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ilkkawhat · 4 years

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just for the sake of sharing. and since i didn’t get the fic done like i wanted to yesterday. here’s a preview of that haunted mansion fic. feel free to ignore.

They’ve been driving for hours on an impromptu road trip to California, since the lab was being shut down for the week due to unfortunate circumstances that they decided to make the best of, collectively pooling the reaped rewards of their overtime paychecks as well as their rainy day funds to sponsor the vacation. They would hit all the big spots in Los Angeles at Greg’s request, then visit the Sequoia National Forest at Nick’s, all while visiting the big tourist attractions per Hodges’ wish—and then finally, in a half-joke but not really a joke, a trip to Disneyland prompted by Henry.

It was an ambitious quest and one that lost its appeal as highway hypnosis drained their exuberant energies, adding in the fact that they had left rather late to begin with, making little progress in the vastness of the state. Their lighthearted banter turned sour, teasing became tense, and Nick in particular had white knuckles decorating the steering wheel as he pushed a couple digits over the speed limit.

They find a motel, the flickering neon of a broken sign outshadowed by the green tinted fluorescence that engulfs Nick and Hodges as they walk through a thin, floating slab of cloud surrounding the entrance to check in. Greg may as well be alone in the car, as Henry is knocked out in the back, overcome with drowsiness from his motion sickness medicine. As he watches Nick enter the office, he swears he gets some sort of double vision, seeing another Nick standing by the pillar on the edge of the canopy, staring at the car.

The hairs on the back of his head stand up, goosebumps tickling his skin and he keeps wary but also weary-eyed contact with the duplicate, and when Hodges and Nick emerge from the office and he finally blinks, the doppel-Nick vanishes and so he takes it for what it was; a figment of his overtired brain playing to the part of him that is truly unsettled in this desolate nightscape void of the flashing sirens and bustling crowds that he’s used to—this is pure isolation.

That, or the apparition was an omen, warning him of danger, possibly to Nick.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Guy at the front desk said there’s some nasty fog rolling into the valley,” Nick’s voice startles Greg out of his thoughts as he lingers on the empty space, and as Nick pats his back softly he asks a silent question with his eyes, and Greg gives a quick nod of his head.

“Plenty of rooms vacant but none with more than one bed,” Hodges announces, patting Henry awake gently despite his loud voice doing the deed, earning a glare from the awakening man, rubbing his eyes.

So they get two rooms and split up. Henry and Hodges in one room, Nick and Greg in the other—the obvious choices, of course, but also logical as Greg snores, and Nick’s an insomniac anyway.

Yet Greg doesn’t seem to fall asleep so easily, or at all, despite his exhaustion. Plagued with restless dreams of a flickering Nick-less void, there’s an unease churning in his stomach and a thumping concert of paranoia in his heart.

“G? You still awake?” Nick asks from the armchair in the corner of the room, leafing through a magazine in the intrusive fluorescent light bleeding through the thin curtains. His voice perks Greg’s ears, but yet doesn’t soothe the flight response bubbling under his skin.

“Yeah,” Greg grunts, still resisting his urge to toss and turn to the other side, not wanting to be uncomfortably watched by the grumpy zombie in the corner. “How’d you know?”

“Y’ain’t snoring.”

“And how’d you know that?”

“Sara told me. Remember when we had...that case...in Pioche?”

Of course Greg remembers, and finds it odd that Nick didn’t refer to it as the McBride case for the first time in almost five years.

“You and her shared a room,” he pauses, Greg can envision how his tongue is washing over suddenly dry lips, even with his back turned. “Me and Rick in the other. She told me in the mornin’ how badly you snored.”

“So you can remember that...but you can’t remember...” Greg sighs in exhaustion, his eyes finally dropping but then snapping open at the sound of the magazine getting tossed harshly to the ground with a groan trailing after it. Hears the creaking of leather, and knowing Nick, he’s gotten up from the chair to start to pace like a lion trapped in a cage.

