.

On the morning of the 5th, his phone screen has 9 happy birthday messages waiting patiently for him to see when he rubs the sleep out of his eyes. The first one came in at 12:01 AM from Dylan Lenivy. His chest strains as his heart attempts to grapple with that.

-

The night of December’s full moon, Ryan finally lets himself out of his self-induced solitary confinement and sits on the steps of his front porch. 

As the moon’s name would suggest, it’s too fucking cold to be outside. Snow crunches under his weight and his teeth chatter as he pulls on the strings of his hoodie a tad more. He may be freezing his ass off, but the walls of his room were beginning to feel unbearably thick. The heater kicked on and what should’ve been a cozy gust of warm air made him kick the covers off his body. It’s too hot in there. Too small. Too lonely.

No one’s really texted in the group chat today aside from a few low-substance, back-and-forth messages from the early morning. Ryan never thought the day would come when being alone would feel so suffocating. Voluntarily distancing himself from the group is sort of Ryan’s thing. 

Right now, he just needs to know there’s another person out there under the same moon as him.

His fingers, stiff from the cold, reach into his jacket pocket and pull out his phone. Maybe the glow of the moonlight, illuminating the blanket of snow over his backyard, is making him bolder than normal. He maneuvers his way through his contacts, scrolling down slightly to the Ds before pressing call.

Dylan picks up on the second ring. There’s shuffling from the other side and Ryan has to briefly worry that he’s woken up the boy on the other end of the line. He’s never known Dylan to fall asleep any time before 2 am, but there’s always a first for everything. It probably would’ve been courteous to ask first anyway. 

“Sorry, Gimme a sec!” Dylan whisper-shouts from the other end. 

“You’re good..” Ryan hums. He hears the familiar creek of a door opening and closing over the tinny phone speaker and presumes Dylan’s made his way outside based on the increase in atmospheric noise on his end. 

There’s a tad more shuffling before Dylan’s voice finally rings out in the darkness, “Hey man!” He’s not sure why he expected his voice to sound as different as he looks. It still sounds exactly like him, same lilting vocal fry, “Uhm, not that it isn’t super welcome, but this is sort of out of the blue.”

Ryan’s leg bounces on the step below him. His breath is visible on his exhale, “Is it, though?”

Dylan clicks his tongue, resigned. He sighs, “No..It’s not. Rough night?”

“Sorry, I should’ve shot you a text or something I-“

Dylan cuts him off, “No, no, no! Don’t worry about it, dude! I answered cause I wanna talk to you!” Ryan bites the inside of his cheek as he listens to Dylan’s voice go up an insistent octave, “What’s been up with you? How’s it hanging?”

Ryan takes a moment to mull it over in his head, whether he should continue with whatever form of polite small talk they’ve started off with or if he should go all in and give Dylan the excruciating rundown of how it’s actually been hanging. He shoots for some sort of middle ground, just honest, “Well you could probably guess but uhm...It’s not been great. Sort of just been keeping to myself. Thought I’d come outside ‘cause uh..fresh air.” 

Nope. Not honest. Ryan curses his moral compass, “And I-..I didn’t wanna be alone. It felt kind of like the moon was staring at me through my curtains. I guess I didn’t like that it was just me and the moon. Just needed to feel like there was someone else here.”

Dylan hums something akin to acknowledgment, like he gets the feeling. “Those full moons, man. Always bothering you and reaching out to talk about your werewolf trauma’s extended warranty.”

Ryan breathes a chuckle out through his nose. He’s relieved to hear Dylan still making jokes, “What about you? How’ve you been?”

“Oh, me? I’ve been pretty okay..” He trails off for a moment, clears his throat before continuing, “Sorry, I almost just gave you the sugar-coated version I’m giving everyone else. Forgot who I was talking to for a minute.”

Ryan hopes Dylan can’t hear the smile in his voice at the insinuation that he’s one of the only people Dylan wants to be real with, “You can start over. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear a thing”

Dylan shifts on the other end, collecting his thoughts a bit before continuing, “I’ve been managing the best I can. That’s about as positive as I can truthfully get with it. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you it’s been ass”

Ryan hasn’t spoken to any of the other councilors on the phone like this, but he’s sure if he did, they’d all have that same exhausted lull to their voice. Ryan for one has felt enough grief for a lifetime. It takes its toll. “Yeah, no, I get it.” He drops the hand not occupying his phone to the stone stairs under him, presses the tips of his fingers into the snow, and starts absentmindedly drawing shapes while he listens to Dylan speak.

“My hand is doing well though. Considering…” Dylan trails off into a yawn.

Ryan winces at the mention of his hand, “Considering?”

There’s a pause. Ryan’s almost sure one of them has accidentally hung up till Dylan’s laugh rings out on the other end, mimicking some distant neighbors' windchimes, “Uhm considering that it’s not a hand anymore! I assumed that you’d remember since you’re the one who oh-so violently dismembered me.”

He’s as teasing as ever. Ryan can practically see his goofy little smirk through the phone. His head is cocked to the side and he’s looking at him like he knows he’s gotten under his skin. He always could.

Even if Ryan knows it’s playful the guilt still boils up into his voice box, “Fuck, I’m so sorry dude.”

“Hey, it’s really not that bad.” His voice goes soft and reassuring on the line, “There are harder things to work through than my hand just sort of being a stub now. The pain’s gotten pretty manageable and most days I just forget that there’s not actually a hand there until I reach out to grab something. I can still feel my fingers moving too which is kind of cool! I wasn’t expecting Halloween to be so shit but I guess nothing’s scary anymore when you’ve had your hand mauled by a werewolf.”

Ryan drops his head on a heavy exhale, “Still. I’m sorry regardless.”

“Oh, stop it, you’re trying to make me blush. Y’know most guys these days wait till the second date to cut off your hand.”

Ryan was wondering how long it’d take before one of them brought it up. There’s an unfinished conversation between the two and Dylan’s dangling it in front of him, asking him to take the bait. Ryan’s hand clenches in the snow beside him, words getting mangled somewhere between his brain and his mouth as he decides his next move, “I uh- I’m glad you’re okay now.” He manages to mumble out. 

He notices the small noise of disappointment Dylan makes, and tries to convince himself it’s something else. Ryan rolls his shoulders back and looks up at the sky. Pussy , he scolds himself.

“Pfft, of course. You thought I got it bad, you should’ve seen the other guy..”

Ryan did see the other guy. He’d give anything to unsee him.

The night goes on like this, skirting around tricky conversations while keeping each other company. Eventually, it gets too cold for them to keep it up, but Dylan promises he can talk tomorrow night too if Ryan’s up for it.

He is. They do. 

He offers the same thing when they’re about to hang up the next night and Ryan agrees. Eventually, it doesn’t become a matter of if they’re going to talk, just a matter of who is going to call first. 

The calls help a lot, not just to have someone there who completely understands what that night was like, but also to have some form of routine back.

-

As December passes over into January, they ring in the New Year together. They both decide to opt out of the festivities and talk though the countdown, neither of them all that interested in a firework show this year. Ryan puts his earbuds in and drowns out the popping noises with the sound of Dylan’s voice on a tangent, something about the current video game he’s passing the days with. The content is interesting but he finds himself lulled into a calm by the drone of Dylan’s talking. He’s at the point where his eyes are struggling to stay open and the words are blurring.

“Oh, hey! Happy New Year, Ry.” He pauses his ranting and pivots when he notices the time has just passed 12:01 A.M, “Got anyone waiting for a midnight kiss?”

Ryan’s taken aback by the question. It’s stuck somewhere in his brain, struggling to get through all the gears and belts that keep his thought process going, attempting to make sure he heard Dylan correctly, “I uh..” 

Joke. Make a joke. Be funny. Don’t let him know he stunned you.

“Let me check real quick. I’m sure I had someone lined up but..” He trails off, listens to Dylan’s muffled laughter on the other end while he hums and hahs, pretending to be looking for a reservation of sorts, “Nope. No call, no show.”

Dylan’s tongue clicks, “Sorry to hear that, man. Maybe your line was busy.” Ryan almost gets comfortable again. Almost gets to thinking he’s out of the woods. Dylan keeps throwing curve balls, “Well, I’m calling, so, if there’s still an opening..”

It takes Ryan a second to grasp the implication but when he does panic alarms go off. Even if he wanted to go down that route, take a moment to flip the script onto Dylan and pull out the charm he’s almost sure he’s lost by now, his foot is on the brake and changing directions before he can even consider it.

“Well it’s getting late so I should probably close up shop,” he blurts out, a pitiful attempt to carry on the joke. Ultimately, it sounds like a blatant rejection. Based on the little noise Dylan makes on the other end, somewhere between a sigh and a protesting groan, he takes it that way too, “I uh..I’ll talk to you tomorrow though.”

Dylan hums in acknowledgment, turning his obvious disappointment into something playful, “For the record, I'm kissing so many boys. Tons. Extraordinary amounts of boys being kissed by me.” 

“I’m happy for you,” Ryan chuckles. “You gotta save the real one for someone special though.”

There’s a solid 5 seconds of silence on the other end, “Ryan..” 

“Yeah?”

Dylan sighs, “You’re so dumb”.

The beeping of the hung-up line interrupts Ryan before he can defend himself. That’s probably a little bit true. He certainly can’t dispute it now.

Chapter Text

“Just text me when you’re on your way home, okay?”

There’s a silence, only broken by the whirring of the road and whatever top 20s song plays softly through Ryan’s car speakers. He glances at the passenger seat where his sister sits wordlessly, a smile stuck on her face as she taps her way through text messages, foot bobbing along to her choice of music.

 He reaches over and waves a hand between Sarah’s face and the phone screen, catching her off guard. She scoffs in shock, her phone falling face up into her lap. He repeats himself, “You’re gonna text me when you and your friends leave, capiche?”

Sarah’s just a couple of years younger than him, in the middle of her junior year of high school. Ryan’s used to being her activities chauffeur for stuff like extracurriculars or going to the mall, but parties are new. Parties that start this late at night are definitely new.

Whatever position Ryan put himself in when he was in high school certainly didn’t end with him getting invited to stuff like this. He tries to think of a time he was invited somewhere at her age and all he’s coming up with is the DnD club in the school library. Maybe the occasional garage show. His abrasive exterior wasn’t exactly begging to be invited to some rich kid’s house party. 

He’s glad she’s got more of a social life than he made himself privy to having, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get concerned about the type of people she surrounds herself with.

Sarah picks her phone back up and shoots off another quick text before locking her phone and giving Ryan her attention, “This is the thousandth time I’ve been driven home by my friends. You don’t need to wait up for me.”

He wasn’t going to wait up for her. He was going to go home and sit in bed with his phone’s ringer on high and pace around all antsy because that was a fun way to spend his night. He doesn’t sleep till late anyway. If he happened to be awake when she came through the front door, completely unharmed and completely sober, then that would just be a bonus. “You just don’t want me to know how late you plan on staying out.”

She tosses her head back against the seat, “Let me live, please? I’m 17”

“Oooh, my mistake. The big one seven,” He feigns being impressed. “So sorry, ma’am. Would you like to withdraw your 401k?”

Sarah’s eyes narrow but she’s definitely holding back a giggle. Her hand extends over the center console to sock him in the arm playfully, “Y’know, I could be the deciding vote that sends you to the nursing home.”

“Oh, come on, I’m driving you to a party, dude.”

Sarah gestures for Ryan to turn off the main road into a well-lit neighborhood entrance. McMansion hell as far as the eye can see. Yup, just as he suspected. Rich kids.

“And when you’re in school I won’t need you to drive me anymore.”

He adjusts his grip on the steering wheel, grabs it a tad firmer. His absence of a sarcastic comeback and his refusal to take his eyes off the house-lined street gives him away almost immediately. The rise and fall of his adam’s apple on a nervous swallow is what really does him in.

“You missed the deadline to sign up for the Spring semester, didn’t you?” Sarah leans forward in her seat, attempting to read him. He digs his grave further by clearing his throat to stall a response, “You missed the deadline.”

It’s not like he promised anyone he’d be attending college in the spring. He certainly wasn’t putting that expectation on himself, but he didn’t exactly shut down the assumption. Did everyone just expect him to go from barely fucking feeding himself most days to living on his own? He doesn’t want to imagine what that’d do to him.

“No, I didn’t miss the deadline,” He does his best to sound convincing like it’s all just part of the plan. “I wasn’t even aiming for it.”

“Oh my god,” She stares at him in disbelief, tone laced with disappointment.

Ryan winces, “Don’t say ‘oh my god’ like that”

“Oh my god!” It’s angrier this time, no..frustrated. Tired, “What happened? When did you decide you weren’t going?”

He murmurs sheepishly, “Never really made a big decision...Just sort of didn’t do it..”, Ryan thinks he hears the faintest ‘oh my god’ under her breath, “It’s for the best, anyway. I’m not ready.”

Sarah bites the inside of her cheek from the passenger seat, mulling over what to say, “I don’t understand why you do this shit.” Her jaw is clenched. “Take a left here”

“What shit?” Ryan jerks the wheel to make the turn he’s almost missed. “I don’t get why you’re so mad at me. You should be happy. This is just one more semester you don’t have to get a license.”

“I have a license” she spits.

Oh…Uhm..

“I got it over the summer. While you were at camp. You were supposed to go to school in the fall, remember?”

Ouch. That’s hardly fair.

Sarah gestures for him to pull up to the curb to let her out. If the car carried a different tone maybe he’d make a joke asking her to at least call if she blacks out and wakes up face first in the pristine golf-course-looking lawn. 

He doesn’t want to leave it on a bad note, “Well, who likes driving anyway? I wouldn’t wanna leave you behind to deal with Grams and Pap all on your own.”

She undoes her seatbelt and is going for the car door handle when she processes Ryan’s words. She pauses. Her head snaps towards him and he realizes very suddenly there’s something about what he just said that struck a nerve, “You’re not staying for me and you need to stop saying you are. It’s not fair.”

“Wha-“

She doesn’t let him get a word in, “I get that last summer was fucked up. Maybe if you actually talked to me like you used to I’d know exactly how fucked up, but I know that whatever happened really changed you. I know you were having some reservations about school even before then, but if you want my real opinion here, Ryan, I think those reservations stopped being about leaving me behind a while ago.” 

Ryan feels like the younger sibling, being put in his place. She’s not done, “I’ll be fine, Ryan. Fucking peachy, even. I miss you so much when you’re not here, that’s a given, but I’ve always been fine. What happens when I go off to college? What’ll the excuse be then? Someone needs to stick around to take care of our grandparents? Grandma’s ancient and still goes on jogs every morning. Pap’s gonna live till he’s, like, 300. If you need to take another semester off to figure your shit out, then that’s fine and we’ll support you but just- agh! Stop using me as your scapegoat, please!”

Ryan sits there in stunned silence, waiting to see if she’s finished. She closes her eyes and huffs out a shaky breath. When she opens them Ryan’s still just looking at her, a deer in headlights, hands gripping the wheel so tight he might get callouses, “It was a joke..” He croaks out.

“Jokes are supposed to be funny, loser.”

Sarah’s always been wiser than him. He likes to think of himself as a perceptive person, but she’s got him beat by miles. God, he hates when she’s right. She can’t ever just be a little right either. It’s the kind of correct that feels like nails in his back telling him to stand up straight or he’s gonna regret it when he’s older. 

He wonders if she even knows how much she sounds like the limited memories he has of their mother.

Sarah glances out the window toward a group of girls waiting at the house’s entrance. Looking back at him, she gestures at the porch, “My people need me.” She moves to get out of the car, opens the door, and maneuvers her body half out before turning back to him one more time, “You know if you need to talk, I’m always here. I just wish I knew how to help you.” She waits for his response. Ryan doesn’t answer, just focuses his distant stare on his dashboard. Sarah sighs, gravity and her heavy heart working together to keep her in the passenger’s seat. She shakes it off, “…I wish you would let other people help you.”

He manages to toss her a quick wave goodbye before he flinches at her door slamming shut behind her. He makes sure she gets in safely, watches her adjust her mood, and skip up the path to meet her friends who immediately pull her into a welcoming hug.

Things have been weird between them the past few months. Ryan’s making them weird. She’s trying desperately to provide him with some sense of normalcy and all her attempts have been met with retaliation. 

Ryan wishes he remembered how to let other people help him.

-

The past few months have felt a little bit like prepping for the apocalypse. He knows the world is ending. He feels it coming. The earth rumbles in the distance like it’s crumbling in on itself, but it just hasn’t reached him yet. The ground will slowly start falling away until he is trapped in the center of it all with nothing to do but watch and wait for his impending doom. He’s waiting for it to catch up. Even now, heading home from dropping Sarah off at that stupid party, he feels it coming. He’s just as much of a sitting duck in this car as he is in his bed.

God, he wants to be in his bed. He wants to get home and crawl into his bed and cover himself with a thick blanket, so he won’t be there for the end of the world. Hopefully, his body will let him sleep for a few hours.

He turns off the obnoxious voice of the radio host on whatever pop station his sister wanted to listen to and focuses on the road. The sun is on the tail end of its set, cool-toned dusk painting the snow of the backroads he’s decided to take home. Busy roads have always made him anxious. He’d rather deal with the occasional asshole who doesn’t know how to go the speed limit and drives into the other lane to get around him than 20 of that same type of asshole combined with bumper-to-bumper traffic. It takes a little longer, but the tradeoff lies in the fact that Ryan hasn’t seen another pair of headlights in almost 5 minutes.

As the sun tucks deeper and deeper into the earth somewhere behind him, the January full moon sits big and low over the tree line just ahead. It’s getting brighter, the transparent haze over it falling away as daylight hides itself for tomorrow. Something about the woody backroad lined on both sides with a dense layer of bushes and branches, even while it’s coated in a layer of dead-winter snow, reminds him of something stalking in the woods. It reminds him of fallen branches breaking behind him and footprints that are too big and misshapen to be human. It reminds him of the smell of recently torn apart flesh and something snarling in the shadows.

He grips the steering wheel a little tighter. He lets the weight of his foot push down into the gas pedal a little harder. The trees bordering him on both sides start to fuse together as his brain tries to outrun whatever it’s conjured up. It tricks him into thinking that he can see the thing in the blur of his peripheral vision.

“Fuck,” He curses, his hands sweaty against the leather of the steering wheel. He attempts to calm himself, but the irrational part of his brain takes hold. It’s coming. It’s always coming. Go faster.

Get home. The heat blasting through the car vents starts to feel too much like summer wind, too much like embers drifting off a campfire. His hands fumble to find the dial that’ll turn the air down.

He only takes his eyes off the road for a split second.

Within that second, something occupies the road in front of him and when Ryan looks back it’s too late to swerve.

With what little he sees, his brain conjures up a monstrous thing, hunched over with its long tongue extended, ready to rip him from his car and consume him whole. His imagination convinces him he’s seen skin hanging off unnaturally long limbs and the reflection of golden yellow eyes boring into him through the front window. 

He tries to brake but his wheels catch, losing traction almost immediately. His car skids forward into the animal that goes rolling over his windshield and the top of his car with a series of shatters and bangs, leaving a smear of blood in its wake. 

He doesn’t close his eyes for any of it. In the viscous red trail, he sees Nick with his side torn open. He sees Dylan holding his mangled flesh. He sees the flayed face of Constance Hackett. He still doesn’t close his eyes.

It only happens over the course of a couple of seconds, yet with his foot slammed firmly on the brakes, it feels like it takes all winter for the vehicle to stop. It only does so once it’s careened into the tree line, rendered immobile upon impact with the thick trunk of an oak.

He doesn’t know how long he’s sat there, staring down into the center of his steering wheel, white knuckles refusing to loosen their grip. If his ears weren’t ringing, he’d be able to hear himself gasping for breath, but now all he feels is this terrible weight pressing down on his chest. He clutches at his shirt but finds nothing pushing into him. 

When the ringing fades, it’s replaced by the rushing of blood in his ears accompanied by the echoes of tearing metal and screeching breaks. He jerks his head around, assessing the state of his body and the surroundings he’s found himself in. From what he can see he’s fine, but his car is most certainly not.

When he finally gets the nerve to move his eyes upward, he’s looking into trees. Layer after layer of trees that seem to go on forever and fade into nothing. They look like an optical illusion. He’s centered on one, the front bumper of his car caved in by it with a few broken branches and tree debris fallen onto the busted hood. Only one of his headlights remains on and even then, it’s hardly in working condition. It flickers in and out, casting its distress signal into the congregation of woods. The smeared windshield is smashed to shit where before it only had a few minor cracks and divots. 

His eyes flit up to the rearview mirror to see the pattern has extended past the roof, a trail of blood continuing down the back of his car. His vision is blurred but he can tell there’s a mass in the road behind him, illuminated by the glow of the rear lights. He almost expects to see it staring back, angry, and ready to tear him apart limb from limb. 

His mind panics. He doesn’t have a gun. He doesn’t have any silver on him. He knows how important silver is. He should always carry some on him. How could he be so stu-…

The thing on the road moves and Ryan makes out the shape of a hoof kicking into the air, revealing itself as nothing more than a deer. Thankfully his brain doesn’t immediately go to Jersey Devil.

Fear escapes his body with a deep exhale, but his hands are still shaking. He holds them out in front of him, turns them over and examines his skin for any serious injuries but they look normal, save for a few scratches that could’ve already been there. He wiggles his toes in his boots to make sure he’s still got a functioning pair of legs too. Okay, everything’s in order. 

Except for his car, of course. That’s definitely out of order.

He has to fight with some branches in the way to open his car door but eventually makes the gap big enough to squeeze his way out. His body hunches over once he’s outside. It’s finally setting in how much he feels like he’s been punched in the chest. He rests his hands on his knees and breathes in the air around him.

It’s not as crisp or cold as he expects it to be, the warmth and smell of rubber tires on asphalt still hovers around the car. His adrenaline is rampant. Maybe if he had the wherewithal to think clearly, he might have moved his way through the thicket and out onto the main road a little more strategically. He doesn’t fully feel the sting from the scrapes the trees around him make on his skin as he pushes past them.

Once he gets to the road, he pats himself down for his phone to check the time, cursing when he realizes it’s still plugged into the center console’s charging port.

There are no cars coming from either direction. Even so, he doubts they’d notice his car buried in the forest unless they were looking for it. If the imprinted tire treads veering off the road weren’t enough to catch someone’s attention then the deer currently kicking its legs in the middle of the road might be.

Ryan approaches with caution. He has to admit that his deer knowledge is somewhat limited. Can deer be rabid? The closer he gets the clearer it becomes that this deer is not in the state to be attacking anything. The lack of antlers tells him it’s a doe.

 As he approaches, her little sounds of distress become more audible, something akin to a cow, maybe a tad higher pitched. It’s a little bit more like a bleat when she whips her head around to find the owner of the approaching footsteps, making crunching sounds in the snow behind her.

The second she makes eye contact with him he has the urge to throw up. Her eyes are big and brown, but they’re surrounded by matted red fur with no source point. Her legs are sickeningly mangled, yet they still attempt to straighten themselves out. She makes another noise, this one from fear of the approaching stranger and tries to force herself to stand. She holds herself up on one leg, but it buckles, and she collapses back down into the stained snow. 

Ryan wants to look away, turn on his heels, and fall to the ground with her, let the awful sickness crawling up the back of his throat do its worst so that he can move on and leave the image of the poor deer behind him. He stays frozen, watching the movement of her out-of-socket shoulder as she writhes on the frost-covered road. She snorts in frustration and tries again to get herself up to even less avail.

A glow floods over the road from a distance. Headlights, thank god. Ryan feels a brief hope for the two of them. He waves his arms, hoping to catch the approaching driver’s attention.

