Ryden Oneshots

The One Where Brendon Kills His Fish And Ryan Makes It Better

Summary: “When I was little I had a fish named Fido that my mom sent off to a farm where all the fishies could swim together. Maybe they have a farm like that for hermit crabs. We should look into to it. I bet Pete could find out where it is.”

---

When Brendon was little, he begged his mother for a puppy. For about a week, his eyes were opened wide, his tongue poked out, and he panted after her, crawling on his hands and knees, telling her at every available moment how great a puppy would be. Just like Brendon, but even better because a puppy has fur. And a tail. Brendon really wanted a tail.

Just to shut him up, she bought him a goldfish. She told him that if he took good care of the fish, maybe they would talk about a dog later. Brendon loved his fish. It was almost like a puppy - - it had a tail too, but it lived in water. He named it Fido and fed it every day just like his mom told him to. Sometimes, he fed it more than once. Fido always looked hungry and Brendon wanted to be a good daddy.

One day, when Brendon got back from kindergarten, he found that his goldfish bowl was empty. His mother told Brendon that she found a better home for Fido – a farm, where he could swim around all day in a big pond with lots of other fishies. He missed Fido, but he understood. A farm full of fishies had to be pretty cool.

---

At a meet and greet, only a few months after Panic had really taken off, a couple of well-meaning fans presented the boys with a hermit crab. They named it Lil Boo, and Brendon liked to watch it scuttle around its tiny little cylindrical cage.

He fed it every day, just like Ryan told him to, and always made sure that the tiny little sponge was wet. After a while, Brendon started to worry that Lil Boo might not be happy in his little cage on a constantly moving tour bus. It didn’t help matters that Jon kept talking about Dylan and Clover and how they had somehow sneakily eaten his cousin’s hermit crabs when they had gone to the beach one summer. There were no cats on the bus, but still, Brendon was worried.

One day, after Lil Boo looked especially shaken up over the possibility of a stray cat somehow getting on to the moving bus, Brendon talked to Ryan about his brand new idea.

“I’m worried that Lil Boo is going to get eaten. He’s worried too, I can tell,” Brendon said, poking Ryan repeatedly on the shoulder, trying to direct Ryan’s attention away from his incredibly pretentious novel. Brendon didn’t appreciate Ryan’s new obsession with the Beat writers, but he knew that Ryan liked to appear well-read, so he didn’t say anything about it.

“What are you talking about, Brendon?” Ryan asked over his book, lowering it a little bit, but Brendon could still see the tiny scrawling print in the margins. It made sense, he figured, Ryan had deep thoughts. “Who is going to eat Lil Boo?”

Brendon sighed, but stifled it. Recently, he had been told that he had a tendency to be a little bit dramatic. “A roaming hermit crab eating ninja cat, of course,” Brendon replied, eyes wide in excitement. “He’s probably got some angsty back story and is really hungry, but I love Lil Boo too much to fall for that trick.”

“A roaming ninja cat?” Ryan deadpanned. “That is ridiculous.” Brendon frowned at Ryan’s disbelieving attitude, but Ryan set the book aside and made room on the couch, so Brendon easily settled down next to him, leaning up against the collar of his floral shirt.

“I’m still worried,” Brendon said. Unfortunately, the floral shirt did not smell like flowers, and the smell of Tide always brought him back to that brief disaster when he decided that he could do his own laundry and everything came out pink. Spencer handled it for him now. Spencer was awesome. Like a ninja cat, but he was pretty sure that Spencer wouldn’t eat Lil Boo.

“Okay,” Ryan drawled. “What do you want me to do about it?”

Brendon grinned. Clearly, Ryan cared about Lil Boo. And by extension, Brendon. And that was always amazing. “When I was little, I had a fish named Fido that my mom sent off to a farm where all the fishies could swim together. Maybe they have a farm like that for hermit crabs. We should look into to it.” He mused. “I bet Pete could find out where it is.”

Ryan stared at Brendon. He blinked. “Seriously? Listen, Brendon. You don’t actually believe that there’s a farm full of goldfish or a bunch of different farms for every pet imaginable, do you?” He pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head lightly. “That’s just something that people say when pets die. They tell it to children.”

The words that Ryan said weren’t exactly lining up in Brendon’s mind. “So, Fido didn’t go to a farm?” he asked slowly. “Then where did he go? I took good care of him, feeding him every day. Sometimes I even fed him twice. Or three times. He was always well fed. And he always had water too.”

“Maybe you killed him,” Ryan said, but when Brendon’s mouth dropped open in horror, he immediately tried to backtrack. “Or maybe your mom gave him to an orphanage for the tiny malnourished little parentless children,” he tried.

Brendon, however, did not believe Ryan. “That,” he said fiercely, “is a lie, Ryan Ross.” The moment of shock passed, and then Brendon’s face crumbled heartbreakingly. “I can’t believe I killed Fido!”

Ryan didn’t know what to do, but he allowed Brendon to burrow against him, and he tried to take Brendon’s mind off of his homicidal streak as a child by telling him all he had learned from Burroughs.

---
When Shane asked Brendon if he wanted to get a puppy, he figured that if Ryan could take care of Hobo, it couldn’t be that difficult. After all, Ryan forgot to pay his bills, and rarely had hot water, so a dog must be easier to maintain than an apartment, and Brendon had been living away from home since he was eighteen.

Dylan was a wriggly little thing. She was hyper and yappy and Brendon loved her immediately. She had a tail and fur, and even lived above water and didn’t carry a shell on her back all day. The best part about Dylan was that after a long day of chasing Brendon around the house, they would both pass out from sheer exhaustion, and Dylan would curl up against Brendon and go to sleep.

One day, when Dylan had successfully stopped peeing in Shane’s camera bag, Brendon decided that Dylan was old enough for a play date. He washed her and gave her a strict talking to since he knew that Ryan didn’t appreciate urine scented scarves, and since Ryan wouldn’t bring Hobo over, Brendon ushered Dylan into his car and drove towards Ryan’s house.

Even though Ryan had assured Brendon that Hobo was not the friendliest with other dogs, in fact, Hobo had flunked out of puppy kindergarten because she snarled at the other students, Hobo and Dylan hit it off right away.

Ryan’s brow furrowed as Hobo jumped up on the couch and curled her body around Dylan. “She usually hates other dogs. You know, hates anything or anyone that takes attention away from her.”

Brendon wiggled his eyebrows at Ryan. “We Urie women are hard to resist. But I guess Dylan is an Urie-Valdez. And I’m, you know, a guy. But we’re hard to resist all the same.”

Still staring at the spooning puppies, Ryan smiled. “I guess you are,” he agreed, blushing a little.