Chapter Text
“God, I hope these get through security.”
Shane Hollander murmured under his breath as he stood in front of his bed, covered in a neatly arranged grid of tools. He picked up and considered a few of the black boxes, each dotted with small, brightly colored bulbs, and decided on one that was a little worn, with a fading sticker - Haunts with Hollander.
When he traveled for work, Shane was often roadtripping with all of gear, just in case something broke, batteries died, or the spirits just happened to prefer one tool over another. He’d been a paranormal investigator long enough to know that in the field, things never went according to plan. One night, your REMPod might be blowing up, and the next, dowsing rods may be the only way you’ll get any answers. Shane always expected the unexpected, which means bringing everything.
This time, unfortunately, he couldn’t stuff his Land Rover to the brim and drive to his next destination. He was flying from Montreal to Chicago for ScareCon. His agent sold it to him as “the biggest paranormal conference in the Midwest” (wherever that is), and sighed heavily as she explained, again, the apparently necessary evil of in-person events.
“Your fans are begging for a tour, Shaney,” Stella had rasped over the phone. She’d been Shane’s agent for half a decade, and he’d lost track of the amount of times he’d quietly admonished her about smoking. “My social media girl says they’re hashtagging and Twittering and Threadsing, all fussed up about Haunts with Hollander never having a live show. They want more conferences, more book signings, more SHANE. You’ve got a cute face, doll, and they wanna see it UP CLOSE.” She wheezed. Shane winced.
“I’ve got a face for podcasting, Stella. That’s why I have a podcast.” Shane paced in his office, stomach churning at the idea of getting in front of a few dozen people at a bookstore, let alone a theater, and hoping for the best. With his podcast, he could “select, delete” every flub, every voice crack, every weird jaw click, and publish a polished 42 minute-episode (with a tight three minutes of ads) without a single mistake. Live? There’s no audio editing, no quality control, just Shane and his words. Frankly, he’d rather put out a campfire with his own face - his podcasting face - than do that.
"Why you don't want to do a simple little tour that'll buy us both a new condo with a jacuzzi, I'll never understand," Stella said out of the side of her mouth, the clicks of her lighting another cigarette ringing in Shane's ear. "But I'm begging you, Shaney. Get your ass to ScareCon."
ScareCon peaked his interest for two reasons. One, he wouldn’t just be meeting-and-greeting at a little booth, which he already knew he’d have to pop a couple Propranolol to get through without a sustained anxiety attack. No, he’d be on a panel discussing one of his favorite topics: paranormal multiverse theories, and whether “spirits” that investigators reach are actually living people existing in their own timeline. He could go on for hours about it.
The second reason was that, while he wasn’t exactly a public speaker, he would never back down from a challenge.
As Shane carefully packed his three camcorders in their foam casing (he could use his phone as the fourth POV, or leave one in a different room, or have a backup if one got knocked over, or…), his eyes flicked towards the grating noise that was blaring from his laptop speakers. A man was screaming with his full chest, barking out sharp words in his deep Russian accent.
“You think is so fun to push people around? Give them scratches? Push ME, huh? Scratch me, DEMON!” The man ripped off his shirt and opened his arms, daring whoever (or whatever) to take him on.
“It’s never really a demon,” Shane said a little too loudly for someone in a room alone, rolling his eyes while organizing his brand new SD cards numerically by storage capacity in their special carrying case.
Ilya Rozanov didn’t have a podcast. He didn’t write books, or publish papers, or likely didn’t even do his own research. Ilya Rozanov had, Shane would admit, a very successful YouTube channel - Ghost Bro (of course). He avoided the show at all costs.
Why? Because Ilya Rozanov was an asshole.
