Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Cut! Great! I think we’ve got it!” Karen said from behind the camera.

Shane pumped a fist in victory. Ryan turned in his chair, his knee barely grazing Shane’s.

Shane fought a sudden light-headedness at being within the laser sights of Ryan’s full-forced attractiveness. “This Ghost Files thing is gonna be great!” he lobbed in Ryan’s direction, clearing his throat when his voice came out too high-pitched.

Ryan laughed and aimed a high-five in Shane’s direction, his palm a little bit sweaty from his ever-present anxiety over giving his new show the 110% he gives to everything he does.

He couldn’t help but grin—it all but lit him up from inside, fizzing with the warmth of champagne. He knew it was going to be good. Heck, they both knew; Shane felt it right down to his bones. The electricity in the air from working together like this again—yeah. Nothing less than great.

Karen took a half step back from her camera, momentarily forgetting how tightly they’d packed the office furniture to keep it all just barely out of frame for the shoot.

“Ouch!” Her hip knocked into the sharp edge of Ryan’s standing desk. She rubbed her side and frowned.

Ryan’s little Paddington bear wobbled and tipped, faceplanting sadly into Ryan’s keyboard.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be,” Ryan fidgeted in his chair, making it creak. He waved a hand at the mish-mash of furniture shoved just barely out of the camera’s view. His voice was an apology. “It was ridiculous of us to ask you to work around this mess.”

Shane felt a static buzz through his body, the electric feeling of Ryan’s eyes on him. He turned in his chair. Ryan adjusted his orange beanie over his curls and smiled up at him.

Almost imperceptibly, they exchanged nods, agreeing to the silent conversation that passed between them. Ryan hefted his own desk chair to his muscled shoulders, dragging Shane’s gaze along with him. Shane caught up another chair before Ryan could catch him staring and dutifully followed Ryan to the office’s spiral staircase.

The stairs thumped and rattled underneath their footsteps.

“What are you doing?” Charlie asked. She looked up from her editing to peer curiously at Shane and Ryan pushing furniture into place on the second-floor balcony.

“We’re moving on up,” Ryan responded, glee in his voice. He wiped his face with his sleeve and Shane nearly dropped his corner of the table he was helping Ryan move. Ryan’s biceps were so distracting, honestly.

“Ryan, don’t say it like that,” Shane squeaked.

“It sounds so—” Shane barely suppressed a shudder “—elitist.”

Ryan huffed. “Fine.”

He waved over the balcony railing to Charlie and Annie. “We’re just fooling ourselves, thinking we have enough room to work down there, with the new set in the way. Does anyone else want their desks moved up here to the treehouse?”

He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around the banister, grinning like a wayward mischievous elf wearing an orange knit beanie, gray shirt, and bright blue Jordans instead of red and green raiment and curled-toe shoes.

“Why not?” Annie said. She picked up her desk chair. Charlie chuckled and followed suit as Ryan sent a grateful shaka in their direction.

The noises of Watcher staff deciding where to place Henry the dancing cactus toy, nabbed by Annie at the very end of their white elephant gift exchange, drifted down the spiral staircase.

“Hi, Annie!” Shane made the little cactus say in its friendly high-pitched voice. It swiveled on its base and blinked cheerful lights. He placed it in front of Annie’s keyboard. Annie guffawed and set down her pen cup next to it.

Katie walked out of her ground-floor office and peered up the stairs curiously. Shane caught her eye and waved to her.

“I get why you moved the desks, and that’s fine—” Katie said to Ryan, her face upturned to watch him hustle down the staircase to join her, “—but what are you going to do if someone on staff can’t make it up and down those stairs?”

Annie spun in her chair, her mouth forming a silent, “oh,” as her eyebrows went up. Shane leaned over the banister from his perch upstairs to see Ryan grimace, as if the wind were knocked out of him.

“Oh,” Ryan said. He tugged his beanie off and ran a hand through his dark hair. “That’s a very good point.”

“This is not exactly an ADA-compliant building,” Katie added, kindly not specifying, out loud, that was exactly the reason why Watcher could afford to move into it.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Ryan said, visibly deflated.

Katie put her hands on her hips, but her voice was softer. “Steven was on crutches literally last summer, boss. We’ve gotta think of things like that.”

Ryan took a deep breath and looked around the office, doubt in his eyes. Then he rallied and shot her a winning grin. “But that’s why we have you around!”

Katie shook her head. Steven, who kept his glassed-in office on the ground floor, poked his head out. “Don’t worry, Ryan; we can rig up a pulley system!” he teased.

Shane laughed. “Ooh, I’ve always wanted a house with a dumbwaiter system. Maybe we can have one installed at the office. But, like, big. For carrying people.”

Ryan puffed his chest up and grinned, clearly a winning idea in his noggin. He made a show of being sure of himself, in the way Shane recognizes means that he absolutely is not.

“I’ll personally carry them up the stairs!” Ryan announced.

Steven widened his eyes, like he’d just had a major brainwave. “Wait, does that make Ryan the dumbwaiter?”

“Ope!” Shane clapped a hand over his mouth to conceal his laughter.

Steven cackled in victory. Ryan pulled a face and huffed out a couple of fake laughs.

“Did I get ‘im, Shane?” Steven asked. “Did I get ‘im?”

“You sure did, Steven!”

Charlie raised her eyes up to the ceiling and ever-so-casually pressed a button on her computer. Her speakers emitted the ‘moo’ stock sound she kept on hand, just for Watcher Weeklies and other opportune editing shenanigans.

