#bfu fic

“Ry,” Shane says. He makes grabby hands at Ryan and Ryan finally puts his phone down to lace their fingers together. “It’ll be fun.”

The thing is, Ryan, in spite of Shane’s relentless teasing, isn’t some kind of Californian flower. He’s been camping before with his family as a kid, and actually enjoyed it. That kind of camping, though, involved a rented RV with an actual bedroom and a place to cook food. He figures Shane, a wild midwesterner, has something different in mind. Some kind of rustic camping experience where they’ll both be mauled by a bear in the middle of fucking, or something.

And besides, Ryan would rather take his rare time off from worrying about Watcher fucking Shane in their bed, in their house, and not in the bear infested woods, thank you very much.

“The last time you said something would be fun, I had to bring you to a Vegas ER to have a dragon dildo surgically removed,” Ryan points out.

Shane shudders at the memory. “It wasn’t exactly surgical,” he argues.

“Dude, they knocked you out for a good twenty minutes.”

Shane waves a hand as if he can get rid of that memory. “Well anyway,” he says. He rests his hands on Ryan’s stomach, under his shirt, and looks up at him through big brown eyes. Dirty pool . “Just imagine it, Ry,” he says, his voice soft. “Just me and you. No one around for miles. The sun on our skin.” He moves his hand lower. “ All our skin.”

“I fucking hate you,” Ryan answers, his voice a bit rough. Shane doesn’t answer, and Ryan raises an eyebrow at him. “No more dragon dildos?”

Shane holds his other hand, the one not currently attempting a break into Ryan’s pants, up in the air. “I do solemnly swear.”

Ryan sighs. “Fine!” he answers, and Shane rewards him with a rather mind blowing orgasm, so Ryan can’t be totally to blame for his Pavlonian response to Shane’s puppy dog eyes.

FRIDAY

Ryan isn’t sure if he should feel vindicated or scared that apparently apprehensive was the right word to describe how one should feel about Shane’s camping plans. As Shane unloads his car, it’s brought to Ryan’s sharp attention that Shane has packed very lightly: a cooler full of cheap beer, a small tent, an inflatable mattress (which, like, okay), a single blanket and multiple bags of graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars. It seems that he’s brought no real food for a three day camping trip. Ryan’s not entirely convinced that they’ll be able to live off this diet, but Shane, taking off to their location with a tent and cooler in hand, seems non-pulsed.

“Hey Shane?” Ryan asks. Shane turns to look at him and Ryan holds up the cooler and one of the bags. “The fuck?”

“S’mores,” Shane answers, which does not answer Ryan’s question but okay. “Come on. Grab the rest of it. We’re burning daylight, baby!”

Ryan grabs the rest of the stuff, grumbling under his breath as he follows Shane. Shane arrives at the camping site first, true to his word, there are no people around, and pulls out the instructions for the tent. A smirk spreads over Ryan’s face as he watches Shane, furrowed brow and all, reading fucking instructions on how to put up a tent. “Need help, bud?”

Shane looks up at Ryan and rolls his eyes at the cocky face staring back at him. “Nah,” he answers. “I got this. Just sit right there and look pretty, baby. Leave the hard work to me.”

Ryan sits on the edge of the cooler and watches Shane struggle for the next ten minutes, grumbling under his breath. Eventually, Ryan decides to stop torturing the guy and gets up, helps him set up the tent. It takes all of two minutes, and Ryan smiles at Shane when it’s done. “Fuck you,” Shane says. “I totally had that in the bag.”

Ryan laughs. “You’re such a liar.” He puckers his lips at Shane and says, mockingly, “say thank you, baby.”

“Thank you, baby,” Shane replies as he presses his lips to Ryan’s. “Now come on,” he says. “Let’s get this air mattress going.”

Unfortunately, the two of them don’t have as much luck with the air mattress as they did with the tent. “I see,” Shane says, kneeling on the floor. “It needs batteries.”

Ryan rolls his eyes at Shane. “You didn’t think to replace them?”

“It’s not my fault,” Shane defends. He flops the end of the air mattress on the floor. “It’s Steven’s air mattress.”

Ryan is kind of morbidly curious how Shane talked Steven into giving them his air mattress, or why Steven even has an air mattress in the first place, but he doesn’t ask. Instead, he says, “well I’ll just take the car and go get some more batteries.”

Ryan reaches for the keys, but Shane shakes his head. “Immersion, baby,” he responds, tapping either side of Ryan’s chest. And that’s how Ryan ends up that night laying on the cold, damp floor with only a blanket and Shane to keep him warm. Comfortable.

