Archive of Our Own

It is, without any doubt, entirely Ryan's fault. Nobody knows this, nobody would even suspect it, but Ryan knows. Feels it intrinsically, in his bones, in his blood, in his soul , that this is his fault. Maybe it's the mess left behind: mud and dirt and leaves and pieces of bark and petals off of flowers. Maybe it's the way the room smells too sweet, like the magic Ryan rarely uses anymore but knows like he knows himself, better than he knows himself. But mostly, Ryan thinks, staring at the wall in abstract horror, more afraid than any old prison or dusty hospital has ever made him, maybe it's the writing on the wall.

“Mass hysteria,” Shane claims, the way he can always be counted on to do. “Like those people in France.”

Damn it, they've been doing so well. Nothing ever makes Ryan more nervous than when Shane brings up the French Dancing Plague in an episode. Every time, somebody (many somebodies) always asks them when they're going to do an episode on it, asks why they haven't yet. Last time, somebody tagged him in a tweet asking them to please cover it, “because I wanna see the look on shane's face when @ryansbergara says ‘faeries.'” The tweet got close to 200 likes despite the fact that Ryan ignored it entirely. It's a wonder Shane didn't see it, honestly.

For now, Ryan deflects Shane's reference and continues spinning his tale, about aliens over in Europe. He can ignore all the questions asking them to cover the dancing plague, same as he always does, and hope Shane ignores them as well. If not, Ryan has time to come up with an excuse that isn't “ because I know exactly what caused it .”

They finish recording, and Shane invites Ryan over to watch movies and hang with him, Sara, and Obi. Ryan agrees for the cat. Obi loves him in the same way all animals do; that is, not all that much at all. Animals tend to be distrustful of Ryan unless they know him from the very beginning of their life. It's something he'd asked his parents about when he was small, and his mother had ruffled his hair with a fond smile and said, simply, that it was just the way it was. Ryan wants Obi to like him though, so he always takes whatever chance he can to prove to the cat that he's trustworthy. It hasn't worked out very well, so far, but Ryan's hopeful.

They drive over together in Shane's car, chatting about upcoming movies they'd like to see and the last two episodes of Supernatural they have left to film: two locations out on the East Coast, including the season's demon episode. Shane ribs on him about his fear of “nonexistent” demons, and Ryan realizes, again, that there is nothing stopping him from telling his best friend everything.

Immediately, he shoves that thought away, because there are a million reasons not to tell Shane and very few reasons to do so. It would only lead to more trouble.

The second Ryan walks through the door, Obi hissed at him and jumps off Sara's lap, darting under the couch to hide. Sara frowns. “I really don't understand why he doesn't like you,” she says, but none of them make any efforts to coax the poor thing out. They know better by now; it's a wasted effort.

“It's probably the demon blood,” Ryan says, making sure he sounds like he's joking.

“Demon blood?” Shane repeats, jumping on the bit.

“I've been meaning to talk to you about that,” Ryan says, grinning wide. Shane just laughs, walks away and into the kitchen. A few seconds later, he can hear the telltale sound of popcorn being made.

He really does think it's probably the demon blood, though. He just thinks maybe the angel blood should cancel it out.

Sara is inconsolable beside him. Ryan thinks about trying to calm her aura, a swirling mass of worried blues and frightened reds and…guilt. Stark white guilt that runs underneath all of the blues and reds and purples, indicating it to be weaker than the others but still very real and present. Ryan isn't in a place to be manipulating her aura, as his is in a very similar state, but he's still an empath, damn it.

“Sara, hey,” he says gently, wrapping an arm around her shaking shoulders. “This isn't your fault.”

She shakes her head, furiously wipes tears from her eyes. “I wasn't supposed to go out,” she tells him, voice thick with tears. “I was...we were just going to stay in today, do nothing.” She sobs, horrible sounds that wrack her body and make Ryan's heart shatter each time. The next leap in her logic is clear: if she'd been home, like she was meant to be, they wouldn't have taken him. Ryan knows better.

“Hey, you don't know that makes a difference,” he tells her, choosing his words carefully. “He's probably glad you weren't here. They could have taken you, too.” They would have.

She takes a shuddering breath, stands up straight. “We have to call the police.”

Ryan freezes. “No.” The police are the last thing they need right now; they won't be able to find him and they won't be able to decode the message written in what looks sickeningly like blood.

Sara stares at Ryan in wide-eyed shock. “Ryan,” she says slowly, like she thinks he's in shock and not thinking clearly, “we have to call the police.”

“We can't,” he says, and begs her to leave it there.

She doesn't. Instead, she slowly, carefully, steps away from him and pulls out her phone. Ryan can tell he's going to lose this unless he explains.

Or.

No.

But…

No.

“Sara, please.” He's begging, afraid to resort to anything he knows he'll regret but desperate enough to do what it takes. The police will come tromping in, take everything that Ryan will need to get him back, and then Ryan and Sara will both be suspects in a missing persons case. He can worm his way out of it, probably even get the important stuff back, but it'll be too much trouble and then he may be too late. “I know it sounds crazy, but i need you to trust me. We can't call the police.”

Sara shakes her head and dials 9-1-1. Before she hits call, Ryan gives in.

He is, after all, desperate.

“ Give me the phone. ”

Sara does, glassy-eyed and robotically, as if she isn't aware she's doing it. She probably isn't; high emotions and Ryan's distaste for forcing people into doing what he wants leads to more force than he means.

Once the phone is safely in his hand and not in Sara's, Ryan lets the charm drop. She blinks, confused, but Ryan tosses the phone on the bed and grabs her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “Listen. We are going to get Shane back. I promise.”

Hes delighted to find that he believes it himself.

They're getting ready to film the Post Mortem for the alien episode when Shane says, “Lotta people asking where the France episode is.”

Ryan shrugs. “I just don't think it's worth it.” It's too dismissive. Now it sounds like Ryan thinks it's dumb.

“Oh, I agree.” There goes Shane, always reliable in surprising Ryan. “I already know all about it. I was planning on talking about it in season two of Ruining History, but.” Shane shrugs; they both know how that turned out.

The matter drops. They film the Post Mortem and move on with their respective days. Ryan can't not think about what Shane had said, though.

Because the thing is, Ryan can only ignore and put off answering questions about why they haven't covered the Dancing Plague yet for so long, before some daring fan asks them in person at a convention or something. Technically, he can explain it away without ever once mentioning that he already knows exactly what caused it, since, as Shane pointed out, his co-host already knows all the details. The whole point of the show is that it's Ryan with the whole story, Ryan with all the details, and Shane just happens to be along for the ride.

But the fans want to know the story, want Ryan and Shane to banter and bicker their way through it, want Ryan to propose that Shane's favorite incident of mass hysteria was caused by aliens or demons or faeries. Ryan thinks a Ruining History episode about it would suffice, would satisfy the desire for knowledge and banter without getting too close to Ryan revealing all his secrets.

He has morals. He has incredibly specific morals, morals he refuses to compromise on, even when he was in danger of losing his job or the show, when he was in danger of never getting the show in the first place. But he's getting backed into a wall, and he's beginning to feel like he may be cornered soon, trapped by disappointed masses. And it's not like Ruining History isn't missed--people ask about it every day.

He has morals. But his secret is more important than those.

When Ryan was five, he made the mistake of asking his father why the lady in the parking lot was surrounded by yellow. The stranger had overheard him, and the yellow had turned orange. Somehow, instinctively, little five-year-old Ryan knew it was because she was confused. His father had reprimanded him, told him it was rude to point out other people's colors. But his father was swirling shades of blue and red, worried and scared.

When he was six, Ryan had convinced his teacher to let the class play outside all day. No class, just recess until it was time to go home. His parents had argued that night, both swirling angry red and scared red and still that worried blue. They were always worried blue, something adult Ryan has come to understand is paranoid. What he never understood was why .

Even after they explained, told him that the colors were emotional auras, told him that the reason people sometimes do exactly as he says is because he has a magic voice, told him that the reason he can tell when other people are saying things that aren't true even when he can't do that is because he isn't human, even after all of that, he never understood what they were always so paranoid over. Paranoia is rarely rational, but sometimes it makes perfect sense.

Just because he never knew what his parents were protecting him from doesnt change the fact that they were protecting him. And he should have asked more questions, should have learned all he could, but he didn't understand. Didn't know that he should have.

Hindsight is always 20/20, or whatever.

The bloody TIME'S UP is burned into Ryan's mind, because this is a message for him. Time's up, it's time to make a choice. They've found him, and Ryan didn't even know they were looking.

The excited yellow that surrounds Shane is blinding, like staring straight into the sun. Bright and pulsating, a rare occurrence in auras because it requires a single, strong emotion. Ryan didn't even know the taller man was capable of that; his aura is always the most complicated in the room, and Ryan needs hours to decode it. He usually refrains, only focuses on what's on the surface in an attempt to allow some semblance of privacy. It doesn't matter today.

He knows what Shane's going to say before he says it. He lets him say it anyway. “They greenlit a new season of Ruining History!”

Seriously, Ryan has never seen his friend so excited. Or maybe anyone, now that he thinks about it.

“That's great!” Ryan says, feigning surprise. Of course they greenlit season two; nobody can refuse Ryan anything he asks for when he puts the right kind of charm in his voice, the right smile on his face. All it had taken was a it's a real shame Ruining History had to end and the fans keep asking about it and then I think maybe we should bring it back and now they're here. It was so easy, required so little magic, he almost doesn’t even have to feel guilty about it.

Look, he's not proud of himself. Usually, he only uses his charmspeak to get asshole customers to lay off of the poor retail workers, make them stop shouting at the cashier who cant take their expired coupon for an entirely different store. Small kindnesses, good things for other people. He never charmspeaks his friends and he never uses it for personal gain or career advancement or anything like that. He doesn’t even use it for Lakers tickets, and he thinks that's a true testament to how surprisingly straight his moral compass is. But Shane's pulsing yellow happiness is almost too much, and Ryan feels like he's going to be sick. Shane thinks this just happened, that their superiors just realized that Ruining History deserved more content.

Shane wouldn't believe it if Ryan told him the truth.

Worse still, if or when he did believe it, he'd be livid.

Maybe Ryan did make a mistake.

Shane throws himself into research, striving to prove to everyone that the abrupt renewal wasn’t a mistake, aiming for a third season to be guaranteed, wanting this one to be better than the last. Ryan gets into his own research, too, since the new season of True Crime is coming up fast. The yellow is still bright in the corner of his eye, leaving lasting imprints like if Ryan was staring directly at a bright light source.

Shane's happy, he reminds himself, trying to talk the guilt down. I did this for him. And also himself, mostly himself, but he wonders: if he avoids thinking the truth, if he lies to himself by omission, could he possibly come to believe it?

