Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Shane thinks things through too hard to ever really slip up — at least not in any substantial way — not with Ryan, anyway. But he thinks about it. He thinks about reaching out and touching the dark hair at the nape of Ryan’s neck, wrapping his arms around him while they’re both a little too drunk. It’s not that he doesn’t think about it, though, slipping up, and all the ways it could happen. But that wouldn’t be a slip up then, would it? No, then it would just be dishonest. It would be on purpose.

On purpose isn’t gonna work here. Shane knows that. He knows it in the same way he knows that even if something were to happen it could never be simple. It was simple, once. If you find the right person, it can be simple, but even then simple doesn’t mean perfect, and simple isn’t always a dealbreaker. Just... it was nice while it lasted.

It’s nice to get into bed with another warm body, and know, intimately, all the ways in which your bodies fit that has nothing to do with sex. It’s nice to find familiarity in the smell of someone’s hair and the sight of their coffee mug alongside yours in the sink, and to fold their laundry alongside yours, or just leave it all unfolded, to cool and wrinkle while you both bingewatch Netflix instead.

And anyway, these things aren’t Ryan. (Well, maybe the Netflix.) But no, Shane knows Ryan — Shane’s been friends with Ryan long enough to know that it would be more like rows and rows of sneakers that wouldn’t fit in Shane’s ridiculously small entryway and takeaway containers instead of twinned coffee cups and it would be— fuck— Ryan craves touch in a way Shane doesn’t and even thinking about it feels very unfair to Shane because they aren’t that. They aren’t in a position where it should be okay for Shane to be thinking about any kind of touch beyond a casual pulling close of bodies — arm around Ryan’s shoulders which still somehow still feel small and delicate beneath all that muscle to Shane. Like the residual touch is still there, lingering. Like Shane’s been closer to him than other people which, he knows, he hasn’t.

But then, also, it would be a lie to say that he has never slipped up accidentally on purpose. It would be a lie to say he’s never let his fingers brush Ryan’s when he didn’t have to, didn’t reach out with every intention to touch when Ryan lets himself get carried away by a wildly overactive imagination. It’s just that that can’t happen a lot. It shouldn’t really happen ever, but Shane is not a man who’s ever reigned himself in when it comes to pleasure. Outside of the places pleasure is usually imagined to be. It’s not that it doesn’t exist there for him, it does. But he just feels better outside of it. When the pressure is off, when…

When he doesn’t have to be the one that loses control.

Shane Madej is a carefully constructed version of a person and it’s safe there, behind this easy-going mask. He’s attractive and untouchable at the same time. It makes him feel like a real fucking dick if he thinks about it for too long which, sometimes, he does, but not enough like a dick to stop. It’s safe.

And then anyway, he reminds himself, he doesn’t owe anybody anything. It’s just a question of whether or not he allows people to see that he’s sort of…

—

Ryan wakes up in the backseat of the car. The crew is on their way back from a ghost hunt. Up front, TJ is driving, listening a podcast about something. The car is otherwise quiet, though, so Ryan knows that the others are asleep. He shifts, groaning softly as he works a kink out of the juncture between his shoulder and his neck.

Beside him, Shane is fast asleep, and kind of all tangled up. He's got one ankle crossed over his knee, but he's slouched so far down in the seat that his sweater's ridden up in the back. He looks like a grasshopper, Ryan thinks, legs too long, knee pressed hard into the back of TJ's seat in front of him. One of his hands is half up over his face, fingers hanging loosely over his eyes and nose, elbow braced in another angular contortion against the window. There's something different about Shane's face like this — when he's asleep, when he isn't so aware of other people's eyes on him. He's got a softness about him that almost looks sad or concerned, and Ryan catches himself staring.

Even after years of friendship, Ryan still never really sees Shane unguarded. He's been unguarded in front of Shane hundreds of times — through his last breakup, through his anxieties about work and Unsolved and being suddenly internet famous. It's a lot sometimes, it's a lot to be recognized on the street. It's a lot to watch the things he puts on his Twitter blow up before his eyes. Shane's sort of grounded him through that because Shane honestly doesn't care. Shane kind of thinks it’s all bullshit, but Ryan… Ryan honestly doesn't know how he would have done this whole thing without Shane.

And God, Ryan wishes that he could be like that — as uncaring as Shane appears to be, because it seems so effortless. He found Shane kind of unapproachable at first, because he's an imposing presence — he's a big man, but he is also so surprisingly soft-spoken. Shane yelling sounds like a man who's never yelled in his life, Ryan thinks. It's like it takes so long to travel from his diaphragm to his lips that it gets muffled and wrung out. It loses momentum on its journey up through Shane's ribs, tangles up in his throat before it emerges too soft and sort of strangled, and Ryan sort of loves it. Thinks it's hilarious and powerful anyway, because he can't just let go with such abandon like that. He's too held in, inside. He's held in inside like Shane has to hold himself in on the outside — mindful of all the parts of his body at once, always so careful of how he moves and in the words he chooses. Sometimes Ryan thinks that if they were somehow combined into one person they would make something laughably terrible.

He thinks laughably terrible is probably the most likely outcome.

But, sometimes, he thinks… maybe something whole.

—

The whole thing just sort of glides gently to a halt. It’s not that Shane thought it was going to be a forever thing, but he also didn’t really think about the end of it either. He isn’t really a person that looks too far into the future.

The thing with Sara is that she’s just as level-headed and removed from things as he is, at last on the surface, and for a while that worked. It worked out really fucking well, and there was something so good about sharing a space and a bed with someone else. It was such a no-pressure situation, and both of them retreated so often to their own separate thoughts that they could be in a room together for hours without saying a single thing and it was comforting. Companionable. It fixed that loneliness in Shane that he so often felt when he was still living in Illinois that he tried to fill with work and friends and long, long nights.

Shane is a lot better at kissing people who he doesn’t have an obligation to go further with. He’s also good at sleeping with friends once or twice or a handful of times without it ever becoming a Thing. Sara is the first time it’s ever been exclusive, and it’s not that they stopped having sex, it was more that they just… other things came up. There were other things to do, time was limited, and then he was so often away doing shoots for Unsolved and she was working on her art.

They talked about it, of course. Shane laid it all out on the table for her, but he chose his words carefully. How do you tell someone you care about that sex sometimes feels like a task — performative, pointless — without sounding like you’re saying ‘sex with you feels performative, sex with you sounds like a task.’ But there were so many other, better things to do with someone you cared about. It’s not you, it’s me.

It’s me, it’s me, it’s me.

But she got it. He thinks. And then that worked for a while too, because now that their feelings were all straightened away, they could get back to business, back to companionability. Until things started to shift. His priorities for one. He should have known Sara wasn’t going to just sit back and take that for long.

“I just mean— you know, you’re away a lot.”

“I, yeah, it’s… yeah, it’s a lot. But True Crime’s filming in six weeks and I’ll be here—”

“But you won’t be. You’ll be at work or going out for drinks after work and I never get to see you.”

“Y— I… come out. You should come out, I want you there.”

“It doesn’t feel like you want me there.”

“Sara… yes I do.”

“You pay attention to Ryan and everyone, you ignore me.”

“I’m not, I don’t ignore you, you’re just so quiet. You just get so quiet, it’s—”

“Well I’m quiet because I don’t want to be there, but it’s the only time I ever get to see you.”

Shane goes quiet, looking away, and the silence stretches out between them. She looks even smaller than usual, tucked into one corner of the couch — too finely boned or something, but she’s fierce and he knows it, and he can feel the energy rolling off of her like waves and he doesn’t know what to say. Finally he just gives in, lets himself go under because he’s— because she deserves better.

“I’m sorry. No, I’ll come home.”

“But then they know it’s me, that I’m the one that doesn’t want you there—” her voice cracks, just a little. It cracks something in Shane.

“Sar…”

“I don’t want your friends to hate me.”

“Jesus, Sara, they don’t. They’re your friends, too.”

“It’s different,” she says, steady again.

“No,” Shane protests, but he’s got nothing to follow it up with.

She turns her face away to the TV which is just the empty, blue channel screen, waiting for the console to be turned on so that they can use Netflix. He can feel that something’s coming, so he braces himself for it, shifting his weight onto one hip, then both feet evenly, suddenly very aware of everything in this room — the way the floor feels beneath his feet, the smell of this place, the soft click click clicking of the heater, the couch they’ve spent hundreds of evenings on together. This familiar apartment, theirs, the one they moved into together, and the fact that she’s been living here alone, mostly, just like he’s a ghost — all his things scattered about amongst hers, his jacket hanging on the hook by the door, his towel damp from the shower, but he’s just… he’s somewhere else.

Like she’s reading him, she says “You’re not even really here when you’re here anymore.”

He feels a little like he’s falling, and that surprises him. The excuses come first, but he bites his tongue and looks at her, but she won’t meet his eyes. She’s still staring at the TV screen. He doesn’t want to give her any more excuses, it’s just that…

“Yeah. I don’t know why that is.”

“I do,” She says, and looks back at him.

“Then, okay, so tell me, and I’ll fix it.”

She squints a little, scrunches up her face into a kind of sympathetic smile. “I don’t think so. ‘Cause like…” she sighs. “They’re right.”

“Who?”

“Everyone. The—” she spreads her arms out and says, with a touch of irony, “The internet.”

He searches her eyes and then shakes his head a little. “The internet is most definitely wrong.”

“Nuh uh.” Somehow she says nuh uh with authority. “And anyway, I already guessed. Like before Unsolved.”

Suddenly he knows where this is going. “Oh for fucks sake.” He breaks his steadiness, walks to the couch and sits down at the other end.

“I think,” Sara says, “It’s time to figure out what we’re doing here. You know, reassess?”

“What we’re doing?” Shane asks.

“Yeah… like what are we doing? Because I don’t think…”

Shane feels suddenly sick and shakes his head. “No no no. Nope, Sara, no.”

“We’ve been living like roommates for months,” Sara says, “I barely feel like your friend anymore.”

He takes a breath and leans forward over his knees, hands over his face. And he goes over it, over the last few months — almost a year. He goes back over all the texts she’s sent that went unanswered or forgotten. He thinks about waiting too late to call her to say goodnight on ghost hunts and about all the nights he’s gone out with the crew instead of come home to her. He thinks about her single supper dishes from nights previous when he arrives home while she’s still at work and about how there’s no more of his coffee in the apartment because he’s barely home enough to drink it. He thinks about the way she said the cat would be nice because then it wouldn’t be lonely.

The silence spools out and out like this endless thread until Shane’s run out of things to think, and this thing they’ve created between them reaches the very edges of its power, spread thin and thinner until finally:

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and they both let it break.

—

Things move rather swiftly after that. He and Sara have been on a month-to-month lease for over a year now, and they both decide that it’s better that neither of them keeps this place. They couldn’t afford it on a single income anyway, not in L.A., and neither of them wants to bring a roommate in.

They’re still friends. That’s the thing that makes it okay, the whole thing goes down very quietly, very smoothly, and suddenly Shane finds himself browsing through rental ads on his desktop computer instead of working, on a Wednesday morning at the office.

Ryan appears at his shoulder so suddenly that Shane panics a little, and he can’t quite quit the internet fast enough so he just slams the monitor to sleep instead. Ryan apparently hasn’t noticed a thing, in spite of the fact that Shane’s ears feel hot, and he just flailed about like a teenager trying to hide porn from his mother.

“Hey,” Ryan sounds out of breath, but he’s smiling as he takes off his stupid hipster hat (which is a lot like Shane’s very own stupid hipster hat), revealing wildly mussed hair and Shane takes a moment to marvel at the fact that Ryan can be dishevelled, sweaty, bespectacled, and slightly red in the face and still manage to look— just really fucking adorable in an effortless, utterly unselfconscious way that Shane could never in his life hope to achieve.

He’s in a good mood. He opens his hands up in a short expansive gesture, not unlike a Mafia boss and says “Your shit’s all over my desk.”

“Yeah, well, I’m working,” Shane says, reaching out to take his laptop out of Ryan’s space.

“You’ve written two words,” Ryan says, eyes on the laptop screen.

“Well— real art takes time.”

“It says ‘HOT DAAAAWG’ and nothing else,” Ryan informs him.

“Yes, I know Ryan, look… I can’t expect everyone to understand the workings of a true genius, all right?”

“More like doofus,” Ryan shoots back.

“Yes, all right,” Shane says, in this long-suffering way. He shuts the laptop and looks back at the black screen of his desktop wondering if he can quit a program while the computer is asleep.

“You okay, Big Guy?” Ryan asks, and there’s something a little softer in his voice and it plucks at something in Shane and he almost — he almost says ‘not really.’

Instead he wheels back in his chair, plants one booted foot on the edge of his desk and gives Ryan a serious look over his own glasses. “Oh… I could use a coffee break, Ryan.”

“You’ve only been here for half an hour and you already need a break.”

“Hey man, who rolled in late?” Shane asks, kicking at Ryan’s chair. Ryan braces himself but still slides back a little. Shane laughs softly and pulls himself to standing, gently taps the back of Ryan’s chair. “Come on.”

