Possession

I don't own them in any way at all. I mean no harm. If any of the PRS kids end up reading this, well, google was obviously not your friend. It will have a sequel eventually. Ryan/Sergey. Ugh, it's slash. Obviously. Pretty dark. If creepy stuff is not your cup of tea, stay away.

It’s the fourth night in a row he’s woken up like this. Drenched in sweat, eyes wide, panting for breath in the pre-dawn darkness of his room. The nightmares are terrifying. And getting worse every night he has them. They’re also coming on faster, waking him up earlier and earlier. The green LED display of the clock on his bedside table reads a pathetic 3:57. He’s only been asleep for little more than an hour.

Sergey resolves himself – as he has been for the last few night after such chilling dreams – to the fact that he won’t be sleeping anymore tonight. He flicks on the lamp on the table beside him and picks up his half finished novel for English class and sets to reading. His sleep-deprived mind seems appeased by his decision, at least until he gets three pages in and his eyes lose focus and he starts to drift off again.

Equally haunting images appear before his eyes for the briefest of seconds before he snaps himself awake again.

No. No no no. Absolutely no sleeping.

4:11, the clock now reads. Man, this sucks.

***

Two days later, Sergey is beginning to suspect that Ryan is getting suspicious of his behavior. He foregoes breakfast in favor of mass quantities of coffee – and really, he probably should get around to telling Ryan that he swapped out their decaf for the real stuff soon – and he balks at the sight of Ryan’s food altogether, despite the intense growling in his stomach.

“What?” He asks, when he catches Ryan staring at him warily.

Ryan shakes his head. “Nothing. Just wondering if you’re stomach is finished yelling at me yet. I think its saying ‘FEED ME!’ You could probably get some sort of EVP read out of it.” He jokes, and offers a piece of toast, perhaps supposing that Sergey’s lack of appetite may be due to the flu that’s been going around or something.

Sergey just shakes his head and downs some more of his coffee. “Thanks. Not hungry.” He lies. He’s starving, at least up until he the second he touches, smells, or even sees food. Then it no longer holds any appeal at all.

He notices Ryan watching him closely after that.

***

That night, after a long shopping trip with Ryan to the grocery store, Sergey feels like he really is going to be sick.

“Serge, you get that last bag?” Ryan calls down the steps to him from where he stands juggling with his own bags while he tries to extricate the keys from his jeans pocket.

With a heavy sigh, he shifts the bag into his arms and shuts the trunk of the car. “Yeah.” He replies, and jogs up the steps to meet his roommate just as he gets the door open.

Ryan shuffles into the kitchen, dodging Xander bouncing around his feet. “We’ll go for a walk in a minute, boy.” He promises the canine as he sets the bags down on the counter.

Sergey walks in then, and is greeted not with an ecstatic dog at his heels, but instead with a vicious sounding bark that makes him stop dead in his tracks. At first he thinks that maybe someone snuck in behind him, rabid fan-girl, stalker, thief, but no one is behind him.

“Xan?” He questions quietly, eyes wide, even as Ryan wheels around to see what is going on. Xander is still growling at him, teeth fiercely bared in Sergey’s direction from where the dog stands between he and Ryan.

“Hey!” Ryan shouts, when he realizes that its Sergey their dog is after. “Knock it off. Go, go get in your bed.” He orders and Xander barks once more in Sergey’s direction, but obediently wanders off in the general direction of his bed at the end of the hallway. “Wonder what got into him?” Ryan muses absently, as he returns his attention to putting groceries away.

Sergey, still glancing cautiously through the door Xander left through, remains quiet, which further concerns Ryan, evidently.

“You okay, Serge?”

“Fine.” He puts his bag of groceries away in silence and heads to his room without another word to the older man. Xander growls at him when he walks passed.

***

There’s a PRS meeting the next day, and Sergey really doesn’t want to go. He thinks about asking Ryan if he minds going solo, but he knows that will only make Ryan more curious as to what’s wrong with his best friend. Sergey would never miss a meeting. Ever.

“Ready?” Sergey asks, a travel mug of coffee in one hand and sunglasses in the other. Xander has taken to avoiding him altogether, refusing to even be in the same room he is.

Ryan shrugs into his jacket and nods. “You sure you wanna go?” He asks, just to be sure.

“Why wouldn’t I?” He retorts, somewhat snappishly. “I’m fine. Just stop hovering, alright?”

Surprised by the attitude behind the words, Ryan visibly recoils at the response. “Alright.” He’ll be doing no such thing.

***

Sergey’s attitude continues to deteriorate as the day goes on. Who could blame him? He hasn’t slept well in over a week, hasn’t been eating, is on a constant caffeine high – and as a result has a killer headache, and now his dog hates him. And to top that off, Ryan will not leave him alone.