The sickly guilt sticks with him for weeks, to the point where Ryan finds himself sitting beside Shane the night before they film the first episode of the new season and is so sorely tempted to tell him everything. Not for the first time, he asks himself what exactly there is to lose. Immediately following, he has to remind himself that he stands to lose Shane’s friendship. Because even if the older man doesn’t believe him, then what Ryan is telling Shane is the show wasn’t good enough to continue without magic intervention. Which, while technically true, is probably not something that Shane should know. Sometimes, it’s kinder to let people believe the lie.

“Ryan?” Shane prompts, and Ryan realizes that he’s been so lost in his own head that he has no idea what he’s being asked. “What movie do you want to watch?”

Yes, right. Movie night. Sara’s out with some other friends, it’s just Ryan and Shane, RyanandShane , Netflix and popcorn, just like always. Ryan can’t figure out why this whole thing is pressing more on his mind lately, even with the added stress of compromising on his morals. Nobody is going to accuse him of being anything other than human, not seriously. So Ryan doesn’t want to cover something Shane already knows about on Unsolved, they’d get over it. In what world does that lead to somebody on the Internet saying, “Ryan doesn’t want to cover the Dancing Plague because he’s fae and he already knows the Fair Folk are to blame”?

Except. Well. It’s the Internet. They’ve made farther leaps on less.

“Uh,” Ryan pulls himself out of the dark spiral his brain’s trying to take him down. “Something bad. Hilariously bad. The lowest rated movie you can find.”

There’s a sparkle in Shane’s eye. “Me and Sara watched something the other day. You’ll hate it!”

Ryan does, in fact, hate it, so much so that he doesn’t even remember what it’s called. The pacing is awful and the writing is so clunky and awkward and expositional that it drags on forever, and that’s not even mentioning how awful the cinematography is. Mark would have an aneurysm; they’ve gotten better shots on their GoPros.

It’s delightful. Ryan’s able to shove all of his problems to the back of his mind, laughing at Shane as he mocks whatever nonsense is happening on the screen and eating his body weight in popcorn. Once the movie ends, and they’re a couple beers deep each, content and getting sleepy, Shane stretches languidly as his cat (who is peering up at Ryan from underneath the armchair in the corner).

“It’s weird, right?” Shane asks softly, and Ryan has to ask him to elaborate. “Ruining History.”

“Yeah, it’s a weird show,” Ryan agrees, his brain waving red flag after red flag as loud ABORT sirens blare.

Shane frowns. “That’s not what I meant,” he says, carefully, like he suspects Ryan of something. His aura’s a swirling rainbow, same as it always is. Mostly nerves, probably because he knows that he’s been given a second chance with the show that meant as much to him as Unsolved meant to Ryan. Ryan can’t see the telltale dark shades of suspicion, but he can sense something in the way Shane’s acting. “I meant it’s weird that they just…approved it out of nowhere.”

Ryan shrugs. He hadn’t really thought ahead to this possibility, that Shane would be curious about why. He’s not exactly concerned , just.

He’s a bit wary, is all.

“Maybe they finally realized how many people have been begging for it to come back,” he says finally, delicate, hoping that the matter can drop here. If Shane presses too far, Ryan may not be able to stop the floodgates. He’ll let the truth come tumbling out.

“Yeah,” Shane agrees. Drop it, drop it, drop it. “I’d given up on it, though. Figured after this long, that’s it. Fun while it lasted, Unsolved is good enough, all that mess. And then, suddenly, just. Called me in, told me they’d greenlit it. Didn’t explain anything at all.”

Yes, Ryan can see why that’s weird. Buzzfeed’s a weird company, letting employees in on the decision making process when it matters. Shane knew why they weren’t giving him a second season, all the reasons that they had, but they didn’t tell him why they’d had a change of heart.

Mainly because they didn’t know it was because Ryan made them change their minds.

“Who could possibly tell what goes on in their heads?” he says, dancing around the truth in a way that is all too natural for him. For a creature incapable of lying, he's exceptional at dishonesty. He's heard that they all are.

The next day, the undercurrent of this was a mistake that Ryan’s been dealing with since he stepped out of the goddamn office turns into full blown panic. It’s all fine, at first; Shane finally gets to cover his fucking dancing plague mass hysteria nonsense and the five-way banter is good. Ryan thinks this is better than an episode of Unsolved could have been, even if he was just a normal human relaying facts and theories. Until Curly, on Shane’s other side, says, “My tía told me about this. She said it was fairies.”

Shane stares at him, and what a change to have that particular look directed at somebody else. Ryan chokes on air, but is able to recover to make it sound like he’s choking out a laugh.

“Fairies?” Shane repeats, incredulously.

Curly nods, and he looks like he’s ready to explain, but Shane holds up a hand. “No, see. This is exactly why I didn’t want to do this on Unsolved. Don’t think I’m okay with someone suggesting fairies just because it’s not Ryan.”

Ryan feels extra insulted, even though Shane’s right, he’d have to bring up the ties to the fae. He wheezes a laugh instead, because that seems more in character, even as his brain rushes at a thousand miles an hour to save the situation and get the talk away from the Fair Folk. There’s nothing he can do that doesn’t make him look suspicious, that won’t at the very least make it look like he’s doing an extended bit. There would be speculation online that the reason Ryan doesn’t want to talk about fae is because he is one. He’s stuck in a perilous situation, where he can do nothing but wait this out.

“It does fit in with faerie lore,” Ryan points out, instead, because he’s got a role to fill and he knows the lore like the back of his hand anyway. Avoidance is more suspect than steering into the skid. He can’t steer the conversation away without inviting more of it later, much to his chagrin.

He’s just glad there isn’t someone else who can read auras in the room, because he’s sure that he’s swirling in fear and panic and worry.

“What are-- no !” Shane’s getting irritated that the episode is getting away from him, away from his “facts” and “logic” and “reason” and careening into the territory of magic, where Shane himself can’t follow. “We’re not talking about fairies!”

“They make people do this, though!” Curly objects, and Ryan has to literally bite his tongue to keep himself from saying something he’ll regret. “They enchant people to dance until they die for their own entertainment!”

“They aren’t real!” Shane looks desperately over at Sara and Ryan. “Tell him fairies aren’t real!”

Ryan, damningly, can’t say anything at all. Shane looks aghast.

“Don’t tell me you believe in fairies,” and it almost sounds like he’s begging.

“They could be real! You don’t know!”

This is getting wildly out of control.

Ryan should, honestly, call his parents. He should call his parents and ask them what to do, ask them how the fuck he’s supposed to go about all of this. Ryan should pause, should think . Ryan should make sure that Sara is somewhere safe. Ryan should warn his brother, because he’s pretty sure Jake’s not going to be skipped right over.

Ryan should, Ryan should, Ryan should.

Ryan should do a lot of things.

He doesn’t do any of them.

What he does is something rash and dangerous and incredibly stupid. He has Sara sit down on the bed and gathers up everything he can use to track down where they may have come from to see if it’ll tell him where they may have gone. He’s going to do all the research he can once they get back to his own apartment, because he needs to find out where the entrance to the Court is. He needs to figure out which Court has Shane. He doesn’t know enough about his parents, about their lives before him. He should call them, ask questions and demand answers.

But they’ll demand answers of their own, and then they’ll convince him not to do exactly what he’s planning on doing.

Ryan is not stupid. One of the Faerie Courts, Seelie or Unseelie, have taken Shane, his very best friend, his partner in crime, and left a message telling him that time was up. It’s incredibly vague, but the meaning is clear. His parents’ old Court  will no longer allow him to wander around independent, unbound to either Court. Ryan belongs to himself, but that won’t be allowed any longer. He already knows, without even having to confront them, that the only way to get Shane out of the Faerie Realm will be to pledge allegiance to the Queen that’s holding him captive. And Ryan won’t be able to get back out, because fae have to honor promises and deals made.

Ryan will not tell his parents, because his parents will stop him.

He sees, now, that this is exactly what the consistent worried blue in his parents’ auras was about; this is why they were always so red scared when Ryan realized a new power, when he didn’t know how to use it or how it worked and so used it too freely. They were always so concerned about being found out, about being backed into a corner that they had no idea how to get out of it.

He just wishes that maybe they’d seen fit to clue him in on all of it.

He looks around the wrecked room, everything he needs packed into one of Shane’s bags because Ryan didn’t think to bring one of his own when he got a panicked call from Sara.

“Why can’t we call the police?” Sara asks smally, as Ryan helps her up and leads her out of the apartment. He refuses to let her out of his sight. “Ryan, you just--that’s a crime scene, you tampered with a crime scene, I let you, we’re--”

“I promise,” Ryan starts, and he has to take a deep breath to remind himself that he has to do this. “Sara, I promise, I will explain everything, okay. As soon as we get to my apartment, I will tell you what’s happening.”

It isn’t something he’s looking forward to, but it’s the least Sara deserves.

They’re getting set up to film the premiere for True Crime when Shane asks Ryan if he well and truly believes in the possibility of of fairies. “I can tolerate ghosts and demons,” he explains.  “But I cannot allow fairies.”

“According to the legends,” Ryan says, in that annoying avoiding-the-question way that he has to, the one that he knows grates on Shane by the way his aura is tinged with an annoyed green, “fae are half angel, half demon, and they live in a realm just off of ours. So it’s not impossible that they exist, and humans would never have to know.”

“Humans would never…” The green grows a little brighter. “That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said. Including telling me that maybe the city of Atlantis is kidnapping people.” It’s a lie, a small one; Shane still thinks that the Atlantis theory is the dumbest thing Ryan’s ever said.

Ryan shrugs. “I’m just saying. You can’t prove that they don’t exist.”

“You can’t prove that they do!”

I could . That desire to let Shane in on his biggest secret returns, thrumming under his skin incessantly. It would be painfully easy to prove, a quick charmspoken command, gentle enough that Shane would be aware that he’s doing something without meaning to. Walk to the door, get me a bottle of water, say ‘ghosts are real and the Hot Daga is dumb.’ So simple. Something not even Shane could explain away.

“That’s the point!” Ryan says instead. “You’d have to meet one of the fae to be able to prove they exist!” Me! I’m one of them! I exist, asshole!

Shane just sighs, the green getting bright enough that Ryan knows the matter will be dropped.

It’s actually easy, with Shane, to avoid that risk. Shane will never find out on his own, because Shane doesn’t believe in any of it himself. It’s not like he’ll look at the way that Ryan skirts his way around answers to questions sometimes, the way he always seems to know too well how somebody is feeling, how servers always seem to come over at exactly the same time, how the liaisons at all their locations seem just a little too charmed, and think it’s because Ryan’s anything special at all. Shane probably doesn’t even know that all of those could be indicative of fae at all, because he has no interest in knowing those sorts of things.