—

Something’s wrong. Ryan knows it. It’s actually not super hard to tell with Shane. Anymore. It used to be — it used to be that he thought Shane was this sort of impenetrable wall with no feelings or emotions at all, but then he got to know him, and he can see it now. Still, that’s not exactly super helpful if he still doesn’t know what to do, and most of the time he doesn’t, because Shane doesn’t often accept help from others. And that infuriates Ryan, but there’s really not a lot he can do about that fact. This is just how they are, and Ryan accepts a lot of things about a lot of people because he cares about them. Because he’s maybe a little too nice, a little too kind — a little too soft, some would say, but that’s just him. It’s him, and just like he can’t change Shane, he can’t really change that about himself either. It’s not even that Ryan dislikes it, per se. It’s rather more the fact that he’s a gentle person in a world that isn’t.

And that’s hard sometimes.

And Shane is like this juxtaposition because he’s gentle too, in a weird, distant way that boarders on the untouchable. He makes Ryan want to be untouchable too, because there’s a lot to unpack in Shane that Ryan doesn’t really fully understand, and he never knows for certain if Shane is humouring him or if he’s genuine and the fact that Ryan can never, never tell makes him feel like he’s constantly on guard, and maybe friendships shouldn’t feel like that at all.

It’s just that the idea of not being friends with Shane does something uncomfortable to his chest that he doesn’t want to deal with day in and day out. It’s fine if it’s just a little passing twinge, whenever he thinks about Shane walking away from him — because there’s no way Ryan could ever walk away from someone like Shane — but when he thinks about the possibility of that sitting there in the cavity of his chest, hurting and hurting, day in and day out that’s… that’s something different altogether, and he doesn’t know if he can do that again, so soon after Helen. He doesn’t ever want to do it again, if he’s being completely honest, and so yeah, maybe there’s a little bit of Ryan that’s he sealed away so it doesn’t get hurt anymore.

The problem with that, is that it stops you really feeling the good stuff, too. Ryan isn’t totally sure on how to do both and still make it through all right in the end. In the end, he doesn’t let himself think about it too much, because it gets really complicated really fast, and there’s this whole mess of creepy, crawly things he doesn’t want to think about beneath the façade of calm seas and calm skies that he tries (and mostly fails) to create, but it’s better than being raw and vulnerable.

So. Something’s wrong with Shane. Ryan knows this, but he doesn’t know what to do about it, so he ends up just being hyper-aware of him at work all day, mostly unhelpful, talking too much, he thinks, while they both try to do work. He can see the total lack of motivation in Shane, moving from one task to the other without finishing any of it, real far away. But he’s on. When he has to be. He’s smiling and chatting and even helps out with a few quick interviews and videos some of the newer employees are trying. It’s only when it’s just him and Ryan that he slips back underneath that thin layer of what’s normal for Shane where he's too quiet, and which is really only a couple of notches, Ryan thinks, but he notices.

He doesn’t ask him if he’s okay again, because it’s times like these that Shane gets annoyed too quickly. Instead he just sticks close by. At lunch, and breaks, Ryan joins a conversation if it looks like Shane’s getting worn down by it. Sometimes Ryan wonders why other people can’t see it, the way Shane taps out of conversations, the way he becomes only half-there. He lets Shane slip into his silences and takes over instead and there’s a moment, the briefest of seconds after the second or third time Ryan’s jumped in over pizza lunch upstairs in the caf that Shane alters his stance, shifts his weight, and leans into Ryan so fast it’s almost like he briefly overbalanced. But Ryan feels it, and he tenses up a little so that he doesn’t reach out and hold on — keep him steady.

After work Shane seems sort of lost. He gathers up his things in a scattered, distracted way, losing track of his thermos more than once, murmuring “Where’s—?” softly to himself, and Ryan pushes his chair back and pushes himself up by the arms of it to look over the desks towards Sara’s, but he doesn’t see her. “You sure you’re going to be able to find your way home, buddy?” he teases, dropping into his seat again.

“Tryin’,” Shane says, and smiles, but Ryan thinks he didn’t really hear him. Shane gathers up everything, fingers lingering on the zipper of his bag as he closes it up and Ryan doesn’t know what to do other than reach out again, even if the answer’s going to be no, and says “What are you doing tonight?”

“Oh, you know, just—” Shane take a breath like he’s going to let out the hugest sigh, but it never comes. “Probably more work.”

“Mm… or, you could come over and play Mario Kart.”

Shane tenses, relaxes. Ryan watches him in a mixture of uncertain fascination. Sometimes he wonders how the hell Shane holds himself together at all. He reminds him of those wooden giraffes you press the bottom of, and they all just collapse into this weird, broken heap of awkward limbs.

“You’re a giraffe. A giraffe man,” Ryan adds, and Shane laughs out loud, and something breaks in him — cracks straight down the middle, and when he looks at Ryan, it’s the first time he’s been present all day and he says. “Yeah, okay.”

—

He knows that it’s not right. He knows that he shouldn’t be coming to Ryan’s after he and Sara literally just talked about this — about how this was part of the problem, but it’s just so easy. It’s so easy to be here, and space out, and let his muscle memory work the game controls. And it’s bright colours and laughter and the familiar smell of Ryan’s apartment. It’s just very very simple, being here. And he doesn’t have to do anything or be anyone, really — not when their attention is directed elsewhere. But he knows it won’t last forever. It can’t.

That being thought, though, it’s still very late when Ryan puts the controller down and rubs his eyes and says “Oh God, I don’t think I was blinking,” and Shane knows what comes next. He knows it with such certainty that his laugh is just a whisper, and not really genuine at all and he waits.

“Whoa, holy shit, it’s late. You want me to drive you home, dude?”

There it is. Shane thought he was ready. He forces himself to believe that he is, but still, his hand comes up on Ryan’s side to toy with the arm of his glasses, and he hides behind it as he says, “Yeah… no I… here’s a— uh.”

Ryan shifts or tenses, Shane feels it, but doesn’t look. He doesn’t have to look at Ryan at all to know he swallows, that he opens his mouth to say something, and then doesn’t — he’s leaving it up to Shane and Shane’s silence and it’s such a relief and such a frustration all at once because then all Shane’s left with are his thoughts, and the words he’s got to say, circling over and over in his head in different formations until he can figure out which one is right.

“I’m looking for a new place. Sara and I just figured…”

“What?” Ryan asks, and — christ, Shane hears it in his voice — how much he feels that. But there’s something else there, too, and it’s curious enough that Shane looks over.

“Yup. It’s, you know, but it’s all good, it wasn’t a terrible thing.” It sort of feels like a terrible thing. It also sort of doesn’t. There’s something looser in him now that he feels guilty for feeling. “We’re fine, like as friends. As people. It’s just— the whole living together and… it wasn’t really…”

“Wait, so… are you still together? You’re just going to live in separate… what?”

“No, Ryan,” Shane says, and it comes out frustrated but really, he’s just bone fucking tired. “No, we’re done. We broke up. But like I said, it’s… it’s fine.”

“But I don’t— you guys were…”

Shane sighs. “I know. We weren’t though. And I just— we just hashed this out last night, I’m not ready to do it again. Please, Ryan?” Shane says without meeting Ryan’s eyes.

“No, okay. Hey, that’s fine, man.”

A silence settles. The kind Shane hates. The kind that means he’s been too thoughtless again. “Sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be. I get it.”

And Shane knows he does, sort of, but not the whole thing. He doesn’t get it completely because Shane knows that he and Sara were moving further away from one another, drifting apart, and it was so slow and so quiet that he hadn’t let himself notice until it was too late, and he knows, because he’s honest with himself most of the time, that he knew it. He knew it and he didn’t change it and now…

“Well, you can crash here,” Ryan says. “As long as you need to, if you want, I don’t mind. It could be— hell, it’ll be fun, if you do. But I— I get if you want some time alone, I was… I get it. Just if you ever need somewhere, you can always—”

“Okay,” Shane says, and his voice shakes. It’s mortifying so he keeps going, fast. “Yeah, that’s, okay, I’ll th—I’ll think about it.”

But he isn’t going to think about it. He should, but he isn’t, and he feels like the world’s literal biggest fucking asshole, because this is the thing that really ended it with Sara. The fact that Shane’s always with Ryan. The fact that Shane feels something for Ryan he doesn’t feel for her and here he is, not even forty-eight hours out of a breakup, already here, already planning to stay at Ryan’s. And he half wants to tell him all of it, right now because it’s huge and dark in his chest, it leeches into the spaces of his mind he wants to keep clear and free of anything that hurts, anything that scares him but he’s been shutting it out and shutting it down for so long that the holds are bowing against the weight of it.

“You want to… you want to get your ass kicked on Rainbow Road?”

Shane’s startled into a laugh, a genuine one, but it’s kind of cracked and weird, but he’s already reaching for the controller.

The track is chosen and the light flashes red, red, green, and Shane’s barely seeing the screen, eyes unfocussed.

“Thanks,” he says, softly.

Ryan smashes his kart into Shane’s in response and Shane’s goes flying off the side. “God—damn,” Shane says, louder.

Ryan laughs and looks over briefly as Shane’s side of the screen reloads. “It’s okay man. You’ll be fine, just keep going.”

Shane nods and pretends, like Ryan does, that it’s not about anything more than this stupid game.

But he can breathe again.

—

It’s a Friday night but they stay up later than is advisable anyway. Ryan’s got a nasty headache building behind his eyes from staring for so long at the screen, but he didn’t have the heart to leave Shane out here alone with his thoughts while Ryan went to bed. He knows it’s got to happen eventually, but…

He lets Shane call it. Lets him lose spectacularly (again) and then drop his controller onto the floor in mock outrage, and then falls back against the far corner of the couch, pushing his glasses up into his hair as he rubs his eyes. “All right.”

“You finally admit defeat?”

Shane stutters through a few half-formed syllables and then says “Ugh,” with such feeling that Ryan laughs.

He leaves Shane to it while he goes to take out his contacts then heads to his own room for bed. Shane’s sitting crosslegged in the centre of the couch, looking like some sort of huge, ridiculous child. His legs are so long that Ryan is somehow almost unsurprised that he still can’t quite comprehend how Shane’s body works. He watches him pull the couch blanket down over his lap, then up to his face to smell it. Ryan makes a vaguely disgusted face at him.

“Who was here?” Shane asks. “That is some— potent cologne.”

“That’s— jesus christ,” Ryan laughs. “What’s wrong with you? It’s Tucker’s, probably.”

“Holy shit. This is going to give me hallucinogenic dreams. I’m going to astral project.”

“Stop— stop sniffing the blanket. And if you do astral project, at least do it quietly.”

Shane’s still got the blanket up over his nose. He drops it. “Good lord.”

“Good night, you fucking freak,” Ryan laughs.

And he feels sort of okay about it now — leaving Shane out there by himself, but Shane’s different from him. Shane doesn’t need people around to distract him like Ryan does, like Ryan has in his situation. It’s just that Ryan’s not good at being a friend that leaves people alone when he knows that they’re hurting.

He’s not actually really sure he’s good at being Shane’s friend at all. And it’s a dark thought, and not one he has all that often, but sometimes — when he’s feeling particularly stupid or annoying or just… when he remembers that sometimes he and Shane are total fucking polar opposites…

It’s just that he doesn’t know what to do for him. Sometimes he feels like there’s a lot more take on his end than give, but Shane won’t let him in. Or Ryan doesn’t know how to earn it, and fuck — so much of Shane feels like it has to be earned.

When he comes out in the morning, Shane’s still asleep, or pretending to be, or wishing to be. Ryan leaves him alone and tries to be quiet as he gets some water and then decides he might as well go down to the gym in the creepy basement of his building, since there’s not a lot he can do with Shane taking up the whole couch in the only real room in his place that isn’t his bedroom. So he writes a note and goes.

The gym is a little less creepy in the morning, he realizes, with the sun coming in through the eastern facing windows. Also, there’s nobody down here except for some old dude on the rowing machine. It’s kind of nice. He puts his music in and starts.

Shane’s awake when he comes back. Ryan can tell, but he’s still twisted mostly away from the room, and his arm is up over his face so Ryan lets him be while he showers. By the time he’s emerged, dressed and damp-haired, Shane’s sitting up, running his fingers through his own hair to tame it, but it still sticks out weirdly on one side where it’s getting too long.

“Hey,” Ryan says, and drops down onto the couch beside him.

“Hey,” Shane says and looks at him, and Ryan wonders how bad his eyes really are without his glasses which are still on the coffee table. Shane looks softer, somehow, when his eyes aren’t quite focused. Like he can be a little more in his head if the world around him doesn’t look as solid.

Man, Ryan cannot imagine what it must be like to live as Shane.

“Tell you what,” Shane says. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”

And Ryan isn’t going to say no to that.

—

There’s a part of this that feels a little dishonest. Shane thinks it as they eat breakfast together. But he tries not to think about it as the weekend spreads out ahead of them and the sun shines through the window of the restaurant booth they’re seated at, and he has waffles and coffee with free refills and

“This is exactly the kind of old person diner I should have known you would enjoy,” Ryan informs him.

“I’m ten thousand years old,” Shane says.

“Oh good, so you’ll be dead soon, and I can have those hashbrowns you’re letting sit there and get cold.”

“I’m getting to them,” Shane says in mock outrage.

“They’re just— you’ve abandoned them, look at how sad they are.”

Shane stares him down as he fits the largest forkful of hashbrowns he can possibly get into his mouth and Ryan laughs. Shane doesn’t break gaze as he chews through it. It’s really— it’s a lot of potato.

