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Ryan pulls back for a wide angle shot and adjusts the focus of his camera on Shane’s goofy mug. He puts on his best Spooky Voice for the narration.
“Legend has it, many, many, many years ago, an unfortunate soul placed their hand into the mouth of the gargouille, guardian of the River Seine. And then—” his shaky zoom underscores the revelation “—their hand was bitten off.”
Shane widens his eyes and waggles his eyebrows. “Oh, oooh, I love stuff like this! What’s your source, Ryan? Did you read that in a dusty old tome?”
Ryan resists the impulse to shrug, concentrating on holding the camera steady. He communicates himself with a twist of the lips instead. “Yeah, that’s right. I pored over an old fourteenth-century book, just to dig up that tidbit of history, big boy.”
A hint of a blush creeps into Shane’s cheeks at the pet name. Point to Ryan Bergara.
His tall blond friend marshals himself and half-heartedly tries to mount a protest. “I was just sayin’—”
He breaks off at a bark of laughter from Ryan.
“You were?” Ryan prompts, but it’s too late for Shane to form words. His shoulders round, his hand comes up to his face, and immediately he’s hiding a breathless wheeze of laughter from Ryan’s viewfinder.
“Come on!” Ryan teases him. “This is Watcher Entertainment, not Wikipedia.” He settles on the angle, tightens up the frame and then nods at Shane. “So get on with the entertainment.”
“Got it. Okay, so here I go! You ready?”
Shane wiggles his fingers showily, like a magician, but the kind without a rabbit to pull out of his hat. He places his entire hand between the jagged stone teeth of the gargoyle. No hesitation—but Ryan knows Shane well enough by now to never expect the slightest sign of uncertainty or even so much as a doubtful pause from his ever-skeptical colleague. Not when it comes to stupid stunts like this—tempting fate on-camera in pursuit of filming some sweet video content.
Ryan pans over the carved-rock monstrosity. It’s a magnificent statue, all frightening expression and dragon scales and bat wings arched up high as if in mid-flight. It would be a terrifying sight to encounter on a dark and stormy night.
As it is—on a warm afternoon on what feels like a vacation in France, even though it’s technically the tail end of a work trip—Ryan can feel his uneasy awe giving way to an appreciation, of sorts, of its efforts to frighten. Like the little stone guy’s doin’ his best, and Ryan would be remiss to not give the attempt its due.
“Tell me more about it, Ryan. The history, I mean,” Shane prompts, simultaneously betraying both his awareness that there’s not much action for the camera to document and his willingness to vamp for the sake of a Watcher video.
Ryan grins, his usual affection for Shane blooming in his chest. He clears his throat and narrates, both for the benefit of the camera and for Shane.
“There’s a theory that there once were more of these gargoyles, all of them placed near the Seine, and that their purpose was to guard the river on behalf of their patron goddess, who went by the name of Sequana. Not much is known about her, as her cult had passed into the mists of history long before Rome took over rule of France. But they’re mischievous little sentinels by reputation.”
“Oh?” Shane prompts again. A sudden shaft of sunlight lights up the garden, making Shane squint. “Got any details about them to share?”
“Well, I’ll admit: there wasn’t a lot of research available in the English language for this one. And my fourteenth-century French isn’t that good, so.” He hazards a shrug from behind the camera, using the opportunity of the movement to pull in tight to Shane’s hand, still resting between the gargoyle’s sharp-toothed jaws.
Shane mugs a wide-eyed expression of interest once he notices that Ryan’s refocused the camera lens on his face. “Well, Ryan, I know you to be a thorough researcher. Tell me what you did find.”
“Something like,” Ryan concentrates on recalling the shape of the words on the scanned manuscript he remembers peering at on his computer screen. “It read something like, ‘Vous—revendiquez—ah, um, te dit?
He manages, barely, not to throw up his hands in frustration at his pitiful French pronunciation, instead keeping the camera steady in both hands.
“We didn’t get a professional translation,” Ryan says out loud. Within his own mind, he silently adds, because we didn’t have the budget for it.
“Anyways, the short version is that this gargoyle is stood here as part of a ‘claim’ if I understood the French word. And I figure, they're supposed to be an intermediary, right? Like, a representative for Sequana. But how the stories about hand-chewing play into that, nobody's actually sure. I was thinking: maybe the book was talking about a possession? But there’s nothing in the records about any possessions, actually,” he muses out loud.
Shane is just looking at him, and listening. And it shouldn’t give Ryan a fluttering heat inside his chest, but it kind of does. He shakes his head to refocus on the task at hand.
“Listen, old outdated French is hard to understand. Je ne sais pas,” Ryan finally says.
“Ah, of course, mon frère.”
Shane winks as if Ryan had just said something clever, instead of, simply, “I don’t know.”
They lapse into silence, which always tests Ryan's patience, but never Shane's. Shane makes a goofy face for the camera, then kicks out his feet side-to-side in a fair imitation of a soft-shoe boogie. All the while, he doesn’t remove his hand from the statue’s fearsome maw.
Shane tilts his head to the side and regards the statue, and then, of course, Shane begins to taunt it.
“You gonna claim me, gargoyle friend? Take my whole hand? Maybe even possess me? Do it! Do it, I tell you!”
Ryan tries to stifle a chuckle at Shane’s outsized conjurations. A laugh sneaks out anyway. Shane turns shining eyes Ryan's way, clearly encouraged, and so he ups the ante.
“Come on! I haven’t got all day! And my hand is—probably delicious! Take a bite! Not even a little nibble? Come on!”
Ryan pulls back the camera angle to get the coverage, then zooms closer on Shane.
As nothing continues to happen, Shane’s antics fade away. In their place appears Shane’s frank appreciation of their surroundings. After all, it’s not every day the opportunity to bask in the green wisteria-lined lushness of a French garden—excuse, jardín—presents itself.
Still, Ryan holds his breath, feeling the foreboding in the air, sure that those granite teeth will snap themselves over Shane’s wrist. Shane’s attention wanders; he looks up at the sky, and then gazes at the orderly rows of box hedges.
In the distance, dark rainclouds threaten. Ryan twists the camera’s focus for a wide landscape shot and pushes down the small spark of unease that winds its way up his chest with the first distant rumbles of thunder. With some luck, he can achieve a sweeping shot of the menacingly dark clouds that’ll look pretty good overlaid with spine-chilling music in the edit.
Ryan swallows, hard. The uneasiness inside him finds purchase and burns like a lightning-lit brushfire inside his chest.
Then, Shane just turns his head, just to look at Ryan. His eyes contain a spark, almost like a reflection of—
The jagged dash of lightning hurls itself across the sky above, spinning off spiky fingers of electricity as it goes. Its accompanying grumble of thunder shakes the ground beneath their feet a half-breath later.
Suddenly, Shane hops backwards from the gargoyle and yells, bending over and clutching his arm to his chest.
“Shane? Shane!”
Ryan nearly drops the camera in his haste to scramble to Shane’s side. The adrenaline hits, making his hands shake when he grasps Shane’s shoulder. Ryan feels the sharp angles of Shane underneath the wrinkles of his jacket.
Shane straightens and holds both his hands out, palms up. Both of them still accounted for. Perfectly fine.
“Just kidding! Kidding!”
Now it’s Ryan’s turn to double over, although he wheezes in relief.
Immediate regret colors Shane’s voice. “Oh, gosh. I’m sorry, Ryan.” He pats Ryan’s shoulder awkwardly, a weak antidote to the aftereffects of fear clenching at Ryan’s chest.
“You jackass,” is all Ryan can pant out. “I should chuck you headfirst into the river for that one.”
“You should, Bergooze. If you decide to do it, I gotta let you know: it was still worth it.”
Shane’s face crinkles up into a grin. Ryan’s resistance crumbles all over again, dissolving into laughter. He’ll push Shane into a river some other time.
A breeze stirs up and a few fat raindrops plop onto Ryan’s head. Shane pushes his hair out of his eyes, then they both squint upwards into the now-gloomy sky.
“I think that’s a wrap on filming,” Ryan says. “We’ve got a red-eye flight to catch back home, anyways.” He clicks the lens cover into place on the camera and busies himself packing it up safely into its padded bag.
“Hey! I didn’t get to bully you into putting your hand in, too!” Shane protests over the rising wind.
They jog to stand under the eaves of an outbuilding. Shane’s newly-dyed blond hair is darkening where the raindrops have penetrated. Damp strands are sticking to his temples and it’s making him look disheveled and it’s—adorable, actually.
Ryan yanks his attention away from Shane to check his watch, performing a heavy sigh for Shane’s benefit. “We have an international flight to catch in a couple of hours. You really want to play chicken with it?”
“You’re just covering for the fact that you’re afraid. C’mon, dipshit, are you scared? Of a little old grumpy statue?" Shane wiggles his fingers in a pseudo-spooky gesture of mockery.
Ryan grins and pointedly ignores the bait. This time. “I am. Run out and grab that tripod for me, will you?”
Shane's shoulders slump, visibly acknowledging the end of the bit for Ryan’s benefit. He shakes an impotent fist at the sky and then obediently jogs out into the spitting rain.
When he turns to run back under the roof with Ryan, he holds aloft the rescued tripod up victoriously. Ryan laughs at the picture he makes, soaked through and pumping those long legs to power his loose scramble.
Shane sets down the equipment and shakes his wet hair like a dog, spraying Ryan with rainwater. And laughs with Ryan, too.
“Hey, Ryan, I wanted to make sure I said: thank you,” Shane says, his voice low. Ryan can just barely hear him above the patter of soft rain on the glass.