But also, Shane always makes the choice to drop conversations about the supernatural before they could possibly get close enough to the truth to genuinely worry Ryan about his secret getting out. It’s everybody else Ryan’s worried about; the other Boogaras out there who are conspiracy theorists at heart, the ones who know the tales of the Fair Folk who may notice that Ryan acts a little bit like them, the ones who are fearless enough to put it out there, the ones who would say “ I think Ryan is a faerie ” and maybe mean it and maybe be joking but Shane could see it and put it in the Post Mortem because he thinks it’s funny and Ryan wouldn’t be able to say it’s ridiculous. He could play into it as a bit, but it’s not like that would dissuade anyone.

It’s a fun episode, despite the grisly details of it. Long enough ago that it doesn’t feel as disrespectful to make dumb jokes and be their usual selves. It goes back to easy, Ryan gets to unwind and be himself without being afraid of being called on it. It’s just him and Shane and nothing else matters.

Ryan doesn’t need to be able to read auras to know that Sara doesn’t believe him.

To Sara, the facts are these:

1. Shane was not in the apartment when she got home, even though he should have been.
2. Their bedroom was wrecked, littered with flowers and leaves and dirt, a message in foot-high letters written in what may have been blood, saying “time’s up.”
3. Obi was cowering in the cabinet under the bathroom, which he never does. He was incredibly skittish and refused to come out, even when it was only Sara trying to coax him out. He trusts Ryan even less.
4. Ryan refused to let her call the police but wouldn’t explain why at first.
5. Ryan took many of the things left at the “crime scene,” despite being acutely familiar that this is also a crime and would implicate him in Shane’s disappearance. He seemed wholly unconcerned about this.

It looks bad. He knows this. But the facts, the real facts, are these:

1. Ryan’s parents, somehow, managed to leave the Court they were once pledged to.
2. Ryan and his brother are both full-blooded, second generation fae, who are unaffiliated with either Court. Ryan is coming up on the age where, were he pledged to a Court, they would begin using him for whatever purposes they see fit. Neither Court want unpledged fae out in the mortal realm.
3. Shane, whose life is publicly deeply intertwined with Ryan’s, is missing. There is evidence of the fae all over the bedroom.
4. Whoever took Shane took the time to inform somebody who was sure to see the bedroom wall that time has run out.

It’s one of the Courts, whichever Court Ryan’s parents left.

What he needs to do, what he knows he should do, is call his parents. His parents can tell him which Court they used to be a part of, they can tell him all the information he needs to know, but he knows, he knows that they’ll ask him why he’s asking, why he’s asking now , and he knows that he can’t tell them why.

So what he works on is calming Sara down. He has to do it the human way, since he’s so worried and scared and tense that there’s absolutely no way that he can manipulate Sara’s aura into anything else. So he sits down with her on the couch and tries to explain everything as best as he can. He tries to leave out the part where it’s his fault, though.

“Ryan,” Sara says, once he’s explained that he believes this is the work of the fae. Explained the signs, the evidence lined up that points directly at them. “Why would fairies kidnap Shane?”

Ryan sighs. He can’t avoid this. “Because they want to get to me.”

Shane is…not having a great day.

He and Sara were planning on having a very nice, quiet night in. One of Sara’s friend had some kind of “personal emergency” that required Sara’s immediate attention, which. Fine. Okay. Shane’s not upset about that, no intentions of holding anything against either of them. He and Sara have been together long enough that he can handle having to reschedule a night, especially since it wasn’t like there were reservations or money spent or anything. So he waved his girlfriend out the door with wishes that her friend is okay and settles down with his cat and the first thing on Netflix that catches his eye.

He’s texting his brother when he hears something coming from the bedroom. He looks down at Obi, who’s staring towards the bedroom with wide eyes, kind of like the way he looks at Ryan on the rare occasion where he doesn’t dart under the couch immediately after the shorter man walks through the door.

Brave , the fans call him, because he shouts at thin air. But here, confronted with the very real possibility-becoming-probability that somebody has broken into his apartment, Shane feels every part the coward that he actually is. He nudges Obi off his lap, and the cat darts into the bathroom faster than Shane has ever seen him move.

The best course of option Shane can see is to ever so slowly make his way to the front door, so he can leave without getting the attention of the burglar in the other room and call the cops. He stands up slowly, freezing when the couch creaks at the shift of weight.

The sound stops. Shane tries to run for the door, stealth be damned, but there’s somebody waiting in the hall, seemingly for him. They look like they’re dressed up for Halloween, or some kind of convention, pointed ears like an elf’s and sharp teeth. The eyes are slanted a little more than can possibly be natural and spaced too far apart, but Shane’s ready to chalk it up to fear. Until they open their mouth and say, “Freeze.” Shane does. He does not mean to, he has every intention of sprinting down the hall, but something holds him still. “Drop your phone.” Shane does that too, despite his brain screaming at him to do the opposite. This person doesn’t seem armed, but Shane thinks that maybe the reason he’s doing everything he’s told is because he’s afraid they’re hiding a gun, they’ll kill him if he doesn’t comply. “Come with us.” He doesn’t question the us , but he’s following the person before he can realize that he’s not making that decision.

There’s somebody behind him, he can feel them behind him, and it terrifies him. Even as the terror grips him, the realization that they’re getting him to the dreaded secondary location where nobody will find him taking over his brain, something in him calms. His brain is still listing off reasons to be afraid, to be worried; reminding him that they’re probably going to kill him and nobody’s looking at them twice and if Ryan doesn’t end the show due to his disappearance then he’d be able to be the topic of an episode (“The Tragic Disappearance of Shane Madej”), but there is absolutely no fear or concern or anything negative at all.

It’s probably shock. That’s how shock works, right?

Once they get onto the street, they lead him to a nondescript silver SUV. Shane thinks this is his chance to run, bolt down the street and start shouting for help. He can see the other person, the one that was behind him, and they’re both a foot shorter than he is, he could absolutely outrun them if he tried.

He doesn’t try. Instead, they tell him, “Get in the car.” He does.

Panic starts to overcome the inexplicable calmness as Shane entertains the notion that he’s been drugged. It would explain why his emotions don’t make sense and it would also explain why he’s being so complicit in his own kidnapping (he’d come to terms with the fact that he’s being kidnapped pretty much immediately). Almost as soon as it pops up, though, the panic subsides.

They drive for what seems like hours, and the unnatural peace that Shane’s feeling makes him more tired than he feels like he should be (another point for the drugged theory!) and he starts to drift off, despite the fact that he’s trying desperately to stay awake. He doesn’t think he ever fully falls asleep, but he’s out of it enough that he has no idea where they are.

When he comes back to himself, the car has been parked in woods somewhere, surrounded on all sides by huge trees. They can’t possibly be in LA anymore; Shane doesn’t even think they’re in SoCal at all. He can’t think of anywhere these kinds of trees grow that’s even remotely close to nearby where they started.

They’re never going to find my body . The thought is still only met by undulating calm. He doesn’t know what they drugged him with, or even when they’d had the chance to drug him in the first place, but he feels like whatever it was should have run out of his system in the time it took to get to wherever they are now.

For the first time, he entertains the idea that Ryan was right about the supernatural, but he immediately shoots that down. Why would demons politely tell him to leave and then proceed to keep him from freaking out? This was obviously the work of two humans, probably obsessed with Unsolved and looking to commit the kind of crime that would be featured, who had access to a crazy drug that they could administer through like, slipping it into his beer when he went to the bathroom or something.

They tell him to get out of the car, and again, he does. There’s a wall of thicket in front of the car, and they lead Shane through it. The bushes seem to part for them.

On the other side is a massive clearing, and there’s some kind of costume party going on because everybody has all kinds of SFX makeup. Some of them have things like leaves or flowers glued to their faces like they’re growing out of their skin. It’s almost as if Shane has walked into some low budget fantasy movie; if he could see any cameras he’d even think that they’d kidnapped him to be a part of it. Although, that still doesn’t explain why he’s so calm, since there’s no point in kidnapping a stranger for an authentic reaction if they’re just going to drug that stranger.

There’s a strong breeze, and if Ryan were here he’d be freaking out, because it sounds almost like there are whispers on the wind. That’s ridiculous, though; obviously it’s just the way that the wind is passing through the trees that surround the clearing. The people around them aren’t moving their mouths, so obviously it’s not them talking.

They lead him to the other side of the clearing, where what appears to be a preteen girl sits cross legged on the forest floor. Her eyes, like the two that kidnapped him, are slanted too much to be natural and spaced too far apart. Shane doesn’t know what kind of birth defect or cosmetic surgery these people may have had, but it’s unsettling to look at. She also has a flower crown on, with some kind of effects makeup and like, wax or something that makes it look like the flowers are growing out of her forehead. There are green undertones to her skin, but it doesn’t look sickly like Shane would have expected.

“Shane Alexander Madej,” she says. It cements Shane’s superfan theory. She doesn’t sound like an eleven-year-old girl, either; between the authoritative tone and the lack of that childish high-pitch in voices that haven’t gone through puberty yet. She looks to the person at Shane’s left. “I want to know what he really looks like.”

“I…look like this?” Shane tells her, stepping back uncertainly. That sounded like the sort of thing the serial killer in a movie says before ripping the skin off the victim’s face. Suddenly, all at once, that weird calm evaporates and Shane is filled with unrelenting panic, fear, and worry. I’m going to die here I’m gonna be killed in some weird cult thing by a bunch of weirdos dressed up like monsters oh fuck oh God.

The girl (woman? cult leader?) in front of him frowns. “No harm will come to you,” she says, matter of fact, as if Shane should believe her just because she said it. She waves her hand, and Shane feels the other two leave. The people lining the clearing mill about, like they’re finally allowed to talk to each other. The girl looks up at him. “Please, sit down. We have much to discuss.”

“All fae-- most fae are pledged to one of two Courts, Seelie or Unseelie. My parents used to be a part of one of them, but I don’t know which. When I was born, they swore to keep me away from both of them. The Courts…The Courts are terrible. Either of them, they force all the fae pledged to them to do anything and everything the Queen says. I think they just wanted to protect me, keep me from being forced into giving up my free will.

“In terms of faerie development, I guess I’m more of an adolescent. I’m getting to the point where my powers are less…shaky? Like, easier to use. Theoretically. When I use them, it’s easier to control them. And because of that, the Courts are beginning to view my unalignment as a threat. They need me to pledge to one of them, so I can be monitored and controlled. But it’s not like I would choose either of them without any kind of…encouragement.

“My entire life is on the internet. And so is my friendship with Shane. It doesn’t take a magical, otherworldly creature to be able to see that he’s easily the most important person in my life. The Ghoul Boys, Berry Boys, a package deal. God, we’ve made so many jokes about being inseparable, about being a unit. If there’s anything that will push me to make a decision, they have to know that it’s him.”

Sara’s looking at him, like she’s searching for some kind of sign that Ryan’s making this up, trying to work through the shock of Shane going missing by making up some kind of ridiculous story. At the very least, there’s so much disbelief swirling around in her aura it seems to have calmed some of the fear. Or, more like put it on the backburner.