After the bit, though, he slides his plate over, hashbrowns side to Ryan. “Go on,” he says.

“I thought you didn’t like to share food.”

He shrugs one shoulder. “I’m making an exception for you.”

“In return for sleeping on my couch?”

“Well, I— no. Well, yes, partially.”

“Which is it, dude?” Ryan laughs, taking a bite of Shane’s proffered breakfast.

“Yes, for that.”

“Noncommittal, of course. Cop out,” Ryan challenges.

“Yes Ryan, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had, that’s why you get my hashbrowns.”

“There you go. Wow, holy shit, I can’t believe I squeezed that out of you. You’re like a lemon.”

“I’m like a—” Shane wheezes.

Ryan grins hard, but something goes serious in his eyes, Shane watches it happen over the edge of his coffee mug.

“Stay as long as you want.” Those brown eyes drop, and Shane watches Ryan finger the edge of Shane’s plate before he gently slides it back to him. “I like having you there.”

“That’s imposing.”

“Definitely not,” Ryan says. “You force me to go to the gym in the morning. It works out for both of us.”

“I hate your couch.”

“Well… beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Is this a— okay,” Shane laughs. “I guess that’s true.”

And then they don’t really talk about it again, for a while.

—

They wait out the weekend. Ryan privately thinks that Shane might be waiting to see if this whole thing blows over with Sara. At least if it were him, that’s what he would be doing. But then again, Shane’s not him, and maybe Shane’s not.

And he wasn’t lying when he said they were still okay, him and Sara. She texts him a couple of times. One of them — the one that Ryan sees accidentally — is a meme. They’re still liking one another’s posts on Instagram. It’s weird, Ryan thinks, because for him it’s just so all or nothing, but with Shane… that’s just not how Shane works.

But they don’t really talk about it, and somehow, come Monday evening, Ryan finds himself accompanying Shane to view an apartment. It’s mostly because he’s the one with the car and it’s a little further out than Shane and Sara’s old place. It’s nice, actually, and just on the cusp of unaffordable, but Shane could probably swing it, Ryan thinks. Anyway, that’s just Los Angeles.

It’s not bad. There’s no gross carpet, it’s got big windows and the view doesn’t suck. There’s even a dishwasher. And yet, when Shane meets his eyes as if to ask his opinion, as if it matters, Ryan says “It’s kinda far from work, though,” and Shane agrees. Still, he takes the form and says he’ll think about it.

They’re both quiet in the car, Shane scrolling through his phone, and they decide to go view one more place, since it’s the only rental agent Shane could get ahold of on such short notice. It’s a four story walk-up and it’s actually pretty cool. “These ceilings are high enough that you might be able to stand up straight,” Ryan jokes. The floors are dark wood and the walls are washed white. There’s old fashioned radiators and a real fireplace (it doesn’t work, to Shane’s very genuine disappointment), and it’s actually really nice. It would be a great place for Shane — the living room is big enough to have people over — it’s actually a pretty big place for the price. Shane takes this rental form too and they’re back in the car again and he’s typing things into his phone calculator.

“It’s uh… that was a good one.”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, eyes on the road, on his mirrors, on the road. Anywhere but Shane and his forms and his calculations.

“I wonder if I could convince them to let me do something with that fireplace…”

“You don’t need a fireplace, it’s Los Angeles.”

“Says the guy who’s cold as soon as it hits below 65.”

“Below 65 is cold! Anyway, I dunno. Maybe you should keep looking.”

“You think?”

“Yeah…” Ryan reaches up and pulls down the car’s visor even though the sun isn’t quite in his eyes. He taps the steering wheel, absently. “Anyway… the floorboards were squeaky.”

“The fl—“ Shane wheezes. “Well, yeah, Ryan, it’s an old building.”

“That would get pretty annoying.”

“I wouldn’t even notice that.”

“Squeak squeak squeak,” says Ryan.

“That fireplace though,” Shane says.

“Squeaky squeaky.”

“Look, I’m— I’m also just trying to get out of your hair,” Shane says.

“You’re not,” Ryan tells him. “In it. I already told you, I like having you there. It’s fun.”

“It’s… I don’t like your couch.”

“Wh— you want to take the bed?”

“No, Ryan,” Shane says, with such seriousness that Ryan glances at him.

“No, seriously. I love my couch. Or we could trade. Then you’re guaranteed at least a few good nights’ sleep a week.”

“I— I’m not taking your bed. I’m not going to force you out of your own bed in your own apartment.”

“You could just— just like three nights a week or something, at least then I wouldn’t have to listen to you complain about it.”

“That’s why I’m trying to find a— look, this is why I’m trying to find a place, because we’re arguing about something stupid.”

“We’re not arguing. Okay, hold on, we always argue, that’s normal, and anyway, I’m just saying you should take the— okay, or just— damn it, Shane. Then just share it with me.”

The silence that falls is deafening. Ryan’s chest burns. It streaks heat all the way down his arms and into his fingers and Shane doesn’t say anything because of course he doesn’t. He leaves Ryan to flounder like an idiot. “It’s a— I mean, it’s a Queen. It’s big— it’s bigger than the bed at the Lizzie Borden house, is all I’m saying! It’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before.” Oh God, what if he can’t stop? What if he just keeps talking about beds forever until he just… turns into oncoming traffic and they both die a fiery death which might be a little less painful.

“No, I’m not. I know,” Shane says, in this stilted way. “It’s… but that’s weird.”

“It’s not weird, I’ve shared beds with friends tons of times.”

“I know, but not in your apartment, Ryan— I…”

“What the hell, man? What are you—?” They’re stopped in traffic. No fiery death possible, and that means Ryan can look over at him, and he does, but it’s hard. His one saving grace is that Shane’s not looking at him.

Shane’s toying with the handle of the glove compartment, and he can feel Ryan’s eyes on him but he just… he can’t. And this is starting to feel like—... and here, on his lap, he’s got an out. He’s got these forms for two apartments that he can scrape by with. Without roommates even… and it feels unfair not to say it, because he thinks maybe Ryan will hear it anyway, or that maybe Ryan will eventually fucking realize… and it doesn’t seem fair not to say anything, suddenly, except Shane’s voice is sticking in his throat.

“Thing is,” he finally gets out, and then has to swallow, because his throat is very dry. He clear his throat. “We— one of the reasons Sara and I broke up was because I was spending so much time with you.”

“Oh,” Ryan says, and he sounds so genuinely hurt by that that Shane wishes immediately that he’d phrased it differently.

“It’s… it was my fault, Shane says. “I wasn’t thinking… about her, it’s just— like, you know, she’s not wrong. And it’s not that I don’t— that I didn’t want to spend time with her, I did. I do, it’s just that... maybe. Maybe it’s easier with you. But we— you know… it just seems unfair to her, now, that I end up with— that I end up at your place… that I sleep in your bed, she’s— you know— the internet’s weird.”

“Losing the thread here, dude,” Ryan says.

“You know they all think we have a thing.”

“We don’t have a thing.”

“I know, you don’t have to tell me, I’m right here. I’ve been here,” Shane says, and finally looks at him, briefly. It’s so brief but Ryan looks away — finally he looks away and Shane takes a breath of relief, freed from that gaze. He still feels a little pinned down. “It’s just that I— I’ve already been a piece of shit. Going directly to you, staying at your place, sleeping in your bed— that’s too much, Ry. I— I appreciate it, I know what you’re— I really appreciate it, I do, but it’s…”

“Oh, no. No, I get it,” Ryan says, and Shane doesn’t know if he does.

“I do,” Ryan protests, like he’s read his mind. “No, sorry, I didn’t think… fuck… should I not have... I was always just… like third-wheeling you guys. I shouldn’t have always—”

“No,” Shane says, brow furrowed. “It wasn’t that. And Sara likes you, it’s… but you and me have a tendency to…”

“I mean… yeah, I know… but we just… we enjoy each other’s company. That’s all.”

“Right,” Shane says. But he thinks Right, yeah. More than my girlfriend’s.

But the thing is…

Fuck.

—

It's not what they do. Of course it's not. Shane is not the easiest person to share a bed with. Ryan knows this because they have done it countless times, and Shane is all angles and length and his stillness and unpliability are somehow unnerving for Ryan who tosses and turns in his sleep at the best of times. Ryan is used to someone who folds around him, or into him, and Shane is— well, it's not like he wants that from Shane, but even when he shares a bed with Tucker or someone, it's somehow easier — they're easier and they don't curl away from him on the very edge of the bed like Shane does. Like Shane doesn't want to be in such close proximity and, Ryan reminds himself, maybe he doesn't. He's not exactly a touchy-feely guy.

But that's not exactly true, either, he thinks. He thinks it overwhelmingly the next time they go out to a bar and Shane's arms are thrown around the shoulders of someone Ryan knows by name (Matt) and by photographs, but who doesn't live in Los Angeles, and barely ever gets out here. Ryan's a table or two away, but he's tuned right into that half-shouted conversation, even though he's not part of it.

"Move to L.A.!" Shane's shouting, and Ryan can't hear his friend's response, but he looks over, and Shane's got one long arm around his shoulders, and he's speaking into his ear and it sends something hot and fluttering down through Ryan's stomach and he has to take a breath. "Be my roommate!"

And Ryan thinks don't move here. He thinks don't, don't, don't like he can will it from happening, and he doesn't even know why. Except… well… he wants Shane to stay with him, at his place. He wants Shane to himself, and he feels like he’s closer to it than ever before and… and later, when they're all on their third (fourth?) round of shots, Ryan watches Shane ruffle his friend's hair and kiss his temple like it is so, so easy, and Ryan knows that this feeling is jealousy — spiking raggedly up his arms like electricity to settle in his chest like this cold, burning ache and he thinks why can't that be me? but he isn't entirely sure what he means by it.

He does know that they cab back to Ryan's together, and they are both inadvisably drunk. Shane bee-lines to the kitchen where he bangs around probably getting water and Ryan stumbles in after him. "I have poised a lot of blood tonight," Shane says, absurdly and Ryan laughs and suddenly Shane's fingers are spilling into his hair and Ryan finds himself leaning, half-pushed back over the sink as Shane overbalances slightly and, laughing, says: "I'm sleeping in your bed tonight."

Something floods hotly all through Ryan. "How do you know that offer even still stands?"

"Does it?" Shane asks, and they're swaying a little. Ryan wishes the room wasn't spinning around them, around him. He takes a deep breath. "Probably. But I might need to puke."

Shane draws unsteadily away and laughs. "Okay."

They both kind of depart the kitchen. Ryan doesn't throw up. He sits on the floor of his bathroom for a long time though, just breathing, and wonders if he'll just come out to find Shane passed out on the couch anyway, or like halfway down the hallway or something, christ he is so drunk.

When he finally does emerge, he finds Shane sprawled diagonally and facedown across the bed, tall enough that his feet still hang off of it.

"Okay, Big Guy," Ryan says. “Shove over."

Shane makes a soft muffled sound against the pillow and does, not even bothering to get undressed or under the blankets, and somehow— somehow that makes it easier on Ryan who just follows suit and climbs beneath them, relieved, a little, by the separation, however thin. He doesn't like sleeping in his jeans, but it's better than trying to take them off. Fuck skinny jeans, he thinks. He'd probably split his head open or something, and then they'd have to call an ambulance and this whole night would turn out a whole lot different. And honestly, Ryan's ready for it to be over.

If he wakes up at some point, just a little, just enough, and slides his arm out from beneath the blankets and into the cooler air of his apartment, and against the cool skin of Shane's arm — so that Shane hums a little and rolls over, breathing sleepy, boozy breath into Ryan's hair he tells himself he doesn't remember it.

—

Shane wakes up close to someone else. Someone he knows is not Sara but maybe Matt or maybe a stranger...

But no, it's familiar here. The smell, the blankets, the breathing beside him. He takes a moment before he opens his eyes and he can tell he's still sort of drunk because the hangover hasn't hit him yet. There's a warmth running all the way up his forearm, someone else's soft skin and he remembers, realizes before he even opens his eyes who this is, where he is.

Ryan's.

He lets that settle, and it's not awful. He remembers, now, what happened. Thinks he might have gotten his fingers into Ryan's hair but that's innocent enough. He doesn't make any move to pull away right away. When he does open his eyes, he is grateful for the relative darkness of Ryan's room, and there is warm, comforting press of a body against his, but barely. They are not really touching, actually, Shane realizes, and that's just the press of the comforter against him, pulled taut beneath his weight and Ryan's body. With Shane on his stomach and Ryan on his back, Ryan's hooked his arm around Shane's elbow, and their hands, their thumbs are almost resting against one another, save for the sheer length of Shane's forearm. He lies very still and thinks vaguely about disconnecting himself from this situation, but he's also comfortable, if a little cold. He considers, for a little while, running his fingertips down the length of Ryan’s fingers and palm, but when he finally does move, it’s only to gently lift his arm up and away so that he can roll onto his back and sit up.

And ugh, gross. He hates when being drunk carries over into the next day. He doesn't like that residual lingering piece of before. Coffee is what he needs, and breakfast — something to soak up the liquor and hopefully beat the hangover.