Ryan, trying and failing to sleep while staring at the ceiling, says “I hate you,” into the silence. When Shane doesn’t respond, Ryan looks down at him. Shane’s got his head on Ryan’s chest, long legs bracketing Ryan’s, arms around his waist, dead asleep. He looks so peaceful like this, no worry on his face, and Ryan, despite himself, brushes Shane’s hair and thinks about how fucking lucky he is to have someone like Shane.

SATURDAY

Ryan wakes up to Shane sneaking out from their blanket. “No,” he whines, groggy, reaching his arms in Shane’s general direction. When there’s no reply, Ryan squints his eyes open.

Shane isn’t in their tent at all. Ryan thinks Shane may have been mauled by bears which, while obviously traumatizing, would kind of serve him right for not listening to Ryan in the first place.

“Shane?” Ryan calls. He reluctantly leaves the safety of their tent to hunt for Shane’s dead body, which is how he finds Shane sitting over the edge of a cliff, watching the sunrise. The fact that the sun is rising cements in Ryan’s mind that they definitely should be sleeping, but he finds it’s hard to be grumpy at being woken up so early when Shane looks fucking etheral, brilliant yellow and orange rays coating his skin, reflecting off the water, rising heat covering Ryan like a blanket.

Ryan sits next to Shane and laces their fingers together. Neither of them speak for a while, watching the sunrise until the sun has fully risen, and the heat is a little more present. Shane turns to kiss Ryan, whispers, “love you, baby,” like a secret for the two of them to share, and then promptly stands, quickly shreds his clothes (Ryan gives him an incredulous look for that one), and jumps into the water.

“What the fuck?” Ryan shouts down at his boyfriend when he emerges from the water, hair a mess and laughing.

“Skinny dipping!” Shane answers. Ryan feels like he has god damn whiplash from the complete 180 his morning has taken. “Join me, Ry!”

Ryan, as with most things, feels drawn in like a moth to a flame to one of Shane’s crazy schemes. Despite himself, he shrugs off his clothes and jumps in the water next to Shane, making sure to thoroughly soak the asshole to teach him a lesson.

“Hey!” Shane shouts when Ryan resurfaces from the water. He splashes Ryan, and Ryan splashes back, and eventually they’re in a full out splash war like children. It ends when Shane holds his hands up as Ryan splashes a particularly big splash in his face. “You win, you win.”

Ryan’s giggles die out as he takes Shane in. His skin is glowing in the morning sun, his hair a mess on top of his head, his eyes sparkly. Ryan moves closer so that he can pull Shane towards him until their skin is touching. He brushes a piece of Shane’s hair out of his face and says, “you’re fucking beautiful.”

Shane goes red. “You’re fucking beautiful,” he answers, and then pulls Ryan into a kiss. He tastes like seawater and s’mores and something so undeniably Shane that Ryan kind of never wants to stop kissing him, like, ever.

When Shane pulls back, he fixes Ryan with a devious smile. “You know,” he says conversationally, “back in the day, I held the record amongst my friends for the longest any of us could hold our breaths underwater.”

Sounds like a boastful lie, but to be fair, so does most of Shane’s crazy midwestern childhood. “Yeah?” Ryan asks.

“Yeah,” Shane replies. He skirts his fingers up Ryan’s thigh, almost touching him but not quite, and says against Ryan’s ear, all husky in a way that makes Ryan fucking melt, “you wanna see?”

When Ryan nods, Shane backs him up against the cliff and uses the momentum of the water to lift Ryan onto the cliff. Ryan wants to argue that this is really no testament to his breath-holding abilities, but then Shane pulls Ryan close by his ass and attaches his mouth to Ryan’s clit and Ryan really loses the ability to argue anything.

Shane pushes two fingers into Ryan’s hole and moves slowly, languidly, as if he has all the time in the world to make Ryan come apart. He lets up on Ryan’s clit to kiss just above, his thighs, everywhere but where Ryan needs him. Ryan locks his legs around Shane’s head, drawing him in closer. Shane pulls his fingers out just enough to spread Ryan’s lips, and he licks a broad stripe over them.

“Shane, Shane,” Ryan chants, his hands everywhere: Shane’s hair, his shoulders, his arms, wrapped around Ryan’s thighs. “You gotta-you-please-”

Thankfully, Shane has had training in understanding Ryan’s babbling and, perhaps more thankfully, he has a heart today. He pushes his fingers back deep into Ryan, gives him something to clench around, and sucks Ryan’s clit into his mouth again, hard. Ryan feels his eyes roll into the back of his head, and he’s pretty sure he would faint into the water if it wasn’t for Shane’s ridiculously big hands on his thighs. Ryan’s soaked and he’s not sure if it’s the lake or him.

