Oh, Write Issue #5: Your character booked an Airbnb. After putting the address into their GPS and driving all day, they ended up here. This isn’t the place they showed online. What comes next?
“It’s cozy on the inside.” Lind tilted his neck up at the roof that looked about as sturdy as a wet blanket. “I just know it.”
“Do you?”
Casper shook his head and went around to the trunk. After sixteen hours in the car—with the last five featuring nothing but wilderness—he wasn’t about to find another place to stay. Sure, it looked haunted and there didn’t seem to be another living person in a 300-mile radius. That was fine. People annoyed him.
Out of the way gothic luxury home in the heartland, complete with every comfort you need for a private retreat!
The description hadn’t been entirely wrong. The structure in front of him—well, this wasn’t what he’d pictured. To be fair, he’d barely glanced at the photos on the site. The price was low, which was good enough. The drive would be a headache, but he could do anything under twenty hours. Lind, of course, was certain he could drive a full twenty-four. If he really wanted to.
“You know what it reminds me of? That place in Miracle on 34th Street. The one where all the kids made wishes by throwing rocks in the windows—”
“That’s It’s a Wonderful Life.”
“Is it?” Lind blinked, slipping his hands into his pockets and coming around to the trunk, bumping shoulders with Casper. “I love that you know these things.”
Casper huffed. It was an acceptable compliment, compared to the one that Lind didn’t say. That Casper had his soft side, despite appearing to be a grouch. He didn’t have a soft side, when it came to personality. His stomach, on the other hand, was a different story.
Taking a deeper breath, Casper tilted his neck one way and then the other. Lind was still standing at his shoulder. Not taking anything out, but then again, Casper had just been staring at their bags for the last few minutes anyway. He closed his eyes and breathed again. Tasting hayfields and low clouds. The fields lie fallow, but the rain would still come.
“Want to walk around the place a bit?”
Casper stepped back from the trunk and shut it. He didn’t want to be inside anything right now—especially not his own head. A walk would be nice. Glancing to his right, he couldn’t help but cringe.
“Wasted shell of a place.”
“You haven’t seen all of it yet.”
“Your optimism is going to kill you.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“Why, so you can smile when I come save your ass?”
“You’re a regular gentleman, Persy—you know that?”
Casper snorted, tugging Lind by the belt loop. The front of the lot was scraggled and barren—burnt, almost—but wild long grasses shuffled and shifted on the side of the house. They stepped over moss and rock, following a trail that wasn’t there.
Lind took his hand, lacing their fingers together and tugging him gently along. The pale sunlight to his perpetual (but good-natured) gloom. Warmth as soft as a sigh. People were the worst, but Lind? Well, Lind was the best.
V. H. King's Ink 
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