Work Text:
Shane hates ghost hunting.
He's been living with humans for a long time; he’s used to all their weird habits. Hell, he likes Chipotle and Amazon as much as the next guy. But ghosts take all the human nastiness— the real human nastiness, not just hangover nastiness— and they make you feel it too.
It’s not that he deliberately sabotages the ghost hunting videos, (Well, except for that one time when the ghost was getting really close to throwing him off a balcony and he just wanted to go back to sleep. But that’s different.) it’s just that the ghosts feel bad and he hates feeling bad, so he just keeps accidentally scaring them away. Or something.
He almost feels bad, when he watches Ryan’s face on the drives back. Almost. Ryan is a great guy, but he’s not the type to handle the fact that he’s surrounded by things that could very well kill him without any way to protect himself. Jesus, it’s a miracle the guy hasn’t had a breakdown yet.
So Shane smooths out the cold spots into a solid room-temperature, and instead of letting the ghost wander around, vicious and cold and scared he lets it come to him, and gives it a weird spirit-y hug and lets it melt in his arms like snow in the spring.
But demons... now demons are fun.
Shane likes demon hunting. For one thing, there’s a delicious sense of irony that even the fans have started to catch on to. (He encourages the joke. The more people who know about it, the fewer who’ll believe. Humans are weird like that.) For another, it’s never really demons. People have one sleep paralysis nightmare and they get convinced that there’s a demon trying to kill them, and everyone just goes with it because the supernatural is easier to confront than any kind of mental health, or something, and then twenty years later he and Ryan show up with cameras to film an empty house.
(Thank go—sata—someone that it’s never actual demons, though. If it were, he might have a different opinion. How would that even go? Like:
“Yeah, hey Azeroth, how are the kids?”
“Oh fine, y’know. They’ve recently grown teeth and are devouring people alive in the deepest caves of the earth. What have you been up to?”
It wouldn’t exactly make for good content.)
Hell, Shane doesn’t know if there are any demons like him. It’s not like they’re spawned in hell. He just woke up one day and maybe set some stuff on fire by accident and also maybe accidentally started a few cults and eventually people created the idea of demons and well, he’s not what they think of as a demon, but he’s not going to call himself “the physical manifestation of extreme belief” because (a) he doesn’t actually know if it’s true and (b) it sounds very unscientific and he is all about science.
He’s been waiting all season for a demon hunt, and it’s finally happening. Shane is delighted.
He is in the front seat of the car, watching the sunset, while he goes over exactly how he’s going to fuck with Ryan this time. After all, there are so many possibilities. For one thing, demon bridge. Already a solid base. Then creepy woods: excellent. AND rumors of Satanists? It’s a dream come true.
(The one time he did run in to Satanists he actually had a pretty good time. They were nice people. Lots of stuff about how the devil giving the apple to Eve was the first step towards knowledge and innovation. They also had fun bonfires with absolutely no dancing animal sacrifices or around naked. They were very adamant on that fact. Shane didn’t question it. After all, in the same way that most books written about what women want in men are written by men, most books about what Satanists want are not written by Satanists.)
He snorts, amused at his own joke. Back to the point. Demon hunt. And fucking with Ryan.
According to Shane’s spidey-senses, there’s nothing on the bridge. Or under the bridge. Or in the woods. Well, okay, there are some beer cans on the bridge, and rabbits in the woods, but there’s nothing ghost-like, or demon-like around. Not even a single solitary whisper of regret coming from a teenager that got drunk here one time and maybe poured a little too much of their soul in to the bridge.
Ryan’s holy water gun is the icing on top of the cake.
Holy water is, of course, complete BS. Shane once drank an entire jug just to see what would happen, (What happened was that he had to pee a lot) but oh boy is he going to enjoy taking the piss out of Ryan for this one.
It’s not like Ryan even believes in the stuff! He’s just scrambling for any source of safety he can get. If he’s going to be ridiculous, he deserves what’s coming to him. And what’s coming to him is a whole lot of freaking out.