When Ryan starts breathing hard around whines, Shane lets up on his clit and instead lets Ryan grind against the bridge of his nose, thrusting two fingers into him in a way that has Ryan gasping and pushing back against his hand. “Yeah,” Shane says. “Yeah, give it to me,” and then he curls his fingers against Ryan’s g-spot and Ryan sees stars.

Ryan comes hard and Shane follows him through it, thrusting his fingers hard, following the manic thrust of Ryan’s hips with his tongue fucking everywhere until Ryan comes down from it and pushes Shane’s head away. Shane pulls his fingers out of Ryan and says, through heavy breaths, “see? What did I tell you? I could hold my breath for hours .”

He’s so fucking full of himself but he’s also so gorgeous, red lips and wet face, that Ryan kind of has to pull him into a deep kiss.

They spend the rest of the day lazing around, laying in the grass in the afternoon sun, Ryan curled into Shane’s side, both of them naked as the day they were born, with no fear of people coming to find them and seeing them like this. No one around for miles. The sun on their skin. Ryan is a little loath to admit Shane was right.

He must fall asleep for a while, because he wakes up to Shane tending to a campfire. He has a pair of Ryan’s basketball shorts slung low around his waist and not much else, and Ryan just wants to look at him for a while. Unfortunately, Shane has supersonic Ryan detectors. “Hey,” he greets. He turns to Ryan with a goofy smile. “Steven called.”

Ryan reaches out for Shane and Shane complies, letting Ryan pull him into a grass-centric cuddle. “I thought we were having a technology free weekend,” Ryan says, a lazy hand coming up to rub circles on Shane’s bare hip.

Shane laughs a little scary against Ryan’s skin. Ryan pulls back to look at Shane. “What did you do to Steven Lim?”

“Nothing,” Shane answers, though his smile gives away the fact that he’s a liar. “He asked where you were and I informed him you were sleeping and thoroughly immersed in our weekend long sex trip. To which he spluttered and hung up the phone.”

Ryan laughs and tucks his face into the crook of Shane’s neck. “You’re horrible.”

Shane chuckles softly, his voice syrupy, as he dances his fingers along Ryan’s thigh. “You know,” he starts.

Ryan sighs softly and spreads his legs as Shane rubs his fingertips against Ryan’s opening. “I’m technically a liar.”

Ryan tries to push back on Shane’s fingers but he’s trapped by Shane’s arm holding his hips in place. “Oh yeah?” he says as he decides to relax into the feeling. “Why’s that?”

Shane presses a finger into Ryan and fucks him with it slowly. He leans down to whisper into Ryan’s ear. “We haven’t even had sex yet.”

Ryan spreads his legs to give Shane a better angle. “We haven’t?” he asks, his voice breathy. “Wasn’t it you that ate me out until I thought you were going to drown? I was really afraid that I was going to have to call Steven and be like: ‘sorry, bro. He died eating pussy.’”

Shane laughs at that. “Steven would die too, and then you would be down to one CEO.” He rubs Ryan’s clit slowly and Ryan groans softly. “You know what I mean though, asshole. Penetration. Some good ole P in V.”

Ryan huffs out a laugh. “You are such a fucking cis guy.” Despite himself, he presses into Shane’s touch. “Go for it, man. P in V.”

Shane picks up his efforts then, pressing a second finger in beside his first. He stretches Ryan out on them, listens to the subtle changes in breathing. “You’re fucking beautiful,” Shane says, and then, just to be a dick, he presses another in and starts fucking Ryan in earnest.

Ryan puts a hand on Shane’s arm and can feel the muscles contracting beneath the skin. “Shane,” he says, all breathy. “Shane, you gotta stop, man. I’m gonna come.”

Shane’s smile is kind of loopy when he replies, “yeah, that’s the point.” He crooks his fingers and leans down to whisper in Ryan’s ear. “I wanna watch it happen, baby. Wanna watch you get my fingers soaking wet. Wanna make sure you’re nice and sticky inside so I have somewhere nice to put my dick.”

That’s it for Ryan, he comes clinging onto Shane’s arms, rides it out with his hips pressed to Shane’s hand, sucks Shane’s fingers into him as far as they’ll go. When he’s done, Shane pulls his fingers out just barely, just enough for Ryan to see how sticky he is. “God, what a fucking mess,” Shane says.

Ryan gives him a challenging look. “Why don’t you clean it up?”

Shane, as always, takes the challenge. He ducks his head between Ryan’s legs. He laps up the come there, but refuses to touch Ryan’s clit, which just drives Ryan crazy. He sucks Ryan’s labia hard and Ryan very nearly passes out. “Oh my god,” he gripes, a hand in Shane’s hair. “Please, please fuck me.”

Shane gives one last suck to Ryan’s labia before pulling his head back. His face is fucking soaked and he might just be the most beautiful person Ryan’s ever seen. “Well,” Shane says, a hand on Ryan’s thigh, a little breathy. “Since you asked nicely and all.”