 It’s some jacked-up white truck doing around 20 miles over the speed limit. It quickly becomes apparent that the driver has no interest in stopping despite the fanfare. “Shit,” Ryan curses as the series of events grows clearer in his head.

He doesn’t think as much as he should about rushing over to the deer’s side. He doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around her broken body and haul her off to the side of the road.

“I got you. I got you. I got you.” He repeats like a mantra, as if she’ll understand that he’s helping. He is helping. He tries to remind himself of that when she kicks up snow with her unruly limbs and pleadingly shouts out into the night to any other deer who may be listening. 

The truck barrels past him, right through where the deer and he just stood. The driver lays on his horn as he passes him, cruel and mocking.

“Fuck you, asshole!” Ryan shouts after the behemoth vehicle. It earns him a hoof straight to the gut from the startled doe still wrapped in his arms. He reels back, dropping her and falling onto the ground behind him. It scrapes the heels of his hands.

Now at her level, he can really see how much blood is leaking from her mouth and glossy black nose. He’s no vet but if he had to guess, he’d put money on some kind of internal bleeding. He thinks about calling Laura, wonders if she’s read up on these kinds of injuries. He doesn’t even attempt to go for his phone. He sits there with his trembling, unsteady limbs that he also doesn’t trust to put him upright and watches the doe struggle.

Her labored breathing catches in her mutilated lungs. It quickens with panic like it’s set in that whatever is happening to her is a truly perilous situation. 

Of course, he’s seen a dead deer on the side of the road before. Everyone knows what roadkill looks like, cadavers so beyond recognition of anything that was once living that they’re thought of as nothing more but roadside debris. It’s unfair to think of that as her fate when this doe fighting before him is the most alive thing he’s ever seen.

He wonders if she has kids to get back to, pictures them watching her struggle just out of sight beyond the tree line. They could already be curled up for the evening. Maybe they’ll think she just up and left in the night, spend their entire lives asking themselves why she didn’t want them. They won’t know how hard she fought to get back.

They won’t know what Ryan did to her.

He looks down at himself and stares at the blood on his hands from where he held her. Some of it's rubbed off into the snow but smears of red still remain. It extends down the front of his hoodie.

He’s heard of people calling the police when stuff like this happens, to put the animal out of its misery. That option is out of his mind before it even shows up.

Fuck no. He’s not calling the cops.

He moves to stand up but the deer in front of him cranes her neck up toward the sky making him freeze. He expects her to call out again, in fear or pain. He doesn’t expect to watch the moonlit silhouette of her head, come down with a heavy smack on the asphalt.

Ryan jumps, shuffling backward in the direction of his car. He’s understandably confused at first, not entirely sure of what he’s seeing until it happens again.

The doe lifts her head up as high as she can, uses what little strength she has left to strain her neck up to the moon, before bringing it back down to the ground with a scary amount of force.

Crack.

“No no no..” Ryan jumps forward this time, shuffling onto his knees to desperately crawl back to her, snow soaking through his jeans where he makes contact with the ground. He pleads, “Hey, girl. Stop, please. No.” 

He shouldn’t have gotten closer. The crack of what he can only imagine is her skull is so much louder from here, so much sharper and all the more gut-wrenching. His mouth tries to form around the word please, but no sound leaves his throat. She just keeps going, slamming her head into the asphalt between cries and snorts, leaving the snow around her a crime scene.

Ryan doesn’t know when he started crying. His cheeks are hotter than the rest of his body which is finally feeling the effects of the cold air surrounding him. He wants to grab her, pull her into his arms and whisper to her through the pain. He wants to know what she’s doing, beg her to tell him why. 

The body he harbors is useless below him. His breathing unconsciously begins to match hers as he feels something dreadful building inside of him. He tries to get up, his boots unable to keep their grip causing him to fall on his ass once again. It’s morbidly comical. Like something is pushing him down and forcing him to face his reckoning. His fingers dig into the dirty tire-marked snow as he watches the horrifyingly mesmerizing show she puts on.

Reel back. Smack down. Crack.

Reel back. Smack down. Crack.

She grows tired quickly, with so much energy expended on the motion, those frantic noises she makes dull into silence. The reel back comes slower and slower until eventually her neck just wilts with its weight, the crack becoming a solid thud. The blood continues to leak from her mouth as her body stills its rise and fall. 

Ryan knows when she takes her last breath. It feels like he takes it with her. The reflection of stars in her dark, glazed over, eyes don’t keep him from seeing when they lose life.

Ryan has never really had a strong hold on his emotions. He does his best to keep them on a tight leash but they’re known to unravel or slip from his hands in moments of weakness. There are some threads that just don’t ever snap though, things that he knows about himself to be unwavering. He feels deeply and copes quietly. His indifference is a defense against the fact that he’s anything but and the distance placed between himself and others is there because sometimes he forgets how far the leash extends. He’s forgotten how thread thins when pulled taut for too long, how it frays till a single strand remains.

It snaps and Ryan loses it.

He screams, burdened and visceral. It echoes down the road and up towards the full moon now sitting proudly in the sky to admire what it has caused. He screams loud enough that a herd of deer tucked somewhere in the woods, once belonging to the nameless corpse in front of him, can hear it. 

He screams for a family doomed by the kindness of a granddaughter, grown rotten in their ways of protection. 

He screams for the hag swarmed in smoke, whose eternal search for her son turns laughable around a campfire. 

He screams for the times over the past several months that he wanted to but couldn’t. For all of the times he made himself brave through it. He had to be rational. He had to keep a level head even when all he wanted to do was turn the gun on himself and let it all be someone else’s problem. 

He screams because he should’ve been screaming the entire fucking time .

He sobs too. He can’t stop the tears from coming once they’ve started and now, they’re mixing with melting snow and blood on his skin. Her blood. She didn’t deserve it. Neither did the Hacketts despite their grade A lunacy. Legally speaking, the counselors were acquitted but a part of him will always be guilty.

He didn’t listen. He pulled the trigger. He hit the deer.

There will always be another shoe to drop, and he may go his entire life waiting for its thud.

With bleary vision, he pushes himself up. He blinks profusely, doing his best not to rub at his tearful eyes with his cold-stiff bloodied hands. There’s a pounding in his head but he can’t quite tell if it’s from the overexertion of emotions or transferred pain. Some kind of cosmic karma. 

He stumbles back towards his car to retrieve his phone and finds the passenger’s side a tad more accessible than the driver’s door he scratched himself up squeezing out of. Once he has his phone clutched tightly in his hands, he settles back into the shotgun seat of his car, the cabin still holding onto a fraction of warm air to ease his frost-bitten skin.

He doesn’t ask himself who he should call. His rational brain would tell him to call his grandparents. At one point he may have even thought to call Chris Hackett for something like this. He turns his rational brain off because there’s only one number his grief-shaken hands want to dial anyway.

The phone rings. Please . It rings again. Please, Dylan.  

Halfway through the third ring, someone picks up.

There’s some shuffling on the other end of the line before a lilting rasp rings out from the tinny speaker, “Hey handsome.”

Ryan tries to speak but once again he falls short of means. His mouth hangs open waiting for the words to come but only short breaths of visible air fall out.

There’s more shuffling. If Ryan had to guess he’d say it’s the sound of sheets rustling and a book shutting, “Ryan?” Dylan greets again, his hopeful tone wavering with the lengthening silence on the other end, “Ryan, is everything okay, dude?”

Fuck, no. He shudders. He glances into the rearview, but the body is out of view now. A darkened blood trail blocks his view anyway. He’s crying again, “Ryan, seriously, is this a butt dial or is something wrong cau-“

“I’m here.” he manages, practically croaks out into the eerie silence of the car.

It seems to ease the boy on the other end based on the sigh of relief that, by the sound of it, he turns his head to let out, “Hey, you. Are you okay?”

The forest of trees beyond his damaged car feels like it’s just waiting to swallow him whole.

He swallows thickly. He can’t do this alone. Any of it.

Closing his eyes, he pictures an early summer day. Another year back at camp, but there’s a fresh face poking his way around the radio hut. Ryan hears laughter a couple of tables over, incited by the loudmouth newbie who’s already garnered quite the friend group. They make eye contact for the first time over that night’s welcome bonfire and Ryan pretends to not notice that scrawny kid staring at him for most of the night. He pretends it doesn’t make him buzz with nervous excitement.

The next morning Ryan and his cabin mates hit the lake bright and early. As he’s going to pull himself back up onto the dock to dry off a figure blocks the sun above him. He pictures the boy he’s never met, brunette hair, golden at the tips by the sun illuminating him from behind, a smile Ryan knows he’ll lie awake thinking about plastered on his face, “Need some help?” 

His hand is outstretched, waiting.

“Dylan..” Ryan breathes down the phone and remembers the boy on the other end. 

He sees the hand and takes it.

“I need help.”

-

Dylan is there quicker than Ryan expected. They never really shared specifics about where they called home when they weren’t at camp. He knew everyone was within the state, but he didn’t really anticipate an ‘I’ll be there in 20 minutes’ kind of close.

Dylan stays on the phone his whole way there. Ryan doesn’t say much, just listens to Dylan talk him through what sounds like their camper injury protocol. He recalls some of the questions from their mandatory first aid training. Is he dizzy or experiencing blurred vision? Can he recall the moments before the crash? Any sharp pains or heavy bruising? In between questions, Dylan gives him updates on how far out he is, desperate to keep Ryan engaged on the other end.

Ryan leans his temple against the cool glass of the cracked passenger window and closes his eyes, listening to the sound of Dylan’s shaken voice on the other end talk him down from his heightened state of panic. He imagines his voice coming in over the radio.

Eventually, the line hangs up and Ryan barely has time to miss him before the sound of snapping branches outside the car door alerts him to Dylan’s presence. There’s a frantic push through the foliage followed by his passenger door opening to reveal the same face that stared down at him from the dock all those years ago, “Hey..” Dylan smiles and it kills him cause what on earth did Ryan do to deserve a smile like that, “Come on, let's get you somewhere warm.”

He’s helped from the car and led back to the road where Dylan’s car is pulled properly off to the side, hazards casting a pulsing glow over the scene like some kind of stylistic horror movie lighting.

Dylan has his hand on Ryan’s back, making sure to angle his body away from the deer as they approach the side of his car. Ryan’s hoodie is soaked in melted snow. He barely noticed while in the car but now that he’s back in the elements it causes him to shiver. Dylan must feel the fabric wet on his hands cause when they stop by the passenger side door, he tugs at the sleeve of the garment, silently asking Ryan to shrug it off, “Here.”

Dylan’s own jacket comes off and before Ryan can protest, fleece-lined blue denim is being draped over his shoulders and his hoodie is swapped into Dylan’s arm. It’s still warm from being in a heated car on the drive over and does a good job pulling some of the tension out of his body. Ryan slips his arms into the long sleeves, but his hands don’t quite make it to the end, limbs a bit shorter than the jacket owner’s. He wiggles the cuffs up his arms, so they bunch above his hands. The folds of the collar smell so distinctly like Dylan, it would make him yearn if it wasn’t for the real thing standing inches away.

Ryan knows Dylan’s tall enough to see over the car, but he purposefully doesn’t look up toward the deer, just keeps his eyes scanning over Ryan’s face. They narrow with concern when they reach his forehead, “You’re bleeding”.

Ryan waves it off, “No it’s..” He gestures to the bloodied hoodie with his bloodied hands, “The deer. It’s not mine.”

Dylan shakes his head, “No. You’re bleeding”. 

He takes the sleeve of Ryan’s snow-soaked hoodie and wipes blood from a gash just below his hairline. From the feel of where Dylan’s fingers follow, Ryan assumes it extends from nearly the center of his forehead down to his left temple, splits between his eyebrow on the way, “It’s just some cuts. We can actually clean it up when we get back to my place.”

His tongue sticks out a little in concentration. Ryan watches the way Dylan’s eyes flit over his face checking for any other spots glass may have cut in the crash, “Your place? Don’t you live like…not here?”

“Yeah, my parents live a little more south, but I needed to be closer for school so, uh, I moved out.” He uses his one hand to messily fold up Ryan’s hoodie and tuck it under his left arm, “It’s close I promise.”

Dylan finishes his scan, his eyes pulling back up to meet Ryan’s when he finds no further evidence of injury. The eye contact makes it really set in that this is the first time he’s seen Dylan since they parted ways at the pool house. Since he had the audacity to tell him to get somewhere safe instead of getting him there himself.

Of course, there’s been the occasional silly group chat photo, but it’s different in person. There’s a ‘just rolled out of bed’ unkemptness that makes him look more like himself somehow. Not messy by any means, but his face suits the framing of his current hair length, and the stubble lining his jaw has grown in unexpectedly nice. Exactly how Ryan should’ve remembered him looking all along. He silently hopes this image takes the memory’s place. He looks really good and maybe Ryan’s a tad bit out of it, but he sort of resembles an angel, illuminated where the silvery moonlight hits him.

Ryan’s not used to being doted on. Thank god he’s not with it enough to fully recognize the steadying hand resting against the small of his back. He doesn’t want to know how a coherent Ryan would deal with that information.

He wants to say something, wants to explain himself and the unsaid words that drifted between them over the duration of summer. He realizes he’s been gazing a tad too intently when Dylan clears his throat and flits his eyes away nervously, “When we get there, I’ll call your parents. Just sit tight for a sec, okay? I’ll grab your charger and stuff.”

Ryan nods, not feeling the need to explain the technicality, and opens the car door. Dylan keeps the hand firmly on Ryan’s back as he lowers himself into the car. The door shuts behind him and Ryan watches through the car window as Dylan maneuvers his way back over to Ryan’s car and searches around for all the useful shit he may want in the outcome that this is the last time they see the busted vehicle.

It’s a little funny that this whole time Ryan forgot about the hand situation, only really noticing once Dylan starts getting creative with how he picks things up and piles them into his arms. His charger, his wallet, some old boots, and a flannel. Without his jacket on he can see his left arm sleeve is pushed up exposing the handless end of his arm wrapped in its own sort of cover.

Eventually, Dylan comes back over to his car and dumps the collection of Ryan’s stuff into the backseat before hopping back into the driver’s side, “Man, your car is fucked up.” Ryan isn't quite sure what to say to that. He just lets Dylan sit with it. “…Okay maybe that wasn’t the most helpful thing I could’ve said right now.”

Ryan manages a smile to let Dylan know he’s not actually mad, “Pfft, you’re not wrong.”

Dylan winces on a readjust of his rearview mirror. Ryan can assume what he caught sight of. He watches Dylan take a deep breath to shake it off before turning his hazards off and putting the car back into drive, “Lil bit nervous. First time driving with a passenger since sacrificing my limb for the greater good.”

Ryan looks over to where Dylan’s right hand is situated at the top of the steering wheel. His covered stump gently rests between the openings in the wheel right beside a steering knob attachment. Dylan glances over to see Ryan staring, “I’ve gotten pretty used to it.”

Ryan quickly looks away, realizing how rude he’s probably been, treating it like a massive elephant in the room. The injury itself isn’t the looming thing, more so the fact that he caused it. He chokes down another apology, knowing Dylan wouldn’t hesitate to scold him for it, “It’s just cool to see you’re still driving.”

“Yeah!” Dylan lifts his stump in the air and does a little shrug, “I liked driving one-handed before, so it wasn’t the worst transition in the world. If I ever need a little bit more control while steering, I just use this knob thing.”

There’s some sentimental-sounding acoustic guitar playing softly through the car speakers, underlying their conversation. It cuts in and out as they go over potholes, shaking the aux loose from Dylan’s phone, “Have you thought about getting a prosthetic?”

Dylan clicks his tongue, “I put a little bit of thought into it but the longer I go without the hand the less I personally feel I need it, y’know? Everyone’s different when it comes to this kind of stuff. I think I’m just more comfortable without a prosthetic.” Ryan lulls his head back into the rest and watches Dylan’s fingers tap along the curve of the steering wheel to the beat of whatever song’s playing, “They’re expensive as fuck too. My parents and I agreed to focus on getting me through college first, and if somewhere along the way I decide I want a prosthetic, we can look into it. My doctor just has me wearing compression sleeves for most of the day. The scar’s still really sensitive so I'm supposed to be careful. Even if it’s technically healed, it’s still easier to damage than any other part of my body, so…Yeah, That’s about it.”

Ryan can’t say that seeing how well Dylan’s adjusting to losing a hand doesn’t begin to relieve something in him. It’s far from gone though. It loosens its hold but only while Dylan’s talking. The second he’s done, and Ryan lets his gaze move back to the stump that nasty feeling takes root again. He won’t bother Dylan with his burden anymore, he’s done that enough, but he’d be lying to himself if he said that guilt didn’t still fester under his heart.

Ryan rubs at a bit of dried blood between his fingers. This fucking sucks.

Dylan doesn’t let the shake of Ryan’s shoulders go unnoticed. When they slow to a stop at a red light, he reaches over and slips his hand across Ryan’s upper back. He gets to rub a comforting circle or two into the back of his jacket before the light turns green and he has to put his hand back on the wheel. They’re out of the woods now, back into civilization. “I think it’s really cool that you stayed with her.”

Ryan lifts his head up slightly, hesitant to show Dylan how his eyes have teared up once again in spite of the physical distance put between him and the body, “What?”

“The fact that you stayed with her while she was dying. I don’t think a lot of people would’ve done that.” Dylan’s eyes reflect the streetlamps they pass by, “You made sure she didn’t die alone.”

Ryan huffs out a bitter sort of laugh under his breath, “Did I really have a choice?”

There’s silence while Dylan mulls it over, “Well, If you don’t think you had a choice then I guess you didn’t.” He chews at the inside of his cheek, “Or maybe it didn’t feel like a choice because doing the right thing is so innate to who you are.”

Ryan wipes his eyes with the worn sleeves of Dylan’s jacket. He looks at him from over the fraying fabric and watches the smallest version of a smile tilt the corner of his lips. Even if it’s just Dylan’s attempt at keeping the mood light, coming from his mouth Ryan almost believes it.

-

There’s a safety that comes from being in the shower that Ryan’s sought comfort in since the events of last summer. It should be the opposite. Growing up under the wing of the horror genre, he should expect a silhouetted man with a knife behind every curtain, but no. It’s the only place his thoughts will stop for a moment. For enough time that he can pluck them from his head, leave them by the door, and wash out the inside they’ve ruined.

He can close his eyes and pretend it’s summer rain. He can let the droplets roll off his skin and take some of his pain with them. He’s always taken long showers, but these days the water will go for so long it runs cold. Like summer into winter. He’ll sit in the downpour until it reminds him that it’s cold outside and the pipes won’t keep the water hot on his account. He’s afforded the means to forget in the shower under a stream of clear water.

The walls of the shower he’s currently in won’t let him forget what’s on the other side, but they will delude him. In another universe, he’s visiting his partner for winter break. He’s using his body wash with the intention of putting on a scent rather than scrubbing the smell of death from his skin. Dylan’s out there, on the other side of the bathroom door, but he’s not calling Ryan’s grandmother to inform her that her already turbulent grandson has crashed his car on some random backroad between cities.

That’s not the case though because he can hear him shuffling around and if he put his ear up against the tiled bathroom wall, he’d be able to hear the muffled sounds of Dylan putting her at ease. Ryan may just have been sat right beside him in a car but there’s something surreal about knowing he’s out there. Real, tangible, and not just a summer camp memory that crosses his mind when he zones out.

The water at his feet runs a murky pink, a mixture of dirt and blood that is not his own. The hot water burns at a couple of fresh scrapes. There’s a nasty purple bruise left by an unruly hoof on his abdomen. Middle left, just a couple inches above his hip bone. He tries to run a hand over it, hoping that maybe the purple will flake off like dried paint, but he only winces at its tenderness.

Dylan gave him some clothes to change into after his shower. Just a simple pair of drawstring sweats and a Scooby Doo t-shirt. 

The fact that Dylan gave him such a well-worn shirt makes him a little giddy. Half because the idea of Dylan meandering around his room in a Scooby Doo shirt is quite possibly the most endearing thing ever. Half because the idea that Dylan purposefully gave him his most worn shirt to wear to bed could kill him.

When he steps out of the bathroom Dylan is just finishing tucking some sheets into the corners of the couch as a makeshift bed. “All good?” Dylan tilts his head up in a greeting upon hearing him walk into the room. His whole expression softens when his eyes land on Ryan in the shirt, any semblance of a poker face gone.

Ryan tightens his lips into an awkward smile. “Squeaky clean,” He mumbles. He still feels dirty. If he looked in a mirror he’d be caked in it.

Dylan shakes himself out of his thoughts and approaches Ryan with a hand outstretched, “Here, I’ll take your dirty clothes. I can just toss ‘em in next time I do laundry and get everything back to you later.”

Later…Implying that there would be a later. That they’ll see each other past this moment in time.

Ryan nods and passes the folded stack of dirty clothes off to Dylan before sitting down on the prepared couch. He hears chirping from below him before a blob of muted orange fur comes to join him in his sitting. The cat stares up at him with big curious eyes, deciding to take the unfamiliar face in from up close. Ryan decides he can expend the energy to give the cat a tired smile and a scratch under the chin, “Sorry bud, Not the best time for a first meeting.” He mutters lowly for only the two of them to hear. His orange ears wiggle in response. Ryan thinks he gets it. No hard feelings.

“Ah, I see you met the professor,” Dylan comes back into the room holding two pillows and a thicker blanket for the couch.

“It’s Schrodinger, yeah?” Ryan asks, hand still mindlessly fiddling with the fur around his face.

Dylan plops the pillows down beside him and looks at Ryan with a cocked head, “You remembered?” He sounds genuinely surprised

Ryan’s not sure whether he should be offended by the level of shock, “Yeah, of course. You only talked about missing him, like, every day at camp.”

There’s that look again. The one where he goes soft in the eyes and slumps his shoulders just a tad bit more, “Well he’s never been one to turn down new company. Don’t go too crazy out here tonight without me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it” Ryan tosses him a playful salute and begins setting up his pillows the way he likes. He can already feel a stiff ache forming at the base of his neck. He can only imagine the kind of pains he’ll wake up with tomorrow morning, but for now, all he has to worry about is closing his eyes and letting his weary body bring him to sleep.

“Uh..Let me know if you need anything, okay?” Dylan starts his nervous shuffle back towards his bedroom, “I’ll probably be up for a bit so don’t worry about waking me up. Literally anything at all. Come get me.” He rocks on his heels in the door frame.

Ryan falls back into his pillows and sends a half-assed thumbs up and an mmph of acknowledgment Dylan’s way. Dylan turns the light off on the retreat back into his room as the solid weight of a pudgy cat settles against his bruised stomach.

-

Ryan wouldn’t know the time off the top of his head. He hasn’t been checking his phone which still sits exactly where Dylan sat it on the coffee table after using it to call his grandparents. He could reach out and check if he wanted to, but movement feels impossible.

He keeps drifting in and out of sleep but the moment his brain gets comfortable enough to conjure up images, they are of a doe smashing her skull open. They’re metal and wood twisted together with a smattering of blood for good measure. Several times tonight, he’s been in that foggy early sleep stage when something flashes behind his lids. His eyes shoot open, and a burn resides in his overextended vocal cords.

He hears the bedroom door across the room creak open, Dylan’s attempts to considerately open it pretty much shot. Ryan keeps his eyes shut, hoping to even out his breathing enough to appear asleep upon investigation. He hears Dylan pad to and from the kitchen, careful with each of his steps so as to not make too much noise. On his way back, Schrodinger meows from where he’s still curled up against Ryan’s torso. Dylan shushes him but stops short of ducking back into his room. His footsteps change direction, beginning their walk away from the door and towards the couch Ryan’s currently sleeping on.