“Ooh that’s spooky,” Shane says, snickering.
It’s a spur of the moment decision, it really is. Shane has never had great impulse control. Anyways, it’s for science. People almost die for science a lot, right?
“Fuck you, goatman!” Shane calls, readying himself for a long night of mischief.
Ryan freaks out, immediately snapping. Oh, this is going to be fantastic. It usually takes a few minutes for him to get warmed up, but he’s jumped straight in to the anxiety attack this time. Shane glances at the holy water gun and grins.
“Goatman, I’m dancing on your bridge! It’s my bridge now!” Shane almost doesn’t notice the strange twinge on the back of his neck.
“Holy shi—”
“You hear that? You want me off this bridge you’re going to have to kill me.” Shane feels another twinge, stronger this time. Damn, Ryan must be finally getting to him. This is embarrassing. As if he’s going to be scared by an old bridge.
“Holy shit.”
Shane keeps going. “You’re going to throw me off this bridge yourself.”
“He did throw somebody off the bridge once,” Ryan adds in helpfully.
(Shane was also thrown off a bridge once, [not by anything supernatural, he just has a talent for pissing off impressively strong women] and he refuses to get thrown off of anything again. A broken neck is incredibly uncomfortable and losing all his blood? Yuck. Never again. But what can he do? Stop now? Just as Ryan is beginning to freak out? As if. This is the fun part.)
“Look at the way I dance on it. I disrespect your bridge, Goatman!”
“He’s taking names right now.” Ryan’s voice is beginning to quiver and Shane resists the urge to grin wider. “He’s sharpening his little blades”
“You hear that, Goatman? Me and Ryan Bergara own your bridge!” At this, the twinge in his neck turns in to an all-out prickle, and there’s a creeping edge of fear crawling up his spine.
Maybe there is something here, Shane thinks, a feeling he presumes is horror crawling in to his stomach. Maybe I finally fucked up. He reaches out again, turning on what he likes to call spidey-senses and what other people have called “psychic powers” (which is a very unscientific name. It’s why he doesn’t tell people about it anymore. [Well, that and he doesn’t want to be sent to a therapist again. He’s perfectly well adjusted for someone who’s seen Rome collapse and modern society develop, thank you very much.]). What he feels is worrying.
He doesn’t know how he missed it the first time around. He should have felt something this strong. It feels like a black hole where life should be, empty and gaping. It’s like no ghost or spirit he’s ever encountered.
Shane has been alive for thousands of years, and if there’s one thing he’s learned about himself, it’s that he likes to know what’s going on, and to do that, sometimes you gotta piss someone off. Or, in this case, something. He’s finally going to get to investigate the unknown—the unsolved, if you will (and he will). Fantastic.
“No, don’t loop me in to your shit,” Ryan says, and Shane feels the focus of the thing shift to Ryan. He lets out a sigh of relief, already putting up mental shields, and (metaphorically) flexing his muscles, readying himself for a fight, just in case, while also trying to get a good look at the thing, which is difficult when it doesn’t exist to the normal human eye. “Stop looping me. I hate when you do this—”
“Well then tell him,” Shane says, wanting to see what happens. “Tell him you’re not part of this.”
“I’m not part of his little charade,” Ryan calls.
The thing is swarming around Ryan now like sentient goop in a horror movie. It’s disgusting. Shane wants to see more.
“You’re talking to Goatman now,” he says, because he’s him and even with a potentially dangerous creature very possibly about to try and kill them, he’s not passing up the chance to fuck with Ryan.
“I see what you’ve done.” Ryan’s voice is shaking, and fear is coming off him in waves. Shane can almost taste the panic in the air.
He’s... genuinely terrified, Shane realizes. That’s weird.
