It's early. Smog still covers most of the sky, waiting to be blown away by wind off the ocean. For now, though, the air hangs heavy. People trickle into office buildings, clothes pressed straight, ready to collect the wrinkles that will mark the trials and tribulations of the day.

Ryan, meanwhile, sits at his desk, legs splayed in ripped jeans, staring at his computer. He flicks the mouse across the screen, watching as his face is wiped bare of the expression it'd had only a moment ago, a reaction to the man next to him onscreen.

"I'll leave that bit in," he decides, rubbing the sleeve of his hoodie absentmindedly on his jeans.

Coffee. He needs more coffee. The office isn't bustling yet; he's one of the first in. No one will be in line for the stuff of gods, the liquid nectar that will keep him steadily going throughout the day. He stands up, stretches. A few vertebrae voice their protests to moving, but he ignores them in favor of the sudden flurry of very colorful snow that's taken the place of his vision.

"Whoa," he mutters, hands going to his face to dig blunt fingertips into eyes, trying to clear away the lightheadedness that gathers behind his temples, rushing toward his inner-ear.

Like magic, a presence isn't there, then it is. Hands large enough to identify the person attached to them immediately cup his elbows and eases him back down into his chair.

"You ok, bud?" Shane's voice is low from disuse; sleep-rough.

"Yeah," Ryan replies, opening his eyes to a clearer world. Shane looks at him with a raised brow of incredulity, but he ignores the mother-hen routine in favor of what's clutched in his free hand. Scrawled across the side of a very large to-go coffee cup is his name, in loud, neat letters.

"Dude, have I told you lately that I love you?"

Shane smirks. "The swooning upon my arrival might have been a tip-off." He sets the coffee down on Ryan's desk, reaching past him to do so. For a moment, Ryan smells the forest scent of deodorant mixed with the lighter, sweeter notes of shampoo. The mix is distinctly Shane. He breathes it out of his nostrils, jaw clenched slightly and focuses on the task at hand.

The coffee is strong. And really fucking good. He's got to ask Shane where the hell he gets this stuff, because he's sure it's just drip coffee, not even flavored, but he can taste faint hazelnut and a smoothness like chocolate and is this why Shane doesn't have a car? Because he spends most of his liquid assets on what has to be heaven in a cup?

He hums his approval, swallows and looks up to find Shane staring at him. Intently. He jerks the cup back, yipping when some of the hot liquid splashes onto his jeans. He'll deny this later.

"What'd you do to it?" He demands, peering into the mouth hole. "Did you spike it with ex-lax or something, you asshole?"

If Shane's mouth twitches up then, it's imperceptible, a wrinkle ironed out before he can catch it. He does laughing at Ryan's antics mid-cackle, though.

"No, Ryan," he says, slowly, like he's placating a child. That voice. He knows it annoys Ryan, knows it gets right under his skin. Maybe that's why there's a gleam in his eye as he shakes his head. "That would be an act of terrorism against the office, not a personal prank. I just noticed you've been looking a little tired this week." He shifts his weight, sits down into his chair and lets the momentum of the movement put some space between them. "Excuse me for wondering why you were moaning like a porn star over coffee, though."

With that, he winks and turns away to boot up his own computer, leaving Ryan speechless behind him.

"Oooook." Ryan cracks his neck, having been dismissed. "Thanks for the coffee, anyway." Another sip. He really has to ask Shane where he gets this stuff.

"Mm." Shane doesn't turn.

The day continues, people streaming around the office at the edge of Ryan's periphery. Since Unsolved took off, he's not in so many side projects. He's not so much an afterthought anymore. A test friend, a canned reaction to the latest in trends or food. Or torture. Those fucking high heels. He rolls his eyes and gets back to work.

The show is moving toward cohesion; smiling faces and inside jokes throughout, edited and neatly packaged when a headache starts behind Ryan's eyes. It comes with the territory, loud voices as a backdrop and staring into the glaring light of a screen all day, but it doesn't make it any more convenient when he has to stop and pinch the bridge of his nose before his eyes decide that it's time to burst out of his skull. He pulls the earbuds from his ears and sits back into his seat with a sigh, eyes closed.

