Archive of Our Own

When Clyde had sidled up to his desk the first time to propose his absurdly stupid idea of some ghost-hunting video bullshit Craig had thought, wow, seriously?

“C’mon, it’ll be cool!”

“Fuck no.”

“We’ll be famous?”

“Not interested.”

Clyde had pouted at him and left and Craig had been obliged to buy him dinner after work, out of necessity (Craig still wants to be let into his apartment, after all) and maybe a little guilt. Mostly necessity.

And the fact that he didn’t really want Clyde doing that, really. Looking for ghosts and all.

That’s not really a nice path to go down.

The second time, Clyde brought their floor manager over, in a show of solidarity or stupidity or—whatever it was, a plea concerning their childhood friendship, big watery eyes looking up at him, Token’s grumbles of okay, we ’ll fund it, but this better get traction.

Craig had found it hard to say no, after that.

(At least it’s just them. Which almost made it worse in hindsight, but he wouldn’t be thinking about regrets until much later.)

The thing is, most people would peg Craig as the kind of guy who’d be a skeptic. He has a physics degree (not that he’s really using it, working at BuzzFeed and all), seems logical enough, doesn’t talk about wanting to fuck Mothman, and even then only derisively. Even if he doesn’t have a stick up his ass (Kenny’s words that he continues to vehemently protest) it wouldn’t matter, because most other people seem to believe in that shit, if just a little.

Especially Clyde, who he’d grown up with, ran around different circles in once they hit college, and then serendipitously found their way back to each other in downtown LA. Clyde’s scared shitless of ghosts; Craig had known this since they were in diapers together. And every time Clyde freaks out about the supernatural getting to him (mostly during horror movie nights, but sometimes when they’re doing overtime trying to get another video out or doing paperwork and a paper cup falls to the floor or something —) Craig would sigh and whack him and tell him ghosts don’t fucking exist, Clyde, now stop moaning on Twitter and get back to editing.

The thing is, as much as Craig wants to believe the words that come out of his mouth, he can’t.

“If there are any spooky boys out here,” Clyde says, lowering his voice as he looks from side to side, then leans into the mic. “Let us know.”

They’re in some abandoned mine a few miles north of Colorado Springs, where a collapse back in ’31 had buried fifteen miners alive. It’s very wet; he hears echoes from spring-water dripping in the tunnels, back where they aren’t allowed to trespass. Maybe they are already trespassing; fuck if Craig would know.

Annie, who’s manning one of the cameras, catches his eye, her expression desperately imploring Craig to say something as she holds the camera steady.

“…This is stupid.”

They wait. No ghosts come swooping out of the air at their faces. Then, out of the corner of Craig’s eye, he spots the shadows behind Clyde shift, for a moment.

“I’m turning on the spirit box,” Clyde whispers. His hands shake a bit as he turns the knob, something that does not escape Craig’s notice. Internally, he sighs.

“Nah,” Craig replies, crossing his legs. The folding chair is uncomfortable, the damp air sticky upon his skin. The crew focuses their equipment towards the spirit box as Clyde shifts in his seat, listening intently, fingers tapping on his lap. He shivers involuntarily.

Even in spring it is chilly underground, but Craig knows this isn’t just the weather. He stares hard at the shadowy figure squirming behind Clyde’s shoulder; it’s a little difficult to keep his face straight when there’s three cameras pointing in their general direction. And Clyde, well—he looks paler than usual as he sits up straighter in his chair.

“Don’t…hey, you think it’s getting kind of cold too right, Craig?”

“It’s April in Montana, not fucking LA,” Craig replies, unmoved. And when Clyde looks away again, motioning to Kevin to pass him another flashlight, Craig feels a crackle, a sensation of electricity at the back of his head, and his vision momentarily goes black.

When he comes to again, a fraction of a second later, the shadow is gone. The other two, oblivious, are now arguing about the veracity of EVPs.

“Turn that fucking thing off, it’s giving me a headache.”

“Okay, okay…”

“Guess the miners are on strike today,” Kevin says, flipping off the switch, and the lights from behind come on in full force again. Clyde sighs loudly, sprawling himself over the chair, but it is obvious he’s breathing a sigh of relief. His hands still shake, whether from cold or adrenaline Craig can’t tell.

“You really should know how to quit while you’re ahead,” Craig says, elbowing him. “You were scared shitless.”