With his eyes closed, Ryan assumes Dylan’s coming over to pick Schrodinger up and take him back to the bedroom with him. The cat never moves, and Dylan’s steps stop somewhere near the edge of the couch. If it wasn’t for the soft breathing above him Ryan wouldn’t even know Dylan’s there, practically stone still where he stands between Ryan and the coffee table.

Ryan’s in mid consideration, contemplating if he should just open his eyes and admit his inability to sleep, but that thought is interrupted by the noise of shuffling and the feeling of a palm resting gently on his face.

Well, he’s in it now. 

Don’t move.

Dylan’s thumb runs lightly over his cheekbone as Ryan does his best to feign sleep. With how his body’s reacting you’d think he’d be around the corner from something hunting him, doing his best to stay unfound. But no, Dylan’s touch is delicate, practically weightless, against his cheek yet it still manages to set his skin on fire.

Stay still. Breathe. You’re asleep.

It seems to work but something causes Dylan to pull his hand back suddenly, like he’s been burned by the ignition he caused.

 “Fuck,” he hears in the dark above him, shaky and full of regret, “What the fuck, Dylan.” It’s mumbled, as Dylan shuffles back toward his bedroom and clicks the door closed behind him.

Ryan shoots up where he sits, almost knocks Schrodinger off the couch, but the cat claws his way back on. He stares at the now-closed door and wonders if it was just a trick of his sleep-deprived brain or if the phantom thumb running across his cheek was really a touch-starved Dylan.

He manages to fall asleep thinking of fireside dares and the nervous hands of a boy he’s wanted to kiss for years.

Chapter Text

There’s a second-story apartment, just a town over from his grandparents and only a few minutes' walk from the nearby college campus, that Ryan has become worryingly familiar with. Worrying to him at least, with how well he’s come to know the rusted staircase leading up to a scuffed green door. Worrying because he spends more time under the movie posters plastered on the walls of Dylan’s apartment than he does anywhere else these days, including home.

There was an unsaid assumption that settled in Ryan’s mind while he laid awake sick to his stomach on Dylan’s couch that night in January – he’d dip the next morning and they’d never have this type of face-to-face interaction again. That’s only reserved for the summer months, bookended by van drives through the forest of upstate New York, and those days are over. So he’s only looking out for himself by not considering the possibility of a friendship beyond trauma-bonded work pals.

Of course, Dylan wouldn’t just toss him aside the morning after such a rough night, make him fend for himself, or refuse the courtesy of giving him a drive home. 

Of course, they go get a shitty fast-food breakfast and enjoy the little pleasure of a shared first meal of the day. Dylan drives him to his grandparent’s house and of course, they ask him to stay for a bit. Of course, he’d say yes and it’s inevitable that he’s adored.

It's not the scenario he’d assumed Dylan would meet his family in. He’d never admit that it’s a scenario he considered at all. He’s more charming with them than Ryan’s imagination made him out to be. He listens intently while Ryan’s grandfather recounts a story he’s told everyone five times. He lets Ryan’s grandmother ask him questions about the new laptop she’s been having technological troubles with, and answers politely despite how obvious some of them may seem. By the time he’s leaving, they’re more enamored with Dylan than Ryan’s ever been.

Mostly because he got their grandson home safe and took care of him. They tell him as much on his way out. Dylan assures that while appreciated, he doesn’t know what to do with their gratitude, “It was nothing. Purely selfish actually.”

Dylan tosses Ryan a toothy grin that lands deep in his stomach. He wipes his sweaty hands on the fabric of his jeans and accepts that this may be the last time he’ll see the tilted front teeth in person.

It's stupid though. Why on earth would he expect their friendship to go back to its once on the phone exclusivity when they’re merely a hop, skip, and a jump away from one another? 

Ryan should’ve had the foresight to know the little routine he had was about to extend to include Dylan’s impromptu drop-bys and pick-ups.

Of course, Dylan would want to see him again with how low effort the drive to swing by and steal Ryan from his childhood bedroom is. His grandparents just let him waltz right in as long as he does the whole song and dance for them in the living room, asking his grandmother about whatever she’s crocheting now or charming his grandfather by complimenting his vinyl collection. 

Whether Ryan felt like hanging out or not, when he hears Dylan’s exaggerated politeness echo from the entryway up the stairs, he feels a sworn duty to save him from the niceties.

He should’ve known he’d find himself spending an unforgivable amount of time in Dylan’s apartment. Weekend nights mean curling up on the couch with Schrodinger in his lap and a container of takeout between his hands while they watch whatever Sci-Fi movie Dylan has decided to have a strong opinion about today. 

Ryan learns quickly that Pacific Rim is the most romantic movie of all time and that Terminator 2: Judgment Day is Dylan’s favorite feel-good family road trip film. His TV sits on the floor for now, along with the couch and a well-loved cat tree, it’s one of the few pieces of living room furniture Dylan owns.

A large portion of their friendship is centered around music. They go get whatever grease-coated fast food they are craving for dinner and drive around town listening to music and sipping milkshakes. They’ll stare up at the ceiling of Dylan’s bedroom, laying back on the space-themed bedspread Dylan swears he’s had since childhood, with a shared pair of earbuds split between them.

At some point, Ryan picks podcasts back up and they start listening to those in their downtime. Dylan says the only time he can properly listen to podcasts is when he’s listening to them with Ryan, the lack of visuals making him space out and lose focus too quickly otherwise. He’s got several months’ worth of his favorite shows to catch up on. 

It’s nice, no longer feeling that pressing urge to hear his surroundings at all times or be aware of every movement behind his back. These days when he feels something lurking behind him, he can be confident that it’s just Dylan over his shoulder. It’s just Dylan leaning into his side or letting the touch on his back linger for a moment too long. Dylan knows not to sneak up.

Ryan knows not to either. He learns that more of the lasting effects of August’s full moon are shared than expected. He doesn't mind leaving the bathroom light on when they go to sleep. Dylan gets pretty bad nightmares which often leads to Ryan grabbing a dream-shaken Dylan a cold glass of water in the middle of the night. To lighten the mood, he jokes about putting those glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling to keep the monsters away. It’ll match those dark blue rocket ship sheets that look straight out of a department store kids’ section.

There’s this unsaid agreement that neither of them are all that okay. They’re taking care of each other though. 

There’s a thank you for the midnight ice water in the afternoon spent listening to Ryan’s favorite podcasts. 

There’s a thank you for the afternoon of podcasts inside the pizza box alongside Dylan’s favorite toppings.

There’s a thank you for the topping choice in the pages of a sketchbook Dylan picks up for Ryan on his way home from class.

It just goes on like that. Give and take. Give and reluctant acceptance.

Give and don’t talk about why you’re so intent on being the one who gives.

There’s the need for a conversation that lingers around them and grows as their lives start to merge with one another. It’s in the bathroom where the toothbrush Dylan bought him, so he doesn’t have to take his back and forth, is. 

It’s there when Ryan opens the bottom drawer of Dylan’s dresser which he’s taken as his own, now filled with his own dark denim and worn band shirts.

It’s resting in the cushion indentations on Ryan’s side of the couch, perfectly matching up to how he sits during movie nights. 

When Ryan’s in the apartment alone, not including Schrodinger curled up in the nest of a cat tree, he feels the conversation lingering beside the closed door. It paces impatiently as it waits for the sound of keys in the front lock to alert it to Dylan’s coming home. 

Alone like this, Ryan has to face the fact that a portion of his routine is now dedicated to waiting for Dylan to walk through that front door. The fact that Ryan even feels comfortable being in Dylan’s space without him is something he refuses to unpack.

It's domestic, he thinks one day and immediately wishes he could scrub the thought from his brain.

 Dylan opens the door, shrugs off his jacket, and immediately gives Ryan the goofiest grin, sincere in his excitement, “You’re not tired of me yet?” He asks as if he expects Ryan to be anywhere else when he gets home.

Yet despite its omnipresence in every room and everything, in all the late-night conversations and fleeting moments that could’ve been something, they still don’t talk about what they are. 

What were they? Was that ever really anything? Aside from some subtle flirting every time they dipped off alone together or a request for a number he never actually gave. 

Ryan’s not the only one avoiding the conversation. He notes Dylan’s tone shift the second it starts to veer into ‘what are we?’ territory. Their hands get too close, or they’ve been leaning on each other for a tad too long, and suddenly Dylan’s jumped into a funny story from the day. He’ll stand up to tell it, go across the room to tell it, get as far away as he possibly can from Ryan to tell it.

Maybe it’s just that he’s not into him anymore. There’s something so taboo about a summer camp romance and that kind of risk is attractive to people. It’s not just possible, it’s likely that after spending more time with him outside of the circumstances he’d find himself not being as attracted to Ryan as he thought he was.

He’ll avoid it for as long as Dylan will. He’ll ignore the urge to catch Dylan’s hand on the way out and squeeze it a little too tight. He’ll pretend he doesn’t watch Dylan’s reactions more than the movie most nights. He’s perfectly capable of being chill about a little unrequited crush till it subsides and they can move on with their friendship.

Don’t ruin the only good thing you’ve got going on, he reminds himself. Sometimes resistance to change is just preservation. Preservation over evolution. For now, Dylan’s his best friend. His fraction of normalcy. He can live with that.

-

The start of the spring semester picks up and the counselor group chat quiets down a little bit. It’s most of their first semesters back save for the few of them still taking time to recuperate and reset their trajectory. 

Last he heard Max was taking the time to reapply to grad school and picking up odd jobs here and there so he and Laura can afford their place. He’s pretty sure Jacob’s dipped away from college life too, surprising considering the overwhelming frat boy energy you’d think he’d be desperate to find an outlet for. He seems a tad more withdrawn, still Jacob and still obnoxious, but reigned in. As if he understands the consequences of the alternative a little bit better.

Then there’s obviously him, Ryan, without a fraction of a plan to set himself up for success. Not taking this time away from it all to work or introspect. His life is still just as on pause as it was when he made the decision to skip out on animation school. 

It feels like he’s got his feet tangled up in a rope bridge, dangling over some wide and cavernous pit. He looks up and the others watch him struggle from the safety of the other side. He can’t begin to fathom how they managed it. Not that they got across unscathed, because that’s definitely not the case, but that they’ve gotten across at all.

Ryan vicariously experiences the spring semester through Dylan’s homework-filled afternoons and early morning cram sessions. As the first few weeks go by Ryan starts to notice Dylan’s jaw clenched more often, tight with stress while his eyes narrow in on his notes. Even in conversations unrelated to school, he’s more fidgety, frantic gestures a sign that he’s carrying the stress of his classes with him throughout the day.

Ryan does what he can to eliminate the possibility of Dylan falling asleep face first into an open textbook which includes quizzing him over his notes. Sometimes he still leans into Dylan’s doorframe to find him passed out and drooling onto his own handwriting, but he’ll help with the preventative measures where he can.

There’s one night in late February where they’re sitting across from each other on Dylan’s bed, notes and a textbook splayed out between them alongside a bag of extra buttered popcorn. It’s the night before Dylan’s first big Physics exam of the semester and Ryan’s pulling concepts from Dylan’s messily organized notebook to ask him about. Every time Dylan gets something correct Ryan will overhand toss a piece of popcorn toward Dylan for him to catch in his mouth.

Ryan runs his eyes over Dylan’s lazy handwriting, some sentences which trail off into incomprehensible nonsense, “These could be wrong for all I know. I don’t think I could even tell you what Quantum Physics is.” He ponders aloud while Dylan works through his mouthful of popcorn, a result of seeing how many he could catch in a row.

“Take a guess,” Dylan runs his tongue over his teeth in an attempt to get a popcorn kernel unstuck. “You remember Physics from high school, right?”

Ryan shrugs and does a little so-so motion with a flat hand, “Kind of? I remember the gist of it. There were…laws.”

Dylan listens intently, very excited to get this one-of-a-kind physics lecture. He scoots closer towards Ryan and leans his head into his palm, “Mhm..Go on.”

Ryan rolls his eyes and playfully tosses a piece of popcorn Dylan’s way. It hits him smack dab in his forehead and rolls down the bridge of his nose. Dylan still attempts to catch it with his tongue to no avail, “Uh, objects in motions stay in motion. Energy can’t be destroyed.” He snaps like it’s going to jog his memory. “There’s the whole thing about Newton getting knocked out by an apple and discovering gravity.”

Dylan nods along as though everything he’s saying is put with incredible poignance, “Really hitting the nail on the head, man. My senior level courses are all gonna be about Issac Newton getting hit in the head with an apple.”

Ryan notes that it’s gotten pretty late since they had started studying, the window blinds a little too open now for the time of day, nothing in the slats behind them but night. He bites the inside of his cheek while he thinks, “If I try to guess what Quantum Physics is I’ll probably embarrass myself.”

Dylan hums in response. He pauses for a moment before whipping his head around the room as though looking for something. His face lights up when he spots the ball of orange fur sticking out slightly from the crevice of two pillows. He reaches over and pulls Schrodinger from his cozy little spot before turning him on his back to cradle him like a baby. Schrodinger looks thoroughly unimpressed by the action, eyes still barely blinking open from his slumber, “You know the experiment Schrodinger’s named after, yeah?”

“I’m familiar. I don’t live under a box.” Ryan responds, pun taken in delight.

“OH!” Dylan does his best to balance the cat in his handless arm while reaching up to high-five Ryan. Their hands linger after the contact for a little too long, “Nice one. I respect it.”

Schrodinger takes the opportunity to squirm out from Dylan’s hold and flop onto the bed. He circles around Ryan and plops himself against his thigh to continue his nap away from Dylan’s loving embrace.

“Schrodinger’s cat is actually a really good jumping-off point when we’re talking about Quantum Physics. It’s like...” Dylan’s hand makes a physical grabbing motion like he’s searching through the words for how to phrase it, “Physics at its smallest level. Subatomic particles and stuff. It gets a lot more theoretical than regular physics since a lot of it is either barely observable or not observable at all. Schrodinger’s cat is a thought experiment that deals with the concept of superposition which is-” He cuts himself off, looks up to make sure Ryan isn’t bored out of his mind.

Ryan gives him a two-finger wave, “Haven’t lost me yet.”

“Good, I’m trying not to.” Dylan bashfully lowers his gaze again, keeping Ryan from reading too far into the words, before hopping back into it, “Just trying to find the best way to explain it.”

“Probably a safe bet to just explain it to me like I’m twelve.”

This gets a chuckle out of Dylan, “Hm..Okay, you’re twelve. Should be easy enough.” He tilts his head back and forth, searching for his thoughts, “Superposition is the idea that until an object is perceived we don’t really know what state it’s in. We can’t with full confidence, without any sort of observation, make any assumptions about an object that has the ability to undergo a change. The cat in the box might be dead, but we don’t know till we open the box. That period of limbo where we don’t know, where it’s everything and nothing all at once, that’s superposition.”

He doesn’t mean to not listen. Ryan swears he’s doing his best to stay an active and engaged audience member. He certainly has questions, but Dylan is gesturing so much, and his eyes keep darting between Ryan and the ground as he speaks. It’s unbearably endearing. It reminds him of a time at camp when he asked a question about Ryan’s hobbies outside of Hackett’s Quarry and got an ear full about Dylan’s playlist curation process. He may be getting the Quantum Physics for dummies version, but he imagines Dylan could go on for hours if he let him. 

He would let him. 

Maybe he’ll perform his own experiment to see how long it takes till the flutter of Dylan’s eyelashes while he speaks stops making his stomach roll over on itself.

He keeps cool as a cucumber on the outside, at one point covering his mouth with the hand he rests his chin in so as to not show how enamored he’s become with Dylan’s focused face, his knitted brows, and the wrinkles in his forehead. The way his voice jumps up when he’s particularly excited to introduce another nerdy topic of conversation.

“-and a lot of people bring up Schrodinger’s cat when they’re talking about alternate universe theories! If something is everything all at once until we find out what it is then that means there’s a splitting-off point where each of those possible outcomes branches into its own distinct universe. Multiple paths with multiple endings.”

Ryan nods to show he’s understanding, at least from his perspective as a previously established twelve-year-old boy, “Like a choose your own adventure game?”

It catches Dylan off guard, amusingly, “A little reductive, but sure! It’s just really amazing to me that at the smallest level we are just…Cloud of possibilities” His eyes are wide. His fingertips twitch as he attempts to find the words and grasp them, “Another neat concept is quantum entanglement, which is like, the idea that two objects are so connected that the states they’re in are dependent on one another. The state of object A can’t be fully described without knowing the state of object B and vice versa.”

He notes the tint of confusion on Ryan’s face and takes a moment to find a wrapping-up point, “I’m sorry. Everything in Quantum Physics is sort of hard to visualize so some old guys put some hypothetical scenarios out there and called them thought experiments.”

Ryan feels Schrodinger’s feet push out against his back in a big stretch. Ryan reaches back and blindly finds the wrinkled space between the cat’s ears, “You’re telling me there wasn’t actually a cat in a box?”

Dylan tightens his lips and shakes his head in stern disappointment, “A gripping realization. I know.”

“When will the lies cease?”

Dylan laughs, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth on an inhale. He lulls his head to the side and tosses a look over his shoulder toward the time. Ryan can tell he’s exhausted. He’s got a lot on his plate these days, not just from school but also his involvement with his school’s radio station. Not to mention the general lack of sleep he’s been battling.

Ryan’s about to ask Dylan if he wants him to duck out for the night, leave him to turn in early so he can have some alone time for once, but doesn’t get to before Dylan leans over and grabs a pair of wired headphones from the edge of his nightstand. He plugs them into his phone and finds his ear with one of the buds, passing the other one off to Ryan so they can share the set. Dylan lays back onto his comforter, patting the space beside him to urge Ryan to do the same before crossing his arms behind his head.

Ryan falls back into the space, getting close enough to share the headphones without a hitch. He recognizes the song playing almost immediately after putting the bud into his left ear from one of Dylan’s recent radio sets. He has a guilty habit of tuning in to them all. Maybe it’s a call back to simpler times, reminiscent of morning announcements and brighter days. Maybe he just likes it when Dylan’s in his element, curating a moment with music and getting to give that to anyone who may be listening. 

Whether that be someone who pops in for a second while fiddling through the stations or someone like Ryan who hangs onto everything he says and may be single-handedly responsible for Dylan’s high retention rate.

Sometimes Ryan will show him a song he just found or something he’s been sitting with for a while but never got the chance to share with anyone. He tries not to read into it when Dylan adds whatever song he’s shown him to the playlist for the following afternoon. He won’t think too hard about it at all when Dylan introduces the track with a nonchalant ‘someone important to me recommended this one.’

Ryan considers the concept of entanglement. He may not understand it in a Physics context, but he feels the urge now. The wired headphones between them are shortened by their entanglement. He considers how easy it would be to entangle himself with Dylan, hook their ankles around one another’s or lace their fingers together.

They lay there for a while. He’s not really feeling time go by. For all he knows it could’ve been a few minutes or close to an hour. Ryan’s only just starting to feel normal about this when Dylan reaches out to pause the music, not bothering to let whatever song they're listening to play out before cutting it off. 

Ryan cracks open his eyes and tilts his head sideways to look at him “Hm?”

“This is gonna feel really out of left field, okay?” Dylan prepares, keeping his eyes on the ceiling above them, “Hanging out with you feels a little like finding myself again. After everything, it can be a little hard to remember what I was like before, but when I’m with you I feel like it just comes to me. I’m remembering Dylan again.”

Ryan’s gaze follows the hills and valleys of Dylan’s profile as he speaks, eyes wandering up his nose and down into his cupid's bow, over the crests of his lips and soft arc of his chin, “Dylan Dylan I hope.”

Dylan’s mouth splits into a grin at the callback to the conversation which they both look back on to be terrifyingly casual considering the circumstances, “Well what if I decided this time around, I was going for cool Dylan or sexy Dylan? Finding myself and reinventing myself aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Ryan knits his brows together, “I thought you liked Dylan Dylan”

A heavy sigh escapes Dylan’s chest and fills the space above him. Dylan continues to look right through it up toward the ceiling. Ryan takes the moment to follow the growing line of his facial hair.

“I just don’t think he likes me too much right now,” Ryan almost jumps when Dylan’s eyes flicker to their peripheral, settling on the boy who’s just been caught red-handed appreciating the details of Dylan’s face a little too much, “He likes you though. He won’t come out for anyone but you.”

Oh, Ryan realizes, this is it. Dylan’s making his move and cementing it in place by rolling over onto his shoulder so he’s completely facing Ryan, even closer than before now. There’s no music playing anymore but a buzz in the back of Ryan’s brain grows louder with the recognition of how close they are.

“Not to shatter the illusion but you’re really not that different at camp.” Aside from the significantly less amount of sex jokes but he chalks that up to the lack of Jacob’s influence.

Dylan weighs that and raises him one better, “Maybe I’ve just never been good at acting in front of you..”

Yeah, this is definitely happening. Ryan’s eyes widen, unable to hide his shock behind a joke or a feigned chill exterior. They were pretty forward with one another in the height of camp flirting, but nothing to this degree since then. He wants to retract what he just said. Remove it from the record. This is camp Dylan. The dude looking at him now with his slight smirk and slow blinking stare is the exact same Dylan who tossed him quippy pick-up lines as they passed each other on the hiking trails. It’s the same Dylan whose name being put in the running by Emma for a campfire dare made his heart fumble a few beats.

“Smooth..” Ryan mumbles into the space between them.

Dylan breaks eye contact only to follow a natural trajectory down to Ryan’s lips. Dylan looks dazed, over contemplating a thought with a simple answer. He takes a tad too long to make up his mind.

Ryan’s closing his eyes when he feels the shape that’s been curled into his side jump over his body and insert itself into the space between them, cutting off anything that may have just been about to happen. 

Schrodinger settles right in front of Ryan’s face, fur tickling his nose as he sighs deeply against the cat’s side. All he offers in response is a presumably innocent meow, “Well..” Ryan tries not to sound devastated at the outcome. His hand comes up to scratch at a space behind Schrodinger’s puffy cheeks, “Happy?” Ryan mumbles for Schrodinger alone to catch. The cat seems delighted with himself, purring and leaning his head into Ryan’s touch.

Dylan rises to a sitting position, any hint of the confident flirt from moments ago vacated and replaced with something akin to mortification.

They both start at the same time.

“I’ll just-“

“We should-“

They wait for the other to speak, running into the issue of neither of them finishing their thought till the other will. Dylan breaks the silence after a few tense moments, “I have that test in the morning so I should probably wind down soon. Uh, Are you staying over or did you want me to give you a ride home?”

Ryan mentally kicks himself several times and mentally kicks Dylan once for good measure. They’re both stupid. They deserve it, “Home’s good.”

Chapter Text

Ryan lays back on a pair of sheets his back hasn’t touched in about a week and a half. It’s still his bed. Still the same comforter he’s had since forever, and it smells exactly how he remembers it always smelling. 

The light gray fabric still bears a dark stain from the first time his sister asked to paint his nails in the early hours of the morning. He remembers trying to whisper through poorly contained giggles, tossing wet towels to one another, and doing their best to scrub out the mess without waking up their grandparents. 

He remembers the early morning light splitting through his blinds, rays catching on the tips of his painted fingers. He stared at the messy black polish for hours, failing to fill in all the gaps in his nail and smudging past the edges at certain points. It made him feel like a rock star, someone a lot cooler and more confident than he had ever dared to be.

His room is still his. His grandparents haven’t rented it out to anyone in his extended absence, though he’s sure they’d consider it if he didn’t drop in a couple of nights a week to remind them that they still have a grandson. They don’t seem to mind his coming and going. Especially since the coming is usually occupied by a sort of contentment that they haven’t seen follow Ryan in quite a while.

