Ryden Oneshots

Switch!

"We're in group one," Spencer says around the pad of his thumb. "Which means sitting at the tables, so you can't wander away "to the bathroom" and never come back."

Stupid Spencer, ruining everything.

"And you could at least try to be nice," he continues, keeping narrow, knowing eyes trained on Ryan. "I know three minutes is pushing the limits of your civility, but try not to call anyone a barren wasteland of witlessness and puerility, ok?"

"Too complicated?"

"Too mean, dickface."

"I know three minutes is pushing the limits of your civility, Spencer," Ryan deadpans, watching magenta-pants guy try to climb a thick, long-suffering looking guy with short, fuzzy blond hair and a lip ring. "But if you could try not to call anyone a dickface, I think you might have better luck with the-"

"Group one!" Blue announces, standing. Ryan stares at Blue's newly exposed crotch, but nothing about it provides any insight as to which way Blue swings, if, in fact, there is any swinging to be had. 

Argyle-guy is one of the ones who breaks away and follows Blue into the little room the community center has set aside for the event; he shuffles slowly in the wake of Ryan's already dragging steps, bumps into him when he freezes at the threshold. It's romantic, in the way that any room with a beige linoleum floor and beige walls can be: small, two-person tables with mismatched tablecloths; bud vases with rainbow-dyed daisies in them; folding chairs with throw pillows tucked into the backs. The lights are dimmed, there's a radio in one corner, playing (no joke) Boy George, and a Bingo machine in another, edges peeking out from underneath what looks to be a paisley bed sheet.

Ryan is going to kill Spencer in his sleep. Tonight.

"So this is how it works," Blue says. Ryan decides to assume that Blue is a guy. Even if he doesn't have an actual dick, he's got to have balls to go through life with the issue up in the air like that. "You guys will sit down at your tables - numbers at the tops of these match lists I'm going to give you - and group two will cycle around the room. Everyone gets three minutes, and then I'll announce when it's time to switch. After you meet each person, you'll check the yes, no, or maybe box next to their name, and they'll do the same for you. If two yes answers match up, we'll give you each other's contact information. Same for maybes. Nos will be told to fuck off. Got it?"

Ryan's card says "Table 2" on it, in the same happy scrawl that labels him as "george." Table two is tucked in the corner, one away from the bingo machine, just across from a high, grated window that leaks the exact wrong about of sunlight in, one spear of which aims itself directly at Ryan's right eye. He's going to have a headache by the time he goes on three of these "dates." Hopefully, Spencer will fall asleep as soon as they get home.

He's still pondering putting on his sunglasses again, is singing "I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can," softly, over Boy George's assertions that "you come and go, you come and gooooooo," when Blue pops the door open and announces, "Group two! Round one!"

Round one is eyeliner-guy. He looks bitter. "I'm Ryan," Ryan says, when the guy settles into his seat.

"Your name tag says George."

"My name tag lies."

"I'm Gerard," Gerard says. He's holding an unlit cigarette, keeps tapping it through his fingers, end to end, turning it and tapping it back through again. Ryan wants to slap it out of his hands.

"You can't smoke in here," he says, instead, glancing pointedly at the cigarette. "It's a nonsmoking building. There were signs everywhere."

Gerard stares at him. "Do I look like I'm smoking it?"