They’re riding together in the backseat of the transport van to the airport, knees and shoulders bumping, their pile of camera equipment taking up all the rest of the space. The rain appears to be hunkering down to stay, turning the whole world a watery shade of gray-blue.
“You didn’t have to build in time to go touristing about on a Watcher filming trip, just you and me, but you did.” Shane says. “Although I didn’t miss that there were no ghosts to speak of at old Château-Gaillard yesterday.”
“Gotta keep my cohost happy,” Ryan responds. Because he couldn’t just bring Shane across an ocean and not indulge him in his historical absorptions.
“And hey! Fuck you, man,” Ryan rejoins, to which he’s rewarded with a quick grin and the deep smile lines he’s come to know so well on Shane’s face.
“There was plenty of ghost evidence! And we’re bringing it all home with us,” he continues, patting a camera bag confidently. After all, he can’t let Shane get complacent.
He frowns and rolls his shoulders, to lessen the ache in his lower back from two straight days spent on his feet in a foreign country. He knew cramming in a historical hike through the dusty ruins of a fortress on the morning after an all-night shoot would do him in, but he really underestimated how exhausted he would be.
Being scared shitless by various and sundry French ghosts while Shane poked fun at him the whole time really hadn’t helped matters, either.
“Christ, I’m getting old and achy. This what being in your thirties is like?”
“Oh, buddy. It's worse,” Shane confirms. Then the huff of laughter from Shane ruffles Ryan’s still-damp hair.
It’s easy, after spending fourteen hours flying the not-so-friendly skies, chasing the sunset through nine timezones, dozing off and then half-waking when knees or elbows bump together between their airplane seats, for Ryan to mumble an offer to share a ride home.
Then it’s easy, when they reach Ryan’s apartment first, right when rush-hour afternoon traffic is hitting, for Ryan to look over at a sleep-soft, exhausted-looking Shane and offer that he could stay over. If he wants.
Shane does want, as it turns out, and so they drop their suitcases on the floor and Shane throws himself facedown on Ryan’s bed, mumbling into the pillow, “Okay if I sleep right here, bud? Great, thanks.”
“No shoes on the bed,” Ryan squeaks. He can’t believe Shane sometimes.
Shane remains facedown, throws a thumbs-up in Ryan’s general direction, and kicks his sneakers off, letting them thump onto the carpet.
Ryan rolls his eyes and fights his own travel fatigue long enough to take a hurried shower and change into a clean shirt and soft basketball shorts, because airports are gross and only an irredeemable rapscallion like Shane could just fall asleep still in the wrinkled clothes he wore through multiple airports.
Ryan’s pretty sure Shane didn’t even take out his contacts before conking out. Heathen.
Ryan stands there, in his own bedroom, in the fading afternoon light, puts his hands on his hips and just looks at Shane, fast asleep in his bed. He shakes his head at Shane’s prone figure.
Shane breathes out a soft snore, oblivious to Ryan’s fond disapproval.
Ryan tugs at the sheets underneath Shane’s body. With a snuffle and a snort, Shane rolls easily in his sleep, letting Ryan lay the covers over Shane, pulling them up to his broad shoulders, and then Ryan slides into bed next to him, even as Shane clutches a pillow and rolls onto his side and curls one long leg up.
Ryan looks at Shane’s peacefully still-sleeping face and then smiles to himself as a wave of affection rolls over him. They were stuck together for days on end during the France trip, sure, and he should be sick of his big pal, but Ryan isn’t quite ready to part ways yet.
It feels—homey, like this. He could get used to it. Maybe he should talk Shane into a ghoulboys’ trip, one without a camera crew, just to get to enjoy the pleasure of his company.
Sure, Shane’s a goon, a real strange guy, but he’s Ryan’s goon. If Shane’s happy to hang around, wasting all his time with Ryan, Ryan’s happy to have him.
He tugs the covers up as high as they can go.
“Goodnight, big guy.”
He closes his eyes.
He lets Shane’s soft breathing lull him to sleep.
Ryan wakes, but he declines to open his eyes just yet. He’s just too comfortable to make himself get out of bed while still wrapped up in soft, warm sheets. He doesn’t remember his own sheets being this nice. Maybe he should travel more often. Enduring the privations of modern travel is clearly putting a nice, silvered edge on his appreciation for the comforts of home.
He snuggles down into the warmth and buries his face in the pillow and the sheets drape gently around his shoulder. He curls his fingers into their lush velvet softness.
He dozes for a while, and then the blankets over him—kind of move by themselves? Gently, like the undulations of the tropical-warm water in the exotic fish tank his dad keeps at his dentistry office.
That’s a weird simile. He must still be dreaming.
He turns over in bed and opens his eyes to see Shane’s sleeping face.
Yup, he must still be dreaming.
No, wait—the hamster-in-a-wheel that is his brain kicks into action, finally. Shane stayed over. Ryan had forgotten that.
Just to double-check that he really isn’t asleep, Ryan crosses his arms, one overtop the other, and pinches himself.
“Ouch,” he whispers out loud.
Yup, awake.
Which is why it’s such a shock when Ryan blinks once, twice, and slowly registers that the snuggly warmth he’s tucked into is emanating from the dragon wing of a giant monster, and said wing is clinging to him, over his shoulder and trailing—wrapping, really—along his back, and oh god, maybe it’s got Shane, too, and Ryan screams and flails his arms and kicks his legs like the axeman of New Orleans has come to call.
Shane snorts and startles, his eyes snapping open in alarm at the precise second that Shane also falls off the edge of the bed—or maybe Ryan knocks him off in his flurry of screaming and kicking; Ryan can’t be held accountable for his actions when he’s terrified, okay.
A quiet oof sound emanates from Shane’s direction, and then the room is quiet. Too quiet.
The edge of a dragon wing is visible rising up from the floor, just peeking over the edge of the bed. A stone-drop of dread lands in Ryan’s stomach. Maybe—no, not possible.
Ryan gropes around for his glasses on the nightstand.
All the hair stands up on Ryan’s arms. It’s because the air is different now in Ryan’s bedroom. It's more … swoopy.
“You okay, buddy?” Ryan asks as he clambers to the edge of the bed to hang over it and peer down at Shane.
A new wave of shock freezes Ryan in place as Shane is peeling his lanky body up off of Ryan’s bedroom floor.
Because Shane is propping himself up on his elbows and then wincing and reaching a hand to his shoulder blade.
Because extending out and up and up from his tall pal’s broad back is a pair of huge, spectacular wings.
“Uh,” Shane blinks, and, correction, actually only one wing extends up and out from Shane’s back. The other wing looks painfully pinned between Shane’s ass and the floor, judging by the way Shane winces and pushes himself up on both hands to let the wing fall free.
In the process, the wing not trapped flaps wildly and it knocks every one of Ryan’s snapbacks off his bureau at the other side of the room. Ryan’s eyes widen; they really are huge wings.
Shane reaches out an arm as if to try to grab the errant wing and rein it in, but it only wavers outside of his grasp, and Ryan’s suitcase is the next to tip over as the wingtip thrashes in response.
“Sorry,” Shane says, sucking a breath through his teeth. He draws both his hands into fists and curls them against his chest, making himself small.
Okay, so the soft warm sheets wrapping up Ryan as he half-dozed were actually wings, which are a thing Shane has, now, and—
”Holy shit,” he points towards Shane, “you were cuddling me. You were cuddling me with your wings, weren’t you?”
Shane just blinks again. “I, uh, I guess? I guess they like you.”
“Sure, big guy. Okay. That tracks.”
Ryan chuckles. He can’t help it, because this scene is ridiculous: Shane crumpled on the floor of his bedroom, sporting magnificent dragon wings and a stunned expression. Ryan, his glasses askew and a heavy weight in his chest made up of belated regret for reacting in screeching fear to his bewinged pal’s sleeping embrace.
Thankfully, Shane’s eyes soften and he wheezily laughs.
Ryan offers a hand down to Shane. Shane interlaces his fingers between Ryan's tightly and hauls himself up to stand. Almost immediately, both wings, as if they have a mind of their own, take the opportunity to stretch out as far as they can go.
Unfortunately, Ryan’s bedroom is not that big, and they impact the opposing walls of Ryan’s bedroom, making a sound like the cracking of knuckles. Shane yelps and crawls onto Ryan’s bed, on top of the covers, all elbows and knees and swoops of errant wings.
“Are you hurt?” Ryan asks. He reaches for Shane, landing solicitous fingers on his shoulder and squeezing gently.
“Yeah, I—they—I guess it’s just a bruise or two. It’ll be fine.”
“Fine? Shane, you have wings. What the actual fuck is going on right now?”
“Yeah, I gathered that.” His voice rises in a high note of irritation. “I just—uh, am figuring out how to fold them in right now. Appears to be a whole—process.”
Instead of folding, the edges of his wings flit uselessly, like a moth trapped in a drinking glass. The breeze from them ruffles Ryan’s hair. Shane bites his lip and grimaces.
“Can I—can I touch them? Maybe I can help, somehow?”
Shane nods. He sits up carefully, crossing his legs. One wing tilts and settles down gently, curling in to his side, over his left elbow. The right wing wobbles.
Ryan leans over, way over Shane’s shoulder. His fingers touch the top of the wing, and a hush falls as the wing stops flapping.
Shane holds his breath.
Now that Ryan has time to look at Shane, really look at him, he can see that they’re—they’re—
“Bat wings,” Ryan says out loud, in astonishment. He wraps his hand around the top of the lightly furred, doe-brown wing, gentling it. It stills underneath his hand.