“Was not.”

“Was too.”

When they start leaving Clyde keeps his eyes to the entrance, chattering away gaily in an attempt to calm his nerves, but all the while Craig feels bristling, pointed gazes directed their way.

(Maybe mentally flipping off angry spirits hadn’t been a good idea. He’s gonna get yelled at over the phone later, he’s sure.)

The thing is, Craig doesn’t want to admit it, but maybe it’s working out well, at least according to their view count on YouTube. Clyde’s smiling all the time at work (though it’s a different story out in the field.) Just bros shooting videos. Whimsical workplace camaraderie. Real human emotions, that.

Annie and Kevin shoot and do sound, Clyde directs and talks nonsensical conspiracy theories, Craig bitches and does the editing. He has to, he’d insisted to Clyde in the drawing room, otherwise he’s dropping out. That’s what he’s being paid to do here, anyway, despite the increase in workload that’s eating into his time spent with Stripe at home.

He just cuts out a little more than he should.

The next time, they’re at an abandoned church that’s reportedly got six ghosts wandering around somewhere in its basement. Great, fantastic, Craig thinks as they walk in, and he could feel the ground tingle beneath his feet. It hadn’t been this bad when they were kids.

“Are you like, doing this to confront your own fears, or something dumb like that.”

“Well, duh,” Clyde says, and his voice breaks a little as a rat scurries across the ground a few steps away from them. Yeah, this place is definitely haunted, but Craig thinks they might smash the cameras from stepping on used needles before any actual otherworldly encounters happen. It’s obvious that there’s been human activity here recently, though that isn’t anything they’d show on camera.

They don’t show a lot of things on camera, actually (Craig’s sure there’s an audience out there for Kevin puking on-set after eating some rancid tacos or one of the interns accidentally triggering the alarm system after falling down a flight of rickety old stairs, but.)

“This, folks,” Clyde says to the camera, putting on his spooky voice again—he thinks it makes him sound spooky, but to Craig it’s just silly. They’re gonna have to rerecord this part in the studio anyway, but Clyde goes at it regardless. “This place is fucking crazy, man. Built in 1889, it burned down after what some call an act of arson, killing four—”

“So you’re saying there’s half a dozen ghosts down here,” Craig says slowly into his mic, staring at the wooden table. A cockroach crawls slowly across its edge, pausing to inspect some ancient crumb. In the background he hears someone snicker. “They probably set the church on fire, huh. What are you gonna do about that.”

“What am I gonna do about that?”

Craig snorts. “Why else are we here? Hey ghosts! Wanna set my face on fire? Or Clyde’s. Whichever one tastes better cooked.”

“Craig!”

“Really don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of here, Clyde.”

It’s the truth, but Clyde isn’t having it. He grabs Craig by the arm, hauling him into the narrow walkway beneath the crumbling eaves. “You…you go inside first.”

“Thought you wanted to face your fears, dumbass.”

“I can face them outside!”

And then Craig’s promptly shoved indoors.

Outside the door, he could hear Clyde pacing around, going at the camera about the history of this place. Inside the door, he feels multiple pairs of eyes staring up at him from the darkness below.

They won’t show up on the camera, but it’s an unpleasant situation, to say the least.

“There aren’t any fucking ghosts here,” Craig mutters into his mic again as he shines his flashlight around, holding his camera steady as he descends the stairs and trying his hardest to ignore the number of presences around him. There’s a scraping sound coming from below, faint, but noticeable in the way he’d noticed the shadows move back in the abandoned mine. He could only hope this means Clyde won’t notice anything when he comes in later. He raises his voice.

“Hey assholes! What are you gonna do, shove me against a wall? Stuff dirt down my throat?”

And then, louder, still monotone, “C’mon, I’m sure someone on the Internet would find it funny.”

Do it.

I dare you.

None of them come near. They’re not interested—not willing, whichever one it is. It doesn’t make his stay here any more comfortable; the air feels too tight around his body, wrapping around his face, slithering through the spaces between his fingers. And once he starts hearing bats squeaking above his head, Craig decides fuck it and hightails the hell out of that basement.

“You were scared back there, weren’t you?”

“Nope.”

“Yes you were!” Clyde nudges him, winking slyly. There’s no camera pointing at them now, in the bright daylight streaming in through their office windows and onto their desks. His is clean and minimal; Clyde’s is a mini garbage heap. “You ran the fuck out of that place, man.”