"You ok?" he hears close to his ear, softly.

"Jesus, Shane," he hisses, twitching away from the proximity of the taller man. "Put a fuckin' bell on or something." His cheeks warm, though he isn't sure why. "I'm ok. Just a headache."

"Want me to grab you a Gatorade?" Shane's already on his feet. The question seems more perfunctory than anything; Ryan's pretty sure there's going to be Gatorade in his future, whether he wants it or not.

Yeah...if you would, man. Thanks."

Shane nods, and spins on his heel. His gait is smooth, strides long. For all the bumbling he does in videos, there is grace in how he holds himself. How he moves.

Ryan frowns at his retreating form. Shane is acting...weird. Too helpful. There's got to be a video, something going on behind the scenes that's going to bite him in the ass later. Pretending to crack his back, he does his best impersonation of casual and glances around the office, but no one holds or avoids his gaze unusually, like he's a punchline waiting to be told.

Hmm.

"Here."

"A mug." Because that's what's been deposited on his desk, a mug of red—berry? Fruit punch?—Gatorade.

"Yes, Ryan. That's what the kids are calling them these days."

"You know, I'm perfectly capable of drinking out of a bottle, Shane."

"Be that as it may, Bergara, I wanted some too, and as you're the dude who seems to be coming down with something, I decided not to let you slobber all over my bottle, thank you very much." Shane's flippant as he sits, tipping the bottle in question up to his lips and taking a few pulls before rolling his eyes and fastening the cap back on.

"Aww, whassamatter, did you really want this?" He waves the bottle under Ryan's nose, waiting for it to be taken.

"God, you're a child." He mutters, picking up the stupid mug and downing it. He's thirstier than he thinks, though, because as soon as it's gone, he's staring at the faint pink remnants, droplets clinging to the side, and suddenly wants more.

The haze of mid-afternoon brings a heavy curtain of listless drowsiness that Ryan has no chance of fighting if he stays here, hunkered down in the slightly too-cool confines of his office block. He stands, hesitates for a moment before heading toward the courtyard between the various filming buildings. No one gives him a second glance as he passes, hands slung in pockets, stale air in his lungs.

He leans his weight into the door and it lurches outward, spilling long-limbed rays of afternoon sun across his face, into his eyes. The light cups his cheeks like hands, balmy but comforting. The area is abandoned in the off hour; no lunchers at any of the picnic tables on their phones. The trees here, groomed carefully to make the spot nature-lite—outside, but without the annoyance of overgrown grass and bushes—cast too much shadow to make it an instragram-worthy backdrop.

He glances around before he lays, limbs splayed, over the top of one of the tables. The leaves rustle around him, lazy wind winding through them to sing him to sleep. If he'd let himself. His eyelids shut, heavy as velvet-crushed drapes, but as much as he'd love to give in to the comfort of a nap in the sun, a surrender to heat and light and an overworked mind, thoughts of things to do push their way through, a stream that surges into a wave, a crash of Did we book the hotel for the shoots next week? The extra room for the first camera unit? Do we need a permit to visit the state park after dark? Should I get a booster tetanus shot? Is the editing done for this week's animations? Did all my VO check out?

Above Ryan, the sun shines just as steady. Shhh, it seems to say, smoothing back his hair like a fevered child. He pushes all the outside thoughts away and decides that five minutes more out here won't kill him, here in the almost-sleep of meditation.

All it takes to shatter a moment such as this is a loud bang that signals someone else's arrival into the secret garden courtyard he'd claimed as his own. Faster than whiplash, he's sitting up, hand at his heart.

Freddie's there, laughing apologetically, her body language a mirror of his own.

"I'm sorry! I didn't know you were out here."

"No worries," he says, grinning back at her. "You just scared the shit out of me, that's all."