“That’s right,” Steven grinned. “Midwest rise up!” Shane and Steven exchanged thumbs-up while Ryan, won over, collapsed into giggles.

Katie raised an eyebrow.

That did it. Ryan doubled down. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “I will carry them up, myself.”

He held up both fists, proudly flexing his biceps in a strongman pose. Oh, he really knew Katie was in the right. Shane could read Ryan like the back of his hand, this many years in, even from an overhead perspective a flight up.

“What,” Ryan said, showing off his weightlifting gains, “you think these bad boys can’t do it?”

“No,” she sighs. “Actually, I have—other concerns….”

Ryan slapped each bicep and then kissed each in turn for good measure.

“Oh, no,” Steven groaned.

Trusting the security of his semi-shadowed perch on the second floor, Shane leaned his chin on his fist and let himself drink in the gun show.

Of course, Ryan looked up at him for support and caught him ogling. His sly grin was for Shane and Shane alone. “Steven’s no help,” he called up to Shane. “Give me two out of three cofounders’ approval, Shane. It’s a good plan.”

Shane nearly swallowed his tongue when all eyes turned to him. “I—I. Uh.” His throat became dry as the desert and he found he could barely make his voice work.

Ryan, fully into the bit, wiggled his eyebrows at him in a dumb parody of flirting. And then he winked.

Shane couldn’t help it. He wheezed. He clapped a hand over his mouth until he could recover (thanks, Ryan) and find his voice.

“Aw, come on, Katie. What a good, completely unproblematic company perk to offer.” And then he added, because everybody had to be thinking it, anyway: “Besides, what’s the point of all of that lifting if Beef Boy can’t make those muscles useful around the office once in a while?”

Katie opened her mouth to parry with a rejoinder. She was interrupted by the phone ringing from her desk. She threw up both hands in mock-surrender, then dashed off to pick up the call.

Ryan apparently decided to call that one a win, although Shane knows that it’s really, at best, a draw for now. He traipsed back up the stairs, the spiral railing rattling with his steps. He patted Shane’s upper arm with aplomb as he passed. Shane reminded his suddenly weakened knees to continue holding him up.

“Thanks for the support, big guy. You’re right—what’s the point, otherwise?” He laughed again, bright and trilling, and headed back to work at his desk.

Shane clung to the balcony railing and let his eyes graze along Ryan’s body.

Indeed, he thought to himself, letting himself daydream for a moment about being carried by Ryan’s buff arms, up and around the spirals of the staircase, what’s the point?

Finally, the weekend approached. Shane glanced around to check he was alone for the moment, then pulled up Ryan’s instastory of his latest basketball game footage. Again.

Shane wished he weren’t a complete joke at basketball because he’d like for Ryan to guard him like that, is all.

The clang of the stairs alerted him to someone approaching. Right! Work! He was supposed to be working!

He guiltily slapped his phone face down on the desk and clicked his mouse busily. Just a couple more things to finish up, then—

“Shane,” Ryan called plaintively.

He followed the sound of Ryan’s voice down to the office kitchen, where Ryan was leaning on the counter, on one delicious-looking forearm. His other arm was flailing at air on the edge of the top shelf.

Ryan sighed and gave up, with a great heave of his muscled chest. Shane remembered himself too late and dragged his eyes hurriedly up from Ryan’s broad chest to meet his eyes.

“Grab the extra bottles of spaghetti sauce and pass them down for me? I thought we could send anybody who wants home with the unopened ones we didn’t use for the Are You Scared promo shoot.”

“Sure,” Shane pasted a grin on his face and reached for them easily, handing them down, one by one, his head in the clouds, watching Ryan’s biceps flex and work.

In the end, it was Ryan’s grunt that did it, Shane told himself later. Ryan let out a—noise—that sounded like a—a—a sex noise—and then the thought accosted him, hmm, wonder if that’s what Ryan sounds like during sex.

He turned to Ryan, and that noise slipped out of his mouth and his chest filled out his t-shirt so well, and Shane noticed that Ryan was sweating a little bit, just above his brow, and then the last extra-large container of spaghetti sauce just slipped out of his hands.

“Oh no!” Ryan yelped as the heavy jar just missed Shane’s foot, splatting into a spectacular glittering pile of glass and Chunky Tomato sauce.

“That could have broken your foot!” Ryan said, relief in his voice, his hands steadying themselves on Shane’s shoulders in his alarm.

Shane, having stopped breathing, only managed a weak smile. “Good thing it didn’t.”

Charlie, standing curiously at the doorway, laughed. “Yeah, or you would have had to make good on your offer.”

Ryan furrowed his brows in confusion. “Offer? Oh. He patted Shane’s shoulders and laughed with delight. Shane felt the blood rushing to his face, a blush probably spreading over his nose and cheeks.

“Right, right!” Ryan said. “No piggyback rides up the stairs from me, Shane! Not today, anyway.”

And he knelt to begin cleaning up the mess.

“No,” Shane agreed, his face hot. “Not today.”

“Oh my god, are you dead?!” an alarmed woman’s voice yelped.

“Ha—ha—ow,” Shane said to her be-shearlinged Uggs, which was all he could see of her from his present position, flat on the ground along a paved trail that looped its way through Griffith Park.

Surely a nice night run would clear Shane’s mind, he’d thought, just an hour before. Something about Ryan’s dumb bit about carrying people up the office stairs had really tweaked his brain into continually serving up images of Ryan. Yes, his face, of course, but also—mostly—his muscles.

