Chapter Text
Staying at three haunted places in one episode of Unsolved wasn’t exactly a thing The Ghouligans did often. But when Ryan got an email where the Travel Alberta company approached them with an offer for a special episode where they’ll travel through the Banff National Park, and in between filming the usual they would also shoot a sort of an ad for the park, they agreed. One, because they haven’t been to Canada yet in their investigations, and secondly, all the costs of the trip were covered by the company (which made the people at BuzzFeed indeed very happy). So without much thinking, one late August morning, the ghoul boys went on a, perhaps, journey.
LA is a big city, with many stories, everyone running around like ants in an anthill, and you only see how life runs around you when you’re sitting in public transport or stuck in a car in a traffic jam. You’re trapped there while others are running their daily errands, meeting people, waving at their friends from across the street, zooming around your car on a skateboard, kids trying to outrun each other before they press the button next to the crosswalk...
-
Shane has been already sitting in the Uber for what felt like an eternity, he was still moderately entertained by the outside world and his twitter feed, but when he got a message from Ryan, his face immediately lit up.
“Hey ‘Squatch, how’s it going?”
“Are you texting while driving?” Shane quickly replied.
As a response, he got a selfie of Ryan at the Bob Hope airport.
“I’ll be there in like 15 minutes if the traffic starts to move 🙄.”
“Okay 😢 Do you want something from the shops?”
“Nah, but thanks ❤.” Right after hitting the ‘send’ button, Shane realized that they never really sent each other heart emojis, but it was too late to take it back now. He can always play it off as satire. And even though Ryan didn’t respond to his message, Shane wasn’t really worried he did something wrong and resumed reading through some tweets. After all, what’s wrong with sending one little heart emoji to your best friend?
Ryan, on the other hand, didn’t really brush it off as easily as Shane, and closely studied the message. “A heart? Well, that’s new.” He thought to himself, smiled, and looked around to see if someone else from the crew was already around.
-
They still had some time to kill when Shane arrived and found Ryan watching some videos on his phone, curled up in one of the retro looking faux leather chairs they had at the Burbank Airport.
“Hey!” Shane waved and smiled at Ryan, who immediately snapped out of his basketball mindspace and greeted Shane.
“Hey, glad you’re here. Do you want to grab a coffee or something to eat?” He said as he got up and put his phone and headphones in the pocket of his jacket.
Ryan struggled with deciding whether they should hug, but when Shane extended his hand he ultimately decided that it wasn’t reasonable since they were hanging out the day before. So instead, they ended up doing an abridged version of their super secret handshake.
“I feel like getting something at that coffee shop over there,” Shane pointed somewhere behind himself.
As they walked together to get coffee, Ryan felt incredibly excited. Blood was rushing through his veins, and he was sweating even in only a t-shirt and his favorite brown leather jacket. He glimpsed over at Shane, he seemed his usual “chaotic but composed” self, and it might have been solely from Ryan’s subjective standpoint, but there was also some novelty to how he looked.
Shane’s hair was absolutely not cooperating that day, so he opted for a dark grey beanie. He had his transparent rim glasses on, and his stubble was just starting to become a kind of a beard. He looked cold, maybe that was why he wanted to get a nice warm cup of coffee. He had at least four layers on: the jean jacket, his favorite light grey sweatshirt, a red and black checkered shirt, and he probably also had a t-shirt underneath all that.
Shane’s glasses fogged up as he took a sip of his black coffee. He set it down on the table and warmed his hands against the cup. He decided his blood pressure must be low, and therefore four ounces of strong black coffee might precisely be what he needs.
“So, how do you feel about going to Canada?” Ryan asked.
“Well, firstly,” Shane pointed at Ryan with the wooden stir stick he picked up off the table, “I’m surprised they invited us there.”
“Right,” Ryan grinned.
“Like they have to be really desperate to invite the world’s worst ghost hunters to their spooky hotels.”
“Speak for yourself,” Ryan sneered.
“Have you caught a ghost, hm, Ryan?” Shane raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I have,” Ryan frowned, “you and your Shaniacs just never believe any evidence that I basically present you on a silver platter.”
“We’ve talked about your evidence, Ryan...” Shane squinted as he waited for Ryan to remark something bitey in return.
Ryan just took a sip of his coffee while frowning excessively, which assured Shane that he can continue the conversation.