It's his bed and while his hands know the fabric beneath him, it doesn’t feel right. The texture’s wrong. If he reaches over, he won’t find and press into the soft pudge of an orange cat. No matter how long he lays here with his eyes closed the bed will never dip with the weight of someone else. He’ll never get accidentally kneed in the side by bony legs. The sheets may smell like Ryan remembers, but they don’t smell like the desperate thing in his chest that he wants them to. They don’t smell like they’re supposed to. They don’t carry that faint scent of aerosol body spray. If he buries his nose into the pillow, he won’t get butterflies.

Dylan’s out with some friends from the radio station and, while it's given him the opportunity to check back in with his family, he can’t say he doesn’t miss the absence. That’s a problem, he thinks. That he’s fallen into Dylan’s orbit. That he’s on course for disaster. It’s a problem because he doesn’t mind burning up in the atmosphere.  

The music currently running through his earbuds is unrecognizable to him, coming from a shuffled playlist of songs Dylan’s planning to play during next week’s radio set. He makes mental notes of the ones he likes, knowing that it’ll be among the first things Dylan’s gonna ask once they are face to face again.

His eyes are shut, fingers tapping against his sternum to the rhythm of the song currently playing when he’s taken by surprise. Before he can react to the sound of his bedroom door creaking open and footsteps inching their way in, he’s hit with the force of a feather-down pillow thrown directly into his face. Granted, not a ton of force. Still annoying.

Ryan pulls the pillow off his face and throws it back toward the direction it came from. It’s intercepted mid-air, a rather smug-looking Sarah catching it with a satisfying thud. 

He props himself up on his elbows and removes the earbud that didn’t get knocked out by the pillow’s impact. He stares at her, waiting for some sort of explanation to why he’s been so randomly targeted but gets an expectant stare in response as if he’s the one who has explaining to do, “Dude?”

Sarah scoffs. Clutching the pillow against her chest she moves further into the room, pushing the door closed behind her. When she reaches his bed she shoves at his legs, causing him to pull them up and maneuver himself into a sitting position. Once she gets comfortable, she returns back to that suspect gaze, as if the added privacy of a closed door would make him any surer of what her drop-in is about.

Ryan shrugs, refusing a guess.

“You’ve barely been home for the past two months.” Sarah finally starts, occupied by a reluctant eye roll. Ryan’s shoulders involuntarily stiffen, posture tensing at where this line of questioning could lead. He watches Sarah pretend not to notice.

“Your friend Dylan..” She begins again while Ryan finds his phone’s volume buttons to silence the muffled sound of Dylan’s playlist coming through the headphones hanging off his shirt collar, “Is he nice to you?”

Well, that’s not exactly what he expected. 

He expected Sarah to ask him about Dylan eventually. She has eyes. Even if she didn’t, she has the ability to perceive the environment around her. She’s observant. She lingers at the stair banister anytime Dylan pops by, greets him with a knowing smirk, and playfully moves past Ryan when she slinks down the hall into her room.

But of course, Dylan’s nice? Maybe he could be called a bitch on occasion, perhaps a know-it-all or a hard ass, but Dylan’s the kind of guy who captures spiders and releases them outside instead of killing them on sight. He’s the kind of dude who ends pay-it-forward chains by tipping the service workers because he knows how annoying they can be. He’s watched Dylan win over complete strangers in minute-long conversations just by being himself. The words ‘nice’ and ‘Dylan’ don’t necessarily feel associated in his mind but maybe that’s because he’s never considered the opposite.

“Yeah? He’s nice to me?” Ryan can’t help but phrase it as a question, genuinely confused at the implication of anything else, “He’s a nice guy.”

Sarah scoots back to make herself more comfortable despite any potential objection Ryan may have, back against the wall bordering Ryan’s twin-size bed. She nods in agreement with what he’s said but narrows her eyes at him. She chews on the inside of her lip like she knows something more than she lets on. Maybe something even Ryan doesn’t know yet, “I’m glad you’re back to normal broody and not just depressed broody”

He cocks his head, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She gestures around the room like it’s obvious like they’re swimming in it, “Uh, Ryan said let there be light? A couple of months ago it was so dark every time I tried to come in here it was like entering the mouth of a cave.” He does recall a point when light just got a little too exhausting to take in, “Not to mention you’re actually talking to me right now.”

Ryan reaches over and tugs the cradled pillow from her grasp, “Mm well, you did attack me unprovoked. I kind of wanted to know what that was about.” He fluffs it before shoving it behind him and into the mass of pillows at the head of his bed.

She frowns at him, half from the pillow’s absence but also in part due to his nonchalance, “Do you remember how bad you got?” She looks to her lap where her hands fold over each other, “Did you even realize how bad things were then?”

Of course, he remembers how bad it got. He remembers budgeting his energy, careful not to spend the day’s lot all on something that wasn’t worth it. He struggled to find what was worth it though which led to a lot of passed-up meals and days on end without a significant action taken for himself. They never made him feel clean anyway. He had accepted the feeling of caked-on blood and dirt trailing down the hollow of his neck as permanent. What he remembers most is the tired devastation. Numb should characterize the absence of feeling, not a dull all-consuming ache that resides just below the skin.

But he doesn’t tell her what he remembers, his lips just tighten with a shrug.

Sarah sits with his silence but takes an answer from it anyway, “We got really worried when you stopped listening to music. Grams would send me to go check on you, usually while we were waiting to see if you would come down for dinner. You’d always just be here in the dark, either sleeping or sitting in this awful silence. Most of the time you didn’t even acknowledge me. It was like every time I popped my head in, I saw less and less of my brother and it fucking scared me, Ryan. I’d go downstairs and say stuff like ‘He’s just having a bad day’ or ‘Oh, Ryan’s just sad.’ I was starting to prepare myself for the day that I would come check on you and the news would be something a lot worse than ‘Ryan’s just sad’.” 

He can’t help but grimace at that, he casts his gaze somewhere past his sister’s shoulder, focusing in on a blank spot of the wall to avoid eye contact. Truthfully, he doesn’t want to see what those memories look like flitting around just behind her eyes.

 “I still worry about you obviously, that’s never gonna change, but I don’t feel like we’re losing you anymore. Whether you like it or not, you look like yourself again.”

He breathes out something he was holding. His gaze moves past the closet that he knows holds a long-since tossed aside Halloween mask and a blood-stained Cult Damage shirt, and settles on his reflection in the wall mirror he chooses not to cover up anymore. It’s the closest he’s looked to how he remembers himself before loading into a minivan to Hackett’s Quarry last June. He’s grown accustomed to seeing himself adorned with injury, a cut here and a bruise there. The lasting harm from his second car crash of the past year is long since healed. For once the person looking back feels like an old friend rather than a hostile acquaintance.

His sister follows his line of sight, leaning into his space to wave at the reflected version of her brother. She keeps eye contact with him as she speaks, “Maybe I’m making assumptions, I’ll step off if you want me to, but something’s bringing you back little by little. Someone maybe…Dylan?”

Ryan considers this, but it doesn’t sit right. Imagining Dylan’s reaction to Sarah’s insinuation makes him feel a little less guilty about the breathy chuckle he ducks his head to huff out. Oh, Dylan would adore the credit, but even he would have trouble taking it.

The impact of Dylan’s friendship on Ryan’s life over the past few months is something that can’t be overstated. He pulled him from the thick of it, but when he looks at what Dylan did for him, he was really just…there. He was there and there was normalcy in that. 

Dylan gave him room. Room to laugh and feel and forget. Room to practice being himself again. Room to relearn Ryan.

He likes to think he’d get himself back on his own eventually. He deserves some credit for what he’s done to be here. But, there’s a jacket hanging off the corner edge of his mirror that belongs to a body far lankier than his. The idea of giving it back hasn’t crossed his mind.

“Yeah” Ryan admits, imagining someone’s goofy creased smile, “Maybe so”.

-

It’s easy to tell when Dylan’s been crying. The skin of his cheeks gets red and blotchy and his under eyes puff up to match. He tries his best to keep his hands steady and fight off the mucus-induced strain affecting his voice, but his face is harder to hide. The blush at the chafed tip of his nose is a glaring giveaway.

When Ryan hears Dylan let himself into the apartment, he sets his recently microwaved leftovers to the side and rounds the corner to greet him, it’s the apples of his cheeks in full bloom that give him away.

“Hey, Did you want me to get a plate ready for you or-“ Ryan catches the smallest glimpse of Dylan’s face before his chin tucks down into his chest. He turns his body back toward the door and takes his time to fiddle with the doorknob that he knows full well he’s already locked.

Ryan stops himself at the kitchen’s entryway and rests his weight on a counter, considering the best approach to his friend’s palpable distress. He continues to avoid eye contact, purposefully keeping his face angled away from Ryan while he kicks his Vans off by the door mat.

Ryan’s not sure what the best move here is. There’s a level of physical contact he’s told himself he wouldn’t breach with Dylan unless Dylan initiates. He has to consider for a moment if comfort in a situation like this calls for touch. It should be a simple yes, but when Ryan’s palms buzz as frequently as they do when his mind wanders to Dylan, he has to be sure he’s not carrying any ulterior motives into it.

“Hey, Is everything okay?” He lowers his voice as if there’s someone else on the other side of the house, like they're keeping Dylan’s upset state a secret from the walls. 

The breath Dylan lets out when he takes in the question is shaky despite how he tries to steady it. He feigns normalcy, putting on a weak smile that still can’t hide the residual wetness of tear tracks, “Yeah!” His voice cracks eliciting a wince, “I’m cool. Cool as a cucumber.”

Ryan’s hands tuck up under his crossed arms, “Oh so we lie to each other now?”

The questioning makes Dylan pout. He falls back against the entryway wall, losing his ability to keep weight on his feet at the same time he loses his ability to keep up the charade. Ryan abandons the counter, along with the plate of leftovers he’s frankly forgotten he even planned on eating. 

Dylan slides down the wall into a seated position, his legs folding up in front of him and knees locking against him in the small space. He succumbs to the floor. His hands grip the space of ankle between his socks and the cuffs of his jeans, rubbing small circles into the skin there, like it’s grounding him.

Ryan moves to the space in front of Dylan, following his movement of sliding down the wall to fit into the limited space of the entryway hall, before settling crisscrossed. Something in him tosses out those pesky worries about touch as he rests his hand atop one of Dylan’s knees. He squeezes slightly for motivation.

Dylan lets out a shaky breath and Ryan can’t tell if he’s forcing another wave of tears down or just shaking off the moment, “I was eavesdropping before class started and I heard some girls behind me talking about Hackett’s Quarry. I know I shouldn’t have been listening in, but college kids talk so fucking loud and you know me-“

Ryan nods, “I know you.”

“They weren’t talking to me, and I doubt they even know I’m in that class with them, but…” He trails off. Ryan’s able to follow the natural conclusion. He doesn’t have to say anymore for Ryan to understand but he goes on, “It was just gossip. Theories or whatever. I just wasn’t prepared for it to bother me as much as it did. It wasn’t until one of them started saying shit about us, the counselors. That’s when my heart started pounding and my hands started shaking really bad. Can you blame me? They were talking about it like it was the fucking weather. At some point, I walked out and the second there wasn’t anyone around anymore I just lost it. Full blown sob fest.”

Ryan can recall similar situations. Ones where he’s just flipping through social media and suddenly his trauma is taking him by surprise, splayed out and being dissected by some stranger on the internet for the sake of journalism or entertainment. Sometimes those purposes blur. He can’t ever really tell anymore.

“You’d think we’d be past this shit. Fuck.” Dylan continues, “Most of the time I don’t realize how bad it’s fucked me up until something like this happens and I’m just absolutely useless.”

When it rains it pours, Ryan thinks but searches the words in his mouth for something a tad more comforting to say. It rains all the time where Ryan takes residence, always caught in the middle of a gloomy drizzle. He associates Dylan with clear skies and unobscured sunsets. He forgets that when it rains for Dylan it doesn’t just pour, it’s a flash flood warning. Fast and vitriolic. Most of the time the aftermath is harder to deal with than the storm itself.

Ryan doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, just keeps that steady hand on Dylan’s knee and listens to his breathing even out. When he feels like the moment’s right he speaks, “Can I ask you something?”

Dylan tilts his head up to look at Ryan with bloodshot eyes. The flush to his skin from his face leading down to his chest has faded some, but his tense body still caves in on itself. He nods.

“I know we don’t like to talk about that night,” He tries to keep Dylan’s eye contact but the still wet lashes framing the stare make him want to backtrack. “Sorry, I don’t know why I thought this would be good to bring up now.”

Dylan sniffles, “It’s okay. It’s not the same. You can talk about it. It’s different when it’s you.”

Ryan hopes his expression doesn’t change too much in response to that, “I’ve just been meaning to ask you about something that happened back at the radio shack-”

“When you cut off my hand?”

Ryan grimaces, visibly disturbed by his participation in the memory, “Before that-”

“I promised you radio lessons,” Dylan interrupts again. It’s a welcome interruption as it’s accompanied by the first smile he’s gotten out of Dylan since he’s gotten home today. He wishes those are what he was talking about. “You can come up to the station any time you want. You know that.”

“No, it’s not- Uhm, after that. When we heard the Hackett’s on the radio talking about us.” He’s the one bringing it up unprompted. He should be the one to reach forward with consoling affection but it’s Dylan who reaches up and rests his palm atop where Ryan’s hand is settled on his knee.

Ryan stumbles a bit over his words, “You, uh…You started panicking and I didn’t know what to do to comfort you. There’ve been a lot of times since then when I’ve wanted to help calm you down, but I’ve never felt capable enough. I wanna know how to be there for you during those moments, however you need me. It’s important to me.” At some point, Dylan’s fingers have started rubbing between the spaces of his knuckles in a soothing back and forth. Ryan takes a deep breath, “You’re important to me.”

Dylan chews at his cracked lip, worries at the splitting skin while he mulls over a response in his head. He seems to settle, “Anxiety is anxiety. Most of the time it’s just my brain being the worst dude I know. It’s hard to build up defenses preemptively when it’s set off by stuff I can’t prepare for.” He takes a few pauses in between sentences, utilizing his filter for once to make the words come out as he intends. He takes an especially long pause and swallows hard, like it’s a struggle to pull the words out from where they reside deep in his chest cavity, “I try to limit my exposure to the bad shit, but it always seeps through the cracks. The thoughts can get pretty gruesome. Once they’re there I feel like I need to get in there and scrub it out somehow. Music helps. Talking to you helps.”

Ryan fears that he and Dylan may close their eyes and see the same carnage. He wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. Least of all Dylan. The hand atop his reorients itself, twisting its wrist and pushing its way under Ryan’s so they’re palm to palm instead. Ryan blinks away his shock, “It’s helpful to have some kind of reminder that I’m being irrational. The radio shack is probably a bad example of irrational thinking cause personally I’d consider everything I felt in there to be fairly justified. But most of the time I’m blowing shit out of proportion. Reality checks help. Something to bring me down to earth, to remind me that I’m alright despite it all.” His hand is squeezed, acknowledging the contact as something more than just two hands holding one another.

“I think I can do that,” Ryan has a brain that catastrophizes too. It doesn’t manifest in massive waves of anxiety, more so in drawn-out periods of what can only be described as self-destruction. Dylan has pulled him out on numerous occasions. It’s only fair he be there and prepared for when that wave comes crashing into Dylan. 

He reaches his unoccupied hand up to rest on the arch of Dylan’s shoulder to commiserate. To show his understanding.

To be just that little bit closer.

“You’re still alright,” His hand rests there, gripping the fabric of Dylan’s old concert tee. It’s tearing just a bit where the seam of the collar meets the sleeve. It’s stupid that the tiny sliver of Dylan’s freckled shoulder skin peeking through the tear feels scandalous. Ryan’s fucked.

Dylan smiles at the contact but it falters when the moment passes and both of Ryan’s hands are still on him in some capacity, one being twisted in by his own touch and the other braced firmly on his shoulder. His leg relaxes, causing the connected hands to fall onto the floor yet stay connected in the space between them. One leg tucks under the other, removing the barrier of knees that was previously up between them. 

There’s room to move forward if he wants. Ryan gulps.

They stare at each other, both waiting for the unsaid to force itself out. The silent wait goes on far too long for either of them to make excuses for it.

Something inside him is dead set on sabotage. He’s sure of it as his hand slowly moves up Dylan’s shoulder till it stills at the base of his neck, resting just above that rip. Dylan gasps a little, as shocked as Ryan is by his own actions. He thumbs over a neck mole. His fingers curve around and feel the hair at the nape of Dylan’s neck.

Dylan whispers in the space, “You’re supposed to be keeping my irrational thoughts at bay. Not encouraging them.” As he talks Ryan feels the reverberation against the palm of his hand. It spreads up his arm like he’s been shocked. His brain doesn’t seem to know the difference between feeling Dylan and an electrical current running through his fingertips, “Please, don’t get my hopes up”

Ryan cocks his head, “If that’s my responsibility then shouldn’t I get a say in what thoughts are irrational.”

Dylan’s eyes are boyish, practically sparkling with this eager delight one can only reserve for an emotion Ryan doesn’t dare name. He’s begging with them. They’ve been at this for far too long. He needs Ryan to mean what he’s saying.

“Ryan, I don’t want you to feel like you have to-”

Ryan shushes him, already sensing a half-assed protest. His eyes fall down to Dylan’s lips.

They’re no strangers to moments like these, the almost and the should’ve. This feels different. No misconstruing the heartbeat Ryan feels pulsing against his hand as if it’s yelling; Please, that’s enough. Why deprive me any longer?

Dylan’s hand slips out of his grasp. He’s worried for a moment that it’s the consequence of an action, that Dylan’s pulling away to remove himself from the situation. Ryan’s quick to accept that he screwed up a good thing.

He’s proven fortunately wrong when he feels the warmth of the palm come up to cup his face.

Dylan didn’t touch him the first time they kissed. He thinks back to that muggy August night and tries to picture him. The dark of the forest made it almost impossible to see, just a figure leaning down with his outline illuminated by an ember glow, his features nearly unrecognizable.

Not now. Now, he sees him perfectly.

His empty hand searches for an anchoring point and finds its way blindly to Dylan’s other arm. Upon contact, Dylan recoils, almost wincing at the touch. Ryan chases it anyway, gently wrapping his hand around the shortened forearm. He spreads his fingers across the scarred skin and steadies the poor postured boy across from him.

It’s Dylan who closes the gap.

The campfire kiss they shared last August was chaste, short and sweet, but shared by too many eyes. Ryan never really felt like he properly kissed Dylan. A dare kiss isn’t a real kiss. It’s schoolyard antics. It could’ve ended up happening with any of the counselors there that night. There’s a universe where it happened to be with Kaitlyn. Maybe that would’ve been safer. It wouldn’t have planted the first seed in the garden he’s now overgrown.

Dylan inhales into the kiss. It’s pent up with several summers’ worth of pining but it’s accompanied by the gentlest touch of spindly fingers he’s ever felt. Dylan’s lips are soft and nervous against his, holding back.

He pulls away for a moment, letting their parted mouths linger just in front of one another. He looks to Ryan for guidance. God, as if he has any fucking idea what he’s doing. As if this isn’t one of the first times he’s kissed someone and really fucking meant it.

Ryan takes a page from blasé Dylan’s book and feigns the fraction of confidence needed to adjust the hand at the back of Dylan’s head and push him forward, not aggressively, but forceful enough to communicate that this is all he’s thought about for the past two months.

Their teeth clack together which makes Dylan giggle into his mouth. Ryan’s absolutely done for. They slot together gently, pulling apart and finding one another again, a playful back and forth that is just so characteristically Dylan. Ryan hums, shifting back out of the kiss till they’re looking at each other. Dylan’s lips are pinker now. 

Ryan moves both hands up to press into the flushed red of Dylan’s face and places his thumbs into the indentations of his cheeks. He’s smiling so fucking hard, “You have no right making me feel like this.”

Dylan shrugs and puffs his cheeks out, which Ryan pushes in to deflate, “We have our respective jobs. You keep my thoughts rational, and I keep you so insane with lust that you forget to do your job.”

Ryan bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling too big he’ll destroy any semblance of chill Dylan thinks he has, “What a trade-off...”

Dylan tosses his head back against the wall, a chuckle of disbelief bubbling up from his chest, light and melodic. Ryan scootches back as well, giving himself space to digest, “We should probably talk.”

Dylan hums, his hand reaching out to grab Ryan’s arm, to make sure he doesn’t go too far, “Sounds like a plan, but I’m gonna kiss you again first if that’s cool?”

Ryan doesn’t need to be convinced, “I certainly won’t deprive you of that”

By the time Ryan remembers there’s a plate of leftovers on the counter it’s been hours since Dylan got home. Even if the food hadn’t gone cold by now, Ryan doubts it could tear him from his spot on the couch where Dylan’s tucked against his side. 

Chapter Text

Ryan assumes something’s wrong when he gets the first of a string of texts, going off succinctly one after the other. He fumbles around in the crevices of the couch for the phone he lost track of about an hour ago, trying not to move around and disturb the body leaning against his chest too much. He fully expects the series of messages to be emergency-related, imagining his sister or grandmother frantically sending them off.

A sigh of relief passes through his lungs when he finally gets eyes on the banner notifications piling up on his lock screen. Relief is quickly replaced with confusion that borders intrigue. He focuses on the first message to come through and the corner of his lips tilt up in a satisfied smile.

when the FUCK did you guys start dating?!?!

Ryan’s currently sunken into the cushions of a well-loved sofa in an apartment that sees him almost daily. There’s a cat kneading the top of the backrest behind him with its orange fluffy body curled near his neck and a much larger (more Dylan-shaped) cat sitting between his legs, slumped with his back against Ryan.

Ryan nudges the elbows slotted near his torso and reaches to wrap his arms around Dylan’s body, connecting his hands above Dylan’s stomach. Dylan hums knowingly under him and tilts back to gently rest his head on Ryan’s shoulder,

“Dylan…” Ryan mumbles near his ear, it’s accusatory but light, “Did you share something with the class?”

Dylan feigns a thoughtful stare off into space and nuzzles back into Ryan’s body, “Well y’know I’m a big fan of making announcements.”

Ryan adjusts his hold on Dylan’s torso. He’s getting used to it. Being given permission to touch, hold and show his affection for Dylan physically is one thing, but knowing how to utilize the permission is another. It still feels new.

It still feels awkward. His hands don’t know where to go sometimes. He still forgets how to breathe with a head on his chest. 

That strangeness is fading with experience, but the thing that doesn’t go away is that swell of fondness that floods him from within whenever Dylan so much as tosses him a glance over his shoulder. 

Ryan feels fairly confident in his romantic capabilities at the current moment, enough so that he’s been periodically pressing kisses against the back of Dylan’s head, burying his nose or chin into the hair that still carries the scent of that morning’s shampoo.

When Ryan breathes in, it takes him a couple of seconds to realize the lingering smell on Dylan’s scalp isn’t Dylan’s shampoo. It’s actually Ryan’s. Becoming aware of that fact makes something rock inside of him. He pictures the other boy, still sleep-drowsy, fumbling his way through a shower, and hopes that the use of Ryan’s shampoo is something more meaningful than a mindless mix-up. Something purposeful and fond.

They’ve been sitting like this for the bulk of the day, Dylan with a controller, switching between video games every few hours while Ryan’s just happy to watch. It’s the weekend so neither of them feels too guilty about the setting sun peaking through the blinds, casting golden-slatted shadows on the wall opposite their couch to let them know the day is coming to a close.

Dylan’s currently messing with the character creation menu on whatever video game he’s loaded up. Ryan’s recently been introduced to the art of “demon-making”, in which Dylan attempts to make the most messed up looking dude he can with the game’s provided sliders and customization options. It’s a craft Dylan has refined to a formula. Ryan just watches on, giving his creative input where he sees fit.