By the time they get back to the apartment, he’s practically seething. There’s not even anything reasonably behind it. Everything everyone did at the meeting grated on his last nerve. He’s so mad when he gets back inside that – after successfully dodging anymore potential attacks from his once loyal dog – he storms to his room with all the maturity of a five year old throwing a tantrum.

“Serge, just… I think you should see a doctor or something, man, you look terrible. Whatever’s…” Ryan follows, trying to talk to him, but that’s Sergey’s breaking point.

He sees red, and he doesn’t know why he does it, but he pulls the silver St. Michael necklace off and flings it at Ryan before promptly slamming the door in his best friend’s face. “Leave me alone!”

A pause, and he doesn’t hear Ryan move. “Sergey, come on.” He says quietly, but the door doesn’t budge, and Sergey doesn’t answer, so Ryan eventually does walk away leaving Sergey to the silence of his room.

The silence that overwhelms him with some sort of panic-ridden anxiety the second he realizes he has it.

***

Ryan’s not home when Sergey goes in search of more coffee the next morning. He still hasn’t spoken to the older boy and at the moment he has no intention to in the immediate future. Xander is growling from where he sits by the back door, glaring at him as if he is some sort of invader in his own home.

“Ryan doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” And even he knows he’s lying about that. At this point, he knows something is wrong with him. He just can’t bring himself to admit such a thing out loud quite yet.

With a resigned sigh toward the inevitable conversation he might eventually have to have with Ryan, he goes to pour himself a cup of coffee and just as he’s reaching for the mug in the cabinet, something inside him vehemently protests. Suddenly he can’t breathe and the air around him seems cold and heavy. He doubles over in the intolerable pain that flares in his lungs and just misses clunking his head on the counter when he goes down.

***

Ryan’s just approaching their street when his cell phone rings, the goofy tune that erupts from it tells him that it’s Chip even before the caller ID can.

Before he can even get so much as a ‘hello’ out, Chip is talking at him. “Is Sergey with you?” The older man asks, and Ryan can hear the sounds of traffic in the background of Chip’s phone.

His heart stops for the briefest of seconds. “No, he’s at home. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, Ryan, I don’t know. But, it’s bad. I’m on my way, but just get to him quick. Something is very wrong.” Chip tells him seriously, and Ryan can hear the fear in the psychic’s voice. Ryan knows that he and Sergey and the rest of the PRS gang are like extended family to him.

Ryan speeds down the street and double parks in his rush to get back to his roommate and within seconds after that, he is out of his car and racing up the steps. “Sergey?” He calls out, cursing himself for leaving Sergey alone while he was at class. He should have called one of the girls to stay with him while he was gone. “Sergey!” He yells again, louder this time as he peers down the hallway. Nothing.

Xander is standing at the entrance to the kitchen area of their apartment, growling from the edge of the linoleum flooring.

“Serge!” Ryan rushes into the room to see his best friend lying on the floor and very much not moving.

He falls to his knees beside the other’s unconscious form and tries to figure out what’s wrong. A little hesitant to move Sergey in case he’s dangerously injured somehow, he tries to determine whether or not he’s breathing before he does anything else.

He is breathing, which is a welcome relief, until he realizes that Xander is not the only one growling. The air escaping out of Sergey’s mouth is coming out with a deep, low rumbling sound that is rather disturbing.

Xander’s barking picks up tenfold when the sound gets louder and Sergey’s eyes open briefly to reveal nothing but white. Creepy? Very much so.

“Sergey?” Ryan says again, and a sinking feeling that is an explanation for all of the odd activity around Sergey lately is beginning to form in the pit of his stomach.

He’s still again, eyes closed, no growling, but suddenly something on Sergey’s chest catches his attention. The white shirt he’s wearing is changing color. Instantly concerned, he tugs at the button-down material to reveal something else that is entirely unnerving. Blood. Lines. Carving themselves in Sergey’s pale skin with invisible tools even as he watches on.

Ryan’s eyes widen in sheer terror and he grabs a dishtowel from the drawer next to the sink to cover the cuts with. “Get out of him!” He shouts, and wishes beyond everything that Sergey hadn’t taken off that necklace. It wasn’t helping much, obviously, since this has been going on since before last night, but it would still be something.

Sergey’s possessed. Really, really possessed. How could this have happened?

***

Paramedics show up a few minutes later, after a very distressed phone call from Ryan. He was kind of torn on his decision to call 911 as taking Sergey to the hospital would inevitably lead to questions about the bloody marks – they’d either think Sergey did it to himself or that Ryan or someone else close to him did it. Alternatively, he knows that Sergey needs medical help.