“But to be honest, I’m feeling kind of indifferent about going to Banff. I’m glad that we don’t have to pay for the accommodation and stuff, but I’d rather go hiking there than ghost hunting,” Shane chuckled. What he didn’t say was that he was absolutely ecstatic to go there with Ryan, that he was finally able to spend time with him like they used to. He enjoyed the road trip aspect of doing Unsolved. Sharing hotel rooms with Ryan and even filming and ‘hunting ghosts’ were his favorite things to do when it meant he could spend more time with Ryan.
“Well, if you get bored, you can always run off to find your Sasquatch family up in the mountains.” Ryan grinned. He, too, looked forward to spending some quality fun time with Shane, but he expressed that so many times already that he didn’t feel the need to say it out loud.
There was a pause as they both looked down at their drinks. Ryan also observed the other people sitting and standing around the shop for a while before Shane spoke again. It was a little too early in the morning for both of them, and they needed the coffee to kick in.
“Do you think that Sasquatches mate for life or they’re like...” Shane made an indescribable gesture with his hand, but Ryan understood that he probably meant either ‘promiscuous’ or ‘solitary.’
“I don’t know,” he chuckled and for a couple of seconds allowed himself to look at Shane like he was his whole world, which to Shane wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. What Shane didn’t realize was that he was the only one at whom Ryan looked like that.
“I thought you were the supernatural specialist here,” Shane raised an eyebrow at him.
“Well, I thought you knew at least something about your own sexual behavior,” Ryan smirked back.
“What if I’m an outlier? Like Spiders Georg?” Shane chuckled.
“Oh, god, that’s such an old meme,” Ryan shook his head and picked his coffee up, “Also, I would love to ask you about the mating habits of Sasquatches, but to be honest,” he took a sip of his coffee again, “ I don’t think it’s a good topic for the breakfast table.” Ryan felt that he wasn’t unhinged or drunk enough for this, and honestly, he didn’t even want to be, not after what happened on Too Many Spirits. He looked away, rather embarrassed at the memory, and tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter now that they created other content, and that surely Watcher won’t be remembered for their, or mostly his, drunk little shit show.
“Alright,” Shane chuckled and kept smiling. Ryan looked somewhere past the fake plants just outside the cafe, so Shane allowed himself to linger with his gaze on Ryan’s face for almost a moment too long. Did he cross some lines by that question? Shane wasn’t sure. Well, he can always overthink it later.
-
When they were comfortably seated on the plane next to each other, Shane suggested they watch a movie together. Ryan thought that it was almost an unusually sweet gesture, so he quickly went through the menu with available movies. He stopped on something that Shane never heard of, to which they both nodded in agreement. About twenty minutes in, Shane started yawning. It wasn’t a boring movie per se - it just had an awfully linear plot, predictable twists, and cliché characters and tropes. Shane wasn’t even mad at Ryan for choosing it because when he dozed off and then woke up again, he felt like he didn’t miss anything important.
But he did miss something, albeit it wasn’t as superficial as the movie. It was Ryan, who found sleeping Shane a sight for sore eyes, so he snapped a few quick pictures of him and carefully brushed away the bangs which fell in his face. Then, despite wanting to run his hands through Shane’s hair, he resentfully resumed watching the movie, so he didn’t have to interact with the flight attendant who slowly approached them with a tray filled with small snacks.
Ryan wanted to reduce the food they had to eat on the plane to a minimum because, as everyone knows, plane food always tastes weirdly bland. They had to have at least one proper meal throughout their six hour flight, though. If they had Steven on the flight he would tell them everything that was wrong with the food, but neither Ryan nor Shane were ones to complain about the quality of what they were eating. They’ve surely eaten worse things. Besides, they didn’t have to pay for any of this. Beggars can’t be choosers.
After lunch, Ryan was the one to doze off. Shane saw that as an opportunity to stretch his legs a bit, so he carefully got up, tried not to accidentally wake Ryan up, and went to the bathroom. On the way, he met TJ, who just waved at him from his seat as he put down his clunky headphones.
“Shane! Hey!” He said to get his attention.
“Hey, Teej,” Shane smiled at him.
“Can I have a request for you?”
“Yeah, sure,” Shane stopped in his tracks at an arm’s length to TJ.