Ryan had really been spending extra time in the weight room lately, and look—Shane’s only human. He couldn’t not notice Ryan’s biceps straining out of all his shirtsleeves, is all. And his chest—well, these sorts of mental pictures were why Shane just plain forgot to pay attention to his own running pace and careened into the ground with the force of a three-car pileup. And probably the same volume of alarmed yelling from bystanders.

He tried to climb to his feet, found the distance too far to scale, and so contented himself with rolling over to sit up on the cracked pavement.

That was fine. Standing was for nerds anyway.

He picked bits of gravel and dirt out of his hands, ignoring the fact that his running pants were ripped from knee to ankle on his right leg.

“I’m fine! So fine! Completely fine!” he wildly reassured her, his voice pitching higher with every word.

He looked back along the path. His running headlamp highlighted the shadows cast by the broken concrete that sent him ass-over-teakettle, sprawling over the pavement just seconds ago. He glowered at the tiny mountain the sidewalk slabs had made to trip him, pushed together and up into a pyramidal shape, like tiny tectonic plates creating a mountain range for field mice to climb.

The woman grimaced, vibrating with adrenaline, just as on-edge as the tiny barky dog she was walking on its red-and-white striped leash.

“You don’t look okay,” she said, pulling out her phone. “I’m going to call you an ambulance.”

Shane groaned, even as he caught sight of the blood speckling his favorite running socks. “WIth my health insurance? Please don’t.” He climbed up onto his left knee, then attempted again to stand.

“Augh!” A pained breath was forced out of him as his right ankle refused to hold him and he half-crumpled to the ground again.

Funny that he hadn’t felt the pain until then, he thought. He surmised he must be in a little bit of shock. Maybe the well-meaning woman wasn’t entirely overstating the severity of his situation.

He looked up. The woman still brandished her phone in mid-air. However, she snapped her gum steadily, indecision written on her face.

A couple of feet away, her twitchy little dog sniffed a patch of grass and lifted its leg.

Okay. He could do this.

“Gr—r—a—u—gh—h,” Shane stood on his left leg, the one that wasn’t sending shooting pains through him when he put his weight on it, and hopped his way to a park bench. He tugged his phone out of his sweatpants pocket and it lit up, still in working order. He breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank you,” he effused to the concerned Uggs lady. “I’m just gonna call a ride over to Urgent Care. I’ll be fine.”

Her dog tugged on its leash. “Okay,” she relented. “Suit yourself. Hope your night doesn’t get any worse!”

She gave a half-wave and headed off along the trail.

Shane lifted his ankle carefully with both hands and crossed his leg over his knee. He poked at it gingerly. It radiated pain, making him hiss between his teeth.

“Great,” Shane mumbled to himself.

Shane winced as he hobbled his way into the car. Putting any weight at all on his foot sent waves of throbbing pain, only calming to a quiet ebb and flow of hurt when he swung his foot up across the backseat, loosening his seatbelt to let him turn in his seat.

He pushed his sweaty hair out of his eyes and let the driver know where to drive.

The tree canopy of the park was just giving way to the streetlights of the city when a text message alert dinged on his phone.

Ryan: Okay. Riddle me this

Ryan: top 5 sports that aren’t sports
I think curling is going to be up there for me
It’s just … sweeping? On ice? I mean, whut?

Shane laughed and wondered, just for a moment, if Ryan’s ears were burning while Shane was fantasizing about his biceps and then getting a mouthful of gravel for his reward.

Ryan: my main concern is whether you even know 5 sports to fill out your list
but I figure you’re just going to argue that chess is a sport or something
… you okay?
I was expecting snappy retorts by now

Ryan: oh fuck

Ryan: give me the address. I’ll meet you there

Ryan: give.

Shane leaned back against his seat in the car and let out a puff of air. Sure, Ryan, he thought to himself, just come hang out with your idiot injured friend who forgot how to work his own feet because he’s a fool who can’t stop fantasizing about your body.

His phone chimed again.

He texted Ryan the address.

He hadn’t been settled on a hard plastic chair in the waiting room for long before his curious little pal shouldered his way through the double doors.

“Shane!” Ryan sat down in the chair beside him and gave him the once-over. His eyes widened at the scattered bloodstains on Shane’s pants and at the hem of his shirt, where he’d wiped off his gravel-scratched hands as best he could.

“You’re not looking good.”

Despite the pain emanating from his ankle, Shane laughed. It was the best pain reliever he’d been given so far tonight.

“Thanks. You look good, too.” It was true, too. His curls still escaped from his orange beanie in a devastating way. His jeans led down to a pair of surely very stylish sneakers featuring the color story of a Fisher-Price toy from 1983. His hoodie sweatshirt didn’t hide the lines of his biceps at all. Shane idly wondered if Ryan would hug him with them.

“No, I mean,” Ryan’s fingers wavered in the air near Shane’s face, “you’re pale. You might be in shock, big guy. Are you next in line, at least?”

Shane shrugged. Getting registered into line in the first place had been challenge enough for one day. “Uh, I don’t know where I am in, uh, triage order,” he said uncertainly.

He followed Ryan’s line of sight, as he turned to watch the various people wearing scrubs scurrying back and forth between the reception desk and the hallways beyond. Ryan didn’t look pleased with their speed.

“This is why I insisted on being here.” He pointed at Shane’s chest. “You need someone to look out for you. Let me see what I can do.”

