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“This is West Virginia.” Shane deadpans, gesturing vaguely at the motel room he shares with Ryan, no further illustrating his point like he intends other than highlighting it is indeed a motel room in West Virginia “It’s October.” He glances at the contents of the unzipped suitcase lying open on the one, and only, God help him, bed. “Is your goal for this shoot to become the ghost? Are you that desperate for proof now, because you’re gonna die of hypothermia.” The look Ryan levels him with is unimpressed to say the least.
“Okay first off,” he begins, counting off all the reasons Shane is wrong on his fingers, “this is the cryptid ep, and second, it’s West Virginia. Mild was what it said on Wikipedia.” Ryan shrugs and pulls a pair of sweatpants out of his somewhat hastily packed luggage. Shane’s fingers fly across the screen of his phone, tapping frantically to pull up the Wikipedia article on the Climate of the State of West Virginia. "'Persistent cloudy skies'" He quotes directly from the page "'Experiences some of the most frequent precipitation in the nation’ ” He plucks a light grey tank top from the mess of Ryan’s suitcase. “This, is barely suitable for public consumption let alone fall in West Virginia.”
“I have jackets Shane.” Ryan scoffs and makes his way to the bathroom. Shane mutters something disparaging about being born and raised in Southern California before turning to face the organised chaos of his own suitcase.
Maybe he’s being a little dramatic. The average fall in West Virginia can’t be that bad, but Ryan’s idea of mild isn’t often the same as a regular person’s and Shane knows for damn sure he doesn’t own that many jackets. He stares down at his assortment of sweaters and tries to convince himself the only reason he’s concerned is that he’ll have to listen to Ryan whine about how cold it is, and not that the moment Ryan’s teeth start to chatter, Shane will feel compelled to bundle him up in any of the sweaters currently folded neatly in front of him.
Ryan is cold. So very cold. In his defence, he is dressed appropriately, beanie and all. He just isn’t built for this, the crisp air that almost stings on a deep inhale, it’s weather with a sharpness to it, a premonition of the hardship of winter. It’s nowhere near biting but the longer they spend traipsing around town, the more a damp chill starts to make itself at home in his bones. Shane calls him a delicate Californian flower and it’s the closest thing to a sweet nothing he’s heard from the man. He tells himself the flush he feels warming his skin is just a result of the cold.
Shane, on the other hand, looks so fucking warm. Not only does he know Shane feels it with the way his warm breath mists in the air and how his teeth neglect to chatter, he also looks it, wrapped in a soft looking scarf and a dark green, cable knit sweater. He fits here, amongst the cartoonish Halloween signs in small store windows, crisp air and the vibrant fall colours of the nearby forest. The gold afternoon sunlight catches in his messy hair and Ryan feels like the protagonist of some teen romance with how his eyes are drawn to it. The green of his sweater makes his brown eyes look impossibly warm, bright with laughter as they crinkle at the corners. His nose is tipped pink from where the sharp edge of it peeks out above his scarf, the shade matching the same hue of his cheeks, the tips of his ears.
Shane lopes along beside him, voice rich and gaze fond, hands stuffed into the pockets of faded jeans. This is fall for more than just the turning, tumbling leaves. Shane suits the season, sharp, burnished, warm.
“You okay little guy?” Shane asks, head tilted quizzically, eyes soft with concern. There is less tension in him here, less in his head and more in the moment. That’s the difference between Shane here and Shane in L.A. His sharper edges are softened by the warm colours, something about the season makes him seem more comfortable within himself and his wit is never more biting than the slight chill in the air.
“Yeah,” he breathes, shifting closer as they amble down the sidewalk, enjoying how the mist of their breaths mingles in the air between them, “just cold.” He shrugs, makes a pitiful attempt at burrowing further into the collar of his corduroy jacket. Shane gives him a look that screams ‘I told you so’ but he doesn't say it, wouldn’t say it. He just fixes Ryan with that look, exasperated and far too fond for Ryan to bear as he fleetingly squeezes his arm, the warmth of a broad palm that he can almost feel.
Their time spent exploring the town doesn’t really feel like work despite the cameras that are trained on them the whole time. Eventually, they have all the footage they need. Mark, TJ and Devon all wander off to entertain themselves, leaving both Shane and Ryan to watch the sunset over small town West Virginia through the window of a quaint cafe.
