Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Day 1

Shane is a demon.

This he is harshly reminded of, because the first thing that immediately comes to Ryan’s attention when Shane steps inside is the blood dripping from the edge of his fingers.

He looks up at the man.

Man.

Demon.

Shane is a demon.

It’s become a common mistake for Ryan to forget that fact lately.

“What happened this time?”

Shane shrugs, but Ryan has been around him long enough to know he’s not exactly a master of balancing out his emotions. He’s trying to go for neutral, but the tense of his shoulders give him away completely.

“Found him creeping around the yard.” Shane says, fingers twitching.

Ryan stares at him. “What did he have?”

“A gun,”

“…what did you do?”

Shane doesn’t look him in the eye, “I took care of him.”

Ryan’s heard him say it so many times. “Where is he now?”

“…out front.”

Ryan slams the door behind him. The brief glimpse of something lying on his front yard makes something twist in his stomach. “Jesus, Shane!”

“Yeah. Love that guy.”

Maybe it’s just Ryan getting his hopes up, but Shane’s dark eyes manage to hold the tiniest semblance of guilt.

Ryan scoffs, more at himself than the demon. Who was he kidding?

“I can take care of the body now—“

“No. No,” Ryan crosses his arms and leans against the wall, tense, like he hasn’t been for a while now. It’s familiar. Unwelcome. “I don’t care about the body—okay, maybe I do, but—fuck what I’m trying to say is—“ Ryan grips at his head, “What—no, fuck. What the fuck, Shane?”

Shane hesitates. Ryan watches him hesitate, but they both knew what Shane had to say.

“It’s my job, Ryan.”

It’s always all he had to say.

It’s just been what, one, two years since Ryan last heard it? Did it even matter if Shane never stopped this whole time?

Shane raises a hand, and has the audacity to look hurt when Ryan flinches away. “Ry—“

“I’m tired,” Ryan cuts. “I need a break. Take care of the—the body,” His words come with a grimace, “Right now. Maybe leave for a few days. Or not. But I don’t…” Ryan stares down at Shane’s fingers, throat tight. “I don’t want to see you right now.”

The silence was deafening as it was painful.

Sure, Ryan could’ve been dead right now if it weren’t for Shane. He might’ve as well been a rotting corpse thrown over the side of the curb by now with two bullet holes in his stomach and a stab wound on his neck, but he’s not. So he should be happy about that right? That Shane’s killing these people before that could even happen?

Fuck that.

Shane is a demon.

Right, Ryan thinks to himself, angels would’ve handled things better.

As if Shane heard his bitter thoughts, the man steps back.  “If that’s what you want…”

He brings a gun out of his back pocket and drops it on the floor. The metal thudding horribly loud against the hardwood floors shakes Ryan’s heart.

He doesn’t have to look to know it’s more stained than Shane’s fingers.

“Happy Birthday, Ry.”

Ryan closes his eyes, knowing the next time he opens them, Shane’s already disappeared.

Ryan’s exhausted.

Now that doesn’t sound so bad. Just go to bed, take a nap, and recharge all that lost energy, right?

Wrong.

It’s the wee hours of the morning, and Ryan still has some leftover footage to go through before he could finally allow himself a little sleep-in Saturday. Now one could say it’s Saturday, just finish the work some other time over the weekend. Though one would only say that if they’ve never met Ryan Steven Bergara, world’s most lethargic workaholic.

Okay, maybe not the most, but he’s definitely getting there. Unsolved took off just a few weeks before, and it’s all Ryan’s got going for him at the moment. It took a lot of effort to finally get the big guys to pitch his show. They’ve still got him and Brent on a tight leash even with the show’s newfound success, but Ryan’s mind is set on changing things for the better. He might be doing all the work right now, but he’s set on getting an actual crew together soon. Maybe a proper set-up other than just him and Brent driving around in Ryan’s car.

Q and As don’t sound so bad either, but what really has Ryan going is the idea of a Supernatural section, because ghosts are definitely something he wants to talk about. Ghosts, aliens, demons. The dream.

Needless to say, Ryan has goals in mind and he’s not about to give up now.

That’s why he’s standing here at a convenience store a few blocks from his house to recharge his sanity. Figured he’d have some time to kill while the video’s rendering.

It’s proven to be entertaining so far. The only other person in the store was the cashier, and though she doesn’t look much for conversation, the music she’s blasting throughout the store is bangin’. Ryan appreciates her taste, nodding to the rhythm as he idles along the aisle where the condoms are placed.

…wait. That doesn’t sound right.

Ryan blinks. Those are definitely different packets of condoms hanging in columns in front of him.

…he walks away.

Maneuvering around the store he picks up a pack of red bull and a lot of microwavable popcorn. He pats himself on the back, nearly halfway to the cashier when his legs betray him and walk him all the way back to the aisle.

…okay, so maybe Ryan’s a little lonely.

He’d been totally swamped with work over the past few weeks. Ryan’s happy and determined, sure, but he hadn’t had a good lay in weeks and, if he eventually does finish editing the episode this morning, he could finally go out and let loose some.

He reinstalled tinder recently too. It didn’t take long to find a lovely looking girl named Cindy(she likes the Lakers, like actually likes them). Wouldn’t hurt to get his sex life a little active again after all that hard work, and it’s not like anybody’s watching.

So Ryan swallows, raising his hand to a particular brand when he pauses in his tracks.

There’s something—someone, floating just a little above the top shelf.

His vision clouds for a second.

…he’s not that sleep deprived is he?

The thing isn’t even that far up either, so Ryan can see every little detail of the sharp teeth, the tall sitting stature, the horns.

And so Ryan processes.

Horns.

 “Sup.”

He doesn’t reply, staring at the void-black eyes and the hideously wide grin that came with it.

“…uh,”

He slowly cranes his neck towards the cashier. She has both legs up on the counter, but it’s not high enough to obstruct her view of him. “Hello,” He reluctantly calls out.

She looks up from her magazine, turning her music down a little.

“Yep?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong but uh… is there a demon floating above this shelf?”

Her eyes dart to the shelf, then she snickers.

“I don’t think demons would judge you for being a little horny at 3 in the morning, sir.”

Ryan refrains himself from blinking again. He sees him, yet the cashier goes back to her magazine without another word.

A prank, or his guardian angel weirdly showing up in dispute of advising him against messing around. Which would be weirder, because he’s pretty sure guardian angels don’t have horns.

He feels a small scratch against his palm, and looks back to see claws retracting. Ryan looks down to see a condom wrapper now on his open hand.

“Nice to meet you.” The demon says with a smile.

“H-Hiya, dude.” Ryan nervously laughs, nodding. “Um, how are you hanging from up there? That looks—you look pretty neat.”

“Oh Ryan, you’re not imagining this.

Ryan swallows. “You…know my name.”

“Why of course.” The demon perches his chin on one claw. “It’s my job.”

He should run away now. “Y-Your job?”

The smile grows wider. Run Ryan.

“I’m Shane, by the way.” A cackle that sends the coldest of shivers up Ryan’s spine. “I’m your guardian angel.”

Ryan’s legs finally listen to him, dropping everything and hightailing it out of there.

Day 14

Two weeks pass by without Shane.

Ryan turns the light on in the living room. They don’t flicker like they usually do when Shane’s around. The lights come on normally, illuminating the room almost immediately.

Ryan hates it.

Obi crawls out from around the corner whilst meowing incessantly. His food bowl’s probably empty, Ryan thinks as he gives the feline an apologetic smile and opens his arms, which gets ignored.

“Pft. Drama queen.” Ryan mutters as he slides his bag off of him and puts it down on the coffee table, being careful not to touch the small glass figurine that sits there. He averts his eyes. “Alright, time to get some food in you little guy.”

Ryan’s mouth closes. Little guy.

It’s…it’s a common nickname. Ryan shakes his head.

He follows Obi into the kitchen, turning the rest of the lights on along the way. Not because he’s lonely—he just feels better with the lights on. Even though there’s still light out.

Yeah, that’s it.

“So, what’s for dinner?” Ryan asks, half to himself and Obi as he opens the fridge. His chest deflates when all he sees is his Chipotle leftovers. Why? Who knows. It’s not like he was expecting to see homemade waffles or a fresh batch of unsalted popcorn. That would be stupid.

“Whatever.” He grumbles, grabbing at his leftovers and settling them on the counter. The last can of cat food Ryan opened was already empty, so he knows to opt for getting a new one. “You’d want something a little softer, right?”

Obi just stares up at him.

“What do you mean I’m extra talkative today?” Ryan laughs, smuggling through the cupboards for a new can. “I’m just—you know, bored. Humans talk when they’re bored, which you wouldn’t understand cause you’re a cat.”

Silence.

“No I’m not lonely.” He insists. “I just talk to myself sometimes. I do that a lot actually you know. It’s not that weird.”

Obi climbs up on the counter next to him.

Ryan rolls his eyes. “I know you’re hungry alright? Give me a minute. Geez.”

He paws at Ryan’s belly. Ryan pulls his hand back to stop him with a frown. “Okay, what’s up with you? You’re not usually this impatient.” He gestures at the cupboards. “See? I’m getting you food. So stop whining.”

Obi twirls his tail, making Ryan groan.

“Me? I’m whining? Please. I have nothing to whine about.” He puts both hands against the counter. “Shane’s not here, so nobody’s long ass limbs are flopping all over the place anymore.” He laughs hysterically. “Nobody’s also annoying the shit out of me 24/7, nobody making fun of me all the time, nobody—nobody murdering other people for me.” Ryan explains to no one, glaring at the sun setting outside his window, at the cupboards, at the sink. “I’m alone, and I’m safe. Nobody’s getting hurt. Everything’s dandy and I don’t need him. I’m fucking fine! Fantastic!”

Obi doesn’t respond, just watching Ryan catch his breath. The latter breathes, then harrumphs, reopening the cupboard with a little more force. “Just—let’s just eat alright?”

Ryan pops the can open, then bends down to pick up Obi’s bowl before actually looking down at it.

The food he left out for him this morning was still there, untouched.

Obi starts meowing again and Ryan looks at him, confused. “Then why are you…?”

Behind the cat, Ryan’s eyes fall on the picture of baby Obi stuck to the fridge, held up by fridge magnets spelling his name. Ryan’s in the frame, holding him up, nervously smiling at the camera.

Shane took that picture.

Obi meows again, a little quieter this time. Ryan looks back down at him.

Ryan rubs a hand against his face. He lets out a harsh breath. “Don’t look at me like that. I know you miss him, alright?”

Obi paws at Ryan’s belly again, and only then does he realize that Obi’s mimicking how Shane pokes his stomach every morning to wake him up.

I don’t miss him.

…I can’t.

Ryan purses his lips. “…I know, Obi.” He carefully picks Obi up, burying his face into the back of his fur.

“I know.”

“Oh give me a break!”

“Calm down, Mr. Bergara.”

Ryan runs a hand through his hair, laughing sarcastically. “You guys—you’re serious right? I mean, seriously? This guy?”

His superiors give him blank looks. The demon stands next to him, sporting a smirk that sends Ryan’s nerves flying.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Bergara?”

Ryan turns to the demon, who gives him a knowing cock of his head. This fucking—

“What about Brent? He’s my co-host. You can’t just replace him.”

“We already talked to Mr. Benett. He agreed to have our new intern here, Mr. Madej, to take his place,” The youngest of the superiors said to him, which made Ryan’s jaw drop because one, why the fuck would Brent bail out of nowhere, and two, literally no one in the entire BuzzFeed LA offices has ever heard this guy talk before.

Ryan slowly looked at the demon again, his suspicions confirmed by the soft yellow glow of his sleepy eyes. Human eyes. He looks human now, but Ryan knows it’s the exact same demon from the other night.

“W-Why?”

“He had a project he needed to work on.”

Bullshit. He and Brent just started the show.

Ryan takes a while to notice, but he realizes that the men’s eyes were softly glowing too.

“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Bergara. I’m sure Mr. Madej here will make a much better co-host for Unsolved.” One of them say, fairly monotonous.

“He’s a rather handsome fellow after all.”

“Funnier, too.”

Okay, that’s enough. Ryan glares at the demon. “I know you’re behind this. Stop it.”

He just smirks, as all three men let out lifeless, strangely comical cackles.

“Deal with it, Mr. Bergara.” They all say in unison.

Ryan storms out of the room with his fists tight by his sides, emotions torn between mad and downright terrified.

The latter had definitely been the dominant feeling the other night when Ryan was halfway past the block before realizing he just stole a condom, and eventually going back to return it against his better judgment. Though the demon was gone when he went back, the fear just from the memory of his appearance made his stomach churn over and over. It lasted throughout the weekend.

Until now, that is. Turns out he’s not just a demon. He goes by the name Shane, and he’s a gigantic pain in the ass.

“Ry, wait up!”

Ryan turns, finding Shane’s apparent human appearance easier to dab a finger at his chest. “It’s Ryan.” He resumes to walk away. TJ passes by him in the hall, exchanging a look between Ryan and the demon. Who’s that? He mouths. Ryan responds with a frown and keeps walking.

Shane chuckles from behind him. “Now that wasn’t very nice.”

“Stop following me.”

“I…can’t do that?”

“Leave me alone.”

Ryan tries to walk faster, but Shane’s catches up to his pace with ease and it’s annoying. It’s annoying to think that out of all the features Shane could’ve chosen to keep, he chose the height. It’s like he couldn’t decide which anatomy to fall into, a human or a sasquatch.

Shane shoulder bumps him. Ryan shoots him another look and keeps walking as fast as his legs could carry him. He can do anything if he tries.

They come into the office not a moment later, Ryan terrified to see that he’s the only current recipient of its human population.