He wanders out into Ryan’s kitchen in yesterday’s clothes and pokes through the cupboards. He’s been here long enough that he’s bought his own groceries, but there’s still not much, and the idea of a bowl of cereal genuinely makes him want to throw up, and so he just makes some toast and coffee and goes to sit on the couch to check his phone and wonder what the hell he’s doing with his life. He’s over thirty and crashing at his friend’s because his last long-term relationship just ended. He’s got this thought in his head that he’d like to go home, but home is two thousand miles away and not really home anymore, and anyway, he’d worked so hard to get the hell out of Illinois, he really doesn’t want to go back.

He opens his messages and realizes that at a time like this he would normally text Ryan — not to talk about it, more just to talk to someone that gave him comfort, that made him laugh… and something weird washes over him, because he’s here. He’s at Ryan’s, but Ryan’s asleep and anyway, Shane feels somehow lonelier here than he would have at his own place — his and Sara’s.

If he was there he could have pressed against her warmth in their bed and just gone back to sleep and forgotten all this nonsense. Or he could have turned to her and asked You ever feel like home isn’t home?

And Shane thinks about how he’d pushed his fingers through Ryan’s soft, black hair last night and how he’d like to do it again, but he also thinks about how he did that. To Ryan. And how that’s not a thing that should be happening, that’s not how they work. And he thinks about the fact that Ryan’s eventually going to emerge from his bedroom all hungover and messy-haired and smelling of liquor and sweat, yeah, but also of sleep and warmth, and maybe he’ll look at Shane with a question in his eyes and Shane—

Shane just wants someone to hold onto right now. He wants it badly enough that he thinks I shouldn’t be here. And so he leaves. He flips the note Ryan left him about going to the gym like a week ago because it’s still kicking around on the coffee table, giving Shane a spike of weird feelings every time he sees it, and he writes something on the back about be back later and Shane’s already texting Matt on his way out the door.

Sometimes it’s easier to get fucked than to ask for an arm around your shoulders for too many minutes at a time. Sometimes it’s easier to get fucked for the touch and press of another person than it is to ask your friend to just— just put their arms around you for a little while.

So that’s what he does.

—

Shane comes back to Ryan’s spaced and distracted, and between jumping up to unlock the door for him and trailing him to the living room where Shane has a bag of his clothes and things Ryan feels bad that he hasn’t gotten a key cut for him, yet. Like maybe that would get Shane to stop being so weird about staying. He almost asks him if that would make him feel less weird about staying, but then the sentence starts to sound weird in his head, so he doesn’t say it.

It also kind of pisses him off, because it’s almost evening, and Shane didn’t respond to any of his texts, and Ryan’s just sort of kicked around at home all day, like he’s just sort of directionless without Shane and it never used to be like that, before. “Hey,” he says, eventually, because even despite all that, he’s mostly wondering if… “Are you… okay?”

“Huh? Yeah.”

“Like did I d— did I say something last night, or?” Ryan thinks, and then, almost on top of that anxiety he remembers that Shane did. Shane said something that hurt him, only it wasn’t to him, it was to Matt, some friend of Shane’s from high school that Ryan barely knows. Ryan’s heart is beating a little too hard. And okay, fine, so maybe he’s jealous, but it’s because— well he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand why this divide exists for him and Shane when it doesn’t exist for Shane and other people.

“What? No,” Shane says. “I just went to Matt’s. He’s uh— leaving soon, back home.”

Home. Ryan’s never lived anywhere that wasn’t home, and he still forgets that Shane thinks of California as someplace else. Just a place he lives. It isn’t home to him. Every time he thinks it he gets a little freaked out. Like Shane’s permanence here is even more diluted. Ryan barely feels like he has a grasp on him at all, some days.

“Hey, man, can I ask you something?” Ryan thinks, because he’s starting to feel like a pressure cooker with all these thoughts, and if he can just get one thing off his chest, just find a rational solution for one thing — Shane’s good at dishing those out — maybe then he’ll feel a little bit better.

“I’m— well, I was going to shower.”

There’s a weird moment where Shane straightens up, backpack in hand, and he notices for the first time that Shane’s put his contacts in but hasn’t bothered to do anything to his hair. He still looks soft and rumpled — he might’ve changed his shirt since last night and it’s just— it’s not really like Shane… and he’s got these marks on his neck that Ryan had taken at first for shadows, where his shirt collar’s been stretched out, and things start clicking.

“You went to see Matt?” he asks, and perplexity still hangs onto every word, like he isn’t sure he heard him right the first time, because…

Shane’s following right along. He’s been watching Ryan watch him, and he hasn’t moved to hide any of it. He looks… tired. He sounds tired when he says “Yeah, Ryan, I went to see Matt.”

And that weird, jealous heat is oozing through his chest slow and viscous — not flaring through like a struck match like last night, because suddenly this is fucking real. Suddenly this means something, and Ryan’s been left in the dark all this time. And he feels… fucking angry, or something. And Shane’s just standing there, unhelpfully watching him in that way he does that makes Ryan hot and irritated and something else all at once — all sleepy-eyed, but too aware for the neutral expression on his face, for the strange, hanging, curving way he holds his limbs like his bones are just doing their best to hold him up, but they’ve got all these fissure-cracks beneath the pressure.

Sometimes Ryan thinks that Shane looks like he hurts. When he’s still and standing…

“Okay,” Ryan says, and he thinks it’s the start of a sentence — it is the start of a sentence, but Shane chooses to take it for acquiescence and says, “Great,” and turns away.

The bathroom door closes and Ryan’s left standing in his own living room, feeling absolutely lost.

—

Really, this could go one of two ways. He really didn’t want Ryan to find out this way. He didn’t want Ryan to find out at all, that this is a thing that Shane does sometimes. Not often, not anymore, because of Sara, but before… and maybe now, again… and he could go out there and apologize and try to walk Ryan though this thing that Shane generally oscillates between being fine or ashamed about and just… he isn’t ready for this kind of talk tonight…

Or he could go out there and pretend like everything is the same as always because here’s the thing… it is. He’s always done this, and what he does isn’t anyone else’s business, even Ryan’s.

And he only lets himself wonder for a second why he thinks of Ryan as a separate category than ‘anyone else,’ because to Shane, ‘anyone else’ used to mean anyone other than himself. And he doesn’t know what Ryan is, if Ryan isn’t either of those things.

It takes about thirty seconds for Shane to start thinking I’m an asshole. It’s somewhere in between picking up the soap that dries his skin too much because it’s Ryan’s soap and remembering that he’s here at Ryan’s apartment and looking back up to face that reality — these tiled walls, the fucking— the Lakers shower curtain.

“Fuck,” Shane says, softly, and it comes out sounding more upset than he thought he was.

When he re-emerges, it’s self-consciously. He runs a hand through his wet hair, wanders, dressed in clean clothes, finally, out to the living room where Ryan doesn’t say anything, and yeah, that’s cool or fair or whatever it is, Shane thinks. Whatever it is, Ryan probably has the right to feel it. He finally myopically locates his glasses on the side table and puts them on and everything comes back into slightly smudged focus. He takes them off again to wipe them on his shirt, standing there a little awkwardly, trying to remember how to seem confident. Trying to think of what the hell to say to diffuse this situation.

“I’m not, like, freaked out, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Ryan says with his eyes still glued to the TV screen — anywhere but on Shane and Shane is suddenly thrown straight back into that night a week or so ago, with Sara and his heart drops.

He freezes there, unable to take a proper breath, focuses on Ryan who stares very hard at the commercial they’ve both seen ten thousand times, and then he looks at Shane, who all but flinches under his gaze.

“I… it just seems…” Shane isn’t even one hundred percent sure what they’re talking about here, and he’s half-afraid to ask. This is one of those times, one of those moments where he’s expected to be on the same page, but his mind’s gone down ten thousand different pathways since this thing started, and he’s never been good at sticking to it.

Especially, he thinks, not when it counts. Sometimes he doesn’t even realize it counts until it’s too late.

“I’m not like… I don’t want you to think I’m monitoring you or something,” Ryan says, and his voice is very carefully controlled, but Shane can still hear all the places it wants to go and somehow that’s worse.

“I don’t,” Shane says, and for a moment they hold that eye-contact, but then it’s gone.

“I just… Matt. Are you guys—?”

“Oh— no. It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like then, dude, because I’m kinda not following you, here.”

And the first thing Shane thinks, would normally think, is What’s it to you? but it doesn’t come anywhere near his mouth. Because it actually does matter. Fuck, it matters because it’s Ryan.

“I ju—” Shane sighs. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You don’t know or you don’t want to?”

“Both?” Shane offers up, and tries to joke, tries to smile through it, and he gets this hollow, perplexed smile from Ryan which isn’t at all what he’d hoped for. “It’s just… it’s complicated and long and boring, Ryan, I…”

“Break it down simple for me then,” Ryan says with that sudden, quick way he has— and Shane looks at him for a long moment before he looks away, eyes searching for something that’s not in this room. It’s in his head.

“I… I’ve had a thing with Matt before, and some other people.”

“Guy people,” Ryan says.

“Yes.”

“Are you—”

Shane heaves this long-suffering sigh. He hears how annoyed he sounds in it. “I don’t really… I don’t know, I don’t care. It’s just something I… yeah. Sure. It’s not straight. I’m not straight.”

“Why didn’t you tell me though, Shane?” Ryan asks, and Shane’s startled to hear his own name come out of Ryan’s mouth, because Ryan never uses it to call him by. He calls him Shane to other people, never to his face, and he realizes all at once that he never wanted it to be in a moment like this, and god damn this has been an evening of far too many realizations and Shane is exhausted, and the heat and solitude of the shower is wearing off fast, and he just feels sore and too tall and cold. He can feel that ache that he associates with sex with guys filtering into his muscles — that he holds in his belly and in his shoulder blades — all these places you wouldn’t think but that feel intimate afterwards, but also sort of empty to him.

He thinks again about how it felt to have his fingers in Ryan’s hair and he thinks about how much he wants to feel that now, right now. It’s this horrible kind of longing that he thinks he shouldn’t feel, and the only way to move past this is to just fucking… get it out. Just say it.

“It’s not a thing. Not a— I don’t feel… he’s just a friend.”

“You have a fuck buddy?”

“No, it’s… that’s not— please don’t say that,” Shane pleads and Ryan laughs a little, but there’s not a whole lot of genuineness behind it, it’s too uncertain for that. But still, it was something. Shane clings to it. “It’s more like I…”

“Did Sara know?”

“I didn’t do it when I was with Sara.”

“No I mean, did you tell her about it?”

Shane rears back a little, runs his fingers over his jaw. “I… no, I didn’t, no.”

Ryan’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Look, don’t… judge me on—”

“Who’s judging?” Ryan asks, voice going softer than Shane’s by contrast.

“It’s— I wasn’t doing it anymore, it’s ju— jesus, it’s just something that’s carried over from being younger, I… it’s not just Matt, it’s— we just… it’s— it’s simple, you know? It’s nice?” It comes out a little shaky, and too much like a question. Is it nice?

“It’s… all guys?”

“That’s a different question.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s… I’ve also just slept with random women before. Like before, when I was still— in Illinois. I’m not gay, Ryan. We just… it’s mostly not. Women.”

“Okay,” Ryan says, and then, “I just… no, just— I just…” he hates this, he hates the way he sounds, so he forces the rest of the sentence out. “Did you think you couldn’t tell me?”

The way Shane looks at him does something to Ryan. There’s this tangle of wishing he could take it back and surprise and something softer. And oh, God, he really hopes that Shane knew he could tell him something like that. He really hopes he hasn’t fucked up somewhere along the way, said the wrong thing one too many times without even noticing…

“I didn’t— I’ve never told anyone,” Shane says, honestly, and Ryan’s first instinct is not to believe him, to think it’s a bit, but it’s not… this isn’t the time, and the moment doesn’t break, and Ryan lets that hit him full-force. "I mean my family knows about the— the preference thing, just not about what I've actually... what I do...

“I… shit, Shane, jesus, I didn’t mean to force it out of you, I just… I thought maybe you thought I wouldn’t…”

Shane sighs again. Ryan feels like he’s exhausting him and it makes him want to put a stop to this conversation real fucking quick, if only to stop Shane from walking out his front door again. He falters, presses his hands together tightly before he slides them down the legs of his jeans to his knees, suddenly forgetting how to hold himself, how he holds his own body.

“I know you’re not like that, Ry,” Shane says. He says it to the floor, but Ryan lets the shortening of his name sit in his mind for a moment, because it always makes him feel a little safer; like the ground he’s standing on is a little more solid than he thought. “It hasn’t come up. It hasn’t happened in forever, so I… it felt like it was in the past. Past Shane.”

“So. Why’d you go today?” Ryan asks, but he thinks maybe he knows the answer. It terrifies him, but he asks it anyway, because that’s what Ryan Bergara does — he walks into terrifying places. Usually first. But usually Shane’s just at his back, and this time… “Honestly, dude.”

“I am honest with you,” Shane says in this tense way. Like he’s holding onto something bigger. His breath shakes as he exhales and Ryan wishes he could walk this back. But he also doesn’t. He thinks doesn’t is bigger.

