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kat_lair***
Title: tread soft, tread sure
Author:kat_lair / ![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
MistressKat
Fandom: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Ghost Files - Watcher Entertainment (Web Series)
Pairing: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Tags: Ficlet, Fear, Ambiguous Relationships, Prompt Fic
Rating: T
Word count: 707
Disclaimer: Make-believe!
Summary: There are footsteps, somewhere in the distance but getting closer, someone walking toward them, coming back from the courthouse, steps slow and heavy, dragging. Well, no one ever ran toward their execution.
Author Notes: I needed to stretch my writing muscles a bit and asked for prompts.pushkin666 offered ‘the footsteps were moving away’.
tread soft, tread sure on AO3
“Do you hear that?” Ryan winces. Even though he’s whispering, his voice seems to echo throughout the tunnel, too loud in the silence below ground.
“All I hear is your panicked panting,” Shane says. The words are mean but there’s nothing but familiar laconic amusement in his tone. As always, the combination makes something squirm in Ryan’s gut, like a worm eating its own tail.
He makes the mistake of turning around to look and is instantly blinded by the glaring light of Shane’s headlamp. “Fuck,” he hisses, instinctively slamming his eyes shut.
“Idiot.” That too sounds like an endearment, soft and loose like soil in a freshly dug grave. There’s a click and even with his eyes closed Ryan can tell that Shane has turned his lamp off.
They are in pitch black now, no sunlight here, only hardpacked earth and roughly hewn rock, marked by chisels of the prisoners forced to carve the route from prison to the courtroom and back again to the waiting noose. There’s nothing but cold, stale air, and the combined sound of their breathing; Shane’s steady and light, so quiet Ryan fights the urge to press his hand against Shane’s chest just to check that it’s still rising. His own breath stutters and catches, a ragged, wet thing that clogs his throat, leaves his teeth bare at every inhale.
He opens his eyes to darkness deeper than the one behind his eyelids. It presses on him like a living thing, something with weight and substance, and Ryan’s hand shoots out behind him, looking for an anchor and finding only cold stone first but then…
“Easy.” Shane’s fingers wrap around Ryan’s wrist unerringly, shockingly warm, reassuringly tight. “Stop flailing about or you’ll hurt yourself,” he says, and Ryan doesn’t wonder how Shane could find his hand in the dark so easily (though maybe he should), doesn’t even think about pulling free from Shane’s grip (he never does) because…
“There!” The word gusts out, barely more than wavering air. “Listen!”
Footsteps.
There are footsteps, somewhere in the distance but getting closer, someone walking toward them, coming back from the courthouse, steps slow and heavy, dragging. Well, no one ever ran toward their execution.
Every hair on Ryan’s body stands up and fear slices through him, pure as glass, sharpening his senses into pinpricks of perception, thin and fractured. Behind him, Shane is a long line of heat, muted fire and strong bones, their joined hands pressing against the soft give of Ryan’s stomach as Shane pulls them together.
He hears them too. Ryan knows this from the way Shane has gone still, the way his breath ghosts over the side of Ryan’s head, hot and silent. Shane hears the footsteps too and somewhere under the terror exultance seeps along the edges of Ryan’s awareness, sweet as honey, sated and thick.
The footsteps come closer, a shuffling scrape that grates over each nerve, makes the bottom of Ryan’s stomach knot, the skin on his face like ice while sweat gathers at the small of his back. No matter how much he strains, he can’t see anything, no shadows, no movement.
The steps stop. Right in front of them. Ryan’s eyes ache from dryness, from not daring to blink.
“Hello.” Shane’s greeting is soft. Not friendly, exactly, but not hostile either, the kind of ‘hello’ you’d say to a stranger you pass on the street at five a.m., when the night still clings to souls and the connection between those who share it must be acknowledged.
Ryan jerks anyway, a small, pathetic twitch that goes nowhere, Shane’s arm around his middle like an iron band, keeping him in place.
“It’s alright,” Shane says, and it could be for Ryan, is for Ryan, but… Not entirely. “It’s alright.” The words are soft still and measured. No platitude this, but a conviction born out of hard-won knowledge. It is alright. Because Shane makes it so.
The footsteps start again. This time, they’re moving away.
When he can’t hear them anymore, Ryan counts to twenty. Then he twists around and turns on his flashlight.
In the pale-yellow beam, Shane is smiling, familiar and fond, kind and knife-sharp. “It’s alright,” he repeats.
Ryan chooses to believe him.
***
Title: tread soft, tread sure
Author:
kat_lair / Fandom: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Ghost Files - Watcher Entertainment (Web Series)
Pairing: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Tags: Ficlet, Fear, Ambiguous Relationships, Prompt Fic
Rating: T
Word count: 707
Disclaimer: Make-believe!