I’m alone with a demon. I’m alone with a demon. He chants in his head as he resumes speedwalking to his desk. He’s pretty sure he has holy water in there somewhere.

“Heyyyy, talk to me Ry.”

“Please go away.”

“Nope.”

“And why not?”

“Because my place is to be by your side.”

Ryan finally arrives at his seat, nearly tripping over it at Shane’s words. “Excuse me, what?”

“My place,” Shane walks to stand beside him, in front of the empty half of Ryan’s desk. The latter inches away a little. “—is here. I sit beside you now.”

A frustrated little noise slips past Ryan’s mouth.

“You—you’re a—what the hell?”

“Pretty hot out there, I’ve heard.”

Ryan’s not sure why he does it, but he shuts Shane up by grabbing his hand and pulling him down, so they’re squatting in front of the desk.

“You’re not real.”

Shane shakes his head. “I could be a little less than physical sometimes but no, I’m definitely real. Hundred percent existing since—uh—a while.”

“No you’re not.” Ryan insists, plopping back on his butt and clutching his head. “This can’t be real. Oh God.”

“Love that guy.” Shane holds his hands up at Ryan’s glare. “Don’t look at me like that! You’re supposed to be the believer here. Believe me.”

Ryan peeks at Shane with one eye, then resumes his mental breakdown. “No, okay. No. This can’t—first off, you’re not an angel—“

“Well I didn’t mean for you to believe that—“

“—but you’re not—you can’t be. My guardian. What? What? What the hell am I even saying? You’re obviously…” Ryan gestures a wild hand which Shane looks at unimpressed. “…this. Demon. Oh God you’re a demon.”

“God and demon in the same sentence sounds weird but uh, correct?”

“Bullshit.” Ryan skitters back to make space between them, settling his rolling chair in his wake as a barricade. “How does that even work?!”

“That I can’t tell you.” Shane tries to roll the chair aside, but Ryan keeps it still. “Calm down, Ry. All you need to know is that I’m here to protect you.”

Ryan stops trying to wrestle the chair from Shane’s grip to stare at him, completely dumbfounded.

“Demons don’t protect humans,”

Shane stands up, rolling the chair back and sitting down on it. “Well, this one does.”

“I don’t need to be protected.”

Shane gestures him to stand up. Ryan doesn’t. “You know guardian angels are there for a reason, right?”

“You’re not an angel, or a guardian!” Ryan’s hands don’t find solace anywhere, so he just rings them out in the air. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Really? Nothing? Demons don’t just want nothing, they always want something.”

“Oh, and you would know? Are you the demon in this conversation?”

Ryan groans. “Exactly. It’s you. You’re the demon, and that’s a big enough sign that I shouldn’t trust you, much less associate myself with you.”

Shane’s expression turns serious, and it brings the fear in Ryan back tenfold.

“Please tell me there’s still a chance that this is all just one big fucking prank on me.”

“It’s real, Ryan.”

“You’re not really a demon are you? How much are they paying you?” Ryan laughs hysterically, swiveling his head around. “Okay, who’s out there? Show yourself folks. The jig’s up! So funny you even got the executives to play along just—“ He claps. “Very funny guys!”

“Ryan.“

Ryan looks up at Shane.

“It’s real.” For no longer than a second, Shane shifts his eyes to black. Ryan feels the blood drain out of his face. “I’m real. Yes, I’m what you’d call demon. In English, at least. Yes I was born and raised and worked in hellfire for longer than you could imagine and hold contempt for all things holy, but I swear to God Himself Ryan, I’m not here to hurt you.”

Ryan finally stands up, only to sit down at his seat again, unable to take it in all at once.

“You’re a demon.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a demon.”

Shane is a demon.

Even now, as human as he looks, Ryan just knows that that fact is gonna be something he wouldn’t be able to forget.

Shane patiently nods. “That I am.”

“I don’t get it.” Ryan whispers, hiding his face in his hands again. “Why now? Why show yourself?”

“Because I need to.”

Ryan doubts that. “I’m not in danger.”

Shane makes a noise, one that can only be described as annoyingly condescending. Ryan frowns at him, “What?”

“Yeaaaah no. Actually, Ryan.” Shane picks Ryan’s phone up from the desk beside them. “You’re always in danger.”

“Hey—!”

Ryan doesn’t have time to process how Shane got through the passcode when the screen is suddenly shoved in his face, his and Cindy’s chat box open.

“You got a date?”

“That’s none of your—“

“Answer me.”

“Wouldn’t you know?” Ryan grumbles, cheeks tinged pink when he follows with, “You ambushed me while I was buying condoms.”

“Figures.” Shane says, but there’s no teasing to it. “You meeting her tonight?”

“…yes?”

“Don’t.”

Ryan pulls back. “What? Why?”

“She’s not a she. Cindy’s a middle-aged man that lives on an abandoned trailer in one of LA’s most questionable areas and he’s most definitely not taking you out to dinner so as much as he’s gonna…well, take you out. If you know what I mean.”

Shane’s nonplussed by Ryan’s shocked silence.

“Well?”

“…that—that doesn’t answer my question.” Ryan shakily dismisses, even as he snatches his phone back and immediately blocks Cindy’s profile. He knew it was too good to be true to see a girl openly be a lakers fan. On fucking Tinder.

“I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Really? You couldn’t have just dealt with these in the shadows like, I don’t know, what a normal guardian would do?”

“I got bored.” Shane leans back, arms stretched as he puts his hands behind his head. Ryan remembers the claws almost immediately. “Figured it’d be easier this way anyway. Keeping things hidden is annoying, so here I am.”

Ryan puts his phone down, drained of all resistance he has left in him.

“I don’t get it.” He whispers. “You’re literally what I’ve been praying to never encounter for as long as I’ve lived, and you think the best idea’s revealing yourself as my protector when you’re—you’re the very being I want to be protected from?”

Shane just shrugs.

“It’s my job, Ryan.” He says. “Nothing else really matters.”

Day 42

“Shane’s not in today.”

Ryan looks up at Brent, then at the empty seat next to him. It was a shared desk, and Shane never really had that much stuff to begin with. Still, seeing the rolling chair unoccupied by Shane’s huge inhuman body prods at something very particular in Ryan’s chest.

He ignores it, looking back to his work. “Yeah. I guess.”

Brent’s eyes squint with concern. Ryan watches him sit down in Shane’s chair at the corner of his eye. “Anything happened between you two?”

Ryan doesn’t look at him. “Not really.”

“Do you know where he is?”

Hell. “No.”

Brent purses his lips. Ryan finally turns at this, raising a brow. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing. Just worried.”

“Why?”

Brent frowns at him.

“Why are you not worried about him? Aren’t you two like, joint by the hip or something?”

Ryan looks at Shane’s portion of the desk.

“…obviously not.”

Brent looks like he has more to say, but Ryan doesn’t want any part of it, so he pretends not to notice.

How does Brent of all people even notice Shane’s absence anyway? He thought Shane handled these kinds of things relatively well by now. It’s like he only remembers he has powers when he needs to use them against people for more selfish uses.

“It’s been a month Ryan. I never heard about him taking a leave or whatever. He just disappeared, and nobody’s talking about it.” Brent pointedly looks at Ryan. “Not even you.”

Ryan’s lips form a tight line. “…so?”

He can feel Brent’s gaze zeroing in on him. It’s very pressuring, and he can feel his own palm squeezing his mouse a little too harshly.

“You’re acting weird man.”

That throws Ryan off.

“Yeah? Why?” Ryan slams his headphones down loud enough that they could be broken. “Do I look like his fucking keeper or something?”

Ryan’s eyes widen when he realizes what he just did, looking back at the curious faces that have turned to him. Devon owns one of those faces, giving him a concerned glance from the other side of the room. He shakes his head.

Brent throws his hands up. “Hey man, calm down! Sorry, didn’t mean to bother you.”

Ryan cringes, guilty of himself. He sighs and rubs a hand against his temple, against the dry skin.

He hasn’t slept a wink since Shane left, and it’s finally getting to him.

“I’m sorry, I just—I don’t know where he is. He didn’t say anything to me either.”

“…not even a memo? Or a goodbye?”

“No,” Ryan’s voice cracks a little, “—I..I don’t know, alright? I just…I’m just his friend. He doesn’t exactly tell me everything. Maybe he needed a break or something. I mean, we all have those moments right?”

“Right.”

“If he was like, murdered or something I’m pretty sure the office would have issued a missing persons’ case with the police by now.” Ryan laughs, but it falls flat. “Uh, yeah…so I think he’s okay. He should be.”

“…right.”

An awkward silence falls between them. Brent leans back, arms crossed and thinking. Meanwhile a group of interns hustle by and Ryan’s eyes slowly wander to one girl wearing a flannel.

Shane liked flannels. He loved them. Ryan gave him one when he insisted Shane at least try and act human, which included not wearing the same shirt and pants everyday, but it turns out he didn’t need to bother. Shane never would not find an opportunity to wear it however he could.

Demons are weird, Ryan had thought.

Ryan stares at Shane’s side of the desk. It wasn’t as crowded and disorganized as Ryan’s own to which he found ironic. What was weirder though was that Shane kept most of his personal belongings at work.

Like his notebook.

The demon liked to sketch things in a little notebook that he kept beside his computer. It was the notebook. Shane’s notebook. Shane never carried it around, but whenever he felt like human office work was too much of a bother, he would take it out and start scribbling out of nowhere. It was a common occurrence, but Ryan never saw the thing anywhere else but at their desk. It was strange, but he wasn’t surprised. It’s not hard to remember the metaphorical boundaries that Shane puts up between them when Ryan is constantly reminded of it every single day.

Needless to say Ryan had always been curious about it, but he never bothered to ask. Shane’s lips were sealed anyway, so what was the point?

Hell Shane wasn’t even here but Ryan could still feel the dark, unwelcome aura surrounding the little black notebook. Ryan was never one to look through someone else’s belongings, but even then, Shane never told him he had permission to look through it.

Shane never told him anything.

“Sorry dude.”

Ryan’s pulled out of his thoughts, smiling weakly. “It’s alright man. Didn’t mean to snap at you there.”

Brent smiles back, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. Now that Ryan thinks about it he doesn’t blame Brent for getting worried, or for anybody else who noticed Shane’s absence. The entire office had grown pretty fond of the big guy, as funny and adorable as he was. They love how Shane brightens the room with a bad joke on days everyone is feeling especially tacky. Everyone loves his sleepy-looking eyes and the way he brings them coffee just the way they like it, how much he looks out for them, how much he cares, how warm he makes them feel, just how warm he is in general from his unnaturally big head down to the bottom of his ghost-hunting boots, everything about him is just warm warm warm—

“Are you crying?”

 Ryan shakes his head, wiping at the wet line down his cheek. “…no? Something just got caught in my eye.”

Brent doesn’t look convinced, but nods and stands up anyway.

“Well, back to work I go. I’ll tell you if I hear anything from him okay?”

Ryan entirely doubts that. “Yeah, sure...”

Just as Brent starts to leave, a thought suddenly occurs to Ryan. “Hey Brent?”

Brent stops. “Yea?”

“I know I’m like three years too late or whatever but…why’d you quit Unsolved?”

Brent perks up at the question. Ryan already knew the answer, but he never really thought to ask Brent about it.

It was weird now that he thought about it. He didn’t know how Shane’s mind-warping powers worked, but Brent didn’t seem to acknowledge that he was once part of the show at all. The earlier Unsolved episodes are still on the internet to prove it but Ryan didn’t understand why Shane kept them in if his goal was to replace him.

It’s always been at the back of his mind to ask, but it never happened. He never felt like it. Until now.

What Ryan doesn’t expect is the contorted expression that Brent responses with.

“I…don’t really know?”

Ryan leans in, curiosity simmering in his gut. “What do you mean?”

Brent scratches his head. “I just felt like it.”

Ryan stiffens.

“Oh no, I didn’t mean to sound like a douchebag! I really did have a project but…I don’t know. One day I just woke up and decided that I needed to figure a way to balance things out better and then, poof! Suddenly, Unsolved had a new co-host, and all focus fell on the project.”

A pause. “You realized this the morning you agreed to get replaced with Shane?”

“A week before it happened, actually.” Brent murmured. “It was all I could think about, which was…strange. No offense.”

“Strange.” Ryan repeats, standing up abruptly. A memory runs through him, of Shane. Shane explaining.

Shane lying.

Brent flinches at the sudden action. “Hey man, are you okay?”

Ryan just picks up his bag, leaning over the desk to break through the aura of Shane’s notebook and grabs it. He clutches it to his chest.

“I’m…no, I think not.” He shuts off his computer. “I might need a break too.”

Ryan hastily wraps a towel around himself after he gets out of the shower. The steam rolls out of his bathroom, and Ryan immediately shivers at the cool air from the A/C invading into his space. He places one hand on the door frame before pausing, ear straining to hear any source of movement.

When he feels that the coast is clear, Ryan sighs in relief.

He wipes his feet on the rug before heading straight for his closet, pulling out a pair of boxers and his Lakers’ jersey.

Just as he’s about to put his towel down he hears his phone ring from the other room.

“Crap.” Ryan curses, an image of Kelsey I. reminding him to stream with her replaying in his head. Without thinking he keeps the towel on and opens the door to his bedroom, only to find Shane fiddling with something by his coffee table.

Ryan screams.

For a demon, it’s almost comical how Shane’s immediate response is to flip around and flail his arms all over the place. “Hey hey hey calm your tits! It’s just me!”

The doorknob serves to keep Ryan upright as his heart pounds in his chest. “Yeah, like that’s supposed to make me feel better!”