“Bats have rabies,” Craig says, accusatory, like it’s Clyde’s fault they were there (well, it is). “And you only went in after I scared all of them out.”

“Are you telling me you saved me from rabies?”

Craig rolls his eyes, turning back to his notes. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“So gallant,” Clyde sighs, pulling him close; for a moment Craig tries to wriggle out of his grasp, but it’s useless and he knows as much. Beyond the slope of Clyde’s broad shoulders he sees Jimmy give him a thumbs-up and snicker loudly.

(As tantalizing as the thought of strangling Jimmy behind the dumpster after work is, it would…probably be really bad if their company’s star reporter goes missing. Sucks.)

There are no ghosts in downtown LA, or at least the parts Craig usually frequents. The energies of the living keep the spirits at bay, as Clyde tells it to the gullible subset of their audience, and to Craig, who he’s eating with tonight.

It’s absolute bullshit. And Craig knows it’s bullshit because three minutes into their meal at he looks up and spots something translucent float up to them and put a hand on Clyde’s shoulder, through his shoulder, grinning at him like it knows Craig can see everything .

Clyde, on the other hand, doesn’t notice a thing.

“I’m going to kill you,” Craig says in a low voice, before remembering ghosts are dead and can’t exactly die again. Clyde drops his sandwich and the spirit vanishes, but not before the chittering sound of giggling reaches Craig’s ears.

“W-what did I do?”

“Was just talking to the demon behind you,” he deadpans, and Clyde stares hard at him for two seconds before bursting into nervous laughter. Craig hates how the headlights of the cars seem to hit him at all the right angles, illuminating the whites of his teeth and his dimples, and how it makes something in his heart rumble even when an unsettling feeling keeps burying itself into his bones. Everything despite the dab of mayonnaise on his chin and the way he’s stupidly grinning now, reaching over to shove Craig on the shoulder.

“Asshole.”

“You looked too happy with that sandwich.”

“Oh, so that’s what this is about now?”

“Dumbass.” He pushes the offering of the half-bitten sandwich away, shaking his head. The jitters, half-coherent thoughts that had transpired between the moment he’d seen the thing and its disappearance, seem incomprehensibly distant in light of the way Clyde’s looking at him now. But.

But.

The chatter of the restaurant seems to fade as Clyde pulls his hand back hesitantly, looking at him with a mix of concern and some foreign emotion Craig doesn’t really want to put a name to. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, lying through his teeth. In the back of his mind he could still hear it: liar, liar. “Just finish your stupid sandwich.”

The thing is, at this point, Craig’s got a pretty good idea of why Clyde’s doing this.

“I’m not saying that’s a fucking terrible idea to ask him about his mom,” Red tells him over the phone the Thursday after the incident in the diner. Craig’s watching some stupid show about aliens ( something something we need this for the next episode ) that’s getting everything wrong because aliens are not like that. “But it’s a fucking terrible idea to ask him about his mom. Even Henrietta said so.”

“No shit.”

“Also, since when did you give a shit about—oh. I see.”

“You can’t see anything,” Craig shoots back, already unnerved at the her change of tone. Anything that warrants that is something he should immediately stop doing, is what he’s found over the years.

She sounds almost smug , and already he’s regretting this call. “I’ve watched your videos, you know. Kinda hard to miss the comments about—”

“I can’t believe you’d even deign to look at YouTube comments.” Craig had made it a point to not look at any sort of comment section pertaining to his work life, and he’d told Clyde too to stay the fuck away, because god knows what kind of inane theories go on in that hellhole. Not that Clyde would listen. He probably writes fanfiction, come to think of it. Not that Craig would know. Or care.

“Only for you, mister ghost hunter.”

“I’m not a fucking ghost hunter.”

“Right.” She makes a noise that Craig knows to mean you can talk shit all you want but clearly I’ve won. “Anyway, I left the package at the post office today. Should get there soon, since I expedited it and all.”

Which, in Red-speak, means I actually spent money on you so you’re taking me out somewhere fancy next time I’m in town. Craig closes his eyes and leans back further into the sofa, shaking his head. “What shall I ever do without you.”