Ryan goes in the ambulance with Sergey, and paces when he’s confined to the waiting room in the ER. In an effort to distract himself, he calls their neighbor to let her know what’s going on – so she can let Xander out later, since he’ll be at the hospital with Sergey, and decides against calling the team for the time being, though he does leave a message for Chip, and calls Sergey’s family to let them know what’s happening.

It takes a little over two hours for anyone to tell him anything – and he’s beyond relieved that he’s Sergey’s emergency contact, or else they wouldn’t have given him the time of day at all.

A nurse, Ruby, her ID badge reads, leads him out of the ER and up to the floors. They’re admitting Sergey overnight for observation. He’s malnourished and evidently that’s what made him pass out, they say. The marks on his chest are under scrutiny, and they’re ready to have a psychiatrist speak with him when he wakes up. Ryan doesn’t know what to tell them to make that visit not happen.

“Sergey?” He says quietly, when he pokes his head into the room. No answer, but for the monotonous beeping coming from the heart monitor. They have him hooked up to IV fluids to help him get something other than mass amounts of coffee into his system.

He sits down in the chair beside the hospital bed and resigns himself to waiting for however long it takes.

***

Chip shows up not long after that, and from the moment he enters the room, he seems gravely upset. Ryan can’t imagine hospitals are very conductive to Chip’s psychic-ness – too many people, too much death, too much everything. Chip walks into the hallway a moment later, unable to deal with whatever it is that he’s seeing or hearing or sensing or whatever in the room, and Ryan follows him.

“What is it?” Ryan asks him, his concern torn between his best friend and Chip.

“It’s not good at all. It’s more powerful than anything here. It’s yelling at me, really in my face. Gloating, mocking. Only demons act like this, Ryan.” A deep breath and Chip looks into the room again. “It knows you. Knows him, probably, too.”

That is not good news. “Six?” He guesses, the only thing that he can think of that’s been this persistent against their actions lately.

Chip shakes his head. “I think it’s worse than Six.”

What’s worse than Six? He’s not really sure for a moment. And then... “No. No way.” He drags a hand down his face. This is bad. Beyond bad. “You remember that case a few years back? With that name? And my dreams?”

“Yes.” Chip answers, eyes wide in realization. “You think that it’s using Sergey to get to…” He cuts himself off and his eyes dart back to the room. “He’ll be waking up soon.”

Ryan wheels around; unsure if that refers to Sergey or his hellish demon. Too soon to tell for sure, nothing looks any different. “I should-“

“Go. I’ll go look into that name some more.” He knows just as well as Ryan does not to involve the team on this one. Ryan hadn’t wanted the team knowing the name back then, but they’d found out anyway. He doesn’t want them near this. “You go take care of him.”

Ryan gives a grateful nod and slips back into the room

***

A nurse stops by about an hour later to change the bandage on Sergey’s chest. Ryan stays close, and he’s glad he does, because it’s then that he realizes that they’re not just lines. Seeing them without smears of blood shows the truth. They’re letters. That… the demon carved a word in Sergey’s skin, undoubtedly a message meant for Ryan to see.

Four letters. MINE. Carved over Sergey’s heart.

Ryan storms out of the room, out of the building, and spends the better part of the next hour pacing around on the grounds. He probably looks like some sort of crazy axe-murderer about to go on a killing spree with the way he’s glaring at everything that moves, but that’s not far from how he feels either. That demon marked Sergey. It crosses so many lines in Ryan’s mind that he can’t even think straight right now. Not only is the demon threatening one of his team – not even his team, his best friend in the world – but now he’s left a mark that’s not unlike a tattoo. Demonic wounds are notoriously hard to get rid of.

His cell rings through and to voicemail three times while he’s walking off his absolute rage. Finally, on the fourth attempt made by whoever is calling, he picks up.

It’s the doctor. Sergey’s awake.

***

Rebelling as much as he can against the flood of fluids and low-dose pain meds in his system, he fights to stay awake. The entire time he’d been unconscious, he had been fighting with the nightmares, and this time he couldn’t wake himself back up. Now, finally, finally, he’s dragging himself back to consciousness.

White. White is the first thing he sees. Almost a blinding amount of hospital-sterile white. “Mm.” He groans, blinking his eyes open with a surprising amount of effort. “What am I doing here?” He’s not quite sure who he’s expecting to answer – Ryan, probably, he thinks – but nothing comes by way of response.

It only takes a few moments for a nurse who’s passing by to check in on him and notice his changed state of consciousness. She calls in a doctor and the next thing he knows they’re asking questions of him and he doesn’t have any answers for them. He just knows that he doesn’t want to sleep and that he wants to know where Ryan is.

“Mr. Poberezhny?” The doctor says, and he butchers the pronunciation, but that’s the last thing on Sergey’s mind. The man must have asked a question. Sergey has no idea what it was, and the guy is simultaneously shining a penlight into his eyes, so it’s not really his main focus.

