Work Text:
The air is uncomfortably warm, but continual movement from an equally warm breeze keeps it from being too terribly stale; its certainly fresher than that which always seems stagnant in Ryan’s room, whether the ceiling fan is going or not. That’s the beauty of Hackett’s Quarry, the freshness of it all. Contrary to popular belief, Ryan actually enjoys spending time outside, despite how often he’s holed up in his room back home. Here, that isn’t an option, and he’s thankful.
Calloused fingers carefully smudge faint lines created by Ryan’s pencil, shading his drawing as best he can without his usual array of art supplies on hand. His break was timed nicely, the setting sun complimenting the already stunning view and urging him to sketch it out. Ryan likes plenty aspects of being a counselor, but moments like this, alone and tranquil with his contraband cellphone and thoroughly loved sketchbook, mark themselves easily as his favorites.
As Robert Smith’s voice fades away in his earbuds when the current song comes to an end, and the instrumentals of the next item on his playlist come to life, Ryan looks out at the sherbet sky, framed by deep green leaves hanging off of tall trees that cast shadows on all that lies below them. It’s fitting, he thinks, that the path he took to get here is called Shady Glade.
If Ryan were at home with his digital art pad, it’d be much easier for him to make the sun in his drawing glow like the one hanging proudly above him, but there’s something to be said about traditional art. He likes the feeling of the paper giving way to the pressure of his utensil of choice, and the physical evidence of him creating something left behind as ink and graphite clinging to his hand. Part of Ryan wishes he could stay in this moment forever, where everything is simple and calm and moody tunes and art, where college plans don’t need to exist or interfere with seeing his family, where stress is swept away by the warm winds of Hackett’s Quarry.
Time passes at a rate impossible to measure on one’s own, and Ryan doesn’t feel particularly inclined to check just yet. Soon, he’ll go back to being a counselor, with dinnertime encroaching and lights out not long after, but right now he’s Ryan and nothing else, and the only thing he knows is dog-eared pages covered in drawings.
“Hey—”
“Jesus!” Ryan jolts violently, pencil dropping into the patchy grass as he becomes Ryan the Counselor once more. His heart hammers in his chest as he whips around to identify the source of the disturbance.
An exhale worms its way past his lips. Dylan Lenivy stands before him, in all his 6’2 glory. His hands are joined in a nervous, repetitive wringing action, facial features contorted into a half-sheepish, half-amused expression. “Shit, sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you,” Dylan offers at a lower volume than his original greeting, as if it could undo the damage.
“You didn’t scare me,” Ryan replies, as he reluctantly pops his earbuds out and lets them instead hang limply out of the collar of his shirt, “you just… startled me.”
Dylan tilts his head, and the sheepish to amused ratio becomes something more like 30:70 than an even split; his dark eyes twinkle with something more than the evening sunlight. “Pretty sure that’s the same thing, but okay.” Before Ryan can say anything in retaliation—Dylan is right, but Ryan isn’t about to admit it—the other continues you. “It’s time to eat. Since you weren’t back yet, I figured I’d come find you myself.” Just like that, the sheepishness eclipses all else on his face. An eternal push and pull Ryan knows all too well.
For a moment, Ryan considers trying to hide his phone, but it wasn’t exactly concealed when Dylan walked up so there’s very little point. Instead, he clicks it on to check the time. Sure enough, he missed the timeframe for hoarding hungry children into the mess hall. He isn’t particularly sad about that, but he can already picture Chris’s face at his absence, and it’s almost enough to make him shudder.
“Thanks,” he mumbles. As he stands up, Dylan sits down right next to Ryan’s previous spot, like he wasn’t sent out here to collect Ryan. Somehow, it aligns with Dylan’s behavior thus far, unpredictable to a disconcerting degree. He’s impossible to figure out—a wild card, like Kaitlyn, but she’s honest and upfront enough that it doesn’t throw Ryan as much as the boy now relaxing beside him does. His intentions hide behind disarmingly charming smiles and quips that are only half-funny. Ryan can’t pin down anything about him, including how he actually feels about him.