Craig has grown to begrudgingly appreciate being on set, even if he hates talking. Indoors, as hot as the room may be sometimes, things are somewhat organized, and he could pick apart Clyde’s stupid theories all he wants from the comfort of his seat. Out here, all bets are off.

It’s simple fact now: they go on location, Clyde freaks the hell out after seeing a bug fly across his face, and Craig yells at ghosts and demons to fuck off in-between voiceovers, all the while keeping a wary eye on the shadows moving ever-closer.

None of them have tried anything yet, but Craig knows it’s just a matter of time now before something breaks through, and it won’t be Clyde’s dead mom. Of all the weird shit Craig’s seen over their times staying in decrepit prisons and run-down hotels, none of them have ever been anything familiar.

He’d almost rather it this way.

“Are…” He slaps his phone down onto his lap as Clyde ambles over, leaning down to peer at his hands. “Are you looking up homemade demon repellent on WikiHow?”

“No,” Craig lies. Then, “Yeah, because you’ll need it, dick.”

“Rude.” Clyde makes a face at him before going off to check the map with Kevin and their tour guide again. Craig takes this moment to dive into his backpack and fish out a water bottle, still warm. It’s his only hope today, that and—he reaches up, fingering the thin chain around his neck, then letting the pendant drop beneath his shirt where nobody could see. The fact that it’s come to this is laughably pathetic.

At this rate, Craig’s gonna give himself an aneurysm before anything even happens to Clyde. And the worst part is the dumbass doesn’t even know .

“‘kay, we’re ready to roll!”

“I can’t wait for a demon to dropkick me out a window,” Craig quips in monotone. Gotta stay in character, now.

They settle into their routine. It’s alarming how easy this comes to him now, flashlight in hand, brushing up against Clyde as they maneuver their way down the narrow hallways. Today’s location, a purportedly demon-infested mansion in a little town on the outskirts of Colorado Springs, had been the site of numerous accidents and occult activity and even a grisly beheading (according to legend, anyway.) Clyde, looking up at the dark ceiling, notes: “Now a fun little mystery house that attracts locals to its Halloween festivities!”

If there’s one thing Clyde is meticulous about it’s his ability to get into character and keep it up forever, something Craig’s started viewing with less disdain and more envy over the years.

Though the fear of the supernatural isn’t just a funny character tic for the audience to laugh at, it’s just Clyde being Clyde. It would be so much easier if he weren’t afraid, or afraid in a different way, but by now Craig knows full well he can’t have everything he wants in life.

Everything up to and including Clyde Donovan.

He readies himself when they enter the expansive drawing room, cluttered with all manner of antiques and junk laid bare for tourists to ooh-and-ahh over. The rustling noise in the corner does not escape either of their notices; Clyde immediately screeches and latches on to Craig, nearly knocking both of them and their multitude of recording devices over. Craig could almost hear Annie’s resigned sigh behind them as she reaches forward and grabs him by the shirt, steadying them. She probably deserves a raise. Hell, Craig deserves a raise, especially after their video where Clyde had accidentally shoved him into a dirty pool after being scared by a pigeon gained five million views in two days.

“It’s probably a rat,” Craig says.

“Yeah, a rat…” Clyde’s eyes are still bulging as he hesitantly takes another step forward, away from where the noise had come. The screech of the spirit box intones nothing particularly incriminating as Craig follows him, flashlight in hand, giving briefly a hard stare at the shadows slinking away from the walls.

On-camera, it’ll just look like he’s annoyed, which is normal and expected. Off-camera, when he and Clyde slip into the adjoining theatre room, he grabs Clyde by the hand and says, “What the fuck is that?“

There’s an ouija board set up on the table, complete with unlit candles and a spread of assorted foodstuffs that looks suspiciously like it had been hastily bought from the corner store next to the place the crew had dinner at. And in the middle of it all, something familiar.

“Clyde,” Craig begins again, allowing a little more alarm to seep into his voice, “Seriously, what—”

“The family used to hold seances here,” Clyde insists, cutting him off. Craig remains silent for a minute: this is clearly something they hadn’t previously discussed, which could only mean one thing coming from Clyde. “So I thought we could, you know—”

“We’re not doing this,” Craig says. The shadows they throw onto the walls as Clyde goes around and lights the candles vibrate a little, but Craig can’t tell if it’s just physics anymore. He feels a little dizzy, a little like throwing up all over the table and the ring, maybe they won’t have to go through with it.