Less than five minutes after Ryan charged toward the nurses’ station, his trademark charm locked and loaded in both barrels, Shane’s name was called. He leaned heavily on the clinic staffer’s shoulder who escorted him in to see the doctor, Ryan tossing him a victorious shaka from the waiting room.

“Oof.”

Shane rolled his way out through the double doors, his walking-boot-encased ankle sticking out behind him on his very own new knee scooter. He leaned his weight on his mostly-unhurt right knee and held onto the handlebars as he pushed himself along with his left leg.

It reminded him, sort of, of the scooter he’d received for Christmas when he was seven years old. It was bright purple and he’d eventually covered it with stickers and it was easily the coolest thing he’d ever owned. This ugly black knee scooter for injured adults was, he thought to himself, a look way, way dorkier.

Ryan opened up the door to his own car and snickered. “Graceful way to get around. It’s just too bad you don’t have the arm strength to haul all those limbs around on a pair of crutches.”

“Hey, now,” Shane chided. “Doin’ my best, here.”

“If only,” Ryan teased, his smile bright as the sun, but he took close care in making sure Shane got settled comfortably into the car.

A few minutes later, Ryan pulled up to Shane’s apartment building.

“Oh, no,” Shane groaned. He covered his face with his hands. He didn’t want to see it.

“Stairs,” the word fell like a curse from both of them, Ryan matching Shane’s tone of newfound despair.

“My new nemesis!” Shane tried to make a joke of it, raising his fist in mock-anger. But honestly, it had been a very long night, and he was looking forward to jumping into bed—well, he thought, looking down at his immobilized ankle, maybe ‘jumping’ is too strong a word for it—and sleeping for a week. With every obstacle that popped up in his path, his reward of crawling into bed seemed to stretch more and more into the distance.

And maybe the pain drugs had made him a little bit bad at making judgements, because how had he forgotten how many stairs were in his daily life?

Shane had cheerfully agreed to the knee scooter, after the clinic had searched up a pair of crutches marginally suitable for a six-foot-plus sasquatch of a man, and he’d gamely tried to haul himself across the room in a trial run, only to find out that they required the arm strength of a professional gymnast to operate properly.

The nurse tech had watched him trying the crutches out, her brows drawn together like she was concerned his drooping willow-tree form was going to tip over and sprain his other ankle.

And now he was—moderately—mobile on his own wheels, for a few weeks, and no more driving until he could put his full weight on his foot again—which, he’ll think about what to do about that tomorrow, and—

Ryan looked over at him. “No problem. I’ll carry you up.”

Shane spluttered incoherently as Ryan hopped out of the car, retrieved his scooter, and opened up Shane’s car door.

“Ryan! No. You don’t need to. It’s fine,” he managed, flapping a bandaged hand.

Ryan held the scooter steady and waited for him expectantly. Shane maneuvered his body into a half-kneel on the scooter and wheeled himself to the apron of sidewalk below the steps.

He bumped the front rubber wheel of his scooter against the riser of the first step.

The stairs really did look forbiddingly tall.

Ryan crossed his arms. “Okay, pal. How do you intend to get up to your place, then?”

This was what Shane got, right, for moving into an older complex, delighted with its old-timeyness. Sure, there’s a creaky old elevator in there somewhere, but it’s often on the fritz, accessible only to the alleyway, and he would have to get a key from the super, and this was all just a little bit too much to deal with at three in the morning.

“Uh. One step at a time,” Shane responded.

Ryan laughed. “Literally.”

“It’s only a few steps up,” Shane scoffed. “How bad can it be?”

Ryan watched him like a hawk as Shane rolled right up to the stair again and considered his options He let go of the handlebars and wiped his hands on his sweatpants, still dusted with gravel from his fall, and it was then when he remembered that the laundry room was also downstairs, how was he going to handle that—no—it’ll wait until later, Shane thought ruefully.

Shane grabbed the railing and put his awkwardly-booted foot on the first step. And looked up at the increasingly distant-looking front door.

His face must have been doing something that betrayed his sudden doubts, because Shane heard Ryan’s sharp intake of breath and a “Nope!” and before he knew it, Ryan was there, leaning in.

“Put your arms around my neck,” he commanded, so close to Shane that he caught the scent of Ryan’s deodorant, something sporty and boyish, and the laundry detergent scent still faintly clinging to his clothes.

“I—” Shane didn’t know what to say. He looked up at the entrance door, longingly. Then he looked back at Ryan. Also, longingly.

“Put. your arms. Around. My neck,” Ryan instructed, with a firmness that made Shane feel like he needed a fainting couch, pronto.

To avoid the embarrassment of collapsing like a pile of bricks to the ground, Shane acquiesced. He clasped his hands together around Ryan’s neck, the heat of Ryan’s chest burning against his cheek. He felt himself lifted off the ground, Ryan’s left arm behind his back and his right arm underneath Shane’s knees.

His stomach swooped as he was swept off his feet—just picked up as if he weighed as much as a tiny dachshund and was remotely as fluffy or cuddly, and not the unwieldy bag of bones he knew himself to be.

Maybe it was the Vicodin kicking in, wrapping him in a blanket of wooziness, but his initial wave of bashfulness cracked and broke and disappeared into the predawn breeze. To his surprise, being bridal-carried by his cofounder was—kind of nice, actually.

“Wow,” he couldn’t stop himself from saying. “This is—new for me.”

“You don’t say,” Ryan said.

“This is—really something,” he said. He let his eyes drift closed to allay the dizziness from the world tilting everytime Ryan turned to go through doorways sideways.