“I didn’t mean to scare you!”

“Well literally everything about you is not helping Shane!” Ryan pants at this outburst. Shane isn’t in his human form, which means all demon attributes are out in the open for the world to see. Even the fucking wings are out, every spindly little detail of it. “Jesus Christ sir!”

“I hear he’s not a big fan of swearing.”

Ryan distinctly remembers that he’s only a garment away from being butt-naked, holding the towel covering his jewels a little tighter. “What the fuck are you even—what do you think you’re doing?”

Shane shrugs, then gestures at the nest he’s made of Ryan’s couch. Blankets of blues, reds and oranges that Ryan doesn’t remember owning has covered it completely. “Making myself at home.” The demon announces, grin out with his teeth proudly showing. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Ryan shakes his head. “Nonono I do mind actually—“ He’s cut off by Shane suddenly throwing himself into the couch like it was a pile of leaves. Which it’s not, because it’s Ryan’s couch. He rolls around like an animal, the sharp edges of his wings slicing through most of the blankets in a flurry. “Hey, lose the wings!”

Shane halts in his actions, an uncharacteristically soft whine coming from his throat. Like a puppy.

Ryan doesn’t budge.

“Lose the wings, Shane.” The demon groans and obliges, a sickening crack pulsing Ryan’s ears as the huge flappers disappear into his back, “G-Good…wait, do demons even sleep?”

“Sure we do.” Shane pulls himself up into a laidback position now that his wings are gone, hands behind his head. “Woke up from a nap not too long ago. Got bored of watching the war.”

“…okay?” Ryan drawls. “The first or the second one?”

“There was another one?” Shane snorts at Ryan’s glare. “I’m messing with you.”

“Why are you down here?”

Shane shrugs. “It’s boring up there. ”

“It doesn’t matter! Alright? We had an agreement.” Ryan shoves a finger upward. “You, roof.” Then downward. “Me, House.”

“Booooriiiiiing!”

“I don’t care.” Ryan stomps over to his front door.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Ryan looks back at him, then down at himself, before grumbling back to his room for a quick change. He comes out not a few seconds later in a slightly soaked shirt and pajamas, immediately heading straight for the front door and pushing it wide open. “Out.”

He looks at Shane expectantly, only to receive a blunt “Nah.”

The chilling air from outside tickles at the fabric still sticking to Ryan’s skin. He begrudgingly shuts the door. “You just love to make things difficult don’t you?”

Shane shifts himself to a more comfortable position. “Took the words right out of my mouth.”

Ryan’s retort is cut off by the sound of his phone ringing again from the kitchen counter. He looks at Shane, who already has his eyes closed, and deflates. There really isn’t any use in kicking a demon out of his house. Though a bit of salt might do the trick, Ryan has a stream to attend.

Or had, until Shane stops him yet again.

“Hey Ry,”

Ryan pauses outside the doorframe to the kitchen. He closes his eyes for a moment, hesitating, before turning back in Shane’s direction. “What?”

Shane cranes his neck back from the couch, so his eyes still meet Ryan’s.

“Don’t you get lonely down here?”

The silence that follows is filled by the sound of Ryan’s ringtone.

Ryan shifts uncomfortably, hand resting on the doorframe. He should probably answer that.

“Uh…no? It’s fine.” He bites at his bottom lip. “I’m fine.”

Shane hums. “You sure?”

Until you came along, no. No not really.

Ryan clears his throat, “I’ll get back to you later. Get off my couch.”

He quickly enters the kitchen, and nearly loses his breath when he finds Shane already there with all demonic attributes absent.

“Would you stop that?!”

Shane raises a brow, casually chilling on Ryan’s counter. “Stop what?”

“Scaring me!”

The lights flicker above them, coupled with the confused expression on Shane’s face.

“…I’m scaring you?”

“Y-Yeah. So?” Ryan stammers out at Shane, who looks less than impressed at Ryan’s bad attempt at nonchalance. “I mean why wouldn’t you? You’re—You’re this.”

“A demon?”

“Exactly!”

Shane frowns at him, looking heavily offended.

And if Ryan looked any closer, maybe even a little hurt.

“…fuck, you really don’t expect me to feel bad for saying that do you?”

Shane doesn’t react at first, which throws Ryan off even further when he suddenly scoffs. “And what if I do, Ryan?”

Ryan had his mouth open when his phone rings again, disrupting his train of thought. He struggled to find the words to say, but the Vanilla Ice really wasn't having it, obnoxiously repeating “Ice, Ice Baby!”

Shane must feel sorry for him(or gets annoyed by it too), because he picks it up and tosses it over to Ryan, who yanks it out of the air and quickly shuts his phone off altogether.

They just stare each other down after that for a few seconds, until Shane sighs.

“What’s wrong with me trying to protect you?”

Because his chest couldn’t handle the pressure, Ryan bursts out, “Everything! Okay?! I don’t need something like you to protect me. I don’t want you to! Not if it means having you kill people just to “do your job”. That’s not—I don’t want that okay? I don’t need that!”

Again, Shane doesn’t react. Just watching Ryan freak out from the counter.

“I swear if you’re gonna give me that it’s my job bullshit again I oughta—“

“Fine.”

Ryan stills. “…what?”

“I’ll stop.” Shane says, throat tight and voice monotone. “If that’s what you really want. Don’t worry, I’m not lying about this one.”

Ryan shakes his head, confused. “I-I never said that you—“

“But demons lie, right?” Shane asks casually, though the bitterness in his tone doesn’t go unnoticed. “I’d lie and lead you all the way to damnation. Isn’t that what you believe?”

Ryan’s stomach drops.

He watches Shane hop off the counter. “Where are you going?”

The demon points up.

“Me, Roof.”

Shane nearly walks pass when Ryan stops him, shoving him back. “Are you messing with me?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I’m serious Shane.”

“And I’m serious, Ryan. All I want is to keep you safe!”

“I know that!” Ryan scowls. “But why?!”

Shane stays silent. There’s a troubled look on his face, like for a moment there he forgot that he owned a pair of eyebrows. Ryan hates that it’s a little funny.

The silence gets awkward after a few minutes. They just stand there, facing each other at odd angles in the middle of the kitchen and Ryan crosses his arms, more to comfort himself than to look tough. He doesn’t get it. He really, really doesn’t get it. He wants to be mad that he doesn’t get it, that Shane isn’t openly giving him answers, but he doesn’t know how to be mad at him either. How could he?

Yes, Shane is a demon. But he never hurt Ryan.

He actually seems like he genuinely wants to protect him, and Ryan doesn’t know what to feel about that.

“This is so fucking confusing.”

Ryan nearly misses it, but Shane lightly nods his head in agreement. What could that mean?

“…I can help clear your head if you want.”

Ryan immediately clutches at his head. “Don’t you dare.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “Not like that, idiot. I would never do that to you.”

Strange. “Then wha—no. No you can’t, I have a stream to be in right now. I should be streaming right now.”

Shane doesn’t say anything.

Ryan sets his phone aside.

“Okay. What is it?”

Shane beams.

“Alright but uh, you might want to put a jacket on.”

Ryan waves dismissively. “It’s fine.”

Shane shrugs. “Suit yourself.” His eyes morph back into their black state, brown rolling to the back of his head. Ryan has to keep his head from looking away, only to look down when he realizes Shane is offering him a hand. A normal, giant human hand.

“Uh.” Ryan has to admit, the demon look doesn’t look as perfect without everything else about Shane going for it.

Shane seems to read his mind, because he says “I just want you to trust me on this one.”

Ryan squints. “I don’t not trust you.”

He gets two raised brows as a response.

“…fine.”

Ryan breathes in, looking straight into Shane’s abyss for eyes and he slightly hates himself for it, but the thought kinda brings a whole new meaning into being lost in someone else’s eyes.

Because if Ryan’s going to be honest, Shane’s eyes…are actually pretty fascinating.

He takes Shane’s hand.

Ryan’s not too sure what happens next, but it feels like something in-between blacking out and a flash. Whatever it was probably doesn’t matter, because when he opens his eyes again he’s suddenly facing…clouds. The moon and the clouds and a cold as fuck evening breeze.

Which means he is at least a little under a thousand feet in the air.

Oh God.

“Shane?!”

“Yep?”

He cranes his neck to meet face-to-face with Shane, whose wings are out spread eagle against the backdrop of the night sky, and for a moment…Ryan forgets his earlier panic.

He’s seen them before, but never as spread out as this. Shane never showed him just how large and wide his wings could get. But now that Ryan knows what they really look like...he really has no words. They don’t have the lightest colors, but the glow of the moon somehow makes them stand out against the darkness, even brighter than they should probably be. They move up and down, keeping them upright, the motions normal but…graceful.

They’re beautiful.

“My eyes are up here, pal.”

Ryan looks back to Shane’s face, and woah, he’s never been this up close to Shane’s face before. Especially not in his demon form(if it’s even his true demon form). Ryan surprisingly doesn’t feel the urge to pull back like he usually does, only to realize he can’t even if he wanted to. Shane’s arms are gripped around his middle like a vice.

“You’re funny.”

“I know.”

Ryan rolls his eyes, then feels the now crippling anxiety at feeling no leverage under his feet. “Um, Shane—“

“Shush. Look down.”

“But Shane—“

“Just do it Ryan.” Shane murmurs, “I won’t let you go.”

Ryan looks back in front of him, chest heaving slightly. This was not how he imagined death would be. He can keep staring at pretty wings and pretty demons all night but it won’t change the fact that the atmosphere thins out with every feet higher he is from the ground so Ryan can’t breathe—

Shane’s arms tighten a little more around him, as if to reassure him. And it works, because when Ryan gets one more breath in, he finally feels the courage to look down.

And what a sight it is.

He’s been on a hundred flights before—he’s seen how the city looks like with or without the sun. But never like this. Never out in the open, higher than he’s ever gone on any airplane or building before. All the past views he’d thought were magical pale in comparison to what Shane is able to show him now, out in the open, free for the world to see and for Ryan to see the world.

“Holy…” Ryan whispers to himself, wide eyes watching over the glistening orange and yellow hues that are the breathtaking city lights of Los Angeles, California. Ryan can see everything from up here. The Hollywood sign at the far end, the inner workings of Downtown LA that he and his brother know by heart at this point, the outline of lights where the city is cut off by it’s borders—everything. Ryan sees everything.

“Agreed.” Shane chuckles in his ear, his voice soft. “They really don’t call it the City of Angels for nothing.”

Ryan reluctantly looks away for a second to look back at Shane’s face. The demon is looking down himself, looking fond.

Huh.

The sound of Shane’s wings and the air and the bustling city underneath them seems to mute out when Ryan’s gaze focuses in on Shane’s profile. The stars and the moon don’t give him much light to work with, but like his wings, every other part of Shane seems to gather light and reflect the light off of him like it was his own. Like he was the moon himself.

Why are demons so fucking weird?

“You really can’t tell me?”

Shane looks a bit surprised, seeming to hold his breath when he slowly shakes his head. Ryan sighs, and looks back down at the view. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”

Ryan relishes in the silence for a moment before saying, “I’m sorry.”

Shane’s hold slackens a little.

“I didn’t mean to—you know. I didn’t—I was raised catholic. Don’t get me wrong I wasn’t the most religious then and even now but all my life, the number one rule that I’ve embedded into my brain from those days has always been big flashing neon lights saying “DEMON BAD”. So I mean…” Ryan hugs himself, his arms overlapping with Shane’s. “It’s just a bit hard to believe, man. That you’re…you know, protecting me. What I’ve been taught has always been the exact opposite and its…well, it’s all I’ve ever known.

“So whatever it is that you can’t tell me, fine. You don’t have to. If you really plan on sticking around, fine. You can. If that’s your job. I just want you to stop hurting other people. That’s it,” Ryan pauses, “If that’s not too much to ask.”

Shane doesn’t say anything for a second. “It’s not.”

Ryan sighs in relief. “Okay.”

“…do you want to go back now? You’re freezing.”

Ryan tries to hold back his shivers. “I-It’s fine. Let’s stay here for a little while longer.” He leans back against Shane. “You’re pretty warm anyway.”

Oh. Ryan’s brain realizes. I just said that.

“…it doesn’t bother you?”

“…no.”

And they leave it at that.

But neither fail to ever forget it since.

Day 44

There’s a small angel figurine that sits on Ryan’s coffee table now. It came with Shane when he started hanging around. Ryan thought it was pretty. Really, really pretty actually.

It was made of glass and had details so intricate you could see the lines of each hair strand, the irises of the eyes, the petite hands meticulously sculpted. And the wings—they might as well have been magic to put together. Each feather looked real, the figure had grace, it actually looked like it came straight out of heaven. It was prettier than anything Ryan has ever seen before, but he did find it strange for something built out of biblical passage to be, well, Shane’s. They never talked about it, but he just knew it was Shane’s prized possession.

Ryan couldn’t find it in him to ask about it whenever he’d catch Shane just staring at it, with sadness and longing so clear in his eyes.

He’d thought about it a lot. He’d thought maybe Shane was an angel once, but this was countered by the demon himself countless of times. “Angels are literally the bane of my existence, and the sentiment is mutual.” Granted this statement only added more to the unanswered questions Ryan already had, but right now, it was proving to be a good lead, and it was all because of what Brent told him that led to this realization in the first place.

When Ryan first asked Shane why he suddenly showed up, he said he needed to. Then the next, Shane tells him that he was just bored, and making Ryan aware of his existence made things easier. He must’ve been too shocked at the time to notice the contradiction. If Shane had really been planning to show himself way before actually showing himself, then that could only mean that Shane didn’t just need to show up. He was desperate to.

It’s barely scratching the surface, but it’s a start.

