Death on Two Legs // Shyan

10. Devon

The evening was hot and the air in the motel room was dry.
Ryan felt warm skin brush against his arm in the growing shade as the sun outside began to go down. The greasy yellow wallpaper in the room looked a shade of dark gold, pure sunlight still poured from between the lowest few slats, yellow light spilling inside, painting lines on the laminate floor.
He had slept a good seven and a half hours, it was almost eight o'clock. Shane was still deep in slumber, eyes moving under his lids. He was dreaming like a six feet four tall puppy.
The duvet wasn't covering his chest, it was too hot for that, and as Ryan got himself up to sit he could see them in the dim light;
Scars, not too visible, not too fresh. Long, like Shane's skin had been ripped apart from places, shaped like lightning. They ran along his side, over his ribs, rimmed with small dots from the stitches.
The type of scars you'd get from say, getting the shit kicked out of you. From hard leather boots bounding on his ribs with full force, again and again and again. His bones must have been shattered like glass when that happened.

Ryan's stomach turned as he tought of it- not that Shane didn't deserve to be treated like a bag of garbage. Emotional pain was something Ryan always wished Shane would experience, but something like this was a little too much. Anyway, the scars were maybe ten years old, Shane had had them long before they even met.
Apart from those white ripples all over his skin, the man looked like he was straight from a renaissance painting. His brown hair was fluffy, moles like constellations on his body, and that peaceful expression on his softly pink lips made Ryan a little bit weak in the knees.
He found himself staring at Shane like a painting in an art gallery, quickly shaking the disgustingly fluffy toughts from his head. He was a dangerous man, a professional killer, he reminded himself on every moment of weakness.

The past him from a year or two ago would have probably been thinking about suffocating Shane with a pillow then. It would have been relatively easy, even though Shane was bigger than him. Ryan had more muscle mass, he would have been able to restrain the lanky man using only one arm, probably.
But that wasn't him anymore. And that made Ryan a little uneasy; He would rather want to kill Shane Madej than kiss him, because the latter was more painful than watching his own house burn down. It was probably the most painful urge to have, because he could never do that. He would rather jump off a bridge than fall in love with the man who ruined his life.

A knock on the door woke Ryan up from his toughts and Shane from his sleep.
"Let's go! Come on, we'll wait in the car. there's a Burger King by the highway only like forty minutes drive away."
It was Brent. Shane rubbed his eyes, so soft and childish. That was exactly what Ryan hated the most about the man- how absolutely fucking adorable he sometimes was without even noticing it. Sometimes though, it was apparent that Shane took advantage of the apparent crush Ryan had on him. like that time in the diner two years ago.
There it was, the hatred. Every bad thing Shane had ever done surfaced in Ryan's mind, making him grind his teeth and turn his back, searching for his jeans and socks so they could leave.

"Morning." Shane mumbled, getting up to sit as well. Ryan just huffed at him.
"What did i do to piss you off now- did i say somethig in my sleep?" He laughed, but Ryan's humor had died a long time ago.
"Just dress up. Mark and Brent are waiting in the car."

———-

Before they walked out the door, Ryan turned to face Shane- a move that took the both of them by surprise.
"Devon." Ryan's voice was shallow, he did a good job on hiding every drop of emotion considering how he was basically overflowing on the inside.
"You never told me who killed her."
His voice was a little demanding, cold and stiff as sole rock.
Shane shifted on his feet, caught so off guard he didn't really know what he was supposed to do with himself.
He wanted to brush it off with a witty one-liner, get in the car and quickly get the Fear thing dealt with so he wouldn't have to stand Ryan anymore.
But the short man blocked the doorway, his frame looking bigger, tougher, stronger than usually. Some sort of a scaring tactic probably, but Shane felt like he was standing next to a cute little kitten all the same. Upset and angry little kitten, with razor sharp claws ready to claw Shane's eyes out of his thick skull.
"Look, buddy, can we do this some other time?" He suggested, voice annoyingly airy. The last thing Shane wanted was to dig the rotten corpse of their last mess up and put it on trial.
"We've waited long enough."
Ryan spit the sentence out, grinding his teeth so hard that the words were but sharp hisses as he poked Shane painfully in between the ribs. The tall man didn't wince, just maintained the now very tense eyecontact. His face had lost the glee and ease, he looked a little scarily blank.
"You really want to do this now? With Mark and Brent in the car and all?"
He tried one more time, recieving a glare so sharp it could have cut trough glass.
"Fuck, fine." Shane sighed, rubbing his temples as if resetting his brains, searching for words that wouldn't lead to Ryan punching him in the face- again.
The shorter man's expression was a little less bloodthirsty now, anticipation making his features softer.