Shane hovers over Ryan with his hands on the floor, like some kind of poor intimation of a sex pushup. He uses one hand to push Ryan’s leg up so that it’s bent next to his chest, and uses this new angle to rub at Ryan’s opening with two of his fingers. Ryan whines at the feeling. “Stop being a tease,” he says, but he can’t quite catch his breath enough to sound angry.

Shane rolls his eyes but lines his cock up with Ryan’s entrance anyway. He pushes in slowly, and despite the fact that they’ve done this more times than Ryan could count to in this lifetime, it still takes his breath away every time. Once Shane is all the way in, pressing gentle kisses to Ryan’s face, Ryan feels so full that he might split in half.

“Shane,” Ryan says. He gets his hands on the nape of Shane’s neck. He’s sweating, which should be gross, but Ryan can’t find it in himself to care. He’s getting fucked in the middle of the woods, is probably gonna find grass in horrible places for weeks to come, and all he can think about is how he wants more .

Shane gives Ryan one shallow thrust that has Ryan crying out and canting his hips up. “You good?” Shane asks.

Ryan resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Yes, Shane, A+ dick game. Please fuck me .”

Shane huffs out a laugh but starts giving it to Ryan in earnest, thrusting hard and fast, filling Ryan up and leaving him empty and filling him up again in a pattern that has Ryan dizzy with it. All he can do is hold on, his fingernails probably leaving indents in Shane’s shoulders, and get lost in the feeling of getting fucked right.

Shane pants over him, right in his ear, which Ryan suspects should probably also be gross but is currently just hot as fuck. “God, you’re so beautiful,” Shane says, because even during sex, he can’t shut up. “So wet for me. So tight. Look at you. You’re fucking glowing, Ryan. You’re ethereal.”

Ryan isn’t sure if he wants more to come or to cry. Shane, however, makes the executive decision for him. He rubs the pad of his thumb over Ryan’s clit in nice circular motions and whispers, right in his ear, “you gonna come for me?”

Ryan nods quickly. “Yes, yes, Shane, man, come on,” he pants senselessly, his nails digging so hard into Shane’s shoulders that Shane actually cringes a little.

That doesn’t stop his attack on Ryan’s clit, though. “Come on,” he breathes into Ryan’s ear, presses a kiss against the skin of his neck. “Come for me, Ryan.”

Shane has some kind of sex superpower that makes Ryan helpless to do anything other than what Shane says. He comes around Shane’s cock like he’s possessed, white light gathered behind his eyes, pussy clenching hard around Shane’s cock, keeping him there, his hands fucking anywhere on Shane’s body that they can reach. Shane rubs him through it, only stops rubbing Ryan’s clit when Ryan pushes his hand away, just on the bad side of oversensitive.

“Fuck,” Shane says, his open-mouthed breathing against Ryan’s neck. He sounds absolutely destroyed and Ryan can relate. He presses a hand to the back of Shane’s head and just cradles him to his body. “Can I-” Shane mutters. His hips thrust forward on their own accord and Ryan gasps. “Can I come inside you, Ryan? Please, please, I have to-”

Ryan cuts him off with an enthusiastic nod. “Yes, please, Shane.”

With permission, Shane thrusts his hips forward fast and deep, like he can’t bear to have his cock any further out of Ryan than absolutely necessary. He must have been holding back for Ryan’s sake, because it only takes a handful of thrusts before Ryan feels his cock throb inside him. Shane gets himself as far in as possible and comes, filling Ryan up so much he can hardly stand it. Ryan doesn’t get to see his face, but he can feel the puffs of hot air against his body, hears the way Shane says “Ry, Ry,” over and over, and that’s a treat in itself.

Shane stays shuddering on top of Ryan for a second, shaking with the sheer force of holding himself up for that long and fucking someone into the grass. Ryan would be kind of proud of if there was any more room in his head for thoughts. As it is, he just holds Shane close, enjoys the feeling of Shane’s cock inside him, keeping his come trapped deep inside Ryan.

Once Shane gets his brain back online, he rolls off of Ryan and lands on the grass with a hard thud . Ryan can feel Shane’s come dripping out of him, which he always finds kind of gross, but makes Shane go blurry-eyed. Shane collects the come that’s dripped out and pushes it back into Ryan, to which Ryan whimpers from oversensitivity.

“Do you want me to clean you out?” Shane whispers into Ryan’s ear, his voice deep and rough, and Ryan’s clit gives a weak jump that honestly kind of hurts.

“My guy, are you trying to kill me?” Ryan asks. He pulls Shane to his chest and kisses the top of his head. He likes being able to do that, horizontally, pretty much the only time he and Shane can be the same height. “Time to nap.”