“Can you give this to Ryan?” TJ handed him what looked like a folded post-it note. Before Shane was able to look at it properly, TJ pointed at him and quickly said: “No, nono, don’t look at what’s in there. It’s just for Ryan.”
“Okay, middle schooler TJ, is that all?” Shane said as he put the piece of paper into the back pocket of his pants.
“Yeah, you may proceed to wherever you were going,” TJ grinned and waved in the direction Shane was headed. He put his headphones back on and continued reading through some papers. Presumably, a script, because it had scribbles and highlighted parts all over it.
Shane didn’t really want to know what was in TJ’s note for Ryan, or so he tried to convince himself. There was clearly some short message, maybe only one word. Perhaps it was just a prank, an inside joke, he thought as he was washing his hands in a small sink. In any case, Shane respected Ryan’s privacy enough to keep the post-it note unopened in his back pocket, which was a mistake because before he walked back to his seat, he forgot it even existed.
-
It was already late afternoon when they got to the Calgary airport. They met up with the crew as they waited for their bags to show up on the conveyor belt. The airport was much nicer than Burbank, it had a more open-spaced layout, and the glass-stone-metal combo with wood accents made a modern and clean impression. Burbank certainly did have it’s magic for some people, but it had the kind of retro vibes that rubbed Shane the wrong way.
After they got their bags, they all stopped for coffee and some snacks again and chatted away cheerfully. As they were leaving, Shane asked Ryan to take a picture of him next to the big red YYC letters at the terminal. Ryan took a few photos of Shane on his phone, then Shane took a couple of Ryan.
“You know that it says YYC, though, right? And not YYZ, like the song.” Ryan pointed out while they were deciding which pictures to post on their instagram stories later and which to delete.
“I’m not dumb, Ryan. I know that YYZ is the Toronto code!” He crossed his arms. “But I guess I’ll give you a jelly bean for the fact that you know Rush,” he pulled out a small packet of jelly beans, reached for Ryan’s hand, and softly pressed it into his palm.
“What? When? Where did you get that?” Ryan looked at his hand, wide-eyed, like he was just gifted an all-year free ticket to Disneyland.
“On the plane I nicely asked the flight attendant, and they gave me a couple of these little bags,” he rustled through his pocket to show there’s more.
“Oh, so you’re gonna give me treats as if I was your dog? You want me to be your obedient little pet!” Ryan said in an angry but suggestive tone.
“You like them! I got them for you because you like jelly beans!” Shane almost yelled. He was just genuinely trying to be nice to Ryan.
“Guys, guys, quiet,” someone from the crew patted them both on their backs. It was true that they tended to get loud, and it was also true that it wasn’t really appropriate here. Ultimately, they decided to film a few short scenes because apparently Shane and Ryan just started with their typical banter, and it was always better when it played out naturally than when they had to push it.
After they were finally done with everything at the airport, they went on their way to Banff in their rented cars. Ryan was driving, Shane was in the passenger seat, and they had one crew member in the back. In case something funny was happening. And sure enough, it started out with their funny antics, but slowly and surely it began turning into a serious argument. So heated that it made the crew guy turn the camera off and act like he wasn’t even in the car.
Shane began joking about the latest season of Too Many Spirits again. He seemed to not catch on to any of the cues that Ryan gave him to stop immediately. Ryan wasn’t even sure if Shane did it intentionally or if he was just that rude because of his lack of emotional intelligence.
“I mean, at least I’m not the one who was trying to break the rules and hug everyone,” Ryan said, thinking that that’ll make Shane stop.
“Well, at least I,” Shane started counting on his fingers, “didn’t flirt with like... all the people on the set, didn’t tell anyone about my weird kinks, and I didn’t try to kiss my friends.” Shane sighed and then took a long sip of his coffee.
Ryan completely forgot about the kissing part. It wasn’t in any of the episodes, after all. He specifically asked everyone to not use that material anywhere. Which he trusted them to keep that way, but still, how could he be so irresponsible? And Shane just casually mentions it as if it wasn’t a big deal? He’s had enough of him.
When he noticed that Shane was drinking coffee and that there were no other cars around them, he decided to take his revenge and immediately hit the brakes.
“Nice try, Ry,” Shane said as Ryan stopped the car. He’s already drunk all of the coffee in the plastic cup, so Ryan’s plan to make it spill on him was unsuccessful.