Shane lets his breath all out in a puff of air. “Yeah,” is all he says, but their eyes meet. Shane gives him an encouraging nod.
Ryan’s fascinated. He moves slowly, mindful of being cautious. He rises up onto his knees and then stands on the mattress, stepping further away from Shane’s side, to slide his hand along and out to the articulated part of the wing. The wing bends and wraps itself around Ryan’s arm, in a gesture Ryan imagines is almost—affectionate.
It’s soft and warm, like touching Shane’s skin. As if Ryan’s holding his hand. Ryan traces around and in between the delicate bones covered by soft flesh. Shane’s flesh. They feel much like the tendons and knuckles in a hand.
When Ryan looks back, over his shoulder, Shane’s eyes are closed.
Ryan gentles the wing, returning back from standing to kneeling at Shane’s side, until the errant wing folds neatly at Shane’s back.
“Oh, no, your shirt.” Ryan puts his finger into one of the long vertical tears the wings must have made in the back of Shane’s t-shirt when they—made their appearance in whatever manner they did.
“Augh. Don’t—don’t poke me.” Shane twitches and his shoulders hunch. The wings respond, arching upwards but not far enough to crack against solid objects this time.
Ryan plops down on the bed in front of Shane.
Shane tugs on the fabric of his collar and then rubs his face. “Fuck. I liked this shirt, too.”
He throws his hands up, and the wings, as if in involuntary response, swoop wildly up and out again.
“Oops.”
When he gets them more-or-less under control again, he sighs.
“So,” Ryan says, trying not to stare at Shane’s wings, but also very much staring at Shane’s wings. He doesn’t want to discomfit Shane, but how the hell can he not look, they’re wings, for God’s sake.
“Yeah,” Shane says. He holds himself very still. “So I guess that’s—new.”
“That’s an understatement.” Ryan watches him carefully maneuver himself off the bed and then walk to his suitcase tossed on the bedroom floor. His usual loping stride is muted. He rubs his face and Ryan can just barely make out his muffled words.
“I’m gonna—think I could use a shower. And maybe some coffee.”
“Sure, no problem. I’ll get the coffee maker started. You, uh—feel free to knock over everything in my bathroom.”
The affectionate jostling hits its target; Shane hides a smile when he picks his clothes out of his bag. Then he carefully sidesteps his way into the bathroom, the wings unfolding and flapping about as he moves.
There’s a bunch of thumping and then a crash and he can hear Shane’s voice go, Fuck! a couple of times.
He’s measuring out the coffee grounds when he hears the shower turn on, so he figures all’s as well as it’s going to be. Shane’s height has got to be a tight fit underneath the showerhead in Ryan’s bathroom, and now, with an impressive wingspan, he’s wider, too. Ryan doesn’t know how he’s making it work in there, but until Shane requests help or the Jaws theme of imminent danger begins playing, Ryan’s not imposing himself.
He finds a red bell pepper and some cheese and eggs and starts throwing together some omelets. The shower shuts off and Shane emerges, his hair damp and wearing just his chinos.
Ryan carefully keeps his eyes away from the happy trail tracing its way along Shane’s bare stomach. He dishes up the food, concentrating on remembering to find forks and knives in the cluttered drawer and only letting himself have no more than a glimpse of Shane’s bare shoulders.
Shane mumbles a thanks and digs in, curling around his mug of coffee.
Ryan sneaks a look at him. He already likes to look at Shane, a little more than he wants to let on, but with the wings, he’s magnetic. They look just as velvety-soft as they felt underneath Ryan’s fingertips. And he couldn’t have extended them the whole way out yet, being limited by the walls of Ryan’s apartment, but Ryan figures they must be at least twenty, thirty feet across. And—oh.
“Are you okay?” Ryan’s brow furrows. One of Shane’s wings flops awkwardly off his side. Ryan reaches again, without waiting for a say-so, and unfurls it. They really are lovely wings, almost golden-haloed in the sunshine.
“You are hurt,” Ryan says, spotting the purpling bruise, low on the wing.
Shane winces and the wing snatches itself out of his hand.
“I guess from when I fell—hah, off your bed,” Shane laughs ruefully. He passes his hand through his hair. Takes another sip of coffee. “What a day this is.”
Ryan retreats back to his own chair and addresses his own breakfast. Eventually, as it always does, the silence becomes too much.
“So I wonder what demon or ghost you pissed off to end up with these,” Ryan says with his mouth full of omelet. “I was with you the whole time, and I don’t remember you saying anything too atrocious.”
Shane half-shrugs and the wings flutter with the movement. “Demons aren’t real, Ryan. Nor ghosts.”
Ryan glares at him.
Shane rolls his eyes and makes a face in response. An almost—grotesque expression.
Ryan snaps his fingers and points. Of course. “The gargoyle!”
“What.”
“You taunted it, and it didn’t snap your hand off, but it did have its revenge!”
“The one in that little garden by the Seine? What an accusation! That gargoyle’s done nothing!” Shane’s sleepy eyes widen. He looks almost offended at the accusation.
“Are you—unbelievable. Are you defending it?”
Shane glances around the room. “So sue a man for choosing to defend a blameless statue. It can’t even do anything, Ryan. They’re just stories.”
At Ryan’s aggrieved huff, Shane finishes his breakfast and sits back, accidentally knocking his wings on the back of his chair and letting out a small noise. He leans forward, crosses a leg over his knee, and puts his chin in his hands.
He really does look a little bit comical, his tall lanky friend, already all awkward limbs and unsure gestures, now with an additional two recalcitrant limbs to manage. Ryan resolves he won’t laugh at him while he’s giving him the third degree. He swears.
Okay, so maybe he giggles a little bit.
Shane presses his lips together, resisting, but then Ryan chokes on a forkful of egg though his own laughter and that sets off a pealing laugh from Shane.
He gestures to his whole, entire self. “So, what, I didn’t state my claims to the French gargoyle and, y’know. Et voila, as the French say. Ryan.”
His lopsided wing dangles to his side, punctuating Shane’s outrage.
“I’m just proposing theories, here, bat-boy.”
“Okay.” Shane heaves himself upward. “Thanks for the hospitality, bro, I gotta—I gotta get home now and cogitate. Maybe sleep some more. Can you sleep off a bad case of the wings, you think?” He looks thoughtful for a moment.
“Maybe?” Ryan offers.
Shane disappears into the bedroom. Ryan makes the turn onto the threshold in time to see Shane dropping a beige buttondown shirt overtop of the entire t-shirt-and-wings situation. It doesn’t look bad—his shirt bunches up over his back in such a way that anybody who looked twice would think Shane was just wearing a backpack underneath his outer layer of clothes. Possession of a pair of gigantic wings wouldn’t be a stranger’s first suspicion. Or second or third.
“I’ll get out of your way, then,” Shane starts to say, but then Ryan’s big yap starts yapping, and he hears it say, “Nah, man, I’ll drop you off home,” and then Ryan is grasping the steering wheel tightly enough to make his knuckles whiten because what do you even say when your tall pal’s suddenly wingified and it’s probably your fault for trying to steal a little more time with him in an enchanted French garden via the gambit of daring him into challenging Fate via a scary-looking toothy sculpture.
But then he looks over at Shane, who hasn’t breathed a word of blame Ryan’s way at all. The sunshine lights up the strands of his hair and he hunches his shoulders forward under the seat belt, to allow for the bulk of his wings.
It occurs to Ryan that he looks a bit like an undercover angel, grudgingly allowing himself to be transported by car instead of his wings, and too grumpy to play his little harp. The thought makes Ryan suppress a giggle.
“What?” Shane asks. He scratches his fingers over the scruff on his chin. “Something on my face?”
“No,” Ryan says, realizing he’s been dumbly grinning at Shane for far too long, after he's pulled the car to a stop at the curb near Shane’s apartment.
He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Shane. We’ll figure this out. I promise.”
Shane just blinks at him. “Nothing to apologize for, little fella. These things happen.” He looks out through the windshield. He hasn’t made a move to open the car door yet, and Ryan’s happy with that. Content to let the moment linger between them.
He huffs a breath. “They really don’t, Shane.”
Shane’s eyebrow traces a high arch. “Things have followed you home before. Remember the time you didn’t sleep until you’d been blessed?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Maybe this is the same. Maybe—” the corners of Shane’s lips turn up, ever so slightly. “Maybe I can go to sleep, and Annabelle, who, as you know, lives in my rib cage now, will take care of it and I’ll wake up good as new tomorrow.”
“All right,” Ryan says. “I know what you’re doing. Don’t feel like you have to kid me out of worrying about you.”
Caught. Shane pats his arm and grins. “I would never,” he lies. “See ya, buddy.”
Ryan drives home, thinking about a rainy afternoon in a French jardín and the look in Shane’s eyes, just before the lightning flashed.
Ryan stops short a couple of steps inside the Watcher office.
Shane visibly brightens. “Hey, buddy!”
Well, then.
When it comes to Shane, Ryan feels pretty comfortable predicting what Shane will do. After all, he’d be the first to say he knows him best.
He thought Shane would graduate from his usual two layers of shirts to three or four. Be his usual, quiet self and hide his new wings as best he could. Ryan’s familiar with how Shane deals with change. The way he retreats, to better allow himself to think about it for ages, until all the rough edges are worn smooth and the inevitable heat death of the universe draws near.
Not this time.