Shane huffs out a laugh against Ryan’s collarbone. “Is that all you frat boys care about?” he asks. “Beer and naps?”

“And sex,” Ryan adds, already well on his way to sleep. “You made me come, like, three times today, dude. My body is begging for a nap.”

Ryan’s eyes are closed, but he can almost hear Shane’s cocky smirk as he says, “yeah. I’m kind of a god, aren’t I?” Ryan slips into unconsciousness, vaguely aware of Shane pressing a kiss to Ryan’s neck and saying, “I love you, baby.”

Ryan wakes up to a dark forest, Shane nowhere to be found. Ryan’s mind immediately goes to bears again, but when he sits up, he finds Shane tending to a campfire, sweats hanging low against his hips, a t-shirt hanging haphazardly from his shoulders, his glasses sideways and his hair a fucking mess as he digs through the utter shit pile of things Shane packed for their trip.

“Shane,” Ryan says. Shane comically drops a backpack, and Ryan sends up a silent prayer to whatever deity is willing to listen to a bisexual trans man that his boyfriend hasn’t broken anything important. “What the fuck is happening?”

“You’re gonna kill me,” Shane says, which is never a good way to start a sentence. Ryan sits up and Shane tosses him a sweatshirt and some pants. Ryan pulls the pants on and stands to put on the sweatshirt when Shane says, “it’s possible that s’mores are the only form of substance I’ve brought.”

Ryan stops with one arm in his sweatshirt and glares at Shane. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish,” Shane says. Ryan pulls his sweatshirt on finally and sits on the ground near the campfire. Shane rips open bags of graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate in quick succession and hands them off to Ryan. He has sticks too, somehow, which makes Ryan a little wary of the fact that Shane ‘forgot’ real food. Maybe his midwestern ass thought they could pillage or something.

“Come on,” Shane says, breaking Ryan out of his thoughts. He already has his marshmallow over the fire, and Ryan does the same. “I’m not telling Steven Lim you died naked in the woods from malnutrition.”

With his free hand, Ryan mimes picking up a phone. “Uhhh,” he starts in a pretty bad Shane impression. “So Ryan died.”

Shane mimes being on the other end of the phone and pitches his voice up in an equally bad impression of Steven. “Oh gosh!” he says, which makes Ryan giggle. “Did he at least die peacefully?”

“Nah,” Ryan answers. He gives an exaggerated sigh and adds, “he was naked and really fucking pissed at me.”

“Oh!” Shane fake laments. “I have to go eat some gold to feel better about this!” He sighs.

Ryan laughs again and pushes Shane’s shoulder. “Man, shut the fuck up.”

They put together their s’mores and eat in relative silence. Ryan can’t help stealing glances at Shane’s face as they eat. He looks gorgeous like this, lit up by the fire, chocolate running down his fingertips. Shane catches him staring when they finish eating and gives him a goofy smile. “What?”

“Nothing,” Ryan answers. “Just,” he shrugs. “Thank you for convincing me to do this. It really was fun.”

Shane’s smile gets bigger then, somehow. “You’re welcome.” He reaches over and touches his sticky fingers to Ryan’s. “I told you it would be better than Vegas.”

Ryan breaks into a comically big smile of his own. “Shut up, Shane.”

SUNDAY

Shane pulls up to Ryan’s house around midday and parks outside. “I’m glad you had a good time,” he says. He leans over and connects their lips in a gentle kiss. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

“See you,” Ryan says softly. He gets out and takes the stairs up to his apartment, where Roland is eating cold pizza in some kind of trance. Ryan guesses he probably hasn’t slept since Ryan left on Friday.

Ryan joins him for a slice of pizza, finally, some real food, and gets a few bites in before there’s a knock at his door. “You gonna get that?” he asks Roland. Roland just shrugs, pretty fucking out of it, so Ryan sighs and, with one last bite of his pizza, goes to answer the door.

“What?” he asks, and is surprised when Shane backs him into the room, pushes him against the wall and kisses him senseless.

“I was wrong,” Shane says when he pulls back for air. “I don’t want to see you Monday. I want to see you right now. And tomorrow and the day after and every second of every day.”

From the kitchen table, Roland says, “ew?”

Ryan doesn’t look away from Shane’s eyes. “Shut it, Roland.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

this fic is a rewrite of a supernatural fic i wrote when i was 16. i wanted to do this cute camping idea some justice and i hope you enjoyed it! it’s a behemoth and also the longest thing i’ve written in two years. i guess i just really like camping.

disclaimer: this fic dealt with a trans character. i myself an nonbinary afab and i used the language i myself would feel comfortable using and i write from my own experiences.

please please consider a reblog if you liked this!! it really helps! i also post bfu/watcher stuff on the reg and aes stuff so if you like that consider a follow? maybe?

thank you so much for reading and for your support.

