Host of Sheets (shyan)

Chp 2. Steam

They drove in silence after leaving the clinic. Shane was pronounced fine; no sign of hypothermia, and his shoulder was bruised, but not sprained. He was going to check in with his regular doctor when they got home, but for now? Everything seemed to have turned out alright.

Ryan was so relieved he couldn't even find the words. If Shane had got hurt...or worse, Ryan knew he never would have forgiven himself. Shane was only out there doing this dumb shit because of him.

And Shane didn't seem like he was enjoying himself as much as he used to. Of course he was having fun, mostly; they were friends and it was fun chilling together, even if their hang-out spots were a little unusual. But he seemed to be getting a little more impatient with every session of the spirit box, with every time they stood in dark rooms and didn't hear anything.

Ryan didn't blame him. There were alot of hours of silence built up over their career as ghost hunters. It didn't mean Ryan had stopped believing, but it was frustrating to drag Shane along every time, and to find nothing.

Ryan sighed before pulling into a McDonald's drive-through, Shane's favorite. They ate in silence in the car. He tried once or twice to start a conversation, but Shane looked so pale, and so tired, that the conversation petered out.

And so Ryan took him back to their motel.

Shane perked a little once he took a hot shower, now dressed in dry, warm pajamas, curled up on the bed beside Ryan. The motel was crappy enough none of the rooms had double beds, but they were used to sharing by now.

Ryan flipped on the cooking channel. It was airing a Guy Fieri-hosted show they both enjoyed well enough, and they sat in the dim, shoulder to shoulder.

It was the same show that was always on when they spent nights out on the road. It was truly awful, over dramatic and humorous in ways they both knew wasn't purposeful. They never watched it at home. But something was different in motels, that liminal state between travel and routine, that let awful television be almost mesmerizing. They'd seen dozens of episodes of it by now over their years traveling together.

Shane chuckled softly, curling around his pillow in a loose-limbed ball.

"What in the hell are they making now? I swear, just a few seasons in, and they're already starting to escalate." He looked to Ryan, eyes dead serious, "And this was not a show that needed to escalate."

Guy Fieri showed off the culinary masterpiece to the cameras. It was a tower of some sort, the chef gushing about alternating layers of sweet and savory, fatty and umami. Shane and Ryan both groaned when the chef mentioned one of the layers being grape jelly, 'just for the childhood nostalgia factor'.

Shane snorted. "How come we got the rotten end of the stick? We coulda... coulda been traveling the world eating food like good 'ol Guy! Not sleepin' on floors." He made a lazy gesture to accent his complaint, without lifting his head from his pillow.

"Yeah... you certainly hooked up with the wrong partner for that. Guess you could go fight Andrew for Steven. You could probably take him, unless he's got a shiv or two made out of office supplies... Oh no, besides, look at that thing. You wouldn't want to eat that."

Ryan gestured at the close-up on screen as a meatball slid off the tower of cheese, surrounded by a moat of grease, melted jelly floating in little purple puddles. Shane blanched.

"No, no you're probably right. Oh- it's on fire now. Jelly flambé."

They both ooh'ed together as it was set before the obviously reticent judges. Then, it cut to commercial.