“Everything’s sorta a bit fucked up. Lately,” Shane finally says, voice low. “I guess I was feeling lonely, you know, typical. Drinking last night… everything sort of hit me, and you— you were there.” There’s a pause after those words that nearly kills Ryan. He thinks he might be dying with the way his heart is beating, but he keeps his mouth shut because one move could stop whatever switch Ryan’s managed to find in the dark that gets Shane talking… and when Shane finally starts up again, he speaks through a sigh, and he sounds like he’s been awake for a thousand years and Ryan almost reaches to pull him down to sit on the couch except he thinks any movement might throw them both back into reality, and not whatever world this is where Shane tells him what’s going on in that stupid head of his.

“You were there, and I— maybe did some things I shouldn’t have done,” Shane says, looks at him from beneath his brows the way he does when they’re ghost hunting — but he’s not doing a bit now. He’s testing the waters maybe, and Ryan doesn’t know what to do with his own fucking expression so he tries to keep it neutral.

“It all just felt like a lot this morning… it felt sort of self-destructive, maybe, or like it could be, and I… I had to be somewhere else. I thought it would be better, ‘cause I… I don’t want to ruin things with you, too.”

Those words shatter through Ryan. When he says “Jesus, Shane,” they crack through his voice, too. And Ryan stops giving a fuck. He leaves all of that behind him as he stands up — he can settle back into it later, that state of being so afraid of what everyone will think of him, what Shane will think.

“C’mere,” he says, and reaches for him and Shane goes tense like Ryan’s just pulled out a switchblade or something, and Ryan grabs ahold of Shane’s shirt somewhere near the join of his ribs in the middle of his chest, before Shane can move away, and then he steps close and gets his arms around him. And if he’s honest about it, he kind of has to straighten his back to be just a little bit taller. “Don’t— just don’t think about it, it’ll be good.”

He says all this sort of into Shane’s right shoulder, sort of into his chest and he doesn’t even let the moment start to turn awkward because he holds on, tight. He presses his forehead down against the curve of Shane’s shoulder and shuts his eyes and fucking commits to it and it only takes a second, maybe two, before Shane’s arms come up around him, and Ryan pushes himself up onto his toes to accommodate that sheer height, feels Shane searching for where exactly to put his arms, and then he finds it, and Ryan is pulled marginally closer. And then, he was right, it is good. It’s like the most uncertain, pre-planned hug in the universe, but it’s good.

Shane exhales against Ryan’s temple, and Ryan feels him relax, by a degree or two. Part of him thinks it would be impossible for Shane to relax totally because all his limbs would just fall off. Ryan’s got fistfuls of Shane’s shirt near his spine.  He doesn’t know how long to hold on, but it somehow breaks naturally. Shane shifts. Ryan lets go of his shirt. It’s in that moment of breaking apart that Ryan says it, because he doesn’t think he’ll have the courage when he can see Shane’s face again.

“I’m not going anywhere, man.”

Shane looks a little dazed, vulnerable almost, but easier and less wound, and Ryan thinks I did that, and he wants it… wants to know how to do that, always. “You definitely won’t ruin things with me.” Because Ryan really isn’t sure how to live his life anymore, without Shane in it. And if he’s honest with himself, it’s been like that for a really long time.

Shane nods at the floor, then meets Ryan’s eyes. “Okay. Okay. Thank you.”

—

The last time he was embraced by someone like that feels like such a long time ago. And he was surprised again by Ryan’s strength. Not just physically — Shane knows Ryan is stronger than him because Shane could not be bothered to ever go to the gym, no it’s more the emotional strength Ryan has. His ability to lift people up, keep their heads above water.

Shane lies awake for a long time on Ryan’s couch, watching the lights from the city slide across the ceiling, and he thinks about it. He wonders whether he’d be this okay if it weren’t for Ryan. If he was in his own apartment. Fuck, he wonders what he’s going to do about all his stuff. Their old apartment’s been leased — his and Sara’s, and so they both have to have everything out of there by the end of the month. And he thinks that maybe they’re both avoiding it, or she’s procrastinating, and he just doesn’t want to go in there and make the place emptier and emptier each time. He also wants to get this stuff out of there before she can start, because he doesn’t want to experience that, either. Little things he took for granted going missing.

It’s nearly two in the morning when he texts her, suggests they move out on the same day. But she’s not awake and doesn’t respond.

Shane thinks about the difference between being half held down, sharp pleasure jolting up his spine, and a voice in his ear “It’s been a while, huh?” — and the warm pressing comfort of Ryan’s arms around him.

He thinks I miss you, to Ryan in the other room.

He types to Sara <Hey also I know you’re asleep, but about the Ryan thing> and he looks at it for a long time before he erases it and set his phone down, rubbing his fingers over his eyes before he rolls over to face the back of the couch and tries to go to sleep as well.

He’ll deal with it — the Ryan thing. He’ll deal with the fact that this is no longer something small, but still (he tries to convince himself) something containable. It’s something that can be compartmentalized, and then he can lock it up and throw away the key and try not to think about it anymore because it’s… it’s not worth their friendship.

And to tell the truth, Shane isn’t even entirely certain that he know what he means when he thinks ‘it’. What he feels for Ryan is… it’s more than friends. More than pals, buddies. It’s special, but he’s known that. He knows Ryan makes him softer than he wants to be. He knows Ryan makes him aware of himself more than anyone else does. Ryan makes him want to be funny and smart and brave and witty. Makes him not mind so much, being the tallest guy in the room, the person that can search all those heads and find Ryan in a crowd. The person Ryan wants on his heels on a ghost hunt, the person Ryan’s still, somehow, excited to work with, even though Shane does his best to make Ryan’s life a bit of a living hell when they’re on camera. It’s just jokes. It’s not real.

Doing anything more than this — being friends — would ruin everything. It would destroy what they have and what they have is great and Shane is going to be happy with it. He is happy. He is…

Which is maybe why, when Sara slides onto the picnic bench across from him the next afternoon, where he’s picking at his lunch alone, he ends up coming out with “So, about… everything.”

“Wait, what?”

He realizes he’d been talking about something completely different not five seconds ago, that this is a major non sequitur. “Oh, uh—” he forces a kind of laugh and tries to find a way to backtrack.

“Ohh,” she says, “You mean the Ryan thing?”

“No—” Shane begins, then winces and says, “Well, okay, yes. The Ryan thing.”

“Oh my God, you didn’t kiss him, did you?”

“Did I— hold on, what? No! No I didn’t kiss him. I don’t want to kiss him.”

“Mmhmm,” she says, arching one eyebrow as she peers at him from over her frames.

And it’s Sara, and the fact is that there’s a lot between them. And she’s still a friend. She’s prickly and blunt and a little insensitive, but she’s also profoundly honest, and she’s safe. She’s safe to Shane. So he tells her the truth. “Okay. Okay, maybe I do,” Shane says. He can feel himself getting warm and wills it away. He thinks maybe it works. “I’m not— I haven’t. Do you think… what— fuck, Sara, I’m not— I shouldn’t be talking about this to you, I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” she says, pulling one leg up onto the bench. Her pants have polka dots. She really is very cute. Shane stares at them and wonders how he could have fucked up so badly, except he knows. He knows why. “That’s what I’m here for,” she says. “We’re still friends, right?”

“I never meant for this,” he says. “I never meant to screw up everything.”

She puts her elbow on her knee and makes a face, a kind of half-smile half-grimace with one side of her mouth. “But shit happens, right?”

“Not like this.”

“But it did. Shit did happen like this. And the thing is, Shane, I didn’t end things to punish you. You know that, right? I mean, if you want to do this Ryan thing, then I think you should do it.”

“I think that that would be a recipe for disaster.”

“Maybe,” she says. “But maybe not. Anyway, wouldn’t it work out? You’re still living there, aren’t you? Are you eating those carrot sticks?”

Shane meets her eyes, a little stung but mostly relieved that she’s still straight-talking, and something passes between them.

“You can have some,” he tells her, and she smiles at him and leans forward to take one. “Okay, listen,” she begins.

—

“Sara found a place,” Shane says on Thursday night, over delivery pizza and whatever horrible noisy sports-thing Ryan has on TV.

“Oh, great,” Ryan says, sounding genuinely happy. “Is she living with someone or— oh… dude not— not like that.”

“Yeah, she’s, no I know, man,” Shane says, standing to go grab paper towels from the kitchen. For something to do with his thoughts, his mind. He re-settles on the floor by the coffee table, all grasshopper limbs and looks up at Ryan on the couch. “But yeah.”

“Damn those L.A. prices.”

“Yeah… listen, I’m… I should probably get my stuff out of that place.”

Ryan watches him, chewing, waiting.

“I don’t… know where the hell I’m going to put it.”

Ryan swallows and says, “I mean you could bring some of it here. Or… I mean, honestly, my parents could probably take some of it — some of the furniture you want to keep or whatever. There’s room, I think.” He’s thinking of Shane’s family — how far Shane is away from them. It’s harder for him, these situations, than it is for Ryan. He’s always just been able to go home. He can see his parents any time he wants to. Shane doesn’t have that.

Shane makes a face that definitely says no and Ryan says “Just think about it dude, I don’t want you to have to buy all new stuff is all I’m saying.”

“No, I… I know, I’m— what I’m… look, I know I’ve got to get out of here soon.”

“No you don’t,” Ryan says, reaching for another piece.

“I do, though.”

“What about Scott?”

“He’s way out of town. I’d have to drive in, I don’t want to do that.”

“I think you’re making excuses, Big Guy.”

“I’m not making excuses, I’m— you’re the one who didn’t like any of the places we went to see!”

“I liked them!”

“You said they had squeaky floors!”

“Well, I was just— I mean, I’m not going to be living there! If you want to deal with a stupid, squeaky floor, then be my guest.”

“I’m n— well it’s too late now, Ryan!”

Ryan laughs.

“Unbelieveable,” Shane says, which only makes Ryan laugh harder.

What ends up happening, of course, is they get caught up with work and life and procrastination and suddenly it’s the end of the month and Shane’s got to move. Sara’s stuff is gone. Ryan trails Shane through half-empty rooms and feels something tight in his stomach. Shane’s quiet and Ryan’s deeply grateful that Tucker and Joe have shown up, because they keep things upbeat. Shane’s couch ends up going to Scott’s but the rest of it… just sort of ends up at Ryan’s. And Ryan realizes that Shane doesn’t really have much. Clothes and shoes take up most of the bulk, and as they go back and forth between Shane’s old place and Ryan’s apartment, Shane’s things collected into garbage bags and boxes they half-looted from the recycling bin out behind the grocery store.

He’s got a few other things —that blue encased butterfly for one, because he’s a total lunatic. Shane holds it in his lap as Ryan drives back to his own place for the last time that evening, the sun setting over Hollywood.

“So where’d you even get that bug you weirdo?”

“It was a birthday present when I was a kid.”

“That’s the worst— were you really always this weird?”

“Oh, definitely.”

And Ryan can’t stop glancing at his hands, how delicate he is with it.

They get back to his, surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of Shane’s old life, piled more or less out of the way. “I’ll… this won’t be for long, Ry,” Shane says.

“Where’re you going to put your little butterfly, there?” Ryan asks, trying to break the mood — Shane’s guilt — whatever stupid thing’s happening in that loud, giant head of his.

“Oh, I dunno,” Shane says, glancing around before he slides it carefully onto the side table near the couch. And Ryan thinks it looks good there, beneath the glow of the floor lamp and next to his cup of tea from this morning and… yeah. It looks right.

“Yeah,” He says “That looks nice. Weird, but nice.”

“If you break it, I’ll murder you.”

“Not if I murder you first.”

“Okay,” Shane says, “That’s—”

“Yeah, that got weird,” Ryan says.

“Yeah it did,” Shane laughs.

Ryan sits down on the couch and groans. “Oh man. I hate moving.”

“Thanks, though,” Shane says, softer than before. “Thank you.”

“Any time, dude.”

—

While there was something romantic about moving to Los Angeles and crashing on people’s sofas and jumping on the first shitty apartment he and his roommates could afford, what’s romantic in his twenties — even his late twenties — is a lot less romantic at thirty-two. And he never really anticipated crashing at a friends’ place — a younger friends’ place, at this age. He has a successful job, after all. You could call it a career, if you’re really desperate and, also, he never imagined he would be living with Ryan. Mostly because whenever he envisions himself surrounded by Ryan’s things he wants to laugh for a very long time, because it is so absurd. He’s so out of place, he tells himself, he doesn’t belong here…

“So then why haven’t you moved out, yet?” Finn asks him over lunch one sunny Sunday afternoon.

“It’s— expensive.”

“Yeah, it’s L.A.,” Finn laughs. “You knew this coming into it.

“I know, I know,” Shane says. He’s toying with his french fries, dragging them through ketchup, making little ketchup trails. Fuck, he should really be working on the Hot Daga… he also sort of can’t really believe that that’s a sentence that just passed seriously and without irony through his brain. It really wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“I mean… not to… you’ve been there for a while now. A few weeks.”

“Six weeks,” Shane says. “Way too long.”

“You starting to feel like you’re overstaying your welcome?”

No, Shane thinks, and that’s the thing. He doesn’t, and Ryan doesn’t act like he is — that’s the main thing. He knows all of Ryan’s weird little tics and idiosyncrasies. He knows how to read him from across a room. He would have noticed. And he hasn’t. “My back is killing me.”

“Still sleeping on the couch, eh?” Finn asks.

Shane drops the fry and reaches up to rub his eyes. “Oh, jesus christ… Scott.”

“Don’t ‘Scott’ me, Shane, seriously. How long are you going to drag this out?”