“Don’t wanna—bump your ankle,” Ryan grunted, as the hallway swirled again.

“Thanks, Ry,” Shane mumbled. He nuzzled into the folds of Ryan’s shirt.

Somewhere the sound of his keys jangled and the door to his apartment opened.

“I love you,” he murmured against Ryan’s pecs, his line-of-sight limited to a little bit of the warmly lit entryway and a whole lot of Ryan’s soft shirt. Ryan said something, low and warm, but Shane didn’t understand the words, nestled in against Ryan’s body as he was.

He must have dozed, because the next thing he knew, he found himself being tucked into his own bed.

Shane yawned. “Guess those amazing biceps aren’t just for show, Bergooze,” he admitted into his pillow. “Lucky me.”

Ryan laughed, and the low ring of his laughter accompanied Shane as he drifted off to sleep.

Swish—CLOMP—swish—CLOMP—swish———CLOMP.

Shane rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He leaned to steady himself with a hand on the archway wall, to see—

—yup, to see Ryan, sacked out and snoring open-mouthed on Shane’s couch, his beanie pulled down over his face, legs tossed along the length of the seat. He hugged a pillow to his chest.

“Ryan?”

Ryan startled, then yanked his hat up to reveal warm brown eyes, looking at him upside-down from the arm of Shane’s couch. He blinked, suddenly shy, and then gave a tiny, upside-down wave.

He clutched the pillow closer and then sat up. His socked feet hit the floor and he twisted around to regard Shane.

“Hey—,” he began, and then stopped himself, a lost look in his eyes.

Ryan fussed with a cord on his hoodie.

Say something! Shane’s brain chided him. He hadn’t expected Ryan to stay over, but since he had, Shane didn’t feel the least little bit sad about it. He should tell Ryan that; do something about how Ryan’s nightmare brain was probably telling him he’d overstepped his bounds. Even though he hadn’t.

“Hey, uh, fancy meeting you here!” he said, waggling his eyebrows. Ryan’s face lit up and he cackled.

“I could—I could go, but.” Ryan glanced down at Shane’s ridiculous boot.

“If you want to hang around here, I’d be honored. I, uh, don’t think I’ll be leaving the house today.”

Ryan held his breath, just for a moment, suspended in some kind of internal argument with himself.

His beautiful face broke into a grin. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like to.”

“Okay! I’m gonna—” Shane gestured to the bathroom, thinking that they could both use a little time apart to regroup. And who knows how long it would take for him to figure out how to shower with one leg he couldn’t quite stand on.

After a long shower where he did the best he could, Shane hobbled into his tiny kitchen. “Smells good in here. Did you—did you make coffee?”

Shane ungracefully flopped himself into a chair. Ryan clattered around at the kitchen counter and placed a mug of coffee in front of Shane, no cream and a sugar.

“Thanks, Ryan.” Shane gratefully breathed in the coffee-scented steam.

“No prob.” Ryan snapped a banana from the bunch on the counter and passed it to Shane.

Shane looked down into his coffee so he wouldn’t get caught looking at Ryan too much, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, his hair rumpled in the cool morning light of December.

Absurd of him, to stare and stare and stare at Ryan so much that his brain replayed images of Ryan to him, over and over, until he got so caught up in wondering about what Ryan looked like, underneath all those clothes, that he couldn’t pay enough attention on his run to keep one foot in front of the other anymore.

“How are you feeling?” Ryan asked, his body studiedly still but his fingers fidgeting on his own mug.

Shane huffed a derisive laugh. “Silly.”

Ryan grinned, and Shane was helpless to resist the impulse to grin back.

“Well, sure, but—I meant your ankle, Shane.”

“Oh! Uh, better, I think?”

Then his damn ankle threw out a spasm of pain, and Shane inhaled sharply through his teeth.

In a second, Ryan pulled out a chair for Shane to prop his leg up on, and dug a bag of peas from the back of the freezer to drape over his ankle. Ryan checked his phone, announcing that according to his timer, Shane was all clear for another dose of pain meds. Shane looked at the swollen, bruised mess that was his ankle now and thanked Ryan again as he opened the rattly bottle of pills Ryan handed him.

It all made Shane a little bit breathless, having all of Ryan’s attention focused on him. And that he just decided to stay! Overnight! And Shane hadn’t even asked him to—but then, Ryan knew that Shane never would have asked him to, so he did what he does best and Kool-Aid man wall-busted his way in, even though his inevitable anxiety about being wanted around had already reared its head. It’s okay; Shane’s an old hand at reminding Ryan that he does want him around—distracting biceps and all.

He took his medicine with the dregs of his coffee, then—“Ready?” Ryan stood next to his chair. Shane, heart in his throat, managed a nod.

In a breathtaking swoop, Ryan picked Shane up easily and carried him to the couch. Shane couldn’t get over it; he knew Ryan had been lifting more lately, but knowing that, logically, and reaping the benefits, personally, were turning out to be very different experiences.

Ryan tucked him up in a plaid blanket, saying something about grabbing a change of clothes and a couple of things and coming back. He took Shane’s glasses and set them within arm’s reach on a table. Shane yawned so hard that Ryan chuckled and pushed a pillow underneath his head.

“Sure,” Shane said, to the stream of Ryan’s words. “Thanks, Ry. Love you,” he sighed, snuggling in.

Ryan’s movement froze in place. Shane fuzzily wondered what that was about and reached out and patted his hand. He felt fingers on his scalp, strands of his hair brushed back from his face, and he gave in to the gauzy sleepiness wrapping him up in fuzzy wool.