Shane stares across the Formica table top at Ryan, the orange hues of the slowly sinking sun making him smoulder like an ember, skin glowing, fingertips catching the sun’s dying rays like golden ribbons tangled around his hands where they cradle his coffee cup. The beige long sleeved top he wears is one of the better options he’s bought with him but it’s still not quite enough to keep out the autumn chill, the dampness of decaying leaves that somehow seems to seep from the soles of their ghoul hunting boots and into their bones. The cuffs slip over his knuckles and it’s cute, so fucking unbearably cute that Shane takes the opportunity to close his eyes everytime he sips at his coffee, just for an easily excusable moment of reprieve.
Ryan isn’t someone he ever would have seen himself thinking of as cute but when he’s quiet, sleepy from a long day and the warmth that has started to replace the chill, relaxed and content, it’s hard to think of him as anything but. Shane has long since stopped trying. It took a matter of months to realise he has a thing for Ryan, to start falling, he’s long accepted it’ll be a lifetime before he stops. Ryan blinks slowly at the rapidly darkening town beyond their little bubble of warmth, the tip of his nose permanently stained pink.
Shane loves him, as completely and tenderly as he can remember ever loving something or someone. He makes him soft, slows down the chatter of his mind, makes him feel like he’s taking in air again after being moments from drowning. He doesn’t know if he should ever tell him. If he’s still privy to moments like this, this quiet, soft and gilded by the October sun, as his friend, could he ask for anything more? Could he give in to greed? Could he be as selfish as he knows he is at times and try to hold his hand?
This warmth is new to him, to them. He’s used to seeing Ryan in the Californian sun, blinding and bright, but Ryan in Virginia is mellower, burning steady and fierce. Maybe one day Ryan will know or maybe he already does and this moment, as Ryan turns to look at him, eyes dark and smile small, is the result. Shane is pretty sure he’s okay with that.
After day two, the cold starts to feel like an issue. He’s never warm enough, not even in their motel room with the heating up, and the damp, forest air seems to cling to the fabric of all his clothes, chilling him even when he’s somewhere warm and dry. Ever the problem solver he searches for a solution and comes up with one as appealing as it is horrifying. He could borrow a sweater from Shane.
The concept of borrowing a sweater from Shane whilst a perfectly normal, innocuous even, request, suddenly becomes a minefield of additional problems Ryan is forced to face. Primarily, can he just ask to borrow a sweater? Asking to borrow a sweater sort of feels like losing and Ryan hates to lose. He knows this wasn’t a challenge, that he didn’t embark on this shoot as some kind of test of endurance against fall temperatures. It doesn’t change the fact that Ryan has a quota of how many of Shane’s ‘I told you so’ faces he can handle before he gives in to the urge to just kiss the smug asshole and he’s pretty sure he’s dangerously close to reaching it. A potential solution is stealing one or ‘borrowing without permission’. It saves him from having to verbally admit defeat but simply going through Shane’s belongings and then taking one seems weirdly invasive even if it’s just a sweater.
The only alternative is to either buy one or go without. Buying one seems unnecessary when there are other options at hand and staying cold is out of the question.
He resolves to steal one.
Shane is out, picking up coffee before they meet the rest of the crew in the lobby. He tip toes gingerly over to Shane’s bag, eyes darting to the door every three seconds in case Shane decides to come back to the room for something and catches him in the act. He hurriedly unzips the bag, grabbing the first sweater he knows he hasn’t seen Shane wear yet and then slams the bag shut again, zipping it back up with a little more force than necessary.
His phone chimes from the night stand and he hurries to check it. It’s a text from Shane, letting him know he’s out front when he’s ready, coffee and bagel in hand. He hesitates, dithering over truly committing to this sweater theft before he tugs the fabric over his head. He shrugs on his coat and beanie, grabs his stuff and jogs to the door. As he reaches the handle he catches sight of himself in the small hall mirror and pauses. The rich maroon of the sweater looks good against his skin and the more he looks the more he notices, the sleeves and bottom a little too long, the fabric pulled a little too tight across his chest. The wool is soft against his skin and oh God it smells like Shane, the faintest hint of him beneath the scent of his laundry detergent and the stale aroma clothes can get when they’re left crammed inside luggage. He catches his own eyes in his reflection, wide and shiny as he notices the red colouring his cheeks. A distressed sound weasels its way out of his throat akin to that of a dying squirrel but before he can shuck off his jacket to take off the offending article of clothing his phone is chiming with texts from TJ and it’s too late. He steals himself with a deep breath and leaves, hoping no one except maybe Shane will notice.