As she stood up, straightening her clothes, she took another steadying breath. And then quietly, almost to herself. “Goodness…”

Shane stood and led her to the office door.

He conducted sessions in a small portion of his house closed off by glass doors and windows. He called it his office. It was painted in calming shades of white and brown. Very ‘live, laugh, love’. It might have been used as a parlor or a piano room if anyone else had lived there. There was an abstract painting against the back wall that resembled a beach, and fake reeds sprouted from a tall skinny vase in the corner. There was a coffee table between two armchairs and a couch. It could either have been a nice waiting room or a therapist’s office if not for the red neon sign through the blinds in the street facing window. PSYCHIC

Shane opened the glass door and walked her to the front door of his home. “It was wonderful to meet you, Ms. Snyder. If you ever need anything else, you call me?” He pointed at his business card in her hand.

Ms. Snyder nodded. “I’ll do that.”

“And,” He lowered his voice, although of course there was no one else to hear. “Be careful. I know you live a bit of a distance. If you do ever decide to visit another, ah, advisor, I would highly recommend keeping to the list of recommendations I have on my website. They are good people. But there are a lot of not-so-nice people in LA.”

Ms. Snyer blinked at him, almost surprised, and she relaxed even further. There. If there had been any reservation left, she had abandoned it. She trusted him. He had her. “Oh, I’m aware. Thank you. I appreciate the honesty. Your… your gift is incredible.”

Shane smiled, lips tucked in. “It is what it is. And you are very welcome. Now have a-”

There was a knock on the door, just as Shane reached to open it for Ms. Snyder.

He paused, confused. He didn’t have any more appointments today.

Ms. Snyder made a small noise. “Oh dear, I don’t mean to keep you.”

“I don’t think it’s another client,” Shane said, brow furrowed. “Could be an old friend of mine, but he’s not due to get here until tonight.” Shrugging, he opened the door.

Shane was correct. It was Ryan.

Standing on the bottom step, tapping on his phone, stood a young man Shane remembered well, although he had not seen him since, what, graduation? He was older, of course, than Shane remembered. More of substantial weight to him (not that Shane was saying he was fat, cause he wasn’t. Ryan just looked… grown-up. Solid. A man now, not the gangly kid he used to be). But Ryan stood in the same, slightly nervous way, bouncing on his heels.

Ryan looked up. “Shane! God, are you taller ?”

Wonderful. “Nice to see you too. Ryan, this is Ms. Snyder. Ms. Snyder, Ryan. We were roommates in college. Ms. Snyder is a client of mine.”

Ms. Snyder cocked her head, clearly interested, and shook Ryan’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you! What brings you to town?”

Ryan opened his mouth. “Actually, I’m writing a-”

That was far enough. “Here, Ryan, why don’t you come inside? Ms. Snyder, until next time?”

“Oh, yes!” She shouldered her purse. “Most definitely. I’ll leave you two to catch up!” With that, she clickety-clacked in her heels to an inordinately fancy car and drove away down the street of the average, nice, modern neighborhood Shane lived in.

Ryan, joining him on the porch, watched her go. They squinted out into the bright California sun.

There was a beat of silence which Shane didn’t try to break, hands in his pockets.

“Dang.” Ryan finally spoke. “Got her wrapped around your finger. What’d you do, tell her she’s gonna win the lottery?”

Shane hummed. “I told her her son forgives her for staying home with a hangover instead of going to his baseball game the day that he died in a car accident.” He picked at the stitching in the neckline of his sweater.

Ryan blinked. “Holy frick, dude.”

“In nicer words, obviously.” He looked down at him. “I thought you weren’t supposed to get here until tonight.”

“Sorry. I’m a fast driver and then I didn’t see the point in hanging out in an empty hotel for hours.”

Another non-committal hum. And then Shane shrugged. “Okay. Cool. Do you want lunch? I haven't eaten yet and there’s a Cuca’s nearby that is frankly divine.”

Ryan nodded. “Yeah! Sure.”

It was odd, how very natural it felt to talk to him. It was like it was just last week they’d been sitting on the floor grumbling through papers they should have written days earlier. And yet here was this distance, years of time spent only occasionally interacting through Facebook likes and Instagram comments.

“Let me grab my wallet.” Shane ducked back in the house, and Ryan trailed in after him. He busied himself searching for his wallet in the kitchen drawers, and pretended he didn’t notice Ryan blatantly snooping, eyes wide.

He popped his head into the kitchen, Shane’s ‘office’, the bathroom, the living room. It was only when he started to knock over one of the fake plants that Shane gave him a look, wallet, and keys in hand.