A cluster of people surround Shane. Between Shane’s still-newish blond hair, today’s wacky felt hat, and the set of gigantic wings he’s sporting, he's a sight to see. Apparently he’s decided to freeball it, wing-wise. Two neat slices down the back of his buttondown shirt allow his wings free range, although he seems already to be in relatively better control of them, flapping them gently and creating a hair-ruffling breeze.
“Neat, huh?” he says when Ryan draws up close. He sips from a mugful of coffee and waggles his eyebrows. The rest of Watcher scatters, heading back to work at their desks, presumably finished with Shane’s office coming-out as a bewinged man.
“Yeah, neat,” Ryan echoes. “I see you’ve taken care of informing the office.”
Shane winks and ambles towards the area where both his desk and Ryan's sit, side by side. “Knew if I let ol’ Slim Lim have the reins on it, it’d be a half-hour all-hands meeting complete with PowerPoint slides and sharing of feelings.”
Ryan chuckles. “Can’t have that.”
Shane raises his mug. “Hear, hear.” He settles at his desk, fusses with his headphones. “Much easier this way. ‘Hey, folks, I got a set of wings now; no, I don’t have any explanations because that’s Ryan’s department.’”
Ryan exhales noisily. “You didn’t.”
Shane’s smile is wide. “I did. You’re the expert on the spooky stuff, buddy. I’m just along for the ride.”
“I’m hardly the expert,” Ryan splutters, “and I do have a couple of theories, it’s true, but what worries me is that—” he lowers his voice “—that gargoyle cursed you, Shane. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, it just did.”
“Of course,” Shane agrees mildly, in that precise lackadaisical manner guaranteed to piss Ryan off.
“I mean it,” Ryan presses. “True, I scoured every source I could find on the web and came up empty, but I just know it. In my chest. Right here.” He makes a fist and raps the center of his ribcage.
“A reliable barometer, as always,” Shane agrees again. He rolls his shoulders and winces a bit.
“You okay? Annabelle up to her tricks again?”
“Haha! Funny!” Shane says, his face showing not a trace of laughter.
“I’m fine. It’s just that fall was a lot. I didn’t know you’ve got the lungs of a foghorn when you’re startled. A terrifying thing to wake up to.”
“Excuse you,” Ryan retorts. “It’s not my fault my fear response leans more fight than flight.”
Shane exhales hard and rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “You did not just say that.”
Ryan hides a laugh behind his hand. Then he leans in. “You—you haven’t tried them out, yet, have you? Can you, you know, fly?”
Shane shakes his head. “Haven’t quite had the opportunity to try, little guy. It’s one thing to walk around Tinseltown, where dreams come true and nobody blinks twice at a weirdo in a folded-wing half-costume picking up Starbucks during the busy morning rush. It’s quite another to frighten the populace as an incompetent flying bird-man.”
“You mean a flying batman. Besides, you wouldn’t be incompetent,” Ryan protests.
“I would be injured, which is what I am,” Shane says. “These old bones don’t heal as fast as they used to.”
“Come over,” Ryan says suddenly. “After work.” To explain himself, he adds hastily, “I’ve got a remedy for the ol’ bone-healing. Never fails when I’ve banged myself up good at basketball.”
“Intriguing,” Shane says. But he agrees, and, later that afternoon, Ryan finds himself with a gangly winged man following him into the hallway of his apartment.
“I’ve got—you know—stuff.” Ryan scratches the back of his neck. He digs around in the bathroom cabinet looking for his prize.
“I don’t know, Ryan.” Shane shoves his hands into his pockets and curls into his usual slumping posture. The tips of his wings flutter behind his back, as if they’re a pair of prey animals, shyly peering around the angles of Shane’s elbows to catch a glimpse of Ryan.
Shane’s eyes take stock of the cardboard-packaged cans lining the hallway walls of Ryan’s apartment. “I don’t think protein whey powder is going to fix what ails me.”
Ryan laughs. “Only if you’re going to lift weights with those bad boys attached to your shoulder blades.” He finds what he’s looking for and steps out of the bathroom with a jar wrapped in a half-torn label. He gives the lid a twist and it resists him until it finally cracks open.
Shane leans in and gives an appreciative sniff as the strong aroma fills the space. “Ah, it smells like Grandma’s medicine cabinet. Means it must be the good stuff.”
Ryan gestures. “Sit down.”
And how Ryan didn’t predict that Shane would take that as an invitation to fold his legs right up and sit down down on the floor in the center of the living room, sighing happily as his wings unfold at his back, Ryan doesn’t know.
He sits on the floor behind Shane, using the bulk of the couch as a backrest, and gets to work.
“This stuff is the real deal,” Ryan babbles. He’s distracting himself, he knows, from the sudden intimacy of having Shane sitting practically in his lap, his bony ass settled between Ryan’s knees as Ryan gingerly runs his fingers along the ridges and valleys of Shane’s wing.
Ryan splays out Shane’s hurt wing underneath his fingers, revealing the discolored patch of purple and blue bruising. It’s a little hard to find underneath the light doe brown of his wing, but still undeniably there, as Shane hisses through his teeth when Ryan grazes it with his thumb.
“Okay?” Ryan asks, withdrawing his hand and scooping a dollop of the medicinal cream into his fingertips.
Shane’s unhurt wing wraps around his own chest, like a self-comfort mechanism already embedded into the logic of his body. It looks cozy, like he’s half-cradling himself.
Shane's voice comes out rough at the edges. “Yeah, I’m good.” The back of his neck, above the collar of his button-down shirt, is flushing pink when he leans forward, bracing himself on one long arm.
“Go ahead.”
Ryan places his tongue between his teeth and concentrates hard, massaging the ointment in first with his fingertips, then with a roll of his knuckles. “I do this when my knee is complaining after too much basketball. It’s, like, a recovery technique the trainers for the Lakers recommend.”
The more Ryan’s fingers work, the closer Shane’s back rolls into Ryan’s hand. Like he’s a dog pressing to be pet again and again. Before he knows it, Shane’s head is cradled on Ryan’s chest, and Ryan watches his eyes flutter closed.
“Hmm,” Shane says out loud. He wriggles into a more comfortable position. “Tell me more about this sportsball stuff. It’s heavenly.”
Ryan laughs and, his fingers free of ointment now, just rolls the pressure out on Shane’s wing in a wider circle, marveling of the softness of it—of him—belying the thick ripples of muscle below.
“You’ve never for a moment cared about basketball.” Ryan kneads his knuckles into Shane’s skin, appreciating the way his wing flexes and bends beneath.
After a moment’s hesitation, he tilts Shane’s body just so and tucks his hands into the furrows and folds of his good wing.
Shane makes a noise low in his throat and leans into him. Ryan almost expects him to purr.
“I care so much about it now, Ry.” His shoulder blades, underneath his shirt, feel sharp above his wings. “I do if it makes me feel like this.”
“Good?”
Shane reclines and slips down further, right into Ryan’s lap, like a bat-popsicle melting in the sun. The tips of his wings flap a contented breeze. “Perfect. Sports medicine is God's gift, far as I’m concerned.”
Ryan looks down. Down at Shane’s face, his eyes blissfully closed. Down at the places where the fabric of his shirt strains across his chest. Down where Shane’s jeans are just beginning to pull tight across his—
“Oh,” Ryan’s traitorous mouth bleats.
Shane’s eyes snap open at the same time his wings snatch out of Ryan’s hands. In a moment, Shane has wrapped himself up tight with his wings, like a camper in a sleeping bag protecting himself from a sudden arctic wind.
“I”m sorry,” Shane apologizes. “I didn’t know that would happen—I didn’t mean to make it weird.”
He makes to sit up and escape Ryan’s grasp, but Ryan keeps a steady hand on Shane’s shoulder. Shane stills and looks up at him, quizzical. Trying to guess what's brewing in Ryan's brain.
Ryan can feel his heartbeat in his throat, pounding a triple-time bass line to his ambient anxiety. But it's only Shane, after all, warm and familiar, and the fireworks firing off within Ryan's chest must be echoed in Shane's. So Ryan leans in and lets his curiosity do the talking.
“It’s not us making it weird,” he argues, watching Shane’s puzzled stare knit his brows and worry his expression into a frown.
Grappling for a way to make it better, Ryan continues, “It's just—us, making the best of a weird situation. Upping the weird ante. What do you say?”
Shane’s expression melts and gives way to a wheeze. His face is open and unworried once again. “I’d like that, actually,” he admits. “But I was already a pretty weird guy. I don’t need to be weirder.”
Ryan shakes his head, insistent. “But I like it,” Ryan says. “I like weird. Hell, I’m pretty weird myself.”
“That’s true,” Shane says. Ryan feels him relax under his hand. He hasn’t tried to move from Ryan’s lap and now he looks up at him with a question in his eyes.
He must see the glimmer of an answer written all over Ryan.
Ryan knows his own face doesn’t hide much. It certainly isn’t hiding the crashing wave of want he’s struggling to stand up against.
Shane’s face widens into a knowing grin.
“You can’t stop looking at me, can you? You like me like this.”
“Is it so wrong if I do?”
“No,” Shane reflects. He adjusts his bony shoulders where they dig in on Ryan’s thighs. Just like that, the tight wrap of his wings around his body loosens.
Ryan can see the effort he makes to still himself. Can see the muscles of his throat working when he swallows.
“It’s just weird.” Almost in a whisper, he adds, “No one’s touched me there. I didn’t think it would be so—”
He doesn’t finish the thought, looking distantly away from Ryan’s face. The pink flush starting across the bridge of his nose tells Ryan everything he needs to know.
“Can I touch you there?” Ryan asks.
Shane fixes him with his gaze. “I can’t—I don’t know what will happen.” He squints up from behind his glasses and clarifies, “If you’ll like what will happen.”
