"Petrified of who you are and who you have become, you will hide from everyone, denying you need someone to exterminate your bones. Friend, please remove your hands from over your eyes for me. I know you want to leave but friend, please don't take your life away from me." - Friend, Please by Twenty Øne Piløts

1:46am

The numbers shone vividly on Ryan's digital clock, burning into his retinas as he stared, unblinkingly, at it. He wasn't tired, in fact, this was early for him. He wouldn't be asleep for another few hours, if at all. His brain was just too loud, too fast. Ryan turned his head back to the ceiling. His eyes were accustomed to the dark so he was able to study the patterns in the paint. A mundane distraction, but a distraction all the same. Anything to reduce the white noise that was buzzing around in his mind. Whoever had painted his room last didn't do the greatest of jobs. You couldn't really tell with the walls because Ryan had covered them from head-to-toe with band posters and pictures of skateboarding tricks. But the ceiling remained bare and seemed to have been decorated in sections, with too much paint in some sections and hardly any paint in others, as if the decorator had tried out different styles in an attempt to find one that worked. Unfortunately, none of them had, so he had given up. Ryan thought that would make a good metaphor, if he could be bothered to think of one. But he couldn't, so he didn't. Maybe the decorator was just drunk.

Ryan tossed and turned for a long while as the part of his brain that so desperately wanted to fall asleep fought ruthlessly with the part that didn't. But the part that didn't drowned out the other with its screams, and Ryan gave up trying to fight it. He lay still and flat, before sighing once in annoyance and standing up, his feet meeting the rough carpet. He paced around the room, lost in thought but not really thinking about anything. It had been weeks since he'd slept properly and physically he was exhausted, but his mind took a bit longer to catch up, and when it did it was rather half-hearted; Ryan slept lightly and was regularly frequented by nightmares. But it was a slightly better option than walking around his bedroom in a failing attempt to quieten his thoughts, so he had to find a way to force his mind to close down.

Ryan paused in front of his window. On nights like this, he sometimes went out and wandered around town. The fresh air made it easier to get his thoughts in order which in turn made him tired. It didn't always work though, so it was really left as a last resort, especially since he had to use his window instead of the front door to lower the risk of getting caught. But Ryan was beginning to grow desperate, and besides, he'd started to feel somewhat trapped inside the four walls of his bedroom. A peaceful walk would do him good, or as peaceful a walk as a head suffocated with the branches of depression would allow.

So at... 1:58am, Ryan opened his window as slowly and quietly as he could, before letting his leg hang down the other side to search for the ledge he used for support. He had done this so many times in the last few years that he knew exactly where to go and, unbeknownst to most people, Ryan was actually a very good climber, what with his long legs and skinny build, so he found it scarily easy to clamber out of his second floor bedroom and shimmy down the thin drainpipe, landing safely onto the damp grass below. Such a clichéd act of escapism, found all the time in books and films. Ryan's life could be described as relatively cliché. The classic Young Adult novel. If he was in a book, he probably wouldn't be the protagonist, or at least, not the main one. He'd be the moody, wannabe gothic boy-next-door that the female protagonist would meet one day. She would be up late reading, or typing some kind of entry for her blog on her computer, and she'd look up, out of her window, and grow curious when she saw him scaling the side of his care home in the middle of the night. She would begin to study his movements, wait up every evening to catch a glimpse of him escaping, or perhaps she'd hear beautiful guitar music coming from the direction of his room. Eventually, after a freak meeting at the skatepark, where he'd intrigue her with deep, hand-written poetry and an accidental reveal about his traumatic past, she would fall head-over-heels in love with him. And it would end in either two, equally infuriating ways, often explored by the kind of authors that Ryan hated. He would leave clues dotted around all the places that the young couple had spent "special moments" together, post-it notes with lines of poetry, or a page ripped from a book, a quote underlined in pencil. The girl would follow them all, never losing hope until the final moment where she was forced to conclude that he had tragically ended his life, and when news spread of his demise, he would be remembered by all his peers as the equivalent of a war hero, crying bitterly at his funeral. Peers who conveniently forgot that not once had they tried to help him, or even ask whether he was okay once in a while. Instead they blatantly ignored him, save for the few occasions when they felt like hissing abuse at him from the back of the classroom. The protagonist would then be heartbroken for a few weeks, before her friends broke into her house and organised an "emergency sleepover" insisting that she move on.

Or, the story would end in the more preferable way chosen by authors; where the girl's love was so deep and true that after just a few months of being with her, Ryan was cured of whatever was making him sad, claiming that it was her eyes that had saved his life. And they'd live happily ever fucking after.

"Yeah right," Ryan thought bitterly. The unlikelihood of either ending happening to him was laughable. For starters, if this book involved a love story between Ryan and another person, it wouldn't be with a girl, which already would be a turn off for publishers, or even any directors who had been rubbing their hands in excitement at the prospect of another romance they could butcher. No, unfortunately for them, Ryan was not attracted to girls in any romantic sense. The thought of having a girlfriend and having to kiss her or touch her, simply made him uncomfortable. He had kissed a few girls in the past, but only to stop classmates whispering behind his back. He had felt nothing when he had been with them, though again, in a romantic sense. Not to be confused with his lack of feeling towards anything anyway.

The other problem he had with this story metaphor, which, by now had turned into an unreasonably long metaphor, was the author's tendency to... what were the words? "Romanticise mental health." He'd heard that phrase a lot and he hated how many books were guilty of it. So many people seemed to believe that mental illness not only had a simple cure, but that the cure was "true love". If the whole world wanted to live in fucking Disneyland, it was probably best if Ryan stayed away. No one could really understand what Ryan had to go through on a daily basis, the wars he had with his own mind, unless they'd properly experienced it. And those who had experienced it had already had a hard time helping themselves, so how could Ryan expect them to help him as well? If only true love was the answer. Although, if his only option of true love at the moment were a bunch of awkward, homophobic schoolmates then Ryan had a better chance of getting better as he was now.