He still hasn’t recovered a good amount of sleep, spending the first day of his officially signed leave searching the internet for answers. The problem was that so far he hasn’t seen anything that he hasn’t already dug up when he first met Shane—repeatedly googling “guardian demons” and “human-protecting demons” and “guardian angels turned demons but still demonic in nature???”, all of which had websites that catered little to no help whatsoever.

On the side, Ryan made a list of all the times he knew Shane “took care” of people who put his life in danger. It wasn’t the easiest task, but he couldn’t shake off the feeling that it had a connection somehow.

Shane did tell him that Ryan had always been in danger, but how true has that been for everyone else?

“What the hell am I looking for here, Obi?”

A muffled meow came as a response, the cat’s head currently shoved under the couch’s cushions. Ryan sighs and pulls him back, bringing him over to his spot on the floor. The list glares at him from the coffee table, begging him to make a connection. But even after searching for death-related statistics online Ryan finds himself in a rut. It’s not like he could just call up a guardian angel and ask “hey how often does your human almost die in a day?” despite how much he wished it was that easy.

“I’m in a rut.” Ryan whispers, watching Obi settle on his lap before his eyes look over to the other end of the coffee table. Shane’s notebook still laid there untouched, next to the angel figurine. Ryan felt confident in finding out what was inside it when he got home, but now that he was here without Shane around…it just felt wrong. He needed answers, but this didn’t feel like the right way to do it.

Ryan strokes Obi’s back, relaxing to the sound of soft purrs.

“Where could Shane be huh, little guy?”

Obi still doesn’t answer him.

“Yeah?” He stares at the list again. “I don’t know either.”

The cat suddenly jumps out of his hold, startling Ryan. He clutches his chest as Obi suddenly climbs on the coffee table, crawling over his laptop and the list. “What are you doing?“

He’s cut off by the sound of Obi’s claw slightly scratching at the small glass figurine.

Ryan abruptly leans over in a panic. “Hey Obi don’t—!“

In his haste to pick Obi up Ryan accidentally knocks the notebook off the edge of the table, the thudding of his heartbeat growing louder than the cat’s meowing protests. A sheet of paper fell out of the pages, slipping down into the sea of Ryan’s living room floor.

“Shit.” Ryan curses, scrambling to get to his feet. He snaps the laptop shut and puts Obi back on the couch, quickly crawling his way around the table. The room was darker now that his laptop was closed, making him slowly navigate through the room to get to the light switch. Obi meows at him from the couch, making Ryan sigh. “Only Shane could put up with you better than I could.”

Another meow, this time albeit like it was offended.

He turns around and is relieved to see that the notebook was face-down, half open but not much damage done. He gives Obi a reprimanding look as he walks over to it, only to stop in his tracks when he steps on something.

Ryan freezes. He doesn’t know why, but he does.

Somehow, it feels exactly like the equivalent of stepping on a land mine.

He gives himself three seconds to think, two, then slowly looks down only to choke on his own breath.

“Holy…shit.”

An angel.

It was a drawing of an angel.

Ryan would’ve thought she was beautiful, the smile on her face genuine and pure, if he wasn’t so shocked to see the spear through her stomach.

Ryan comes out of his bedroom to find Shane silently growling at the wall.

“Uh, Shane…?”

Shane doesn’t turn around. “Get back inside Ryan.”

“What are you—“

Shane snarls, his neck snapping to side-glance at him. “I said get back.”

Dread washes over Ryan’s chest like a tsunami, finally noticing that Shane had his claws and fangs out, his eyes morphed back into their pitch black form.

Shane looks back at the wall, his horns growing out of his head. They just went on and on.

Ryan stumbles back into his room, slamming the door shut and throwing his back against it. He tries to catch up with his breaths, thoughts running wild as they go in and out. What the hell is going on?

The brief look of rage on Shane’s face plays back in his mind again and again. He’s never seen the demon look so mad before. It was downright murderous. Demonic.

It was Shane in his element.

Ryan didn’t know how long it took until he felt brave enough to peek through the door. It could’ve been a few minutes to about an hour, but he’d stayed in the position with his back to the door long enough that it was starting to cramp.

Everything was so eerily quiet.

The door creaks through the silence. Ryan pokes his head out, scanning the living room and finding Shane on the couch, his back facing him. The horns were gone, and there wasn’t any mess in sight. Everything looked as normal as they should be.

Ryan walks towards him. “Dude, what the fuck happened?”

Shane doesn’t answer him.

Instead, his wings emerge out of his back like something straight out of a pop-up book and the next thing Ryan knew, his face was planted at the crook of Shane’s bare neck, the demon’s arms and wings squeezing around him, holding him like a lifeline. Shane had his own face buried in Ryan’s hair, and the human couldn’t be any more confused than he has ever been in his entire life.

“Shane?!”

“I never killed anyone.” Shane whispers, his voice gruff and muffled as he hugs Ryan tighter. “I kept my promise. Nobody ever got hurt, Ryan. Every single one of them—they weren’t people. They’re just—they exist because you’re here. They’re not people. They’re all made by Him.”

Ryan’s eyes widen, trying to squirm out of Shane’s grip but can’t. “What are you—?!”

“You’re safe.” Shane sobs. “They can’t get to you. They can’t. He can’t.”

Ryan’s brain short circuits, unsure what to do after hearing all this information.

His hands were sandwiched between their chests, so he gently wriggles them out and—after a moment of hesitation—settles them around Shane’s waist. He breathes Shane in an attempt to calm him down.

It’s a first to see Shane like this. Huge, intimidating…vulnerable.

“You’re a bit warm.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ryan raises a brow, though Shane can’t see it. “The almighty demon Shane apologizing? Never thought I’d see the day.” He teases, which he regrets. It just wasn’t appropriate.

Shane doesn’t reply, just holding him. Ryan sighs and frowns, fully bringing his arms around Shane’s form this time.

“Who’s…who’s He?”

Shane shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Are you saying that all those people…they weren’t real? Why do they want to kill me? What—“”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Ryan squirms when Shane’s grip on him suddenly goes tighter. “Shane, what the fuck is going on—?“

“You’re safe Ryan. I’m protecting you. I’ll always protect you and that’s all you need to know.” His wings seem to grow larger in size, because they’re completely covering the both of them now. “That’s all that matters. You’re all that matters…”

Shane just starts speaking gibberish at this point, in tongues. Ryan doesn’t feel anything for a while until the warmth of Shane’s body only grows hotter and hotter. So hot it’s starting to burn. “Shane?!”

“I’m sorry, Ryan.” Is all that Shane says, before he leans back and presses a finger to Ryan’s forehead.

Shane’s eyes are glowing with tears, and everything goes black.

When Ryan wakes up, he’s lying next to Shane on the couch with no recollection of how he got there.

The flashback strikes at Ryan the moment he sees her face.

He doesn’t remember it happening. He’s not sure if it ever happened at all but here it is, vividly flashing in his head over and over and over—

Ryan falls back on the floor, holding the notebook in his hands, the memory replaying in his head on a loop. Like a never-ending nightmare.

Shane told him he’d never touch his head.

He lied.

But for what?

The first couple pages didn’t serve much help with Ryan’s growing hysteria. They were all drawings of…random things. Shane things, Ryan found. Drawings of statues straight out of museums, worldwide monuments while they’re under construction, detailed sketches of busy streets and bustling crowds…it’s all so mundane and so weirdly Shane. There’s even one page filled with nothing but hot dogs, as well as one on avocados with angry scribbling by the side. There’s a lot of those, actually. Ryan doesn’t think it’s a language that anybody understands.

But even by a mile, he could still tell it was Shane’s handwriting.

Around the middle Ryan starts to calm down, finding himself fascinated by the contents of the notebook. No, actually, a journal. It’s more Shane’s journal than just a notebook at this point. The pages were yellow, some more worn out than others, and it’s safe to say that Shane’s held on to this for a long, long time.

One thing that still bothers Ryan though, as he makes sure to look through the pages in chronological order, is who exactly the angel from the torn page is. The same angel that happens to look exactly like Shane’s figurine.

Was she the “Him” that Shane had talked about? Why is it a she then? Do angels even have genders?

Fuck’s sake.

It’s starting to make sense why Shane would keep something so personal at work.

The only person he’s trying to hide it from is Ryan.

Ryan starts flipping through the pages faster, his frantic mind working it’s wheels again. His fingers start to tremble when he finally comes upon a certain page that puts his whole heart on pause altogether.

He blinks once. Then twice.

There’s really no mistaking it.

It’s him.

There’s no scribbling, no other mundane objects around the page like the others. It’s just him, Ryan, sitting on his dinner table while scrolling through his phone.

Beside him, an unknown person is sitting up on the table, smiling happily.

It’s the angel.

Ryan continues to scan through them, flipping through the pages repeatedly. By then, the drawings start to revolve around him. Him and the angel. It starts with a few sketches of them at home, at work, at Disneyland with his family(though the details are clearer around his face. Jake looks more like a smudge than a person), and then…more drawings. Of him. The more Ryan draws closer to the end of the sheets, the more the surroundings around the drawings start to look more recent. More familiar. Like the viewpoint has changed from “at” Ryan to “beside” Ryan.

There’s Ryan, but no more angel.

Ryan looks again at the gruesome drawing of the supposed angel next to him. He starts scanning backwards, trying to pinpoint exactly where the page was torn off but couldn’t find it. It’s like Shane wanted to forget about it completely at some point, but couldn’t bear to lose the memory. So there it was, detached but clipped within the contents.

But…why? What the fuck actually happened? And where exactly does Ryan play in all this?

Who was she to him?

Who was she?

Ryan’s head spins and spins and he goes to the very last page, the most recent of the drawings. It’s still him. At Ghoul HQ, laughing over nothing in particular. Ryan remembers what he’s wearing. That was when they were filming the last True Crime episode for the season, and Ryan had been excited to start delving back into Supernatural.

Shane hadn’t been as thrilled(a demon who doesn’t believe in ghosts, Ryan’s still baffled by this), but he looked happy enough to know Ryan was happy. Or at least Ryan had hoped he did.

And looking at this now…

“You piece of shit Shane…” Ryan sobs, closing the notebook shut.

Where was he? Right. He was looking for answers, and he doesn’t find them. Right…

…maybe he doesn’t want answers.

Maybe, he could’ve been better off with the rest of his memory erased. Without all these convoluted mysteries. Without all these stupid information that he doesn’t need. Doesn’t want.

Maybe, he just wants Shane back.

And in that moment, in where Ryan finds himself with a heavy heart and a chaotic mind, an idea comes to him. A very bad, very risky, very bad fucking idea.

Shane is a demon.

Ryan is reminded, as he scrambles back to his laptop, wiping at his tears so he doesn’t struggle through typing out the words on Google’s search bar.

“how to summon a demon”

He can make something work.

Chapter Text

Earth is strange, he finds.

The trees sway with force above where he lays, brushing past one another like sheets of sandpaper. Not louder than the bursts of thunder, an instrument of His light playing within the clouds. A storm is coming. The Almighty must be mad.

To have another one of their kind within His playing ground…

Of course He would be.

His eyes, void of nothing but resignation and darkness, glaze over the surrounding. No creatures. No humans. No noise. Just dark greens and blues, Mother Nature’s favorite palette. A refresher from all the black and red...so many reds.

But what to do now? He questions himself.

Those who’ve been freed before him couldn’t have been so sure either. It’s nothing new; All that their pointless lives’  had ever been made up of was hellfire and sinsinsinsin—sin. He had been spending most of his time breeding sinners, growing sinners, taking the monsters out of them in order to make new brothers from them. At one point, he had been a human’s monster too. A human’s sins.

He doesn’t feel the rain dropping unto him as he rises up, standing on his two hind legs. Vertically, he now finds himself as high as the trees, and now they scrape unto him as well. He growls.

The moon glimmers against the scales that decorate his body, raising his claws up to his face. The light glints off of the white of his palms, and it all dawns on him.

He’s here.

He’s free.

The moon calls for him, and he starts running.

He doesn’t know why, but he’s trying to find the feeling;  Trying to find what all the sinners he had bred had been missing so dearly. He wonders, what exactly they scream to come back for as they were punished within the flames. Was it this?

The air that slices through him as he sprints? The clarity of the stars as they danced around the heavens? Is it the trees? The grass? The ocean? Why do humans yearn so much for this place that it’s all they could possibly wish for in the midst of torment?

This is earth, isn’t it? What’s so special about it?

What makes it…home?

After roaming around earth for a good while, he doesn’t find an answer.

Not until a couple hundred years later, in the eyes of one human man.

Shane wouldn’t call himself creepy—though technically, demons are usually coined with the term ‘creepy’ if not ‘terrifying’—but he’s been staring at Ryan’s sleeping face for the past ten minutes and he’s starting to concern himself. Though he’s not complaining. In fact, he’s pretty relieved that Ryan’s asleep.

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity for the both of them. To have Unsolved pitched for a third season for both True Crime and Supernatural, it was clear that it was getting more and more difficult for Ryan to be less of a busybody than he already was. He’s constantly working himself to the bone, insistent on writing his own scripts and looking over all footage for himself before the crew does, sometimes even doing the editing himself. Shane couldn’t really blame him, because he knows, possibly more than anybody, just how much Ryan loves his show. He knows that though Ryan is grateful that it’s not just him doing all the work now, the human feels that he’s never really satisfied with just being scared for the camera and doing voice-overs. It’s his show, and he doesn’t want to lose sight of that idea.

And Shane gets that. He really does.

But Ryan is tired.

If Paddington 2 playing in the background dimmed out by the sound of Ryan’s snores are any indication, then it’s safe to say that his exhaustion has finally gotten the better of him.