Clyde raises an eyebrow, and there’s kind of a weird humor playing in his tone as he speaks. “Don’t tell me now you’re scared of something you don’t even believe in.”

“Do seances even work on demons?”

At this, Clyde indicates something to Kevin, who shrugs and slips out of the room, leaving the camera rolling on the tripod next to the large oaken door.

It closes with a little click.

“I mean,” Clyde tries again, looking not at Craig but at the flickering candlelight, “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. We can make this a solo investiga—”

“You can't do a seance with one person. This isn’t about the demon, is it.”

The room is silent. Far away, there are faint footsteps, human ones. Annie’s somewhere on the other side of the house getting footage for the B-roll.

Clyde’s always had a habit of blabbering on whenever he got nervous, whenever he was lying, ever since they were kids. They’d get caught chucking things at storefronts and Clyde would be trying to explain away what he was doing while Craig stayed silent or yanked him away from the yelling owners; they’d done projects together and Clyde would go off on tangents on-stage whenever he forgot which notes he should be reading.

And now…

“Of course it’s about the demon! That’s just what we’re investigating here—like, I’m fucking scared of them, man, you know that, but—”

His hands are shaking and cold, when Craig grabs them, letting the flashlight drop soundlessly to the seat cushions below. There’s something tremulous in Clyde’s voice, scared but wanting, like this is something he’s been waiting his entire life to do.

It’s sitting right there in plain sight, next to the Oreos and the candles: the ring Mrs. Donovan used to wear. Clyde’s never been good at hiding his intentions, after all.

And well, Craig’s never been good at words, so maybe they’re even.

So he sighs and says, “Fine.”

Theoretically, this might not even work. They’re not on Donovan property, though Craig wouldn’t discount Clyde’s family having visited before at some point; this place is, after all, not far from South Park. The ouija board looks like cobbled-together crap (which may well have been marketed as authentic, judging from the wear and tear) from a second-hand toy store. The candles, once lit, emit a suspicious scent of tropical fruit. Nothing at all like what Craig’s seen Red use in her ceremonies, and those are—mostly—real.

Still, there is power in belief, and more importantly in the ring Clyde’s placed in the middle of the ouija board—something full of longing, regret, remembrance. And if Clyde believes so fervently that this must work, that what he wants he will see—

“Your skin,” Clyde blurts out, as they reach towards the ouija board simultaneously, bumping knuckles with each other. “It’s so hot.“

“Candles,” Craig replies, rolling his eyes for the camera. If Clyde’s trying to flirt out of nervousness, he’s not about to take the bait. “Fire.”

Craig tries very hard to not think about the holy water in his backpack that Clyde’s not allowed to know about. If Clyde had been thorough with planning this misadventure he’d have brought his own, but even if he had, it’s nowhere in sight. Craig also tries very hard to not think about the fact that, were it not Clyde sitting across from him, he’s not so sure he would even entertain this folly in the first place.

“They did it once,” Clyde says. He’s mumbling to himself again as he carefully places the offerings on the board, surprisingly gentle. “You remember. In the courtroom—“

“That was a projection. Like, there was a machine and everything. You know that.”

“Yeah, but you saw it. That was a ghost. That was—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Craig mutters, shifting in his uncomfortably creaky chair. “Just get this over with.”

“Okay,” Clyde says. He takes a deep breath, fingers again brushing over Craig’s as he looks down at the board. They sit for a minute, maybe less, maybe more, as Clyde goes through the necessary words to begin the ritual. The windows are shut tightly, and Craig could see dust motes suspended in the firelight as they give their names to the spirits.

This is a mistake, but with Clyde’s hands in his, he’s not sure how to stop it anymore.

“If there are any spirits in here with us today, you can use this to talk to us.”

Silence.

“Are you there?”

Then, imperceptibly, a scratching sound: Craig looks down at the planchette moving ever so slightly. He frowns, tilting his head so neither the main camera or Clyde’s Go-Pro can catch his expression.

“Don’t cheat.”

“It’s moving on its own!”