Shane slept, off-and-on most of the weekend. Ryan stayed, passing him icepacks and making Kraft Mac and Cheese for dinner. Sometimes Shane awoke to Ryan playing Red Dead on the Playstation, galloping his horse over wide prairies and tall mountains.

Ryan turned to Shane when he stirred, his face upturned from his perch on the floor, his back leaning against the couch Shane was sleeping on, and smiled. The answering warmth in Shane’s chest spread out to the rest of his body. He smiled back, and found himself unable to resist reaching out a hand, just to barely touch one of Ryan’s curls.

Ryan leaned into his hand. Shane carded fingers through his curls.

“I didn’t have time to tell you yet, but. I really. Like what you’re doing with your hair lately,” Shane said.

Ryan held very, very still, then ducked his head to look down at his controller. “Thanks, Shane.”

“It’s … fun,” Shane said, wondering why he was still talking.

Ryan huffed appreciatively. On the screen, his horse walked straight off a cliff.

“Oh, no!”

By Sunday afternoon, the swelling around Shane’s ankle was mostly down. Shane left the pain reliever meds up on the shelf, and his sleepy brain fog left him. It took a lot of repeated tries, but eventually he reassured Ryan that it was fine to go home and sleep in his own bed. It had to have been doing a number on Ryan’s back to sleep on Shane’s couch.

Ryan only agreed on condition that Shane allow Ryan to drive him to work the first morning back—”I don’t trust any rando app driver with fragile cargo like you,”—he’d scoffed. “I should really talk Papa Lim into having the company take out an insurance policy on your glass limbs.”

“Okay,” Shane laughed, wondering if the bridge of his nose was going pink.

Walking—well, Ryan walked and Shane wheeled—through the doors to the office wasn’t half as embarrassing as Shane feared. After all, what kind of company would Watcher be if razzing Shane for falling during a run—again—wasn’t a near-yearly event?

Together, they approached the spiral staircase.

Katie smiled. It was a knowing smile. “Ryan, guess you’ll have to make good on your promise,” she pointed out.

“Oh.” He turned to look at Shane. “Yeah. Guess you’re right.”

Shane hoped he wasn’t blushing, because it suddenly felt like all eyes in the office were on them.

“Staircase doesn’t look too wide, owner-of-limbs,” Ryan observed. He crouched down, his back to Shane, and offered his hands behind him. “Going my way?” he said.

“Yeah—yeah.”

Shane parked his scooter by the railing. He looked at Ryan. Ryan turned his head to look back. “How do I—oh!” Ryan caught up Shane’s thighs in a firm hold just as Shane’s hands landed on Ryan’s broad shoulders.

Suddenly Ryan was chuckling and Shane felt like he was flying along one of those spiral rollercoasters. He tightened his arms around Ryan as they rocketed around. And Ryan’s arms—yeah, they felt nice on him, strong and steady. Shane could smell the jasmine in Ryan’s hair conditioner, as soft strands caressed his cheek.

He set him down where Shane braced himself on a desk. Which was good, because getting this up-close-and-personal with Ryan was making itself known in a sudden case of weak knees—not ideal on top of the ankle. So.

“Love ya, buddy,” Ryan tossed off as he sat down at his computer and brought up his calendar.

And oh. Oh no.

Shane hazily remembered saying, “I love you,” well, more than once. He had been kind of high on meds, sure. But he wasn’t about to take any of it back.

And now, Ryan thought that Shane had said it in a platonic way. A buddy way. A—shudder—bro-ey way.

And listen, once he knew what Ryan’s chest felt like (firm, softly defined, good), he didn’t ever want to go back to not knowing that. If anything, he wanted to know more.

No, that state of affairs simply wouldn’t do.

But what to do about it? How to proceed? After already saying “I love you,” but when he meant it in a pantsfeelings way, in a hey-I-twisted-my-ankle-while-fantasizing-about-your-biceps kind of way?

Fight for Ryan, that was the way. But Shane had never fought for anything in his life. Wasn’t like he was going to start now.

Subterfuge, that was the ticket.

Shane curled his fingers underneath his chin and grinned the grin of a scheming Cupid. Ryan would be his. He would make sure of it. He just needed the right strategy.

“You know,” Shane commented out loud, casual as could be, wrapped around Ryan’s back on their slow way down the stairwell at the end of a rather long workday, “I can’t think of how to repay you for doing this. For me.”

“You can get better, and you can do your assigned physical therapy,” Ryan grunted. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that you didn’t do your ankle alphabet exercises.”

“Dammit. You’re such a hardass, Bergara. You sure there isn’t anything else I could do?”

The music of Ryan’s laughter reverberated through his body. Shane clutched Ryan closer.

“Just take your recovery seriously. That’s all you have to do.” Ryan set him down gently, then fiddled with the new shark keychain dangling from the handlebar of Shane’s scooter. It matched the other one that had swung from Ryan’s Paddington bear’s pocket, after they’d returned from lunch.

The rest of Watcher staff really weren't ever going to let them live down the sharktooth necklace stunt, it appeared.

“I know, but.” And was Shane flirting with a man he’d known and been friends with for years, as if he was back in junior high, beefing it terribly at getting his crush to notice him, short of knocking them over with a two-foot clue bat? Absolutely.

But Shane’s clue-batting average must have gotten better since he was a self-loathing teenager in secondary school, because Ryan hesitated. Just a moment.