“Ryan,” she says slowly, and Ryan recognizes all too well the blue worry creeping in, different from the worry she’s had for Shane. “Listen to me. I know you’re scared, but I need you to understand that fairies do not exist . Shane was kidnapped—” Her voice breaks around the word “—by real people . And we should have called the real police to find him.”

Ryan takes a deep breath to keep the frustration out of his voice when he asks her, “So why didn’t you?” At her confused look, he elaborates. “You were getting ready to. You had 911 dialed. Why’d you give me the phone when I told you to? Why didn’t you ignore me?”

“I…” Sara doesn’t seem to have thought about that. A different kind of unease settles into her aura alongside confusion, disbelief starting to fade. “I don’t…I don’t know? I didn’t—I didn’t really make that decision?”

“You didn’t,” Ryan agrees. He knows that maybe telling Sara that he ever-so-briefly removed her free will isn’t exactly the way to calm her down, but what he needs right now is for her to believe him. If she believes that he’s fae, then she’ll believe that the fae took Shane, and then she’ll believe him that the police wouldn’t be helpful. “It’s called charmspeak. It was so important that you didn’t call the police and…and I panicked. I swear it’s the only time I’ve used it on you, I didn’t—I didn’t know what to do, and I actually didn’t mean for it to be as strong as it was, I just don’t use it very often on anyone and—”

“Are you…Are you saying you made me give me your phone?” She isn’t as scared about the idea as she probably should be. At Ryan’s miserable nod, Sara sighs, like she’s trying to puzzle her way through this mess. “So what…What other powers do you have?”

Ryan doesn’t see how that’s relevant right now. He tries to say so, and Sara’s aura flares angry red, overtaking everything else.

“If we’re going into…into wherever these faeries are, I need to know what we’re going up against. So how about you stop hiding and fucking tell me what these things are going to try to do to me to keep us from getting Shane back!”

Ryan blinks up at her. “You’re not coming with me,” he tells her. This appears to be the wrong thing, because the red gets brighter.

“Like hell I’m not!” Admittedly, Ryan’s glad that he’s managed to distract her away from the fear and panic and everything, it helps him focus more on the bigger problem, but he wishes she wasn’t angry at him. Despite the sickening roiling in his stomach that reminds him that this is, in fact, his fault. “If we aren’t allowed to bring in the cops, then I’m not going to stand here and wait around for you to do--to do whatever it is you’re planning on doing!”

“Sara, no. It’s too dangerous.” Ryan’s resolute on this point. “I’m not bringing you with me, and I’m not changing my mind on it.” Sara’s clearing gearing up to work on convincing him otherwise, but Ryan cuts her off before she can. “Fae can’t lie. I, Ryan Bergara, am not taking you, Sara Rubin, with me into the center of either the Seelie or Unseelie Court, or anywhere adjacent to either Court.”

The red grows impossibly brighter. She seems about half a moment away from the anger being so present and overpowering that it’s about to be the only color of her aura; like Shane’s pulsing yellow happiness from finding out Ruining History was continuing, except the red surrounding Sara is actually scaring Ryan a bit.

“I am coming with you,” Sara tells him, voice steely and dangerous. She isn’t lying either. One of them is going to have to bend and break on this, but Sara doesn’t understand what’s at stake. “So tell me, what exactly do you plan on doing with me to keep me from following you?”

Ryan’s mind races to decide on the best course of action of the options he has. He could send Sara to his parents, where they can watch her and make sure nobody comes to take her, too. But that requires telling his parents that the fae have taken Shane and that Ryan plans on going in to rescue him by himself and do whatever it takes to get him back, even if that means giving up his own free will. It makes everything he’s done up to this point to keep this between him and Sara worthless.

He could use charmspeak again, tell her to stay here and not follow. But that leaves her unattended and unguarded, allowing the fae to come and take her away too--possibly even the other Court, the one that doesn’t have Shane. That could lead him to having to choose between the two, not to mention the way that whichever one he chooses would have to live with the consequences, while Ryan would probably end up stuck in the faerie realm.

He could call Jake. His brother would understand, Ryan’s sure. There’s another faerie there to make sure Sara’s safe, one that he trusts. But the problem is that Jake might tell their parents, out of worry for his brother and the stupid decision he’s about to make. Jake isn’t as deeply intertwined into this as Ryan is, it’s not Jake’s best friend who’s being held captive. Jake can see through this more clearly, he doesn’t have the same reservations about calling somebody who can actually help with this.

Ryan sighs. “There’s not much that an entire Court of Fair Folk can’t do.” It’s not resignation, he’s not agreeing to bring Sara with him. But no matter what they end up doing, she’s in danger. It wouldn’t hurt for her to be prepared. “Their charmspeak will be stronger than mine, better. You won't even notice that you don't want to be doing whatever they tell you. They can manipulate your aura however they see fit, make you scared or angry or insanely calm. And.” Ryan feels like his tongue is too big for his mouth. “They can glamour themselves and everything around you. Make you see things that aren't there.”

“That...doesn’t sound particularly dangerous,” Sara says carefully. It’s like she’s hedging him, like she knows that he’s not telling her everything.

Ryan needs to try again. “They can make you do anything they want you to do. They can change how you feel . Any panic, any fear, any emotions that will make you proceed with caution, they can take those all away. Or they can amplify it, make the fear so bad that it drives you into a panic attack so bad it actually kills you. I need you to understand what the risk here is.”

“Why? So maybe I’ll decide I don’t want to come after all?” There’s venom in her voice. It almost makes Ryan more afraid of her than he is of what awaits him in the Court.

“No, because they’ll come after you anyway!”

Sara freezes. Ryan sees all the anger evaporate out.

He sighs. “There’s two Courts, Sara. And there’s only one Shane.” Even without the ability to see her aura, Ryan can tell when the realization dawns. “There’s no reason to believe the other Court wouldn’t come for you. And then I’d have to make a choice that isn’t just my freedom for Shane’s; it’s Shane’s freedom or yours. And I won’t have to live with the consequences of my choice, because I’ll be aligned with the Court. I’d never get to see either of you again, regardless. I’m never going to be able to see either of you again.” He feels his throat start to close up, tears pricking in the corners of his eyes. He can’t cry, not yet. He’s got to find Shane, first.

Ryan’s got a pretty good idea, after almost eight hours of careful and meticulous research, where the gate to the faerie realm is. Sara dozes fitfully on his couch, with very little interference on his part.

The only place that every single leaf, flower petal, and piece of tree bark comes from, in the entire country, is Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state. He is trying not to think about the possibility that the entrance isn’t in the country, but he’s pretty confident that there has to be some kind of gate in the US. For one, there are faerie portals all over everywhere, but also, if they want him to be able to get to where they are, they wouldn’t make it impossible.

The problem, now, is finding where the portal is inside the very large stretch of forest that he’s narrowed it down to.

And, still, Sara. He still didn’t know what to do about her. Every time he has to wait for a page to load, he lets runs over all the options again, over and over, until he’s forced to accept that there isn’t any option where she’s completely safe. Even if he did go to his parents, he had no idea if that would actually assure her safety. Ryan doesn’t know anything about his parents and their history with the Court except that they had one at all. There’s every possibility that they could still be bound to obey, and then where would Ryan and Sara be? Jake’s even more hesitant to use his powers than Ryan is, not to mention he’s still young enough that those powers are shaky. He doesn’t stand a chance against fully mature, aligned fae. Granted, Ryan doesn’t either, but he’s not exactly looking to walk out of his encounter himself.

There really isn’t a way to win this.

Ryan sighs, putting his head in his hands. “Fuck me,” he mutters. It sums up this whole mess pretty well, he feels.

“Research going well, then?”

Ryan looks over to where Sara’s sitting up on the couch, watching him carefully. If the only indicator he had to her emotions were her face, he’d have no idea what was going on in her head.

He chooses to pretend that’s the case, instead of commenting on anything he sees that he’s sure she doesn’t want him to.

“I think I’ve found the portal they’re trying to lead me to.” He hopes she doesn’t pick up on the uncertainty of the phrasing.

She does, if the thrill of fear that shoots through her aura is any indication. She doesn’t say call him on it, though. Instead, she seems to catalogue it away for later.

“Then what’s the problem?”

Ryan sighs. “It’s in Washington,” he says softly. “All I’ve got is that it’s in a national forest park up in Washington State.”

“And you’re not sure,” Sara adds. She knows him too well, he thinks, despite her only learning just yesterday that she doesn’t know him at all.

Ryan nods. “And I’m not sure.”

Sara stands up, and Ryan watches in amazement as all the fear, worry, and uncertainty bleed away in steely determination. “Then what are we waiting for?”

Shane’s not exactly an expert on fairy tales and folklore, but he’s pretty sure that he read somewhere once that you’re not supposed to accept food from the Fair Folk, which these people are claiming to be. He’s more familiar with real people and true crime cases, and he knows that it’s a bad idea to accept food from strangers who have kidnapped you, especially if they’re unhinged enough to be claiming to be magical, immortal beings who kidnapped him just to get at his best friend.

And how does that make sense? Sure, Ryan’s got those muscles that all their fans are thirsting over in the comments on all their Instagram posts and YouTube videos, comments that they have to intentionally skip over in their searches for good Post Mortem questions, but he’s hardly going to use them to fight. They absolutely could have kidnapped him if he’s the one they wanted (not that Shane wishes they had kidnapped him, but it’s the principle of the matter). Not to mention, for all the dumb shit Ryan says, he’s a smart dude, and he knows a lot about true crime. The moment Ryan and Sara realized Shane’s missing, they must have called the cops. The fact that these people don’t seem to be planning on killing him gives Shane good hope that the police are going to find him, even with all the stories Ryan’s told him about incompetent and corrupt law enforcement. He’ll be rescued in no time, he’s sure of it.

Or, they are planning on killing him. Shane’s trying not to think too hard about that one.

“It is unwise to accept the offers of the Queen,” the girl beside Shane says, once more trying to offer him some kind of platter. Shane supposes it’s probably food, but it’s nothing he’s ever seen before.

“Pretty sure it’s dumb to accept food from strangers, too,” Shane points out. He wonders who her parents are; what kind of people don’t mention to their twelve-year-old daughter the concept of stranger danger?

It’s getting harder to ignore the hunger pains in his stomach, though. He hopes that somebody comes to save him soon.

They almost make it all the way out of California before Ryan’s phone rings. It’s either someone from BuzzFeed, asking where he is, where Shane is, where Sara is; or it’s his parents, with their uncanny ability to know when Ryan’s doing something he shouldn't be. He doesn’t answer the phone, leaving it in his pocket where it will stay until they get closer to the exit they need to take off of I-5. But, since they’ll be on I-5 for a while, Ryan doesn’t need his phone. He debates just turning it off.

Sara, in the passenger seat, refusing to be left behind, looks at him with unmasked concern. “Did you get any sleep last night?” she asks, after the third time his phone rings. It’s almost four, and Ryan hasn’t slept in somewhere near thirty-six hours.

