Ryden Oneshots

Aliens In America

“You did. It was creepy.”

“I suppose it sounds strange, when you're unused to it,” Brendon said thoughtfully. “It's pretty nice, though. Do you have the ticket? You need it to get in, you see.”

“I—” Ryan hesitated, sighed. “Yes, I do. Brendon, look, I—you know I'm not retarded or anything, right?”

“Of course I know that!” Brendon looked shocked at the implication, but followed up by saying, “I suppose only the most intelligent get chosen to go,” which was, in truth, not at all reassuring.

“Go where?”

“Don't be coy.” Brendon pursed his lips reprovingly. “OK, so this next part is where we buy popcorn. Since I asked you out I will buy for us, but next time you should buy for me, all right? It's a gesture.”

“Sure,” Ryan replied, bewildered. “But you know, I could—”

“No, no, no. I want you to ease into it.”

Ryan suddenly thought it was easy to forgive Brendon a lot of his eccentricities when he smiled like that.

He didn't really know what Brendon meant by constantly referring to Ryan as “one of Them”, by telling him how to pay for his coffee with human money, by teaching him how to date through Wikipedia or by asking if the moon really was as dusty as it looked like in the pictures. He didn't really know if Brendon was entirely normal.

He did know that Brendon was the most interesting person he had ever met, and that he was crazy pretty (even if this also meant pretty crazy). He did know that he really wanted to kiss Brendon. He did know that they had been sort of dating for three weeks, and now Brendon had got them seats right at the back of a pretty shitty movie that'd probably have about ten other people watching it.

They were halfway through the movie, and Ryan was nervous as all fuck. Brendon had been laughing at the screen for the entire time, without making any move towards him at all. He was just starting to wonder if he'd got this whole thing wrong, when Brendon reached into his lap to take some more popcorn and said casually, eyes still fixed on the screen, “Now, this would be the part where one of us would kiss the other. It's kind of good form to wait until halfway through, right, because otherwise you make it kind of obvious that you only came to—”

Ryan twisted in his seat so quickly he dislodged the bucket of popcorn and leaned across Brendon, interrupting him with a quick kiss. Brendon didn't respond at first, and he was about to sink back into his seat—there to die of embarrassment, possibly—when Brendon leaned forward and kissed him. Ryan sighed with relief, bringing his hands up to Brendon's face and almost losing his balance in the process. There was some awkward shuffling, and Brendon accidentally elbowed him in the face once, trying to get his arm around his neck, but Ryan didn't actually care all that much because he was kissing Brendon.

“Part of your Human Interaction training has been really good,” Brendon said eventually, breathlessly, and Ryan groaned.

“Brendon, please—oh God, please, just stop talking.”

“It isn't as slimy as I thought it would be, either.”

Ryan kissed him again. It was basically the only way to get him to shut up.

It was a pretty good way, though.

Alien Investigation, Day Thirty.

Investigation taking interesting turn. Think I'd better stick close to Ryan, to monitor his behaviour in the best way possible. Learning new things every day.

Be a shame to waste the opportunity. Yeah.

“Did you know your friend is following my friend around all over the place with what looks suspiciously like hearts in his eyes?” Spencer asked.

Jon grinned at him. “He thinks he's conducting an investigation to expose Ryan as an alien.”

“He's dating him.”

“Undercover investigation.”

“He's sort of creepily in love with Ryan, if you ask my opinion.”

“I know. I'm thinking that he'll probably figure that out himself, too. Eventually.”

Spencer shrugged and sat down next to Jon. “Brendon knows there's no such thing as extra-terrestrial visitors, right?” he asked. Brendon might be cute, but Spencer wasn't about to let Ryan date a lunatic.

“He's a smart dude,” Jon said, scratching his wrist.

It wasn't actually an answer to the question—but then, not a lot of what Jon said ever was.

Alien Investigation, Day One Hundred.

Ryan and I celebrated three months yesterday. It was totally romantic, although he may have teased me about aliens a little.

Of course Ryan isn't an alien. I never seriously believed it. I have recently realised, however, that the investigation of Ryan—which was a joke, okay—blinded me to who the alien at our college really is.

Ryan's friend Spencer has really shiny hair. Suspicious, right?