Then Ryan tilted his head and looked up at Shane through his eyelashes, in a way that just might mean that Ryan was picking up what Shane was putting down.

“Oh,” Ryan said, his voice low. His lip curled; his eyes looked like he was thinking about taking a dare. Or making one.

“Should I—should I set a price? A toll, even?” He rubbed his whiskered jaw.

“Yeah, a toll! Consider it practice for when we retire to a life of being professional bridge trolls, living next to the Ryan-and-Shane bridge and exacting a toll on all comers!”

Ryan let out a soft laugh, then reached up to rub at the back of his neck. Shane leaned on his scooter for support so his knees didn’t buckle underneath him at the sight of Ryan’s arm on display like that.

“You know, I’d do this for anyone who asked.”

“Of course.”

“But I’d ask a particular price from you that I wouldn’t ask for, from anyone else.”

“I’d expect nothing less.” Shane’s mind raced with the possibilities.

Ryan straightened his shoulders. His gaze was almost a dare.

“A kiss,” he said. The toll is a kiss.”

“Uh.” Shane wavered, knocked off-balance. Ryan hustled to catch him by the elbow and steady him. The shark keychain rattled.

Ryan’s voice softened. “If you don’t want to, you don’t have to,” he said, and Shane could see the light in his eyes start to shutter. He could feel Ryan slipping away from his grasp—all too ready to retreat back into calling him “buddy” and “pal” and pretending that Shane had said “I love you” and run his fingers through Ryan’s hair as a platonic gesture just a few short days ago.

“No!” Shane yelped. Ryan startled. “I mean! I do! Want to,” he clarified.

Ryan gave him a grin wider than the Los Angeles River and three times as sexy.

Moment seized! But now, what to do with it? Shane didn’t know.

So he reached out, and took Ryan’s hand in his. Hovering in a terrible gray area of doubt over what to do next, he passed his thumb over Ryan’s knuckles. Ryan’s hitch of breath was almost too much to take—the little guy was anxious 24/7 at the best of times, and Shane was conscious that he really wasn’t improving matters at the moment.

And so, then, he bent his head forward, and he kissed Ryan’s hand.

He looked up into Ryan’s startled eyes and smiled.

Yeah. Clearly, this was a perfect plan.

How did this become my life, Shane wondered, dropping a kiss onto Ryan’s temple as they made the first turn into the shadowed part of the stair, where he was pretty sure no one else could see him do it. Ryan’s eyes crinkled in amusement so Shane kissed him again, right there where the lines of delight were settling into his skin.

Ryan cleared his throat and delivered his heavy burden of Shane to his chair.

Hours into the workday, Ryan grunted when he settled back into his desk next to Shane. “Keeping up with your physical therapy?” he asked pointedly.

Shane sighed and undid his boot and waggled his ankle in circles sulkily.

“I can still puppeteer with a sprained ankle,” he said, failing to hide his irritation.

“Yeah, but you can’t ghostbust from a scooter.”

“Hmm,” he groused. “Bet.”

“I can’t carry you and all the new ghost cameras,” Ryan retorted, from between bites of his second breakfast burrito.

“That’s why I’ve got a scooter basket. For the gidgets and gazmos.”

Ryan just looked at him, a smear of sour cream at the corner of his mouth. It was cute as hell.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you don’t want to heal up.” Ryan’s eyes held both a challenge and an endearment. “What, you like the perks too much?”

“Yeah!” Shane’s stomach fluttered nervously, like he was being found out for… something. “Lotsa perks. Little old ladies helping me cross the street and whatnot.”

Ryan nodded, as if Shane had said something particularly insightful. Abruptly, as if it weren’t the non-sequitur it was, he said, “We still on for dinner tonight?”

“S—sure?” The flutter in his stomach went from a tiny bumblebee to a flappy sparrow in size. Ryan barely seemed to notice, stretching in his chair, his beefy arms tossed carelessly behind his head. For a second, Shane almost thought he was going to try the ‘ol ‘casually-put-your-arm-behind-your-date move, until he remembered that, one, work wasn’t a date, no matter how much it felt like it, and two, it would be great if Shane’s id would shut up about Ryan’s arms for a handful of seconds.

Ryan ferried Shane down the stairs at lunchtime. Shane dropped a kiss just behind Ryan’s ear. He morosely reflected that it was most likely for the last time. He made sure to relish the feeling of Ryan’s strong arms around him, hoping he could call up the memory at will in the future; his sturdy little pal making him feel light as air, both in his body and in his heart.

Already, he didn’t have to use the scooter to get around. He could mostly make do simply swish-CLOMPing around the office. These weeks had passed faster than a blink, just a blur of late worknights and physical therapy and Ryan honking his horn at morning pickup before work. (Yeah, Ryan had never stopped carpooling with Shane, and Shane hadn’t registered a single protest. Sue him.)

Sure enough, he returned to the Watcher office that afternoon from his follow-up doctor visit, awarded a clean bill of health. He knew he should have been happy, knowing he was cleared to go back to running on a regular basis; he did miss it, that much was true.

“Congrats,” Ryan clapped his shoulder. “I’ll text you before I come over,” he said.

“Sure,” he said, turning to look out over the balcony to the floor below. Wildly, he wondered how hard it would be to break his leg and not his face if he … fell off the balcony. Just a little bit. Completely accidentally, of course. Ryan would forgive him, right? Probably.

Horrified, Shane shook his head to banish the thought from his mind, as if he were an Etch-A-Sketch. Nope, he knew he just had to keep his head down and keep on keepin’ on. And try to think about Ryan’s biceps less.