He nudges Dylan’s controller with the knuckle of his thumb “Mouth should be wider..”

Dylan’s tongue is caught between his teeth in skeptical thought, “Hmm. I was thinking small mouth ‘cause it reads as sort of bird-esque.”

“The bigger the mouth the more children you can gobble up in the night.” Ryan states so matter-of-factly. 

Dylan concedes, “Gotta gobble up those kids…God, you’re so right. What was I thinking? This is a big mouth man.” He defeatedly skips the joy-con back up to the mouth slider, “Next guy needs a bird mouth though.”

“Maybe big mouth man and bird mouth man can kiss,” Ryan says, coaxing a laugh out of the other’s lungs. He likes the feeling of Dylan’s voice reverberating against his chest. Especially his laugh.

He can say for certain that he likes it more than the phone still relentlessly vibrating against his palm.

“So you posted something about us?” He asks, using Dylan’s shoulder as a chin rest while he unlocks his phone to scroll up through the messages. It seems a link to Dylan’s most recent Instagram post was the inciting event.

Dylan shrugs, “Yeah just like a happy one-month thing.” He tenses suddenly before backtracking, “Wait, that was cool right? Like it wasn’t a secret or anything…I didn’t just royally screw up, did I?”

Ryan can’t imagine wanting to keep Dylan a secret. Sure, they haven’t been very public with their relationship but he’s not very public about anything. Even with his aversion to polite small talk, he imagines if anyone actually asked how their relationship was going he’d turn unrecognizably giddy. Sure, we can sit down and talk about how much I love my boyfriend. Do you have three hours?

“No, course not. It’s cool.” Ryan assures, “The group’s just talking about it.”

Dylan perks up a little, the hand that holds his controller goes a little slack as he turns his head back to face Ryan, “Oh yeah? Does anyone seem particularly disappointed by it?..”

“Oh my god” Ryan rolls his eyes but does lift his phone up a tad closer to double check the response, not actually sure if it’s all positive yet.

WHO WHOSE DATING??

ummmm do i get a thank you for setting that kiss up or???

omg ! so happy for you guys !

you are so lucky i’m on the other side of the country right now. you’re so lucky.

WHO IS DATING?? HELLO???

a whole month? it’s about damn time you tell us.

Respect for keeping it on the down low for so long

OH NVM! CONGRATS GUYS !!

oh! sick!! happy for you!!!

“Look.” Ryan tilts the phone screen up for Dylan to look at, “Kaitlyn is much smarter than us. She’s not going to spend her life hung up on some dork from camp”

Dylan smiles at the implication that they are in fact just dorks hung up on another dork. “Just jokes,” Dylan strains his neck to see the messages before ultimately just stealing the phone from Ryan’s unsuspecting hold, “Kaitlyn knew way before everyone else anyway.” He mentions nonchalantly. 

Ryan’s hand chases its assailant but quickly gives up, accepting that the loss is not worth the battle. Dylan holds it so that he can see the screen from where his head is resting anyway. He furrows his brow at the new knowledge Dylan’s suddenly dropped on him, “Wait, Kaitlyn already knew?” 

“Mhmm, like a couple of hours after we kissed, maybe?” Ryan doesn’t attempt to hide the shock that crosses his face, “Aside from you she’s like my closest friend from camp. We probably text the most out of everyone. Bonded over our shared affinities I guess.”

“How’d she take the news?” He can’t lie and say he’s not the slightest bit curious.

“Well I sent a photo of me flipping her off while you were sleeping on my chest so it could’ve gone worse, but you know Kait. She’s cool.” Dylan smirks, “I’d love to feed your ego and say she was devastated but she’s actually really happy for us. Honestly. She said ‘Better me than one of the other dozens of camp randos with a crush on you’”

Ryan never understood that whole ‘hottest guy at camp’ label. He’d heard whispering from the girl’s cabins about a supposed list he may or may not have been at the top of but brushed it off as nothing more than camp gossip, “You guys were projecting.” 

Dylan just stares at him, disbelieving, “Are you serious?“ Ryan shrugs in response, “You do realize half the camp had a thing for you, right?”

Ryan scoffs, “They did n-“ Now that he thinks about it, the amount of middle-school-aged girls who paid attention during sailing instruction like their lives depended on it was suspicious, “…Wait did they really?”

Dylan rolls his eyes. A chuckle tumbles from his lips as he leans his head back just a tad to kiss Ryan’s cheek, “You’re cute”

Ryan scrunches his nose, a warmth taking residence in his cheeks in response to Dylan’s kiss. Once Dylan’s done viewing the other counselor’s congratulatory messages, bordering on cries of outrage for not telling them sooner, he slips Ryan’s phone back into his hold and picks back up the console controller since forgotten in his lap. 

Ryan scrolls back up in the text conversation and clicks the link that redirects him to his boyfriend’s social media post. Ryan notes the amount of notifications in the top corner has probably tripled from what he’s used to, all of which are coming from the impromptu anniversary announcement he’s been tagged in. 

Ryan’s presence on the internet has dwindled down to essentially zero. He’s never cared much for social media, especially not in this past year. He’s certainly nowhere near as present on it as Dylan, who runs all the school radio station’s socials and has an entire folder in his images app reserved for esoteric memes. The last post Ryan made was well over a year ago and even before then they were few and far between. Ryan will continue to keep them downloaded for the sake of lurking only.

However, he can’t say he hasn’t been a little bit tempted to post something featuring Dylan over the past few weeks, if not just to brag a little, “Honestly, I’m surprised it took you so long to post about us.” Ryan mumbles against Dylan’s shoulder as he waits for the string of photos to load.

“It was just a month. I guess it just felt kinda good that we were the only ones who knew.” Dylan shrugs and turns his attention back to the idoling demon on the character creation screen, caught in a swaying purgatory, “and I look really good in those photos so they were gonna come out one way or another.”

Ryan isn’t sure what he was expecting. Shocked isn’t the word to describe his reaction to the post, it’s so perfectly Dylan after all. It’s a string of a couple of goofy photos from their month together accompanied by a rambly caption that couldn’t have been written by anyone else. 

He’s surprised by his own reaction, surprised that he cares so much considering his general indifference towards being publicly online. Yet, here he is, biting the inside of his cheek to keep a grin contained. Maybe it’s surprising that someone could feel this way about him at all, that a month in their relationship warrants this kind of affection.

Dylan’s mumbling something about making their demon’s arms longer, but Ryan’s brain has tuned him out to a muffle from below. His attention is preoccupied. He chews on his bottom lip while his thumb slides back and forth across his phone screen, swiping over the pictures Dylan liked enough to share.

The first picture that loads in is among the first photos taken of them post-second kiss. Dylan was committed to going on a real first date despite already living in each other's pockets. Against his nature, he was a proper gentleman. As an extension of their familiar movie nights, Dylan asked if he could take Ryan to a drive-in movie theater. The photo was snapped by Ryan’s grandmother who insisted on commemorating the moment. This particular photo, however, was taken at the end of her five-minute-long photo op where she kept fussing for them to hold still and smile. Ryan’s looking past the camera, quite fed up, with his hand extended outward to get his phone back. He remembered being nervous about the time and using that as an excuse to cut the photography session short. Dylan just looks delighted to be there, his hand resting on the small of Ryan’s back, smiling like his life depends on it. There were much better photos taken that day, but Dylan liked this one for its candidness. He’s not a fan of stuffy poses and fake smiles.

That theme of candidness continues into the next picture. They both hate grocery shopping, but have found it’s a tad more bearable when they do it together, specifically on late-night ice cream runs which have become a bit of a routine. This photo finds Ryan perusing the fogged-over freezer section doors and features Dylan’s hand held out in front of the camera, already holding a pint of his tried-and-true selection, mint chocolate chip. Ryan personally doesn’t like to eat toothpaste for dessert but he’s learned to accept his boyfriend’s nearly fatal flaws. Ryan doesn’t know a photo’s being taken and looking at it now he can’t confidently say he’s ever seen this one. The domesticity of their grocery trips is not lost on him. They’ve never officially talked about moving in together, it’s way too soon for that, but where does one draw the line between living together and staying the night 6 days out of the week. If that line is drawn at making a shared shopping list then Ryan’s fucked. Even if it’s not on the list, ice cream always makes its way into the basket. Even if it’s not Ryan’s home, not his kitchen, and not his fridge; they still push the cart together. 

He swipes over to the next photo, another one that he’s never seen and has no recollection of it ever being taken. He can’t even really tell when it was taken. Even if he tried to dwindle the guessing pool down to a couple of days out of the month he wouldn’t be able to eliminate half. They’re sitting on the couch in almost exactly the same position they’re in now except it’s Ryan who’s looking ahead at whatever game or movie they have up on the TV, while Dylan stares down at his phone screen. Dylan’s still relaxing into his chest, same as he is now. Same as always. He’s holding his phone at a lower angle, capturing an unflattering picture of himself from below, nostrils on full display. Ryan’s in the background, blissfully unaware, one of his hands lightly twirling Dylan’s growing hair between its fingers. Ryan finds himself wondering how many photos there are like this, the ones Dylan took without him knowing. He doesn’t mind. If anything he’s flattered. He likes the idea of someone finding worth in photographing his normalcy. He tries to see what Dylan sees, tries to put himself in the head of the sleepy college kid who just got home from class and immediately went to fall in his boyfriend’s arms. He stares at his own face and tries to find what about it Dylan deems important enough to document repeatedly. 

When he can’t see it he swipes over to the next one. Dissimilarly to the previous two, Ryan’s fully aware of this photo being taken. He remembers the panic all too well. His smile is twisted up with remnant anxiety from a minor cooking mishap. It’s from the time they decided, with too much confidence, that they could try their hands at making their own pizza instead of ordering out for the third time that week. Dylan was getting used to the excuse that their bodies are young and expendable. They should take advantage of it now before they start nearing 30 and their bowels hurt at the mere thought of cheese. However, home cooking costs less and is typically not as greasy. Their attempt to save each others’ wallets and stomach linings was noble. Unfortunately, the charred pizza means they ended up making that delivery call regardless. The backdrop of the photo is a messy kitchen and in the foreground, Ryan’s holding the well-done pizza like it’ll turn back and bite him any second, blackened after being forgotten in the oven without a timer for close to an hour. Ryan remembers the little apartment smelled like burnt garlic for about a week and a half after the fact.

The penultimate picture might be his favorite, despite it being the most genuine of the bunch. It’s a family photo taken by Dylan's long arm to get all three of them in frame; Dylan, Ryan, and Schrodinger. It looks like something a suburban family would have framed up in their living room, right next to their gaudy home decor complete with a live, laugh, love embroidery. They truly look like first-time parents posing with their newborn. Dylan’s holding the orange boy, tummy up, supported by his handless arm. Schrodinger is reluctantly letting the photo happen at all, only a few moments away from losing his allotted patience for being held like a baby. Dylan’s kissing Ryan’s temple, lips caught halfway between a pucker and a smile. Ryan’s looking into the camera, actually smiling, and doesn’t seem to be hating it entirely for once. Shortly after this picture was taken Schrodinger lost his remaining shed of patience and twisted his way out of Dylan’s grasp, scratching up his arm in the battle. Schrodinger slept curled up with Ryan as opposed to Dylan for the next two nights and Dylan swore he was icing him out.

The post is bookended by one last picture of Ryan sitting across from Dylan in a coffee shop. It’s a red brick building with warm lighting located just across the street from the radio station. It’s walking distance from both campus and the apartment so they always meet up when they can while Dylan’s between classes or before his radio slot starts. In the photo they’re at a cozy little two-top table and although Ryan’s covering his expression with the end of his jacket sleeve, anyone would be able to tell he’s laughing. He’s not looking at the camera but his attention is pulled past it, looking at Dylan who sits on the other side of two coffees that probably grew cold as they spoke. He doesn’t wear the look of someone bothered by a photo, more so the look of someone too head over heels to mind. Absolutely enamored. Like he’d put up with all the clicking cameras in the world if it meant the person behind them was happy. 

He sees himself all the time. Ryan would like to think he knows what he looks like. There’s just something he doesn’t recognize in these pictures. There’s someone he doesn’t recognize. He wears the same face as the guy who stares back at him in the mirror but it’s not him. It can’t be. This guy is softer. This guy writes poetry without crumpling the page. He hums to himself the songs he’s heard via radio broadcast. He leaves the last slice in the pizza box for someone else to grab. He walks across campus every afternoon to fall for some goofball in a coffee shop over and over and over again. 

Maybe it’s still him, just a different him. That’s Ryan Ryan, he thinks.

Dylan replies to the group chat on their behalf, calming the crowd and thanking them for all their congratulatory hooplah. He gives Emma credit where credit is due but reminds her that regardless of the truth or dare kiss he was making moves on Ryan with impressive speed. It was a matter of time. She remains unconvinced. 

Ryan just continues to swipe back and forth through the photos, ignoring intruding notifications in favor of staring between himself and Dylan and wondering what luck could have possibly got him here. Where did it come from and when is it going to want something in return? How did he go from building up the guts to tell Dylan they could share his headphones on the drive back to sharing a little life, or at least sharing his personal space on the couch.

“Why did you take so long, by the way?” Ryan asks as Dylan settles into making another, more bird-like demon, tossing up a question that’s been on his mind as of late.

“What?” Dylan lowers the controller and tilts his head back up toward Ryan. It’s clear that he heard him but needs a bit of clarification, confused by the question, “To tell everyone about us? I told you-“

“No. Not that.” Ryan sets his phone down and fusses with his picked-apart cuticles out of nervous habit, “I mean, why did you take so long to make a move. To make us a thing.”

Dylan is shocked, offended almost. Once again, the demons are abandoned by Dylan who tosses the controller onto the coffee table and maneuvers himself up into a sitting position on the couch beside Ryan so he can look at him while they talk, “I’m sorry, Are we forgetting the multiple times at camp I asked for your number like it was my full-time job? Was all my scooting closer around the fire pit for nothing?” He continues to recount moments from camp. It does its job of making Ryan feel a little silly for asking in the first place, “All the times I complimented your rope knots and your big strong sailing arms or how you looked like a total dreamboat tying the dinghies up? Those were strictly platonic buddy-pal moments?”

At this proximity, it’d be a waste not to take hold of Dylan's hand gesticulating wildly between them as he speaks to thumb over his knuckles, “First of all, we’re not going to pretend like you’re a charming flirt. I distinctly remember you dropping both yours and Nick’s dinners on the ground of the main hall because I said I liked your shirt.”

“Okay, but you said it in a really deep sultry way, like-” Dylan narrows his eyes and tosses his head back to get his hair out of his face before pulling his best Ryan impression, “’Hey Dyl, like your shirt’. You had never called me Dyl before! You can’t just bust out a new nickname in a climate like that!”

“Climate like what?” Ryan laughs between the words.

“Teenage summer camp. Rifled with hormones and insecurity.” Dylan shakes his head like he’s recalling something awful, feigning devastation, “I never stood a chance.”

“Not the point.” Ryan offers no sympathy for his trying time, “I mean.. after camp. When we started talking again. Considering you were 2 seconds away from asking for my hand in marriage before everything happened, why’d you act so weird at first?”

Dylan takes a deep breath in and looks up to the ceiling to ponder. His mouth twists up in thought as he tosses an answer around in his brain, hoping to get it back as some complete thought, “Uh, maybe I’m just weird?” He offers up but it’s clear Ryan’s waiting for something a little more elaborate. He throws his shoulders up in a shrug, “I guess I was waiting for your cue? I didn’t want to initiate anything you weren’t comfortable with. I didn’t know what dumb flirting I had permission to try if that makes sense.”

The corner of Ryan’s mouth twitches up, “Hm, so you completely chickened out?”

Dylan gasps, “I would never. I’ve never not been 100% sure of myself at any given moment.” He can barely get through that sentence with a straight face, let alone convince Ryan it’s true. He takes a moment to think in between words, drags his eyes over Ryan’s face and hopes to find a satisfying answer, “It would’ve been kind of shitty of me to just assume after everything we went through that you’d still be cool with starting something up between us. Whether we thought it had already started or not, things changed. We both changed a lot. The only thing I knew for sure is that I missed you and wanted you around in some capacity. As whatever you needed me to be.”

Ryan chews at the inside of his cheek to limit his reaction to the sentimentality but the little squeeze he gives Dylan’s hand gives him away, “I missed how annoyingly persistent you were.” 

“I was not annoying about it..” Dylan lacks confidence in that insistence. 

“Matter of opinion I guess.” Ryan shrugs, “When it’s 6 am and the morning announcements start to sound like desperate ploys to get my attention it’s a little bit annoying.” 

Dylan bites his tongue to save himself from the teasing he knows Ryan has several years of built-up. He switches gears back to finish his thought from before, “I was gonna wait a couple more months before I actually started purposefully flirting again. I was thinking June or July. I thought I could ride it out until you started feeling better or maybe you’d just ditch me before then…” His throat strains as he swallows, “I just didn’t want you to like..only be with me because we’re both sad and lonely. I also didn't want you to think I was taking advantage of you or your mental state.”

Ryan hadn’t even considered that to be a possibility, if he had there wouldn’t have been much basis to it, “So what made you change your mind?” He asks, adjusting his position on the couch to tilt his body to look at Dylan head-on.

“Uh..” Dylan drops their eye contact. Ryan attempts to pick it up by dipping his head a little to follow Dylan’s gaze but unfortunately, it’s lost to him and peters anxiously back and forth between their connected hands and the floor at their feet. Dylan shuts his eyes and whispers, as if hyping himself up under his breath, which only confuses Ryan more, “You touched my nub”  

Ryan blinks at him. He can’t pretend he doesn’t immediately assume it’s a euphemism for something.

“My arm…where my hand used to be.” Dylan clarifies quickly once he realizes Ryan’s silence may be born out of concern rather than contemplative thought. Puzzlement doesn’t leave Ryan’s face as he processes it once again with the new context, “Right before we kissed you touched my nub, right where my hand should be, and you didn’t even flinch. You just held it like you were holding my hand and it was the most normal I'd felt in so long.”

Ryan thinks back to that moment on the couch, tries to recall the events in the lead-up to their kiss but all he remembers feeling is this panicked need to hold on, to keep Dylan from psyching himself out and running from something they both wanted. He remembers how Dylan initially recoiled from the touch and Ryan feels sort of dumb for not noticing in the moment how that might’ve been a first for him. It was never anything but a hand to him, even if the hand wasn’t technically there.

“That was just…I thought there’s no way I’m not kissing this dude immediately. The idea that someone would view it as gross or undesirable wasn’t even something I had fully processed as an insecurity I had. Yet here you go touching it and for some reason, in that moment, it was the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done.” A delighted chuckle tumbles from Dylan’s lips, “It still is. You still do. You always do. You hold it when we’re laying together. You help me wrap it in the morning and unwrap it at night.“

Ryan takes both of Dylan’s arms into his palms and it almost makes Dylan visibly swoon. Of course he’s not going to sit here and tell Dylan that he’s being dramatic, especially since he’ll never really feel what this means to him, but he thinks the praise is unwarranted, “I don’t see why I wouldn’t. It’s different, yeah, but it’s.. It’s a part of you. I like you. All of you.” 

Okay, maybe he’s playing up the corniness just a little bit. They’ve earned it.

Dylan groans, pulling his arms from Ryan’s grasp to hide his reddening face behind, “Oh my god stop. Shut up.” He spreads his fingers out to peek through his eyes at Ryan who still just sits there with his heart eyes, waiting for Dylan to come back, “No, wait, actually I need you to kiss me right now and never shut up ever because I really love the attention.”.

Ryan does exactly as he’s told, pulling Dylan’s arms back down and meeting him halfway. He wants this feeling forever. He’s grown too comfortable to go without it.

Chapter Text

The spring semester comes and goes in the blink of an eye. The months have been bleeding together in Ryan’s mind for a little while now. Something about May feels a lot like April. Something about April feels a lot like March. So on and so forth. Sometimes his ability to keep track of weeks relies solely on educated guesses and peeking over his boyfriend's shoulder to get a glimpse of what date he’s penciling in at the top of his homework. He could just grab his phone and check the lock screen, but that’d be such a waste of a perfectly good opportunity to lean down and bury his face into the collar of Dylan’s shirt. 

As the days get warmer and stress radiates off the nearby college campus, Ryan starts to realize that this is the first Summer in quite some time that he doesn’t have any concrete plans. The other counselors seem to be equally as lost in their summer endeavors, throwing out comments like ‘well since I have the free time this year…’ and ‘we should make the most of it since you never know when you’ll be attacked by werewolves and accused of murder again’.

Dylan has rounded out the semester with less psychic damage than he presumed he would, doing his best where he could and promptly forgetting about the bits he half-assed since they didn’t affect his overall GPA too much.

With school as a priority of the past and ample free time on his hands, Dylan’s made the decision to start booking some DJing gigs outside of his usual radio spots. He still loves doing the radio show, but as a purveyor of sweet sweet tunes, he’s gotta maximize his commodity. Plus, college radio was never going to pay the late-night food delivery fees. 

He throws his lure out there and gets a few bites. Some local clubs, a grad party, even getting a couple of weddings to bite as the warm summer nights pick up. People are constantly looking for cheap labor from less than professional college kids. Ryan promises to design him a flyer for his newfound business endeavors. It’s not like he has anything else going on this Summer anyway.

It’s mid-May, one of the first weekends Dylan’s been free from the mountains of school work he’s had piled on top of him since late January, and he’s been invited out by some coworkers. Dylan’s admitted he’s never had the guts to get a fake ID but most bars in the college town hardly care anyway. Some of the radio station’s Juniors and Seniors have offered to spoil him with drinks on them for a semester well done.

Ryan leans against the hardwood surface of the connecting archway between their bedroom and bathroom, watching Dylan as he gets ready for the evening. It feels a little silly, maybe a bit invasive, but it’s not like there's much privacy between them anyway. He did spend the entirety of the day before laying in the messy sunlit bed they didn’t bother to make from the night before (not like they ever do) with Dylan flopped right beside him. Their lines of privacy have been blurred for a while.

Ryan watches him struggle to wrestle t-shirt after t-shirt over his spindly arms and head, only to decide a few minutes later that he wants to wear a short sleeve button-up instead. He watches him slip on his already double-knotted sneakers over a pair of striped socks, bunched around his ankles. Dylan stops to look at them, adjusting the cuff of his jeans to his liking, before clicking his shoes together like an endearing little ritual. He looks up to Ryan afterwards, who tenses where he stands in the doorway, as if he’s just been caught tracing up the lines of Dylan’s limbs, illuminated from behind by the evening glow that Schrodinger currently bathes in.

Dylan smiles, toothy and fond, before patting the space beside him on the bed for Ryan to come sit down. Ryan declines, scrunching his nose up a bit and shifting his weight to the other foot. 

He pouts at the rejection, “The view’s way better over here.” 

He’s a dork. He’s a dork that Ryan is embarrassingly into, “I don’t think you’ve seen the one from over here yet.” 

Dylan makes a show of standing up, letting out a dramatic grunt as he raises himself from the bed, the joints in his knees popping on the way up. He moves over to Ryan, who twists his body to make space for Dylan in the threshold, and plants himself beside him. His eyes start from one side of their bedroom, following the wall around till he’s turned his head about 180 degrees, and his gaze lands on Ryan beside him. Ryan admires the little hairs he missed while shaving that poke out from under his chin. Dylan’s contemplative purse turns into a soft grin, “Oh” Dylan whispers, feigning shock, “There’s that view..”

Ryan feels the conflicting desire to playfully shove him away paired with the want to reach out and work his fingers through Dylan’s messy brown hair, which he’s recently trimmed against Ryan’s hopes and wishes, and pull him into a kiss.