“Where’s Ryan?” Sergey manages to ask.

“You can see your friend in just a minute. We need to have you assessed before we do anything else.” The doctor tells him.

What Sergey doesn’t know is that it’s a psych assessment with a side order of domestic violence questionnaire. They think Ryan was responsible for the cuts – what cuts? He doesn’t even realize he has cuts on his chest until they say that, the pain meds are so helpful – and that he tried to starve himself as a result. He denies it all. He vehemently denies that Ryan would ever, ever hurt him and he claims that he has no idea where the cuts came from, even though he thinks he might.

The doctor sent to evaluate him still seems suspicious when they’re finished talking, but they have nothing to notify the authorities about, and no right to declare Sergey in any way unstable.

Luckily.

***

Ryan returns to Sergey’s room as fast as he can. Not fast enough.

“Serge?” He calls, as he steps into the room. He’s not sure if the demonic attitude problem is still in effect or not. He doesn’t want to take any chances, especially since Sergey evidently just finished talking his way out of a psych evaluation. When Sergey doesn’t start screaming at him, he proceeds further in, reclaiming his seat beside the bed. “You okay?”

“I think I’m possessed.” Sergey says, in a stunning moment of clarity. The demon must not be hanging around right now. Maybe bothering someone else. Maybe distracted by all the activity that the hospital presents spirit-wise. Maybe even the pain meds are downplaying its hold on Sergey.

Ryan nods. “Yeah. I caught on to that when words started carving themselves into your chest.”

“Words?” The younger asks, still equally clueless as to what exactly is carved into his chest even after the psychiatrist’s mention of it.

“’Mine.’” He says, pointing to the location, even though Sergey can certainly see the white bandage marking the area. “I don’t know why it went after you. Before it just stayed focused on me.”

Sergey frowns. “Before?”

“The one that was following me a couple years ago. Chip’s researching it right now.” Ryan explains. “How long has it been hanging around you?”

“A week or so, I guess. The dreams started a couple days before that, right after we got back from New York for that case. ” He answers, and chances a glance at one of the IV bags feeding into him. “Can you get them to lower the pain meds? I really, really don’t want to sleep.”

“You have to sleep, Serge.” Ryan tells him, a frown of his own taking place. “I… I know it’s hard with the nightmares, but you need to.” His words don’t seem to do very much in the way of convincing Sergey on the necessities of sleep. “I’ll stay right here the whole time. Wake you up if it looks like you’re having a nightmare. I’ll even sit on the bed with you, if you want.” He offers, and he’s not at all hesitant to do so. When the demon had been more passively after him, Sergey had spent a night or two on the couch with Ryan doing the same.

At that, Sergey nods, and scoots over a bit to give the older boy some room. “Yeah, okay.”

He climbs up beside Sergey, sliding an arm behind his best friend, who leans his head on Ryan’s shoulder.

“This is why Xan won’t come near me, right?” He wonders aloud in random thought.

Ryan nods. “Probably. I don’t think dogs like the paranormal all that much.” He gives Sergey a light squeeze in reassurance. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you through this.”

About ten minutes later, when Sergey is soundly asleep and looking nightmare free, he gets a reply to his statement. It comes from Sergey, but the boy is still asleep and it’s not from his voice.

“No, you won’t.”

It ensures that Ryan will not be sleeping.

***

It’s not until late the next evening that Sergey is released from the hospital. And that is only after the nurse on duty glares at Ryan through the entire time she’s lecturing him on the discharge instructions. She takes special care in explaining to him that if Sergey starts refusing to eat or sleep again, or if more suspicious marks show up that he should bring him back in as soon as possible.

Ryan glares back and opts to focus on the fact that Sergey gets to come home and now they can figure out how to fix this mess. Chip has been voluntarily enlisted in the task of getting Sergey back to the apartment, and Ryan leads him to Chip’s car with an arm thrown over his best friend’s shoulder.

Chip, to his credit, has been researching constantly. He hasn’t found anything thus far that Ryan hadn’t when he’d searched years ago. And the demon now seems to be avoiding any and all attempts to contact it. This, at the very least, equates to less stress for Sergey.

He’s just glad that Sergey’s cooperating and not shutting him out anymore.

***

The days go by and still they find no new information on the demon possessing Sergey. The risk of an unsuccessful attempt at an exorcism is what’s keeping them from trying it. It obviously didn’t work in the case of Six, and Ryan will not be at all surprised if they get called back to that one in the future. So, with Sergey, he’s looking for something more permanent.

Neither of them sleeps at night. Nights are for researching. Laptops and textbooks and anything else they can think of that might mention something useful. During the days they sleep, curled up on the couch together and most of the time they don’t have nightmares.