“It’ll be fine,” Ryan says, brushing her off. The great thing, he marvels, is that it is some unspoken thing, and since he doesn’t know what it is, he can say that it’ll be fine without it getting caught in his throat.

“You’re pulling off at the next exit. I’m driving,” Sara says, like she’s already figured out what Ryan’s non-answers mean.

“It’s fine,” Ryan says again.

“Ryan.” There’s a world of meaning behind it when she says his name. Ryan tries not to think about it. “We’re no use to him at all if you drive us off a cliff.”

Except, Ryan thinks but doesn’t say, that there’s no reason for them to keep Shane if Ryan is dead.

Immortal is not indestructible. Ryan can be killed; at least, he’s pretty sure he can. He’s not much hardier than the average human, his bones can be broken and he bleeds just as easily as everyone else. He’s pretty sure that if the car went careening off a cliff, he’d be just as likely to die as Sara. Of course, the last thing he wants to do is kill Sara, so he has no choice but to agree with her.

“We should probably stop somewhere for hiking supplies,” Ryan says, like the words are torn from him. He’s wearing his ghoul killing boots, which are technically hiking boots, he’s pretty sure, but that’s where their preparation ends. Sara’s wearing a pair of ballet flats , for fuck’s sake. They don’t have water bottles, backpacks, anything for camping—if it comes to that—or anything else that they could possibly need in the forest.

Sara, to her credit, just nods, like she’d been thinking the same thing but was afraid to mention it.

It feels like there’s something every second that points out how unprepared they are for this.

It’s dark when they’re halfway through Oregon; Ryan’s pretty sure that it’s coming up on ten. Sara’s phone rings. He sees Curly’s name on the screen. She ignores it, the same as Ryan’s been doing. He may have fallen asleep for an hour or so. Not long enough.

He’d put his phone on Do Not Disturb hours ago, not wanting to deal with it. They’re all coworkers trying to contact him, nobody in his family who could figure out what he’s up to. Curly and Steven Lim and literally everybody on the Unsolved team with him.

Ryan’s been avoiding thinking about Unsolved this entire time. It’s over, Shane isn’t going to want to continue it without him. He’s not even sure that the show could —nobody else at BuzzFeed believes quite as strongly as Ryan does (mainly because nobody else is fucking half-demon ), and nobody else is so invested in learning everything they can about depressing and gory true crime cases just for the hell of it. Nobody’s ever even going to know why the show has to end, just that it does.

Maybe, Ryan thinks, Shane could do one last episode. The Abrupt Disappearance of Ryan Bergara . He can see it now: Shane, alone at the table, talking about being kidnapped by people who claimed to be faeries (because he knows Shane isn’t going to believe them) and then Ryan showed up, and then they let Shane go and kept Ryan forever. A tragedy, truly.

“What am I supposed to tell everyone?” Sara asks, suddenly. They haven’t spoken since they finished at Walmart, buying cheap camping supplies and hoping that they’d last long enough. “If you’re really not planning on coming back? What the hell are supposed to say happened to you?”

Ryan sighs. He hasn’t thought of that, mainly because he’s trying to avoid it. “I don’t know,” he admits.

“Because,” Sara steamrolls on, like Ryan hadn’t said anything at all, “I am not going back to the office and telling them that Shane was kidnapped by faeries and that Ryan’s a faerie and he sacrificed himself to get Shane back.”

“I’m not sacrificing myself,” Ryan objects, because he isn’t. “They aren’t going to kill me.”

“You’re sacrificing your freedom ,” Sara points out. “And that isn’t better , Ryan, have you even considered your other options?”

“My other option is leaving Shane there.”

They don’t say anything again until they get to get to their exit, the sun back in the sky.

“I’m sorry,” Sara says, always the one to break the silence.

“Don’t be.”

This is hard for her, Ryan knows that. She had to cancel plans with Shane, and when she got home he was gone. Then she found out that Ryan had been hiding a huge part of himself from them the entire time he’s known them, and that Ryan’s the reason Shane’s been taken (although he’s fairly certain she doesn’t actually believe that, not totally).

And she’s going to have to be the one that explains everything to Shane, in the end. Ryan doesn’t think the Queen will give him much chance to say his goodbyes. As soon as he’s there, she’ll send Shane and Sara back to the mortal realm and keep Ryan there forever. And that’s not fair, either, for Sara to have to pick up all of Shane’s pieces as his worldview is shattered and his best friend is lost.

Idly, he wonders if the fae realized how much they were fucking up by taking Shane, or if they’ve just gotten phenomenally lucky.

They make it to the entrance to the park, and Ryan is, once again, struck with the enormity of the place. He hadn’t truly realized what a needle-in-a-haystack scenario this whole mess has been fated to be. He’s been hoping that some kind of innate, latent fae ability would kick in as soon as he was in range of the portal and he’d just know which way to go. To be fair, he may not be within range, whatever that range would even be. Ryan sighs and steps out of the car, honestly wishing that there was a better option for keeping Sara safe than bringing her with him.

“So…He’s somewhere in here?” Sara’s squinting in the morning sun, looking at the dense forest surrounding the parking lot they’re in.

“Sort of,” Ryan says cryptically, grabbing the bag they’d packed with supplies at Walmart. He doesn’t explain what he means until he’s charmspoken the forest ranger to let them in for free. He’d feel worse if it weren’t for the fact that they’re only going in for a rescue mission. “The fae reside on a different plane of existence from us. There are different doorways that can lead to that plane. So the fae that took him came through one of those portals, and presumably brought him through the same one. I went through everything that they left in the bedroom, looking at all the places where they grow naturally. It led me here. So, it stands to reason, the portal they used is somewhere in…all this.” He waves an arm at all the trees and foliage. “Find the portal, get to the faerie realm. Get Shane back.”

It seems so simple when he says it like that.

“What if…” Sara trails off, but Ryan doesn’t like the way the colors in her aura shift. “Why would they lead us right to them?”

Ryan could have sworn he’d already explained this. Kind of. In halves. Look, he’s not used to full transparency, alright?

“They aren’t actually after Shane,” he says, and really, he definitely already said this. “It wouldn’t make sense for them to send us to the wrong place if they want me to come to them.”

“So…Why didn’t they just take you?” Sara asks. Her aura lights up embarrassed yellow. “Not—Ryan, I don’t, I didn’t—”

“I need to step through into the realm of the Fair Folk completely and totally of my own volition,” Ryan says, saving Sara the trouble of trying to backtrack. He knows she didn’t mean it in a bad way, just that she doesn’t see the point in kidnapping one person in order to get to another. It’s not like a ransom, kidnapping Shane for money. “Which, I wouldn’t have. Three days ago, I’d have said I wouldn’t go to the faerie realm for anything. So they found the one thing that could make me change my mind.”

“So how do you think Shane’s trying to rationalize all this, anyway?” Sara asks, a while later, after she trips over a tree root for the fifth time. Ryan’s up to seven, and he’s fallen to the ground twice.

“Oh, he thinks he’s been drugged, definitely.” There’s the barest spark of amusement in Sara’s aura. “And he thinks that he’s being held by crazy people.”

“I mean, anyone who kidnaps somebody else isn’t exactly sane,” Sara points out. “So that’s a given.”

Ryan smiles for the first time since Sara called him the other night. “Well, obviously,” he agrees, “but if they explained to him what he’s there for, then he definitely thinks they’re like, delusional fans.”

Sara laughs, actually laughs , at the thought. It’s so shocking that Ryan trips again.

They can’t do anything when the sun stops filtering in through the trees. They find a spot where the ground is flat enough to set up the cheap tent that they’d bought, except that neither of them actually know how to pitch a tent. They end up getting it set up, but there’s a point where all that’s happening is Ryan smacking himself in the face with all the poles about a dozen times each with Sara holding the flashlight and laughing at him.

It takes another day and a half of directionless wandering before Ryan catches the traces of impossibly strong magic. It takes another hour after that before he’s able to pinpoint which direction it’s coming from. He doesn’t tell Sara how he knows where they’re going, or even that he does --they’ve been picking random directions and just walking this entire time. He doesn’t think that telling her that he has a feeling and that’s what they need to rely on to find her boyfriend.

Also, there’s some kind of bloodhound or Spidey sense joke just waiting to be made.

They keep going for another couple of hours before the sensation of ambient magic is overpowering, all-encompassing, and it very nearly brings Ryan to his knees.

“Ryan?” Sara places a careful hand square between his shoulder blades, studying his face with concern. “What is it?”

“We’re getting close,” he forces out, the magic nearly suffocating him. He takes a deep, steadying breath, closes his eyes, and tries to stop fighting the pull of the magic. He knows that’s his problem, that he’s so used to rejecting anything stronger than the barest hint of charmspeak, the faintest glamour so that he can get through a crowded airport without being recognized.

He can tell by Sara’s startled gasp that the magic changes his eyes to the steely grey that indicates he’s using his own powers.

It doesn’t become any less strong, but it’s easier to handle. Ryan straightens up and breathes out slowly. The way the magic courses through him is a heady, intoxicating sensation. He thinks he’s going to have to get used to this: if this is what it’s like as they near the portal, he can’t imagine what it’ll be like on the other side.

“What...what was that?” Sara asks, half a step behind Ryan as he squares his shoulders and keeps moving forward. “Ryan? Ryan, please tell me you’re okay.”

Okay probably doesn’t cover it. “I’m fine.” That doesn’t cover it either. “It was just overwhelming, is all.” He stops in front of a gap between two trees. There’s nothing remarkable about the space, contrary to what Ryan was expecting. He’d almost think he had it wrong, if it weren’t for the fact that he can see the swirling aura of strong, heady magic that the gap emits out into the rest of the forest. “This is it.”

The enormity of the situation hits him. Shane is on the other side. In order for Shane to get back here, to this side, Ryan cannot come back. This is the biggest choice Ryan is ever going to be faced with in his life, the whole never-ending eternity of it. And every instinct his parents ingrained in him is screaming at him that he’s making the wrong one: he should take Sara back to California, settle for the human friends that he still has, leave Shane to the mercy of the Court. After all, it’s not like he gets to spend any more time with Shane anyway . If one of them has to spend the rest of his life imprisoned in the faerie realm, why should it be the one whose natural lifespan is an eternity?

But then, Ryan’s never been good at listening to the instincts his parents took so much time to ingrain in him. If he had been, he wouldn’t have agreed to work at a company with a massive online presence, and he certainly wouldn’t have agreed to do anything in front of the camera. Also, being half-demon trying to masquerade as human himself, he absolutely wouldn’t have gone looking to prove the existence of demons on camera , going on to become one of the most popular members of that company with a massive online presence.

It really is his fault his best friend’s been kidnapped by the fae. Ryan should have listened to his parents.

