CATEGORY: Fluff
FEATURING: childish!Brendon and mature!Ryan
TRIGGER WARNINGS: A cactus incident
PROMPT: Brendon and Ryan go on a hike together in the desert.
WORD COUNT: 1,826 

"Well, here we are, Ryan announced as he pulled into the dusty roadside parking lot. There was little to look at out in the middle of the desert, except for cacti and distant mountains.

"This is it?" Brendon asked, puzzled. "There's nothing to do out here." And he was right: there were no obvious attractions. All that was man-made was a port-a-potty, and a sign about ten feet away from the car.

"There's desert." Ryan got out of the car, and Brendon reluctantly followed, watching and glancing around as Ryan got two water bottles, small backpacks, and sun hats from the back of the car. From a plastic bag, he also pulled out a tube of sunscreen, and started lathering up his arms. "Bren, you need to put on some sunscreen."

Brendon frowned and crossed his arms, in a pouty sort of way. He didn't like sunscreen; it made his skin all slimy and greasy. "I don't want to."

"I'll put it on for you," Ryan coaxed in a sweet tone, the one Brendon could never say no to. He patted the back of the car. "Come on, sit."

Reluctantly, the other man sat down and let Ryan smear sunscreen on his arms, legs, neck, and face. Ryan did his face last, carefully rubbing the skin protector around Brendon's nose. When Brendon leaned away in protest, Ryan leaned closer. "Hold on, I think I missed a spot."

"I'm not a baby," Brendon said, reaching his hand up to rub in the sunscreen the rest of the way. Seeming satisfied, Ryan nodded to Brendon, and the other man hopped out of the car again.

Ryan slammed the back door, locking the car up with a click of the button on his keychain, and then led the way over to the sign Brendon initially spotted.

Hurricane Desert, the sign read. So-named for the massive hurricane that came over the land in 1856, which drove out the few residents of the land. In 1904, the area was chosen to be preserved as a national park by President--

Brendon stopped reading the sign. It was boring. He looked around the desert some more, hoping to spy a waterpark or carnival or something fun in the distance. Nope. All he could see was dust. And cacti. There was definitely a lot of that.

Ryan was still reading the sign, and Brendon wanted to tell him to hurry up, but Ryan was his boyfriend, and Brendon loved him quite a bit. So, he tried to occupy himself with other things while he waited. He scuffled his feet in the dust, but that only got his shoes dirty. He looked to the sky to see if there were any birds, but the sun was so bright that it hurt his eyes. He pulled out his phone to see if anyone was saying anything interesting on his Snapchat, but found that he didn't have a signal.

Just when Brendon thought he would die from boredom, Ryan finished reading the sign. He handed Brendon one of the small backpacks, a water bottle, and a sun hat. "Ready?"

The other man was still puzzled by all of this. "What are we even doing out here, anyway?"

"Hiking, silly." Ryan kissed Brendon's cheek; the latter wondered if he tasted like sunscreen. "Weren't you listening earlier?"

"I was listening to the stereo," Brendon admitted. Ryan had let Brendon choose the music for the trip, and he had brought every single Queen CD he owned. He wasn't sure how he felt about the idea of hiking, although really, he should have expected it. His boyfriend enjoyed outdoor activities.

Ryan rolled his eyes. "Of course."

"I'm a sucker for Queen, Ry, you know that." Brendon crossed his arms again. "Why are we hiking?"

Ryan started walking down a dusty, faintly visible trail. "Because it's a bonding experience for the both of us, and besides, it's good to be out in nature."

Brendon wasn't so sure about that, but he let his boyfriend lead him out into the desert.

--- --- --- --- ---

The desert by the sign at the head of the trail was almost exactly the same as the desert along the hike: dust, dirt, and cacti, as Brendon had predicted. Occasionally, there was a tumbleweed, or a small sign indicating something on the map Ryan had picked up by the first sign, probably a historical landmark or something. Brendon wasn't much interested in the signs, or the indents in the ground that indicated old homesteads, or the miles and miles of desert. But he loved Ryan, so he would put up with it. At least for a while.

The sun, a gigantic ball of fire in the middle of the sky, was beating down on the desert, and with no cloud in the sky, there was little chance of relief. It was blazing hot, the kind of hot that makes your skin burn. Brendon was glad that Ryan had made him put on sunscreen, because he definitely would have been bright red by now if he hadn't.

Hiking itself was rather boring and uneventful for Brendon. He would walk along the dusty trail with his boyfriend, stopping only when Ryan saw a sign from the map, and had to read about it.