Somewhere, a bird chirps. This silence is nothing like the silence he reveled in only moments ago; that kind had held no expectations.
Ryan sighs. “What are you doing?”
“Well, we’re already late. And it’s nice out here,” Dylan says easily, letting his head tilt back, eyes slipping shut.
No, Ryan thinks, I’m late, you’re not.
Here Dylan is, displaying another reason Ryan isn’t fully comfortable around him: he acts like things don’t matter far too often, especially Chris’s directions. His style of humor hinges on that kind of shit, so Ryan makes a point of hiding smiles when he can as to not encourage him.
With another glance at the guy, Ryan takes his sketchbook under one arm, then turns on his heel to walk around the makeshift bench and start back to the lodge, to meet whatever reprimands await him. He gets all of three steps away, leaves crunching under his feet with each one, before being interrupted.
“You’re going?”
In place of a verbal answer, Ryan squints at Dylan over his shoulder. Not that Dylan can actually see it—hopefully the lack of response gets the point across even without.
“They won’t even know you didn’t come back right away, man. Maybe I’m having trouble finding you, and we won’t be back for a while.” That signature winning smile spreads across Dylan’s face like butter on toast (plain white bread is the more applicable description, considering his paleness that persists even after a full month working at a summer camp). There’s something to be said about the sight of him, grinning and visibly relaxed, soaking in the sunset; Ryan doesn’t say it.
Instead, he looks straight forward at the brown of bark rather than that of thick, swoopy hair. He does not wonder how long Dylan stands in front of the mirror fussing with that hair to get it how he likes it—which, to be fair, does look good on him. Ryan, of course, doesn’t say this either.
They’re being waited on. It’s unfair for them to make the other counselors take care of their campers while they do fuck all in the woods. By all accounts, Ryan should head back now, whether or not Dylan comes along. And yet.
“Fine,” he concedes against his better judgment. When he turns around, the area around Dylan’s eyes are crinkled so extremely by his smile that his dark eyelashes are the only thing indicating which deepened lines are his closed eyes. Ryan exhales and retraces his steps back to the log, taking a seat where he had been before Dylan’s arrival. The warm breeze releases its own sigh against Ryan’s cheeks.
Ryan runs his fingers along the spine of his sketchbook, either edge frayed with wear. Sooner than later, he’ll have to start a new one, limited pages filling out quicker than usual without access to anything digital. It’s been a long time since he finished one.
“So,” Dylan starts just as Ryan gets used to the silence between them, “Mr. H is not being subtle with the favoritism, huh?”
“What?”
Dylan’s eyes open, sliding to Ryan’s back pocket. “Your phone, he let you keep it. I mean, we already knew you were his fave, obviously, but damn.” He laughs airily.
Ryan says, “No, I—he didn’t,” and Dylan raises his eyebrows as high as they’ll go. In all fairness, Chris does let Ryan get away with more than the other counselors because he trusts him more—and, in all fairness, Ryan is more trustworthy than some of the others—and knows him better. This, however, is not one of those things. Camp was beyond busy when phones were being collected and Ryan just happened to avoid it, and he just happened not to say anything so he could listen to music and podcasts to sleep easier. If Chris found out he still had it, it would be confiscated just the same as the rest.
“Uh huh.”
“I just didn’t turn it in, man,” Ryan confesses.
The expression on Dylan’s face turns shit-eating. He sits up straight, at full attention. Strands of hair flutter down over his face, too few to obstruct his features, but enough to be noticeable. Ryan turns his head back to the sky yawning endlessly in front of them, slightly darker than it was the last time he set his gaze on it. They really should go back to the lodge. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Dylan lean slightly closer; he makes no attempt to get up.
“You didn’t turn it in?” Dylan presses with so much disbelief in his tone Ryan feels like he should be defending himself. “You’re fucking with me.”
“No I’m not.”
