Chapter Text
Ryan wasn’t sure when things started to feel off. It was a gradual thing that grew harder and harder to ignore as more time passed by. A general sense of unease that evolved into full fledged panic.
Ryan was sure that he was being stalked.
It started innocuously, like most things did. A few things missing from his work desk, paper clips, a stapler or two, a few pens. All things he could explain away as a case of forgetfulness or some asshole just swiping office supplies from his desk because they were too lazy to go to reception for more. Then slightly more important things started to disappear. The first thing to go missing was a little figurine on his desk. Something that blended into the background because it was always there. When he noticed that it was gone, he wasn’t bothered. He figured it just rolled under his desk or was hiding under one of his many papers scattered around.
After a few minutes of searching turned into a fruitless hour, Ryan deduced that it’d been swiped. At first he was angry, who would have the gall to steal something from him? But then slowly, but surely, the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. The missing paper clips, the stapler, his pens , and now his figurine. His things were routinely getting stolen.
He wanted to report this to HR, but then decided immediately against it. These things were hardly worth making a fuss over. Yeah he was upset that his personal items were starting to get stolen, but he would get laughed out of the room if he went there just to report a few paper clips and a pen to be stolen. He would just keep a closer watch on his things. This was just a minor annoyance in his day to day life and besides, he had more important things to worry about, like the new episode of unsolved.
Days passed without incident, and days turned into weeks. Ryan had mostly forgot about his phantom thief until he reached into the company fridge one day and realized his lunch was stolen.
“What the fuck?” Ryan mutters as he shakes his empty tupperware. There was no way that he had eaten the contents inside and he immediately grew irritated. He shot a glare at his cohost who shrugged back at him.
“What are you glaring at me for?” Shane grins from ear to ear and shuffles over, obviously entertained by Ryan’s irritability.
“Someone ate my lunch,” Ryan grumbles. “And I’m pretty sure that it was you.”
Shane’s smile falters just a little.
“It wasn’t me dude…” Shane snorts. “...but maybe it was a ghost!”
Ryan groans and Shane doubles over with laughter.
“I’m serious dude, someone ate my lunch. Unbelievable.” Ryan sighs as he looks over at Shane, too wrapped up in his own joke.
Ryan rolls his eyes but he can’t help but smile. He has to admit he did set himself up for that one.
“Sorry, sorry.” Shane composes himself. “I swear it wasn’t me though, are you sure you didn’t just eat it and forget about it or something?”
Ryan grumbles and turns back to the fridge. He’s absolutely certain he didn’t, so if he didn’t eat it, and Shane didn’t, then who did? The realization slowly crawls down Ryan’s back and he can’t fight a shiver.
Shane looks at Ryan curiously, who’s hunched over his tupperware in front of the fridge. “Hey man, you alright? You don’t look so great…” He nudges Ryan with his foot but he doesn’t budge. Ryan slips out of his trance long enough to mutter a quick “Alright.” And shoves his empty tupperware back into the fridge.
Ryan debates internally a little before spilling his thoughts. “I think someone is stealing my stuff. Specifically mine.”
Shane chuckles, clearly not taking this seriously, “Maybe you have a secret admirer?”
Ryan shoots Shane an incredulous look, but the gears have started turning the and an idea is planted in his head.
A secret admirer.
The idea rolls around in his head and circles his thoughts throughout the day. A secret admirer. It couldn’t be possible, weren’t secret admirers a little more…cute? Would leave notes instead of stealing? He insisted this much to Shane, who, predictably laughed, the ass... This couldn’t possibly be the case.
But it’s not happening to anyone else. His brain insists, and that much is true. After minor sleuthing around the office about his missing innocuous office supplies, everyone he talked to had no idea what he was talking about. All of their items were intact.
Ryan was at a complete loss. There wasn’t much he could do about it except keep a closer eye on his things and take anything that was important to him home.
After a particularly long day at work, Ryan was more than ready to head home. After waving goodbye to his coworkers, he briskly walked to his car and opened the door. He was so tired, he almost missed the note, placed seemingly gently into the driver’s side seat.
Ryan’s breath hitched, as he held the note in his hands. He quickly scanned the parking lot but most of the cars, and people, had left already to beat the horrible LA traffic. After scanning his car for hidden passengers, he jumps inside and locks all the doors and opens the note.
I love you Ryan.
This is all the note says and without thinking, Ryan throws the note away.