“Forever,” Shane says, with such emphasis he almost believes it.

“Or you could just tell him that you’re super gay for him.”

“That’s— you know that’s not—”

Finn’s laugh is too loud for their booth at the restaurant. “Okay, fine. I just think… maybe he’s waiting for you.”

“He’s definitely, definitely not,” Shane says. “Definitely not.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Oh, I dunno. It could shatter our friendship, Unsolved would end, we’d disappoint a hell of a lot of people, I wasted Sara’s time and uh, also, I would be homeless.”

“You can always come to mine. There’s the spare room. It’s just a futon, but… better than that couch you’re bitching about.”

“That’s okay,” Shane says.

“Why not?”

“Because… I don’t— I’m already feeling like a bit of a major failure here, you know? I don’t want to move in with my brother.”

“Your brother is the coolest guy in L.A.”

Shane snorts, but Finn’s won a smile. Shane meets his eyes across the table, taking a drink from the straw of his Coke without bothering to pick up the glass.

“Cute,” Finn says. “Definitely the way to Ryan’s heart is for you to keep looking like that.”

“Adorable?” Shane asks.

“Idiotic. Come on, I gotta get back to work. I expect you to pay for this, you free-loader.”

“I’m— okay,” Shane says, and they start collecting their stuff.

“All I’m saying,” Finn says as they step back out onto the street where it’s unseasonably warm for November, even in L.A., “Is maybe think about why you haven’t moved out yet. The real reason.”

Shane opens his mouth to say something, something clever or at least ridiculous, but all he ends up with is “You’re an asshole.”

Finn tips an imaginary cap and winks at him before he starts walking in the direction of work. “Be good!” Finn calls back to him.

“I’m trying,” Shane says, but Finn can’t hear him anymore. And Shane doesn’t know, exactly, what he even means.

—

Wow, he is fucking tired. It’s the end of what feels like The Longest Day. Ryan thinks that it could, quite possibly, be the longest day on the planet, ever. In fact, maybe it won’t ever end, and he’ll be stuck in front of this computer screen editing the first episode of True Crime because it goes up tomorrow and he’s really just… he’s so far from ready.

The clock hands are still moving though, so he’s not caught in an endless time warp. At least that’s good. It’s almost six o’clock and Shane’s sitting quietly in his chair next to Ryan’s, working on something for Ruining History, it looks like. Most of the office has left. They haven’t said anything to one another for a while, but it’s a good silence. Companionable. Still, though, Ryan feels bad for keeping him waiting.

“You want to go home?” Ryan asks. He slides down in his chair a little, slipping his keys out of his pocket before he holds them out to Shane.

“Nah, that’s fine,” Shane says.

“It might be another couple hours.”

Shane pulls a face and leans one elbow on his desk, reaching out to gently take the keys from Ryan’s fingers. “You need help?” he asks, just to ask it. They both know that Ryan’s going to say no. It’s a too many cooks situation.

“That’s cool. I’ll just get it done and then I don’t have to worry about it until we put it up tomorrow.”

Shane slowly closes his laptop. “Okay,” he says, agreeing. “See you there. You want me to order some food or something?”

“Yeah, that’d be awesome.”

“Cool. Just text me when you’re leaving. Text me what you want.”

“Okay.”

There’s a moment. There is, Ryan thinks. He feels it as Shane swings his chair around to stand up. Their eyes lock and there’s this stillness, this waiting. Ryan’s stomach goes hot, he goes still and holds Shane’s eyes which are just brown — they’re always just brown, but sometimes they’re different, brighter somehow. He thinks he catches it and wonders why— what it means, or what they were doing when he noticed it before. Shane stands and Ryan’s gaze drags after him, but it’s Shane who breaks it first.

“See you… there.”

“Yeah.”

Shane departs, and Ryan makes an effort not to watch his tall, sloping figure step out the glass doors and into the night. He makes an effort not to think about the colour of Shane’s eyes or the way that moment felt, or whether or not Shane felt it, too.

He finally heads home around eight-thirty, texting Shane on his way out the door. He knocks to be let in, which is weird at his own apartment, but Shane’s right there, and Ryan’s apartment is already warm and bright and… just more somehow, than it usually is. More, maye, because of Shane.

That’s what he’s thinking sitting next to Shane on the couch and for some insane reason he says it. Out loud. “I really… it’s nice coming home to you. Here.”

Shane laughs. “You only like it because you know I’ve already chased away all the little ghoulies.”

“Well, yeah,” Ryan says, playing along, beneath the frantic rhythm of his heart. “Exactly.”

They end up watching The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix which Shane doesn’t really care for, but he knows that it strikes something in Ryan. Shane thinks it’s a little bit cheesy, but whatever. To each their own.

He doesn’t remember exactly how it happened. Only that he starts laughing hard at Ryan’s reaction to one of the jump scares, and reaches over to hit his arm gently with the back of his hand. They always do this. This is a motion he repeats probably once a week, but this time they’re alone. This time they’re alone and it’s dark and Ryan is still breathing fast, one hand pressed over his chest, trying to steady his heartbeat Shane presumes, but Shane’s knuckles linger against the back of Ryan’s wrist and he doesn’t pull away. And neither does Ryan.

And it takes a long time, ten minutes, fifteen maybe, but somewhere within that timeframe, Shane’s moved — millimetre by millimetre — until his index and middle fingers have slid down the length of the back of Ryan’s hand which is pressed still and steady against the couch cushions between them, and Shane’s knuckles bump over Ryan’s tendons, feel them flicker beneath his skin — and his knuckles brush over Ryan’s knuckles, and then his fingers brush over Ryan’s fingers… until it stops being a dare to Ryan or himself, stops even holding the vaguest form, the ghost of a bit, and Shane can’t lie to himself anymore.

When Ryan moves, it’s little beats of motion. His fingers flutter, and he tips his wrist ever so slightly, raises his index so that Shane’s can slide along the underside of it, and he’s moving a little faster now, a little more certainly because Ryan still hasn’t pulled away and Shane feels a little like he’s running out of time. The episode will end and they’ll be caught, touching, in the countdown screen to the next episode where they’re supposed to… transition, talk. Here and now is this beautiful liminal space, and somehow it seems impossible that this moment could ever continue into the next one.

And Shane thinks about taking Ryan’s hand in his, seeing whether or not their fingers fit together right, like that wouldn’t be the most insane thing he’s ever done (It isn’t, not by a long shot, but it feels like it. If not the most insane, certainly the biggest). He thinks about shifting so that their shoulders brush on purpose and not just by necessity, like in the sound booth or in the library for the Post Mortems… he thinks about it so hard that he almost doesn’t realize that Ryan’s been looking at him because Shane’s been watching the trail of his fingers in the flickering TV light. He has almost no idea what’s been going on onscreen.

Ryan meets Shane’s quick, startled gaze and holds it. Shane feels his breath hitch and something bloom hotly through him, and that’s bad enough, but then Ryan twists a little to face him, pulls his hand away from Shane’s fingers in a careless movement that feels to Shane like he’s been torn in two like wet paper. Like he’s sliced his palm along a blade so sharp it doesn’t even bleed at first, doesn’t even hurt.

He hears himself sort of whisper “Sorry,” but then Ryan’s right there, and he’s so close that Shane can see the freckle in his right eye, even in this dim light, he can smell his cologne and the product in his hair and he realizes all at once where this is going.

Ryan’s fingers touch the side of Shane’s neck, and Shane flinches, very very slightly. More of a twitch than anything else and Ryan says “What’re you doing?” like he’s just catching up to the way Shane had been touching him for the past quarter of an hour and Shane says “I dunno—” and then Ryan shifts forward.

“Ah—” Shane says. It might be the start of a sentence or a warning or a question. He isn’t really sure. Ryan’s mouth is so close to his when he speaks that Shane thinks it’s impossible that he didn’t feel their lips brush — or maybe that’s only Ryan’s breath he’s feeling against his own parted mouth. There’s a hitch in Ryan’s motion though, and he stops, waits, and Shane waits with him, barely breathing.

“You scared, Big Guy?” Ryan asks, under his breath, sounding somehow annoyingly cocky and deeply uncertain in the way only Ryan can and there’s nothing Shane can say but the truth.

“A little.”

And Ryan waits. Ryan strokes the side of his thumb down over the back of Shane’s neck and he waits, and Shane doesn’t remember closing his eyes, only that it’s been all feeling and darkness for what feels like forever. When he opens his eyes, he sees Ryan’s flicker up — too close, just black lashes and this impossible liquid dark. There’s fear there, he knows it. He’s seen it so many times in so many different rooms in so many different cities.

“I didn’t say don’t,” he whispers, and Ryan Bergara fucking kisses him on the mouth, earnest and sweet and deep and Shane’s breath breaks like a wave into the heat of Ryan’s mouth, against the soft slide of his tongue, and it’s this sound like he’s been wanting for a hundred years. Ryan curls his fingers into Shane’s hair at the nape of his neck and pulls him close, pulls him down. When the episode ends and counts down from this impossible moment to the next one, neither of them notice — not even peripherally.

—

There is one small problem, though, Ryan thinks vaguely, and it’s this: they can’t stop now, because neither of them knows how to stop. Neither of them knows how to stop and face one another and do whatever they’re going to do next — pretend it never happened, or maybe never speak again which is so much worse. It’s so much worse. He knows it and he knows Shane knows it, because he starts to fade, once or twice — all these points that a kiss might end naturally — but Ryan doesn’t let him, because Ryan can’t figure out how to have Shane without this now that he’s got it, and he doesn’t want to deal with what that means. He doesn’t want Shane to do that horrible lesser-of-two-evils-logical-thing that he does which probably ends with him leaving tonight, heading out into the dark and leaving Ryan alone in his apartment. His apartment which is warm and bright and more than it usually is because Shane is here.

And that’s why when it starts to become too much, when he starts to feel Shane fade the third time, Ryan shifts turns to face him better and fits himself between the arm of the couch and Shane and pulls Shane down over him, and it is so easy. Shane just follows. He twists, makes room for Ryan’s limbs as he lies back— oh god, and Ryan’s shin brushes the line of buttons on Shane’s button down, the inside of Ryan’s knee slides down over the side of Shane’s ribs, over the jut of his hip until Shane is between his thighs but he won’t come down. He holds himself over Ryan and just kisses him and kisses him, and it becomes harsh and sharp and Ryan’s lips are stinging and finally he says “Just— c’mere,” And Shane melts against him. They are chest to chest, hip to hip and Ryan groans at the weight of Shane there, spooling desire from his dick, painful in his jeans, all the way through him — to the very fucking tips of his fingers and toes. It’s intense, and Ryan reaches down, tries to get his hand between him so that he can undo his pants and Shane jerks away like he’s going to bolt.

And for a moment it’s real. A split second.

“What’re we—”

Ryan’s mind starts to go haywire, and he knows he can’t let it. “Kiss me,” he says, and after a brief hesitation Shane does, and Ryan undoes his jeans and arches up and oh fuck— Shane slides against him through the fabric of his briefs, and it’s heavy with the weight of him, heavy with the heavy slide of Shane’s pants, the cling of them against the thin fabric of Ryan’s underwear. Only their hips are touching, and the impossible length of Shane’s legs, bent awkwardly so that he fits on the couch.

There’s this vibration — Shane’s arms are shaking and Ryan gets his arms around him and pulls him down again, surprised as always at how broad Shane’s shoulders are, the strength in them. He’s not strong like Ryan is strong, but he’s bigger, and Ryan forgets that sometimes. Knows he’s taller, but he’s also just bigger and he’s never felt that before… in a situation like this—

He’s about to assess just what that means until Shane puts his mouth on Ryan’s throat, on his jaw. He scrapes his teeth over the cartilage of Ryan’s ear and the thought flies straight out of his head. And then they’re shedding clothes in this whirlwind of movement, or at least Ryan is, and their legs knock and sort of tangle as Shane gets his on the outside of Ryan’s, braces one foot on the floor as he starts undoing buttons from his throat and Ryan watches, gasping, because Shane’s eyes are this impossible dark, like a storm’s rolled in as he looks down at him and Ryan thinks — this isn’t new for Shane. This is something he’s…

And maybe it’s not new for Ryan either, he admits. Safe in this moment, because he can barely hold his thoughts together long enough to keep them entirely cohesive. Shane gets his fingers twisted in the collar of his own shirt to pull it off, now that he has enough buttons undone, but then he stops, and the darkness fades a little, and there’s this brief moment of sheer uncertainty — like he doesn’t want to do it. Like Ryan hasn’t seen him shirtless a billion times, like he isn’t so aware of Shane’s body in all the ways Ryan always just told himself were just curious comparison.

“Sh—should,” Shane starts.