Dylan braces his arms on the log beneath him, neck craning to allow his head to rest on his shoulder. Ryan squints at wispy clouds floating past the nearly set sun. “Fucking with me,” Dylan repeats in a theatric whisper.
Ryan ducks his head and hides his smile in his chest. It would only encourage him. “Why—why would I do that?”
“Uh, because you wanna sway your reputation as a teacher’s pet. Duh.” When Dylan laughs at his own declaration, Ryan can’t quite tell if the sudden warmth against his neck is Dylan’s breath, the incessant breeze, or something else entirely. He twists his shoe in the dirt until the toe makes an indentation in it.
Since the first day of camp (since the moment Ryan was old enough for conscious thought, really) Ryan has been aware of the gap between him and other people—which, admittedly, he has been guilty of nursing by keeping to himself more often than not—perpetuated here by his closeness with Chris that none of them actually understand. Explaining it in its entirety is not something he’s keen on, and the others are fucking nosy so he knows they wouldn’t settle for fragments. Instead, he gives them nothing at all. He pretends not to hear it every time Jacob says something exceedingly weird about Chris being his ‘daddy,’ and ignores it when Kaitlyn calls him a goody two-shoes for something reasonable that she likely would have done herself either way. To attempt to change anyone’s opinion on him is to sign up for a losing battle, and he tries not to be that idiotic.
It’s half a lie when he tells Dylan, “I don’t care what you guys think of me.” For a few moments, the silence between them is charged with the promise of a reply, but it never comes. Somewhere overhead, several birds fly past, squawking as they go, and true, empty silence befalls them after that.
Ryan’s fingers itch to open his sketchbook or put in his earbuds; his legs itch to get up and leave, or drag him closer to the guy beside him. In their bubble in the woods, nothing moves but chests rising and falling with breath. Typically Ryan would prefer this, the quiet. Dylan, however, always feels the need to fill it, and the nothingness from his direction is confusing. Impossible to figure out, that one. Ryan should stop trying to.
He hasn’t.
He turns his head to Dylan, once again appearing asleep in his positioning. His mouth is dropped open only slightly. His knees and calves are exposed by khaki shorts, paired with a band tee advertising a group Ryan hasn’t heard of before. Dylan seems to have an affinity for those underground types, although that same love extends to artists that frequent the top forty radio stations, too. It’s like his very existence is made up of music. Maybe he’ll play one of this band’s songs on the PA before summer ends.
“Is this your first year at camp?”
Dylan doesn’t quite spring to life like Ryan had imagined he would and that’s startling in its own right, but a singular opened eye in his direction explains his question was received. “Nah,” Dylan says, “I was a camper here for a few years. That’s when I, uh, cleaned up the radio hut. Well, partly, I mean I’ve had to—Yeah, I’ve been here before.”
Something like guilt blossoms inside Ryan. “Oh. That’s cool.”
“It’s chill if you didn’t notice me. I was really—I mean, for one thing, I was super lame, but I was—I was pretty quiet. Quieter than I am now, anyway. Easy to miss.” The way Dylan shrugs falls just short of true, unbothered carelessness. The guilt turns into a black hole and Ryan begins picking at the frayed threads on his sketchbook cover anew.
Alongside it comes the need to explain himself, or make Dylan feel better, or some combination of the two. At the least, smooth things over. “I never really… talked to most of the other campers.”
They look at each other for a moment, and Ryan feels he should be picking up on something. His leg twitches.
“Well,” Dylan pipes up eventually, “I’m cooler and hotter now.” He’s all teeth and dimples and breezy conversation again, and Ryan drinks in this attitude change like a dying plant. Whatever this is, a little grating it may be, is familiar, and it’s safe. Neither of them reveal too much this way, remaining firmly in friendly-coworkers territory.
He racks his brain for something equally surface level to reply with. “Doesn’t that cancel out?” he asks, and Dylan’s eyebrows twist in confusion, still smiling. “Cool and hot. You’re back to lukewarm.”