Craig watches in horror as it moves and moves and moves. Behind Clyde, on the walls, the shadows stretch long and thin into the ceiling, flickering even as the candlelight surrounds them stay very, very still. Don’t move don’t move don’t move—

“YES,” Clyde spells out, his hand trembling. There’s a sort of dry, hollow quality to his voice, as if he’s about to throw up. “See, Craig, I told you—”

“Nope,” Craig retorts, desperate and wondering how he’s doing keeping it out of his voice. He feels a chill—there is no heat from the candles, but whether or not Clyde could detect it over his excitement is doubtful. Certainly he hadn’t been expecting this to happen on-camera today, in the very worst way possible. “It’s—it’s fucking suggestion. You spell out what you want to see.”

Clyde ignores him.

“How many?”

O-N-E.

The candle closest to Craig flickers as if in jest before settling back again, white wax overflowing its holder. They’ve barely been here for a few minutes—but Craig can’t think about the wrath of the owners coming down upon them for fucking up the antique desk. All he can think about is the fact that his fingers are plastered to the planchette, and it’s getting really, really cold.

Remember, he recalls Red saying, when they were kids, don’t fight it, until it think it’s already won.

Lay low because after all, the call's not on you.

“Clyde—”

“Your name, please.”

Clyde’s eyes are unfocused as he looks up at Craig briefly, then back down at the table again. The electric feeling, the one from the mine, from childhood, comes back with renewed vigor as the shadows congregate, circling lower and lower.

Waiting is not really his forte.

“Stop,” Craig murmurs authoritatively, in a voice low enough so the camera won’t pick up. They might have to scrap this entire episode altogether at this point, but to hell with it. “Clyde, fucking—listen to me. Tell the camera you’re moving it on your own.”

“I’m not moving it—” Clyde’s tone, high-pitched and shaking, drops something hard and heavy in Craig’s stomach. “I can’t…I can’t take my hand away…”

The thing is, Craig can’t exactly remember all that had happened when Clyde’s mom died. She had slipped and fallen, there was that. Then something about a seance that he hadn’t been there to witness, and then the thing in the courtroom. He’d been too young and annoyed by the clamoring adults, and Clyde had been, well—

South Park’s a shitty place where people believe in anything, from the real monsters to the self-made ghosts living inside tiny screens and slide projectors. It had been safe, in a sense: the weirdness had been reigned in, kept to the confines of the town limits, where belief and doubt passes between townspeople like currency.

Maybe Clyde had started believing then, in ghosts, or whatever it was he wanted to believe in. Craig doesn’t think about this kind of thing much; he’s still got his parents, his sister, his petty grievances that on some level frighten him more than any spirit ever could. The selfish part of him calls it the way the world turns; the other, smaller part of him wishes he could know what it’s like to carry someone else’s weight for once. To look outside the confines of his own head and say, I’m here, I’m here.

And in the outside world, nothing is stopping the demons from coming in.

You miss her, don’t you?

The air is tight around his face, saran-wrapping his features until he cannot see anymore. Clyde’s face is distorted on the other side as murmurs fill Craig’s ears, indistinct, like the ever-present humming of insects late at night.

He wants so badly to scream, to bang his fists on the table, but his body doesn’t listen. Instead, he watches Clyde talk to the air.

Something long and dark curls around Clyde’s broad shoulders, slides over his collarbones, settles into the curvature of his arms.

“Clyde, look at me.”

Clyde’s mouth is open, sweat-damp brown hair sticking fast to skin as he mumbles something into the air, his chest rising and falling to the rhythm of the flames.

Do you miss her?

“I’m so sorry,” Clyde is saying, across the table. His head is bowed low, and he might as well be on the moon for the distance in his voice. Craig leans forward, straining against the grainy texture over his eyes. The dark tendrils congregate under Clyde’s chin, and beneath it all, beneath their fingers, the planchette slowly starts to spin. His chest burns hot, hot, hot, and Craig could just barely make out Clyde lifting his head, gazing across what seems like the innumerable time and space hanging between them. “Mom—”

I can take you to her.

“No!”

There is a surge in his chest in response to Clyde's voice which Craig barely registers as familiar, magnified tenfold in his head. And then the room is thrown into darkness as the candles extinguish themselves, the acrid smell of smoke and burnt metal. Someone is moaning, clear as day; Craig realizes he’s on the floor, and that the sounds are coming out of his own mouth.