It’s not as if Ryan isn’t scared in every video, but he’s never been scared like this. Sure, Ryan is anxious and a bit of a wuss, but there’s a difference between fear and terror, and Ryan is free falling on to the hysteric side of the fear/terror fence.
He thinks he’s going to die, Shane realizes.
He takes a look at the swarming thing properly for the first time, lowering his gaze in to the dimensions outside the normal three. Layered over and over and over are these tiny black things, like swarming viruses, compacted in to one seething, roiling mass of almost-smooth black. They’re burrowing their way in to Ryan’s skin, feeding on his terror.
Ryan can feel it. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, but he’s reacting. Shit.
“It’s Goatman entrapment,” he says, reaching out, beckoning the thing towards him. “Goatman?”
“I’m not with him,” Ryan says, but it’s too late. The thing is already deep inside him, and he’s radiating terror from the inside out. It’s strong enough that Shane can feel it, the same way he feels a ghost. The thing is still stuck on Ryan, Shane just an afterthought.
Dammit, he thinks. Maybe if I were human...
“They’re going to put my name in graffiti!” Shane taunts, desperately trying to think of a way to get it away from Ryan.
Fragile. Fucking. Humans, He thinks. With stupid. Fragile. Brains.
“Children will come here and tell tales of me!” He cries, reaching out with his guilt and fear.
The thing pauses. Swirling curiously. It reaches out one swarming tendril towards him and Shane reaches out, the way he does with ghosts.
Here! He thinks, hoping the thing can hear him. I’m warm. Come! Touch me! Come taste my fear!
The thing comes. It swirls across his skin, invisible and intangible to everyone else. It feels like soap, smooth and sinuous as it wraps around his arm and... licks? He nearly jumps. It licks him again.
Okay, he coaxes, like he was talking to a small child or a particularly possessed doll. Here you go.
He lets down his mental shields, letting a little soapy tendril creep inside his head. It spreads out, squid like, and does a backflip.
Shane is stunned.
And then... like the voice in the back of his mind that occasionally tells him that he’s being a little cruel to Ryan, like when he steals a cupcake, or makes fun of him a little too much, he hears the thing singing.
It’s happy, he realizes, and the thing sends him a little burst of thought. Not just happy, the burst of thought clarifies, golden.
What, Shane thinks, in the actual hell are you?
The thing curls around his arm in response, stroking his hair. The little piece inside his head is as close to smiling as an amorphous void can get, swimming among his happy memories, avoiding the fear. It doesn’t answer
Ryan is calming down across from him, his breaths slowing.
At least he’s not hyperventilating, Shane thinks to the creature. The creature nudges him playfully.
Aww, Shane thinks. You were just a little lonely. You don’t actually like fear, humans just freak out when you try to hang out with them. They’re not great company for you, are they?
The creature slinks its way up his shoulder and settles there comfortably, as if in agreement.
Still, Shane continues, why did you throw someone off the bridge?
The creature shrugs, and sends him a mental image of someone dragging a terrified rabbit out of the woods, and on to the bridge. The person raises the knife, and is promptly thrown over the edge.
Yeah, Shane thinks, you and I will get along just fine.
Ryan finally looks up. “Was that really necessary?”
Shane deliberates how much of the truth he’s going to divulge. “Yes,” he says. “It absolutely was. After all, I wanted to see you get to use your gun. No better way to get a goatman than to taunt it in to revealing itself.”
Ryan wheezes, laughing half in humor and half in fading terror. “Let’s just set up for the séance.”
“And then a lovely stroll in the dark woods that are filled with Satanists?”
“I hate you,” Ryan says.
Shane grins, and the creature sends him an image of a lightly scared Ryan with a question mark at the end. Shane glances at Ryan, chews his lip, and decides.
Okay, he thinks, But only a little. You really scared him earlier.
‘Only a little,’ the creature echoes back to him, promise undercut by the fact that Shane can hear the creature thinking of ways to fuck with Ryan.
Shane snorts. This is going to be fun.