Rozanov’s whole thing was that he was unafraid of anything. Every episode, he’d go into allegedly haunted places, gas up whatever terrible thing may have happened there, and spend the night kicking out whatever lurked in the shadows with sheer manpower and a lot of yelling. He’d strut around houses, prisons, asylums, wherever he was called, antagonizing spirits, goading them into responding. Without fail, Rozanov would always hulk out, tear his shirt off, and flex his muscles, as if they were some kind of holy object that could clear a haunting on sight. Whatever “voices” he claimed to capture were obviously autotuned, and his videos of shadows and orbs were always a stretch by a mile. By the end of the episode, Ilya would declare the spirits were scared in submission, and wouldn’t bother anyone anymore. And then he’d wink as he said his catchphrase, “Dasvidaniya, ghosties.”
Shane tried not to hate people, but he really, really, really didn’t like Ilya Rozanov. Shane was a proud academic, with a PhD in Parapsychology and a master’s in Victorian history. Rozanov once said documentaries were for nerds. Shane had a closet full of paranormal investigating tech, and Rozanov had his big boy voice and a GoPro. Shane took a “gentle parenting” approach to connecting with spirits, and Rozanov treated them like squatters to be evicted. He was everything Shane was not - loud, abrasive, confident, with perfectly messy curly hair, sprawling tattoos Shane could never pull off, arms that begged to be set free from his too-tight t-shirts…
Not that Shane noticed things like that.
No, Shane was going to ScareCon because Ilya Rozanov believed that he wouldn’t.
“He’s flirting with you, you big, big idiot.” Rose hugged one of Shane’s several (too many?) accent pillows on his bed as Shane brought out yet another shirt from his closet and looked expectantly at her.
“Salmon isn’t good on you, you should throw it away. And did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, and I’m ignoring you. Are people still wearing short-sleeve button ups?”
“No, and ignoring me isn’t an option.” She threw one of the throw pillows into the closet, eliciting an indignant, “Hey!” from Shane.
Rose was his best friend from undergrad at McGill University, who he met at the “Ghost Believers Club” she tried to start. Shane was the only person who showed up to the first meeting, and they’d been inseparable ever since. Rose herself was “sensitive,” as they said in the community, and she’d join Shane on investigations as his medium to connect with spirits, get answers from tarot readings, bring good energy to the space, and make sure nothing followed them home.
“Do you actually think someone who wasn’t at least a little interested would take the time out of his day to antagonize you like this?” Shane brought out a denim shirt, eyebrows raised.
“Just because you’re Canadian, we’re not doing a Canadian tuxedo.”
“But if I wore it with khakis-”
“Ilya Rozanov thinks you’re pretty. What are you going to do about it?”
“Absolutely nothing. What about a corduroy?”
“He’s the hottest guy in the paranormal community.” She paused. “Which is probably the lamest thing I’ve ever said, but I stand by it. No to corduroy. Do you have anything in silk?”
“No, I run warm. Too sweaty for silk. And exactly, the hottest one by far-
Rose gasped. “So you ADMIT IT-”
“No! And frankly, I don’t care if he is into me. There’s no reason for him to be in the first place, and I wouldn’t act on it if he did, because Rozanov -
Rose rolled her eyes and finished his sentence. “- is a sham and an asshole, I know.”
“But,” she countered, raising her eyebrows. “You always ‘expect the unexpected.’ It may not be a bad idea to allow for the unexpected here, and give him the chance to surprise you.”
Shane closed his eyes and hummed, taking a moment to consider what Rose said - though he’d never admit it.
“Oh, and bring the tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches, it makes you look like a sexy professor.”
Shane popped his head out, and in a moment of silly confidence that comes only from being alone with your best friend, he purred, “I am a sexy professor.”
Rose clapped in delight. “THAT! That right there, THAT’S how you’re going to bang Ilya Rozanov!”
A pillow hit Rose squarely in the chest.
The next day, Ilya Rozanov sat in a first class lounge at Logan International Airport, downloading episode after episode on his phone of the most boring podcast in existence, Haunts with Hollander.