Ryan stood the plant back up. “Sorry. Just, this is… a really nice house.”

Shane gave him a closed smile. “Thank you.”

“No, but like, really nice. Like, how the heck do you afford this?” Most people might be embarrassed to ask a question like that. Ryan wasn’t and Shane wasn’t offended.

He got this question a lot actually. There was an idea people had in their minds of what a psychic was supposed to be. Creepy little offices in a run-down track mall next to a nail salon that doubled in sex trafficking, or a creepy booth at a carnival with crystals and incense and blah, blah, blah. Shane’s business wasn’t like that. He was clean and shaved and dressed in a brown sweater and he let his clients drink from his Starbucks espresso machine while he told them what they needed to hear. The less he was associated with thieves and liars, the better.

He shrugged. They walked outside, down the steps, and simultaneously got into Shane’s car. “You get in with the right people, the right customers, being a psychic brings in the big bucks. Besides, LA is superstitious as hell.” Shockingly so, Shane thought sometimes. It blew his mind how many hundreds and hundreds of dollars people were willing to give up to hear him spout off some nonsense.

And that’s what it was, of course.

They sat in a red leather booth at the restaurant and the plastic fabric protested loudly as they slid inside. It was past the lunch rush and the place was relatively empty, decorated with colorful paintings of wild animals, sculls, Christmas lights, the distant sound of Spanish radio, banging pots, and the rapid-fire speech of an employee in the kitchen. The food would be delicious, as it always was.

Usually, Shane could hardly wait.

But there was a pit in his stomach, a deep sort of twist that kept him stiff and ready to stand. Was he nervous? Was that what it was? But Ryan didn’t make him nervous. In fact, Ryan only increased exponentially Shane’s ability to be the calm one in comparison to Ryan.

Ryan dipped a chip in salsa and raised an eyebrow.

“So it is then? Just-, just you know, fake.”

Shane looked at him for a long moment, contemplating whether or not he was actually posing a serious question. “I mean, yeah. What else- you seriously think I can talk to dead people? I see the future? I look into the oogly-googly beyond and-”

“Well, fine, not you specifically!”

Shane chuckled. “It's fake, Ryan. I've seen it all. It's all fake.”

Ryan thought about this. He didn’t seem particularly enthused, which Shane would have expected. But Shane wasn’t going to lie to him. There wasn’t any reason to sugar coat it.

Ryan’s voice was quiet. “Last time I talked to you, you wanted to be a magician.”

“Last time we talked I was a dumbass. You can’t make money in LA as a magician. Well, you can. I just didn’t.”

Ryan stirred a chip, ate it, and chewed thoughtfully on the inside of his lip. “So that’s it then? You’re a con-man.”

Shane sat back. He didn’t invite Ryan to stay with him just to be judged. “Says the ‘true paranormal sightings’ author!”

“First of all, I write fiction based on fact, which is not conning."Ryan wrinkled his nose. "It’s just entertainment and research. You are actively lying to people.”

That hurt. A lot. He didn’t need this and on top of that, Shane honestly disagreed. Yes, he was lying to them constantly, but Shane didn’t hurt them! He was telling people what they needed to hear! He gave them closure when there was no other place to turn. And yeah, so the psychic part was rubbish, but it worked! It worked for his clients, and it gave him enough money to own a nice home and a car and gave him the option to eat out twice a week if he felt like it. “It’s better they come to me than to some tiny hovel where some witch will tell them they have to live on butter if they want to survive through the next year. Or worse, make them come back for a reading over and over until they're bankrupt just because they’re grieving and hardly in their right mind.”

Ryan paused at this. “People really do that?”

“Yeah! Happens all the time. And stuff like the stupid butter thing! Made local news. ‘Lady Eats Nothing But Butter to Avoid Death’. She didn’t die but she got super sick.”

Their food came and they took it mutely, neither looking at each other in the eye. Maybe things weren’t quite like how they used to be. Or maybe they were always this way when it came to this subject; a little tense, ever since Ryan told him he honest to god believed in ghosts, all the way back in sophomore year of university. Shane had reacted… less than ideally, he’d admit. It wasn’t his place to judge people, and he was far better at that now than he was at eighteen, but he just couldn't compute how otherwise perfectly sane people could believe in such ridiculous things. Unless they’d been tricked, of course. And he’d rather it be a nice trick, if it came to that, than an evil one.

Shane sighed. “Look, I don’t want to argue about this. You emailed me , remember? I’ll let you see what it's like to be a ‘real life psychic’ or whatever. But I’m not going to play pretend with you. You’re not a client and you can do whatever you want to make yourself happy, but this is just how the world works.”