Ryan groaned, and it sounded like a sex noise again. Shane rolled his eyes at himself and the sudden half-boner he got over it.

Whatever.

“This is—nice,” Shane said cautiously. He looked at the oil paintings on the wall, all originals, and the white tablecloths with cutlery laid out neatly on them. “Really nice.”

Ryan looked suspiciously good, too. Like he’d made an effort. Shane pulled on the hem of his buttonfront shirt. It wasn’t the worst shirt, but he didn’t know Ryan had made reservations at Horses on Sunset Boulevard.

“That’s good,” Ryan said, settling into his seat across from Shane. Shane’s gaze snagged on Ryan’s, and Ryan rewarded him with a grin bright as the sun. “Thought I’d pick a place that’s celebratory, man. Saw a writeup that this is the new hot restaurant. Figured that would please your hipster leanings.”

“Thanks, Ryan.” Shane tucked into his rye highball. It was perfect.

Ryan held up his wineglass. “To being back on your own two feet. Proud of you, big guy.”

Shane clinked his glass to Ryan’s, and then tucked into his food.

“I thought about the toll I charged you,” Ryan said through his chewing.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Ryan ducked his head down and took a sip of his wine.

Shane swallowed a (delicious) bite of potato gnocchi.

Ryan’s words were casual, but his gaze was intense on his own plate. “Maybe it was—a little bit too much?”

Did—was Ryan really worrying that he’d extracted kisses from Shane, instead of what he’d actually done, which was provide an opportunity for Shane to gladly exploit? What the—

“No!” Shane said, a little too loudly. He bit his lip when a couple of diners on neighboring tables looked up with frozen glances, probably concerned they were privy to an argument.

Shane leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I mean, if anything, it wasn’t enough.” He waited until Ryan looked up, meeting his eyes, and then Shane said, meaningfully. “I feel like I still owe you. Actually.”

“That so?” Ryan said, intriguingly.

“Yeah,” Shane said.

The end of dinner approached, and Ryan’s eyes were warm, and his body looked—mouthwateringly good underneath his shirt, and Shane did not want the night to end, not just yet.

“Do you want to—come over to my place?” Shane found himself asking. Ryan’s eyes flickered and sparked, reflecting the votive candle light at their table.

“We could hang out,” he added.

Ryan stretched out on Shane’s couch luxuriantly, in the same place where Shane had recuperated while Ryan kept him company. Ryan placed his arms behind his head and regarded him curiously. “So, earlier. What do you—still owe me?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Shane said quickly. “What would you like?” he said, feeling himself skating along the very edge of something, like a banked roller derby track with a hard concrete floor awaiting him if he fell.

Shane knelt next to the couch. He felt warm and hazy from the alcohol. And from—well.

Ryan reached out and took Shane’s hand, just softly by his fingertips. He drew Shane’s hand to him, his eyes over them full of promise.

“I just wondered—,” he began, then cut himself off.

Shane curled his hand further into Ryan’s, encouraging him. Sure, maybe they’d gotten into this because Ryan’s mouth sometimes outran his anxieties, but Shane wasn’t going to let Ryan’s nightmare of a brain stop him from asking for whatever he wanted.

Ryan laughed at himself. “I wondered if you’d let me kiss you back.”

He got that brave look in his eyes, the one Shane knew from haunted houses and pitch meetings and every time something really, really mattered to him. Shane nodded, heart in his throat.

Ryan turned Shane’s hand, gently. He laid a kiss on the heel of Shane’s hand, where only a faint white scar remained from Shane’s fall.

“Oh.”

Ryan looked up at him through his eyelashes, and moved lower, kissing the thin skin at his wrist.

Shane felt himself falling, again. No, that wasn’t right; he was still falling. And he wasn’t finished yet.

He tilted over Ryan, and Ryan smiled. He leaned forward, holding his breath, and Ryan licked his lips nervously.

Shane closed his eyes and fell into Ryan.

Ryan’s lips were warm and soft and Ryan’s arms around him were just as he remembered, strong and firm and just good. Ryan’s curls just at the nape of his neck were soft and his broad chest felt solid against Shane’s.

Shane pulled back, his head whirling. He laughed, at himself, but Ryan looked at him quizzically all the same.

“I was—had been—sort of figuring out ways to get you this close again.”

Ryan’s hands in Shane’s hair paused. “Silly,” he teased. “What did you come up with?”

“Spraining the other ankle, mostly,” Shane admitted, shamefaced.

At that, Ryan cackled, taking Shane along in an eddy of his glee. Shane exhaled and it came out in a laugh at himself, too.

Shane lined up his body over Ryan’s, and Ryan held Shane’s face in his hands. Shane wasn’t falling anymore. Ryan had caught him.

Ryan's eyes searched Shane’s. Shane didn’t know what he saw there, but he exhaled and tugged Shane’s face to his, kissing him.

Shane got drunk on his soft lips and low noises and strong hands drifting down to cup his ass. He pressed his hips into the cradle of Ryan’s body, and when Ryan turned his face to pant and moan, Shane dragged his hands through his hair and kissed the angle of jaw underneath his bristly scruff.

“Bed?” Ryan panted.

“Bed,” Shane agreed. Then—”Would you—carry me there?” He felt himself blush, even as his mouth formed the words.

Ryan grinned beneath him. The world swooped and turned and spun, and then Ryan grinned above him.

Shane wrapped his arms around Ryan’s neck and held on tight. Until it was time for them to fall, together.