Maybe that is why Shane’s staring at him. He eyes Ryan carefully, from the bags that have grown impossibly deeper to the arms subconsciously tucked around Shane’s middle, all the way down to his feet dangling off the edge of the cushions, though not tall enough to reach the other armrest where Shane’s own feet are propped up. Perhaps there’s also the fact that it’s because Shane doesn’t really stop Ryan from moving around in his sleep that they’re now tangled up together on the couch in an angle that forces Shane to look directly at Ryan’s face, especially if he doesn’t want his own neck to break.

But then he could also just close his eyes. Shane’s tired too.

Holding up his physicality for so long now, it’s becoming more and more risky each day.

Resting helps. If he could just close his eyes.

Shane breaks his stare from Ryan to give the window at the far end of the room a sidelong glance, then looking over to coffee table where her memory sits. Ryan’s hold on him tightens as he shifts, and Shane’s focus goes back to him.

Ryan’s a human.

Shane lets his limbs surround Ryan’s head, cradling it. Protecting it.

He could afford to stay up for a little while longer.

There’s a lot of answers to ponder over why exactly he chose to freeload another demon’s house around the outskirts of Atchison, Kansas, but only one of them is correct and that is—he doesn’t give a shit, really. So why not?

Sallie doesn’t really seem to mind, anyway, because she doesn’t even know he’s there. She likes to hang out down in the basement unless anybody’s moved into the house for her to play with. Other than that, she’s been pretty dormant since Shane came and decided he’d hang around for a few years. Didn’t even welcome him. Hmph. A big bore.

Which is perfect for him, anyway. He could use the boring company. Or company of any kind, really.

“Sallie, I’m home!” He calls out to the other demon, who of course doesn’t answer. He’s established earlier on that she must be pretty weak if she couldn’t even sense his presence between one floor(or she just really didn’t give a shit about anything other than tormenting humans). The lights flicker rapidly a few times before going back off as he settled down into the main chair in the living room.

The journal sits open patiently on the coffee table, but…eh. He isn’t really feeling it today. He hasn’t been up to it for a while now, actually.

So he settles back, letting his claws freely scratch against the armrests, staring out into the dark living space.

The usual.

“…”

…

…he’s bored.

Okay, he’s not about to have another nap for the next fucking century like last time.

But damn is it tempting.

“Sallie, I’m bored.” He says to nobody in particular. An array of sounds pass to answer him—the wind blows by the window in answer, the rats scratch through the walls in answer, his horns tapping against the lamp above his chair clinks in answer.

Silence, basically.

So. This is what he’s grown used to. 

It’s a joke really, for him to call other demons a bore when he himself is just as much of a bore as any of them(if not more). What has he done for the past 900 years? Walked around, drew, slept the years off, and once again wake up to see anything new humanity’s come up with.

Which—for a demon—is practically nothing.

He’s just another spectator of the enigma that is the evolution of humanity. He’d say it’s actually an interesting pastime, but in a demon’s world, he would be compared to what humans call “nerds”. Or better yet “weirdoes”…which actually kinda fits.

Not that he can help it. He doesn’t find joy in terrorizing anybody.

He doesn’t find joy in pretty much anything.

He found out earlier on that trying out any sort of human trait—like emotions and…physical manifestations, like what most demons who’ve come to earth do—would risk him losing what he’s worked so hard for. Not that having feelings doesn’t sound intriguing, if anything it’s what runs the universe, and as such, demons love to chase after it. To seek after the root of pleasure and fear.

He, himself, is a demon.

But he’s not stupid like the rest of them are.

Conjuring up emotion to feel, or worse, turn and disguise as a human themselves? Taking up that much hellfire would send them back to Hell faster than a priest ever could! Most of them resort to possessing vessels (human bodies) because of this, and even that requires just enough hellfire to be considered risky.

And for what? A little fun?

No thanks, He’d thought so long ago. I’d rather be a weirdo.

It’s been a while since somebody moved in, so he’s got the house all to himself save for the occasional passerby. He doesn’t do much—just goes out sometimes and draws. There’s not much about Kansas, but he’s already gone over the places he did like, and even they got boring after a while.

There’s really been nothing much about Earth in general, now that he’s been here long enough.

“Another nap doesn’t sound so bad, huh Sallie?”

Silence.

“Thought so.”

The demon has second thoughts about it for not longer than two seconds before he’s shifting himself to a more comfortable position, letting his wings stretch out and drape over the armrests. He lets his eyes roam over the house one more time, looking down to check on his journal. The last country he’s been to had been New Zealand—one of the smaller ones. On the last page sits a landscape of Fiordland National Park.

He really tried to capture the setting, the atmosphere, how bright and cheery the people were, but there was only so much his oversized claws could do. Though he could only be thankful that humanity has grown a lot since using nothing but ink and calfskin(which he regrettably had to recreate over and over to keep up with the times, hence the notebook), he wished there was an easier and more efficient medium he could use.

Or that he had smaller hands.

Don’t even go there.

He sighs and closes his eyes. But even then, there really isn’t anywhere else he could go to at this point, is there?

Maybe when the continents merge together again, he’ll have something new to look forward to.

For now he’ll just..drift…and…

Glass breaking outside breaks the demon out of his concentration.

“Oh shit!”

“Shut up, Ryan. You’ll wake up the neighbours.”

He stands up and hides his journal under the chair. The window isn’t open, but it’s glass, and the only thing separating him and the window is a thin-veiled curtain, so he takes one look outside and sees—

Children. But they’re too big to be children. Adults? Height isn’t exactly consistent with humans over the centuries.

“I don’t even want to be here, Steven.” One of them says, though the demon is too annoyed and a bit tired to use his vision to see them better through the darkness, so he’s not sure which one.

“Well, we’re here. So deal with it.”

The demon blinks, becoming a little more awake. This Steven person is here to see Sallie?

Now that seems like an innocent sentence, if Sallie wasn’t a bloodthirsty bitch.

The two silhouettes come closer to the front door, their bickering eventually tuning down to hushed whispers. More at the human "Ryan"s command. They’re really here to see Sallie, huh? That’s interesting. He didn’t usually come across humans with death wishes before.

He watches the doorknob move as the humans fiddle with it from the outside, wondering if they know that it’s still technically trespassing to do that.  That's when he catches the scent of bourbon and whiskey. That explains it. Before he can do anything about it though, the door bursts open.

Steven comes in first, movements wobbly. “So this is where Sammy lives?”

“Sallie.” Ryan corrects, who looks a little more sober as he helps the other human balance on their legs. They both enter the living room, surveying the place. The Ryan human ends up squinting in the demon’s general direction. “Okay, this is fucking creepy enough. I’m unsettled. Let’s leave.”

Ouch.

“Don’t be such a wuss.”

“I’m not a wuss.”

Well, that’s a lie. The demon would know.

Steven ignores his fellow human, trudging further into the house and passing by him. The demon knows he’ll be fine, since he’s not afraid. This other human though…

He looks to the human who is now closer to him, eyes wide with fear as they look to where their friend had just been.

…oh.

Oh.

He really hopes Sallie isn’t up to being extra wicked today.

“Fuck. Fucking fuck Steven come—“ Ryan holds back on shouting. “…back. Oh God.”

Yeah, that’s not gonna help. The demon watches as the human gets obviously torn between leaving and going after his friend, only to opt for the latter and run ahead.

The next few minutes pass with him following them around, keeping an eye on them, most especially this Ryan fellow. The lights still flicker whenever he enters a room, which freaks Ryan out even further, but the demon knows it helps them navigate their way through the dark threshold. He doesn’t know how to get them to leave without personally making them though.

He wants Ryan out of the house as soon as possible.

…wait, why?

“I don’t want Sallie to touch him.” He tells himself, knowing the humans can’t hear him as they get further into the house. “Wait, I don’t? Why don’t I?”

Who knows.

He frowns. He wouldn’t lose anything if this human were to get hurt.

…is he concerned?

…but he doesn’t feel.

…okay, they need to leave.

He decides, but his determination is interrupted when Steven, who’s constantly slurring commentary on the furniture and decorations, suddenly announces “Oh! Look Ryan, a creepy door!” and he freezes, looking at where they’ve ended up.

They’re in front of the basement door.

“Do the honors?”

“We should leave, Steven. Now.”

The demon agrees with vigorous nods. No one could see him, so he doesn’t look like an idiot. Ryan’s right. They need to leave. They’ve come too far.

He looks at another window that happens to be close by, motioning it to open, slowly so that it creaks. His efforts for Ryan to see it are in vain though, as Steven has held the human by the shoulders to face him. “Just a peeeeek?”

“No.” Both the demon and Ryan respond.

“What was that uh, new show you were working on? You wanted a co-host right? I can introduce you to somebody!”

The demon was expecting Ryan to relent further, but the human goes quiet.

“Hey, wha—come on dude, you two need to leave.”

Of course, they don’t hear him. Ryan actually seems to be thinking over it.

“…one look. Then we’re leaving.”

“Yay!”

“Ney!” The demon stresses, stomping forward to Ryan who’s hand is already on its way to turning the knob.

Without thinking, he almost does something he’s definitely sworn he would never do.

He nearly touches the human.

But halfway through reaching out, it happens in a flash.

His claw is suddenly tangled up with…a sword.

And it burns.

“Ow!” The demon growls out, wings stretching out behind him on reflex, and he staggers back at the pain. Excruciating pain that could only be—

No.

He looks up.

Sure enough, there it is.

An angel stands before him, glaring up at him defiantly with a sword held up to his chest.

Her own wings are outstretched behind her, but in contrast to the blood red and intimidating horror that are his own flappers, hers are full of feathers and pearly white. Blindingly so. She’s covered up in a white robe that hangs just below her shoulders, features almost as sharp as her eyes that nearly don’t fit her curly brown hair.

“So you’re the threat.”

She says to him in latin, to which he groans.

“We’re in America lady.” The demon hisses, pain still shooting up through his arms and fucking fuck fuck it hurts. “English is—eugh—fine,”

The angel looks offended for a second, then shakes her head. “I don’t take orders from your kind.”

He raises a brow. “I wasn’t—“

“Save it Sallie,” she snaps, missing the dumbfounded look on the demon’s face. He’d never encountered angels before(not so sure why he’s facing one now), but gladly one of his questions have been answered. They are as annoyingly stereotypical as they sound. “It’s best if you leave this Earth. You don’t belong here.”

Double ouch. Now that—that he takes offense to.

“Seriously lady—“

“Silence!”

“I would like that too but before that—“

“I’d erase your existence before I’d ever let you touch him.” She declares firmly, her voice upturned and determined. It would be funny if his claw still wasn’t causing him constant agony. “Be gone! Now!”

He licks his hand, helping it heal, then holds it up. “Look, I don’t think we’re on the same page here—!”

“I said be gone!”

He slumps, exasperated even as her glare impossibly sharpens.

“You dare ridicule me.”

“Oh geez sorry.”

She charges at him, and he would be indifferent to this except she isn’t the reason why he moves out of the way in that moment.

Behind her, Ryan has opened the door completely.

And he’s looking straight through Sallie—a hideous wall of massive red eyes, made up of swirls of inky tendrils and fangs and stupidly pink horns—towering over him.

Goddamn it.

Steven is clapping. “See? Now that wasn’t so bad was it?”

The demon morphs himself out of the angel’s way just in time, so he’s teleported right in front of Sallie, shielding Ryan behind him.

Sallie’s attention immediately snaps to him, and she lets out an unholy screech.

Christ.

In a single movement, the demon brings his still burning claw up to her disgusting body, slicing through her in less than a second.

Her screams are the equivalent of nails scratching against a board, if the sound was recorded and amplified to be two times louder.

He’s heard worse.

He pushes her back, successfully banishing her with the holy energy still simmering in his claw.

Her form crinkles and smudges together, much like watching an inflatable tent open but in reverse, until she just disappears in sparks, leaving an ominous howl lingering in the air.

It’s faint, but it’s littered with Sallie’s last bouts of hellfire. He looks to the two humans who sure enough hear it too, seeing Steven visibly lose his earlier confidence, evident by the shiver that goes through him.

He immediately checks on Ryan. Despite not knowing what just happened in front of him, the look on his face is pale. Like he’s seen a ghost. He scoffs. Ghosts.

“Y-Yeah…” Ryan mumbles after a moment of silence. “C…Can we go now?”

“Sure.” Steven says this time, without a second thought. The demon sighs through his nose in relief. Ry—the two of them are safe now. Yep. He can’t wait to see R—them leave.

He looks back at the angel, who just stares at him wide-eyed, sword still in hand.

He throws his claws up again. “H-Hey, mind putting that away?”

“Did you just…?”

She doesn’t finish her sentence, mouth still falling open. The demon shrugs. “Uh, yeah? Sallie was a bitch anyway, so.”

“I know. I’ve heard.” She replies, still dazed. “You’re not Sallie.”

“I’m most definitely not.”

“No.” She agrees. “You’re different.”

He blinks. What does that mean?

Before he could ask out loud, the two humans blindly trying to find their way back out in the background snaps him out of it. He looks at Ryan, who’s eyes are still wide with shock and…fear.

…concern. No. Can’t be. He doesn’t feel. It’s just another human.

He perks up, and it clicks.

“Hey, are you his guardian—“

He looks back to her, only to find that she’s…gone.

“…angel.”

He stands still for a moment, not entirely sure what just happened. Ryan and Steven are already by the entrance when the demon finally decides he’d see them off(no reason. Just courtesy). 

The angel is nowhere to be found.

When Steven closes the door behind them, he stays where he is by the wall.

For a few seconds.

