Spooky Scary Skeletons (male, m/m)

[LeapYearKisses]

A kind person prompted a sneezing while hiding fantasy scenario over on Tumblr, and this is what I came up with.

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Lachlan pressed his eye to the gap between the wardrobe doors, breathing heavily but trying to quiet himself.  Outside, the bedroom they had ducked into was empty, but he could hear creaking footsteps in the hall beyond.  It just figured that the keep they were trying to rob was full of animated skeletons.  That was the way his luck worked, for sure.  He supposed it was fortunate at least that neither he nor Neve had been injured on their flight. He hadn’t been thinking of anything more than speed when the piles of bones had started rising from the stone.

“Are they still out there?” Neve asked, voice low.  He was almost invisible in the close darkness, and there was an old lace dress tumbled on top of him, giving him the silhouette of a disgruntled nanny.  He and Lachlan were pressed side-to-side in the small space and Lachlan could feel his legs trembling from the sudden shock of, you know, the undead.

“Yeah.”  Lachlan settled back a bit.  “But they’re out in the hall.  If we’re quiet, they shouldn’t come in.  I mean, they don’t have brains, right?”

“Presumably not?” Neve shifted to make a little more room. His golden eyes were odd in the gloom.  “I’m not a wizard.”  

Lachlan sighed. “Maybe we should have advertised for one before we came out here… Ah? Shh!”  There had been a sound by the bedroom door.  He peered out again and saw a skeleton passing by the opening, clattering unnervingly.  “Careful,” he said, voice almost inaudible.  “They’re close by.”

Neve nodded, grim, and the two of them sat in tense silence for a minute, maybe two, unmoving.  The air was hot and close in the wardrobe and Lachlan could feel a fine haze of dust in the air from the hanging clothes. Beside him, Neve suddenly lifted his hands and pressed them over his nose and mouth.

“Ngkt!”

Lachlan’s eyes widened.  “Really?” he mouthed.  They could still hear the passing footsteps outside the room. “Now??”

Neve flushed.  “Sorry,” he whispered.  “It’s thih- the dust.”  He tucked his face away again, shivering with another pair of hastily-stifled sneezes.  “Hngkkt Hh- ngtt!”

“You’re gonna get us killed,” Lachlan hissed, but he had started to blush himself. He could feel Neve moving beside with every little duck into his hands.  “I’m going to haunt your ass!”

Neve tensed again.  “Ngkt!  Hngkkt! Hh- how, if we’re both dead?”

The bedroom door swung open and impacted the wall with a thump.  Both Lachlan and Never stiffened and curled closer.  “Okay,” Lachlan mouthed, barely breathing.  “Hold it.  Please.”  Through the gap in the wardrobe doors, he watched, transfixed, as a skeletal warrior rattled into the room.  The bones were yellowed with age but seemed to move with strength and confidence, eerily floating together and bound by magic.  The eye sockets were lit from within with a sickly green flame.  Each step across the floor clacked on the stone, and the skeleton’s sword gleamed as it flashed past the gap.

Lachlan swallowed and pulled his dagger silently.  They were just a pair of thieves, a quick in-and-out team.  This was beyond their pay grade.  He put a hand on Neve’s knee, shuffled in front of him, as quietly and as best he could in the close confines anyway.

“Hh-”  Neve was struggling, body tense as a bowstring, both hands pressed tightly to his nose, but he still couldn’t quite eliminate the itching inside his sinuses.  It had reached his eyes, too, and his ears.  The dust was too pervasive.  He tried to hold his breath, but it was impossible as his body fought him every step to try and expel the irritants. “Hh- hh–”

Lachlan felt his heart racing as the skeleton grew closer and closer, the green flame of its eye taking up his vision.  He sent a silent prayer off to the goddess he was raised with.  She hadn’t heard from him in a while, but better late than never, he hoped.  He raised his dagger.  But just as he was braced for the skeleton to open the wardrobe, there was a loud, metallic clanging from- somewhere outside the keep?  The front gate?  Lachlan almost pissed himself the sound was so unexpected.  But the skeletal warrior reared back from the wardrobe and clattered out of the room with an alacrity that the creature probably never had in life.

The silence rang in the aftermath and then Lachlan sagged.  “We’re saved,” he breathed.

“Ngktschiu!”  Neve pitched forward beside him, sneeze pushing through him desperately.  “Ngktsch! Hngtschiu!  Hakhtschiu!”

“Oh fuck, bless you, baby,” Lachlan gasped, limbs trembling with adrenaline.  “Bless. We’re safe.  Fuck, I though we were gonna-  Bless, honey.”  He leaned over and kissed Neve on the cheek, heedless of him bending to sneeze again.  “We made it.  We’re gonna be okay.  We-  We gotta get out of here.”  He sheathed his dagger and pushed open the wardrobe.  “Before they come back.  Can you stand?”

“Hah- haktschiu!  Y-yes.”  Neve scrambled out of the wardrobe after Lachlan, one hand still pressed to his face.  He wiped the other on his pants.  He was going to need a handkerchief, or several.  But an allergic fit was definitely preferable to death.

The two of them sprinted through the keep, out down the back servants’ stairs, which is is how they’d come up to begin with.  Their hurried breathing was punctuated through the entire escape by Neve’s sneezing, but luckily they didn’t meet another soul on the way, necromantic or not.  After vaulting over the back gate and fleeing into the forest, they ran until they couldn’t run anymore, and then they collapsed in a tight thicket of trees just to be safe.

That was the last fortress they tried to break into for some time.  Lachlan didn’t wait until they were back at the inn to celebrate surviving their brush with certain doom.

Edited June 17, 2019 by LeapYearKisses

[Guest]

Omg I'm at a loss of words  the descriptions were so good! I just kfjhdskf

 I just love sneezing while hiding! Neve's desperate stifling was perfect 

(also, I would be so scared by those walking skeletons lmao)

[LeapYearKisses]

@EvaBloom Lol, seriously!  If I were an actual adventurer, I'd turn right around.  So glad you enjoyed it!  I had a blast writing it!