He goes for the first option. Dylan pretends to stumble back, throws his hand over his heart like he’s been wounded but wears a smirk the whole time. He smoothly catches himself on the bathroom counter, pivots so he’s facing the mirror and continues getting ready. Dylan doesn’t really have a ‘getting ready’ routine, let alone a ‘getting ready to go out’ routine. Most of the time doing his hair just consists of wetting it a little and hoping it dries looking better than it did when he woke up. The other portion of the time he throws on a goofy thrifted baseball cap and gets on with his day.

“You sure you don’t wanna come with?” He asks, triple-checking despite Ryan already declining the invite several times today. Ryan tries to imagine himself spending his night amongst the group of radio personalities. He can’t even remember the last time outside of camp activities he hung out in a group with more than one person. He feels like his social battery would drain pretty quickly. One Dylan is enough, let alone four or five.

Ryan chews at the inside of his cheek, “As much as I’d love to stand around awkwardly while people silently judge me for my lack of ability to small talk” 

“They’re not a small talky group. They’re probably not gonna let you get a word in.” Dylan has a moment of realization that this may not be the most comforting thing for Ryan to hear, “They’d love you though. You’d love them.”

He looks for and catches Ryan’s eyes in the reflection of the mirror. For some reason, it’s more intimidating than if he had just flipped around to face him, “You’re somewhat of an office myth. I talk about you so much, but I've never brought you around to meet anyone. They’re starting to think I've made you up.”

Ryan shrugs, ducking his head bashfully “Can’t let them know I’ve been a figment of your imagination this whole time. Where’s the fun in that?”

Dylan’s chuckle falls into a hum, he lingers in front of the sink for a moment longer to fix his collar and turns to look directly at Ryan. He idols like he’s about to ask him a question, mouth falling open only for him to quickly snap it shut like there’s a threat of something getting out. As if it’s on the tip of his tongue but he’s still figuring out how to say it. 

“Are you doing anything this summer?” Dylan finally lets slip. Ryan must not do a good job at hiding the thought that crosses behind his eyes, one of concern at the shift in conversation. Dylan goes on and attempts to clarify, “Like, any big plans or little plans or…just plans.”

Ryan clears the bad taste from his throat and pretends to think, not having to expend much thought for the answer at all, “Uh no, Probably not. You’d know if I had something going on.”

Dylan processes that, something within him seeming unconvinced. Ryan’s not sure why he thought he would be for a second, “Cool, cool, Just checking.” 

He pushes himself from the bathroom counter and migrates to the living room. Ryan follows him with his eyes but only physically follows him to an extent, moving from the bathroom doorway to the bedroom doorway, as if the threshold is somehow protecting him from the conversation at hand taking a turn down the path he’s dreading. Like how a kid who knows they’ve done something wrong will lurk just outside their parents' peripheral, at the ready, holding a lie between their teeth. 

Ryan watches silently as Dylan looks for his car keys amongst their countertop clutter, humming something under his breath as he searches. He lifts the newest addition of junk mail, coupons and advertisements they’ll forget to sift through and eventually just throw away, and finds his bulky keychain under it all, “Aha!” He turns back towards Ryan who has gone, not uncharacteristically quiet but quiet nevertheless, “What about the Fall semester?”

“What about it?” Ryan can’t help but go on defense. He knows this interrogation like an old friend. An old friend found face down in a pool. An old friend missing post-incident but here they are again. It’s the crackle of the leaves on the forest floor behind him just before something jumps out, “Why are you asking?”

Dylan shrugs, pretending that the line of questioning was a whimful decision, random and not thoughtfully stewed over, “I don’t know. I was just curious.” It’s a lie. Despite what he leads on, Dylan thinks too much for his own good. 

It’s a sensitive topic. Ryan’s sensitive to the topic. Dylan’s sensitive to Ryan. Usually, that thought comforts Ryan, but right now it sort of just pisses him off, Dylan attempts to reach out, “Is that okay?”

He doesn’t answer. Ryan nervously tries to pop his knuckles but just like him, they don’t make a sound. There’s no release. Tension still shakes through every bone in his hand, wrist to fingertip. Dylan continues, “I can always talk to someone at the radio station and see if they can get you a gig. Just to try out for a little bit? Could do it for the summer or until-”

Ryan cracks, cutting him off, “What are you doing?”

Dylan falters, hopeful smile falling along with his hand which droops to his side in defeat, keys rattling as it does, “I’m not doing anything?” He says it like a question, like he’s not sure if the insinuation is for him or someone else in the room, unseen to him, “I’m just asking you questions.”

“You’re prying, man.” Ryan accuses, breaking eye contact with Dylan and angling his body back toward the bedroom. It’s only been a few minutes but with the setting sun losing its light through the blinds, the interior room looks darker than before.

“I’m not prying? Can I not talk to my boyfriend?” Dylan almost meets Ryan where he is but takes a step back to regroup himself, not wanting to make the situation any worse. He sighs, “I just want to know where you’re at right now. I want you to be happy and I don’t know how happy you’ll be stuck in here with Schrodinger all summer. Especially if you’re not doing anything.”

“I draw,” Ryan mumbles, knowing full well that his sketchbooks have collected a few weeks’ worth of dust.

“And when was the last time you did anything with the drawings?”

That little comment hurts more than Ryan would’ve expected it too. He doesn’t usually sit down to draw with the intention of doing anything with it, but when he does it’s because he wants to give something to Dylan. A gift for putting up with him. Thank you for sticking around. 

He glances up, looks past Dylan’s form and sees a couple of his drawings now, pinned to the fridge by the letter magnets they bought to spell out swear words. Dylan put them there because he valued them. Even if he’s not drawing for a purpose that doesn’t make it worthless.

“Are you still thinking about animation school?”

“God, I don’t know!” The defensive tone he takes catches Dylan by surprise, “You sound like-like- a fucking guidance counselor and I don’t need that right now, Dylan. It’s suffocating.”

His face twists through phases, first surprise as he processes what Ryan’s yelled at him, followed closely by a brow-furrowing guilt which lands on something akin to sadness, “Wow. Okay.”

“Can we please drop it?” It’s more pleading than frustrated.

Dylan shakes his head in disbelief, a dry but wounded chuckle tumbling from his lips as shoves his keys into his pocket and reaches for his enamel pin-covered rucksack. He starts to head for the door, but decides against leaving the conversation unfinished, “No, actually. I don’t wanna drop it.” He turns back around and meets Ryan, toe to toe, closing the intentional gap of distance left between them, “This isn’t about whether you’re doing something over the summer or not. This isn’t an intervention. I just worry about you. I want you to be okay.”

Ryan’s not expecting the hand that tries to hold his own, causing him to wince away from its touch. Dylan’s jaw clenches in front of him. He makes a sort of shocked hum and leans back against the wall opposite Ryan.

“I’m not you, Dylan.” Ryan starts before he can stop himself, “I can’t just fake it till I make it. I’m not okay. I’m glad your life is basically back to normal, but I’m still at the bottom of Hackett’s Quarry and you can’t just expect me to claw my way up to meet you. I can’t just forget what I did.”

He knows it’s selfish the second it leaves his mouth. He understands that it’s presumptuous and counterintuitive to anything Dylan has ever confided in him since that night. He has seen Dylan’s struggles closer and more personally than anyone else yet here he is completely demeaning them. He doesn’t blame Dylan for how his face contorts in response, beyond angry, hurt. It strikes him so deeply he almost loses his balance. It’d be distasteful to reach out and steady him now. There’s a chain link fence between them that he has personally put up and chose to electrify all by himself.

Through the gaps, he can see that Dylan’s eyes have welled up, “I-..I’m sorry, Ryan. I didn’t know. I didn’t think..” His voice comes out bitter and shaky. He swallows the lump in his throat and continues, “I shouldn’t have suggested that fucking bonfire. I shouldn’t have gone against you and Mr. H because you were right. I just wanted so badly to do something cool and memorable and now we’re stuck with all this shit. I’m sorry that you have to deal with all of this because of me.”.

That’s not. That’s not true at all. Not once has Ryan even remotely considered that. That’s not what he meant. He tries to interrupt. “I didn’t mean-“ 

His quiet objection is drowned out as Dylan continues, ”But this goes beyond Hackett’s quarry. This goes beyond our relationship. You refuse to let people care about you.” He wipes his eyes with the palm of his hand but it does nothing to combat the coming tears. His hand comes down into a pointed finger, inches from Ryan’s chest. He could swear it’s burning a hole through him as Dylan speaks, “You refuse to accept help when you need it and then you punish people for even trying. That’s not fucking fair. Not to me, not to your family, not to our friends, and certainly not to yourself.”

“Dyl…babe I’m so…” He tries to say something comforting but it’s just coming out as broken noises from the back of his throat, words he can’t get out. Maybe there’s cowardice in the way. 

“You know I'm not okay. You know that..” Dylan mumbles between sniffles. His red-rimmed eyes, wet with tears, dart towards the door. Ryan would do anything to wipe the pained look off his partner’s face but unfortunately, something has detached his rational brain from the rest of his body. All he does is stand there and blubber. Dylan adjusts his bag’s strap on his shoulder and attempts to speak normally, “I wish you would stop seeing other people’s love as a personal attack. All it is is love.” 

Just as Ryan’s about to build up the guts to reach out and comfort him, Dylan slips away, heading to the door. He fumbles with getting his keys from his pockets for a moment before stopping to look back at Ryan, “I do want to keep talking about this. Later. When we’re both not so…” He stops and makes a shaky gesture with his hand, “Overwhelmed, I guess.”

When Dylan leaves, the apartment door seems to slam behind him. It didn’t close especially hard, but Ryan swears the earth shakes underneath him. Maybe it’s just the collapse of his heart and lungs in his chest. Schrodinger skitters across the floor to hide under the bed that Dylan and himself shared the night before. The one they’ve shared almost every night since their second kiss. Ryan worries at his nails, wondering if he’s lost that privilege. 

He listens to the tedious start-up of Dylan's shitty sedan, sputtering on its last leg of life. He listens as it backs out of the usual space below their building and turns onto the street. He listens until it’s nothing but a dulled hum in the back of his mind, too far to distinguish the sound of a car from the rest of the surrounding noise. 

He thinks about love and entanglement, thinks about a parallel universe where he decided socializing could be for him for a change. A universe where he took Dylan up on that offer to go out and clung to his side all night, just a tad too delighted to be his arm candy. Dylan would keep a hand on his arm or hip while introducing him, rubbing little circles where he could to ease the anxieties of interaction. They’d converse and laugh and get a little bit tipsy. They’d exchange sweet little glances over the brims of their drink glasses and they’d save this fight for another day.

But it’d still happen, wouldn’t it. They’d still reach this point. Eventually. Because Dylan loves him and Ryan doesn’t know what to do with all of it.

-

Last winter, when Ryan didn’t know what to do with all the weirdness he felt, he would find himself sitting alone in the dark of his bedroom quite a bit. The clocks fell back and the dreary sunlight that seeped into his room would dissipate quicker than usual. The creeping darkness was disconcerting at first, mostly because he’d get lost in thought, surrounded by ample light, only to find himself in pitch black moments later. He started to find comfort in it, the nighttime unfolding around him like a daily visitor, brash in its approach. In a weird way, he liked letting it cover him up until he couldn’t distinguish the hand held in front of his face from the rest of the darkness surrounding him. He liked coinciding with it while knowing it had no real power over him, just a lamp flick away from disappearing under his dresser. 

People put themselves in shark cages to feel bigger than their fear. 

Ryan may not be able to see his surroundings through this darkness but he knows he’s in Dylan’s apartment. He hasn’t left since their argument. He knows that the couch he’s sitting on feels nothing like the sheets of his childhood bedroom, but a trick of the eye could convince him that the darks are one and the same. He could probably even be swayed to believe that these four walls belong to a Hackett’s Quarry cabin and if he reaches out just a bit he can touch the wooden slats of Nick or Jacob’s bunk.

If he was starting to lose confidence, Schrodinger’s still slinking around the living room, mewling here and there. It reminds him of where he is and provides some ambiance outside of the tinny ringing that fills his ears. He feels sick but the bile never threatens to force its way up. It just sits there in his stomach. If he spilled his guts now he’d look down into the toilet bowl to find them laced with guilt. Maybe he’d find the words he should’ve said to Dylan before he left in there too. Maybe they just got tangled up somewhere inside.

Dylan doesn’t stay out very late. Ryan hears the telltale rattling of keys fumbling outside the front door only about 2 hours after Dylan left. It’s not like Dylan has a track record of going out and coming back sloshed in the early hours of the morning, but part of Ryan expected not to see him for a bit. He’s only ever come home really drunk once. That was long before they started dating, back at the very beginning of the semester when Ryan could barely guide his drunken ass into bed without getting flustered. 

By the sound of it, alcohol wasn’t entirely absent tonight. Dylan’s curses are muffled through the door but Ryan suspects he’s dropped his keys a couple of times now in an attempt to get them in the lock. Ryan’s about to get up and open it for him but freezes when the door clicks and a ray of hallway light breaks through the darkness. Ryan tenses at the edge of the couch as if it’s a flashlight trying to catch him in its glow. 

Dylan shuffles in, immediately going to kick off his shoes in the entryway. He doesn’t seem bothered about hanging his bag from the door or putting it in a chair like he usually does, just sort of tossing it on the ground where he stands. The front door shuts behind him, once again taking all the room’s light with it. 

He can’t see Dylan anymore but he can hear him let out a deep, frustrated sigh. Ryan waits until the shuffling stops to say anything, until Dylan goes so silent he may as well be alone again. Ryan calls out to him from the other side of the room.

“Dylan?”

“FUCK!” Dylan yells, not expecting the voice to suddenly ring out from the darkness. To be fair to Dylan, a dark house is usually an empty one. He had no reason to believe Ryan would be sitting in the shadows.

“Shit. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to-”

“No it’s fine.” Ryan listens while Dylan tries to steady his breathing, taking in air like he’s been held underwater and has just come up gasping. Dylan pats his hand across the wall for a moment, searching for any kind of light switch that’ll provide him some light relief, “I just- You reminded me…I still get caught off guard.”

Ryan knows that. Dylan’s told him before about how he gets when it’s dark and he’s alone. The feeling that something is always watching from over his shoulder, looming and vengeful. Ryan knows that Dylan still flinches when someone unexpectedly calls out to him. He knows that every time Dylan answers the phone he’s half expecting the raspy voice of an old woman to tauntingly greet him  

Dylan never saw the Hag of Hackett’s Quarry. He never saw the burned remains of a camp or a ghostly form waving through tree trunks. All his memory has to haunt him with is her voice, crackly like audio through an old radio, and haunt it does.

“I’m sorry.” Ryan mumbles, quieter than his original greeting. Sorry for more than just scaring you.

At some point, Dylan has followed his surroundings to maneuver his way closer to Ryan in the dark. He reaches out, finding the switch of an end table lamp and flicking it on to reveal the state of them both.

It’s obvious in this light that they’ve separately been sulking for a while, both in varying phases of ‘recently balled my eyes out’. Ryan can’t imagine it made for a very fun night out for Dylan. He’d feel more guilty for that if he wasn’t so concerned with how Dylan waivers slightly as he stands. He’s definitely drunk and it’s definitely Ryan’s fault. 

Dylan winces at the light at first but once his vision adjusts his brow softens, expression falling into something longing, “You didn’t leave..” 

Ryan shakes his head. Of course he didn’t. 

Truthfully, it crossed his mind. In the past, maybe leaving would’ve been the easiest thing to do. A means to escape the very good thing he never felt deserving of in the first place. He could’ve left but he wouldn’t have made it out of the apartment stairwell before turning back and planting himself where he sits now.

Dylan hesitantly approaches the edge of the couch and sits down about a cushion’s length away from Ryan. He looks into this lap, knee bobbing restlessly as they decide who’s going to break the silence. Ryan speaks up before Dylan’s drunken brain can jumble words together to form a proper sentence, “I’m trying…I’m trying so hard all the time.” He hates the way the admission feels, like an excuse, “I was being a dick. I’ve been being a dick and you’re still with me despite it. The last thing I want to do is push you away. You’re the only person who’s consistently patient with me and I don’t show you how grateful I am enough.”

Dylan looks up at him, the brims of his eyes glistening as they catch the lamplight. Ryan continues his apology, “I’m sorry. You were only asking me questions because you care. I know I'm putting shit off. It’s easier to forget about it. I think sometimes I convince myself that time isn’t really moving. Like, I know it is, right? I know that weeks and months are going by and I know that I keep passing deadlines I told myself I was gonna meet. But it all just feels so contained. If I don’t have anything going on then time can’t mean anything to me. It can’t be affecting me. As long as I don’t have to consider it then I don’t have to think about how much of it I lost.”

Ryan realizes he’s crying too. It’s the first time he’s said anything like it out loud, maybe even the first time he’s acknowledged it to himself, “and god, Dylan, I don’t blame you for anything that happened at camp. I never have. None of us knew. We couldn't've. I’m sorry that I let you leave here thinking I do.”

Dylan lets out the heavy sigh he’s been holding, but it comes out as a choked sob. He removes the space between them on the couch and falls into Ryan’s arms, folds into him really. His shoulders cave forward and he buries his face into Ryan’s sternum, tears soaking into the fabric of his thin shirt which belongs to Dylan anyway. Ryan’s hand finds where Dylan’s hair is its longest and gently tangles his fingers into the dark brown tresses. They sit like that for a while, Dylan collecting himself in Ryan’s arms. Ryan holding him still so he has an easier time putting himself back together.

Dylan sits up so he can look at Ryan while he speaks to him. His pupils are dilated from having a couple more drinks than ideal for such a serious conversation. The dim desk lamp lighting makes the dark circles under his eyes, gifted to him by end-of-semester stresses, look more prominent. He’s still shaking a bit, the restlessness of his limbs getting the better of him, “I get so scared that if you start pushing me away and I don’t try to pull you back in somehow, then I'm never gonna find you again.” 

Ryan lets his head fall forward onto Dylan’s shoulder and urges him to keep talking through gentle strokes at the base of his neck, “One of my friends at the station asked about you earlier today. We were talking about our partners and they wanted to know more about you so they asked what your plans were..” Dylan tosses his hands up, defeatedly, “and I didn’t know what to say. I felt like the shittiest, douchiest partner in the whole world cause I didn’t know how to answer the question ‘what does your boyfriend want?’ I should know what your plans are! We practically live together! I should know what you want out of life, whether that be in a year from now or ten years from now, and I should be helping you get there.”

Ryan can’t help the chuckle that builds up in his throat. He lifts his head to look Dylan in the eyes, moves his hands so they both cup his face, and lets himself laugh it all off. Dylan’s obviously not feeling the same mysterious joy Ryan is, eyes filled with some combination of curiosity and concern, “What? What did I say?”

Ryan shakes his head, “How are you supposed to know what I want in 10 years from now when I don’t even know what I want tomorrow?”

Dylan pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and thinks on it for a moment, “Well..” He starts, placing his own hand and nub on the sides of Ryan’s torso, “What do you want right now, Ry Guy?”

What does he want? The pad of one of Ryan’s thumbs bounces back and forth between two freckles on the side of Dylan’s face as he runs the question through his mind a few times.

Well, he wants to crawl into bed and sleep away all the lousy feelings. He wants to go a full day where the name Hackett’s Quarry doesn’t cross his mind once. He wants all the bad memories replaced by the image of brown eyes fluttering shut and the feeling of Dylan’s breath ghosting over his lips. He wants to learn a new kind of kindness, one that he can share with himself. He wants to remember what a younger, angstier, yet more headstrong version of himself wanted and he wants to give that to him.

He’ll start there. He owes that kid something to make up for what’s coming, “I’ve always wanted to post my art online. Like, make an account for it so I can share the stuff I'm proud of. I think it’d be cool to stream myself drawing too? That’s the kind of stuff I like watching and I've always thought it’d be fun to try.” 

Dylan smiles ear to ear, like he’s pleased to learn something new about Ryan after so much time spent together, “That sounds like the start of a plan to me.”

-

Dylan has a desk in his room that he never uses. He bought it thinking it’d somehow magically fix his posture problem. That if he stopped doing homework hunched over in his bed, using his lap to stabilize his journals, then his spine would straighten out despite years of abuse. He gave that theory a good experimental run but unfortunately, he’s too far gone. He insists his shoulders just naturally sit like this now. Fixing it would be going against human evolution. Who is he to deny science and the will of the universe?

So the desk doesn’t get used much. Sometimes it serves as a collection spot for junk or clothes that are technically dirty but not dirty enough to toss in the hamper. The flannel Ryan wore a couple of nights ago when he finally took Dylan up on that offer to meet his work friends. Dylan’s favorite band shirt, worn thin and ripped at its seams. A couple of expensive textbooks that Dylan has seldom gotten use out of and may never open again. It’s a bit of an eye-sore, but to be expected from a couple of guys in their early adulthood living on their own for the first time. 

However, today there’s a noticeable change. The desk in the corner of the room has been cleared off, standing out as pristine next to its surroundings. Ryan does a double-take, only noticing on the second viewing that the desk is occupied by Ryan’s perfectly centered laptop, adjacent to a flexible desk lamp. Upon closer inspection, sitting atop the closed, sticker-covered laptop is the smooth black surface of a seemingly brand-new drawing tablet. A sticky note is pinned to the top of it, which reads in Dylan’s notable handwriting, ‘A start.. :)’

Ryan approaches it slowly, knowing logistically what a gift looks like, but having a difficult time processing that it could be for him. He picks the tablet up gently and runs his hand along the sleek edges. He takes the stylus between his fingers and rolls around, getting used to the feel of it, and how it naturally falls into his grasp.

Dylan’s voice rings out from behind him, “One of my coworkers bought it on a whim cause she wanted to try out digital art and sort of ended up hating it. She mentioned barely using it and I offered to take it off her hands. Don’t worry, I haggled. It wasn’t as expensive as it looks, I promise. It’s still an upgrade from what you have now so...”

Ryan turns around to face him, still clutching the tablet close to him. His mouth falls open and forms around words that aren’t there.

Dylan simply smiles at Ryan’s wordlessness, “If you need help setting up your stream, I can do that too.”

Ryan can’t lie to himself and say that he’s done with the self-sabotage. It’s a crux. It’s a warm bed, recently abandoned but still unmade and beckoning him back. He’ll continue to crawl in and wrap himself in the same blankets that suffocate him from time to time. But he’d like to think that waking is getting easier or that it will with time. It’s easy with Dylan.

Ryan shakes his head, “Dylan, you know you didn’t have to do this.” 

“I wanted to.” He shrugs, bouncing on his heels where he stands, all too delighted, “And hey, if the streaming doesn’t work out you can always just work in a cubicle for the rest of your life or something. Society always needs people who are willing to work themselves to death in a little gray box.”

Ryan sets the tablet down where Dylan had originally left it and bites a grin away, not wanting to fuel Dylan’s ego that makes him think he’s much funnier than he actually is, “My number one supporter”

“In everything and anything.” Dylan sneaks up on Ryan as he’s angled away and wraps his arms around him from behind. His chin nestles against Ryan’s shoulder, “Do you need a framed photo of me and Schrodinger for the office? Maybe I’ll get you one of those ’don’t talk to me till I’ve had my coffee’ mugs.”

Dylan rocks on his feet, swaying Ryan in front of him. Ryan’s hands come up to rest on Dylan’s arms as he takes another moment to look over the desk setup, “This is really cool, Dylan. Thank you.”

