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Shane takes comfort in simple things. Like, he really, really likes pie. Not coconut cream, that shit sucks, but like a good, flaky crusted apple pie or something. He likes hot drinks and sunshine and the feeling of being half-way drunk. He likes bugs. Those little guys are pretty neat. Creeks, backyard fires, the smell of woodsmoke. All of these things are things that have been consistent through his life. Buttered popcorn, the soft scrape of salt against the tips of his fingers.
He doesn’t much like sleeping on hard concrete floors or unfamiliar mattresses, but he can do it. He does do it, for Unsolved. And maybe that’s different from when he was younger. Sure, he used to pass out in bathtubs (with the shower running), but those were college days, and he’s settled into himself a little more, or something. He’s quieter now, or at least he feels like he is.
Tastes do change, though. He thought he liked beer once upon a time. Before he discovered the silky complexity of scotch, the warmth and tickle of bourbon in his chest and throat. He used to be desperate to get to the West Coast, and now that he’s here he misses the Midwest. The cold winters, and all that grey, misty drizzle that feels like it falls all autumn long.
The thing about nostalgia is that it’s a bitch, but it’s not completely a liar, either. Maybe nostalgia makes you fonder, or maybe it just makes you soft, he isn’t sure. He doesn’t mind being soft. He feels like maybe he fits the Midwest more — grew to fill a space there, like a tree snakes its way through fences and power lines. But Los Angeles is home now, or close enough to it.
He’s been here for over six years now. Long enough to really be a local, long enough to feel like he really belongs here, or at least he does as much as anyone else does. He doesn’t think that he has that twenty-some years of perpetual sunshine brightness that Ryan has, but he knows how to get around. He understands what the fuck people are talking about now, when they talk about their route to somewhere. He still gets all tickled by that big ol’ Hollywood sign.
And he’s been here long enough to meet some really good people. And to know Ryan practically inside and out. He once heard someone say that knowing exactly what someone was going to do was intimacy, rather than boring, and he’s inclined to agree. Whatever this is doesn’t have a name, yet, but it’s different from the boozy, found-family, D&Ding, affectionate cheer he had back home in Shaumburg, Illinois.
It was never hard to accept. More that it came on so gradually neither of them really realized that it was happening. It was his fingertips pressed to the heat and pulse of the side of Ryan’s neck for too long one evening at a bar — them and Steven and the rest of the Watcher gang out for drinks — and he could feel the beat of Ryan’s blood and the vibration of his voice when he spoke. It was the silence between them, sitting side by side on someone’s back porch steps, months later, not at all awkward but … waiting. This slow pull of anticipation that seemed to draw time out and outward, endless, forever, but somehow, simultaneously, passing too quickly.
Shane broke it first, that quiet. Standing up and going inside for another drink. For another space. The world seemed to ripple and cool around him as he crossed the threshold of the sliding glass door to the brightly lit kitchen, and the numbers on the kitchen stove clock didn’t line up with his understanding of time. Shane checked his wristwatch, afterwards, to make sure that it was right.
Ryan didn’t follow him in. Not right away.
After that, it was the laughing, rollicking embrace they had the following summer at the pier, just messing around until they weren’t. Until Ryan’s arms stayed tight around him and they both found their feet and their hearts settled as they just stood in sand and held each other and breathed and breathed. Half laughter, half shaking.
Shane thought about that, afterwards, for months.
They spent the holidays apart, Shane back in Illinois and Ryan, always and forever in sunny California. Shane feels like the snow, and the rain that follows settles into his skin until he’s heavy with it. He meets his own eyes in the mirror, in those no-time days between Christmas and New Year's that don’t make any sense and don’t really even exist in time, and thinks that he could use some of Ryan’s brightness, now, because it’s been awfully grey out here.
It’s the fluid ambergold of the scotch he sets on Ryan’s coffee table, and the soft clink of two coffee mugs because he doesn’t have proper liquor glasses and it’s the way Ryan’s laugh just cuts through everything until Shane’s practically lightheaded. Until his chest physically hurts with how much he—
Okay.
Neither of them really realized what was happening until they did.
Until they do.
And all at once it’s the heat of Ryan’s mouth, and suddenness with which he kisses Shane, and then pulls back, and it’s the uncertainty in his dark eyes.
“The, but the— Ryan. The movie’s still on!” Shane sputters, because maybe it’s funny, but also he’s genuinely kind of incensed that Ryan would kiss him for the first time while Ride the High Country is playing. Ryan laughs, genuine, relieved. It lights up the room. It lights something up in Shane. And then it’s the taste of salt and scotch on Ryan’s tongue and Shane can’t stop but that’s okay because neither, apparently, can Ryan.
It’s the way they break apart, foreheads together, the tumble of their breath between them. Shane doesn’t even know exactly where’s Ryan’s hands are holding him anymore, only that he’s being held. Flicker of lashes and Shane looks up too, and they meet each other’s eyes — too close, and then they both break into soft laughter.
And Shane thinks that this is something he hasn’t had yet, something he hasn’t learned. He wants to page through it like a history book, commit all of it to memory, learn Ryan by rote, and by touch, and taste. For a moment he’s overwhelmed by possibility.
Ryan kisses him again. The movie plays on, but Shane’s already forgotten. Time rights itself. Somewhere, stars align.