He looks over at Sara. “Stay close. Don’t trust a single thing they say. Don’t accept anything from them. You’re going to need a faerie to get you back out, and they aren’t going to let it be me. Once you get out, take Shane and run .”

“How do I know they will get us out?” She seems just as overcome by the enormity of this whole thing as Ryan.

“They’ll have to. Otherwise I can leave, and they can’t have that.” Ryan takes a deep breath, wraps an arm around Sara, and they step through the space between the trees together.

The first thing Ryan notices is the cloyingly sweet smell of flowers, so strong that it feels like an assault on all sides. The second thing he notices is the intoxicating rush of power—not magic, like in the clearing, but power , the knowledge that he can do absolutely anything. It almost makes him think he can take on the Queen.

The third thing he notices is Shane, with almost a dozen shades of manipulated calm to his aura and a telltale glaze over his eyes that says that he’s been charmspoken, so well and thoroughly that Ryan can tell from where he stands, on the total opposite side of the clearing. He feels Sara tense beside him, hears her gasp and knows that she wants to run to Shane and check him over herself. She restrains herself, and Ryan thinks she might finally believe him entirely.

“Ryan Steven Bergara.” There is what looks like a young girl sitting to Shane’s left, but Ryan can tell even without hearing the authority in her voice that she is so impossibly old. This is the Queen.

Shane looks up then, and a dopey smile spreads slowly across his face. “We have superfans!”

Ryan feels a pang in his chest at the realization that Shane isn’t lying. He genuinely believes that he’s being held by delusional fans. He’s going to think that Ryan chose to give himself over to delusional fans instead of calling the police like a rational, intelligent person who some people would consider an expert in true crime cases. Shane is probably going to think that this is all his fault.

Shane’s going to need fucking therapy after all of this.

“I’ve come for the freedom of Shane Madej,” Ryan announces, and there are whispers in the wind. The human’s freedom! He’s come for the human’s freedom! There isn’t a visible audience—it’s just Ryan, Sara, Shane, and the Queen—but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t anyone else watching.

He tries not to look at Shane as he says it, but he can’t miss the way that his best friend’s face falls. “Ryan.” He sounds sad, surprised. “You should have called the police!”

The Queen acts as if Shane hadn’t spoken, and Ryan knows enough to take his cues from her. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say to Shane, anyway.

“And what will you give in return?” the Queen asks. Despite the large distance between them, she doesn’t raise her voice at all. It’s like she speaks and sends the words to him on the wind.

“What would you have me give?” Ryan knows the answer, of course he knows the answer, but if there’s any chance of bargaining, then he has to try.

The Queen laughs. “If you truly did not know the answer to that, then you would not have come alone.”

“He’s not alone,” Sara says from Ryan’s side, and Ryan wants nothing more than to tell her to stay quiet. He knows, from experience, that Sara will do whatever she damn well pleases. “I’m here with him.”

The Queen tilts her head in mock confusion. “Yes,” she agrees. “You are. And tell me, what exactly is it that you think you could provide?”

Ryan expects Sara to shrink under the scrutiny, to step back and fall silent and realize just how out of her depth she is. She doesn’t; somehow, it doesn’t surprise Ryan the way that it probably should.

“Moral support,” Sara answers readily. “And something to fight for.” It stuns both Ryan and the Queen as Sara takes a couple certain steps forward. Her aura is a swirling mess of fear and conviction, like she’s terrified but refusing to let it stop her from doing what she feels she needs to do. Ryan feels like that’s probably what his own aura looks like, too. “I want to walk out of here, with both Ryan and Shane with me.”

“And what could you possibly offer to the Court that would be worth letting Ryan remain unaligned?”

Ryan’s heart stops at the question.

“Stop!” He rushes forward, grabs Sara’s arm and pulls her behind him. Quietly, in what he wishes was a low tone only for her but knows the wind will take and spread to all the hidden fae, he tells her, “This isn’t going to end how you want it to. There is no way we all win.”

“You won’t even try!” Sara hisses back.

“Your humans have both disrespected the Queen of the Seelie Court,” the Queen informs Ryan, a dangerous edge to her voice. “Even your allegiance is coming to seem like it may not be enough for both their freedom.”

Sara makes a funny noise in her throat, like she’s only just realizing that she may have been making it worse.

Ryan turns back to the Queen, desperation making his voice break. “Please. Name your price. Just let both of them go and never bother them again.”

There’s a gleam in the Queen’s eyes that tells Ryan that he’s just made the biggest mistake of his life.

Shane’s never really been the research things that aren’t proven kind of guy. He does the research for Ruining History, sure, but that’s history . Cold, hard facts, things that definitely happened, one hundred percent confirmed. Even the conjecture of Benjamin Franklin’s participation in a sex cult wasn’t a myth; the sex cult existed and there was good evidence that Ben Franklin was there sometimes.

This, what he’s trying to figure out now, this isn’t fact . These are myths, legends, literal fairy tales. It isn’t real .

Except, apparently, it is.

The facts he’s managed to compile in the past week are these:

1. He was kidnapped. The people who kidnapped him had inhumanly shaped faces and plants growing out of their skin. He’d thought this was special effects makeup of some kind.
2. The people who kidnapped him manipulated the way he felt and seemed to be some kind of hypnotists, making him comply with everything that they said. He had written this off as some kind of drug. His memories of the incident are fuzzy enough that he isn’t willing to take drugs completely off the table.
3. Sara is convinced that Shane was kidnapped by fairies. Now, Shane doesn’t believe in fairies, because apparently that would mean he believes in demons. But Sara, also a skeptic who Shane thought didn’t believe in fairies seems to now believe in fairies.
4. Sara and Ryan didn’t call the police about Shane’s kidnapping because Ryan also seemed convinced that Shane had been kidnapped by fairies. Sara didn’t mean to listen to Ryan when he told her not to call the cops, but she did anyway. It’s very similar to Shane being complicit in his own kidnapping, but Ryan would not drug Sara.
5. Ryan and Sara went into the woodsy clearing where Shane was being held captive. Shane and Sara walked out. Ryan did not.

The obvious conclusion to draw here is that Shane was, in fact, kidnapped by fairies, and that Ryan is somehow a fairy, and the fairies that kidnapped Shane really just wanted Ryan to join them. Or something. Shane doesn’t understand how fairies work.

Which is how he got to where he is now, spending every free second working on researching fairies. He has a lot more free time than he’d ever wanted, what with the whole Ryan-is-missing thing, since no Ryan means no Unsolved. He was even able to get the rest of filming for Ruining History put on hold, telling everyone who asked that Ryan’s having some sort of family emergency but Shane doesn’t want to the show without him. He does still need to get the scripts done, but that’s something that was already mostly done before all of this started, anyway.

The problem, Shane’s realizing, is that there are a million and one different versions of the so-called Fair Folk, and none of them are in total compliance with one another. He’s got what Ryan had told Sara: charmspeak ( hypnosis , Shane’s persistent skeptic brain corrects), something about auras, glamours. The only other thing he’s got is the one constant across all the lore he’s been sifting through: they can’t lie .

This one piece had been Shane’s one triumph, the one thing that kept him from falling down the rabbit hole of actually, genuinely considering that his best friend was some kind of supernatural being—how could Ryan be a fairy if he couldn’t lie about it?

But then Shane thought, really thought about the entire time that he’d known the guy, and he’d never outright said anything that he didn’t believe to be true. We don’t fake evidence . Ryan believed that every sound, every word out of that dumb spirit box, every temperature shift, and every weird occurrence was some kind of proof that there were ghosts or demons in the building they were investigating. Ryan didn’t believe every single theory that he put forth on the show, and he said that, time and time again, he didn’t actually believe that there were zombies on Roanoke Island or that there was an underwater Area 51 under the Bermuda Triangle.

But, reviewing the raw footage of the Ruining History episode about the French Dancing Plague, Shane remembers how Ryan never once said that he didn’t believe in fairies. More than that, he sees a flash of panic in Ryan’s eyes when Curly brings the subject up. Like Ryan doesn’t want to talk about them, for some reason. If he was a fairy, then it would explain why he wouldn’t want to talk about them on the internet, especially since their fans like theorizing about them being inhuman.

Shane thinks about another conversation, a couple days after this, setting up to film an episode of True Crime. Ryan never said that he didn’t believe in fairies then, either, dodging the question in that truly irritating way that he has. Humans would never know. No, Shane supposes. They wouldn’t. You’d have to meet one to prove they exist.

Shane powers down his computer and gathers up his things. There’s not much else he can do today, anyway. Nobody stops him on his way out.

The worst thing about all of this is that he can’t tell anyone that he was kidnapped, because that would beg the question of why didn’t anybody call the cops and Shane doesn’t actually have that answer because he wasn’t there he was busy being held captive, but he does know that the answer is because my best friend is a fucking idiot.

An idea comes to him as he’s climbing into his car. He fires off a text to someone that he rarely actually talks to, except occasional meme sharing, and starts driving.

Sent : I need your parents address

Received : wtf why???

Sent: Jake please. It’s important.

Once Jake sends the address, Shane plugs it into the GPS and takes off, praying to a God he still isn’t sure he believes in that LA traffic can be just a bit less awful.

Sara calls when Shane’s about twenty minutes out.

“Where’d you go in such a hurry?” she asks, and she sounds worried. Shane can’t blame her; they haven’t left anywhere without the other since they got out of the fairy realm.

“I’m going to talk to Ryan’s parents,” Shane tells her plainly. “First off, Jake’s probably gonna be targeted next, so somebody should warn him. Second, if anybody knows how to get Ryan back, it’s going to be them.”

Sara’s silent for a long moment. “Shane.” There’s something weird in the way she says it. “Ryan made a deal. He’s honorbound to keep it. Our freedom for his.”

“I refuse to believe that!” Shane shouts, banging his hand on the steering wheel. “There has to be something!”

He hears Sara sigh, but she doesn’t say anything until Shane’s ETA says five minutes . “Just…If they tell you there’s nothing they can do. They know better than either of us.”

“I’ll drop it, if they can’t do anything,” Shane tells her. It’s a lie.

“No, you won’t.” She knows him so well.

“No, I won’t.” He hangs up, pulls onto the residential street. He just barely pulls into the driveway, and he’s definitely blocked both cars in, but that’s fine. They aren’t leaving until he has his answers.

He has to take a deep breath so he doesn’t bang the door down; he’s pretty sure that they wouldn’t appreciate that.

“Shane!” Ryan’s mother answers the door. She looks happy to see him for precisely half a second before her face falls, and Shane remembers the few sources that called fairies empaths and thinks maybe she can tell exactly how he’s feeling. She ushers him into the living room and shuts the door. “What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

Now or never . “I was kidnapped by fairies last week.”

He has exactly a second and a half to worry that he’s actually going crazy and that he’s just come to Ryan’s parents for no good reason and that he’s losing his mind and he should have just gone to the police before Ryan’s mother sets her jaw and steers him over to the couch and forces him to sit down.