The hurt is all over, but particularly on the skin between his collarbones, and his fingers; he winces as he turns over, feeling small, sharp pieces of something jammed beneath him and the carpeting. The pendant, he realizes, reaching up instinctively to grab for his neck, but there is nothing there except a burning sensation where metal should be. For a fleeting moment Craig wonders if they’ve blown up the place, or if he’s actually dead and in hell and none of this matters anymore. If he could just see—

Then, he hears rustling nearby.

“Craig!”

Frantic hands find him and jolt him upright, careful to not roll him onto the broken pieces of equipment again. Clyde’s face swims into focus as a flashlight clicks open above head, blinding Craig for a split second before being consigned to the background again.

“Oh, oh my god you’re—Craig—can you hear me? Can—”

Clyde’s arms are around him, gripping so tightly he thinks he might actually suffocate for real this time, and he’s—crying? Shaking? Craig can’t tell. But Clyde’s here, physically existing, and the beating of his heart against his chest is real, which must mean—

So Craig says instead, “Hey, it’s alright. I’m here.”

“So,” Kevin says flatly, surveying the damage on the floor. “You’re telling me the camera…exploded.”

“I dropped it,” Craig says the same time Clyde decides to pipe up breathlessly with “Actually, a demon pushed it off the table.”

They are met with a reasonably contemptuous silence. Craig crinkles the water bottle in his hands, watching the last of the holy water soak through the carpeting. None of them seem to have noticed the sizzling and scream of spirits vacating the premises; good. At least let him have this, for once.

Annie exhales, pinching her nose in despair. “I don’t even want to know.”

They lose all the footage, including those from the Go-Pros, a reality of filmography that’s all too common out in the field. Shit happens, equipment fails. Thankfully the season doesn’t premiere for a few weeks yet, and Token had had the foresight to make them film extra footage (‘just in case’, whatever that means) that could theoretically be cobbled together for another episode. Craig goes back to his old routine of editing shitty articles and being pulled into inane shoots about eating slugs and virtual reality pornography. Clyde, on the other hand, takes off the entirety of the next week.

It shouldn’t bother Craig, really: it must’ve been traumatizing, if Clyde remembers anything at all. The camera had been smashed to pieces (sure, insurance covered it, but they’d both gotten a good lecture about it after), and so had the ouija board. And so had both of them, kind of. Annie had hauled them to the hospital to get their cuts and burns checked out, and now BuzzFeed’s probably banned from entering that town forever. Good riddance.

Clyde’s phone is on, which is a plus. The downside is the fact that Craig really, really hates talking anything out with anyone, ever, and especially after some harrowing, clearly paranormal event which should’ve been broadcast to the world immediately afterwards but hadn’t. Clyde hasn’t updated his Instagram stories for three days and the fans are going insane. Craig’s already gotten way too many DM’s from strangers and coworkers alike asking if he’d murdered Clyde and buried him somewhere in the Rockies like he’s threatened to on-camera more than thrice.

Almost like everyone thinks only one is allowed to be frightened, to be scared out of his wits, between the both of them.

“Hey, dumbass,” Craig says to Clyde’s voicemail, after he texts his cousin with a string of skull and prayer hands emojis. An intern shuffles into the room, glancing around, then freezes when she sees Craig. He ignores her, turning to the coffee machine and watching his cup fill up. “I’m coming over after work.”

“Is that Taco Bell?” Clyde asks upon opening his door.

Craig blinks down at Clyde, at the dark circles under his eyes and baggy clothes and his clearly struggling smile. “Yeah.”

There are no signs of Clyde’s roommate, which is good. His place is a good thirty minute drive from Craig’s on a good day, and today hadn’t been one of those. No matter; Craig steps inside, drops the paper bags and his work backpack (full of sage and holy water) to the ground, closes the door behind him.

Clyde’s looking at him with wide eyes, like he’s the only being that exists in this moment, and well—Craig doesn’t know what to do about it. About any of the things that’ve transpired. About Clyde and all of these feelings welling up inside him at once, too much and too threatening that perhaps this is the first and worst time all of it will come spilling out.

“I’m sorry,” he begins, and then Clyde is there, arms around him, face buried in his neck. He thinks, as he stands there, that there is a hint of wetness at his collarbones, just above his new scar.

Oh.

“No, I— I shouldn’t have, done that. I’m sorry. It was, you know, such a fucking stupid idea and, Craig—”

“Yeah?”

A sniffle, then fingers curled tightly around the small of his back. “You’re alive.”

