Ryden Oneshots

By Small and Simple Things (1)

An “uh, thanks” is all Ryan can manage. 

Jon steals a Twinkie out of the smallest box on the right and pushes the pantry door closed with his foot with a shrug. 

A few days later, Ryan sees a mouse run across his kitchen floor when he’s coming in from work and when he checks to see if his mousetraps are still armed, he’s surprised to find that the only thing snapped by the small metal bar is a toothpick and the small pinch of cheese that once sat at the trigger is now gone. 

Picking it up to inspect it, the bits of toothpick fall freely from either side of the trap and Ryan’s only explanation is that his house is overrun with rodents smarter than he is. The thought is both depressing and scary. 

But apart from the genius mice that are, by evidence he just observed, apparently still alive in his house, Ryan is still a bit creeped out over how organized his pantry has stayed. Every box is in perfect alignment with the edge of the shelves and yesterday, just to make sure he wasn’t really losing it, Ryan pushed his box of Cheerios to the back and turned his Pop Tart box on its side before heading over to Spencer’s for a jam session with Jon. Upon opening the pantry door, Ryan noticed that everything was OCD perfect again and the mousetraps he’d spent most of the afternoon re-rigging had snapped shut, empty. 

Ryan refuses to harbor the possibility that he could be dealing with mice that are not only smart and organized, but quite possibly sing and hem dresses too; so he opts for finally admitting his house is haunted and tries not to acknowledge how his counters have started to gleam. 

---- 

Ryan wakes up in the middle of the night with a dry throat and parched tongue. He rolls over to check the alarm clock and groans as he gets out of bed, 3AM mocking him in glowing red digits. Shuffling over his carpet in socks that are stretched from wear, he yawns and heads toward the kitchen. 

There’s a dim glow from the light on the ice and water dispenser on the front of his fridge and he’s like a moth to the flame, only venturing from his path to bypass the table in the middle of the floor and to grab a cup from the cabinet. 

He fills his glass and takes three long gulps, the moonlight streaming in through the small window above the sink turning the water crystal in the darkness. With a refreshed sigh, Ryan turns to make his trek back to his room and he steps on something that crinkles under his weight. 

“What the -” Ryan lifts his foot and squints through the dark, allowing the glow of the moon to illuminate his sight and his eyes focus on the vague outline of a bag of - “Skittles?” Ryan asks no one in particular. Setting his empty glass on the edge of the counter, he bends down to pick up the inconveniently placed candy, confusion racking his thoughts. What is even more strange, is that as he takes up the package, a few stray candies escape an apparent opening and they crackle as they hit his linoleum, rolling and bouncing across the floor. He curses once but stops short when he hears the distinct sound of tiny feet scraping along after the displaced food and he growls in irritation. 

“Alright, you little bastards,” Ryan says angrily, standing up quickly to turn on the light and finally catch sight of these smart rats. The light is too bright when he flicks up the switch on the wall and he squints against his blindingly white (seriously, he will never understand how everything is staying so clean) tile, but when the blurriness in his eyes is blinked away, he sees a small mouse hurdling after a green Skittle rolling under the table. 

Ryan quickly drops onto his hands and knees, only narrowly claiming his fly-swatter, and he takes a moment to grow even angrier because there’s another mouse down there and he the thought of one alone was disgusting enough. But he’s still partially blind because his floor is channeling the sun currently and there is no possible way that there is a second mouse squeaking and vying for the possession of a blue Skittle. And there’s no way that Skittle is currently hoisted above the head of a tiny little brown-haired man who is pressing the mouse away with his foot and shrieking in frantic whispers, “No, no, no! Be quiet, he’ll hear us!”