“You know what, Shane? You have a driver’s licence too, so let’s swap. You’ll drive.” Ryan sounded extremely angry, and Shane wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t that insensitive, what he said, right? Or was it?
He got out of the car shortly after Ryan, unable to make any witty comeback. Ryan purposefully walked around the back of the car while Shane went around the front, which made Shane feel guilty. It was heartless what he said, but he didn’t realize earlier that Ryan was so self-conscious about the things he did during and after filming TMS. Nonetheless, Shane sat behind the wheel, struggled with pushing the seat back a bit so he could fit in there, put on his seatbelt, and turned the car key. Waiting for the controls on the panel to stop shining and flashing, he looked over at Ryan, who looked like the angriest driving instructor he’s ever seen. It almost made him snort, but he held his breath and started the engine. He stepped on the gas pedal, and the car started moving again. Shane was just glad that it had an automatic gearbox because if he had to remember how to shift gears manually, he would make a complete fool of himself.
They drove in complete silence until they reached Banff. Shane parked the car in a parking lot next to the motel they were supposed to stay at for the night. He was quite proud of himself. Not that he had the chance to show off his parallel parking skills, but he did park the car nicely between the white lines on the asphalt.
When they got out of the car, and Ryan didn’t praise him, he felt like he was a teenager again. He wanted Ryan to at least say ‘not bad for a midwesterner’ or... anything really. But then again, Shane thought, it wasn’t a big deal for Ryan because he was, after all, driving to and from work every day. Shane, on the other hand, didn’t even own a car nowadays and had much less experience than Ryan. And, moreover, Ryan never let him drive before, so he expected at least some snarky remark. After they walked past the reception desk, and the whole crew said goodnight to each other, Shane just accepted that he won’t get any words of recognition from his friend.
When he plopped down on his bed, Shane realized that he might’ve really fucked up. He started thinking about how to apologize in a manner that won’t make Ryan angrier than he was already. It took Shane about fifteen minutes of additional silence before he formed in his head what he wanted to say.
“I’m sorry for the things I said in the car. I know the whole talk about TMS was sort of... out of place.”
Ryan, who was to that moment mindlessly scrolling down his twitter feed, looked up at Shane from the other bed. “Apology accepted,” he said flatly. He was still angry at Shane, but maybe more so at himself.
“Can I do anything to make it right?” Shane sat up on his bed.
Ryan put his phone down and also sat up on the edge of his bed, facing Shane.
“Look, Shane,” he started, but then he realized that he didn’t want to use such a rough tone, especially since Shane apologized and wanted to talk it out, “I’m sorry I overreacted.”
Shane listened to Ryan earnestly, as he opened up about how he regretted how he acted on TMS and hoped that everyone would just let him brush it off, but no, some people will forever nag him about it. He mentioned the Halloween episodes more than the Christmas-y ones because even though he acted like a fool in those as well, he had it under control. It was all just a schtick. But in the first season he was seriously drunk and out of his mind. He even admitted to Shane how he wished that he could act so composed as him.
It flattered Shane, but he still felt very guilty. He didn’t want to be the cold-hearted skeptic asshole when he didn’t have to. And he had to admit, he was expecting that he would cross the line with his jokes someday. So he decided that it was definitely for the better that they only had some random new guy in the car with them because if it was someone they’ve been working with for a longer time, they would’ve just taken someone’s side in the arguments and made things worse. Yeah, they probably scared the new guy a bit, but that's show business, baby. Shane finished his thought just in time to zone back in at the end of Ryan’s monologue.
“So, yeah, it’s just something I’m kind of self-conscious about. I didn’t think that I would be acting so insane after a few drinks. That’s all.” Ryan finished talking, hitting his knees with his hands as if he was getting ready to get up.
“I’ll make up for it tomorrow, I promise, okay?” Shane reached his hand out and softly brushed his fingers over the knuckles on Ryan’s right hand.
“No, you don’t have to, Shane, it’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it.” Ryan placed his other hand over Shane’s in a comforting manner, even though he was shaking because of all the emotions he was feeling at that moment.
“Yeah, but I still hurt you, so I’m gonna be on my best behavior,” Shane winked, added his left hand to the hand sandwich they made, and for that, he finally got an earnest smile out of Ryan.