azryal00:

Hmmm….I know what the first thought is, but then this came up…

Paul is a  badass stunt guy. He shows up for shooting at a huge, gorgeous mansion that is reportedly haunted. The cast and crew have rooms in the open, hotel portion of the wing. He’s getting ready for bed and suddenly his room goes frigid. Then…

He sees a translucent, glowing figure walk right through his wall….

He’s not a skeptic. Paul prides himself in being intelligent enough to rise above this ghost nonsense. They’re only here for a week, tops - and thus far, there haven’t been any oddities worth remembering. His room is rather bland, old fashioned. Not at all to his tastes, but he’ll take it. After the modern stiffness of his hotels in the cities, it’s actually a welcome change. 

Other members of the crew have been livid about it. Discussing doors that have slammed during the night, and the sounds of footsteps they can’t explain. Paul simply maintains they’re the wind. Or someone up for a midnight snack on their own. Someone quiet enough not to be seen.

He’s tired, and there’s a headache swelling at the back of his mind. It’s been an awfully long day, and just about every inch of him aches. He sighs, drags a hand over his face, and unclips his watch clumsily. Tossing it haphazardly onto the mattress of his bed. He reaches up for the lapels of his jacket, pressing them past his shoulders when… he pauses. 

For a moment, he thinks he sees something. A flicker from the corner of his eye, from the very peripherals of his vision. A sharp movement, but he turns his head, and he only sees the empty wooden wall. He blinks at it. Before sighing, before shaking his head, “Nonsense.” He mutters, gruffly.

But then something cold brushes over the back of his neck, like a breath blown over ice. He shudders, and shoves his jacket further down his arms, he swears he sees the lights flicker, feels the room darken, feels the walls press in about him. There’s not a sound in the eary silence at all. Save for his breaths, and now… his pounding heartbeat. He swallows. 

Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense… he repeats it like a mantra, like a prayer.

There’s a quiet creak, and he turns, and he sees it then. A figure, stepping out of that empty wooden wall, like he’s just stepped through a doorway that Paul has missed. His breath leaves him all at once, and he rushes to step backward, tripping over the heels of his dress shoes until he falls, stumbling into a heap by his bed. A wordless cry wrenches free of him, lips parting around his silent scream.

The figure just… blinks at him. Eyes him with a sort of sadness that Paul doesn’t understand. He’s all but luminescent, glowing in moonlight that doesn’t exist. Dressed in a suit, with a sharp bow tie, and rosy cheeks. Eyes bluer than any Paul has seen as he crawls helplessly backward. Fear gripping in his chest like a vice, who is he what does he want what did I do - holy fuck.

Ghost. It’s a ghost. It blinks at him, tilts it’s head thoughtfully to one side and watches him as it takes measured steps closer. Paul hits the nightstand, and slumps down, he feels himself trembling. His blood runs cold in his veins. But he manages to force himself to speak, “The… the f-fuck do you want?!” he asks, trying to sound sharp, firm. But he sounds feeble.

Still, the figure says nothing, he keeps moving closer and closer, and then… he kneels. Lowers himself down between Paul’s carelessly spread thighs, and reaches out. Paul presses himself back, forces himself as far back as the nightstand will allow until the knob on the drawer digs into his neck and his temples ache.

A lifeless finger breathes over his cheek like a dying breath. He shivers, it’s as cold as death itself. Like bedsheets in an icy winter night.

“W-What do you want…?” he gasps out. 

The ghost blinks at him. Looks at him. Forlorn. It leans ever closer, and Paul’s breath is caught in his throat. He forgets to breathe as it looms closer, closer. It’s eyes flutter closed. Prettily-long eyelashes brushing over the apples of it’s cheeks, lips parting.

They touch Paul’s… and for a moment… he swears he feels it. He swears he feels the warmth, the softness, the slight chap to that full bottom lip. But it’s cold. It’s so cold. How could he feel anything at all?

The ghost pulls back from him. Eyes swimming, it gazes at him. Lifts that hand again to caress his cheek with an icy touch that makes Paul shiver. 

You… it’s eyes seem to say. I just want you.

(Source: mysr2000)

“It’s not going to crack?”

“It’s not going to crack.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s minus bloody twenty degrees and this is a still-water lake, James!”

“That doesn’t change anything, it’s still a lake!”

“Come on. Just… step where I step.” 

“What if it does crack?”

“I’m here.” Michael gives his hand a reassuring squeeze, “If the ice cracks and you fall through I promise I will freeze my ass off to save you.” 

“You promise?”

“I promise. Now, come on.”

James grumbles, but complies. Shuffling off the snowy bank and onto the icy surface, peppered with cotton-fluffy snow that swirls about his boots as they crunch over the frost. Michael’s gripping his hand in a tight-gloved hold, leading him like he’s a child learning to walk, taking confident steps as if he’s walking on a concrete path rather than a riverbed. As if he’s done this dozens of times before. As if it’s completely normal.

