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Oh, come on.
“Hello, Madej,” Sneered the ugly green demon from across the attic as he glared at Shane. “I wish I could say it was great to see you again.”
Shane cursed every god and mythical being he knew of as soon as he recognized the hideous creature in front of him. He was in the middle of his solo investigation for the premiere episode of the new season of Ghost Files, and even though this wasn’t supposed to be a demon episode, Shane’s luck had never been that great.
He had sensed the familiar dark energy as soon as he had entered the house. It was weak, obviously coming from a demon that did not know how to harness its power, but it was enough to have him on edge. He had not prepared for this to be a demon episode. If he had known, he would have slipped out of their hotel last night to banish all the evil entities from the house before Ryan even stepped foot on location. Call him a little paranoid, but he wasn’t taking chances with his human’s safety. Which totally had nothing to do with his gigantic schoolgirl crush on his co-host. Not at all.
To make things worse, the demon before him had already been banished by Shane once before. Many years ago, at a preschool in Illinois, Gelmog had decided it would be fun to torment a bunch of little kids by giving them nightmares worse than their little minds could comprehend. It sickened Shane who, despite never spending much time with them, had always had a gooey soft spot for children. When he had become aware of the demon’s wrongdoings, he sent Gelmog back to hell before the sun even set below the horizon. And he made sure it was painful too.
Now, he was faced with a vengeful, ugly, and stupid demon that he would have to banish again, and he wasn’t even done with his solo investigation yet. He would have to make this quick or he risked outing his biggest secret to his closest friends.
“Hello, Eggnog, was it?” Shane snapped impatiently. “Back for more already?”
This angered the lesser demon even more. “You know who I am, you traitor. The name is Gelmog.”
Shane faked offence with a gasp and a hand over his heart, “Traitor? Why, I would never. You must have the wrong guy.”
While he was partially messing around, there was some truth to his words. Demons weren’t created to be inherently bad creatures, Satan was just kind of a shitty dad. His demon children grew up to be angry beasts with a hatred for humans due to how much attention their father focused on the little mortals instead of his own offspring. Demons like Shane knew the truth, however. Satan had never wanted to rule his own kingdom, and he especially never wanted to be a single father. He had simply been a creature in love back in his youth.
Satan and God (who has since renamed himself Christian, Shane has been told) were once head over heels in love with one another. They were opposites in all ways, but that didn’t stop them from jumping from universe to universe, hand-in-hand, for centuries on end. One day, Christian had proposed the idea of them creating their own universe together. He said they could create a beautiful planet and raise tons of loving children with one another, and Satan jumped on board immediately.
The two deities worked together to build the Earth and its galaxy. It started as a labor of love, the two of them huddled shoulder-to-shoulder as they poured over blueprints. Eventually, though, they ran into some problems. Christian claimed that the only way to get the humans to obey them was to frighten them—to show them how powerless they were without the help of the gods. That day, he created disease and disaster without even consulting Satan’s opinion. When his lover found out what Christian had done, he was furious. Satan believed that the only way to get the humans to respect them was to allow them to live free without fear. In retaliation, Satan created doubt and mischief.
The two went back and forth as such until they could no longer. Their fall out was catastrophic, and the old deities even claim that they could feel the shift from all the way in their own universes. In the breakup, the angels were split into two groups. One half stayed with Christian and the other half stayed with Satan. Both halves suffered. Now, the two gods still hold grudges and they continue to take it out on their children, mortal or otherwise.
Gelmog, being a newer demon and most likely being born of lower level parents, had probably never heard this retelling of events before. In Hell, rumors spread about the creation of the universe as the years went on, with only the oldest and most powerful demons remembering the true story, but being forbidden from talking about it within the parameters of Satan’s home. That’s how demons like Shane became known as “traitors” for simply following their true purpose, to coexist with the humans.
“Do you know how long it took me to get back to Earth after you banished me? I had to serve three years of community service!” Gelmog nearly screamed with fury. Shane had to keep himself from laughing at the ridiculousness of the exclamation. Community service in hell was nothing compared to some of the punishments they offered.
“Hm, well, up here we have a saying you might have heard of. It’s ‘not my problem’, dude.” Shane was already getting tired of the guy. He was slimy, smelled like rotten peanut butter, and was making filming this episode a lot harder than it had to be.
Gelmog also seemed fed up with Shane’s flippant retorts, “Oh, fuck this. Get ready for suffering, Madej.” As the little demon raised his arm, presumably to attack, Shane allowed his glamour to fall.
With one snap of his taloned fingers and a self-indulgent “Bye, Eggnog”, Shane sent the demon back to hell. Hopefully, this time the courts would sentence him to something more extreme. Being banished twice by an OG demon would not be a good look for Gelmog.
As Shane let out an annoyed sigh, he fumbled with the camera on his chest, trying to get it to turn back on so he could return to his investigation before things got suspicious. However, Shane’s poor luck struck twice in one day, and the camera nearly fell from his large hands as he heard a familiar voice exclaim, “What the fuck!”