Chip comes by at night sometimes and stays with Sergey during the day if Ryan has class – he only goes at Sergey’s insistence. PRS is put on hold and no one but Chip knows what’s going on with their current vampiristic existence.

It takes a little over a week of this routine for anything to change. And it only does when the demon comes back and Chip realizes something he’d been missing before in this complex situation.

Why did it pick Sergey?

***

Ryan’s not home when the demon reassumes control of Sergey, and Chip gets the full effect of it when it does. It screams at him to try and disrupt whatever it is he’s trying to read, and Xander will simply not shut up, but he finally gets the message.

It picked Sergey because… because he’s weak. Not physically weak, though the demon had certainly worked hard on that one at first, but there’s something affecting Sergey that’s making him an easy emotional target.

The demon doesn’t hide once Chip establishes that much. He taunts and laughs, and probably weakens Sergey even more by doing so.

Sergey’s in love with Ryan.

***

Chip is waiting on the front steps when Ryan pulls up. Okay, so he’s not so much waiting as he is pacing anxiously. Ryan picks up on his behavior nearly immediately.

“Is he okay?” He asks, very concerned.

“He’s okay, but the demon’s active again.” Chip explains with a sigh. “I stayed in there as long as I could. Haven’t been out here long.” He adds, when further concern and something close to terror cross Ryan’s face.

“Did the demon give you any useful information?” Ryan questions, hopeful that maybe there’s an end in sight to this madness.

He’s more than a little hesitant to share his newly acquired information with Ryan. And Ryan is beginning to notice his hesitance in the silence that falls as a result. However, a loud crash from inside effectively derails Ryan’s attention away from that.

“Serge!” He shouts out, sprinting inside well before Chip has even started to move, and Ryan is almost instantaneously kneeling by Sergey’s side.

More blood. As if seeing this once wasn’t enough. It’s coming from Sergey’s back this time, which makes it a good thing that he fell from the sofa and onto his stomach on the floor, and a not so good thing that he’s writhing in pain.

“Get a clean towel from the hall closet and the first aid kid from under the bathroom sink, will you?” He directs Chip, and the psychic quickly collects the items and makes his return, kneeling on Sergey’s other side.

Ryan offers Sergey one of his hands, and the younger boy clings to it like a lifeline.

“Should we call a doctor?” Chip questions. He knows what they’d thought last time. The same thing occurring again probably wouldn’t go over well with the already suspicious doctors and nurses at the hospital.

“It was just a flesh wound last time. We can deal with it. And he still has some of the pain meds from last time.” Ryan decides, as he, too, weighs the risk of involving doctors again. Chip nods in agreement and he continues with his first-aid attempts. “Hey, Serge.” He prompts, using his free hand to lift the back of the once grey - now blood stained - Penn State t-shirt that is going to end up in the garbage. “Sergey. You gotta stay with me, okay? We’ll fix you up, and then we’re gonna get rid of this thing that’s got you, okay?”

Sergey only flinches with the pain of the cloth moving over his skin. The cuts are by his shoulders, so it takes a lot to get the shirt out of the way. Ryan eventually ends up just cutting it off of him. He sends Chip to the kitchen to get some water, and while he’s gone, Ryan gets Sergey to shift enough so as not to be putting pressure on his still healing chest wound. He runs his fingers through the other’s hair and promises, swears that he’s going to fix this all.

“Here.” Chip says, offering a bowl of warm water. Ryan nods his thanks and sets to work on cleaning the wound before he applies medicine and a bandage. He’s not sure whether or not the absence of a message this time is a good thing or a bad thing.

Once effectively patched up, Sergey sits up at Ryan’s instruction and finds himself promptly wrapped in a tight hug.

“I’m going to save you.” Ryan promises again, and this time no voice corrects him.

***

Ryan and Sergey find themselves alone that night – as Chip went home to crash for a bit – and they decide to forego even the pretense of research this time. It wouldn’t be very effective anyway, with Sergey slightly buzzed on pain meds as he is, and Ryan still quite on overprotective alert for his safety.

So instead of hunched over old library books and internet articles, they order pizza and settle down on the couch for the night. Sergey eats as Ryan’s insistence, and under his observation, and by the time they’ve watched two episodes of some Discovery Channel show, Ryan’s nearly passed out.

Sergey can’t really blame him, and he kind of wishes he could bring himself to sleep at night again. “Ry, come on. Go to sleep.” He insists, even though he’s not going to like being awake alone. They both don’t need to be sleep-deprived. And he’s going to make sure Ryan goes to classes through all of this, too.

“Nah, I’m good.” Ryan counters, sitting up straighter and trying to blink himself awake again.