"It was Fear. well no, the guy who pulled the trigger was working for him. He was supposed to get us all but fucked up somehow, I dunno. Don't really remember those dumb little details anyway."
"What?" Ryan's eyes were the size of dinner plates, his voice cracked as he took a shaky breath in. Shane's eyes showed no emotion, no empathy. And Ryan felt an urge to cry.
"I never told you because knowing you, you'd just get invested in this crazy shit and, well,  get yourself shot in the head too. That old crow has been after me for ten years, Ryan. I tought he had lost me after I changed my name, apparently not."
The disbelief didn't leave Ryan's eyes, they were burning with tears of anger and sadness.
"You... you fucking dickhead..." He managed to stutter, eyes falling away from that sharp and surprisingly intimate eyecontact. If it was Fear all along, why the fuck did Shane wrap him into this Tinsley mess after Ryan already dismissed the hit from his client? This was honestly too much, he wanted to throw up.
"You've got nothing else to say? No questions or anything?" Shane fought back an urge to make a joke, because that was what he always did in situations where the air was just too heavy, where the tension was the negative kind.
"Why did you drag me into this, if it was exactly what you avoided in the first place?"
The pure disgust on Ryan's face didn't suit him, it made him look more mature, more scary, more killer-like. and for the first time after the time he burned Ryan's house down, Shane felt a twist of quilt in his stomach. but his eyes staid the same, without a hint of emotion.
"Jesse Fear is an intelligent man, Ryan. he would have got you anyway. My thinking was, maybe if you're with me in this I've got some chances in keeping an eye on you."
"But WHY, you absolute fucknut?! WHY would he get me, I've never even met the man!"

"Because I'm- I... because I like you, Ryan, that's why. just drop it, all right?"

A silence, painfully shocked one.
"You... you what?"
There were tears in his dark eyes now, shadow had swallowed the room whole as the sun had already set. And Shane's facade of expressionless staring broke apart as well, he swallowed the chunk that rose to his throat as he wished he hadn't said anything.
"I said drop it, so do."
He mumbled, pushing Ryan aside from the door and opening it with haste.
The second his feet touched the hallway floor, a tight grip dug into his arm. Ryan yanked him back, eyes so full of emotion they looked like little pools of rainwater.
"You... you do?" His voice was timid, soft, and oddly enough a little hurt. Shane had never seen him like that- so emotional, so woulnerable, so unbelievably real. And he couldn't say a word, he found no voice to speak with. Ryan's fingers were so warm trough the sleeve of his flannel, he could almost feel the blood run trough his veins like velvet.
"I do." He finally confirmed with a silent, even a little shy voice. Then he swallowed painfully, eyes too full of something recembling shame to look into Ryan's eyes again.
Those eyes. Those fucking eyes.

They stood there, half inside the room, half in the hallway for a while. A while that could have been seconds or minutes, time didn't really matter then.
They just were, Ryan's arm refusing to let go of Shane's sleeve. A pressure, odd kind of soft electricity radiated in between them, like the air during a thunderstorm. They were breathing that moment in hungrily, with both their lungs and their eyes; encraving each others warmth into their memories, studying this new found, less aggressive way to just be.
"I like you too." Ryan finally whispered.
It was like they were children again, confessing their first crushes.
But they were full grown adult men instead, and something about the feeling was so pure, so raw that it made the situation feel completely new and alien. Maybe it was the way they had despised each other- or well, Ryan had despised Shane. Maybe it was the relief after Shane finally spoke about Devon. Or the way Ryan had found a whole new way to look at him, softly, with something recembling kindness instead of boiling rage.
Whatever it was, it was new.
And it made them both feel dizzy and foolish, but so lucky and so childish as well.

"What's the fucking hold up?!"
Brent. Of course it was Brent. The yellow ceiling lights flushed over his slumped figure, and Ryan yanked his hand off of Shane's arm so fast that the fabric made a little 'swish' sound.
"We're coming!" Shane smiled with that radiating glee as Ryan couldn't quite form actual words yet.
"It's been fifteen minutes, man. I'm starving! You guys better pay us extra for this." He left as fast as he had appeared. And they were left there with a wave of heat flushing over their faces.
"Man, this is weird." Shane finally mumbled, looking down.
"Yeah." Ryan agreed. They staid for a few more seconds before Ryan got out of the room and locked the door. They made it to the front desk together, without a word.