The sweater fits Ryan reasonably well, looser and tighter in places where it isn’t on Shane. Shane is lengthier in the arms and chest where Ryan is... girthier and his strange choice in mental terminology leaves him thinking about what else might be girthier on Ryan. Christ it’s cold and Shane needs the blood in his extremities but not that extremity and balls deep in muddy Virginian brush screeching at the top of your lungs is not the right time to be thinking about your friend’s dick. For some, with a particular kind of fetish, it might be the perfect time. Shane doesn’t think he has that fetish.
Shane had noticed the moment he laid eyes on Ryan this morning that he’s wearing one of his sweaters. It’s obvious in the fact that he’s left his jacket hanging open and that he knows for a fact Ryan didn’t bring any sweaters of his own. The sweater wearing, although very distracting doesn’t bother him. No what bothers him is that he doesn’t know what it means.
Of course he knows that it means, at the most basic level, that Ryan was cold. He must’ve had enough of the fall temperatures and finally caved. Of course it’s not weird for a friend to let their friend borrow a jacket or sweater but what’s weird is that Shane didn’t offer and Ryan didn’t ask. He just took it. Like the fact Shane wouldn’t mind was unspoken, like he had no hesitation over wearing his friends clothes without asking, that he was comfortable enough to treat his things as if they were his own.
But they’re best friends right? Living out of each other’s pockets, especially on shoots. Was this level of closeness a given, normal even? Well yeah but could it possibly, maybe, mean something else? They stomp around the forest, pausing every now and again to poke at clumps of branches and to let out the high pitched affront to hearing they’ve dubbed the Mothman call. It’s not until they approach the old TNT igloo that he caves in to the urge to say something. They wander inside, it’s cold and dank and smells like piss. You know, romantic.
“You cold there buddy?” He asks, trying to keep it nonchalant, a hint of knowing, but he misses by a mile and his tone is high pitched, almost accusatory. Shane can barely see him, the cavern like structure is dark but the sound of his shuffling feet echoes, his nervousness plain. He pulls his jacket tighter around himself, zipping it up.
“Ahh yeah-“ he starts and Shane sees the vague shape of his arm come up to rub at his neck “sorry man I just- it’s so fucking cold I guess you were right and I didn’t have time to find a store and buying a sweater seemed kinda dumb considering I already own a bunch I just didn’t pack properly and I didn’t ask-“ Shane switches off his camera and keeps his flashlight trained at his feet, the only light source the beam of Ryan’s flashlight pointed at the ground and the moonlight filtering through the bunker’s entrance.
“Ry” Shane calls, his voice raised slightly to cut off Ryan’s rambling. The nickname echoes around them, bouncing off the ceiling. Shane catches Ryan shiver. “It’s- it’s fine Ryan, really.”
Shane reaches out barely believing his own actions as fingertips brush the collar of his sweater exposed where he hasn’t zipped his jacket up all the way. “It suits you.” He says, voice sounding strange and strangled. He snatches his hand back, immediately fiddling with the camera, switching it on as he swings his flashlight up to Ryan’s face, almost blinding him.
“Ahh fuck- okay I’ll ask next time.” Ryan huffs.
“Nah don’t worry about it.” He says waving him away. “What’s mine is yours. Now let’s see what happens when I pull this ominously placed string in this hell hole that used to house explosives.”
October in West Virginia is cold, Shane finally admits, especially if you’re used to the Californian sun. Shane spends the majority of the shoot and the trip back to the motel hunkered down into the collar of his jacket. The heat in the rental car is blissful but they have to abandon it for the dubious heating system that warms their motel room. At least the water is hot. He showers, trying to keep the warmth flowing through him but the water pressure leaves a lot to be desired and it feels more like someone is just gently pissing on him for longer than any healthy human being should be pissing. Yet another fetish he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have. Ryan wearing his sweaters might be one he does have. If it can even be considered a fetish. Shane just knows that he wants to smooch him more than usual.