There was a noise behind him and he stopped walking. It took him a second to realise that it must have just been a passing car from the main road, and then another second to notice his surroundings, and a final second to gather exactly where he was. Ryan was stood outside the park, around ten minutes away from Ashdene Ridge. It was so quiet, that he thought his own breath must be the loudest thing for miles, and the dark street was lit by nothing but a few flickering street lamps. Ryan took a few steps towards the park's rusty metal entrance and held onto the prison-like bars, cold on the skin of his hands and cheeks. Everything looked so different in the dark, like his own night-driven thoughts filtered into real life and made it all look just that bit more unnerving. The winter had caused the trees to lose their stylish green coats, a rather ironic metaphor if you thought about it, but the wind had blown them all away and now they were bare and shivering. In the daytime they had a certain charm about them, the morning dew made them sparkle in the sunlight. But at night they were intimidating and violent. Their twisted arms raised in attack, ready to strangle any unsuspecting loiterers. Ryan would normally have felt uneasy, but right now he felt rather peaceful. As if he was looking at a small part of his own mind from an outsider's perspective, from a distance. It couldn't hurt him. And for once, he felt he was in control.

Another car passed, making Ryan jump. He shook himself out of the trance he'd fallen into, something that happened far too often. He'd go too deep into his thoughts and have short periods of complete obliviousness to the rest of the world. If he didn't realise it in time he'd blank out in one place and "wake up" in another. One minute he was watching TV with Charlie, for example, and the next minute he was in his room, with no recollection at all of walking up the stairs from the living room. This scared Ryan a lot as it meant that one day he could find himself in a dangerous, perhaps life-threatening, situation and not even know how he ended up there, or how to get out. It was only a matter of time before he wandered into oncoming traffic and not even notice the car about to hit him before it was too late.

And now he was doing it again. If he could just stop fucking thinking, for two seconds, maybe he might actually achieve something. Ryan sighed and continued his pointless journey. Hands in pockets, head bent low. The surface of his mind now took control, the part that talked to him, usually only active when he was lying wide awake in bed. The rest of the time it was smothered by the deeper parts of his mind, the dark parts that somehow said everything without saying anything.

"You know," the surface suddenly piped up. "There is a way to stop thinking forever." Ryan actually stopped short at this. He knew what his mind was getting at and he didn't like it one bit that it had managed to get there. He started running. He didn't acknowledge what he was doing, nor focus on where he was running to, he just wanted to get away from the place he had been. If he ran fast enough perhaps he could escape from the unwanted images that his brain produced, and if not that then, at least his body would be so focused on not having a heart attack that it wouldn't have time to send him death threats.

He didn't stop until he became aware of his footsteps, piercing the silence every half second. He almost collapsed onto the pavement and had to support himself with a nearby lamp post while he caught his breath, his lungs now on fire. Once his breathing had slowed and he was able to stand upright he looked around the abandoned street and worked out that he was now around twenty minutes away from Ashdene Ridge. He decided not to take the long route back like he usually did since it was too cold to stay out here for long and Ryan hadn't brought his coat. He didn't really notice the cold but he knew if he stayed outside for much longer he'd probably get very sick, and Ryan didn't want an excuse to stay in bed any more than he had to. Besides, the freezing air was stinging his eyes, and his legs were struggling to support him after his unexpected burst of energy. He had succeeded in making himself tired, and now what he wanted, no, needed, was sleep.

Twenty minutes later, he was back underneath his window, and in a few quick movements, he was on top of his bed, not even bothering to undress, and very soon he lay still and calm, his head finally listening to the rest of his body. His eyes were shut and his breathing was low. 2:38 am. This was a record. Maybe there was still hope of getting better.

Author's Note:

Okay, so definitely a little different from my previous Scorbus fanfictions, but I'm planning on this becoming my main "project" now. I really hope y'all like it, and I'll try and update as regularly as i can, but this hoe is in the middle of GCSE studies, so finding the time to write is gonna be tricky, but I will try as hard as i can to not let this fanfiction become *shudders* discontinued. Reviews would be awesome, especially since I know how small the fanbase is for The Dumping Ground, so hopefully this gets even a notice. Things you might want to know before I continue:

1. Yes, in case you haven't guessed yet, Ryan is gay.

2. Any love interests will probably be OCs

3. Don't click off, I too hate OCs as much as the next person, especially in The Dumping Ground fanbase where most fanfictions are riddled with OCs. None of my own characters will be residents of Ashdene Ridge, they will simply be there as school characters, and relationship purposes.

4. This fanfiction is set around, or just after, series 6, though I might touch on a few elements of the new series, for example, the slight friendship that seems to have formed between Ryan and Charlie. Though, I'm going to be expanding it here, mainly cos I love Charlie and I would like to write about her.

5. The title and quote at the beginning of the fic is from a Twenty Øne Piløts song by the same name, and I really recommend listening to it, I feel like it suits Ryan a lot, or at least, the Ryan in this fic.

7. Cover image is from Lewis G Hamilton's Instagram. All credit goes to him and the photographer. Hope i did that right, although honestly i wouldnt mind if Lewis copyrighted me, please take my money, you need more make up, you fabulous queen (seriously hAVE YOU SEEN HIS MAKE UP SKILLS? AM STILL IN AWE).

6. Uhhh, I think that's it? Any questions I'll answer in the author's notes of later chapters, so feel free to ask :)

Anything else?

...

Brendon Urie is our lord and saviour. Also stream Trench on ITunes