“I told ya I’m sorry—”

“No.” Greg’s turn, to bite down on his lower lip and decide if he really wants to have this conversation right now, but they’re both cranky and tired anyway. “No, from what I recall you just promised not to do it again. You never actually apologized—“

“Well, I’m sorry. Happy?”

“You don’t mean it.”

“Greg—of course I mean it!”

Greg doesn’t realize how tightly his jaw is clenched until it seals tighter when he feels the space next to him sink down. He almost rolls backwards into Nick, whose touch indicates a softness not found in Greg’s vision of animalistic anger and places a tentative hand on Greg’s shoulder which quickly retreats when he feels how stiff Greg is.

“I know that...I’m not invincible,” Nick’s fingers curl into the palm of his hand.

“Coulda fooled me,” Greg scoffs.

“And I didn’t mean to accuse you of being...some sort of bad guy, I-I mean, you had a point, that kid was probably gonna kill me—”

“He never would have stood a chance anyway,” Greg admits dully. “But that’s really not what upset me. You were just so...angry.”

“I was almost blown up. Twice!” Nick laughs, dropping the softness in his words and exchanging it for daggers. “What, was I supposed to be prancing around giddy with glee that I was alive? That wore off fast after I was pulled outta hell the first goddamn time, Greg.”

“Cath told me what you said.”

“What do you mean?”

“‘I’m not afraid to die.’”

“Yeah. Well...I’m not.”

Greg spins around, propping himself up on his elbows.

“But maybe I am, Nick!” Greg hisses. “And maybe...I’m afraid of...”

“What?” Nick wipes his nose to mask the escaping sniffle. “What are you so afraid of?”

Losing you.

Greg’s elbows give out, he falls back onto the bed, a hand rubbing throbbing temples while the other shoves down the heart bulging out of his chest. There’s an odd sloshing in his lungs, airways in his nose blocked. If he’s not careful he’ll work himself up into an asthma attack. He turns his head away from Nick to ensure the inhaler is right where he left it on the end table.

“Nothing. Just forget it.”

Nick gets up from the bed, and it’s the sound of clicking—a certain clicking, the one that only comes from the opening of a door, that snaps his head back to the main attraction, the man standing in the opened doorway, ready to escape the suffocating imprisonment of spending the night with Greg Sanders.

“Wait, where are you going—?” Greg sits up, his heart now soaring, telling him to give Nick a reason to say because he knows that really, he’s about to....

“I’m taking a drive,” Nick answers gruffly, popping the collar to his jacket and pulling on his sleeves. “Gonna fill up the car, I’ll be back by morning.”

“Let me come with you—”

“Get some sleep. You need it.”

“Nick—” Greg gestures to the empty space that Nick just occupied, waving a hand for him to come back.

He knows he won’t.

He picks up the car keys instead.

“Save it.”

He walks out the door without another word, and Greg leaps out of bed, boxers be damned he flings the door to call out to his friend.

“Nick!”

Nick enters the car, slamming the door without consideration to the sleeping residents and prying eyes of the motel.

Or even to Greg.

“NICK!”

Squealing tires, a loud gasp—multiple gasps, from his passengers who start shouting in the white noise of panic as Nick veers off course of an almost collision with a shadowy figure ahead—a figure that was short enough to pass for a child, long hair and a faceless face but the curvature of the body under a slender dress registered the humanoid figure as potentially female—but he doesn’t dwell on that for long as he regains control of the car, swerving in and out of the parallel yellow lines—the car almost tips, he doesn’t release his breath until all four wheels touch the ground and he finally tunes into his passenger’s dialogue.

“What was that?”

“Was that a girl?”

“Jesus, man! Keep your eyes on the road!”

He allows himself a few shortened gasps before gulping down the remainder of his adrenaline, forcing calm on himself as fatigue comes crawling from under his eyelids, daring to pull the curtains.

“Sorry,” Nick gulps. He looks at the clock on the radio. Five A.M. He feels as if he’s been on the road all night, but he remembers getting some semblance of sleep in the dingy motel room with Greg after filling up the gas tank, going back and apologizing through pillow talk.