“So are you, dumbass,” Craig murmurs into his hair, his hands fumbling awkwardly now that he’s dropped everything he could’ve possibly been holding onto. “Next time—”

“There won’t be a next time,” Clyde says, finally leaning away. His face is red and splotchy, but Craig spies that familiar look of determination in his eyes. “I…I almost got you killed .”

“You wanted to see your mom again.”

It’s starting to sound like a conversation they should have sitting down, and so they do, on the worn leather couch that Clyde lugged all the way here from South Park and still hasn’t thrown out yet. Clyde’s looking at the floor because a single incident from fourth grade fucked him up for life, and Craig’s looking at Clyde’s collection of cartoon saltshakers lined up on a nearby shelf because he doesn’t know how to, as people say, talk it out.

They kind of just sit there, in the living room smelling faintly of cheesy gordita crunches.

Craig exhales. “Right. We…kind of fucking suck at this.”

“Yeah.” Clyde leans back into the couch, his hair falling down over his eyes like—Craig doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want to look at him, but there’s no helping this situation. There’s a kind of exhaustion there, relief maybe, or something too deeply unsettling that they can't face just yet. If Craig had been wanting to come here angry, or disappointed… “I just, uh…”

“Thought it was a good idea to conduct a seance in a murder house infested with demons.”

Clyde quirks an eyebrow at him, his palms sinking into the sofa as he leans forward into Craig’s face. “You believe now, though. Ghosts. The supernatural—it’s real. You saw it.”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” Craig says, truthfully. It’s better than I’ve been seeing it all this time, which is a conversation for another day. Clyde seems to take that as a win, looking up at him with a sort-of grin and punching him on the shoulder. Carefully, he follows with “You know there’s no footage of it, right? The audience—”

“Fuck the audience,” Clyde says, his voice trembling a little. He’s very, very close now, and Craig thinks this is what it must be to have an out-of-body experience: staring at himself from above, watching this scene play out like a terrible Hallmark movie. “We can…we can deal with that, um. Later. I just want—I really just wanted—”

His brown eyes are bright and wild as he continues, “I wanted to see her again, dude. I wanted so bad, like…I thought…maybe I needed to, one last time. To say goodbye and everything. But I wanted you to believe, too. I was so scared, but…I wanted you there, Craig.”

Clyde takes his hand, and Craig thinks, flushing crimson and maybe a little desperate, Oh.

He’s never been great at admitting his wrongs. He’s never been great at admitting much of anything, other than half-truths that’ll get him through the day, little evocations of his reality that will lead him forward an inch every day and nothing more. Nothing to the level of the vulnerabilities he’s about to put on display.

The thing is, maybe he’s getting tired of hiding.

“I’m here,” Craig says, quietly. “And…I believe you, Clyde. I always have.”

Clyde tastes like Listerine; it’s not the first surprise of Craig’s day, but it’s probably better than all the ones he could remember up until now. The sofa beneath them smells like someone’s spilled days-old tomato sauce all over it, but he lets himself be pressed down anyway, lets Clyde cry into his face as they kiss, lets Clyde put a hand up his shirt and brush gently against the faint scars on his abdomen, newly healed.

It’s a nice sensation, tingling his spine as Clyde’s fingers (cool to the touch) find their way up his body. Craig’s kissed before, certainly, but never so eager, never like this. Never, in a million years, did he think anything would lead up to this moment.

He reaches up, cupping Clyde’s cheeks with both hands, and then a loud, grumbling growl sounds off below.

“Fuck,” he groans, struggling to get up as Clyde lands heavily on him, laughing as if he’s never done so before. “God, the tacos are probably frozen.”

“It’s your fault—”

“You’re the one who, fuck—” They really are bad at this. Craig pushes him off with all the mock-annoyance he could muster, but on the other hand, he really doesn’t feel like getting up. That was work, and getting up means he won’t have Clyde sitting there looking at him with those eyes, like Craig’s the world’s shittiest but ultimately irreplaceable art exhibition. “I can’t believe you.”

“You just said otherwise like, two minutes ago!”

“Fuck off,” Craig laughs, throwing a dirty sock at him, and it’s worth everything, ghosts and demons and everything in-between, to watch Clyde’s face light up as he gets smacked full in the face. “C’mon, let’s eat some tacos.”