Dylan clutches his chest like he’s been mortally wounded, groaning in pretend-pain. “You’re calling me room temperature? Ouch, man.” Ryan’s own smile sneaks up on him before he has half a mind to feign seriousness or tuck it away, and something makes Dylan grin wider; he suspects it’s the same thing.
The sky has shifted shades to something more nightly, indigo edging in on the last of the orange. A handful of stars have popped up already, dim but far more visible than they ever are in the suburbs. That’s the beauty of Hackett’s Quarry. If he focuses, Ryan thinks he can see their glitter in Dylan’s dark eyes. For a moment, he wonders if the stars can be seen wherever Dylan lives, but he doesn’t speak this thought. Besides, Dylan seems too much like someone from a city or a decently-sized town, somewhere with too many streetlights and businesses with neon signage to spot them.
Bark nips at Ryan’s hand as he readjusts its placement on the log, and he feels the rest of the world slipping back in. They’ve probably completely missed dinner by now, which makes him realize he actually is hungry, and shit out of luck. He and Dylan will probably have to do the dishes as an apology for not watching the kids they’re responsible for, and they won’t hear the end of it from the others any time soon. Chris will give him an I’m-not-mad-just-disappointed look and Ryan will never do this again—not when it isn’t the middle of the night and he knows he won’t get caught or disrupt anything—and stars reflected in eyes will exist in the back of his brain until the details of counseling this year fade into shapes and smoothies of memories, indistinct from one another.
The smile on Dylan’s face mellows out but never leaves, lips covering up his teeth tilted upward endlessly.
“It’s late,” Ryan says.
Dylan checks his watch, and makes a pssh noise. “Barely.”
“We should head back.”
With that, Ryan wills himself to stand up, and Dylan only does the same when he’s completely straightened and primed to follow through on going to the lodge. His sketchbook rests under his arm, pencil in hand and phone in pocket. His earbuds hang out the front of his shirt conspicuously, but he decides he’ll only put those away when they get closer to the lodge, in case their walk is awkward and he feels the need to escape.
Summertime surrounds them in all sides. Tonight is, evidently, a warm one. Ryan pictures the black tank top sitting in his travel bag that he’ll wear to bed. All sorts of bugs give them a soundtrack to fill in the gaps between dried leaves underneath shoes.
Every so often, he can feel Dylan’s eyes on him, and makes a point not to meet his gaze. He can’t imagine it would dissolve any tension, doing so. They pass by the sign with arrows labeled Rocky Road and Shady Glade, and it’s perfectly legible to Ryan despite the waning light. Perhaps it’s the years of walking past it all the time that make it easier. He wonders if it’s the same for Dylan.
“Are you gonna counsel next year?” Dylan asks him after a while.
The lodge is visible now, partially obscured by trees but impossibly obvious, as large structures in the woods tend to be. When Ryan looks over at Dylan, he’s already looking back. He doesn’t answer right away, because he isn’t sure about anything regarding his future. Sure, he would love to come back here as much as he can, revel in the comfort of temporary escape and hot weather and telling scary stories around a campfire to impressionable young kids, but he knows that isn’t going to be what happens. Maybe he can come back next year. Maybe.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “Are you?”
Dylan echoes, “I don’t know.” Ryan’s lips twitch up just a little, and maybe it encourages him. “If you are, you gotta tell me before summer ends.”
“Why?”
“So I can come back even cooler and hotter than before and sweep you off your feet. I hear lukewarm’s gonna be in by then.” Dylan says this like his logic is waterproof, like he makes any sense at all—which he never has.
Ryan shakes his head, amused, and Dylan rolls his shoulders before letting them drop into something relaxed. Only when they’re climbing the stairs up to the lodge does Ryan answer him.
“I’ll keep you posted,” he says, “Come on.”
He puts his earbuds in his pocket, braces himself, and opens the door, Ryan the Counselor once again, with Dylan and the summer on his heels.