“Bedroom,” Ryan says. The word falls from his lips like someone else said it, and the moment that follows is sort of horrible because Shane’s draws back a little more. Barely touching… he’s half kneeling over Ryan’s hips, and Ryan can see that Shane’s as hard as he is but…

“No,” Shane says and Ryan feels like his heart is snapped in a bear trap. Shane meets his eyes a second later and his fingers touch Ryan’s hips where his skin meets his jeans. Touch and pull back, touch and pull back, his hips, his ribs, his collarbone. He isn’t looking at Ryan anymore and Ryan’s just bleeding out beneath him. And for a second he hates himself, hates that he’s let Shane do this, that he’s been so fucking stupid, but then…

Shane touches a freckle on Ryan’s neck and his weight gets a little heavier. His hands come up, soft as anything and he finds the mark on the other side — the corresponding freckle or birthmark or whatever it is and Ryan watches something in him break down. The last walls, maybe. He watches the impossible colour of Shane’s stupid eyes shift again to almost-amber and when Shane looks at him he looks impossible, somehow, because it’s so soft. And young and uncertain. Ryan doesn’t think he’s ever seen that expression on Shane’s face before, and he’s pretty much fucking done in by it.

“No, yes,” Shane says. “Yeah.”

After that it’s a mess. They scramble up, tangling together in a mess of limbs and mouths — and Shane pulls his shirt off, leaving his hair wild, and there’s this fold and bend of their bodies as Ryan arches and Shane leans over him and and they are moving back, kissing hard. Shane’s shoulder hits the doorframe and Ryan doesn’t apologize. He presses his palm against the rise of Shane’s cock in his pants instead and Shane makes this soft, startled sound that vibrates against Ryan’s lips.

It’s darker in here, closer, Ryan thinks, even though light from the living room filters in. Shane sits down on the bed when his legs hit it and Ryan clamours over him. There’s this clink of a belt, the slide of leather and Shane drops his head back as Ryan undoes his pants and drags them down a little. Shane lifts his hips and for a moment he’s just there, vulnerable, long, pale. Exposed. Then somehow, Shane’s reached out, wrapped an arm around Ryan’s waist and pulled him close, mouth on his chest, his stomach. He takes Ryan by the hips and moves him, bodily and Ryan just lets him. They both end up sitting sideways on the bed, removing the last of their clothes separately, and then they crash into one another again — so hard their teeth clatter and Ryan thinks maybe he laughs, and he feels Shane’s returning breath burst against his mouth and it might be a laugh or a frustrated huff or just an exhale because this is all building and building and it’s too much.

Shane’s hands slide over him like he’s something special. For Shane that probably means Ryan’s like some old stone from an archeological dig or he’s all bones, unearthed after hundreds of years. And Ryan sort of feels like that — like this is the first time he’s ever felt something like this, and there’s that flicker of fear again, because what does that mean, but then Shane’s mouth slides wet and open over his chest. Shane’s tongue laves over the dip of his collarbones, then over his nipple. He doesn’t bite and Ryan’s sort of grateful for that because so many people do, and he doesn’t like that, there. He wants— maybe— maybe he wants to be bitten somewhere else… maybe he doesn’t— he— “Oh god, jesus fuck,”

It’s just Shane’s breath, hot, rushing over the length of Ryan’s cock, and fuck, he did that on purpose— fuck… he’s done this before and Ryan— well, hasn’t. And oh, god, he hopes he doesn’t look like an idiot or do something stupid or wrong or—

“Ryan—”

Ryan makes this half-lost, half-acknowledging noise. Shane’s hand is spread over the inside of Ryan’s thigh.

He doesn’t have to ask

“Fuckyesdude,” Ryan says, and immediately wishes he could take it back, but Shane’s smile flashes at him, crooked and achingly familiar through the almost dusklight of Ryan’s room and then Shane takes him into his mouth and it is— everything. Ryan jolts a little, grabs at the sheets beneath him, grabs at Shane’s shoulder, and that halts Shane a little, so Ryan stops. His knuckles knock against the headboard as he reaches up for something to hold onto, something bracing, until he’s got a handful of cold metal and a handful of soft blankets and Shane’s mouth slides hot and slow over him and Ryan just gives himself over to it. To Shane.

He doesn’t know how long it takes — all it is is sensation and soft sounds in the darkness behind Ryan’s eyelids, squeezed shut. He lets go of the headboard to touch Shane’s shoulder with his fingertips, and his skin is so hot. “Sh—” he can’t quite make himself say his name out loud, not right now. “Oh, I’m— you better stop,”

“S’okay, I got it,” Shane says, which seems sort of nonsensical to Ryan and he’s about to— maybe clarify? That Shane probably doesn’t ‘got it’, because Ryan certainly fucking doesn’t — oh god, what have they done? What are they doing?

Shane’s hand spreads over Ryan’s stomach, holds him down, brings him back. It’s grounding. Their eyes lock for a moment and it’s hotly intimate and Ryan squeezes his own shut, grabs fistfuls of his sheets with both hands, because “Ohgod,” he whispers, right back to where he was before he started thinking. Shane’s hand leaves his stomach and catches his wrist. Shane’s fingers detangle Ryan’s fingers from the sheets and he draws Ryan’s hand to his hair, to the back of his head, only lets go when Ryan’s fingers tighten there instead, inadvertently because he’s so close to the edge, and Shane’s— Shane groans around him when Ryan’s fingers tug and tangle in his hair which is softer than Ryan expected somehow, and shorter. He struggles for a grip, ends up just spreading his fingers as the ache mounts in him, then tugs again, twists. Shane makes another noise, and it’s genuine, wanting. He still wants— wants Ryan. Ryan arches and comes, and his fingers leave Shane’s hair in case he presses down, holds him too tight — he thinks maybe he says something soft and fast but it’s lost beneath the orgasm which leaves him shaking.

Slowly it registers that Shane’s mouth is still on him, slower now. As soon as Ryan registers, Shane pulls away, and Ryan pushes his fingers through his own sweat-damp hair and opens his eyes, which are blurry, in time to watch Shane pull back.

He looks— Ryan’s softening cock jumps anyway and he grits his teeth against it because it’s too much sensation. Shane’s hard, still — maybe harder than he was on the couch, and there’s wetness at the end of his cock that kind of catches the light just enough for Ryan to realize that he’s fucking leaking — from sucking Ryan off and holy shit.

“Holy shit,” Ryan says, and Shane laughs a little, then kind of shies away, wipes his mouth self-consciously.

“What do you, uh—?”

“Whatever,” Shane says, “Anything… you don’t have to do anything if you—”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ryan says, and there is a genuine flicker of anger. Because maybe Shane thinks Ryan can’t handle it, but he can— he wants to. He reaches out and slides his hand lightly over Shane, and it’s slick, already at the head and he slides it down over the length of him and feels Shane shiver.

It would be easier, maybe, to reach if he just sat up, but he doesn’t want to, and when he lies back, fingers still circling him, one hand finds his bicep and pulls and Shane follows him down. The movement pushes Shane into the circle of Ryan’s fingers and he bites back a sound. And Ryan touches him, slides his hand over him the way he would want someone to do to him, but something strange starts to slide in, this awkwardness, this feeling like he’s doing something wrong.

“Do you—” he begins, voice cracking with uncertainty because maybe this isn’t good, maybe Shane wants something else or he wants… but he was so— he was getting off on Ryan’s cock in his mouth, so surely there’s something about Ryan that he wants. Ryan’s starting to feel a coldness seep into him though, anyway, replacing the contented warmth of orgasm.

“It’s not—” Shane says, “you’re good, you’re fine…” the sentence trails off. Shane opens his eyes and Ryan feels trapped beneath his stare, like that blue butterfly in glass out in the other room.

“Kiss me again,” Shane says, asks almost, and it’s… wow, fuck. Ryan does, and the way Shane responds lights something up in Ryan again, that smallest spark, because all this uncertainty has leached in… but somehow, within moments, Shane’s breathless against Ryan’s mouth, breathless into the kiss, and Ryan kisses him harder, makes it more difficult, until Shane’s just gasping against him. Ryan slides his tongue over Shane’s lips, bites down on the lower one softly, then kisses him again. It’s all one-sided now, Shane’s attention directed elsewhere. He’s breathing so fast and Ryan gets his free hand up to the back of Shane neck, fingers spilling into his hair, thumb pressed across his throat to feel his pulse. Shane makes this impossible sound. It resonates through his voice-box and makes something in Ryan shiver hotly. Ryan licks at Shane’s mouth, gentle, gentle, and then he bites his lip again, a little harder than last time, drags it between his teeth before he lets go, before he kisses him again, Shane’s open mouth, and in the split second that follows— Shane says “Ry,” like it means something to him, and then he’s spilling over Ryan’s hand, and in the aftermath they both just lie there, breathing together, Shane’s pulse, his breath slowly coming down to match Ryan’s, and Ryan’s touch is softer now, on Shane’s throat, on his softening cock.

They lie there for a while, eventually shifting so they are no longer touching, and Ryan can feel the cooler air on all the damp places of his body. There’s the smallest flicker of movement, and Ryan raises his eyes to meet Shane’s, and it’s just so many questions there. Or maybe just one question.

“I think,” Ryan says carefully, “that you should sleep here tonight.”

“Here?” Shane asks, meaning the bed, and Ryan nods.

Shane licks his lips, and Ryan almost thinks he’s going to be kissed again, but then Shane doesn’t. Shane just says “Okay.”

But that’s good enough, and Ryan heaves a sigh of relief, and it doesn’t fade — that feeling — even as Shane says something about cleaning up and disappears into the bathroom. Ryan just breathes. Because did that really just happen?

—

A few minutes later, in Ryan’s bathroom, which is the size of a closet, Shane whacks his elbow on the door like he always somehow manages to do. He doesn’t shut it all the way, just sort of stands there in the too-bright light and assesses this moment. He’s standing here without a stitch on, aside from — well, he’s still got his watch. He checks it and it’s not even one a.m. Somehow this feels like a situation that should occur in the early hours of morning. Right before Shane grabs his stuff and says ‘thanks, see you around!’ and leaves.

He looks wild. He doesn’t exactly look ‘fucked’ though. More like he stuck his finger into a socket. He washes his hands and pushes them through his hair, trying to get it to look a little less insane. He’s scared to go back into Ryan’s room, but he’s got to. Shane’s walked out on a lot of people he probably shouldn’t have, but he can’t do it to Ryan. So he takes a bunch of the toilet paper, braces himself, then walks back out.

Ryan’s still half out of it. It’s kind of beautiful. “Here,” Shane says, sitting beside him on the bed. “I’ve got— you’ve got stuff on you.” Ryan’s eyes are just glitters in the half-dark and he wipes his hand and his stomach and reaches over to drop the mess into the trash.

“You’re… are you freaking out?” Ryan asks, and his voice is different, heavy. It does something to Shane, flutters low in his stomach.

“I’m— maybe just a bit,” Shane says. “Look, it doesn’t have to… sometimes it’s just nice to do that. With someone you trust. But we can forget it, if you want.”

“Is that what you want?” Ryan asks. “Like— sorry, I’m not— I can’t be like Matt.”

Shane takes a long breath and lets it out before he meets Ryan’s eyes. “You’re not like Matt,” he says.

“Oh.” And he sounds so startled that Shane almost smiles. “Uh, okay. Um. So what— what am I like, then?”

“This is a tomorrow conversation,” Shane says. “I think that’s… I can sleep on the couch.”

“I don’t want you to sleep on the couch. I don’t— I mean… you— you… that’s rude. That would be rude.”

“You don’t— it’s fine, Ryan,” says Shane, and starts to stand, already looking around for his clothes.

“Shane,” Ryan says, and nothing else. Shane stops, freezes really, and looks back at him. “Please don’t… I want… I want you here, I want to know you’re not going to leave, and I don’t care what that makes me sound like, I just… I don’t…”

“Okay,” Shane says, but he can hear the reluctance in his own voice. Even though he already agreed a few minutes ago.

“No, seriously, Shane…” Ryan meets his eyes, and he looks so freaked out. “Did we fuck up?”

“Well, we definitely… fucked. But I don’t think… that that means we fucked up, no.”

“Oh my god,” Ryan says. “We did. We did that.”

“It’s cool, buddy,” Shane says. But damn, this is starting to feel too much like a roller coaster. “It’s okay. It can be a one-off, and we never have to talk about—”

“I’m not like that,” Ryan says, and he sounds… wrong. Shane hopes he isn’t the one who made him sound like that. “I don’t just… I’m not like that.”

“I know, Ryan,” Shane says. “I’m going to get dressed, okay? I’m not leaving.” He gets up. Ryan doesn’t watch him, and Shane’s sort of glad. He casts around for his clothes and pulls them on sort of haphazardly, hands Ryan his, but Ryan shakes his head. “No, it’s… I’ve got some.”

Shane sits down again on the edge of the bed, eyes on his hands which are clasped together on his thighs as he listens to Ryan go through his dresser, grab something that sounds soft — pajama bottoms. Okay.

“Are you okay?” Shane asks.

“I dunno,” Ryan answers. “Are we? Or— oh, no, right. Tomorrow conversation?”

Shane sighs and smooths the hair down at the back of his neck repeatedly to avoid looking at Ryan. “It doesn’t have to be.”

“Were you… why did you start this?”

Shane wants to argue here, because he didn’t start it, Ryan did. Ryan kissed him. But the touch, that was him. He did that.

“I’m… I wanted to, I guess. You seemed like you were happy to go along with it.”

“Do you think this is like— maybe we’ve just been together too long. Like boarding school syndrome”

“Jesus christ, Ryan,” Shane says, and something prickles in him, hot like anger. “No. I think…”

Ryan’s quiet, chewing his lip. It’s distracting and Shane takes and lets go of a shallow breath. “I think I… finally started listening to people.”

“To who?”

