Ghost Towns In The Ocean ☀︎ Ryden

5 | luca

june 25th

- hey there i'm officially on summer break and i'm living it up i love being free from the confines of school life is humid but it is also good

this song is luca by brand new and it's sad bc everything they make is sad but big news it's also really good bc everything they make is really good

━ unless you have friends among fish, there'll still be no air to breathe

Dottie was a gift to the world.

Except for when she almost killed Ryan one evening, but that wasn't a big deal because he had been trying to feel what it might be like to be on the brink of death, but not really, and she had helped more than he had wanted.

Brendon had come home from work somewhat confused when Ryan hadn't been holed up in his room as he usually was, and had gone out to the backyard to see Ryan standing on top of a ladder in the middle of their small yard.

It was an odd sight, at least to Brendon, to see the tall brown haired boy standing with his back straight and his arms out like he was Jesus Christ himself. His eyes were closed. Brendon wondered if he was going to jump. Though, somehow, it had been the perfect picture of peace. Ryan's eyes were closed, but not all scrunched up like he was thinking. Just. Closed. The cold wind ruffled his hair, and a greyish lavender winter sunset barely tinted with hints of orange across the horizon was painted behind him. Brendon admired him like he was something in an art gallery, leaning against the side of the door like an art critic that he wasn't really at all, and observed the scene as if looking for individual brushstrokes and watching for the places where the color wasn't blended as smoothly as the rest of it, but no, everything had been painted perfectly and Brendon was watching a perfect picture where there were no messy brushstrokes and no fucked blending, just Ryan Ross going about his everyday life.

Brendon watched Ryan's feet shift on the edge of the ladder and had felt a small sense of worry twist in his stomach but wasn't worried about it because Ryan wasn't going to do anything stupid, but Brendon hadn't been thinking about Dottie. And there she was, dashing around under the feet of the ladder and Ryan was up there doing his thinking or whatever and Dottie was bouncing around like dogs do, excited to be outside, and then-

"Dottie!" It came out way too high pitched but Dottie dashed through the legs of the ladder, causing it to wobble but not fall, thank god, and Dottie ran up the stairs, her tongue hanging out and her eyes excited to see someone other than her weird master who had tendencies to stand on ladders at twilight.

When Brendon was done petting Dottie, he looked up to see Ryan at the bottom of his ladder, staring at the sky.

"Ryan?" He didn't reply for a moment and then a quiet-

"Yeah?"

"What were you doing?" Another silence, and Brendon wondered what the answer to this would be.

"Writing." That made absolutely no sense, but Brendon just fell quiet.

"Oh." Ryan scratched his head, his back still turned to Brendon. After they had ran into each other downtown, Ryan had seemed somewhat more subdued and had made a sort of obvious effort not to insult or try to apparently show his hatred for Brendon. Which was appreciated by Brendon, because he was overworked and stressed and not used to sleeping in a new place, but he had to deal with it. Because life consisted of dealing with things.

"Are you gonna come in?"

"Later." So Brendon shut the door after pausing for another long moment. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for.

Dottie cast him a mourning glance when she realized that Brendon wasn't letting her back outside, but he mumbled a quick apology and then made his way down to his room. He had been planning what he was going to do that night, and it was really very exciting. He was going to take a hot shower until the water ran cold, and then he was going to fall asleep. Maybe the next morning he would ask about whether or not Ryan owned a washing machine.