"What're you doing out here?" She asks, looking around slyly, though her face falls when it seems whatever she's searching for isn't there.

"Just resting my eyes for a second. Needed some air, too." He looks around now, too, ready to be embarrassed if he hadn't actually been alone there.

"Hey, have you seen—"

"Who're you looking—"

Their words mingle and overlap, and with a chuckle, Ryan gestures for Freddie to continue.

"Sorry. Have you seen Shane?"

"Shane?" Maybe he's still groggy, but for a moment, it's as if something hangs in his mind that wants to contradict what comes next, an instant of deja vu that curls in on itself and disappears as soon as he tries to investigate further.

"You know. Lanky dude. Skeptical. Could be mistaken for bigfoot if you squint?"

"A girl after my own heart, Freddie. But no, haven't seen him for a few hours. Maybe he's doing VO for his stupid hotdaga."

Freddie squints at him, tilts her head before shaking it, brown eyes tracking his as if to make sure he's telling the truth.

"Damn, really?" She starts to turn back toward the door, voice unsure. "I could have sworn I saw him come out this way. Weird." She glances back at him. "Anyway. Sorry I interrupted your nap."

"I was on my way back in, anyway." He peels himself away from the table, licks his lips and follows her in. They're tacky, stick slightly when he wets them. Faintly, he notices that they taste metallic, but it's an afterthought that shuffles to the back of his mind like it never existed at all.

He spends the next few hours doing the same thing, play—pause—rewind—stopping until he's shaped an almost-finished episode. With dialogue and voice over complete, he's left to wait for animations to do their thing, and he'll have one more Unsolved: Supernatural under his belt. It's equal parts thrilling and terrifying, the moment his content goes live to be digested by the masses. They like it now, but what about in a year? Five? Will Unsolved be the most successful thing his name is ever attached to? When will the fans stop caring about questions that can't be answered?

Time to go home, he thinks, trying to wheel his mind away from the free-fall of what-ifs. He turns to say goodbye to Shane, but the seat next to him is empty, the backpack that had been slung across its back gone.

When Ryan comes to, it's unexpected. It's not waking up, jerked out of dreams by high-pitched alarm clock chirps—no. It's a steady pattern of tapping that infiltrates his dreams first, then whines louder until he gasps awake, reality crystallizing under his gaze in an instant. He isn't in bed. He doesn't remember why, or how he got here. The cool blue-and-white checked tile of the floor under his knees cheerily announces that, at least, he's in his own house, sprawled on the floor, head flush against the porcelain of the tub.

Shit, he thinks, tensing muscles, feeling out the limits of mobility, searching out anything broken or sprained. Nothing shouts in agony, so he presses fingertips into the floor, cool, reassuring, and lifts himself, though his left hand slides, tacky, like he's squeezing jello through his fingers. It takes him a moment, eyes locked on his hand as it open-closes, to realize that the flecks of red splashed across his tan skin is not paint. Paint doesn't flake off like that. It doesn't smell like rust and pennies.

The floor has blood on it. The shower curtain too, a garish stripe that mocks him, water droplets clinging to the other side, unable to reach the stain he's left, to clean it away and pretend it never existed. It's not a ton of blood, but it's there, and then—he's easing fingers into hair, following a trail of matted locks stuck down with it, but there's nothing, no pain, no sting, no wound.

"What the fuck," he breathes, voice echoing neatly back at him, tones hollow with disbelief. "What the fuck." Like a train bearing down on him, facts glide through his mind, one by one. He has woken up, on the floor. He does not remember getting home. He doesn't remember turning the shower on. He doesn't remember pain, or falling, or bleeding out onto the tile of his bathroom. In fact, most of yesterday after work is a haze of nothingness; memory that was neither created nor stored.

In the distance, through the thin plywood of his bathroom door, the alarm on his phone goes off.