Ryan’s unwavering. He finds himself grinning, his body springing ahead of his mind like it always does. “What if I already like everything?”
“Oh.” Shane looks caught between a rock and an emotion. “Then, if you’re sure, I’d like that.”
“I’m very sure,” Ryan says. He reaches down, places sure fingers at the place low on both of Shane’s wings, close to where they jut from his back, and applies pressure.
Shane makes a soft noise, like all the air has escaped from his body.
“Good?”
“Ryan, yeah.” Shane whispers. Ryan digs his fingers into Shane’s wings and feels his insides tilt with delight when Shane’s eyelashes flutter and his back arches in response.
“Ryan,” Shane says again, low in his throat.
“Still good?” Ryan asks. He doesn’t bother to hide the chuckle in his voice. Because given the way Shane’s eyes fly open, and the way he gasps at the firm stroke Ryan gives his wings with both hands, Ryan’s rather sure it is.
Pleasure is written plainly over the curl of Shane’s body into Ryan’s, and he enjoys himself just like that: running his hands over and over Shane’s wings, feeling Shane roll himself into Ryan’s body and utter a stream of endearments mixed with curses. Then, Shane reaches up and cradles Ryan’s chin in his hand, a gentle gesture of tugging Ryan towards him.
“I need—Ryan,” he gasps.
Ryan’s hips twinge in protest as he bends down as far as he can and brushes Shane’s lips with his own.
Shane groans and Ryan feels Shane’s wings grasp him around his back. Shane’s agile command of his wings is something to see, sure, but it’s something else to feel how their gossamer appearance belies the muscular strength he has, hurt wing or no, as he bears Ryan down to the floor.
Before he knows it, he finds himself lying draped over Shane’s body, kissing the breath from Shane’s lungs, his legs entangled with Shane’s, their hips lined up perfectly together, a pair of wings holding him close across his back and Shane’s hands roaming across his chest. He’s doing his damndest, now, and it’s working to pull loud moans from Ryan.
“No fair,” Ryan gasps. Shane just chuckles beneath him. Between his wings and his hands and his long body, Ryan feels like there’s nowhere Shane isn’t touching him.
In revenge, he reaches around Shane, and then up, and strokes hard along the low place in Shane’s wings. He watches, entranced, as Shane throws his head back.
“Fuck.”
“Could you come from this?” Ryan asks. A pink flush makes its way up along Shane’s throat, and Ryan impulsively kisses Shane right where his shirt collar parts.
Shane’s voice comes out strangled. “Maybe,” he pants. “I don’t know. Why—you gonna try to make me?”
“I have to know,” Ryan says, then doesn’t pause at all in the movement of his hands when he leans down to take gasping kisses from Shane’s mouth. “I want to investigate. Gotta know.”
“Curious little pal,” Shane huffs, then gives a long moan that goes straight to Ryan’s cock.
“Stop trying to ruin it,” Ryan demands. “Pal. Buddy.”
Shane huffs a laugh, but Ryan can feel the tension winding in his body. His wings clench Ryan closer.
“Mon frère,” he says, in a weak attempt to parry. Then he pants when Ryan gets his hands just precisely between tendon and bone, where Shane’s wings are particularly velvet-soft and sensitive.
“That’s right,” Ryan says, with no small amount of satisfaction.
With the way Shane’s looking at him right now, the look in his eyes so exactly like his gaze at Ryan that day in France, Ryan feels himself hurtling along, too. Shane’s cock is hard as a steel rod against Ryan, and Ryan’s desire is welling low and insistent, just at the sight of Shane, his body open and vulnerable underneath Ryan’s like this. And their bodies are pressed together everywhere they can, and Ryan keeps up a relentless course of touching Shane’s wings right where it makes him moan and thrash beneath him.
“I’m gonna—Ry,” Shane gasps out, and that’s it. He clings to Ryan’s body, wings grasping at his shoulders and his big hands clawing at Ryan’s waist. He comes with a quiet sigh.
The sight of him satiated like that runs through Ryan like a lightning bolt, and soon Shane’s slapping Ryan’s hand away from where he’s touching himself through his jeans and replacing Ryan’s hand with his own. Shane’s eyes are dark on his and his hands are big and sure over Ryan’s cock.
Ryan moans Shane’s name and Shane whimpers and seals his mouth over Ryan’s and his hand speeds up over Ryan’s fly.
It’s too much and over too fast and Shane wraps Ryan up in his wings and Ryan catches his breath, come still cooling in his underwear.
“That was—” Shane stops himself, his eyes searching Ryan’s.
“—gross,” Ryan finishes the thought for him. He rolls over on his back and pitches an arm over his eyes to blot out the light.
He hears the sound of Shane shifting beside him. Then silken tendrils wrap gently around his arm. It’s Shane’s wing, gently prying his arm from his face. Ryan lets his arm fall.
Shane looks down at him, propped on his side, all elbows and wings. “Oh, I don’t know. I thought it was nice.”
Ryan feels a pang at Shane’s crestfallen expression. “I’m sorry. It was—good. It’s just that—I don’t think I’ve done something like that since I was fifteen.” He lets out a wheezing laugh at himself. At them. At all of this.
“Me neither,” Shane admits. “And it doesn’t” —he glances over at the window, rubs a finger along the side of his nose— “it doesn’t have to mean anything, you know. It can just be, you know. Something nice.”
Ryan knits his brow and looks at Shane’s face. The reflection of the window sends up a glare on his glasses, hiding his eyes. He holds his body still, wings arching slightly above, even though he has to be uncomfortable in his clothes right now. It all gives Shane the look of the other-worldly.
“Yeah,” Ryan agrees. “It was nice.”
Shane turns back to him. Something shutters behind his eyes and Ryan feels like the earth cracks underneath him. Like thunder rumbles inside his chest.
“It was,” Shane says, then, “First in the shower?”
“Help yourself, man. If you want, you could borrow some clothes.”
A tightness shows itself around Shane’s lips. He stands and makes a show of stretching, his back emitting a series of alarming cracks. “Thanks, Ryan. Think I will.” He heads off to Ryan’s bathroom in a stiff-legged march.
And why does Ryan feel this way, come cooling in his underwear and they both agree that it was a nice time, and maybe—maybe Shane will want to do it again, even. And yet a feeling of foreboding wells up within Ryan’s chest cavity, and the sparking heat of it spreads underneath his skin.
The rattle of a cascade of plastic bottles hitting the bathroom floor jolts Ryan out of his reverie. The water in the shower turns on. Underneath, the muttering of Shane’s voice, undoubtedly swearing up a storm, brings a grin to Ryan’s face.
Nothing’s where Ryan expected it to be. Shane’s in his shower, knocking down everything with his gigantic wings. Ryan’s lying in the middle of his living room floor, come tacky in his pants, Shane’s it was nice, still echoing in his mind.
This is fine. It’s all fine. Good. He just made out for the first time with Shane, and they can both be adults about it.
Ryan shakes his head to clear it. And picks himself up off the floor to go find a change of clothes, hoping somewhere between the stacks of wrinkled shirts he’ll also find himself a fresh brain, one less prone to catastrophizing.
A tendril of steam curls from the bathroom door when Shane emerges, his lower half wrapped in a towel, his tucked wings dripping water. Ryan tries to avert his eyes before catching a glimpse of—nope, there’s Shane’s happy trail again, a tempting bristle of hair leading down to his—
“What?” Ryan exclaims, his irritation at himself sluicing through the single syllable.
Shane just wheezes softly. “C’mere.”
And already Shane’s wings are reaching for Ryan. Shane’s dextrous with them now, Ryan notices. The tips of the velvet fingers of Shane’s wing tilt Ryan’s chin upwards, until Ryan meets Shane’s eyes.
“I’m not gonna be weird about it,” Shane says. His voice is low, steady, like he’s drawing on a secret well Ryan would like to peer into, down until he can see the bottom of it. But he can’t, and instead he’s got that foreboding feeling in his chest cavity and a dampening on the front of his clean shirt from Shane’s wing, even as Shane keeps his hands technically to himself, waiting for Ryan to give some sign of return—of reassurance.
“You’re already weird,” Ryan huffs, but he leans close and puts his arms around Shane’s waist and pushes up on the balls of his feet and presses his lips to Shane’s.
“Hey, Ryan.”
Shane closes one eye from over the striped straw spiraling out of his tiki drink, its questionably-orange color reflecting in the blue twinkle lights of the bar. Most likely, Shane is just trying to get Ryan’s face to come into focus.
To help him out, Ryan leans wayyy down and leans his chin on his fists, elbows banging off the edges of their little round table.
“Yeah, Shane?”
“Ryan. RyanRyanRyanRyan.”
Ryan laughs. “Shane,” he says, liking the feel of his name in his mouth so much, the way it rolls over his tongue, that he says it again.
“Shane.”
Shane blinks hard, then opens both eyes wide. “We should walk home. ‘S a nice night.”
Ryan finishes off his drink in a magnificent chug of the remainder of his blue-tinted drink. He smacks his lips, tasting the last of the cream of coconut and pineapple juice and blue curaçao, savoring the last sting of alcohol.
“Sounds good. Lead the way, mon frère.”
Shane bobbles along on his bone-stilts legs, extending his wings, first this side, then the other, for counterbalance.
At the street corner, when Ryan expects him to turn left, instead he swings right, and gallivants on.
“Hey,” Ryan says, squinting into the balmy evening air, a misting fog rolling in gently decorated by the faint glow of bar windows’ neon lights. “This isn’t the way.”