“You’re sure?”

That’s not the tone of someone who’s humoring him. Oh, God, my best friend’s a fucking fairy .

Shane nods, not trusting his voice right now. Up until now, there’s been a part of his brain that’s remained steadfastly rooted in the real world, where angels and demons and half-angel/half-demon fairies didn’t exist. Where he was just kidnapped by delusional fans who had impressive special effects makeup and some kind of drug that made him compliant and calm. In the real world, there was nothing stopping them from getting Ryan back.

“Tell me what happened,” Ryan’s mom says gently, but she doesn’t seem to be forcing Shane calm, and she’s not forcing him to want to tell her. He appreciates that; he doesn’t really want to be manipulated like that again.

“I…I was at home. And then I heard sounds coming from the bedroom, and I thought somebody had broken into the apartment, and I tried to run and there was somebody in the hallway and they just told me to leave my phone and follow them and get into a car and I didn’t want to and I didn’t know why I was and then I was weirdly calm and I think I fell asleep? And then I was in this clearing in the woods and there was this twelve-year-old and she told me that she was the queen and that they wanted Ryan so they took me but I didn’t have to worry because they wouldn’t hurt me but I didn’t understand what they wanted Ryan for , they didn’t explain that much but she did tell me that they were fairies and I didn’t believe her I just thought they were crazy fans or something except then Ryan and Sara showed up and they hadn’t called the police and Ryan said he’d do anything as long as it meant me and Sara could leave and they’d leave us alone.”

He’s crying by the end, silent tears running down his cheeks as he tries to keep his voice steady enough that Ryan’s mother can understand his words. He hadn’t meant for it all to come rushing out of him like that, but once he had started it was hard for him to stop.

“Do you know exactly what the Queen asked of him?” she asks him finally. “The exact phrasing of it?”

Shane’s sure, somewhere in his brain, that memory is still there. But he was so out of it by the time Ryan and Sara got there, all the details are muddled together. He thinks he remembers Sara trying to negotiate with the Queen at some point, but he can’t remember much else.

“I don’t,” he admits finally. Ryan did so much to save Shane, and Shane can’t do this one simple thing to return the favor. He feels horrible. “I was…They had…”

“The Seelie Queen is powerful,” Ryan’s mom tells him softly. “If she does not want you to remember, then you will not.”

“Sara might,” Shane says, the realization giving him hope, real hope, for the first time since all this started. “She was there too, she could—” Shane fumbles for his phone to call her, to see if she can tell them. All of Shane’s aborted attempts at research seem to agree that phrasing matters, it’s important. If there’s a way to cheat the system, a loophole that can get Ryan back, then they need to know exactly what was said to find it.

He pulls up the contact information with shaking fingers. It rings once, twice, three times, before Sara answers.

“What did they say?”

Shane puts it on speaker, so Ryan’s mother can listen. “Do you remember exactly what she asked for? What price they made Ryan pay?”

“I told you. His freedom for ours.”

“No, not—I know that part. Do you remember exactly how it was worded? The phrasing matters, Sara, it’s important.”

“Shane, I…” Sara takes a shaky, stuttering breath. “Ryan told her to name the price for both of us to be let go, and for them to never bother us again. And she, she said…He would give his allegiance to the Court, and his life to the Queen.”

His mother lets out a dry sob.

“Thank you,” Shane tells Sara softly. “I’ll see you when I get home.”

A heavy silence settles over the living room. Shane thinks, even without knowing much of anything about this entire situation, that he understands what the Queen demanded.

Shane’s only met Ryan’s mother a couple of times, but he really likes her. She’s always been so sweet and kind, affectionate in a way that Shane’s own Midwestern upbringing never was. It hurts his heart seeing her like this, devastated and mourning the loss of her son. Ryan may not be dead, but even he knows that the chances of getting him back have gone from slim to less than none .

“She wouldn’t…She won’t kill him, right? She went to all that trouble—”

“She won’t kill him,” Ryan’s mom agrees. “But she will force him to protect her, to act as her personal guard. And if that means that he dies to prevent an assassination, then that is what he must do.”

Ryan hardly seems like someone capable of protecting anybody, considering the way he’s afraid of the wind and how he screams at every perceived threat. But then, there’s an entire part of himself that he’s been hiding from Shane and the public for years, and Shane knows first hand what kind of things the fairies can do if they wanted to.

The hope that Shane had felt earlier sputters and dies like a candle in the rain. Sara had been right: there’s nothing they can do.

One week without Ryan turns into one month. Shane wants to think that he’s moving on, tells Sara that he is, but they both know better. Shane still spends his time learning everything he can about the fae, cross-referencing every single source that he finds until he thinks he’s got a pretty accurate profile stitched together. Shane had, in fact, been half-right about accepting food from the fae: you shouldn’t do it, but less in the sense that food traps you than that overstepping the kindness offered to you leaves you owing a favor. Because Shane was taken in for the fae’s own purposes, they owed him a kindness. That kindness was keeping him from feeling afraid and feeding him to keep him alive. Ryan was the one who demanded that Shane be let go, and so Ryan owed them something in return.

Shane refused to take the Queen’s food, told her to her face that he thought she was insane and delusional, talked to her like the child he thought she was. Sara overstepped and spoke out of turn. They were both disrespectful to the Queen, and could have been forced to stay in the faerie realm because of it, and so, Ryan’s demands that they be freed became higher and the price he had to pay became steeper.

Shane’s pretty sure that it’s his fault Ryan has to die one day serving the Queen he spent so long trying to avoid. If Shane wasn’t such a skeptical asshole, they might have been able to get Ryan back.

He’s not really allowed to think that way, though, because Sara also thinks it’s her fault. If she hadn’t demanded that Ryan take her along, if she hadn’t tried to negotiate to get all three of them out, if she hadn’t disrespected the Queen herself, then the price the Queen demanded wouldn’t have been Ryan’s life.

Probably, it’s both their faults, but neither of them are willing to let the other take any of the blame.

Jake texts him every day. Shane had asked him to, wants to make sure that they don’t get the younger Bergara the way they got Ryan. At first, it was a lot of apologies, Jake trying to place the blame quite squarely on the whole family. Their fault they didn’t warn Shane that this could happen, that they never told him what they truly were, that they didn’t know that Ryan had been placed into the situation that led them here.

Nobody truly deserves all the blame, probably none of them deserve all of it: this is the Court’s fault, plain and simple, it’s the Queen who had Shane kidnapped and it’s the Queen who demanded that Ryan die in her name.

Unsolved comes to an unresolved end when nobody at BuzzFeed hears from Ryan after the fifth week. They’d asked Shane if he wanted it to continue, since it’s technically his show too, but he can’t bring himself to continue without Ryan. It wouldn’t be the same, nobody believes the way that Ryan believes.

(Of course they don’t, Ryan was always a part of the world whose existence he fought to prove, even if nobody knew it.)

Ruining History continues, although Shane doesn’t know how. He has to find three guests per episode instead of the two, someone to sit beside Sara in the seat that should be holding Ryan. It’s not the same without him, and people start to notice. The internet runs rampant with rumors, from Ryan quit (kind of) to Ryan was fired (also kind of), Ryan was kidnapped (not quite) or even murdered (not yet). Nobody guesses the truth, not that Shane had expected them to. After all, fae and fairies don’t exist.

Nobody can prove that they can.

It’s been three and a half months since everything happened when Shane gets a text from Jake.

Received: Come to my parents house. Bring sara.

It’s almost four in the morning, far too late (or early, it’s just that Shane hasn’t slept) for the invitation to be anything less than urgent. Shane gently shakes Sara awake and tells her that something’s happened. The second he mentions Jake, she’s up. They don’t even bother changing out of their pajamas before they’re out of the apartment, practically running to the car.

They don’t speak to each other on the car ride. Shane thinks for a moment that Sara may have fallen back asleep, but a quick glance to the side while stuck at a red light shows her just as awake and alert as he is. She’s staring at Shane’s phone, like she’s trying to figure out all the writing between the lines in Jake’s text. He hasn’t texted again, but he has seen Shane’s hurried on my way .

They pull into Ryan’s parents’ house after only forty minutes, a record low that comes from the early pre-rush traffic and Shane’s speeding. Jake’s got the door open before Shane and Sara are even halfway up the driveway, looking worried but hopeful at the same time.

“I’d have called you earlier,” Jake says, breathless. He’s blocking the doorway. Even with Shane’s height advantage, he can’t see what’s going on in the living room. “Mom and Dad told me not to.” He steps back, and Shane and Sara both rush past him.

Ryan .

He’s lying on the couch, shirtless, a gruesome burn on his side. As Shane gets closer, he can pick out a stitched-up cut in the middle of the burn, like the cracking skin originates from it. His skin’s ashen, like he’s sick, or a vampire, and his breath is coming in shallow, uneven, rattling. But he’s here . And he’s alive.

“What happened?” Sara asks. She sounds half a second away from crying.

“We’re not sure,” Jake says, from somewhere behind where Shane’s crouched by Ryan’s side. He doesn’t even remember getting this close. “He showed up around midnight. He was bleeding pretty bad, and we think he may have been poisoned. I wanted to call you as soon as I saw him, but. Mom and Dad wanted to make sure they could help, first.”

Shane’s pretty sure Jake wanted to say Mom and Dad wanted to make sure he wouldn’t die. That makes him feel a little better: they let Jake text him. That means Ryan’s going to wake up.

“What happens when he wakes up?” Sara asks, although Shane kind of wishes she wouldn’t. He doesn’t want to think about Ryan’s return as something temporary. He wants to be able to pretend, at least for a little bit, that Ryan’s back to stay. He doesn’t have to go back.

“We don’t know,” Jake admits. “We’re just going to have to wait.”

Shane and Sara both call out of work. There isn’t exactly anything they can do, but they aren’t willing to give up any of the time they get with Ryan. Even if he’s not awake, he could be, and then they wouldn’t be here. They need every second.

Shane never even got the chance to say goodbye , for fuck’s sake. Sara, at least, knew what Ryan was planning, even if she refused to give up and accept that it was the only way to get Shane back. But Shane didn’t have that chance. He spent half a week thinking he was going to die, and then he saw Ryan, and then Ryan was gone. Shane’s spent months thinking he was never going to see his best friend again, and now he’s here, half-dead on his parents’ couch.

So they hang around. Ryan’s parents make breakfast and check on their son, and then expend their nervous energy in whatever ways work for them. Shane and Sara stay crouched by Ryan, while Jake sits on the armchair in the corner. There’s something playing on the TV, white noise so that they don’t suffocate in the silence. Every once in a while, Ryan will start coughing, hacking up blood like a tuberculosis patient. His father tells them that it’s good that it’s becoming less frequent, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s bad that it’s happening at all.

It’s not until about five that Ryan stirs. There’s a chorus of sharp intakes of breath as everybody waits. Ryan’s eyes flutter open, and Shane has to force himself not to crowd into the other man’s space.