Wake up, his mind urges. Wake up, this is a dream. Fingers tingling, he grips the side of the tub and tries to stand on colt-shaky legs, switching his weight to the sink when he's most of the way up. The mirror challenges him. When he faces it, he expects pale and shaky, the reflection of whatever happened last night. And yet—the only thing out of place is the wide-eyed terror; his eyes shine with it, but all else is normal, skin unbruised from the fall, if there even was one. His jaw hurts, but then again, he's clenching it so hard he's surprised he hasn't spit out shards of tooth yet.

His alarm falls silent.

Staring into his own gaze, he realizes he has to get out. The world within these walls has stopped making sense. He's got to get that sense back. Go to work, his mind whispers, a source of calm, an all-consuming goal he can focus on. Get in the shower.

He washes his hair in frigid water and finds that, if he doesn't look down, he can pretend not to see the slick of red that rinses away with his shampoo. He's tender with the back of his head, careful, but he needn't be. There's nothing wrong. Nothing.

He shuts the shower off and steps out, wiping off and dropping the towel so it covers the stain on the floor. Just like that, it doesn't exist, and he leaves the bathroom, the air of his apartment even cooler on his damp skin. It feels good. Light. His phone is on an end table next to the couch that faces the television, which is also on. No calls, no texts from friends that would hint he'd done something, gone somewhere—drank too much, been roofied. Nothing. He rolls his shoulders and dresses in the first things he can find that match. Details don't matter right now.

Go, he tells himself, not bothering to gel his hair (that's what hats are for), or look twice in the mirror as he leaves.

His illusion almost breaks when he realizes, car keys in hand, that he doesn't want to drive. People who wake up with head injuries (where?) and amnesia (no, keep pretending) should not get behind the wheel. That much he knows.

Uber to the rescue, in more ways than one. The driver who picks him up is chatty, interested when she sees she's dropping him off at the Buzzfeed offices. She is a distraction, all curious questions and upturned eyes. Friendly. She must be tapping her foot or something, though, because Ryan keeps hearing a low, rhythmic thud throughout the drive, like someone keeping time to music. Just...completely off-beat.

With the window down, idle chatter flowing like the traffic in front of them, he can pretend. Because—and his mind doesn't hover on this for too long because it is strangewrongweird, he feels good. Like, slept for 16 hours without interruption, good. Which...he might have. Energy hums in his veins to the point of vibration; thoughts come clearer, more focused. He's never heard of anyone hitting their head and getting smarter, but fuck. Wouldn't that be funny. He scoffs at the thought, and the girl gives him a sideways glance, but he explains it away and offers a crooked grin.

The ride is over soon enough, though, so he waves and thanks his uber as she pulls away. Then he's alone on the sidewalk, given a moment's time to breathe out. He's made it. Relief. No more thoughts about blood and missing time. He never thought he'd take comfort in what he usually fears; the ghouls and ghosts and long-legged beasties of Unsolved: Supernatural. But those mysteries, those legends are like the sea. He can wade in and lose himself because they aren't about him.

He almost makes it, too. He's close, a hairsbreadth away from slipping into normalcy like it fits and pretending this morning's incident never happened. Then he turns the corner toward his desk and sees someone sitting there, the sole other person in the office.

Shane.

Dark eyes look up, meet his own, and in an instant, the world tilts violently on its axis. That low buzz in his veins swells into a crescendo of vibration, and inside, in the recesses of his mind, his body, somewhere deep he doesn't understand, somewhere urgent and primal and insistent, something clicks, a lock in a key, a puzzle piece falling into place. Ryan's shaking, feet not cooperating as he shouts internally at them to just move. Instead, Shane stands, eyes wide, mouth set in a grim line of worry that pulls down at the edges.

Shane reaches him, grasps his arm and stares into him, gaze jumping from one eye to the other, and the lights must be reflecting or something because the other man's gaze seems deeper, somehow, a glimmering blue within their depths. It distracts him from the touch, the warmth that radiates up his arm firm and safe.

"What," Shane whispers, voice dead of emotion, "Did you do?"