“Course it is,” Shane asserts, and there’s a rush of wind near Ryan’s ears and he turns to look, but it’s only Shane’s big wing, scooping a divot into the air behind Ryan and wrapping around his back, covering him from knees up to shoulder and urging him along.
Shane’s eyes are creased in laughter, and his wings reach for Ryan like they have a mind of their own, pushing and urging and touching, their velvet softness an extension of Shane’s whole—Ryan doesn’t know—thing he’s got, which is that he’s taller than anyone’s got any right or reason to be, and he could be intimidating because of it, but Ryan knows his tall friend’s timid heart is soft, which is why his wings reach for him when he won’t allow his hands to.
And Ryan just wants to wrap up Shane’s heart and keep it safe, the same way he finds himself tangled in Shane’s wings, blades of grass poking at his legs while he rubs his cheek against velveteen skin and Shane sighs happily, so close Ryan’s bangs ruffle in the pineapple-scented breeze of Shane’s breath.
A blink, maybe two, and Ryan’s sitting up, watching Shane, arms and wings akimbo, walking along the top of a short brick wall.
“You okay?”
“Y—yeah,” Shane returns, tossing the reply over his shoulder as he steps, one sneakered foot in front of the other, stepping along the skinny walkway formed by the retaining wall set into the largest green rolling hill in the park.
A roil of mist swirls in the air. Ryan peers up at the sky, trying to reckon the time. Then he gives up, flopping down into the grass already wet with dew. Probably he should mind, but coconut cream still coats his tongue and his mind is a warm soft haze.
He turns his head. Sees Shane still walking, his steps delicate and precise. He executes a turn that puts Ryan in mind of a gymnastics routine, like one he probably watched during a televised summer Olympics, consisting of some gymnast walking the balance beam with ramrod-straight posture and pointed toe. At any rate, now Shane makes forward progress in Ryan’s direction.
“You know,” Ryan says, running a blade of grass between first and second fingers, feeling the gritty snap of the greenery against his skin, “You know, you’re the goddamn batman now.”
He didn’t do the voice, and now he wishes he had, the way Shane stops and stands stock-still, just looking at him, with an expression that teeters on the edge of confusion.
So he sits up, and does the voice, lowering his register to a growl. “You’re the goddamn Batman,” he says, fingerguns pointing toward Shane.
That does it; it produces the outcome Ryan was looking for. Through the swirling mist, he sees Shane curl into himself in laughter, the tips of his wings ruffling themselves in mirth. Then he straightens his shoulders, holds himself like a dark knight would, even playfully shielding his eyes as he presumably surveys his own pretend Gotham City below.
It suits him, Ryan reflects, that where the Batman, the Dark Knight’s city is dark and cold and full of asphalt and harsh lights, the city that Shane casts his eye over is a meadow of green grass framed by the low-hanging boughs of trees. All of it lit up by the reflection of the lights of Los Angeles, bouncing back into a gray-white glow from the cloudy sky, even as the fog billows and rolls across the hills.
“I did a bunch of research,” Ryan says out loud. Then pauses.
“Yes?” Shane prompts him. “I think you told me in the bar, but you had to yell to be heard over the jukebox. So. Might as well tell me again, in case I missed any of it.”
Ryan smiles. “Think I will. So, bats, when they fly, they don’t take off like birds.”
Shane’s smile is small and half-hidden by a sudden gesture of rubbing his bottom lip, like he’s thinking things over, but he says, “Ah. Continue.”
“Turns out, because they generally sleep at the roofs of caves, they have to dive into a steep drop, before they can get the wind lift upwards to fly.”
Shane leans over to the side and peers down over the edge of the wall. It drops off down, down, before graduating into the side of the hill, where the green grass takes over and the hill slopes away, far into the trees.
“You don’t say.”
Shane’s sneakers execute a half-turn this time. He drags the toe of one of his sneakers along the edge of his sturdy brick perch.
“You think I should try it?”
Ryan shrugs his shoulders and leans back, his gauntlet successfully thrown. The only way Shane would take on a challenge, Ryan knows, is if he makes a big deal of it being Not A Big Deal.
And yet, at risk of showing his hand, the flutter of excitement in his chest, knowing that Shane needs a little push—has always needed one, in fact—to give himself permission to try, he does look up into the dark sky, swirling with droplets of mist, and say, “I think you’re the goddamn batman, is what I think.”
Shane laughs at that. He laughs and his body leans into it, and that does it. Ryan’s watching him, so, so closely, and one moment, Shane’s peering over the edge, a doubtful look on his face, and then the next, he’s laughing and taking courage from Ryan’s seemingly tossed-off words, and he squares his shoulders and arches his wings and leans forward and Ryan’s heart is in his throat when Shane tilts far and begins to fall, just until the moment comes when Shane’s wings snap wide open and catch his body in its freefall and bear him up, up, up, into a majestic glide.
Ryan’s on his feet and yelling, and he can’t feel his face but that’s fine, because Shane is laughing. Their voices intertwined are the only sounds echoing across the glade, because other than the first snap of Shane’s wings, wide-open and weight-bearing for the first time, catching him in his fall—no, flight Ryan corrects himself—because that’s what Shane is doing, right now, is flying, flying on silent wings. But other than that first initial snap of his wings opening, Shane is floating on silent wings.
Ryan’s yelling until his throat is raw, a jubilant noise, while Shane, who didn’t know how to fly, couldn’t fly, is flying, calling out, “Ryan, I’m—” then his voice breaking like a wave when it reaches Ryan’s ears at the foot of the hill where he’s run to. The wind rolls through Shane’s hair and clothes, tugging him into rumpledness and lashing at his face, so he closes his mouth and gets a look on his face like he’s concentrating, and then he pivots, grandly, swooping in the distance.
For a moment, Shane is graceful, and Ryan forgets to breathe. He banks an elegant turn, far away at the treeline, and with a flap of his wings that Ryan sees but does not hear, he steers to aim himself into a return.
“Oh!” Ryan yells, but it’s too late as Shane’s expression turns into one of panic and he puts the brakes on in a whirl of flapping overcorrection. “You’re gonna—”
All the air leaves Ryan’s lungs in a rush as Ryan takes the impact right in the center of his chest. Ryan’s body, well-trained by years of basketball, knows exactly what to do, wrapping his arms around Shane in an attempt to make the two of them aerodynamic, shedding off the excess momentum by rolling together across the damp grass, tumbling over and over.
Like Pooh and Tigger in the Five Hundred Acre Wood, Ryan thinks to himself, his thoughts tumbling and rattling around inside his head just the same as their bodies tumble and roll together.
They come to a stop, and Ryan doesn’t let go of Shane, feeling the heave of their chests as they pant together. Ryan shakes his head, to try to rattle his brain until all fanciful thoughts flutter away. He sternly tells himself they’re in Los Angeles, not a mythical make-believe forest where magic happens.
Except magic just did happen, and they made it together. Ryan knew Shane could do it—could fly—he knew it in his chest; no, he doesn’t know how he knows it, he just knows with every fiber of his being. It’s the same feeling he had when he nudged and poked and prodded Shane into coming along to Watcher.
I know you can do it, Ryan had said back then, and Shane had smiled, the same unsure look on his face even back then, and said, I think I need a little push from you.
Gladly, Ryan had grumped, and then given him a shove, both hands on his body, and then metaphorically, too, proofreading Shane’s two-weeks’-notice letter he penned with a nervous hand, addressed to his steady 9-to-5 job.
And here they are, nose-to-nose, Shane having stretched out his wings and flown, all six-feet-whatever of him, gamboling across the meadow like it was nothing, like he was born to fly, and Ryan can only run his fingers through Shane’s hair, damp from the fog and the mist and the dew. A few blades of grass fall from Shane’s hair, and Ryan can only laugh.
Shane just looks at him, with a searching gaze that makes Ryan recall a moment in a French garden with dark stormclouds gathering and the lightning in the distance.
And then Shane closes the distance between them; he leans down and kisses him.
A spark of electricity jolts down Ryan’s spine.
Oh, Ryan says into Shane’s mouth.
Ryan feels the fine bones of Shane’s hands cradling the back of his head above the hard earth beneath them and feels the insistence of Shane’s body pressing down on his own. He kisses Shane back, harder and more demanding, reveling in the way Shane responds, groaning into his mouth and kissing with all he has.
Shane smells like rich earth and wet grass and Ryan drags his hands down Shane’s back to his ass and feels the heat of his body warm him through his damp clothes. Feels the way Shane is hard against him, and Ryan’s cock must be pressing into Shane’s stomach, the way he feels himself throb with desire.
Ryan stops sucking on Shane’s tongue long enough to say, “I’m taking you home,” and Shane stops panting into Ryan’s mouth long enough to say, “Yeah, yeah, okay. But it doesn’t have to—”
“Shhhh,” Ryan hushes, and reaches up to rub away a smear of earth on Shane’s temple with his thumb.
“I know. ‘It doesn’t have to be a big deal, Ryan,’” he says in a fair imitation of Shane’s voice and manner, complete with a raise of his eyebrows and a quick glance away from Shane’s face and off into the distance.
Shane barks a laugh, and the smooth skin underneath Ryan’s hand, right along his temple, crinkles as Shane smiles, really smiles, in a sudden wave of unguarded exuberance.
Ryan frames Shane’s face between both his hands, suddenly unable to bear it if Shane chooses to look away. Fortunately, Shane doesn’t look away, instead blinking, as if spellbound, at Ryan’s face.