“Look… I don’t know, just… you’re a very— I like being around you! You’re very good looking, I’m… I don’t know. I wanted to. I got— caught up in the moment, and I thought you did, too. That’s all.”

Ryan doesn’t know how Shane can just let these things roll off his tongue like they don’t cost him everything to say. But Ryan knows that they do, because Shane never says anything without meaning to. Without thinking about it forever. And even in spite of that, Ryan thinks, Shane— Shane called him ‘Ry’ when he came, like that was something… on purpose. Meaningful. And now he’s calling Ryan attractive and saying he got caught up in a moment that Ryan didn’t even start.

“I’m just— sort of reeling here, man, because I didn’t even know you were into guys until like five seconds ago—”

“You knew,” Shane says in that patronizing tone Ryan hates so much.

“No, I didn’t, because you never told me!”

“Well, you never asked! Agh, no, I don’t want to… I’m not… I’m just into people.”

“Okay, fine,” Ryan says, and they both go quiet for a moment. Ryan chews his lip some more, debating and debating, and then he finally just says it — because they’ve both already gone out on some pretty spindly limbs tonight.

“Are you into me?” It’s such an impossible question. Ryan honestly has a hard time believing that anyone could be into him. Ryan grew up scrawny and film-obsessed and nerdy and mixed-race. He grew up trying so hard to be good enough for everyone. His parents, his friends, his girlfriends. But he was not quite smart enough to become a doctor, not white enough for Hollywood, not tall enough for basketball, not smooth enough verbally— not accurate enough in his pronunciation for radio, which was what he studied for fuckssake… he’s not even brave enough for ghost hunting, but he seems to have everyone fooled about that one. It hasn’t been until recently that things have started to turn around. Most of the time, it’s still that weird, too-small kid he sees in the mirror. Glasses, braces, not special… overlooked. Saying are you into me to Shane Madej — Shane with his midwestern distance and his clarity and his height and his whiteness and the way nothing fazes him.

Shane laughs out loud. “That’s, well— isn’t it obvious by now?” he asks.

“Well, I dunno— that’s what I’m trying to understand, dude,” Ryan says and then, perhaps a little meanly because he’s feeling vulnerable as fuck right now. “Are you into Matt?”

The answer comes so fast. “No.”

“But… me?” he hears his voice falter a little and wishes he could rewind time just a handful of seconds to fix it. He can’t though, so he doesn’t, and Shane—

Shane says “Yeah,” anyway. He says it very soft, but very steady and Ryan wants to ask him if he’s seen Ryan in those high school rap videos, if he’s taken a moment to gather up everything that Ryan is — or rather, everything that Ryan isn’t, in order to answer that question with ‘yeah’, but all he comes out with is “Since when?”

“I’m still figuring all this out as I go, buddy,” Shane says, and looks up at him, uncertain. “So… now do you want me to sleep on the couch?”

Ryan swallows, mouth suddenly very dry, heart pounding in his chest. “If I say no… if I say ‘stay here’, what does that make me?” he asks, and his voice sounds as dry as his throat feels.

Shane shrugs a shoulder, looks away from him, then back — sort of sidelong. “It doesn’t make you anything. Just makes you Ryan.”

Ryan feels something in him spark. He grasps the edge of something bigger, but loses it all at once. It only lasted a split second, but he thinks that might be one of the nicest things Shane’s ever said to him, even though he isn’t entirely sure it’s not a veiled insult.

“Okay,” Ryan finally manages. “Cool.” And he pulls himself back up to the headboard, shifts to the left side, because Shane is always at his right. That’s just what they do. He doesn’t even know when or how that started, but that’s just what they do.

Shane follows him, and they don’t speak as they get under the covers, they leave the TV on in the other room, and Shane tucks himself away on his side, but he doesn’t turn his back on him. Not like in all the haunted places.

And Ryan thinks they both lie away for a long time, but he knows he hears Shane drop off first, as the night spends its hours to afford the morning.

—

To be honest, Shane thought it was something that would never happen again, but the next morning, somewhere in between Ryan’s eyes myopic and half-unfocussed and never quite on Shane, and Shane’s recklessly bold “Just— last time— no big deal,” as he shifted forward and slid his hand from Ryan’s hip to his stomach to his cock — and the way Ryan’s breath shook and Shane could look at Ryan’s sleep-dark eyes and ridiculous hair and just think — oh fuck he’s so— he’s so beautiful. Somewhere in between that and Ryan finally rolling out of bed to go and shower, Shane figured out just how fucked he was.

After, they decide to go for a walk because it’s better than staying in here, where things are so close, and so… it’s just better.

“It feels sort of normal though,” Ryan finally says, as they walk side by side. “Like this, now. Doesn’t it? I mean aside from the subject matter… we feel. Normal?”

“Yeah,” Shane says, quietly. “We feel normal. We don’t have to screw us up.”

“Just… I don’t— are we gonna…?”

Shane looks at him once, quickly, a hitch in his step. “Gonna what…?”

“I mean… it was pretty good.”

Shane looks away, up towards the brilliant blue sky because he’s never learned to take a damn compliment from Ryan because Ryan is so earnest in everything. He means it. And if he means it — then that’s a lot. That’s maybe more than Shane can take right now. “Yeah,” he finally manages.

And then Ryan says “I kind of… I don’t do casual sex,” and Shane has to stop walking, he has to because he doesn’t know what’s happening, he needs to gather himself. There’s a lot to gather. He holds his breath for a second, holds it in his lungs like it’s his last. He holds it until Ryan stops too, and turns back to him.

“Then what do you want to do?” Shane asks him. And for the first time on their walk he really looks at him. Ryan’s got his eyes down, hair still un-gelled beneath his baseball cap. It’s the Unsolved hat Shane notices for the first time. And that affects him, somehow, but he doesn’t know why. Ryan’s searching, but he looks lost. He looks to Shane for help.

“I’ve managed not to royally screw up any of my other relationships,” Shane says. “Like friends, I sometimes…”

“Can we— could we…” Ryan’s still floundering, Shane can see it. “Like maybe could we just… see how it goes for a little while? No strings?”

“Sure,” Shane says, wondering if he’s just died from a fucking heart attack. How is he still breathing? “Whatever you want.”

“There’s, uh, maybe one more thing,” Ryan says.

“Shoot.”

“Could we not… sleep with other people while we sort of… figure this out? That’s just a level of anxiety I don’t need right now.”

“There’s…” Shane’s reeling a little and the words come together before he’s even ready for them. They’re out of his mouth before he’s thought too deeply. “I don’t have— I’m— clean, jesus, there’s protection.”

“Protection’s not always… reliable, I mean… just… we’re both clean and I’m not saying the other people you… I’m not saying they’re not, I just… it’s just something that kind of freaks me out. You— what we did— that’s not… I don’t do that. I’ve never done that. I’d rather not be a person that does that.”

“Are you asking me to go steady with you, Ryan?” Shane teases, but he can’t— he finds he can’t really take his eyes off of him.

“I’m n— fuck off,” Ryan says, and he laughs, and maybe Shane’s too unguarded in this moment because when Ryan looks up and gets a look at Shane’s eyes, he stops and Shane blinks and quickly schools his expression into neutral. It's so fast Ryan almost feels like he must have imagined it. “Let’s just… can we just do this?” Ryan asks, “For a while?”

“Yeah, let’s try it,” Shane says.

“But just friends? Still friends.”

“We made a pact, remember?” Shane asks. “Nobody breaks up the ghoul boys.”

“Yeah, yeah, right,” Ryan says. “Not even the ghoul boys.”

“Not even,” Shane agrees, and it feels like a promise. He’s not sure if that was meant… if Ryan meant it or if he did. But he leaves it alone for now. He just lets it be.

—

It felt like a moment, Ryan thinks, that day, but nothing comes of it. They don’t touch, don’t kiss again for a long time. Weeks. Shane’s back to looking through apartments that are available online and it sits heavily and sort of sick in Ryan’s stomach, and they do this thing where they find a place and, without fail, one of them will point out something wrong.

“That’s a murder kitchen.”

“Oh, you think every kitchen is a murder kitchen,” Shane scoffs, but he’s closing the page anyway. It eases something in Ryan every time Shane Cmd+W’s a window. “It definitely was. Did you see those windows? They’re just screaming for someone to stand outside and watch you through the glass before they smash in and—”

“Jesus christ,” Shane’s laughing. “You and your faces through windows phobia. I wonder if there’s a name for that.” He opens up Google and Ryan shifts closer to watch him search.

“That’s a way more normal fear than being injected with heroin—”

“No, it isn’t! It’s the fear of a paranoid, deluded mind.”

“Okay, that’s taking it too far,” Ryan laughs.

“Scopobophobia?” Shane asks. “Is that you? Are you Scopoba— what?”

“Scopobo… scopobophobic? All these words are so bad. Nobody can even say what’s wrong with them!”

“So you admit that there’s something wrong,” Shane says, closing the web and putting his computer away on the coffee table, sitting back on the couch.

“No, stop putting words in my mouth, you dick!”

—

True Crime wraps up. It’s the last day and they agree on going out to celebrate with the crew. And there’s this vibe, this crackling kind of energy and Ryan’s coasting on it, smiling. It’s been a good day, a good season, and he’s happy with this episode. It doesn’t always all come together like that, and something builds and builds in Ryan while they’re out for drinks and food, and Shane is beside him, because of course he is. They’re always beside one another and Shane shoulders him gently, pulling him back from his thoughts, and it’s flicking through his mind more than it should. It’s beating with his heart. A few drinks in he’s not even drunk because they’ve been eating so much, but he’s warm and happy and full and it’s a break now, for Christmas and before the next season of Unsolved and he actually has a handful of days off where he doesn’t have to do anything at all. He doesn’t even have to think about work — he probably will because that’s what he does, but he doesn’t have to, and that’s the main thing. And Shane’s still at his place, for now…

And for a moment Ryan entertains the thought of Christmas, with Shane, because in all these years it’s never happened, but then he remembers that Shane’s definitely going to go back to Illinois because that’s what always happens. It makes him sadder than it should but then Shane’s saying his name, pulling him back into a conversation, and Ryan forgets about it for a little while.

At some point during the night while Shane is talking, Ryan, who’s suddenly stranded outside of things while Mark disappears to the bathroom just tunes in to his conversation. And in a surge of boldness and slightly tipsy mischievousness, he takes a drink of beer with his left hand while his right finds Shane’s leg under the table, fairly high up on his thigh since his knee is honest to god too far away for Ryan to be able to reach and Shane stutters a little, half-glances at him, then continues, but he’s lost the thread a little. Ryan pretends like he’s very interested in whatever Shane has to say, but he’s looking at the others. And no one’s noticed. And so he slides his hand up a little further, because it’s a dare now, and the inside of Shane’s thigh tenses beneath his fingers and Ryan wonders— there’s this rolling shame, but it’s riding beneath the heat in him — Ryan wonders if Shane’s already hard, or if Ryan could get him there by just doing this.

And he thinks, it’s not very fair, after doing nothing like this for weeks, to do it now, in public, with friends and colleagues all around. But Ryan thinks he can gauge the people around him, who’s looking, who isn’t. His hand is dangerously high on Shane’s thigh now — and jesus, his legs go on forever — and suddenly Shane’s fingers, strangely cold, are on his, curling around his fingers, pressing his hand down against his thigh, holding him there, holding him steady, and he finishes his story without a hitch. Someone else leaps into the conversation and Shane doesn’t let go of Ryan’s hand. Not quite. He pushes him down a little lower, to a slightly more respectable place if anywhere on Shane’s thigh is a respectable place in public, and then he— fuck, he curls his fingers around Ryan’s differently, gentler, until he is undoubtably holding Ryan’s hand. On purpose. And it’s not like this is something they haven’t done — maybe it was at séances, but still, it counts, Ryan thinks.

But this is different. This is a choice Shane just made and it sends something through Ryan that is better than the desire Ryan felt a moment ago. Desire to fuck with Shane, yeah, but also maybe desire to… he remembers the heat of Shane’s mouth on him and Ryan closes his fingers around Shane’s fingers and that’s it. They’re holding hands beneath the table, and it’s not like it’s supposed to be — fingers interlocked, palm to palm. Shane’s palm is against the back of Ryan’s hand, but his fingers are long and curled around almost the whole of Ryan’s. And Ryan has closed his fingers over Shane’s and they both hold on gentle, steady. But still, Ryan wonders if Shane can feel the way his pulse is jumping.

Eventually, though, it settles. A handful of times over the last three quarters of an hour here, Shane runs his thumb back and forth, just once or twice at a time, over Ryan’s skin and it’s in those moments that Ryan thinks — Ryan wishes that he could just… that they could do this. Or that he could lean into Shane because he’s getting tired now, too full and too buzzed and it’s been a long week…

He’s been too distracted by the touch that he’s barely spoken for the last little while, but sometimes it’s nice to just listen. Shane doesn’t let him go until people start standing to leave and still, he holds on, holds on, until the very last possible second, and then his hand slips away from Ryan’s. They both stand up, grab their jackets and in this one half-second moment, Ryan meets Shane’s eyes as he gets his arms through his coat-sleeves and Shane gives him this smile that is genuinely bright and… quiet somehow. Like it’s just for him and Ryan holds onto it.

And all at once he realizes there’s something in this that he really, really wants to keep.