Ryan can’t help but feel unsafe in his apartment. The implications of the note in his car carried deep meaning. If this “secret admirer” could break into his car without anyone noticing, then how safe was he really— in his own apartment?
More than that, the note made him feel violated.
He no longer felt safe in his own apartment. The stalker had stolen more than his office supplies and lunch, they’d stolen his peace of mind. Ryan paced around his apartment, double checking his locks, and checking any nook and cranny for any signs of invasion. He couldn’t find anything that would point to someone that may have been in his apartment, but his place wasn’t the cleanest one around. He decided to clean his apartment and take note of every item in his home.
Making sure that his space remained untouched was the first step into countering his “secret admirer”.
Ryan spends all night and into the early morning cleaning his apartment. While most of it was his incessant need to make sure his apartment was in check, it was also the fact that he couldn’t sleep. Every passing car, every creak and bump in his apartment lead to him frantically looking around for some weirdo hiding in the depths of his apartment.
Sleep barely came to him, and only in a small burst in the early morning. By then his alarm had gone off. He had to go to work.
Predictably, Ryan arrives late. After making up an excuse and waving off the worried looks of his coworkers he shuffles over to his desk and sits down. He stares blankly at his computer screen when he sees from his peripheral someone sit next to him. He jumps, then immediately relaxes when he sees who it is.
“Hey man, you doing okay?” Shane looks at him, eyebrows furrowed.
It takes Ryan a bit to compose himself. “Yeah,” he mumbles, “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.” Shane insists, he leans in a little closer to inspect Ryan’s face, and Ryan can’t help but avoid eye contact.
“You look awful.”
Ryan can’t help but snort, “Oh geez, thanks.”
“I mean it Ryan, you don’t look like you got any sleep.”
Ryan makes the grave mistake of glancing back at Shane. Shane hasn’t stopped staring at him and has a look on his face that he hasn’t seen before. He looks genuinely worried, and it scares him.
“Do I really look that tired?” Ryan touches his faces and massages his temples. He can’t say that he didn’t try to look composed this morning, but truthfully he just really wanted to get out of his apartment as soon as possible.
“Yeah man, you okay?” Shane pauses as if he’s considering not saying it, “You like, want to talk about it?”
Ryan thinks about it. He really wants to talk to someone about it, but as well as he’s known Shane he’s not sure that he’d be the person to go to about this.
“It’s nothing.” Ryan mumbles. “I just didn’t get enough sleep, just like you said.”
Shane doesn’t seem satisfied with the answer. Ryan avoids his gaze and stares at his computer screen. Shane sighs, shrugs his shoulders like he’s given up interrogating him and turns to his own desk. “Well,” Shane says, “I’m right here if you need someone to talk to about whatever it is you’re not telling me about.”
Ryan can’t fight the smile that appears at the corners of his mouth.
The day passes by as normally as someone who had their car broken into just a day ago can be. Ryan is jumpy and nervous, even with a bunch of his coworkers around. Maybe because there are bunch of his coworkers around. He can’t rule anyone out of his suspicions of being his “secret admirer” at the office, and he can’t narrow it down because he has little to no evidence about it. He fumes at his desk while trying to piece his newest unsolved video together.
After the day is over Ryan sighs and prepares himself to the walk over to his car. He’s almost tempted to ask Shane to accompany him but the minute the clock hits 5, Shane has left, leaving only a cloud of dust in his chair as a sign he used to be there.
Ryan briskly walks through the parking structure, not trusting the looming shadows cast by the remaining cars and cement pillars of the lot. He touches his car, almost afraid that something is going to happen and throws open the door. There’s nothing inside. Ryan turns the car upside down, tearing through the miscellaneous items strewn about and finds absolutely nothing.
He breathes a sigh of relief and then only realizes he was holding his breath. He feels safer, more secure, that his car had remained untouched today.
As he drives home he thinks about his secret admirer, the new unsolved video, and Shane’s gaze that he couldn’t quite meet. All things he’s not quite too sure about, and before he knows it, he arrives at his apartment. He can’t wait to actually feel like enjoying his apartment again and relaxing on his couch while watching something supernatural and dumb on Netflix.
He opens the door, throws his keys on the kitchen table and immediately stops. There’s something deeply wrong in his apartment. At first he isn’t sure what it is, but as he frantically looks around he sees it.
A small note, folded daintily that his keys are resting on top of when he threw it on the table. A note that he knew that he didn’t write himself.