“This feels wrong.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” Michael is grinning, though. Glancing over his shoulder at the rest of the lake - they aren’t the only ones to have thought of this, evidently. There’s a stick frozen into the layers of ice that has clearly been tossed out when it was much thinner, but it’s wedged a good six centimeters below them. There are footprints fading in the falling snow, and even their own are being slowly obscured. As if the clouds want to hide them, keep them Russia’s best kept secret.

It’s all awfully ominous, really. The lake spans for miles, it looks as if it’s infinite, huddled beneath a heavy mist-fog that remains stagnant even in the icy wind, bordered with grey-black clouds. The messy snowfall is nearly constant, with flakes perching on James’ nose, in his hair, on his eyelashes, and the more he tries to bat it all away, the more Michael begins to admire it’s insistence on gluing itself to the younger man. The cold brings a red flush to James’ cheeks, sends his lips chapped and redder than ever and freezes his nose and it only makes Michael want to kiss it all away because for some reason, James had refused to wear thermals, (‘They’re bloody leggings for Christ’s sake!’ he had snapped).

“They used to bring horses out here back in the day, you know.” Michael says. Giving James a helpful tug over a jagged rock protruding from the bank.

“Yeah, before Global Warming became a thing.” James responds, flatly. Steadying himself carefully as he steps onto the lake.

“Right. Now they just drive trucks over it instead.”

He hears James laugh behind him, and he’s at Michael’s level now. 

“Right. Carefully, now. It’s still ice.”

James exhales a quivering breath and tightens his hold on Michael’s hand. They walk slowly, taking careful steps, the soft crunch, crunch, crunch of snow underfoot is impossibly loud, but that’s not what they’re listening for, it’s… something much louder that might not be snow crunching, cracking. But there’s nothing. Nothing but their measured breaths carrying out to the white trees doffing the horizon somewhere to their left. 

Then James stops.

“Right. That’s far enough.” 

Michael sighs. They’re a good hundred meters from the shoreline, and in scale to the rest of the lake, it’s really nothing. 

“Come on, just a bit further.”

“No.”

“James, really - how often are you going to be in a place like this?”

James says nothing. Lake Baikal, that’s what it’s called. A few miles from Irkutsk, Siberia. Bloody Russia. A lake that turns into a frozen wasteland of snow and ice during the midwinter months when a minus ten temperature is a warm day. A lake that looks like an endless, glittering, white valley under snow, that looks like a grim and pale fairy-tale when the clouds gather to cuddle the skyline. That sparkles beckoningly when summer nears, that lures misguided travelers to it’s icy waters when it all begins to thaw. But it’s January. Michael had promised James they’d be safe. Promised him he would let nothing go wrong.

“Fine.” Michael says, in defeat, turning to face James again - and his cheeks are flushed, and there’s a crack in his lower lip that Michael knows will bleed and irritate him later. He’s merely glad he managed to get him this far. It’s better than nothing at all.

“I can’t feel my nose.” James says, winding his gloved fingers through Michael’s, huddling in a little closer as a sharp-edged wind cuts past them, rustles the fur hoods of their jackets. “Or my cheeks, or chin.” His words tremble with his shivers and he glances to their right at the swirling gloom as thunder rumbles somewhere they can’t see.

Michael looks down between them, at the snow-covered ice, and lets go of James’ hands. Bends to his knees and wipes a hand over the ice, sweeps the snow aside, and it’s blue underneath. There are cracks, like pale and stringy spider webs, but as he runs his fingers over them, he realizes they’re smooth. Frozen over, weeks and weeks ago. He starts as something darts by, beneath the surface, beneath the ice. But then something else flits past after it, and he grins.

“James - look!” 

“What?”

“Fish!”

James lowers to his level, steadying himself with a hand upon Michael’s shoulder to peer at the ice beneath them, and indeed, there are fish there. Swimming past, going about their business as if they are ignorant of the frost entirely. Of the people standing just feet above them. Swirling together in colourful abundance at their brief chance under daylight.

“This really feels wrong.” James says, sounding breathless, though there’s still amusement in his words, Michael glances up at him, and he’s smiling. Watching the marine life go about their daily activities as if time nor space has any hand at all in their universe. 

“It must be cold there, though.” He says, eyes still on the ice. “Dark, too. I wonder if they get lonely…”

“They’re fish, James.” Michael says, chuckling once. 

“They still have brains… and families.” He adds, softly. Pressing his other hand over the ice, splaying his fingers out wide as a glimmering, silver fish bumps it’s nose to the surface beneath his index finger, pressing to the thick ice between them.

“James.” Michael says, and the younger man looks up with reluctance, evidently quite taken by the fish. 

But the moment his eyes settle upon Michael’s face, the older man forgets whatever he’d been about to say as a snowflake lands on the tip of James’ nose and he leans over the ice between them to press a kiss into James’ frozen lips. He probably feels a hundred degrees to James, whom seems to melt into him, both hands steadying him on Michael’s shoulders as his frozen-pink and soft lips quirk up gently in a smile as the fish dance in circles beneath them.