Summary: There are footsteps, somewhere in the distance but getting closer, someone walking toward them, coming back from the courthouse, steps slow and heavy, dragging. Well, no one ever ran toward their execution.
Author Notes: I needed to stretch my writing muscles a bit and asked for prompts.
pushkin666 offered ‘the footsteps were moving away’.tread soft, tread sure on AO3
“Do you hear that?” Ryan winces. Even though he’s whispering, his voice seems to echo throughout the tunnel, too loud in the silence below ground.
“All I hear is your panicked panting,” Shane says. The words are mean but there’s nothing but familiar laconic amusement in his tone. As always, the combination makes something squirm in Ryan’s gut, like a worm eating its own tail.
He makes the mistake of turning around to look and is instantly blinded by the glaring light of Shane’s headlamp. “Fuck,” he hisses, instinctively slamming his eyes shut.
“Idiot.” That too sounds like an endearment, soft and loose like soil in a freshly dug grave. There’s a click and even with his eyes closed Ryan can tell that Shane has turned his lamp off.
They are in pitch black now, no sunlight here, only hardpacked earth and roughly hewn rock, marked by chisels of the prisoners forced to carve the route from prison to the courtroom and back again to the waiting noose. There’s nothing but cold, stale air, and the combined sound of their breathing; Shane’s steady and light, so quiet Ryan fights the urge to press his hand against Shane’s chest just to check that it’s still rising. His own breath stutters and catches, a ragged, wet thing that clogs his throat, leaves his teeth bare at every inhale.
He opens his eyes to darkness deeper than the one behind his eyelids. It presses on him like a living thing, something with weight and substance, and Ryan’s hand shoots out behind him, looking for an anchor and finding only cold stone first but then…
“Easy.” Shane’s fingers wrap around Ryan’s wrist unerringly, shockingly warm, reassuringly tight. “Stop flailing about or you’ll hurt yourself,” he says, and Ryan doesn’t wonder how Shane could find his hand in the dark so easily (though maybe he should), doesn’t even think about pulling free from Shane’s grip (he never does) because…
“There!” The word gusts out, barely more than wavering air. “Listen!”
Footsteps.
There are footsteps, somewhere in the distance but getting closer, someone walking toward them, coming back from the courthouse, steps slow and heavy, dragging. Well, no one ever ran toward their execution.
Every hair on Ryan’s body stands up and fear slices through him, pure as glass, sharpening his senses into pinpricks of perception, thin and fractured. Behind him, Shane is a long line of heat, muted fire and strong bones, their joined hands pressing against the soft give of Ryan’s stomach as Shane pulls them together.
He hears them too. Ryan knows this from the way Shane has gone still, the way his breath ghosts over the side of Ryan’s head, hot and silent. Shane hears the footsteps too and somewhere under the terror exultance seeps along the edges of Ryan’s awareness, sweet as honey, sated and thick.
The footsteps come closer, a shuffling scrape that grates over each nerve, makes the bottom of Ryan’s stomach knot, the skin on his face like ice while sweat gathers at the small of his back. No matter how much he strains, he can’t see anything, no shadows, no movement.
The steps stop. Right in front of them. Ryan’s eyes ache from dryness, from not daring to blink.
“Hello.” Shane’s greeting is soft. Not friendly, exactly, but not hostile either, the kind of ‘hello’ you’d say to a stranger you pass on the street at five a.m., when the night still clings to souls and the connection between those who share it must be acknowledged.
Ryan jerks anyway, a small, pathetic twitch that goes nowhere, Shane’s arm around his middle like an iron band, keeping him in place.
“It’s alright,” Shane says, and it could be for Ryan, is for Ryan, but… Not entirely. “It’s alright.” The words are soft still and measured. No platitude this, but a conviction born out of hard-won knowledge. It is alright. Because Shane makes it so.
The footsteps start again. This time, they’re moving away.
When he can’t hear them anymore, Ryan counts to twenty. Then he twists around and turns on his flashlight.
In the pale-yellow beam, Shane is smiling, familiar and fond, kind and knife-sharp. “It’s alright,” he repeats.
Ryan chooses to believe him.
***
no subject
on 2023-08-27 06:13 pm (UTC)I love Shane's reaction to the possibility of a ghost in front of them. He still isn't scared; he's calm and kind (not just to Ryan, but I feel like his words are meant for the spirit as well).
no subject
on 2023-08-28 06:47 am (UTC)Hee yes, I left that bit ambiguous and potentially a bit spooky (just how well does Shane know that spirit, hmmm?) on purpose so glad it worked!