-
Rozanov sat in a little pod chair with a high back and curved sides, sunglasses on, baseball cap pulled down, keeping him safe from prying eyes. He’d already taken five selfies this morning with giggling fans and he was, frankly, exhausted. Thank God, he had exfoliated last night.
Ilya scrolled through episodes of Haunts with Hollander, clicking the little download arrow again and again. Hollander didn’t discriminate. Sure, he covered Canadian spooks, like the Tranquille Sanitorium, the Mackenzie House, and, oddly, the Old Spaghetti Factory. But he also dug into the Winchester House, Leap Castle, the Château de Versailles, and the Island of The Dolls, which gave Ilya the ick. He didn’t care for dolls.
Rozanov was chronically online, with alerts for his name on Google and constant searches for his name across Twitter, Threads, TikTok, Instagram, even Tumblr when he was feeling a little down. (His favorite were the slow-motion GIFs of him flipping his hair and flexing). Because he was chronically online, he learned a new term that brought him unending joy: rage baiting. And Hollander was so easy to rage bait.
Swiping over to his messages, ignoring much more important texts from his camera man, Cliff, Ilya read through his old texts with Hollander and grinned. He wormed his number out of Shane’s agent a few years ago after pretending to be an advertising rep from HelloFresh. Ilya was surprised his Russian accent on the phone didn’t give him away, but Stella likely wasn’t on YouTube, and after a few velvety compliments, she was more than happy to give him the digits. (Hollander needed a new agent.)
Rozanov started by texting Hollander in a pretend panic that he had a real Swamp Ape sighting, the Florida Everglades species of the mighty Sasquatch. Hollander didn’t buy it (or so he says. Ilya swears there was a little bit of hope in his texts back). But ever since, Ilya was delightedly haunting Hollander’s texts with digs, memes about his terrible podcast, videos of screaming Ghost Bro fans at live shows, and, Ilya’s favorite, a little bit of flirting.
Ilya loved to make Hollander squirm. His responses were so stilted and awkward, Ilya would bet his life that Hollander’s face was doing that little scrunched look it did when he got mad and, God willing, he’d blush a little bit.
If Hollander ever called his bluff, which Ilya knew he wouldn’t, he’d probably play it off as a joke. Because it mostly was. Mostly.
He mostly didn’t think about Hollander’s voice, soft and deep and steady as a metronome. Why was it so soothing to listen to him talk about the world’s darkest stories? By soothing, of course, he meant boring.
He mostly didn’t think about the few times he’d seen Hollander in person at dumb conference after dumb conference, whenever he could bully him into coming. How Hollander glared at him during panels, even before Ilya started speaking. How he got all shy when he had to do meet and greets. One conference had blessedly placed their booths next to each other, and Ilya smirked at and chirped and yes, rage baited Hollander for 5 hours straight.
And he definitely didn’t spend a little too much time gazing at his freckles in his author photo on the back cover of his book. (Yes, Ilya bought Hollander’s book. No, he’d never tell him. Yes, it was so, so boring…from start to finish.)
Hollander acted as if Rozanov texting him was the worst thing in the world, calling him an asshole and telling him how annoying he was. But he never blocked him, and he always responded. So Ilya kept texting.
The intercom dinged. “Now boarding our first class members for flight 8124 to Chicago.”
Ilya settled into his seat, sipping on terrible plane vodka and winking at women who passed and gasped as they recognized him. As the plane started to take off, he thumbed over to episode 140: “The Salem Witch Trials.” He may have grown up in Moscow, but Rozanov had been in Massachusetts for over a decade, with enough Dunkin’ coursing through his veins to prove his honorary Bostonian status. Ilya would learn all of Hollander’s talking points and debate him every chance he got about his chosen hometown’s history.
He closed his eyes. Shane’s voice filled his ears, practically made of silk.
“In 1692, 11-year-old Abigail Williams sat in her home, writhing on the ground, hysterical…”
Ilya smiled. How boring.