Phantom whispers fill his ears, unintelligible voices but it sounds like Greg. He tries to focus but his attention is taken by the urgency of looking for his almost-fatal victim in the rear view mirror and the returning reaction of panic as his mind unscrambles.

Whatever shadow was there that he almost hit is gone. All that’s left is a thick layer of fog that swirls around the car, trailing behind yet also retreating ahead of them. Thick walls sandwich the car and Nick cracks his window to suck in the cold, misty air as a reminder that he’s not necessarily entrapped so much as they are just...well, okay maybe a little trapped but he doesn’t want to admit it, parting his lips and gritting his teeth as he reels himself in before he unravels further.

“Should we go back?” Henry mercifully asks and breaks Nick’s concentration on his inner self. He’s spun around, looking out the rear window but seeing nothing but the same fog, though it’s much less suffocating to him than it is to Nick.

“Y-yeah,” Nick breathes, then swallows down the last nagging thought of panic. It’s time to be the leader of the assclowns. “But I don’t know if a U-turn is a good idea with this fog.”

“Maybe we should stop. Stretch our legs, we can just take a quick walk down the road, we haven’t gone too far yet,” Greg offers. Nick’s ears perk up, he’d very much like that, and immediately schemes a scenario of holding hands so they don’t lose each other.

“I don’t know, with Lightning McQueen here, we may already be into the next town,” Hodges scoffs, an intrusive finger sliding past Nick’s shoulder to point at the speedometer.

Fifteen over the speed limit. Whatever the speed limit actually is—the sign is masked and as faceless as the road wanderer.

“I don’t think walkin’ in the fog will do us any favors either,” Nick reluctantly growls as he takes his foot off the pedal and bats Hodges’ finger out of the way. The initial appeal of walking around loses to the settling danger of either losing each other, or losing the car, or losing their minds walking around the ceaseless skyfallen ground. He thinks of how Sara described wandering in the desert for hours and hours and hours, while the intense desert heat is the polar opposite of the frigid foggy roads, he still empathizes with the prospect of having no direction, no hope.

Only difference is, he wouldn’t be so alone.

He puts his foot on the brake and pulls off to the side, channeling his frustrated energy into putting the car in park. He swivels in his seat for a full group discussion.

“Well, what’s it going to be then?” Greg sighs, his tone dripping in annoyance.

A beat.

“I’ll turn around. If we find the girl, we’ll pick her up and take her home,” Nick concludes, nodding his head to amp himself up for this more logical plan, rather than the more emotionally driven choice of walking around, stretching the cramping legs that kick at the floor of the vehicle. “‘S why it’s a good idea to drive, cover more ground that way.”

“Think she’ll fit back here between us? And she was walking so slow—” She was walking? Nick thinks to himself, astonished that he really wasn’t paying any attention. “—what if she’s hurt, or diseased or something?”

“C’mon, Hodges, wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had a girl between us,” Henry teases.

Hodges begins to stammer, the corners of Nick’s lips twitch up as he does a three-point, as efficiently and cautiously as he can in case there are other blind drivers in the fog, but after nearly ten minutes of driving, there’s no girl in sight.

“There was a turn about a mile back, maybe she went down that road?” Henry suggests.

They follow the road, and reach a dead end with nothing but the road sign sprouting in the sea of fog.

“Guess not.”

They turn around, but the main road is either passed or not reached. They find themselves in a fork that doesn’t seem familiar to Nick.

“Do any of y’all remember seein’ this? Did I run a sign?”

The backseat passengers shake their head, Greg is looking to the left, past Nick.

“Turn left,” he nudges.

“You sure?”

“Positive,” Greg nods his head.

They turn down the road and continue on, Nick’s eyes flicker to the clock. Seven A.M, and no signs of the fog letting up—in fact, it’s somehow more packed, though specks of what might be...snow? Scatter the air—It makes no sense, Nick thinks, this part of Cali doesn’t get snow...does it?