They hiked for what seemed like, and probably was, hours. Brendon found that, as the sun started to go down, the air became much cooler. It was almost invigorating, giving him new energy, and making him almost happy to be there, out in the desert with his boyfriend.

At first, Ryan kept a close eye on Brendon. The latter man could find trouble in almost any situation, whether he was 'setting a bear trap' the time they went camping, or 'hunting for alligators' the time they went fishing. Brendon, in fact, seemed to draw in trouble the way Scooby-Doo seemed to draw in mysteries.

But after a while, Ryan loosened up. Perhaps he figured there wasn't much Brendon could get up to in the middle of nowhere. The man was distracted by a particularly interesting landmark, and as he paused to read the sign (and his map), Brendon kicked into high gear.

Adrenaline was coursing through him. How could he have ever been bored of the desert before? It was so exciting! All these different things to look at and explore. Maybe he could find a coyote, or a rattlesnake!

Since the dust was boring, Brendon decided to investigate a cactus plant. There were loads of them around, and he hadn't really looked closely at one yet. He bounded over to the nearest one, which had wide, pale green leaves the size of a frozen waffle, and thorns the size of a grain of rice.

Brendon was feeling kind of hungry. Thirsty, too: he'd finished all his water about two miles ago, and though Ryan had let him have some of his, it still wasn't enough to quench his thirst.

Suddenly, Brendon remembered something he'd learned from one of Ryan's nature shows last week. He'd watched with mild curiosity as a wild boar had taken a huge bite out of a cactus, revealing liquid inside. The narrator of the show had explained that cacti stored the water in their leaves for later use during the hotter months. The cacti in front of Brendon probably had loads of water, and all he had to do was take a bite!

The man inspected the cacti carefully choosing a leaf that didn't see to have any spikes on it. He grabbed onto it with his bare hands and gave a big tug.

Nothing. Hmm. Maybe he wasn't pulling hard enough. Brendon tugged harder on the leaf, but it still stayed firmly stuck to the cactus. At this point, Brendon was starting to get annoyed. He just wanted a drink!

The man clutched the cactus leaf tightly, and with all of his strength, he pulled hard. The cactus plant became uprooted, and as Brendon fell over, the cactus fell down on top of him.

The spines weren't the needle-length, dangerous kind, but the small, painful kind that were hard to get out without a pair of tweezers. Besides being covered in the tiny spines, Brendon was also being crushed under the surprising weight of the cactus.

"RYAN!" Brendon shouted, and immediately, the other man dropped his map and came running.

When he saw the situation his boyfriend had gotten himself into, Ryan couldn't help but laugh. "You poor idiot."

"I was trying to get water from it, cause I was thirsty," Brendon whined. "Help me out, Ry, it hurts."

Immediately softening, the other man managed to lift the cactus off of Brendon; thankfully, Ryan had brought gloves just in case. He then leaned in close to give his boyfriend a once-over. Brendon had tiny spines on his hands, arms, legs, and shirt, but luckily he'd caught the cactus with his hands instead of his face, so he wasn't in any serious danger.

Brendon was scratching at the spines, messily trying to get them out. Ryan grabbed Brendon's hand. "Honey, don't. You'll make it worse." With a sigh, Ryan slid his arms under him and lifted him up into his arms with a grunt. "Can't take you anywhere, can I?"

--- --- --- --- ---

Hiking the six miles back to the car while carrying his boyfriend was no picnic, but Ryan managed. When he got back to the parking lot, he opened up the back of the car and instructed Brendon to sit, which he did. Ryan got a pair of tweezers, some antiseptic, and a few band-aids out of the first aid kit.

He cleaned the tweezers with the antiseptic, just to be safe. "I need you to sit still and be good for me, okay?"

Brendon bit his bottom lip, anticipating how much it would hurt with an unpleasant worry in his stomach. "Okay."

To his credit, even though it hurt, Brendon was able to stay still the whole time, as Ryan went over his hands, arms, shirt, and legs, picking out all of the spines and applying antiseptic and band-aids as needed.

Once he was done, Brendon wasn't in pain anymore, but he was tired. It had been a long day of hiking and cactus attacks, and he was very sleepy. His eyes were half closed, and he was too tired to even drink all of the water Ryan gave him.

Without a word, Ryan scooped up Brendon and put him in the passenger seat of the car, starting the engine and pulling out of the parking lot. Before they even got back on the interstate, Brendon was sound asleep, and Ryan couldn't help marveling at his boyfriend with a soft smile, as Queen played quietly in the background.