All at once, Ryan tries to sit up too quickly, getting about halfway up before he collapses back down with a pained cry, clutching his side. He coughs once, twice, three times, but no blood comes up this time. His breath is ragged as he stares up at the ceiling. Shane, for lack of any better ideas, places a shaking hand on Ryan’s shoulder.

He wants to say I’ve missed you and thank you for saving me and also are you here to stay, but what comes out instead is, “You’re a fucking asshole.”

Ryan lets out a shaky laugh. “Yeah, I deserve that, don’t I?” His voice is hoarse, although that’s not exactly a surprise, considering the state he’s in. He tries to sit up again, slower this time, and Shane helps him up. He doesn’t know if Ryan should be sitting up, but he also knows Ryan well enough to know that if he wants to sit up, he’s going to. May as well make it as painless as possible.

Once Ryan’s up, leaning very heavily against the back of the couch, he already looks much better. The color starts returning to his face, although the wound on his side still looks ragged.

Nobody says anything for a while, all deciding that it’s best to let Ryan get his breathing a little more even before assailing him with questions.

“So,” Ryan says finally. Shane thinks it’s been maybe ten minutes, but it’s not like he’s been watching a clock. “How’ve the Lakers been doing in my absence?”

Shane thinks he’s going to hit him, injuries be damned.

“Ryan,” his father asks, behind and above Shane, somewhere. It occurs to Shane that there’s now plenty of room on the couch, since Ryan isn’t sprawled across the whole thing. He stays where he is. “What were you thinking?”

“Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t?” Ryan replies wryly. Shane can tell he’s already fighting to keep his eyes open.

“If you can say that you weren’t thinking, sure,” Jake points out. Shane couldn’t have said it better himself.

“I could say that. I haven’t been thinking all day.” There’s a faint upturn to Ryan’s mouth. “You know how this works. Be more specific.”

“Ryan,” Shane says softly. “I wasn’t…I’m not worth your life.”

Ryan looks at him, studies him for long enough that it makes Shane a bit uncomfortable. He’s frowning. “You really believe that,” he says, and he sounds like the thought makes him sad. “How could you believe that?” He reaches out a hand, knocks Shane’s shoulder with a loosely curled fist. “You’re my best friend. I’d give my life ten times over if it meant I could keep you safe.”

Something in Shane twists painfully. He thinks it’s the knowledge that Ryan can’t lie, couldn’t say that if he didn’t mean it that makes his throat close up and his eyes burn. He carefully, gently, mindful of Ryan’s side, wraps his arms around Ryan and hangs on. “Don’t leave me again,” he mumbles into his shoulder. “Please.”

Shane feels a hand threading through his hair as Ryan whispers, “Wouldn’t dream of it, big guy.”

The not-actually-a-twelve-year-old girl, the Queen of Seelie Court, is dead. Ryan tells his parents this with no small amount of significance behind the words. Shane worries for a moment that this means that Ryan’s somehow in trouble, because his end of the deal was not upheld (he still knows fuck-all about the workings of the fae), until Ryan explains what happened:

Visiting Unseelie emissaries had slipped iron filings into Ryan’s wine at the feast they held in honor of the spring equinox (Shane is, very vaguely, aware of the equinox as a thing pagans are concerned with, but he has no idea the significance it's meant to held). As soon as Ryan started coughing, violently trying to dispel the iron now in his throat, he was grabbed by a half dozen Unseelie and stabbed in the side with an iron sword for good measure. Another dozen Unseelie swarmed the Queen.

Ryan's memory of what came next is hazy, which Shane thinks is fair considering the fact that Ryan was poisoned and bleeding. What Ryan does remember, with startling clarity, is that the new Queen told him that he was free to go, and that the Court would not bother him, his family, or any of the Bergaras’ friends again.

So Ryan came home, half-expecting and half-hoping that Shane and Sara had told his parents and brother where Ryan had gone so that he had a few less questions to answer.

“Not less questions,” his mother points out. “Just different ones.”

Ryan smiles wryly. “I didn’t tell you because I knew that you'd try and talk me out of it,” he admits. “But I needed to get Shane back.”

“Still not worth your life,” Shane reminds him.

“You are,” Ryan argues. Shane knows better than to argue the point.

They're up all night, letting Ryan explain himself and tell them what the Queen had made him do and apologize what seemed like a hundred times. It isn't until Sara's phone alarm goes off that Shane realizes how long it's been since the last time he slept (he hadn't actually managed to sleep more than a couple hours the night before).

Ryan pauses in the middle of describing an encounter with a Red Cap (whatever that is) and looks at Sara's phone, a blank expression on his face. “I don't...I don't have a job anymore, do I?”

Shane and Sara glance at each other. “I'm sure they'd take you back,” Sara offers, but Shane can tell by the look on Ryan's face that it's not a totally true statement.

They would, is the thing, if Ryan can give a good excuse for where he'd gone and why he never bothered to tell anyone. But even Shane knows that Ryan can't exactly waltz into the office and tell management that he was off serving the Seelie Court because they'd kidnapped Shane and that was what it took to get him back, and Ryan can't lie so he can't make up an explanation of the “family emergency” excuse Shane had been giving everyone.

He could, Shane reasons, do that charmspeak thing. But he's pretty sure Ryan isn't willing to do that, so he doesn't suggest it.

“They cancelled the show,” Shane says finally. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.

Ryan nods, like he'd expected that. “Well. You believe in demons, now. So.”

“I never said that!” Shane argues, and it feels good, this familiar ground.

“But you believe in me!” Ryan points out. “And I'm half-demon.”

Shane knew that, all that research he's been doing had agreed that fae were half angel, half demon, but that doesn’t mean anything to Shane.

“Then why are you so afraid of them?”

Ryan’s silent a moment. “Some fae...They have really powerful demonic lineage. It’s not the most common, but it happens. And so other demons, they want to get at those powerful ones. I don’t know much about which demons I’m…’related’ to, but my dad says that one of them is pretty important. Not one of the princes of hell or whatever, but. Still pretty high on the hierarchy. It’s why the Court wanted me and Jake so bad.”

Something like guilt spreads through Shane like ice water. Ryan’s face shifts immediately, and Shane keeps forgetting that Ryan always knows exactly what he’s feeling.

“It’s not--I wouldn’t--If I was in any actual danger of that, I’d have made you stop!” Ryan’s backpedaling, trying to make Shane feel better. “I’d have gotten us out of there before it came to that, okay, I promise! It’s just that I don’t like putting myself in a position where that might happen.”

Shane doesn’t exactly feel much better about apparently goading demons into maybe killing his best friend to get at other demons that his best friend is apparently related to, but he does feel better knowing that said best friend isn’t mad at him over it.

Or maybe he is. Ryan never said he wasn’t.

But Ryan smiles at him, and Shane hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the little things about him, like the way that he smiles with his whole face. “It’s okay,” he says softly. “Really.”

Shane smiles back. He can’t help it.

“So, were faeries actually responsible for those people in France?”

Ryan knew that question was coming eventually.

He’s staying with Shane and Sara, since his roommates have long since given up on him ever coming back (as far as they’re aware, he kind of just fucked off somewhere. It’s close enough to the truth that he lets it be, especially since they aren’t asking him for months of back rent). Shane’s making coffee, and Ryan’s sitting at the small dining table trying to beat Obi in a staring contest. The cat doesn’t run from him, anymore, but he still hasn’t gotten to the point where he lets Ryan pet him.

“They were,” he answers, still not looking away from the cat. “Which is why I didn’t want to cover it on Unsolved.”

They’re in the process of trying to get the show back on the air. BuzzFeed isn’t happy with Ryan, considering that he was gone for so long without any warning or excuse, but they took him back without any actual effort on Ryan’s part. Seriously, he had to use more magic to get Ruining History renewed (he hopes Shane doesn’t ask about that one, ever). He thinks it’s because Unsolved is (was) one of the most popular series in the company. Ryan’s pretty sure that there are some people watching Unsolved who won’t even touch any of BuzzFeed’s other content.

Even still, the company isn’t exactly willing to give Ryan everything back just because he asked nicely. He could ask less nicely and with more magic, but he didn’t do that to get the show started the first time, and he didn’t do that to get it renewed, so he’s not going to do it now. And so, he’s going to wait. He’s going to prove that he’s not going anywhere again.

Shane hums, and Ryan can see something like nerves in his aura. Like he wants a question answered, but he isn’t sure that he’s going to like the answer.

“What’s wrong?” Ryan asks, because he doesn’t have to pretend that he doesn’t see the emotions Shane tries so hard to hide.

Shane sighs, grabbing the coffee cup and sitting down across from Ryan. He scritches Obi behind the ears. “It’s just…We were talking about covering those people in France, remember? Or, not covering it. And I mentioned, ‘oh, I’d like to have covered it on Ruining History.’ And then, less than a week later, management surprised me with a second season of a show I had given up on getting renewed.” He says it all so plainly, like he’s not essentially accusing Ryan of brainwashing their bosses into giving Shane more work (granted, Shane wanted that work, but still, principle of the thing).

“I mean, I seem to recall agreeing that it was weird,” Ryan says, noncommittally. As Shane’s look, he sighs. “I just. Something about the whole situation was starting to make me feel cagey, like some random person on the internet was gonna be like, ‘oh, maybe Ryan doesn’t want to cover the dancing thing because he’s a faerie and he doesn’t want to talk about faeries on the show!’ And just like the whole thing with you being a demon took off, that would take off, and I can’t exactly say I’m not fae, since, you know. I am.”

Shane frowns. “You wouldn’t have had to,” he points out. Before Ryan can argue (“Yes I would!”), he adds, “Steer into it. It’s not like enough people would actually believe it. I mean, I doubt that many of them actually believe that I’m a demon. It’s just fun. Material for fanart and stuff. If someone asked you if you were a faerie, and then you avoided the question with that dumb look on your face, they’d probably think it was just a bit.”

Well. Now Ryan feels dumb.

“Well. Now I feel dumb.”

“You are dumb,” Shane points out. “You go to haunted houses and places that may or may not have demons that may or may not want to kill you because they don’t like your demonic grandpa and you went into the Seelie Court to save some dumb human. You’re the dumbest faerie I know.”

There’s friendly affection somewhere in the mass of layers that always surround Shane. Something warm and bubbly spreads through Ryan, and he’s pretty sure he’s grinning like a doof. “And I’d do it again,” he tells him. “Just try not to get kidnapped by demons. I don’t think it’ll be as easy to get you back.”

“I’m still demon proof, baby!” Shane says with a grin.

They stand up, ready to get to the office. Everything feels almost exactly the same as before; yet oh so different. Ryan wonders what it was that kept him from telling Shane in the first place.

“Let’s go, Tinkerbell!”

Right. That’s why.

Ryan smiles anyway. He can put up with a few dumb faerie jokes at his expense, if it means that he gets to stay here forever.