Snow was such a rare occurrence for a young boy growing up in Texas that it was a little more disturbing than it was luxurious. He of course, would often see depictions of children such as himself building snowmen, making snow angels, having snowball fights and so at first, the idea of snow excited him—but it was never enough to stick, never enough to craft meltable creations, never enough to get a cold. He appreciated how lighter it was compared to the heaviness of rainfall, but didn’t quite appreciate how it would disappear just as soon as it fell.

Fleeting, like life itself.

The wind slices across his cheek, waking him from a ride down memory lane to find a more distorted one, winding downward—he doesn’t typically get nauseous when he’s driving, but something sinks and settles to the pit of his stomach, clogging the drain with a tight not that threatens to burst like a geyser out of his body.

The road straightens out, and they reach another fork that’s missing a prong.

Nick keeps driving forward.

“You sure this is the way?” Hodges asks.

“Quit bein’ a backseat driver, I know where I’m goin’!” Nick hushes him, his accent thickening in his annoyance. “The map had a long winding road, just like this one, dinn’t it?”

“Here, I can pull it up on my phone—Oh...maybe not. No cell service,” Greg mutters. “Maybe we should find the gas station, ask for directions?”

Nick puffs his chest, lifts his chin.

“Don’t needta. Fog’ll clear up soon.”

“Well, it hasn’t yet—”

“Calm down, G—”

“I am calm!”

“I think we’re lost,” Henry groans.

“We ain’t lost,” Nick proclaims. “When have I ever steered us wrong?”

“When you rolled the car and sprained Henry’s ankle,” Hodges responds immediately.

“That—That wasn’t my fault, just the rolling—which you laughed at, and hey, if I didn’t, we coulda crashed—”

“When you told me that riding that mechanical bull was as easy as those twenty-five cent kiddie rides at the grocery store,” Henry offers.

“That one just had a screw loose is all—”

“When you, Warrick and Sara convinced me to stage a coup against Catherine,” Greg jabs.

“She betrayed our trust, Greggo!”

“No, she betrayed your trust. You guys kinda forced me into it.”

“That’s not—It wasn’t just—This was years ago and what the hell’s gotten into you?”

“Me? What’s gotten into you? You’ve been all over the place since we got to the motel—”

“Well, sorry I can’t close my eyes for more than a minute without gettin’ nightmares, and therefore, no goddamn sleep!”

“Mm. Suddenly saying ‘sorry’ a lot now, I see.”

“You know, Nick, if you need a break, maybe I can drive—” Hodges interrupts.

“No.” Nick and Greg say flatly, simultaneously.

A terse, awkward silence flitters in through the open window, which Nick rolls down even further. He allows himself a few breaths after a few endless minutes before he speaks again.

“Just...need some food in me or somethin’, tank’s gettin’ empty.”

“So’s the gas tank,” Greg observes.

“I knew that,” Nick mutters, though really, he didn’t know that. He scrunched his face, hadn’t he left to fill up last night?

They reach another fork with no sign in sight. Nick squints and leans, before getting out of the car to do a quick sweep, as if he’d suddenly find the direction along the listless roads, but the only signs are the red ones telling him to stop.

He gets back in the car, flexes his fingers around the wheel, and takes a deep breath.

“I think we’re lost,” Nick admits.

“Oh, really?” Greg sighs loudly in exasperation, tossing a hand into the air to wave at the directionless driver.

“Relax, man, I’m sure we’ll find our way.”

“Then why even bring it up?” Henry whines from the backseat.

“Just to make you whine, buttercup,” Nick teases with a playful smile into the mirror.

#mk.op #mk writes stuff #fic: the day the world went away #i'm giffing some assclowns stuff to get in the mood #it's not working #and like. i know i don't HAVE to have a fic posted every week but #i really honestly don't know when i'm gonna have another fic ready.#i don't know.#i'm sorry #also no italics cause i'm too lazy to fix that #but there's a lot of them

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