He goes to the window to look through it again. They should’ve been gone by then, but he sees Ryan still standing in front of the house, looking up at it intently.

The demon stares at Ryan staring for another minute, till the human finally leaves.

“…peace.” He says to himself. “Peace and quiet now.”

Not a minute later, he’s taking his notebook out from under the chair and spreading his wings out on the front porch.

Demons were never ones for peace and quiet.

Shane hates lines.

It’s one of the many stupidities of humanity that he refuses to accept has become a common norm in buying things in “organized fashion”. Stupid. It’s a flawed system. Always too many customers for too few cashiers, or a great lack of both, and a big fat waste of everyone’s time. It’s certainly a waste of Shane’s time, standing around, feeling like a fool like he knows most humans in lines do. He’s taller than everyone else, so he can see all the way to the front, see how annoyingly slow people order and how cashiers drag their fingers over the registers like it physically pains them to do so.

“This is stupid.”

“For the fifth time Shane, deal with it.” Ryan says, sounding just a bit annoyed himself.

“Don’t wanna. This is agony. I just want a ‘rito Ryan. And I want it now.”

“You can’t have it now, so shush.”

Shane can, actually. Except Ryan gives him a look, and so he can’t.

“Lines are stupid.” He grumbles.              

Ryan huffs in amusement, having had listen to Shane complain about this matter a million times before. He suddenly pats his shoulder, Shane giving him a questionable look. The human nods at an empty booth. “Wait there. I’ll order for both of us.”

Shane guffaws. “Ryan. I’m not going to abandon you.”

“I’d very much like you to if it means I can get some peace and quiet.”

Mocking a stab through his chest, Shane holds a hand up to it. “Oof. Shame Ryan. I thought we were friends.”

“Yeah, we are.” Ryan smiles, then pointedly looks at him with his hands shoved in his pockets. “But if you don’t get your ass out of this line in the next two seconds I’m gonna make them salt all over your chicken burrito.”

“I feel betrayed.”

“Think of it as a noble sacrifice.” 

“Ohhh, sacrificing yourself for me? So sweet. Okay, we can be friends again.”

He’s already turned around, but Ryan’s wheeze still reaches his ears. Shane grins to himself as he sits at the vacant booth Ryan had pointed out. It’s noon. They’re out for lunch, and Shane has been running around the office for the majority of the morning, so he’s understandably grumpier about the lines than he usually would be. Ryan’s been less busy for the past few days since Unsolved preparations were done and all they really needed to worry about now was filming. Shane sighs, sinking into his seat. He’s glad the human’s relaxed a significant amount.

Speaking of said human, he arrives not ten minutes later with both their usual orders and greets Shane with a scrunched nose.

“What?”

“You’re taking up the whole booth.”

Shane snorts and stretches his arms to dangle them over head of the seats, manspreading to really bring it home. “Was it not obvious?”

Ryan rolls his eyes as he sits down on the other side of the booth. “Wa’ it not tha’ obvious?” He mocks Shane’s voice as he hands him his burrito, and Shane does the same, their weird sounding impersonations overlapping with each other. He’s completely aware that it makes them look like two weird ass aliens bickering over a cup of guac without context, but Ryan’s having a good time with it, so he doesn’t care.

“Okay, we should stop.” Ryan breathes out one last giggle before chomping on his food. Shane looks down at his own and oh, he still can’t get enough of human food. It’s hard not to when he’s been missing it for the majority of his time on Earth.

“You eat the food, big guy, not stare at it.”

“I am aware of how food works short stack.”

Ryan shrugs and passes the guacamole. “Just saying. In case you’re still confused about that. I mean, here.” He puts his food down, and brings his hands up to his face. “First, you open your mouth. Then you put the food in your mouth. But oh!” He drawls on, before deliberately winking at Shane “…don’t forget to chew.”

Shane indignantly flicks a paper napkin at him.

It hitting his face doesn’t stop Ryan from bursting into another fit. Shane groans. “You’re never gonna let me live that down are you?”

“It’s—it’s hard to forget something as bold as deepthroating a banan—“

“Okay, okay I wasn’t aware before that. Stop bullying me!”

Ryan keeps laughing, and Shane couldn’t stop the smile that comes at him. He’s always loved Ryan’s laugh.

It’s taken him…a while, to get Ryan to be more comfortable with him. Their earlier videos together showed how that came about, when Ryan was still treading waters with Shane, rejecting any close proximity before eventually thinking it over. Their fans thought Ryan had been no-homoing him, which he could’ve been, but now that they’re closer Shane doesn’t need to worry about Ryan being too afraid of him to laugh boisterously like this, mouth wide open and hand occasionally banging the table, eyes filled with mirth as the afternoon sun sharpens his profile. He looks impossibly brighter, here with Shane.

Shane swallows.

The heart he’s formed for himself beats erratically in his human chest and wow, he hasn’t felt that in a while. He’s never even considered feeling until…this whole thing started. It’s so fucking risky.

But at this point, he already knows that he’d risk anything for Ryan.

Anything.

He discretely pats at his chest to calm himself down, hating how aware he is of the blood rushing to his face. Human bodies. So inconveniently obvious. “Yeah yeah, laugh out all you want. Imma be here enjoying my ‘rito, that I know how to eat.”

Ryan’s laughs start dying down, eyes not leaving Shane’s until they’re both just staring at each other with stupid smiles on their faces.

“Yeah. Yeah you do that.”

Shane grins. Gathering the contents so they’re more nicely settled inside the tortilla, he pauses in front of his face. “Watch this.”

Ryan looks like he’s on the verge of laughing again. They’re so gonna be late for work again. It’s worth it. Shane opens his mouth wide, only to stiffen when he catches something in the corner of his eye.

There’s a dark corridor that leads down to the back a few booths behind Ryan, and Shane’s eyes snap to it just in time to see something emerge straight out of the shadows. His human blood runs cold.

A woman this time, dressed so casually and innocently.

This motherfucker.

Shane puts the entire burrito in his mouth on one go, furiously chewing so that he can swallow it just as quickly. It’s painful to do so with a human throat, and Ryan seems to think so, his expression immediately turning to one of concern. “H—Shane? Are you alr—“

“We’re gonna be late for work.” Shane calmly says with a smile, looking at Ryan, doubling his vision so he could keep an eye on the woman slowly making her way towards them. He tries strengthening his presence, making that bitch aware that he knows she’s there. He sees her sneer before turning around, casually walking back into the shadows.

“Shane?”

He doesn’t respond for a moment, making sure she’s completely gone.

He smiles at Ryan, “I think it’s best we finish quickly, yeah?”

Ryan just blinks, cocking his head at Shane in confusion before shrugging it off. “You’re weird.”

“Likewise.”

When Ryan looks away momentarily to sneeze into his arm, Shane lets out a quiet sigh of relief.

This is a stupid idea. Why?

Three reasons.

One. Turns out, Ryan and Steven don’t even live in Kansas. They come from another state entirely, in a particular city nicknamed after the bane of his existence. Now of course, “City of Angels” obviously doesn’t mean it’s a place full of angels, so that’s not why it’s stupid that the demon has followed the human all the way back to Los Angeles. What’s stupid is that ironically, Los Angeles doesn’t have angels as far as the demon knows but…it has other demons. A shitload of demons. And demons don’t really get along that much even with each other, evident by who the demon himself just smited the other night.

This is a death wish, because from his experience with this place fifty years back, a lot of these fuckers are seriously territorial.

The next two reasons can be summed up in single sentences.

Two—he is a demon.

Three—Ryan is a human.

What the fuck is a demon doing following a human around?

And yet he watches on anyway, as the Ryan human exits LAX with a heavy body and a tired face.

Some other human is waiting for him and Steven, beckoning them over from the far end of the street with an Uber at the ready. The two of them don’t really look so good.

Judging from last night’s events, plus the two of them obviously sporting massive hangovers, being out in the LA sun with bags hanging off their backs don’t seem to be the best of circumstances at the moment.

From where he’s perched up on the roof, the demon contemplates.

He sighs and, reluctantly, twirls a finger. From up here, he can see the confusion on both their faces at the loss of the misery-inducing pain in their heads.

Why am I here? He asks himself again.

“You saved my human.”

His wings bursts open, staggering back on the inclined roof with his claws, leaving crushing dents. He frantically looks at who’s startled him and gawks.

It’s the angel. The one that tried to kill him.

“Motherfuck—warn a guy will you!” He runs a hand through his head, claws tangling up with his horns. The angel doesn’t look perturbed, just staring at him in disbelief. He blinks. “What? What do you want?”

“You saved my human.” The angel repeats, crawling closer to him. The demon crawls backwards, but the angle of the roof makes him slide back down to her, ending up with them face to face.

“Whoa whoa whoa stay back—“

“Eugh.” Her nose scrunches up. “Demon breath.”

“Then don’t get so close!” Says the demon, pissed off. “You’re gonna burn me!”

“Oh relax you big baby, only my sword can kill you.” She rolls her eyes and grabs at one of his horns—“OW OW watch it!”—to demonstrate her point. “I’m Sara by the way.”

He teleports back, so they’re now at least two feet apart. He frowns.

“What?”

“I’m introducing myself?”

“W—You’re not here to smite me?”

The angel cocks her head in confusion. “Why would I do that?” She disappears for a second, then appears closer to him again. He cusses. “You’re weird.”

“I’m weird? Really? You sure about that?” He uses his wings this time, flying away from her. She follows him. “Um, please leave me alone?”

She cocks her head again, curly hair messed up by the wind.

“Why?”

“I don’t know! For all I know you could be plotting to slice me to bits!” The demon says before turning around, only to come face to face with her again. Right. Angels could do that too.

She’s smiling.

“You saved my human from being diced to shreds just last night. I owe you.”

The demon blinks.

Last night’s events played back in his head.

“That—Ryan? I didn’t—I just thought it would be inconvenient! You know, humans. Full of flesh. Full of blood. He could’ve made a real mess back there y’know? Haha.”

The angel crosses her arms. “You like my human don’t you?”

…what?

“What?!” The demon exclaims, shocked beyond belief. “I’m not—no?! How does that even work? I don’t even know—he’s a human, angel!”

“Sara.”

“Whatever!”

“Don’t you have a name?”

“No—hey, don’t change the subject, alright? I don’t like your human. I just saved him! That’s it. Maybe he’s a little interesting. I don’t know. But I don’t like him. I didn’t even know he existed until he came to Sallie’s house—drunk, mind you—last night. That’s all!” He faces away from her, sulking at the sun. “Demons liking humans. Ridiculous.”

“Hm. You’re right.” The angel—Sara, muses. “And yet you’re here.”

The demon stiffens.

“Just…thought I’d fly by.”

Sara flies into his line of sight, a smirk on her face. She hums unconvincingly. “Hm, if you say so.” She gestures down. Ryan’s putting his stuff into the Uber now, laughing with the other human about something he doubts is even relatively funny. It’s a tired laugh.

Still, the sun somehow pales in comparison.

“Well, if you’re not planning to go anywhere in particular you can ‘fly by’ over to Ryan’s house with me.”

He looks back to the angel, perplexed. She smiles, “What?”

“I’m a demon.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I’m a demon.” He repeats. “I don’t get it. Don’t you hate me? We literally exist from two different worlds and should loathe each other and—you’re being friendly with me? Tell me angel, how does that make any sense?” The angel doesn’t reply, smiling still in front of him, heavenly wings flapping behind her. He grunts. “Look, this is just very unusual alright. I mean isn’t your job to kill us or something?”

She thinks it over a second, then scoffs. “Well, that’s one thing.” He rolls his eyes, “But no. As I’m sure you’ve already gathered, I’m a guardian angel. My ‘job’ is to protect my human until Death comes for him. Ryan…his safety is my top priority.” She shrugs, looking a bit unsure what to say next. “You…well, you saved him. If you ask me, I think killing you would be the most senseless thing I could ever do.”

The demon doesn’t really know what to say to that.

“…you really want me to come with you?”

She doesn’t reply for a moment, her smile softening. “We could use the company.”

Well.

“You really don’t have a name?”

This again. “Never needed one.”

“Now you do. You’re talking to me.” The angel quips. “C’mon, Mr. Fartswagon. Gimme a name.”

He frowns. “What?”

“I’m gonna keep calling you that unless you’ve got something for me to call you.”

The demon mulls it over before shaking his head. “I don’t—“

“Ugh, fine. Sorry I asked Fartswagon.” She cocks her head behind her. “I’m heading this way Fartswagon. Don’t follow me now and you’ll probably never see Ryan ever again.”

“I didn’t even—“

“Byeeee Fartswagon!”

He stays still where he is in the air, watching her purposely fly away instead of just teleporting to God knows where. He doesn’t want to give in. He won’t.

So he wants to be around Ryan. Does it really matter? Even if he’s bored, Ryan’s just another human. Not too different from the rest of them, even if there is something about him that calls at the demon the way no other human has ever piqued his interest before.

Wow, he really hasn’t thought this through.

But…it’s not like he can just go back to Sallie’s house now.

Is there anywhere else he could…go?

…fuck it.

“Sara.”

The angel looks to her left to see that the demon is now flying beside her, somewhat begrudgingly. She grins. “Why hello there Fartswagon. Glad you could join me.”

He swallows, before saying “Shane works too.”

Fuck.

He hasn’t called himself that since…since forever. Literally forever.

Sara seems surprised for a moment, before she gives him a pleased look and hands her hand out to him. The de—Shane…Shane, takes it.

“Nice to meet you, Shane.”

Shane should’ve known something was up the moment His attempts were starting to get more and more frequent with each passing month. He was getting desperate. It wasn’t impossible, and the demon should’ve known that this was gonna happen at some point.