Dylan drops his voice an octave, attempting a nonchalant tone, “Well y’know..It’s no big deal..super chill” It only takes Ryan turning his head to the side to kiss his cheek for him to break the cool guy character. He practically melts around Ryan and it reminds him of who originally had the big fat crush on who, “I’m here…every step of the way”

Dylan returns the affection, kissing Ryan’s temple before urging him to sit down so they can mess around with Ryan’s new tech. They sit together for hours, fiddling with the features and running some tests. Dylan vows to be his first follower and Ryan promises to draw him on stream in return. 

Later that week, Ryan snaps a photo of Dylan and Schrödinger while they’re napping together on the couch and buys a picture frame to put it in. His desk was looking a little empty.

Chapter Text

Everything was going really well. It was supposed to keep going well.

Dylan helped him with his stream set up, doing the whole techy side of things that Ryan wouldn’t even know where to begin with, while Ryan got familiar with his new tablet. Toward the end of May, he spent a lot of his free time, which to be fair is the only kind of time he really has, getting back into doodling. Crude drawings of Dylan became his favorite pastime.

He was excited. He was excited to create, not just art, but also this next phase of his life. A phase where he moves on and forgets. One where he knows how to leave the past behind him and refuses to let it take significant hold.

Ryan made a list of all the things he wanted to do, one that he could slowly work through in his own time. It started out in the notes app of his phone before moving its way to sticky notes stuck to the side of his laptop. Eventually, it got written out on a piece of notebook paper, a torn leftover from one of Dylan’s school journals, pinned to the fridge by a souvenir magnet. The thought process was that the more he saw it, all the things he set out to accomplish, the more he'd actually get done. If the tasks were always there, fluttering in the corner of his eye, he’d take a bit more pleasure in crossing them off.

Everything was going fine until it wasn’t.

Until one day he started going about his day, looked up at the calendar, and noted that it was June. Logistically, nothing had changed from May to June besides the made-up labels the ancient Romans gave the 30ish-day blocks of time. Nothing profound happened overnight. The sky is blue, the air is warm, Dylan is Dylan, and it is June. 

Time is just passing too fast. He wishes he could stop it. If only he could raise his hand up to the night sky and watch the stars race by, turn time back to a sunday morning where he can taste maple syrup in Dylan’s kiss and he’s regrowing hope inside him. Back to melting snow and crisp aired evenings where he could cuddle closer at night and not overheat. 

He let himself spiral for the day, gave himself permission to fall back into his old routine of waiting for it all to blow over while he ducked for cover. Unfortunately for him, there was no breeze coming. The summer air is as stagnant as ever, somehow more suffocating than the bitter cold of the previous winter. 

That evening as he tries to sleep, cheeks pressed into the too-warm exterior of a pillowcase, he zeros in on the sound of cicadas buzzing in the foliage outside. Contrary to most people’s annoyance with it, he used to love the sound. It reminded him of tree-lined paths, of shady groves and rocky roads. It still does. He guesses that’s probably why the hiss makes him sick to his stomach now.

He hadn’t considered how difficult it’d be to know that had what happened not happened, he’d be prepping for camp. He used to pack his bag about a week in advance so that he had plenty of time to make sure he had everything before they took off. He’d keep it by his door so that in the morning he could just roll out of bed and head out. 

It’s hard knowing that Hackett’s Quarry is still out there, collecting cobwebs and forgetting what laughter sounds like weaving through its trees. That it’s never going to be what it once was. The camp always circulated with ghost stories, mostly those born from Ryan himself, but he never imagined he’d see the day that Hackett’s Quarry itself became the ghost story. Before last August, it was his favorite place in the world. The day he left for camp was usually more significant than his birthday, than any holy holiday.

When he thinks about that last venture out to Hackett’s Quarry, when his brain lingers over the word “last”, he spirals. Last implies finality. That specific emotion will never be felt again, certainly not by him. He can’t say he’s been reconciling with that well.

His new drawing tablet collects dust in the corner of their bedroom. His boots haven’t been worn in a couple of weeks, strewn across the floor from one another where he last tossed them. He doesn’t intend on putting them on any time soon. He holes himself away again because it’s easier than trying to do anything in this heat. This overbearing, deeply nauseating, crawl upward of the weather forecast. It isn’t even peak Summer yet. It’s hard to do anything with this nihilistic funk keeping him glued to Dylan’s bed, holding him hostage in between waves of depressive sleep.

It’s a mourning period. He doesn’t remember what it feels like not to mourn. He’s been mourning for a year straight. He mourns for the winter, the eye-burning chill. When winter rolls around once again he will mourn the same heat that melts him into the bed.

Ryan doesn’t get angry about it anymore, not about the stolen time or the Hackett family secret that destroyed what normalcy meant. He doesn’t get angry about the month in jail or the news articles that told everyone what to think of him before he had the chance to speak for himself. He doesn’t have the energy to be angry. He’s just sad. Maybe it’s acceptance and the two emotions just live in the same place between the rungs of his ribs. Acceptance that the anger won’t change what happened. He can punch walls until his fists are bloodied and bruised, until he’s ripped the skin from his knuckles and screamed his lungs raw but it changes nothing. It won’t fix him. It won’t fix them. It won’t breathe new life into Hackett’s Quarry or bring it back for another picturesque summer, filled with songs and laughter. 

Instead of waking up with his eyes peeled, waiting to be wronged, looking over his shoulder and refusing to be caught off guard by the next thing that comes to get him, he flops over onto his side and says ‘Okay, make it quick.’ Maybe it’ll get him in his sleep. He squeezes his eyes shut but keeps the door open, leaving him vulnerable to attack, tender to falling apart.

All that comes is Dylan. Dylan’s lanky body curling into the space behind him, pressing his nose into Ryan’s skin where his shirt collar stops.

“How’s it hangin? Are you coming out today?” It’s far off. He’s right next to him but his words are muffled as they fight through all the other shit in Ryan’s brain. It’s like hearing him through a seashell.

How could he possibly feel like this when he’s got it so good? When he flips over in bed expecting to find the humanoid maw of a werewolf, dripping and vile, and instead his gaze lands on the dopey grin of unrelenting patience. How could he possibly complain? Look who’s come to check on him. Look who’s got his arms around him despite the thin layer of afternoon sweat just below his t-shirt.

Ryan shrugs, rolling his body over to look at Dylan directly. Dylan seems delighted with this. He takes it as a little sign of hope and takes his chance, “Wanna listen to some music?” He doesn’t get a response but continues asking anyway, “We could have food delivered?”

Dylan’s hand rests against his side, thumb rubbing the small patch of skin exposed between his riding-up shirt and the borrowed pair of pajama pants. He swears the touch is mending him, like even the littlest contact between them is enough to start hemming up his frayed ends.

“Mhm…sounds nice” He manages to mutter. His eyes are so heavy, keeping them open is a task, but he still tries to look at him through the exhaustion. You’re so good , he thinks, What am I doing to deserve this? What will I have to do to make up for it? When is karma going to catch up to me?

Dylan can read the thought, not literally, but by now he’s an expert at interpreting every little flicker of Ryan’s eye movement, whether he’s aware of it himself or not, “You’ve got something going on up there” He whispers into the space between them, continuing the repetitive touch at Ryan’s side.

“I’m uh..”  Ryan could lie but it wouldn’t be a successful one. Dylan would still recognize the distress signals. He already knows what that thing up there in his head is anyway cradling his brain like a dragon’s stolen hoard, “..thinking about camp”

Dylan’s lack of shock is evident in his solemn smile, “Presumably not the aesthetic slash met gala theme?”

It makes Ryan huff out a weak chuckle. He shakes his head “Nope.” 

Dylan adjusts his hold, slides his hand along the dip of Ryan’s waist, and wraps his arm around to soothingly rub his back. Dylan likes touching him. Not in any suggestive way. He’s always been respectful of Ryan’s apprehension to physical intimacy, but touch is nice. They’ve talked about their limits. They agree on what matters and part of that is Dylan showing Ryan affection through wherever he can hold him. If Ryan would let him he’s almost positive he'd be perpetually trapped in a bear hug.

Dylan doesn’t break eye contact, just blinks at him patiently, waiting for him to elaborate. Like how a cat slow-blinks at you from across the room.

Somehow he digs down and finds the energy to keep talking, moves around a couple of the rocks in his chest to reach it, “I’ve gone to camp every June for a decade. This is the first year I won’t be there and that’s…”

What is that?... Depressing? Disconcerting? Unfair?

Dylan is nodding along, listening emphatically. Ryan continues, “What’s really frustrating is that I knew it was coming, right? I knew Summer would roll around and I knew it’d be way fucking different this year. I thought I was fully prepared for when it finally hit me. A part of me thought I would even be relieved but right now I’m just-..I’m not okay right now”

“It’s okay to not be okay.” Dylan starts but the words make Ryan want to roll off the bed and away from him. He’s heard it too many times. He wants to be okay. It doesn’t matter if no one else expects him to be. Dylan senses his weird shift and pauses where his fingers are tracing down the bumps of Ryan’s spine. The hand moves back around to cup his face, ‘Healing isn’t linear, Ry. You don’t just get better and keep getting better. That’s not how that works. It’s an up and down, back and forth, kind of thing.”

Ryan sits with that, pictures his hills and valleys drawn out in front of him. He imagines his healing process looks a bit like an EKG.

“It’s like my hand, y’know?” Dylan shimmies his other arm out from where he’s tucked it underneath Ryan. He holds his handless wrist up between them, “Sometimes it hurts pretty fucking bad. Not just the part of my arm where my hand was severed from, but my actual hand. Which doesn't make a lot of sense since I don’t have one, right? I can’t do anything to remedy a hand hurting if the hand isn’t there. All I can do is pop some ibuprofen, stare at the blank space, and remind myself that that’s all it is. Something that isn’t there anymore.”

Ryan takes his wrist in his hand and cradles it gently while Dylan continues, “That doesn’t keep me from feeling it though. It helps momentarily but even if I know it’s not there, even if I’m fully aware and accepting of the fact that this part of me is forever changed because of last summer. I still feel it sometimes. My brain wants it to be there so bad that it makes me feel pain with no source.” He flexes the same muscles he would if he was wiggling his fingers, Ryan can feel them pressing up into his palm through the compression wrap over his scar, “Even if you know better, know that you’ve felt what you needed to feel and that your guilt is dissipating, that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to double back and hurt every so often. That’s the fucked up secret of the healing process. Sometimes you just gotta let it happen so that you can start moving forward again.”

Ryan mulls this over, flipping onto his back, but keeping his hand on Dylan. He stares up at the ceiling and attempts to find a reason for it all in the popcorn texture. He doesn’t find much. 

He runs his thumb over the stump of Dylan’s arm and apologizes, “Sorry again..” Unfortunately, it’s in Ryan’s blood now to always feel a little guilty for what happened to Dylan, no matter how many times he tells him it was the right decision or how much he would’ve hated him had he not done it. 

Dylan scoffs, following Ryan’s lead and flipping over onto his back, landing closer to Ryan than before. He wiggles himself into Ryan’s side and rests his head where he can feel Ryan’s heartbeat in his ears. He does his best attempt at a Ryan impression, dropping his voice as far as it’ll go but not quite making it, “Oh, so sorry Dylan for cutting off the infected limb that would’ve led to your skin exploding off your body so that the violent werewolf inside you couldn’t come out and kill all your camp friends. My bad.” 

Ryan rolls his eyes and tilts his head to see how proud of himself Dylan is, “Sounded nothing like me.”

“You’re right, I wasn’t annoying enough.” Dylan giggles to himself before pulling Ryan into a sweet kiss, assuring him of the joke. He speaks again when he pulls back but keeps them at a short lovey-dovey distance, “You don’t have to apologize. I’m fine. I mean…Yeah, it sucked but it felt mild compared to everything else. I didn’t come out of there looking too pretty, but the hand thing actually might’ve taken the shortest amount of time to come to terms with.”

Ryan dips his head forward to rest their foreheads against one another, “I think you’re very pretty.”

It’s comical to Dylan. He tosses his head back in an overexaggerated cackle and pinches Ryan’s side affectionately, “I think you’re full of shit but I'll accept this.” He settles back into Ryan’s space before returning to the conversation at hand, “There’s not really a reddit thread you can look at on how to cope with life after you’ve spent an entire night in the woods narrowly escaping a werewolf mauling. My point is, I don’t think we’re ever gonna be fully okay. No one sees the kind of shit we saw and just gets over it. That’s trauma, baby.”

This time Dylan takes Ryan’s hand that’s resting lax across his stomach, “To be honest, I don’t think you’d be giving yourself so much shit if it was anyone else. You wouldn’t be telling your sister to get over it. I know for sure you wouldn’t ask me to. You can let this anger and guilt about not ‘getting better’ eat you alive or you can give yourself permission to let your body feel what it needs to feel. And you don’t let yourself feel it alone.” 

So, Ryan feels. They feel and they grieve. That night Ryan cries into Dylan's chest for the hundredth time since they’ve been together because it feels safe to unravel there. Eventually, Dylan gets up and makes them two bowls of shitty microwaveable ramen, attempts to spruce them up with egg and chili flakes. He accidentally makes his own bowl too spicy and Ryan can’t stop laughing when he watches him struggle to slurp up each bite, not wanting to admit his palette's defeat. 

They go to bed early but when Ryan wakes up the next afternoon that internal ache still resides there, weighing him down into the sheets. The next day Dylan goes to the store to buy fresh cilantro to rip into their broth and this time only makes his noodles mildly spicy. They keep their curtains closed and wait for the sun to set on the longest day of the year. When Ryan wakes up from a bad dream he screams a sob into his pillow. Dylan rubs his back till the tears stop.

This goes on. Life goes on. Eventually, Ryan wakes up and he wants to draw again. Eventually, he rolls out of bed at 10am and opens the curtains because sunlight looks good bleeding through the blinds. Eventually, he does a stream. It gets a singular viewer but he doesn’t mind because it’s his biggest fan watching from the couch in the other room. Eventually, things feel normal. As normal as they can get anyway.

He knows that someday he’ll wake up and find that, once again, he’s not okay. But he’s ready.

He thinks that not being okay can be okay too.

Chapter Text

‘half way through summer and no ones even suggested a meet up >:(‘

‘I’m down!’

‘day, time and place, we’ll be there’

‘What if we go camping!’

‘you do realize that’s like saying “we should relive the worst day of our lives”’

‘okkaay what if we go hiking and then stay in the woods overnight?’

‘So…Camping?’

‘We could find a really safe campground. A trusted one with a lot of good reviews. Werewolf free.’

‘ah yes cause trusted campgrounds have never once failed us’

‘I get the hesitation guys but this was the kind of stuff we all used to look forward to. I’m not saying we absolutely have to do this but at the same time I think we’d be doing a disservice to ourselves if we just holed up inside all summer out of fear that some freak show shit is gonna go down again. I highly fucking doubt we’re gonna encounter a pack of werewolves two summers in a row’

‘and we could go end of august! full moons on the 11th! we’ll skip right past it!’

‘PLEASE I’ve been stuck inside all summer :(‘

‘There’s no one i’d rather risk my life camping with again then you guys’

‘such a sap’

‘sounds like a plan!’

‘yeah baby! one year reunion to wrap it all up!’

‘everyone in?’

….

ryan?

...

”Ryan?” Dylan’s voice permeates through Ryan’s mess of thoughts and pulls him back into reality.

“Huh-...Oh, yeah...” He shakes it off and does his best to recall the conversation at hand. 

They’re currently wandering up and down the aisles of a local record shop that Dylan knows like the back of his hand. Obviously, it’s a great place for Dylan to broaden his collection and prepare himself for gigs. It’s only a few streets down from the university so consequently, some of Dylan’s radio friends work there. Usually one or two of them are around to hook Dylan up with a friends and family discount. Even the owners are familiar with him, greeting him by name when he comes in every couple of weeks. They even let him pin up the posters Ryan made advertising DJ Dylan’s services. 

Ryan came along by choice, unlike many of the other times Dylan dragged him out of bed to come record shopping with him in an attempt to get him out of the apartment for a little bit. Ryan follows in toe behind him, providing his boyfriend an extra hand to keep his growing collection of potential purchases safe while Dylan peruses through bin after bin of records. 

There is a ridiculously large encyclopedia of music and music history tucked away somewhere in Dylan’s brain which he gets more excited to rattle off the further they roam into the record store. Ryan has no idea how he stores so much information up there. He’s asked him before but Dylan gets bashful and deflects when the conversation starts to center around himself, instead asking Ryan how he remembers all those ghost stories so well.

Dylan was slipping into some infodump about the rise in popularity of midwest emo when Ryan’s thoughts started to peter off, taking his concentration with them. It’s not that he isn’t interested in what Dylan has to say. Frankly, he could play any of Dylan’s fun facts on a loop for hours and never get sick of hearing it. He just, as always, has a lot on his mind. This week in particular has been a lot for a couple of reasons.

Dylan doesn’t seem wounded by the realization that Ryan’s focus had ditched the conversation, but his concern is palpable. His fingers halt where they were flicking through albums and he ducks his head slightly to keep eye contact, “You okay? You’re a little quiet?”

Ryan hates eye contact. In general, it feels placating. The pressure to make and hold eye contact out of some unspoken expectation of politeness has never sat right with him. It feels like unexpectedly walking on quicksand or getting caught in some kind of booby trap. If he moves he’ll just get more stuck. It’s been a wonder to him how Dylan’s eye contact can somehow feel like the safest place in the world. Suddenly he doesn’t mind that he’s sinking. It’s comforting. With Dylan, the expectation isn’t there to maintain the gesture, he could crawl out from the pit of sand if he wanted to. But, he doesn’t.

Ryan shrugs, adjusting his hold on the stack of records Dylan’s indecisiveness has created, “I’m notoriously quiet.”

The corner of Dylan’s lip tilts up with a little smirk. “Debatable,” he hums.

He doesn’t turn back to the box of records he keeps one hand paused on top of, just waits expectantly for Ryan to provide him some genuine answer instead of skirting around it in the hopes that Dylan will give up, “Yeah I’m…cool..”

Dylan’s eyes narrow skeptically, very clearly not believing him or at least having the wherewithal to acknowledge that ‘cool’ is not the entire story, “This about the camping trip?”

Ryan lets his eyes drift as he absent-mindedly picks at the already torn corners of an old vinyl. Dylan notes the nervous tick and takes his silence as a yes. 

“You know you didn’t have to say yes just because everyone else was cool with it. I’m kind of uncomfortable with how ecstatic everyone was too.” He finally reaches his hand out to still Ryan’s defacement of the record they haven’t actually bought yet, “We seriously don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“I do want to go. I think it’ll be cool to see everyone again and catch up,” Ryan says in earnest, walking ahead of Dylan to encourage forward movement through the shop. He half hopes that if a particularly interesting album cover catches Dylan’s attention that he’ll drop the conversation entirely. Instead, he just stares at Ryan with a dissatisfied grimace. He reads Ryan too well, “Maybe I’m a little bit worried that I’ll freak out again.”

Dylan scoffs but it tumbles out into an almost chuckle. He takes his boyfriend's concerns seriously, but only to an extent, “You? You’re gonna be the one who freaks out?” He has a point. Ryan’s track record involves more internal turmoil than outward panic, “As if I don’t teach the masterclass in exaggerations of the mind. I promise I’ll be freaking out enough for the both of us. You won’t have to lift a finger.”

As they talk Dylan reaches out to gently maneuver the stack of records from Ryan’s hands. He expertly balances the collection on his left arm while rifling through to double-check his selections thus far.

Ryan keeps a hand on stand by, just in case Dylan loses his grasp and an irreplaceable collectors-edition vinyl comes clattering to the floor, “Emotions are just weird.” He mumbles, “I never know what’s gonna hit me where or how hard.”

Dylan’s brows raise in acknowledgment, fully understanding that struggle himself, “Well, if the woods get too spooky, you can always hold my hand.” Dylan lifts his right palm into the air and gives Ryan a little wave, “In case you weren’t aware, every time we hold hands I absorb all of your cowardice.”

“Hm, a generous sacrifice.” Ryan gives him a distant smile but there’s more on his mind. If Dylan notices, he decides that he’s pushed it enough for the day and doesn’t continue the prying.

“We have like a month before we even have to think about it anyway. It may not even happen. Plans change and we’re not exactly the world’s most dependable group.” He’s right. The odds of getting a group of 9 young adults scattered around various parts of the country for college and work to the same campground at the same time for however long they want to stay is unlikely, “We’ll play it by ear.”

Dylan tilts his head with a comforting smile. Some of the longer strands of hair that have grown out over the past couple of months fall into his eyes. Ryan can’t not lean up and brush the messy bangs back with a loving stroke.

“It’s a good idea. We should go.” Ryan’s hand falls but not without stopping to give the lightest squeeze to Dylan’s sleeve-covered stump, which still manages to fluster him. Ryan takes back half of the albums stacked up in Dylan’s arms, “You brought me along to be your album lackey and you won’t even let me do my job.” Dylan doesn’t really need his help but Ryan selfishly needs to do little things to remind him that he’s a decent boyfriend from time to time. 

“Fine by me.” Dylan tilts his head away to hide a bashful smile and rocks on his heels, “The point still stands. You say the word and we’re out. You’re right, though..it’ll be fun, Cap’n.” He salutes him playfully before turning on his heel, proceeding to weave Ryan through the rest of the shop. 

Dylan points out his favorite albums about love and Ryan convinces himself not to read into what that means.

-

The same week Dylan graduated from high school, he impulsively drove across town to find a tattoo shop accepting walk-ins and proceeded to get, what Ryan fondly refers to as, ‘the most first tattoo ever’. The irony of the wolf residing on his upper arm is not lost on him. Ryan sort of just assumed Dylan would want to get it removed or covered up after last Summer’s events, but no other efforts have been made. 

He knows Dylan eventually wants a ton of tattoos, at least a full sleeve. He’s gone on record saying that he doesn’t think you need some deep, poetic reason behind every tattoo you choose to put on your body. Logistically, he understands that, but he can’t imagine the tattoo hasn’t taken on a new meaning since being etched into his freckled skin. Ryan wonders what goes through Dylan’s head when he pushes up his sleeves and sees the wolf’s snout peeking out from under the fabric.

 He’d ask Dylan now but he’s practically asleep, head on Ryan’s chest and arm lazily draped across his abdomen. Ryan’s thumb draws circles into his inked skin, his touch lulling the lankier boy further into that presleep haze. He drags the pad of his finger across the bold, jagged lines of the wolves’ geometric half and follows them as they fade into the more realistic art style.

They originally crawled into bed to lay together while listening to one of the albums Dylan picked up at the record shop earlier that day, something instrumental and chill. The vinyl currently spinning on Dylan’s record player in the corner is one that he was particularly excited to find. He raved about it the entire way home, swinging his and Ryan’s hands where they were connected between them while going on and on about some obscure artist he spent several hours last week researching for fun. Ryan listened the whole time, hanging onto everything Dylan says, as usual. 

At some point Dylan’s endearing babble subsided into a sleepy mumble here and there, his comfy position slowing his brain down. It opened up the opportunity for Ryan’s internal debate to creep back up into the forefront of his mind. He stares up at the ceiling, watching the fan above him spin round, as his brain goes back and forth about the thing he’s wanted to bring up all day but couldn’t find the courage to.

Eventually, the rise and fall of Dylan’s body against his evens out and Ryan assumes he’s gone to the world, “Dylan?” He whispers, just to double check, kind of hoping his partner doesn’t hear him. Otherwise, he’s not sure he can keep the thing weighing on him inside.

There’s a hum of acknowledgment against his skin followed by a short snort of breath as Dylan comes to. He lifts his head up barely, obviously just coming out of the early stages of sleep, “Wha- Huh? Ryan?”

Ryan can’t help but grin, moving to run his hand through the length of hair that falls in front of Dylan’s face so that he can see him better in the room’s minimal light. The living room light is still on, bleeding in through their open doorway, but the darkness around them still blurs things, “I uhm…” He considers dropping it till tomorrow morning, when Dylan’s more awake and his eyes aren’t threatening to shut with their weight, “I was just thinking.”