“You don’t have to protect me. From overthinking. I know you do that, and you just. Don’t have to. And It is a big deal. To me,” Ryan says, his voice lent a firmness from the conviction welling up from the center of his chest. Even with the static electricity jumping through his veins, somehow, it feels important to say. Out loud. “So let it be one. Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Shane’s wings suddenly arch far above them, unfolding from Shane’s back and spreading out in a display that takes Ryan’s breath away. As if the fireworks exploding underneath Ryan’s skin feel the same to Shane, inside his body, and his wings have to unfurl their full length in an expression of joy, lest Shane spill over with it.
Tugging Shane’s shirt off, first easing his arms out of its sleeves and then pulling his shirt along the holes cut out for his wings in its back, is easier than it looks.
Shane appears deft at accommodating his bewinged body now, having had years of care of his overly-noodly limbs to prepare him for it. He turns and looks at Ryan, suddenly shy, hesitating, arms at his sides. And yet his wings swoop out and reach for Ryan, unbidden, if Ryan’s judging by the benign surprise written all over Shane’s face.
Ryan holds his hand up and spreads out his fingers wide and watches with fascination as the bones and tendons and muscles in Shane’s wing work as he clutches at Ryan’s hand, the articulated bends in his wing as it wraps around his hand. It feels like fingers in a hand, with webbing in between, holding him with gentle pressure, as if his knuckles would break if Shane’s wing clenched around his hand with too much strength.
“Look,” Ryan marvels. “We’re holding hands.”
He wraps his own fingers around the wing and wobbles it between them to punctuate his words.
The wing squeezes his hand in acknowledgement. Shane watches the motion, alert like a cat watching the switch of its own tail. “We are.”
“Chiroptera,” Ryan pronounces the word out loud, to Shane’s visible befuddlement. “It means hand-wing, in Latin,” Ryan tries to explain. “It’s the name for bats, the scientific one anyways.”
Shane’s hand-wing flexes warmly in Ryan’s grasp.
“Oh, baby,” Shane laughs. “Speak that scientific research to me.”
Ryan grins with all his teeth.
Having Shane in his shower isn’t new. Being in the shower with Shane is.
Ryan crowds him against the tile and watches the flush travel up his chest and his neck into his face. “Do you like that?”
Shane wheezes a laugh. “I really, really do.” As if to reassure Ryan of the truthfulness of his statement, Shane’s wings ruffle, shaking water in droplets in a gesture of pleasure.
“Aw, thanks,” Ryan winks at them in thanks.
“Are you talking to my wings as if they aren’t me—oh,” Shane breaks off his statement of incredulity to lean, weak-kneed, against Ryan when he traces a lubed-up finger around and around his hole, teasing.
“They work like the tail of a dog, don’t they?” Ryan asks, but he already knows the answer; he’s read it in the animated gestures of Shane’s wings. Before, Shane’s body was a closed book: still, hands kept close to his body. Controlled. Betraying very little. But Shane’s wings won’t be fettered by Shane’s habitual impassiveness. Instead, they reach for Ryan, or flutter with happiness. Sometimes a ripple runs through them, like the physical illustration of a sigh made in pleasure.
Shane’s body tells Ryan exactly what he wants, via the motion of his wings.
“Y—yes,” Shane breathes against Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan presses his finger in, opening Shane up, and Shane keens into Ryan’s neck and his body shudders in pleasure.
“Annoying things, these wings” Shane grumbles. “They want what they want.”
“What they want right now is me,” Ryan laughs, feeling the sensual drag of Shane’s wings along his shoulder blades.
“Yeah, they really do,” Shane admits, continuing, for the moment, the ludicrous bit that his wings aren’t him.
Shane drags his lips along Ryan’s collarbone, the side of his neck, then his cheek. Droplets of warm mist from the showerhead swirl between them. He pulls back, even though Ryan’s fingers are insistent inside him, pressing that hot secret place that makes Shane’s eyes glaze over and his skin burn pink.
“My wings want what I want. And what I want is you.”
Ryan moans, full-throated and loud, when Shane seats himself fully on Ryan’s cock. His wings spread out, wide above Ryan’s bed, and Shane’s hot and tight around Ryan’s cock and Ryan howls his pleasure as his hips pump into Shane’s.
“You’re so loud,” Shane rocks into Ryan’s body, even as he complains, gasping when Ryan’s cock breaches him again.
“And so what? You love it,” Ryan insists, fucking into him again and again.
“Fuck, I do,” Shane says, and his whole body is flushed, from where his chest hair curls all the way down to his toes. His wings bend and flex and flutter above, sending up whorls of a breeze every time Ryan buries himself deep in Shane.
“Ryan,” Shane says, “I fuckin’ love—it when you’re loud.”
And Ryan would have a smart reply locked and loaded, something about how he heard that pause and clocked the way that Shane veered away from saying everything his body is telling Ryan at the last moment.
Except he looks into Shane’s eyes and his hips stutter and roll and he comes his brains out, Shane’s wings clutching at Ryan’s body and Shane delicately panting into Ryan’s skin.
Not a moment passes before Shane’s eyes close, and the long column of his neck looks like sculptural art to Ryan, and Ryan feels hot spurts landing across his stomach and chest.
It’s when Shane comes back with a washcloth and gently wipes his come from Ryan’s skin that Ryan clutches at Shane’s shoulder and then reaches for his glasses.
“Come here,” Ryan demands, and pulls Shane’s body where it’s illuminated under the weak light cast by the nightstand lamp.
Ryan feels Shane’s breath catch in his lungs. A guilty look palls over him and he wrenches away.
“It’s nothing,” Shane says, then, predictably, “No big deal,” but Ryan knows what he saw. And felt.
A patch of cold forbidding stone, just above Shane’s hip. Ryan grazed his fingers across it and shivered, the softness of Shane’s skin giving way to the unmoving quality of rock.
A sparking heat of indignation rises within Ryan’s chest. “It is a big deal. To me.”
To which Shane only huffs, and then settles down between the sheets with Ryan. Shane lets him run his fingers over him, stroking his wings tucked in close against his back. They fall asleep that way, Shane’s legs tangling with Ryan’s, one of Ryan’s arms tossed over Shane’s wings while Shane clutches his pillow underneath his head with his hands.
When the sun wakes them in the morning and Shane is moving around the room, putting on clothes discarded last night, Ryan watches him like a hawk. He notes the new stiffness in Shane’s joints. Shane looks at him like he knows exactly what Ryan sees and like he doesn’t want to talk about it.
He circles the room and leans down to kiss Ryan sweetly. Offers to make coffee in the kitchen. And all the while Ryan can’t help but notice the subtle harshness of Shane’s movements, as if his joints are beginning to refuse to bend.
Research. Research is what Ryan knows. The cold, hard certainty of research is what Ryan needs. This is the way the world works, the authoritative sources Ryan finds comfort him, on long dark nights when he can’t sleep so he lets the blue glow of his laptop screen light up the darkest hours of the night.
For the time being, he’s working toward conclusions, so he keeps his preliminary findings to himself. But every morning, when Shane lumbers into the office, Ryan makes observational notes in his head. On Tuesday, Shane grimaces when standing up from his chair. By Thursday, Ryan offers to run downstairs to retrieve his lunch delivery when Shane peers down at the spiraling staircase and a microexpression of distress flutters across his face.
Thoughts of his research: ancient lead curse tablets buried underneath the glittering waters of rivers and chanted incantations at Sequana’s temple roil through Ryan’s head.
Shane works at his computer, right next to Ryan, and reaches up to idly scratch at the collar of his shirt. Ryan catches a glimpse of the telltale gray dullness of his skin, hidden underneath the long-sleeved shirt Shane wears at the height of southern California summer.
Ryan chest burns within him. “That’s it,” he says, and grabs at Shane’s hand to hold it inside his own.
“Wha—Ryan,” Shane fiercely whispers, but Ryan is having none of it.
He shakes his head. Tugs at Shane, until he acquiesces and follows him outside the office, into Ryan’s car.
“We’ve tried this your way,” Ryan says, entering the destination into his car’s GPS.
“Now we’re doing this my way.”
“It’s not—it’s not a big deal, Ryan.”
Ryan grinds his teeth and parks in an awful sun-beaten lot by an abandoned Toys ‘R Us. He turns to address his—what, paramour? Business partner? Life partner?
“Don’t you dare use your reasonable voice on me.”
“I wouldn’t! I—” Shane throws up both his hands, his wings furling themselves down to help his whole body with his denial.
Ryan climbs out of the car and, without waiting for Shane, stomps off toward the Greenway Trail. Just beyond, contained within its cradle of sun-bleached concrete, the L.A. River glimmers.
Ryan shoves his hands into his pockets and watches the sparkles thrown by the river’s flow. Too much rain has fallen lately; the river is swollen higher than Ryan’s used to seeing it.
There’s a nudge at Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan turns with a start, to see Shane standing next to him, his wing outstretched to touch Ryan, even as Shane’s arms are crossed over his chest.
“Sorry,” Shane mumbles.
“Don’t be. It’s just—” Ryan sighs. “What’s happening to you? And why would it have been so bad to just tell me about it?”
Shane shrugs. “I thought I was imagining it, at first. Then, I thought: maybe it’ll pass.” He licks his lips, and a flash of sharp incisors shows before he firmly closes his mouth.
Ryan's stomach tilts with dread. “It’s not gonna pass, buddy,” Ryan says. “That’s not how this stuff works. Not ever.”
“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it. Can’t go back to France, and I don’t know—ask for it to stop?” He huffs a breath, amused at himself. Here on the tilted concrete wall that leads down to the swelling river, he sits down and wraps his arms around his knees.