Shane should’ve fucking known.

“Talk to me you little shit.”

The other demon in the room, the one Shane has pinned down with one claw piercing the sides of it’s unpleasantly thick neck, gurgles out what sounds like a laugh. A disgusting, hideously shameless laugh. Almost hysterical. It makes Shane sick if not angrier.

“All high and mighty now that he’s got holy energy inside him eh,” The creature cackles louder, nostrils flaring up, black eyes rolling back and back and back and Shane couldn’t wait to tear this fucker apart. “Come on, Shane, it’s just a human. Is he really worth it?”

“What did He offer you?”

“Us, you mean.”

Shane grits his fangs together tighter, the growl growing louder at the depths of his own throat. “What. Did. He. Offer. You?”

The pinned demon smiles fully, small but deadly sharp fangs visible, black blood continuously oozing out in spurts that fail to block the single word that has Shane’s vision going red.

He smites the demon by simply clenching his fist around it’s throat, sparks of it’s pathetically low hellfire floating in front of him before dissolving into ash.

In the silence of the empty prison cell, Shane quietly thinks how much easier it could’ve been to clean himself up if he hadn’t decided to be a physically visible life form. To put it simply, human. He looks down at his claws and the black blood stained all over his flannel. For the most part, anyway.

For the first time since what happened to Sara, Shane has never been more angry.

“Hey Shane?”

Shane looks up to the door, quietly clearing his throat. “Yeah?” He yells back.

“Are you okay in there? Wanna come out now?”

Ryan’s voice. Ryan’s talking. Ryan’s okay. He didn’t hear what happened. He’s okay. He’ll be okay.

“Extend me a few minutes, baby! I’m really feeling the ghostly vibes up in this shithole!”

“Uh, sure. I’ll call you back in a few if you’re having that much fun.”

Oh, he definitely had fun sending that demon to oblivion alright.

Shane clutches at his head, his breathing ragged and panicked. The bastard’s face continues to reappear in his mind, coupled with that sick fucking smile, his last word repeating in Shane’s head over and over and over.

“Peace.”

Ryan’s still awake when Shane comes back that night. Sara is sitting on top of one of Ryan smaller bookshelves, watching him as per usual. He flies in through Ryan’s open window, carefully closing it behind him.

Sara notices him immediately, tapping at the space beside her. Shane nods and goes to sit beside her, effortlessly navigating through the dark.

Ryan has headphones in, working on something with the only light in the room being the one shining from his laptop. Though Shane’s been around long enough to know Ryan’s a huge night owl, it’s a bit new for him to be seeing the human stay up this late alone. He looks up and sure enough, the wall clock above Ryan shows 4AM in the morning. “What’s up with him?”

Sara smiles. She does that a lot, but this time it’s different. It’s a lot softer.

“He’s motivated.”

“Yeah…I can see that.” Shane deadpans. “But why?”

Sara’s quiet for a moment. “Unsolved.” She says simply. Shane doesn’t follow.

“What about it?”

“You know how that douchebag executive told Ryan he thought Unsolved was stupid?”

“Oh yeah. Then I made him bang his head against his own keyboard and he had no idea it even happened because I numbed his stupid little human brain.”

“Shane.”

He snickers. “Oops. Got off track. Continue.”

Sara shakes her head disapprovingly, though fond. “Anyway…the guy got fired this morning. You wouldn’t know since you’ve been too busy flying around all day, but that happened. Ryan got assigned to another exec and they loved the idea, so now…”

Shane looks to her with wide eyes.

“He can officially start Unsolved as a show!”

Sara’s smile grows wider. “Correct.”

Shane leans against wall, eyes back on Ryan, watching the human’s knee bouncing as he balances his laptop on the other. “No wonder he’s up so late.”

“He wants to get it out there as soon as possible. He and Brent already got a few episodes filmed out, so he’s planning on cramming the editing as much as he could handle.”

“I’m putting him to sleep if I have to, just so you know.” Shane warns playfully, “…but seriously, damn. That’s amazing. You must be really proud of him.”

“I am. I so am.” Sara’s practically glowing with happiness. “Aren’t you?”

Shane nods, smiling at Ryan, who’s eyes are beginning to droop. “Yeah. Absolutely.”

He finds himself staring a tad bit too long at the human, clearing his throat awkwardly as he senses Sara’s knowing gaze on him.

“You really do like him, don’t you?”

Shane shakes his head with a chuckle. “Sara we’ve been over this—“

“I’m serious Shane.” Sara insists, whispering, her knees up to her chin. “Why else would you be here?”

The lamp behind Ryan flickers briefly, the human too focused to even notice.

Shane stays quiet. Sara sighs.

“…remember when we first met? When you asked me what my job was, and I said it was to protect him at all costs?” Sara asks, dazed as if she’s recalling it herself. Shane nods. “Well, I just wanted to clarify that…Ryan’s not just my job, Shane. He’s my entire existence.” She says. “You might not get it since you’ve been on this Earth for like, a thousand years or whatever, but me? I existed when Ryan was born. I was made just for him;  To watch over him as he grew up to what he is now. I’m tied to him forever.”

Shane hums. It’d been a year since he’d followed these two around and it surprised him a little to only find out about this now. “You’re like a cross between…a robot and a nanny.. Or something.”

“You can say that.” Sara laughs quietly. “But you know, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I love Ryan. I’m biased of course, but I believe he’s no ordinary human. He’s special. He has this way of…making people happy without having to say anything, and I’m content with the fact that I’m always happy to see him happy too.

“I don’t feel programmed, or obligated to say these things...  Unlike other guardian angels who don’t actually like what they’ve been made to do, I actually want to protect Ryan. I want him to live a full and happy life, so much that I’m willing to protect him from—I don’t know, Death Himself?”

Shane’s looks to Sara in surprise, who nearly mirrors the look on his face after realizing what she’s just said.

She looked almost mortified at herself for a moment, but it slowly melts into a look of sincerity. She looks back to Ryan.

“I just realized how crazy that sounds.”

“No, it’s…I get it.” Shane doesn’t. “No I mean—that one thing about the guardian angels. They don’t like that they’re stuck to humans?”

“They think it’s unfair, yeah.” Sara says bitterly. “You might think Heaven’s perfect in every way, shape and form, but boy you couldn’t be more wrong.” She lets out a dry laugh. “Whether you’re up there, or down here, or even all the way down further—“ Shane stiffens, “—Everybody, angel or human or demon, has one subconscious, incredibly selfish goal, and that is to find their own purpose. It’s the one sin nobody can ever escape from; The one major flaw in Dad’s plan. If he really wanted things to go by his will, then we shouldn’t be able to choose.”

Sara brings up a hand in front of her. “And yet here we are. Other guardians? Most of them abandon their humans because they can. It’s what they choose to do, even if it gets them in trouble. And me?”

She smiles at Shane. “Here I am, because I chose Ryan.” Her eyes turn knowing, as she asks him “What about you, Shane? Why are you here?”

The demon is silenced.

“I…”

Shane stares at Ryan for a little while longer, before shaking his head and jumping off the bookshelf.

 “I’m gonna go get some fresh air again.”

Sara frowns. “Shane—“

“He’d be condemned Sara. We’d both be unhappy.” Shane says, trying to reason with her. “It’s out of my control, okay? I can’t just—I can’t even feel emotion! If I felt something then—then I would’ve sent myself back to Hell the moment I first saw him walk into Sallie’s fucking house!”

“You really think you’ve contained yourself from feeling after all these years?” Sara scoffs, grabbing at Shane’s claw when he tries to walk away. “That’s stupid Shane. I’d say it’s the exact opposite. If you really stopped yourself from feeling something in the first place, then maybe you never would’ve saved Ryan.” Sara gripped Shane’s claw tighter. “Tell me idiot, what are you really afraid of? Going back, or staying?”

Shane feels stubborn. He knows he’s being stubborn and he glares at Sara with a scowl. Sara doesn’t look fazed. “…I tried to be human before.” Sara says, shocking Shane out his gaze. “Ryan got lost in the woods, so I manifested into a physical appearance so I could be the ranger that took him home. It’s not that hard.”

How did she—?

“That’s different.” Shane insists. “We’re different. There’s a reason demons possess people Sara. Feeling is one thing, but being physical—“

“You’re a lot more powerful than you think, Shane.” Sara teleports, taking Shane with her so they’re now outside. “In fact, I think you do know this. You’re just too afraid to try it.”

“You—“

“Sallie wasn’t weak.” She cries out, frustration leaking out of her like water over a cracked dam. “You told me about this. How easy it had been for you to smite her. I knew there was a threat when we went into that house because I sensed it Shane. The place was flooding with demonic presence, and you know why I thought you were Sallie?”

She lets go of Shane’s claw to dab a finger at his chest.

“It was all coming from you.”

Shane steps back in disbelief. He’s not—he couldn’t be—

“I’ll be back.”

“Shane—“

The demon is gone in a flash and lands himself somewhere else in LA. Something in him is still back with Sara, trying to argue sense into her…

But he knew better than to continue fighting a losing battle.

Shane takes some time to calm himself down before looking at where he’s ended up. It happens to be an empty street somewhere not too far from Ryan’s neighborhood, but Shane figures Sara wouldn’t be able to guess he’s here. She only goes where Ryan goes.

Shane growls, his thoughts circling around everything he thought he’d repressed well enough. He’s mad, ironically because he can’t be mad at Sara. Being his first and only companion for over a year, it shouldn’t be a surprise that she’d drop his own bullshit in front of his face sooner or later. Ryan’s life is finally looking up, and he should be happy about that---and he is!  But he’s mad that he is.

He’s mad that Sara couldn’t be more right.

Shane’s not denying anything, alright? Human bodies are interesting.

Shane’s not the best judge, but he’d admit that God definitely had an eye for design when he created man.  Perhaps that's where the saying 'they were made in God's own image' came from, (though that thought is pretentious and probably untrue, in spite of their beliefs). He took up the art of drawing a hundred years back to try and capture the complexity of it himself. They’re not as beautiful as angels like Sara, or as hideously mortifying as himself, but nothing about them is mediocre either. All beings like Sara and him have is an existence. Humans are different—their bodies have so much more thought put into them, so much precision, and they have souls.

It’s really something he’s pondered over as he’d roamed over the lands of the living, how these lumps of flesh could hold the eternally condemned weight of a soul inside them. Not that he’d ever seen for himself. Possession’s never really been his cup of tea.

Though, throughout the years, he’s always wondered what it would be like to craft himself into one. Into a human.

And that’s the problem.

There’s a reason why most demons prefer taking up a vessel; To turn himself into a human at will and as swiftly would require an insane amount of hellfire, of power, and attempting to see if he does could cost him his freedom.

Channeling a shitload of demonic energy could reopen his gateway back to Hell, and he’s not on board with throwing the freedom he’s worked so hard for out the window just to become another big, fat, probably lanky lump of flesh, thank you very much. It’s taken him too long. To be one of the thousands of demons roaming around the land of life and the living—it’s not that simple. Hundreds of millions of demons back home are literally dying to take his place, and not once has the idea of risking his freedom for the sake of—what? Meeting a human?—ever crossed his mind. He was happy enough to just be here. How could it possibly be something he’d even consider? It shouldn’t be.

…until now, that is.

“Goddamn it, Sara.” Shane curses, coming upon a the entrance of a boutique, seeing his own reflection on the glass. “Fuck. Fuck.”

Shane eyes himself in the glass, looking over his monstrosity of a body. No humans are passing by on the sidewalks, but even if there were, they’d still be unable to see him because he’s not summoning enough power to do so. But if they did, that would be pretty hilarious.

Unless it’s Ryan.

Ryan would see him. See his true appearance and fear him like the little scaredy cat he is. It’s not as funny as Shane had thought it would be. He doesn’t want Ryan to be scared of him.

He already fears the shit out of most anything supernatural, and  Demons just happen to be at the very top of Ryan’s no-no list.  If a ghost can make him shit his pants, then Ryan would surely have a heart attack if he were to see him.

If Shane were human, Ryan wouldn’t…hate him.

Maybe he’d even see the spark in Shane as the latter had seen in him.

But he isn’t.

I’m not human.

Shane looks over himself one last time before turning around, raising his claws up to his chest. He can’t pretend to not know anymore.

He can no longer pretend that he’s barely encountered another demon on Earth because he’s “just that lucky”, or that he’s only able to manipulate minds because some demons can do that, which is not true. They’re not just some demons. He’s not just some demon.

Some demon wouldn’t just be attached to some human.

Shane clenches his claws to fists. The question is, is he a demon who could hold up a physical body?

A human body?

He pokes at the hellfire within him, doubting himself before finally, he gives in and lets it grow. Grow and grow until it’s flying in sparks all around him, and the very first thing it does before his body starts visibly changing…is form a heart he can feel slowly stitching itself right inside him.

Shane screams.

He can’t answer his own question just yet, but he guesses there’s only one way to find out.

“We should get a cat.”

Ryan’s mouth opens a little. “Where’d that come from?”

“Nowhere,” Shane casually shrugs, his double vision sharpened on the demon pacing around the salt circle. “Just a thought.”

“Um, yeah but we’re kind of in the middle of something right now?” Ryan nods at the Ouija board in between them, flustered as he glances to where TJ and Mark are shooting at the side. Outside of the salt circle. Shane grits his teeth. The demon isn’t even looking at them. “We already introduced ourselves…so…uh…is anybody out here?”

The demon’s eyes on Ryan couldn’t be any less hungrier. Shane wants to rip them out of his stupid goat skull.

“Just take it out of the video then.” He says dismissively, “So what do you think? Cats are cool. Snozzy.”