Dylan’s hand flattens out against his side, the charged tingle of fingertips ghosting across his ribcage, “-bout?” 

Ryan suddenly remembers the fact that there is no one else he would trust in bed with him like this. No one else could probe his mind the way Dylan does or drag undeniable truths out of him with nothing but a look, “Earlier, in the record store, it wasn’t the whole camping thing that was bothering me. I’ve been a little worried about it, of course, but it’s not what I was in a mood about.”

Dylan reaches out to fuss around with the bedside table lamp till he gets it turned on. His bleary eyes rapidly blink to adjust to the sudden change, “Well what’s up, man?”

Man. It makes Ryan chuckle, “I still think it’s a little bit funny that you still call me man even when I'm notorious for kissing you on the mouth.”

Dylan’s sleepy eyes glare up at him but his attempt to look menacing is entirely overshadowed by how fluffy his hair’s gone on one side. His pout is really cute, “and I’m pretty sure that for every time I call you ‘man’ there’s 5 times you’ve called me ‘dude’.” He wiggles upward a little bit, so he’s at a better angle for looking directly at Ryan as opposed to the underside of his chin, “What’s plaguing you, my dear?”

Ryan’s nose scrunches. That’s certainly not any better, “Okay..” he takes a deep breath and lets his anxiety pass with the exhale, “I’ve been emailing the admissions counselor from the animation school I got accepted into last year. I missed the fall deadline again but they’re being super lenient and cool about it since…y’know..everything.” He gestures vaguely with his hands, “..I-..I think i’m gonna go in the fall. Like, actually this time.”

At some point during his ramble Dylan has perked up to full attention, eyes gone wide despite being dreary with sleep only moments before, “Oh shit, Ryan..” He blinks at him for a moment before shaking off his shock and brining a hand up to cup Ryan’s cheek, “Hey that’s like…That’s really fucking cool. I’m so proud of you.” 

Ryan finds himself nestling into the palm of his hand, “I was just nervous to bring it up.”

“Why?” He lets out an elated chuckle, “That’s awesome!”

“I’d have to live on campus,” Ryan can’t help but notice the way Dylan deflates a little. “It’s not far! My grandparents already said they’d help me with a car as long as I get a job so I can drive down whenever. I’ll be around I just..well uhm..would you still want me around?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Dylan questions, not understanding the implication. 

“I mean it’s not exactly long distance but it's an inconvenient distance. I don’t want anything to change about us but I know this might not be something you want to stick around for so-” Dylan cuts him off with an abrupt laugh, “I’m being for real, Dylan”

“And I think you’re really fucking ridiculous.” He manages to get out between giggles, “Did you forget that prior to this year our relationship existed in 2 month long increments?”

Ryan groans and exaggeratedly lulls his head back against his pillow, “We weren’t dating then”

“You’re right. I just pined over you and thought about no one else for the other 10 months out of the year. How will I possibly survive now?” Dylan uses the hand still on Ryan’s face to gently tilt his head back up by his chin, “I’m so proud of you. I’m stoked that you’re finally taking this opportunity and I’m really happy that I get to be there to support you through the whole thing.”

Ryan doesn’t say the three words hanging off his tongue. He curls them back in and presses them against the dry roof of his mouth. Eventually, they won’t stick. One of these days he won’t be able to keep the admission from escaping, but for now it sits there on his hard palette for another day. He simply leans forward and presses a kiss against Dylan’s forehead before whispering a goodnight against his hairline. 

–

A few nights later, in the limited space of their apartment kitchen, Dylan and Ryan cut into a store-bought ice cream cake with Dylan’s name drawn across the top in blue frosting. The shitty knife they’re using gets stuck in the still-too-frozen layers and Ryan watches fondly as Dylan does little hops to apply enough pressure to cut himself a piece of his own birthday cake. The digital clock on the microwave rolls over to 12:00 AM, July 19th, and Ryan reaches up to hold Dylan by the back of his neck before bringing him down into a kiss. He tastes like mint chocolate chip and for a moment it becomes Ryan’s favorite flavor. It’s clumsy. Dylan bumps Ryan’s mouth with his teeth before truly capturing his lips with his but Ryan smiles into it anyway.

“Happy Birthday,” Ryan mumbles into the shared space between them and, once again, holds the words back that want to follow.

He loves him. He loves him. He loves him.

Chapter Text

A year never feels like a year. People have all those phrases about time, how it flies or passes before your eyes. Reflecting on the past year Ryan expects to have that feeling, a ‘gosh where did the time go?’ realization. He can’t honestly say it feels like last August was ‘just yesterday’. 

In some ways, it doesn’t feel like he lived it at all. Sometimes he has to convince himself with the tangible evidence of that night, the tears in his cult damage shirt or the hand his boyfriend no longer bears, that it even happened to them. Despite the repercussions he’s faced, it almost feels like someone plucked him out of a completely normal summer and dropped him into this fucked up timeline where everything went wrong. 

He has a hard time believing the Ryan he sees when he looks in the mirror is the same Ryan who pulled the trigger of Chris Hackett’s own gun against him. He’s too soft for that. His heart exists as a bundle of ribbon in his chest and a mere tug or catch on the edge of something unravels him. He buries his face in his hands to avoid looking at roadkill. Ryan couldn’t have been the one who took a chainsaw to Dylan’s wrist. Not the same wrists he kisses before bed. If that was him, it happened a long time ago. Much longer than 12 measly months.

He’s starting to forget the smell of drying blood caked onto his face. There are images he thought would be burned into the back of his eyelids for years to come that appear fuzzy and incomplete now. Silas the dog boy, no longer in dog form, with a silver bullet buried deep in his chest. Constance Hackett’s jaw, barely clinging on by bloody sinew. Nick’s skin exploding off his body to unleash the beast growing within him. He could visualize them all at one point. Now they exist almost entirely in concept alone. 

Regardless of what he remembers, what he lived or didn’t, it has been a whole calendar year since he left Hackett’s Quarry in the back of a cop car. Twelve full moons. The emotion that stems from that is complicated. A bittersweet acceptance that while things slowly fall back into place for him, this thing that happened will always loom there. Its presence doesn’t scare him anymore. He’s equipped to deal with it when it comes rearing its ugly head.

Ryan rolls his passenger side window down and props his elbow up. He leans his head into the space created by the bend of his arm to watch the trees pass, maples and pines blurred by the car’s forward motion. The air smells different, not bad, just not what he would smell when he stuck his head out the van window on the way to camp at the beginning of every summer. The campsite he and Dylan are headed to now is about 45 minutes in the opposite direction of Hackett’s Quarry, putting some sizable distance between them and the woods they have no plan for returning to anytime soon. Dylan said it should be far enough out that the stars will remain mostly uninterrupted by city lights, but that they'd be close enough to civilization in case anything goes awry.

 “The second it stops feeling safe we can dip,” Dylan told him as they loaded the car earlier that afternoon. He slipped his hand up Ryan’s arm and gently rubbed at the skin under his shirt sleeve, “Just say the word and we’re out of there.”

It’s nice to know, but Ryan’s nervous anticipation has less to do with what could possibly happen to them while out in the woods and more to do with seeing everyone else for the first time in a year. In some ways, he’s a hundred steps behind them all. He’s always felt like there was an aspect to living with this burden that all the others learned in time but he never seemed to get the hang of. He knows they wouldn’t judge him for how little progress he’s made since last August, but he doesn’t trust himself not to make those comparisons anyway. 

The sun is low in the sky, not quite setting, but it’s not long now until the early evening pinks and purples start seeping into the blue. It’s a good night to camp. Not too humid or sticky and breezy enough to cut through the late summer heat. It’s one of those days where the campers would have begged Chris to extend curfew a little bit. A late afternoon where Ryan would’ve taken the camp boat out onto the lake, minus the campers, and enjoyed a moment to himself.

Dylan’s phone is plugged into the aux, playing something Ryan’s sure he’s heard multiple times just from being in proximity to his boyfriend but doesn’t know the name of. Most of the songs he knows through Dylan he knows by melody alone. The artist and titles tend to be lost on him. He just fondly refers to them as ‘Dylan’s songs’. He doesn’t know if they’re popular or not. All he knows is that they’re Dylan’s and he wants to continue only knowing them as that. That way they stay in this vacuum of things that are theirs to share alone.

There’s a bag of chips and soda at his feet, just some snacks they were put in charge of picking up on the way out. Funnily enough, tucked away amongst the requested items, are some Peanut Butter Butter Pops. It was a surprise to find that they’d relaunched recently with new branding. Ryan can’t say it’s an entirely successful redesign, their new mascot is a little bit frightening in comparison to their old more cartoony one, but they buy two bags anyway. One for Jacob and one for Nick so no one almost gets shot over them this time. 

The whole group is much more prepared than need be. They spent a majority of the morning checking in with each other, sending reminders of who is supposed to bring what and photos of their overpacked bags. Everyone’s bringing their own version of a ‘just in case’ kit, containing bear spray, first aid supplies, and survival things of that nature. There’s an authentic sterling silver chain necklace tucked into Ryan’s boot, bought from an antique shop in an act of overpreparation. Just in case.

They eventually turn off the main road, almost missing the tucked away dirt road that’ll lead them down towards the campsite. It’s not quite golden hour but the sun is low enough that as they drive it tucks behind some of the trees, shooting out in quick bursts of light that flicker over them between the gaps of the treeline. Ryan glances over to Dylan in the driver's seat, whose eyes are on the road ahead, keeping a lookout for signs pointing them in their desired direction. He uses his stump to steady the wheel while he rhythmically taps along to the song softly playing from the car speaker with his other hand. 

Ryan has decided that the absolute worst part about Dylan being the designated driver in their relationship is the fact that Ryan can’t hold his hand during car rides. He tells him as such.

“What are you talking about?” Dylan objects, pouting as if he only just realized this is a form of affection he may be missing out on “I can hold your hand.” He moves to take his one hand off the wheel and reaches out toward Ryan.

He’s intercepted in the gap between them, “No you can’t. Don’t do that.”

Dylan scoffs, “Haven’t you ever seen someone who’s really good at texting and driving? It’s all in the knees and elbows.” He attempts to demonstrate, positioning his legs so that his knees rest against the sides of the steering wheel.

Ryan leans across the center console, placing Dylan’s hand back onto the steering wheel for him. His own hand lingers on top of Dylan’s for a moment. He'd be content to stay like this for a while if it wasn’t for the uncomfortable stretch in his side as he awkwardly leans across the car to keep his boyfriend's grip on the wheel, “Hand on the wheel, Lenivy.” He pulls back and rests his elbow onto the center console, propping up his head in his palm.

“Will do…” Dylan hesitates, “..Er..zay..ler”

Oh…My god…Ryan freezes and takes a moment to gawk at him before a stream of cackles escapes his mouth, ”HOW did you just say that?”

Dylan’s eyes go wide and the smile that had creeped onto his face from their previously playful conversation twists into a pained grimace. “Oh god it’s happening.”

“HOW did you say my last name?.” Ryan manages to get out between his fits of laughter. Perhaps he should be a little insulted that his boyfriend doesn’t know how to pronounce his last name properly, “We’ve been dating for half a year and you still say my name like a substitute teacher.”

“My worst nightmare is coming true” Dylan shakes his head in disbelief, staring straight ahead and refusing to make eye contact with Ryan, “If you don’t mind I’m gonna stop the car here, walk back to the main road, and lay down for a bit while I wait for the guy who’s really good at texting and driving to hit me. If that’s cool with you..”

He’s not really bothered. Now that he thinks about it, Dylan’s probably never actually heard his last name said allowed, only read it on camp sign up sheets and activity schedules . In fact, a part of Ryan finds the fumble a little endearing. 

He stifles his chuckles so as to not embarrass Dylan more and reaches up to brush back a piece of hair that hangs down in front of Dylan’s face, “It’s Erzahler.” He plays up the German pronunciation a little bit more than he usually would, just for show.

“In my defense, It’s not exactly a common name!” Dylan’s head leans into the touch, “It got all muddled on the way over here anyway.”

“Mhm, Used to have an umlaut on it” Ryan remarks, only to be met by a deeper furrow of Dylan’s brows.

“You’re just making up words now.”

“Umlaut?” Ryan asks, suddenly curious what Dylan passed Senior year English class with, “It’s the little accent mark on top of the A. The two little dots. It makes a round sound.” He demonstrates a couple of times which Dylan attempts to mimic. He stretches his mouth into a bunch of different shapes, playing around with the vowel sounds of his last name.

Ryan makes him prove that he can say it right a couple of times before they’re allowed to move on from the conversation, “You think it’s so hot that i’m dumb” He grumbles in shame, “You wanna kiss me so bad” 

Ryan leans up to peck a kiss against Dylan’s freckled cheek, “Yeah.” He considers it for a second but decidedly agrees, “It’s kind of hot.” 

“Absolutely nothing going on up here.” Dylan taps the side of his temple with his covered stump, “Just nuts and bolts rattling around.” He shakes his head as if Ryan would be able to hear them clinking against each other and the inner walls of Dylan’s skull.

The trail eventually leads off into a sizable clearing, marked by a placard stating the campsite rules and encouraging a ‘leave no trace’ stay. Ryan leans forward in his seat to peer around some trees and get a good look at the body of water and its rocky shore stretching out from the clearing of land that’ll be their campsite for the evening. Kaitlyn told him there’d be a swimming hole but he underestimated the size. It’s a nice surprise compared to the sad little pond of stagnant water he was picturing in his head. Dylan must see the way Ryan’s eyes light up at the sight. He makes a little content hum and mumbles something about how long it’s been since either of them have swam. 

Dylan already informed the group that they’d be the last ones arriving. The girls drove up together to go on a hiking trip earlier that morning, along with Max who may as well just be considered one of the girls. Nick and Jacob caught a ride together as the two of them have become pretty close post camp. There was some stuff to hash out in the beginning, but petty truth or dare drama didn’t seem to be worth it anymore once they got back home.

He spots Kaitlyn and Laura setting up the tents for the evening. Laura pauses briefly after putting a stake in the ground to reach over and grab a frisbee that’s landed off to her right. She tosses the disk in Max’s direction but it’s intercepted in the air by a dog the couple recently adopted. Now that they’ve got their own place together and Laura’s settled into school, they’ve been having more serious discussions about their relationship and how they’re going to grow together going forward. Part of that included a bigger commitment to each other and their futures in the form of a rescue pup. 

Over the past few months, Laura’s taken on the role of the big sister Ryan’s never had, being the go-to emergency contact if Dylan’s not around or he just needs a second opinion on something. He likes having someone else he can confide the more personal shit to who returns the favor and confides in him too. As expected, her healing process continues to be a steep uphill battle, but he’s happy to know she’s healing at all.

Jacob and Nick seem to have been put on fire duty. Nick leans down, fussing with the barely smoking firepit, trying to get some of the kindling to catch. Jacob’s on stand-by with logs in hand, lifting more than need be, probably in an attempt to appear capable. Watching on and giggling amongst themselves at the struggling pair are Emma and Abi, sitting side by side on the same log. Abi has her sketchbook open and she’s drawing something that Emma leans into her to look down at. Abi’s always been good at capturing passing moments. He’s sure the sketchbook is already filled with the sprawling lake scene in front of them.

Jacob spots them first. His head shoots up from the unlit fire pit to their car when he hears the sound of tires rumbling down the dirt road. He throws a hand up in the air to wave but fumbles a log in the process, the chunk of wood coming down heavy onto his foot, causing him to drop his wave and double over in pain for a moment. Nick almost falls back onto his ass with laughter and Emma seems all too delighted. 

Dylan rolls down the window and tosses a little wave out to them as he pulls up beside the others parked cars. “WELL LOOK WHO DECIDED TO SHOW UP!” Jacob’s voice rings out across the campsite, as he pulls himself up from his hunched over position, sending a few nesting birds fleeing from the trees.

Ryan takes a deep breath as the group of ex-Hacketteers all stop what they’re doing to swarm the car for their greetings. The release of air in his lungs coincides with the hitch of their car as Dylan puts it into park. Ryan reaches for the door handle, moving to step out of the car and get their bags from the trunk, but he’s stopped by Dylan’s hand landing on his shoulder. His touch is hesitant but as Ryan turns to meet Dylan’s gaze it becomes more sure, fingers gently pressing down, squeezing softly. 

Ryan smiles at the gesture. He was a little bit nervous through the majority of the ride but he’s started to mellow out a bit. Seeing the others with their campsite already set up, a beautiful space serving as a backdrop for a fun evening with people he’s grown to depend on, has eased his anxious feelings a bit. No need to be talked out of destructive thoughts yet.

He reaches up and clasps his hand over Dylan’s, accepting the affection. Dylan closes his eyes, brow furrowing in a dramaticized concentration. “What are you-” Ryan starts to question.

“Shh..” Dylan cuts him off, not losing an ounce of seriousness, “I’m absorbing your anxiety.”

“Oh my god. You’re such a loser” Ryan chuckles and rolls his eyes but plays along, letting Dylan hold his hand for the sake of the bit. He can’t say it doesn’t make him feel better. His thumb runs over the space of skin on the back of Dylan’s hand just as he glances out the windshield and catches Kaitlyn’s onlooking smirk. At some point Jacob has started mocking them, turning his hands into puppets and making them kiss.

“Alright, I think my cowardice is done being absorbed.” He mumbles after they’ve just sat there for a bit longer, Dylan’s eyes still closed and his head downturned. He lifts Dylan’s hand off his shoulder and wiggles it a bit, “The others are getting rowdy.”

Dylan doesn’t let go. He flips his hand and holds onto Ryan’s tighter than before. Nothing painful, but certainly desperate for the touch. Dylan lifts his head, opens his eyes, and Ryan has the sudden realization that the comforting hand hold may not have been for Ryan’s sake afterall. His bottom lashes are brimmed with tears and a long shaky breath comes tumbling out from his chest. Ryan’s smile drops and it seems some of the onlookers have turned their backs, having the decency to give their friends a deserved moment of privacy.

Dylan attempts to shake it off. He blinks the tears of his eyes but makes no effort to wipe the tracks off his cheeks, as if the motion would acknowledge them, “Whew. Sorry, that was a lot. I took a really big hit there.”

Ryan tries not to show any sort of pity in his expression, knowing that’ll just make Dylan feel worse. Instead he reaches up and cups Dylan’s face, slotting his pinkies into the underside of his jaw and resting his palms against his flushed cheeks. He turns his boyfriend’s face toward his and closes his eyes, with just as much belief as Dylan has a few moments before. Dylan makes a small, curious hum.

“There.” Ryan says after letting him sit in the same suspenseful silence, “Took half of it back. Now we’re even.”

When he opens his eyes, Dylan is staring back at him in awe, “I-” He starts but falters. The corners of his lips tilt upward and Ryan moves one of his thumbs ever so slightly over to trail over the private smile. He still can’t believe it’s for him sometimes. “...I love you and uh-..I'm really really happy you’re here.”

Perhaps they were sharing more internal dilemmas than Ryan previously thought. Dylan says the words like they’ve been sitting at the back of his throat for months. Sometimes Ryan thought he could see them there, waiting to get out, but he’s new to wishful thinking. 

Ryan says it back, of course, and it tastes sweet and sharp on his tongue. Like the first sip of a wine bottle he will never put down.

-

It’s declared that the first order of business for their little celebration is to take advantage of that gorgeous lake they have at their disposal. Jacob and Max hop on grill duty, tending to the burgers (and veggie burgers for those put off by meat) while the others hop off the short wooden dock heading out to deeper water. 

Ryan doesn’t realize how much he’s missed the water till he’s in it. That weightless feeling. He floats at the top while all those funny worries sink their pathetic way down to the bottom, taking residence in the muck beside littered bottle caps and broken snail shells.

Laura sneaks up behind an unsuspecting Ryan and tackles him down under the surface. He gasps before going under, taking in a big gulp of air that lasts him long enough to grab a handful of lake grass. He retaliates by planting it directly on top of her head.

She squeals, shooting Ryan a glare that can’t hide her amusement. She ducks her head under water to get all the grass off before coming back up and slicking her wet hair back off her face, “I’ve reaped what I sowed.” She sighs, pulling another strand of slimy algae off her shoulder, “Happy you decided to show afterall.”

“Happy to be here.” Ryan says earnestly.

Dylan joins at some point. After setting up their tent and checking to make sure Jacob and Max are all good on grill duty. He inches himself off the dock and drops down into the water as opposed to jumping before doggie paddling his way over to Ryan, out of breath before he even reaches him.

“Do you need me to like-..” Ryan meets him halfway, swimming over and reaching out to pull Dylan closer to him, “Is that an arm thing?”

Dylan shakes his head, clinging to Ryan like the lake is going to suddenly transform into a river and carry him off with its current, “No, I just suck at swimming. Thank god we had to wear life vests at camp.”

“Unless you snuck down to the docks after curfew” Emma, who kicks her feet from where she sits on the dock, chimes in.

“If I recall correctly, the one time Dylan snuck out with us he made Ryan help him put on a life vest” Kaitlyn teases, pinching Dylan’s side as she backstrokes by the couple.

“Oh yeah. I remember that…” Ryan digs the memory up, pushing past some of the more unsavory camp memories to find where he stores the ones he likes to recall. He can’t say that Dylan’s flirty insistence that, as the sailing instructor, Ryan had to buckle up his life vest to ensure proper safety protocols didn’t work in Dylan’s favor. He’s here now, isn’t he? A lanky set of arms tossed around his neck and keeping their bodies held together for dear life.

“I wish you would stop remembering.” Dylan grumbles, hiding his blushing face from the rest of the wading group.

“What’s wrong? The life vest thing was undeniably the hottest thing you’ve ever done.” Ryan lies through his teeth before leaning his head down and pressing a kiss to Dylan’s sun warmed shoulder.

Swimming is followed by dinner which consists of burgers (veggie available upon request)  paired with the cheapest beer they could find at the nearest gas station. They sit around their successfully lit bonfire, entirely thanks to Kaitlyn, and catch up. They pass around memories and stories long since told. They share the ups as well as the downs, knowing that this isn’t the group to hide those from. Mostly they talk about the future. The residual hope that they’ve all had to find for themselves. 

Ryan wraps himself in Dylan’s jacket as the evening chill kicks in. It hasn’t been in Dylan’s possession since the car crash and it hasn’t left Ryan’s side of their closet either. Ryan’s not really sure who it rightfully belongs to at this point. 

The thinnest crescent moon hangs in the sky, its reflection rippling on the lake’s surface. Something about how small it looks up there is comforting. Something about how measly and harmless it is. He’s used to all consuming moons. Moons that take up the whole horizon and remind him how devastatingly out of control things can get. Ryan feels like he could reach up and pluck this moon right out of the sky. He could hold it in the center of his hand and it’d barely take up his palm.  It’d have no power over him. 

He’d keep it. Tumble it in grit till it’s smooth stone. He’d give it to the boy sitting on the ground between his legs, back pressed against the log Ryan sits on, tossing glances back up at him every so often. He’d reach down and tuck it into the front pocket of Dylan’s shirt so he could feel his heartbeat and know that it’s calm. He’d find a way to get him every moon in the galaxy.

It’s strange. You would think that surrounded by forests, sleeping under stars and warmed by Dylan’s body beside him, that’d he be thinking about the horror movie that took place under last year's sturgeon moon a little bit more. But, if he’s being honest, when he closes his eyes to sleep that night it’s one of the first in a very long time he doesn’t see the tree lined paths of Hackett’s Quarry summer camp. 

He sees Dylan, he sees an outstretched palm, and he makes the choice not to be alone anymore.