The younger raises an eyebrow, clearly skeptical of such a claim.

“Really. I’m awake. I’ll sleep, we’ll sleep in the morning.” He continues to protest. “I promised you that I was going to stay close while you slept. That goes for awake, too.”

“Ryan. Sleep. Now.” Sergey orders, despite the words.

Ryan resists for another 15 minutes or so, but inevitably, he ends up asleep against Sergey’s shoulder, and Sergey ends up reading some mystery novel he’d borrowed from Katrina forever ago.

***

Chip shows up the next morning to find both Sergey and Ryan asleep on the sofa, practically lying on top of each other. Sergey stirs at his arrival – and Xander’s barking – and carefully extricates himself from his still sleeping best friend enough to sit up properly.

“I know why it’s using you.” Chip tells him, and Sergey doesn’t look very relieved that someone has an answer for that question, and even less relieved when Chip looks to Ryan as his explanation. “He doesn’t know yet.”

“Will it help somehow if he does know?” Sergey asks, clearly torn on the implications of that decision.

“I think it will.” Chip answers, honestly, given the plan that has formed in his head about the possible ways they can get out of this situation. “I’ll tell him, if you’d like.”

Sergey doesn’t answer, but that’s because Ryan shifts in his sleep. “Yeah.” He agrees, and he could not feel more pathetic that he’s agreeing to it.

***

Ryan steps outside with him some time later, once Sergey’s asleep again.

He knows he has to tell Ryan about Sergey’s secret now, especially now that Sergey knows that he knows. And about the new information he gained while watching the two of them interact the previous day.

“It’s weaker now, you know. I think actually attacking Sergey weakened it. And you being around.” He theorizes his new perspective on things. “The whole time you were gone yesterday it was shouting at me, but it was quiet when we went inside to deal with Sergey’s back.”

“You think now’s a good time to do an exorcism?” Ryan asks, hope appearing in his eyes once again. They’re talking on the front steps, and Sergey remains well within Ryan’s line of sight at all times.

Chip shrugs. “I think there’s something else you need to know before we decide that.”

Ryan stares, not quite liking the way that sounds. Chip knows something that he hasn’t told him yet, and it is evidently pretty important. “What’s that?”

“The reason that it’s using Sergey to get to you might be able to help us get rid of it, depending on… well, how you deal with what I’m going to tell you.”

He waits expectantly for Chip to continue with his answer to the question that has been eating at his mind since he found Sergey on the kitchen floor.

“He’s in love with you.”

Silence.

“It made him vulnerable to the demon. And a valuable target to the demon, too, since he’s probably the closest person to you. But, since he’s pretty convinced you’re not going to be returning those feelings, it left him open to this.” Chip explains as best as he can, a difficult line of thought to articulate, but that is the main gist of it.

More silence. He blinks. What…?

“Ryan? This would be the reacting part I mentioned.” Chip supplies, somewhat alarmed by the lack of said reaction.

“Sergey’s…” More blinking. More vacant staring. His brain is processing this information as a normal person would process the components of what they do with PRS. “Sergey… me?”

Chip actually kind of laughs at his confusion. “Okay, then. You sit out here and think that one over. I’m getting coffee.” He shakes his head as he walks away.

This one is going to work out. He knows it.

***

Ryan sits on the front steps for exactly seventeen minutes and forty-six seconds. In which time he has the epiphany that he and Sergey are pretty much already together. Hell, they live together, work together; they’ve been sleeping in each other’s arms since this whole mess started. And he’s pretty sure that the demon could not have picked a better person to possess in order to get to Ryan.

He finds Chip still in the kitchen. “You’re saying that by returning Sergey’s feelings, it could loosen the demon’s hold on him, aren’t you?”

Chip nods. “That’s not to say, of course, that you should only return those feelings because of the demon.” He warns. “I don’t think that will work.”

That wasn’t what Ryan had been thinking at all. “I know.” He says. “I want the demon gone as soon as possible, though. Can you go find me a priest to help with the exorcism? I’ll… talk to Sergey about this.” Ryan glances into the living room at the still sleeping form of his best friend.

Chip nods, and excuses himself to do as asked.

***

Ryan has no idea what to say. He sits and stares at Sergey. Which is kind of creepy, yeah, but he can’t bring himself to wake Sergey up when he’s had so little sleep.

Finally, three hours after Chip leaves on the hunt for a priest willing to perform an exorcism on short notice – last time it took them 2 days to find someone – Sergey wakes up.

One look at the way Ryan is watching him so intently and Sergey knows that he already knows the truth. “Chip talked to you, I’m guessing.”

The older boy nods in reply. “Yeah. I, ugh, don’t really know what…” He cuts himself off. He’s been thinking through how to have this conversation for three hours now and he still doesn’t know what he should say. “I think… why didn’t you tell me?” It’s not what he’d been planning on, but it’s what comes out.