The bright sunshine makes him squint when he looks up at Ryan. “I’m a realist, Ryan. I reckon with whatever’s real. This? Is very real.” He unbends an elbow with some visible effort and holds out his arm. From underneath the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt, Ryan can see the gray stone creeping its way over his skin.
“You were right, Ryan. Is that what you want to hear? You were right, and I was cursed by that gargoyle, somehow, and now I’m gonna be—one myself, I guess. And right here was the perfect place to take me. I’ll guard the L.A. River and get to watch the moon and stars at night. There are worse ways to go, Ryan.”
Ryan blinks back tears. “Oh, fuck you, man. You aren’t ready to go.”
“I’m not. But,” he gives a half-shrug, slow, like it taxes him to move from his perch on the dusty concrete sidewall. “France is far away, and I am here. And I’m in no shape to drag my sorry stone carcass onto a plane.” He laughs, ruefully. “I’d probably bust the weight limit, besides. Six-foot of noodle body made of gneiss.”
“So I thought I’d enjoy the time left to me,” Shane concludes. “However long that is.”
And Ryan crouches next to Shane, and in the distance, he feels a breeze kick up at his back.
“And you didn’t tell me.”
Shane just sighs and perches his chin on his knees. “What good would it do? Honestly.”
“It would’ve let me get ahead on the research. As it is, I’ve got the barest wisp of a theory and other than that, I’m—if you’ll forgive the phrasing—winging it.”
Shane throws his head back and laughs, the sharp edges of his incisors glistening in the gathering gloom. Dark clouds are moving in and blotting out the sun. Ryan doesn’t know how he hasn’t noticed it until now.
Shane looks up at him. A flash illuminates his face, and underneath Ryan’s feet he feels the grumble of rolling thunder from a storm honing in on them.
“It’s fucked up, you know that? To make a decision like that all by your lonesome. Without me.”
“It’s my life.”
“‘Package deal,’ remember?” Ryan yells, his voice nearly overpowered by wind and oncoming rain and the thundering of angry clouds.
The look that Shane gives him pierces Ryan to the marrow.
“Don’t tie yourself into my shit,” he cautions darkly. “I won’t have this happening to you, too.”
Shane kneels and assumes a familiar posture. One reminiscent of a guardian statue, crouching along a river far from here. Ryan could be imagining it, but it looks like his features become sharper, under the shadows thrown by the driving rain and flashing lightning. Even his teeth look like they end in points.
Ryan’s stomach tilts inside him. “No,” he yells. “Don’t you dare give up on me. Don’t you dare.”
“It’s for your own good,” Shane shoots back. “Better this way.”
But Shane looks up at him, and desire wells up in Ryan’s being; the same bolt that jolted through him on that day in the garden by the Seine, when a flash of lightning illuminated Shane’s face and he saw the same in Shane’s expression.
“You self-sacrificial liar,” Ryan yells, his voice nearly overpowered by wind and oncoming rain and the thundering roil of angry clouds. “You love me, and this is your fucked-up way of showing it.”
“So what if I do? Love you. Nothing good will come of it.”
A lash of driving rain makes Ryan gasp with the chill of it. He kneels next to Shane, his knees scraping the rough concrete.
“Au contraire, mon frère,” Ryan manages to weakly joke. “If my theory turns out to be right, that is.”
Ryan shivers, wet to the bone already.
“State your claim. Of me,” Ryan demands. “Like the fourteenth-century book said to. Or hinted at—whatever.” He gestures wildly in the air. “And I will claim you in return. Because if I don’t claim you, she will.”
“Who?”
“The goddess of the river. There’s stories of how jealous she can be. Is, obviously,” Ryan corrects himself.
Thunder rumbles dangerously above. Ryan grins, his fear ramped up high; he's never felt so alive with fear before. “See?” He tosses in the general direction of the clouds.
Shane doesn’t make a move. Or a sound. He just looks at Ryan, terror in his eyes.
Ryan continues. “Shane, all the rivers of the world are connected. The Seine, the Thames, the Mississippi and the L.A. If you speak to the L.A. River, the gargoyle of the Seine will hear you. Has to hear you.”
The noises of Shane’s scoffing are lost in the torrent of cold rain as Ryan turns and rushes knee-deep in the rising murky water of the river.
“Is that what you need from me?” Ryan roars to the sky. “He’s mine! You can’t have him.”
Lightning cracks overhead, and Ryan clutches at his chest. It feels as if the lightning sparked a heat in his chest, and it’s building with an intensity that makes him feel as if he’s glowing with it.
Rushing tidewaters roll in, soaking Ryan to the skin. He turns, and catches sight of Shane, a cold gray pallor spreading over him, sealing him to his place guarding the Los Angeles River. Above his angular face, his graying wings rise in an impressive arching display.
“No,” Ryan bleats, climbing up the concrete sidewall to wrap up Shane in his arms. It’s not enough. Shane’s going cold and sharp underneath his hands. It doesn’t matter how strong Ryan is; how much weight Ryan can lift, because Shane is turning into stone and it won’t be too long before Ryan can’t move him from this spot.
“We have to claim each other, Shane. Otherwise the river will take you as her own.”
Shane shivers, a small motion.
“By water and rain and thunder and clouds,” Ryan chants, grasping at remembered bits from research rabbitholes and online grimoires. The rain is cold but Ryan is warm, heated by the strength of the words flowing through his veins.
“By dry riverbed and sunshine and calm skies and Santa Ana winds,” he chants aloud, making it up as he goes.
“I oath by roaring river and I oath by drying drought: I am yours. And you are mine.”
The arch of Shane’s eyebrows is becoming pronounced; his hands curl into claws. Ryan hugs him still, even as Shane’s joints stiffen and lock and his wings trace a magnificent arch above.
Shane opens his mouth with a visible effort, and Ryan can barely hear his voice above the raging storm.
“I’m yours.”
And Ryan’s chest burns and burns with heat and magic—and the fear that he’s too late.
Lightning crackles and thunder booms around him and he lets out a yell containing all his outrage, all his need, all his desire, and all his rebellion against the inevitable churn of Fate.
A wall of water rushes from the river, threatening to drown him in its grasp. Ryan doesn’t care if it takes him.
He just holds onto the gargoyle statue that was Shane and feels his heart turning into hard stone within his chest.
His face is wet, and his vision blurs. He’s pretty sure he’s crying, but he cannot tell between the wind and the rain and the feeling of his heart breaking inside his chest, like the cracking-open of a rock geode, except instead of an amethyst inside, it’s just his heart of stone exploding into a million pieces.
“I’m yours,” the statue that was Shane growls. And its eyes flicker back to life, to look up at Ryan.
And Ryan’s chest burns and burns and the clouds part and the sun casts a watery weak light from behind clouds, just as it was on a car trip long ago, when Shane grinned at Ryan and Ryan fairly felt that he glowed with it.
And he notices, then, that he is glowing with it now, and that the yellow light on Shane’s face is beaming out from Ryan and not the sun at all.
All at once, the goddess of the river relinquishes Shane and he sprawls into Ryan’s arms, a warm, fully-human bundle of limbs.
His gargoyle wings have disappeared, and Ryan turns up his face with a thumb underneath his chin. Shane smiles, and his teeth are flat human teeth once again, and the arch of his eyebrow is normal human Shane once again.
“We took an oath,” Ryan breathes, hardly daring to believe what he sees. “We took an oath, and it worked. I can’t believe it worked!”
“I can certainly believe it,” Shane says. He lifts up an arm, and Ryan runs his fingers over his skin, where the familiar warmth of skin reassures him. “The evidence is undeniable.”
“The evidence,” Ryan repeats, with a chuckle. The heat in his chest is dissipating, and the warm glow of the oath’s light has faded, presumably to settle permanently in his bones somewhere.
Ryan looks at Shane, and wonders if, in a million years when archaeologists dig up their bones—both their skeletons, because how could they be buried far from each other; the very thought is impossible—if there will be the words of their claims to each other stenciled into their ribs or maybe chiseled into their femurs.
“We took an oath,” Shane agrees. “Guess you’re stuck with me now.”
Ryan just laughs. “Come here.”
They’re both soaked to the bone from standing in the rushing floodwaters of the L.A. River. Ryan tosses his sneakers, their soles squishy with water, to the floor, and abandons his clothes.
Shane follows suit, the undressing easier now that he just has his own arms and legs to contend with. No extra limbs in the form of gargoyle-like batwings. Not anymore.
Ryan revels in the way Shane feels underneath him, laid out in Ryan’s bed, the sharp angles of his hips and the lingering rain-dampness of his skin a reassurance against his restored form.
Shane grins when he rolls over and presents his freckled back for Ryan’s inspection.
“Just regular ol’ human Shane,” he says.
Ryan hums and runs a flat-palm hand over Shane’s shoulderblades in wonder. “My favorite variety of Shane.”
“You don’t miss the wings?” Shane asks, pausing to groan in appreciation as Ryan opens him up expertly with a lube-covered finger. Ryan loves him this way, on hands and knees, in Ryan’s bed, both his body and his words speaking frankly to him.
“A little,” Ryan admits. Then he caresses Shane’s shoulder and neck and jaw with his other hand. Shane catches his hand up and turns his head to kiss it gently. With heat and a playful nip to his knuckles.
“But that was a limited-edition Shane. Time-limited. This one, I can take my time with. And that makes all the difference.”
“By drying drought and furious floodwaters,” Shane paraphrases. “You’re sure stuck with me. That’s an oath that’s unbreakable.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”