Shane whipped around quickly to where Ryan was standing in the door frame. His fanged mouth mirrored Ryan’s own shocked expression as he struggled to find the words to explain.
“What the fuck, Shane,” Ryan’s voice quivered but his shoulders were squared back in a display of bravery. “What was that?”
Shane, still dumbfounded and unable to form a proper response, could only reply, “Uh, hey, Ryan.”
Ryan, seeming to grow more confidence each second, scoffed, “Don’t ‘hey, Ryan’ me, dude. Explain what the fuck I just witnessed.”
Shane gulped, “Well, that was a demon and I, uh, just sent him back to Hell.”
“And care to tell me how you can do that? Or why you have horns, fangs, and black eyes?” Ryan seemed more angry than afraid now.
“Because I’m also a demon,” Shane said, dumbly, watching Ryan creep closer until they were right in front of each other. He expected the human to run away screaming or try to exorcise him with his holy water gun, but what he didn’t expect was for Ryan to punch him in the shoulder, hard.
“Ow!”
“All these years you’ve been making me feel crazy for believing in demons while you’ve been one the whole time?! Fuck you, Shane!” Ryan said as he continued to hit at Shane’s shoulders and chest (which he did not notice were much bigger and stronger than they were previously, thank you very much.)
“Ow, Ryan, stop! I’ll explain, just please stop hitting me!” The demon put his hands up to defend himself from the pitter pattering fists against his body. Ryan stopped and huffed, staring up at Shane with a glare. He raised an eyebrow as if to say ‘any minute now’ and Shane fumbled through ways to explain.
“Okay, I’m a demon,” Shane started slowly, “But I swear it’s not like what you think. I’m not evil or out to steal your soul or anything. Those are myths, kinda.”
“I know you’re not here to steal my soul, you idiot. If you wanted to do that, you could’ve done it ages ago. What I wanna know is why you didn’t tell me!” Through a few cracks in his facade, Shane could tell that Ryan’s anger was just a cover up for his hurt. If he had found out his favorite person (Ryan) was a mythical creature after years of knowing him, he’d also be a little hurt.
“It's not that I didn’t want you to know, but I didn’t want to ruin anything with you!” Shane exclaimed before looking down and saying quieter, “You hate demons. I was afraid you’d leave if you found out.”
Ryan looked surprised as if he hadn’t expected that answer. “You were scared of me? Leaving you?”
Shane nodded without making eye contact, “I’ve been alive forever, Ryan. I even slept through the entire ice age once. But nothing and no one has made me want to stay here on Earth the way you have. I was afraid that if you didn’t want to be around me anymore, I’d have no reason to continue living.”
Shane heard Ryan’s breath hitch at his last confession. Shane closed his eyes and braced for Ryan to retort with some comment calling him an idiot for saying such a thing. What he didn’t expect was for the human to grab both of his hands and intertwine his cold small fingers with Shane’s long, taloned ones.
“Shane,” Ryan said fondly, “You could probably tell me you were the human embodiment of a rabid grizzly bear and I would still be in love with you. You’re kind of everything to me, y’know?”
Shane snapped his head up to look Ryan in the eyes, unable to believe what he was hearing. “You…love me?”
“I love you,” Ryan assured, “And I am so fucking head-over-heels in love with you.”
“I’m in love with you too,” Shane said, the words coming out automatically, as if he had no control over his mouth. When it came to Ryan, he wasn’t sure if he had any control at all.
Ryan grinned, “I know.”
Once again, Shane was shocked by Ryan’s reaction. His face must have shown some surprise because the human continued.
“When you’re drunk or tired you like to call me baby and try to hold my hand, and you glare at any other man that tries to talk to me. That’s pretty gay, dude,” Ryan giggled as Shane blushed. The tips of his pointed ears were flushed to a deep red color. “Also, my contact in your phone is ‘Ry’ with a heart next to it. Everyone else in your contacts is just a first and last name.”
Obviously, thousands of years on Earth had not taught Shane much about keeping secrets if Ryan was able to figure him out so easily. There was just one thing that didn’t make sense. “If you knew that I had the same feelings, why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I could tell that you were hiding something from me, something that you really didn’t want me to find out, so I figured you just weren’t ready yet. I didn’t want to rush you,” the human explained. Shane was overcome with a sense of adoration for the other man. He was so considerate, if Shane hadn’t been one himself, he would’ve assumed Ryan to be an angel. “But now I see that you’re just a big dumb demon that should never, ever play poker. Your poker face is atrocious.”
And there’s the Ryan that Shane knows. He can’t help but laugh out loud at being insulted by the world’s worst demon hunter.
“Hey, you’re the one who has traveled the country searching for demons without ever stopping to question if there was one right next to you.” Shane was so glad that their natural banter would not be changed by their new revelations.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ryan sighed exasperatedly, “Are you gonna keep making fun of me or are you gonna finally kiss me?”
Shane didn’t take long making his decision.