Sergey frowns. “I didn’t know how you’d react.”

“I’m still in the process of reacting.” Ryan kind of laughs. “But, ugh,” He shifts from the chair across the room to sit beside Sergey on the couch. “You’re not alone in this, okay? In anything. I promise you that.” He curls an arm around Sergey’s shoulder and hopes that he can think of something to say to explain that he’s more than willing to give this more than a try.

***

By the time Chip returns with a priest willing to help nearly twelve hours have passed since he’d first left. In that time, Ryan has all but fused himself to Sergey’s side. He refuses to leave the younger boy on his own so long as the demon is still hanging around to torment him. He hopes it will make Sergey stronger, knowing he’s not going anywhere.

Chip walks in with a priest - Father Rowan is his name - just in time to catch the tail-end of a bandage changing session.

Sergey spots them and scrabbles for the nearest thing possible – which happens to be Ryan’s PSU hoodie thrown over the back of the couch – and covers up as quickly as possible, not quite interested in having more people see the angry, red, wounds.

“Demon still around?” Ryan asks Chip, after introducing himself and Sergey to the Father.

Chip nods. “He’s here, but he’s quiet.”

“We gonna do this?” Sergey asks. He wants it over with just as much as everyone else.

Ryan nods. “Let’s set up then.” It’s going to be a long night.

***

“Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis, et in noimine Jesu Christi Filii ejus, Domini et Judicis nostri, et in virtute Spiritus Sancti, ut descedas ab hoc plasmate Dei Sergey, quod Dominus noster ad templum sanctum suum vocare dignatus est, ut fiat templum Dei vivi, et Spiritus Sanctus habitet in eo. Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum, qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem.” Father Rowan speaks quite fluently in Latin, and they proceed onward into the Ritual Romanum.

Ryan is within arm’s length of Sergey, and he’s refused to be further away than that. Chip is sitting across the room, watching Sergey intently as the exorcism rites continue on.

Sergey doesn’t seem at all effected. They might as well be rattling off statistics or reciting some uninteresting poem.

Then the growling starts again. Ryan is the first to hear it, not only because he’s the closest, but rather because he’d kind of hoped he’d never have to hear that noise again. “Shh, wait, wait.” He prompts, cutting the priest off. “Listen.”

“What is that? Growling?” Chip asks.

“He did it before. After the first attack.” Ryan answers, but Chip isn’t listening to him anymore.

“He’s not just growling. The demon’s talking.” The psychic closes his eyes, tries to listen intently to the whispered words that are garbled by a sound that Sergey isn’t actually capable of making. “Ugh, he’s saying…”

Ryan stares at Sergey, as well, waiting for Chip to speak for the demon.

“I’m going to take him from you. You can’t stop me. This is a fucking joke. It’s won’t work, he’s mine.” Chip tells them solemnly.

“It’s not getting stronger again is it?” Ryan questions. Sergey looks exhausted. Not surprising, they stayed up all night and a good portion of the day preparing because they didn’t want to do the exorcism at night.

Chip nods. “It might be gearing up for another attack.”

The priest doesn’t look particularly thrilled by the turn their conversation has taken. “We’ll stop for a bit. I have something I need to look up quickly, a friend to call about this.” He looks to Ryan. “Stay with him. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

Chip follows the Father out of the room, leaving Ryan and Sergey alone in hopes that Ryan’s presence might weaken the demon without the stressor of outsiders around.

***

“Sergey.” Ryan prompts, sitting beside the still growling man on the couch. “Sergey, Serge. Come on, Serge. Talk to me, okay? Fight the demon off, talk to me.”

Nothing.

“Serge, it was weak before. We were winning. Whatever it’s telling you now, don’t listen, alright? I’m not going anywhere. You’re not getting rid of me that easy. It’s telling you that we can’t save you, but I know we can. I won’t stop until we do. It’s telling you that I’m only saying this stuff to get you back, right? Well, that one’s not true, either. I… I really do feel something for you, Serge, okay? I just… you’ve had more time than I’ve had to process it and figure out what it means. You’re just a little ahead of me is all.” The growling has stopped, but Sergey still hasn’t said anything. “Come on, Serge, fight it. Look at me, Sergey.”

He does.

***

“Whatever you did, Ryan, it worked.” Chip comments when they recommence the proceedings. This time Sergey is leaning kind of against Ryan’s chest, and Ryan’s arms are curled around him. The demon is weak again, Sergey’s in control.