“Pretty sure we’ve got too much on our hands to raise a cat—“

“I don’t,” Shane lies. “I’ll feed it and everything.” Ryan’s unimpressed, the candles illuminating his face enough that it shows. “Oh come on, it won’t be too bad. Statistics shows they even reduce stress and anxiety so—“ the demon’s moved to stand behind Ryan, patiently waiting for the circle to break “—you know, problem solved?”

Ryan bites at his lip. “You know it’s really weird that you’re suggesting this now.”

“Pft, no. What’s weird is that I’ve been wanting to pee for a while now  and I can’t hold it in any longer.”

“Jesus Christ sir!” The demon behind Ryan cringes. “You should’ve said that sooner!”

“I still want a cat.” Shane says, standing up and gesturing at TJ and Mark to have a time out. He points down at the salt circle, looking at Ryan. The demon perks up in excitement, licking it’s lips. “Uh, do you mind?”

Ryan nods, “Sure.”

The moment Ryan breaks the circle, Shane snaps his fingers.

Ryan, TJ, Mark, and the demon stop moving, frozen still. Only the demon is conscious of this however, panic immediately overtaking it’s disgusting face.

Shane ignores it for the time being to look down at Ryan.

He kneels back down so the human’s directly facing him. Ryan’s face has grown still in the middle of him smudging the circle, so it’s muddled with concentration. Shane laughs a little, before bringing a thumb over to smooth out the frown between his temples, then proceeds to hold his face with both hands.

He’s really going to do this.

Shane could pretend that it hasn’t been on his mind until He decided to play dirty, but no. Shane knew it’d come to this sooner or later.

He’d just been too selfish to even consider it.

But now…

Shane tries to hold back the tears, but they come out anyway.

He brushes his thumbs over Ryan’s cheeks, then leans forward to kiss his forehead.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Ryan.” He whispers, before standing back up and wiping at his face.

Immediately, the demon screeches when Shane pounces on him, pinning him down with his claw like he’s done with the past twenty of them.

This demon is different though. It’s dumber, hence it immediately crumbles in fear at Shane’s advances.

Perfect.

“Listen. And I’ll spare you.”

Shane breaks the spell on the demon, and as expected, it doesn’t struggle.

“Tell Him that I want to talk.” He says, “He’ll know when to meet me.”

The demon nods promptly, eager to be set free. Shane lets go of it harshly, throwing it against the bridge floors. “Get lost.”

It’s wings immediately burst open as it flies off to meet Shane’s command. The latter goes back to where he stood in front of Ryan, and snaps his fingers again.

Ryan immediately looks confused, Shane smiling, “What was that? Did you say something?”

“Uh…” Ryan blinks rapidly, clearly unsure what to say. “I…um…why did you want a cat again?”

“Nothing.” Shane says. “Just a thought.”

Time couldn’t have passed that long, because the break of dawn welcomes him when he cracks his eyes open.

He groans tiredly as he sits up, only to come face to face with his reflection in the mirror once again.

What meets him first aren’t his own pitch black eyes, but brown ones. Human ones. But not only that—his eyes slowly start to rake over himself. He has white human skin, human hair. He brings his hands up.

Hands. He looks down, at the rest of his limbs.

He’s naked.

His face burns.

In fact, his entire body burns, and it’s unlike anything he’s ever experienced before. His skin has pink undertones—blood. He has red blood red inside him running through him pumped by his—he has a heart. He has organs, and he feels them working. He has bones and they crack slightly as he stands up. He has this and this and that and he’s—

Alive.

Shane’s alive.

Shane’s human.

His wings are gone, and so are his horns. The attributes that made him something to be feared have disappeared, but he knows he can conjure them up again.

He tries to summon his claws but immediately stops at the burning sensation. So he’d need a little more hellfire to get them physical too.

Shane looks up at himself again.

He wouldn’t need them anymore.

Steadily, he brings a hand up against the glass. It sticks slightly to his newfound skin, the blood in his palms freezing up. It’s cold. This is what cold is. The glass is cold.

If this is cold, then is what is warmth?

Is Ryan warm?

Ryan.

Ryan.

A wide smile spreads on Shane’s human face, and it doesn’t come with fangs.

Ryan can see him now, and he wouldn’t be afraid.

Shane breaks the lock on the boutique door and takes on a random set of clothes, sprinting out in the direction of Ryan’s house as soon as he’s done.

The roads are rough as they scrape under his bare feet, his first rush of adrenaline speeding him up as he runs and runs and runs.

He never knew there was so much feeling to simple actions. Was this what he’d really been missing?

The first time he’s ran was when he first got on Earth, searching for what people call home.

This time, he’s running towards Ryan.

He couldn’t wait to see the look on Sara’s face—

There’s a dead man lying beside Ryan’s front door.

Shane stops dead in his tracks. Ryan’s house is still a few hundred meters away, but he sees it. Unmistakable red splotches around a lifeless sack of flesh.

The blood flowing through his veins runs terribly cold, his face suddenly going numb.

Dread.

Shane takes a few steps, shell-shocked for a second, before his own sparks of hellfire burn his insides as he attempts to teleport.

It works. The next second he’s inside Ryan’s living room, and he’s screaming.

“SARA!” He calls desperately, running through all the rooms, trying to get the heart in his chest to calm the fuck down. But he doesn’t calm the fuck down, not until he finds an unconscious Ryan lying on the bathroom floor.

His heart beats rapidly. It would’ve been something he welcomed, but never in this context. God never. Please.

Shane comes to his side immediately, breath leaving him at the sight of Ryan’s chest softly going up and down. He kneels down, leaning over Ryan’s troubled face. The human’s hands are shaking tremendously.

He reaches out a tentative hand and for the first time, the way he’d never imagined from happening…he touches Ryan’s face.

Shane chokes out a sob

He is warm. He thinks, as water—tears?—flood down his face.

“Shane look out!”

At sound of Sara’s shrill scream Shane turns around to find the dead man from outside standing behind him with a spear already in the air.

But he’s not aiming for Shane.

“SHANE!”

Shane pushes Ryan out of the way just in time to dodge the spear that sinks through the tile floors. The sound of it shattering pulses through Shane’s ears as he holds Ryan close to him, looking up at the man before him in confusion and fury.

Then sees her. Sara’s glowing, frozen in the background with her sword in mid-air. She’s red in the face, tear-streaked expression mirroring Shane’s just moments before. “Shane, don’t let Him have Ryan! SHANE!”

Shane doesn’t understand. “Who—what the fuck is this Sara?!”

It answers his question, but not through words.

Shane watches as the man’s neutral expression mutates into a blank slate, arms and legs extending with the bloodied shirt and jeans joining to become a pitch black robe that covers the man—thing’s now elongated body. A hood crawls over it’s faceless head, looming over Shane and Ryan. The demon scowls, now fully recognizing the creature before him.

Since the last time he’s seen Him drop by in Hell, the Angel of Death never looked more familiar.

And it’s clear who he’s here for.

“You son of a bitch…” Shane spits with venom. “You son of a bitch!”

He knew Death. Any demon would know him. They envied him. A prick who didn’t play by the rules of time, rather finding enjoyment in what he does best.

Shane watches Him face Sara, an outstretched mouth forming on it’s blank face.

“A demon…with your human?”

Sara just scowls at him. “Any demon would be better than you—!”

“You’ve turned over, graceless angel.” The bastard clicks his non-existent tongue. “Have to set you straight.”

“There’s no reason for Ryan to die now you sick fuck!” Sara cries out, which goes to show just how mad she is. “You can’t just take him when he’s finally happy with his life like the cruel bastard you a—!“

“His time.” His voice is deep, raspy. Lifeless. “Shameless. You’ve forgotten your place, lowly guardian.” Sara’s glowing even harder now, sobbing uncontrollably. “When I come there are no more exceptions. You’ve breached your purpose. Your human’s condemnation could only be your fault.”

Shane’s heart stops.

Ryan…is condemned?

“Please don’t do this—!”

“I would take care of you now…” Death says, ignoring Sara and turning back to Shane, his mouth moving akin to that of a Tim Burton stop motion film. “…but the human would have to go first.”

Shane’s burning his insides at the amount of hellfire he’s trying to muster, trying to get his form back so he can deal with this fucker, but it’s just not working. If he tries any harder, he’s going to send himself back to hell or worse, die.

Still, Shane ignores the pain to growl up at the angel, holding Ryan tighter.

“Don’t. Fucking. Touch him.”

Death smiles.

“And who would stop me?”

He raises his spear in the air, almost too fast for Shane to follow, but he sees what happens next.

Sara, breaking whatever barrier’s holding her just in time.

Sara, wings spread out on her back so wide that it covers Shane and Ryan.

Sara, hurling, as the spear strikes straight through her stomach.

Shane couldn’t unsee it.

Whatever’s he’s lit up inside him dies immediately.

“…Sara?”

Sara sputters out blue blood, the same dripping off of the spear and flowing down to stain her robes.

“Sara…no. Please—“

“Shane.” She breathes out, a pained smile on her face. “Protect him, alright?”

Her hand shoots out to grip at Shane’s head.

The room turns to nothing but white.

Day 1

Sometimes, Shane wondered how differently it would’ve been if he met Ryan as a human.

After Sara had instilled her holy energy in him, he’d been able to turn to a demon in physicality with ease. Hellfire wasn’t as limited anymore, and even then, he still would’ve charged at that motherfucker with what hellfire he had left. Death had gotten off with Shane’s scratch through his stupid blank face, and had been hiding from him since, sending angels(and now demons) in disguise as humans after Shane and Ryan in His cowardice.

It was only reasonable that he come clean with who he really was, even if he kept everything else from the human. He hadn’t lied when he told Ryan it would’ve been too difficult to hide himself from the very person he’s protecting, but he couldn’t not lie about why he was protecting him either. Ryan can’t know he’s condemned, that Death himself is after him. Shane wants him protected, not scared for his life.

So he made it seem natural, like humans were after Ryan, and not the highest grossing murderer that Heaven has to offer. Who’d stay sane knowing their guardian’s actually fighting off Death himself, right? Ryan was barely able to stay sane knowing his guardian’s a demon. Shane chuckles at the memory.

But even so, he can’t help but imagine what it would’ve been like if he was actually human. Maybe things wouldn’t have been so complicated. Nobody would be in danger. They’d live life as far as human lives could go and see where the afterlife takes them. A clueless, naïve, non-demon Shane would think it doesn’t matter because he wouldn’t know how fucked up the afterlife actually is. A human Shane wouldn’t care about Death, or angels, or God. He’d probably only see Ryan, if he’d met him.

But Shane’s not human.

He could try and convince himself, warp up his own mind of hundreds of thousands’ of memories of Hell and history, but he could never run from what he truly is.

…Shane had been human once.

When sinners come to Hell, their sins are punished and extracted out of them. That’s how Lucifer made demons. He took God’s creation out of spite, and crafted them into his own little works of atrocity in his own, sickening way. No doubt Shane was made the same. He couldn’t even remember.

But whoever he’d been in the past had been named Shane.

Whoever Shane had been in the past…had condemned himself.

And because of who Shane is now, he’s given Ryan the same fate.

How could he just let that happen? Ryan. Let, beautiful, brave, kind and faithful Ryan Bergara be something as hideous as….Shane?

He could never accept that. Ryan deserves better than to be something like him. Ryan deserves better than Heaven.

Shane had thought being beside him was enough, but that was never true.

Shane is a demon, and demons are selfish.

It’s time to change that now, by doing something that he should’ve done a long, long time ago, when he was blinded by anger and resentment.

Death doesn’t come as a human this time. He appears as He truly looks, the same blank face, the same spear, staring at Shane from where he’s sitting on Ryan’s front yard.

“We meet again.”

Shane stands up, indifferent. He thought he’d be angrier as he nods. “We do.”

“…you’re not in a fighting mood.” Death observes out of how Shane isn’t in his demon form. Curious, He comes closer. “Why do you seek me?”

Shane keeps a firm gaze on Death’s face, as there are no eyes to look at. He breathes, thinking of Ryan inside the house behind him, patiently waiting so they could finally start binging Umbrella Academy on Netflix like they’d been planning to for weeks. Or so Ryan thought.

Shane planned differently. No date more fitting than his human’s birthday to give him one last gift.

“If you remove Ryan’s soul of condemnation and let him have his life back, I’ll go back to Hell.”

He’s met with silence. A long, unsettling, but firm silence.

For the first time, Death spoke with uncertainty. “For…a human?”

Shane nods. “For Ryan.”

“How bold of you.”

The demon shrugs, hands shoved in the pocket of his jeans. “One less demon in the Almighty’s playing ground. What more could you ask for?”

Death takes a while to respond.

“…pity. I was hoping you’d take care of the rest of them for me.”

“Too bad. But then you’d be left with me to deal with.”

“…fair.”

Shane looks down. “Just…don’t let Ryan forget me. Even for just a while.”

Death scoffed. “Truly a demon. Can’t afford to be selfless even when you’re saving his life?”

Shane stays quiet, waiting for an answer.

“…very well. 60 days then, and Earth will forget that you ever existed.” Death pauses. “And if you come back…know that whatever happens next is out of my control.”

“I understand.”

“The deal will be off.”

“I understand.”

The Angel comes closer again, so that He’s in front of Shane now. “Do you wish to say goodbye?”

“…not exactly.”

Without explanation, Death seems to get it, as His tall holy form morphs down into a man. The same appearance He’d used to lure Shane in that day.

In His hand is a gun, and Shane takes it.

Live long and happy, Ryan.

Shane lets one last tear escape his warm brown eyes, before he rolls them back to black.

I love you.

He pulls the trigger.