Ryan can remember what it was like to not care about the world, once.
It was back when he was younger, like really young, not even like 5 years old. He and his older brother, Jake, loved to chase eachother in the wheat fields near their old home in Hermosillo. Sure, they technically weren't supposed to be there, but they still went anyway.
He can still remember the ant bites that barely stung, the grass rash that didn't string, the air underneath him that shot through his stomach every time he jumped to look over the downing gold to find Jake's head. That field was their paradise.
It only ended when the farmer came chasing after them one day when they thought he wasn't home. They ran, of course they ran, the shouting in Spanish scaring them back over their side of the fence, but Jake ended up shot in the leg by the dude's rifle and life as they knew it was over in a flash, Mom not wanting them to get hurt again.
Ryan did his best to protest, even saying that they could give him the blame and he'd go without treats and everything, but his father sat him down late when the sun was low int he Sonora's before he explained to him that he couldn't risk their lives - not when they were the last of their kind.
Their kind. God, it sounded so alien. As a kid, Ryan never really got it. It never really hit him like his parents most likely hoped it would. Their kind. It was like a spit in the face. Most people would think he was talking about being Hispanic if he even mentioned it on the fly (which he has, on accident), but it would be far from the actual truth.
No, the real reason Ryan hates those words is because, it's true. He has a kind. A different kind. The straight-up truth is that Ryan Bergara, Human Disaster - isn't actually human at all. Ryan Bergara is actually a full blown fucking dog. Not a werewolf (shut up about mythical creatures already!), just your plain run-of-the-mill dog. Who happens to be able somehow to become bipedal and shift into a human form.
Yeah, life's complicated.
As far as he knows, according to his parents, Ryan's personal hell started way back with his grandparents, who were victims of the Guatemala Syphilis Experiments. Apparently, when being part of the people who were lucky enough to be treated, the US used dog DNA to make an experimental cure for the Syphilis and boom, made hybrids who didn't know they were hybrids until suddenly, they kept transforming into dogs.
This, of course, caused a lot of panic among the people who were running the experiment as well as the unwilling subjects and the US - who seemingly realized just how much they fucked up - ended the experiments in 1948 to cover up the new operation taking place to catch all the hybrids before they could escape.
However, somehow, Ryan's grandparents managed to get out safely with some of the other hybrids and moved up from Guatemala to the mainland part of Mexico, where they made a community of dog people. That was where his grandparents learn to control their new abilities, where his father was born and raised, where his mother had been brought to be blessed and at first, where he and Jake were supposed to be raised as well.
However, thanks to Jake catching a stray bullet (that he still has the scar of by the way, unshifted or shifted), both his parents become overprotective and completely intent on shattering his paradise completely, regardless of his thoughts. So it shouldn't have been such a shock when they told him they were packing up and moving up to the US when he came home from his second day of attending Jake's big school.
Ryan can barely remember what was said, but he knows he and Jake were silent the whole road trip which should have really been a sign to their parents that this was the worst possible idea ever, but it never stopped them from going over the border cause fast forward almost 20 years and here he is, running his own company in California and pretending his skin doesn't itch like meth addict trying to jump out of his skin.
God, he so wants to just shift. He hasn't had a good shift or even a decent run in goodness knows how long. Ever since he, Shane and Steven started Watcher, they're always been something in the way. A deadline, a production, a business deal, a preventive that leaves him too tired to run and too pissed off to care. He's tried to get weekends, but the weekends seem worse, with overtime and all and constant phone calls. Even if he just dropped everything and took off to the Sierras for literally a day or two, he'd most likely never escape that obnoxious ringtone of his that haunts his canine brain in every waking nightmare.
He's also noticed…other things that have given them a clue that he really needs to get out sometime. Like, /really/ out. People aren't exactly able to put their legs behind them and scratch the tops of their heads after all.
(The office was bamboozled, to say the least when he did it on accident. Steven put it down as a party trick, however, loudly commenting on his flexibility. He went with it.)