Father Rowan gets back to the Ritual Romanum. He goes through the entire thing and Sergey remains in control throughout. Then, once it is finished, he starts in on something else. It’s not the Romanum, but it’s all Latin, still. Ryan, Sergey, and Chip have never seen it used before, whatever it’s from.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica, in nomine et virtute Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, eradicare et effugare a Dei Ecclesia, ab animabus ad imaginem Dei conditis ac pretioso divini Agni sanguine redemptis. Non ultra audeas, serpens callidissime, decipere humanum genus, Dei Ecclesiam persequi, ac Dei electos excutere et cribrare sicut triticum.” Father Rowan prays, and it seems to be doing something.

Sergey starts shifting in Ryan’s arms, wincing and glaring intently at the priest. “You won’t win.” It growls out, in something that’s a crude sounding version of Sergey’s voice.

But Father Rowan doesn’t even pause. He keeps going, reading off of a page of handwritten text he must have scribbled down when he called his friend. “Imperat tibi Deus altissimus, cui in magna tua superbia te similem haberi adhuc prasumis; qui omnes homines vult salvos fieri et ad agnitionem veritaris venire. Imperat tibi Deus Pater; imperat tibi Deus Filius; imperat tibi Deus Spiritus Sanctus .”

“Serge…” Ryan prompts, and he says it over and over again while Father Rowan speaks in an attempt to keep some sort of a hold on Sergey while he fights the demon off. “Come on, you can do it.”

The Latin words continue on and on. When the priest reaches the end of the large paragraph of text, Sergey’s head drops to Ryan’s shoulder.

“What was that?” Chip asks the priest. “What were you reading?”

“An exorcism prayer that a good friend gave to me once. For if the Ritual Romanum ever failed me.” He explains, and refuses to say anything else on the matter.

Ryan’s concern, however, is not with the Latin prayer, but rather with Sergey, who has, as of yet, showed no signs of stirring. He’s breathing, and he has a pulse, but he’s just not awake. “Is this normal? Is he supposed to be out like this?”

Father Rowan nods. “He’ll wake up shortly, I would guess.”

Guessing doesn’t sound like a plan to Ryan. He has a better idea to immediately determine whether or not the demon is gone and not just in hiding. Chip couldn’t hear the demon, or feel its presence even during the weeklong period of its hibernation. But, Xander still wouldn’t come near Sergey then.

“Chip, can you let Xan out here?”

Chip catches on quickly to his plan and retreats down the hall to retrieve the canine. He leads Xander out by his collar and over to the still-sleepy Sergey, stopping a few feet away.

No barking yet, that’s a good sign. Ryan nods, and Chip let’s go.

Xander happily trots the distance between he and his owners, sniffs at Sergey’s hand, and then promptly hops up onto the sofa beside them.

It’s the first time Ryan’s felt relieved since he found Sergey on the floor. “It worked.”

***

Sergey wakes up about an hour later. Chip and Father Rowan have left, both with orders for Ryan to call if anything changes and Ryan has managed to shift Sergey so that he’s more or less lying with his head in Ryan’s lap. Xander is sleeping soundly on Sergey’s feet. The sofas suddenly feeling kind of cramped but none of them are moving anytime soon.

Ryan’s engulfed in reading over the notes from his last Anthropology class lecture when Sergey first begins to stir, but he promptly ends that the second he realizes that his best friend is indeed awake again.

And still demon-free, if Xander’s continued silence has anything to say about it.

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.” Sergey says, voice still sleep thick and drowsy. He doesn’t even try to move, doesn’t even open his eyes, and he just sighs in something like relief when he realizes that there’s nothing weighing on his mind anymore, as the demon’s presence did. His chest and back hurt, and there’s something heavy on his feet, but no demon.

“Well, no actual vehicles were involved, but I’m sure getting rid of the demon sue wore you out.” Ryan answers, just as relieved. He runs his fingers through Sergey’s disheveled hair as he’s been doing on and off since the others left. “Xander might be going through exhaustion by proxy.”

“Xander?”

Ryan nods, and Sergey lifts his head enough to notice that that weight on his feet is actually their dog. He accidentally shifts his foot, and Xander lifts his head curiously. He lets out a happy half-bark and wags his tail before settling back down as if he’d never been bothered.

Another huge, beyond huge, really, sigh of relief. “It’s really over then?” Sergey asks, also aware of the significance of Xander’s non-hostile response.

“Almost.” Ryan answers, and his casual tone is the only thing that keeps Sergey from panic. It does cause Sergey to sit up, though – displacing Xander.

“What do you mean?”

“I need you to know that I wasn’t just saying those things because you were possessed. You are still way ahead of me with all of this, but, ugh…” He trails off, bites his lip. He feels like an awkward teenage boy.

Sergey looks relieved that it’s not actually about the demon. “Ry, I know th-“ He finds himself promptly cut off when…

Ryan kisses him.