Affection, Adoration, and Infatuation {Ryden}

Pizza

As much as I loved my friends, I was absolutely not excited to talk to them at all. I didn't want all the questions from them because I knew I couldn't answer them without lying, but I guess that's what I'd have to do to keep Brendon from being potentially fired from his job.

I walked up to the group, slightly nervous, and set my belongings down next to Pete. "Hey," I said as I sat down next to him. "What's up?" I asked as nonchalantly and normally as possible. He looked up to me with confused eyes.

"I thought you stopped coming to lunch." Pete said, turning his focus back to poking at a salad he had sat in front of him. I shrugged before stealing a French fry he had on his tray.

"I don't know, I just- oof!" I fell to the ground, being tackled by none other than Tyler, who proceeded to call me 'Mom' and welcome me back. "You, you can let go now- fuck, I can't breathe."

"Ty, oh my god, you're going to kill Ryan, get off of him, oh my god." Josh worried, pulling at Tyler's waist, until he finally unlatched from me.

"Sorry," he giggled, "you've just been gone for like, a whole year-"

"A month actually." Pete interrupted in a salty voice.

"Same thing," Tyler dismissed. "Anyways, where've you been? Do you know how hard it was staying with Josh and Pete for a whole month? It was torturous! You know how emo and poetic Pete is? He's worse than me, and that's saying something. I can't believe you just left me to put up with that emo freak and Josh, well, I'm fine with Josh, obviously, because he's cute, and-"

"You're rambling again, babe." Josh whispered, gayly to him, to which the boy just shrugged and walked around the circular table, to the other side.

"Where have you been though, like, not only have you not been here, but you've not really talked to any of us. I kinda thought you didn't want to be friends with us anymore." Pete said in an extremely sad voice, making me feel guilty about my whereabouts.

"No. No, no, no. It's not that, at all. I love you guys, I never want to leave or lose any of you. I'd rather actually die. It's just that, like... I don't know. I promise I'll talk to you guys more, things have just been really, well, not bad, they've been great actually, but I've just been busy with some things I guess." I stuttered out to our small group.

"What kind of things?" Josh questioned.

"Just... stuff. I'll tell you about it sometime, but not right now. I promise." They all nodded their heads and carried on with catching up and stuff until Pete seemed to bring up the subject I wanted to avoid talking about with them.

"Mr. Urie came in with a hickey this morning." He said and I proceeded to choke on my Gatorade that I forgot I had, well, it wasn't forgotten about until now at least.

"You good?" Pete laughed, while I squeaked out a quick 'wrong pipe' followed by more coughing and blushing. "But yeah, no, he had a giant ass hickey on his neck. He said that it was from a vampire attack that happened to bruise afterwards. It was hilarious, that one Ashlee girl just doesn't want to stop trying to get with him and uses literally every excuse in the book to try and talk about stuff with him like that." I felt a surge of jealousy, but then felt proud because I was the one that actually was with him and was actually gay, in case we forgot. "His boyfriend really went at it with his neck, though, oh my god, Ryan, you had him last hour, did you see it? Thing was fucking huge." I just laughed awkwardly while willing myself not to blush.

"Heh, yep." I sighed internally, hoping he wouldn't notice my odd behavior.

--

"You made me socialize, I hate you." I groaned, walking into Brendon's house with him following behind because I stole his key right before I got out of the car.