He’s spread eagle on the bed, feet too close to the edge for comfort as he contemplates whether there has to be a sexual component to the preference in order for it to be considered a fetish when the door to the bathroom opens slowly, billow of steam preluding Ryan’s return like he’s some kind of game show host. He emerges from the fog and Shane realises he has a fetish, sexual component and all. Ryan shuffles out of the bathroom, shower damp and swaddled in another of Shane’s sweaters. He rubs almost viciously at his hair with a towel, trying to get it as dry as possible as to keep out the chill but all he really accomplishes is making himself look like a hot troll doll.
Shane stares, and Ryan meanwhile is somehow blissfully unaware of his friend’s inner turmoil as he putters around the room packing as much as he can to save him time in the morning before they have to head to the airport. The sweater he wears is grey and worn and big. Shane usually only ever wears it if he’s sick or cold at home. It’s big even on him but on Ryan it seems huge, he has to keep pushing the sleeves up to stop them from falling past his fingertips and the hem falls to about mid thigh on his sweatpant clad legs. Drops of water from his hair have left the collar mottled with ink stain like patches.
Ryan has his undivided attention, he couldn’t hear or see anything but Ryan in that moment. Even if Mothman himself were to crash through the front door and screech directly into his ear he wouldn’t be able to look away. He looks so soft, so comfortable, so at home with Shane, wearing Shane’s clothes. He lets himself bask, small smile pulling at his mouth as Ryan turns to face him. “Dude you look like you just shit yourself.” He laughs, throwing himself onto the bed and quickly burrowing under the covers. Shane laughs, a breathy and uncontrollable laugh that makes him curl in on himself. The grin Ryan fixes him with makes him feel like he’s floating.
“Still cold?” Shane asks after a while, curled up on his side, voice quiet. He can see Ryan’s blush from this close, and it gives Shane the inkling that Ryan put a little more thought into his sweater selection this time around.
“Yeah um, yeah thanks for giving me free range to you steal your clothes... Dude.” Ryan says, voice stilted as he refuses to meet Shane’s eyes.
“No problem, dude.” Shane mocks, delighting in how Ryan huffs out a disgruntled breath.
“You know you don’t- it doesn’t have to be a thing Ry you just - you look good in my clothes, I mean you look good in clothes in general not just mine but the sweater’s mine and fuck.” Shane rambles cutting himself off with a groan when Ryan starts laughing uproariously. He clenches his eyes shut, throws an arm over them as if shielding them will stop him from being seen altogether, like a kid praying his blankets will make him invisible to the monster under the bed. So much for keeping things on the down low, he’s practically just admitted seeing Ryan in his clothes gets him going and he wants to die.
“Alright big guy don’t hurt yourself.” Ryan laughs. Shane makes a sound akin to what Mothman might sound like if he were slowly drowning. “So you have a thing for people wearing your clothes huh?” He asks teasingly, flirty although he makes no reference to himself. Shane shakes his head, blinking unseeingly at the ceiling. Ryan scoffs in disbelief. “Bullshit! You can’t still deny it!”
Shane takes a deep breath. He counts to three and then to ten for good measure before he’s eventually reaching unlucky for some number 13 before he thinks fuck it. “I don’t have a thing for people in my clothes.” He says and he rolls back onto his side, to face Ryan, still half submerged in bed sheets. “I have a thing for you in my clothes, idiot.”
He doesn’t have a chance to feel smug at Ryan’s brief stunned silence because Ryan’s sweater swamped arms emerge lightening fast like the creature from the black lagoon from the depths of the comforter and wrap vice like around his neck. He pulls him into a kiss that has warmth tingling through his extremities, yeah every extremity, until the tips of his ears burn with it. The sight that greets him when Ryan pulls back is nothing short of exquisite. Ryan is flushed with warmth, hair a fluffy mess where it’s spread across the pillow, his grin lopsided and bright. “I was kinda counting on that being the case, idiot.” Ryan quips and Shane elects to ignore the jibe.
“Still cold?” Shane huffs with an eyebrow raised, so close he can feel Ryan’s breath against his lips. Ryan hums, stretching out so that Shane is forced to roll on top of him like a human blanket.
“A little.” He tilts his chin up, wrapping a leg around Shane’s own, manoeuvring him closer. Shane lets his hands wander underneath his sweater, skating across gloriously warm skin.
“I know a way of warming up.” He suggests and it’s cliche and corny and Ryan laughs at him but he isn’t pushing him away only pulling him closer.
“Hmm taking this sweater off seems kinda counter-intuitive.” Ryan teases.
“Who said anything about taking the sweater off?” Shane grins, fisting the fabric and kissing him again.