The knot in Shane’s stomach wound tighter, and he couldn’t imagine eating. He wasn’t hungry anymore. There was something in the air that pulled at his skin, tugging him, making his entire body feel tight and fragile and horrible. His stomach felt sick all of the sudden, and he set his fork down with a rattle of metal on porcelain.

He must have eaten something weird.

“You alright, big guy?”

He hummed. His head buzzed. He took a sip of water. “Yes. Sorry. I started feeling sick for a second there. It’s a little better now.”

Ryan’s face relaxed from indignance into concern. “Shit, dude. Did you ea s.”

Ryan was not put out by the shortcut meal. Shane paid for them both quickly, before Ryan could object, and they took their to-go boxes into the car, setting them on the sun-warmed dashboard. The feeling didn’t go away, even as they eased onto the main road and took a left toward Shane’s house.

“I’ll drive,” Ryan offered. He kept side eyeing Shane. “You look really pale. Are you sure you’re alright?”

Shane didn’t answer, too busy trying to not throw up. This was the worst timing. “I’m fine! It’s fine. Just drive!”

“If we need to pull over-”

“Look at the road, Ryan!” Shane’s stomach lurched again. He rolled down the window frantically as the buzzing in his head became so loud he could hear nothing else.

Then it happened.

He remembered it later in bits and pieces, everything in slow motion. Ryan, mouth open, a hand stretched toward him, looking at Shane, and more importantly, not looking at the truck that barreled toward them. The tacos flew in the air, cheese, and lettuce like dust in a light beam. Shane saw it all in his side mirror, his head out the window. He wasn’t fast enough to pull back inside.

With shocking strength, the truck plowed into the front of the car. Something burned down Shane's legs and then he was flying. There was the sky, the ground, the sky.

The ground.

He woke up to the sound of an ambulance and the smell of vomit. Above him, sunlight trickled through layers of green leaves.

His brain felt like it was stuffed with sand. He struggled to move and found he could, but a hand pushed his shoulder into the ground. Ryan, above him. He was bleeding from a nick on the shoulder, but otherwise looked alright. He was shaking, eyes wide and red. This was gonna traumatize him forever, poor thing. Ryan was so sensitive when it came to danger. He didn’t mesh well with it...

“Can you hear me? Shane? Jeez, Shane, you’re bleeding-”

“S’okay.” Shane managed. He didn’t feel like anything was broken. He tried to wiggle his fingers and toes. They wiggled just fine. He blinked a few times. His whole body hurt. How did he get out of the car? Something in his brain wasn’t lining up, and he couldn’t quite figure out the missing piece that brought him onto the sidewalk in this idyllic, old neighborhood. The light was too bright, the colors too loud. The siren wailed. Shane tried to sit up again. It wasn’t that bad. He was okay. “Why’d you call an ambulance?”

Ryan made some reply in a high pitched shriek that Shane couldn’t understand. There was the siren again. People stood around him now, telling him to stay still, to not move. Why were they being so uptight? He didn’t even feel that awful. They didn’t need to make a whole dumb fuss. Shane remembered glimpses of the ambulance and the people poking and prodding him.

He was tired. He should sleep. Shane closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the sound was gone.

The world was tangibly silent, unlike anything Shane had ever experienced. It felt like noise had never existed in the first place, like he was in space, free-floating in the nothingness of eternity. He could feel his heartbeat pounding in his throat. He sat up. Moving through the air felt like moving through thick, thick water. His arms trembled to keep him upright. The ambulance either moved so quietly and smoothly he didn’t notice it, or they’d stopped. Everything was slippery to the eye. He couldn’t see enough at once.

The light was a dull, fluorescent sort of blue, even though he remembered the sunlight from outside ought to shine inside. He should be frightened also, but Shane wasn’t. A dead calm lay over him like a thick blanket. Even if he wanted to, Shane didn’t think he could summon any kind of reaction. Moving was hard enough, and it was like whatever was pressing in on him, pressed inside him as well.

It took longer than it ought to have to notice the people lining the walls of the ambulance. A pregnant woman. A young boy. A very old man. There were several more unfamiliar people around the room, seemingly random paraphernalia, all staring at him stanchly. Something was very wrong about them, and Shane didn’t know what it was. He tried to open his mouth and break the god-awful silence, but when he spoke, there were no words. This didn’t surprise him, to be honest. The pressure only increased, begging him to lie flat once more.

After a long moment, Shane gave in and his arms buckled. He slammed into the pallet he’d been placed in. The pressure surged, pressing him deeper and deeper into the plastic. He could feel it stretching under him, his ribs creaking. It was going to push him right through the pallet, Shane realized. He screamed silently, terror rushing back to him as the pressure finally forced him into the pallet. He watched the plastic melt around his arms, his body, his neck, his face. He couldn’t see.

Their heads were on backward.

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