People also don't seem like it when he drinks beer like a dog lapping up water from a bowl, as evidenced when in the episode of Mystery Files they're recording at this very moment, Ryan's asking how dogs were blamed for Chupacabra attacks, which he's allowed to, as he takes great offence to his kind (there are those words again) being under the microscope and Shane's ribbing into him about it. "It was kinda funny you know, you had the beer literally against your face like a gas mask, you were inhaling that shit-"
"It was one time, man! One time!" Ryan doesn't mean to snap. Truly, he doesn't, but given how on edge he's been lately, the teasing was just a little too much. The silence left in its wake speaks volumes and Ryan lowers his pointer as Britney clicks the projector screen off, the clock echoing though the room. "Okay…let's take five, everybody."
Five minutes wouldn't be enough for anyone, but he still takes it, muttering apologies as he pushes his way out of the room and upstairs into the main office where he grabs a bottle of water from the fridge. He knows he shouldn't, as it will probably make him worse, but he impulsively sits near the window just to feel the Cali sea breeze on his skin, imagining himself running again in that field of wheat as if nothing had changed. He can still picture it, the dirt beneath his paws, Jake's and his excited feeling, the wigging tail he had as just a puppy that was trying to find another littermate for fun.
He's so entranced in the moment that he doesn't see someone settling beside him before his shoulder's gently shaken. "Ry? Ryan? Ry Guy? Hey, you okay?"
The sound of playful barking slowly faded away as he returned to the real world, disappointedly facing Shane (because of course it's Shane with those nicknames) with a sigh. "Yeah, man, I'm fine. Sorry about snapping earlier. Didn't mean to get upset."
The crow's feet around Shane's eyes pull as he looks him up and down. Shane's always had that trait, when he doesn't know whether he believes something or not. Ryan knows him inside and out, having been friends with him for so long now. He can tell by the way Shane's eyes are dialled that he's being analysed and he hates how easily he comes to that, like Shane is trying to find the right response by looking at his every need.
He should hate it, given everything, but he doesn't. Somehow.
The look goes on for a few more seconds and Shane's hand hasn't moved before he finally speaks. "Are you sure you are okay, dude?"
Ryan just wants to cry. He almost breaks. He almost spills that he just wants to go outside, be free, uncaged and wild, just like in Mexico, but that would almost sound like he wanted to jump out of the window in retrospect, so he can't say that. Plus, even to Shane, the least sensible person in his orbit, his thoughts would never make sense.
So, instead of suddenly reenacting Birdman or ploughing head first into his best friend's chest weeping like he's in a telenovela, he just rubs at his eyes and sighs again. "Yeah. Just haven't been sleeping well lately. Still adjusting to the work load and all that."
"Ryan, Ryan, Ryan-" Shane's voice sings and Ryan tries not to hum along with it. "-you should have said something. The team can always pick up what you need to put down, you just have to ask around. There might not be a lot of us, but we're all family at this point."
'Pack.' Ryan's brain corrects automatically in place of family as his thoughts tumble on the inside like when he and Jake used to playfight. 'We're a pack.' "Yeah, sure." Ryan tries to smile, even though it comes out forced. "Thanks Shane, once again, your backwater Chicago pleasantries have saved us from irreversible ruin."
"Hey, you know you /love/ these backwater Chicago pleasantries!" Shane drives a jokingly offended finger into his chest and they both laugh before the taller of them rises. "Ready to get back into the mystery realm again?"
Turning to the window, Ryan eyes the skies and the city, feels the air one more time and pretends it's just like way back when, before he finally turns and gets up from the ledge, throwing the bottle into the recycling. "Yeah, let's go before Britney has our necks. Plus, the pointer's giving me a power complex, I think."
"Oh, whatever will we do!?" Shane jokes, his tone making Ryan crack a genuine smile this time before they walk shoulder to shoulder back downstairs to the film set. Sure, the itch is still there, but at least it's quieter.
He hopes that it remains that way for now.