[fic] Ghost Heart
//Pairing//: Lay x Sehun
//Prompt//: Supernatural
//Rating//: PG
//Summary//: Ghosts are just figments of your imagination.
//Word Count//: 1,690
//Author’s Note//: Character death
Originally posted here as part of the justgetlayd Bingo Round 2 Challenge.
There is a ghost living in my dorm room.
Whenever night falls, I can almost see him out of the corner of my eye, flitting through my consciousness. His form gathers as silvery dust motes do, coming to rest in the farthest reaches of my room. Blink and you’ll miss him, when he fades as quickly as he appears, and all you are left staring at is the darkened outline of a bookshelf, or a mirror. Turn on the light, and he dissipates completely, leaving nothing but a whisper and the faint scent of smoke.
If you must know, he was already here when I moved in. The first time I see him is on a balmy summer’s evening in late August. He flickers for a moment just as I stand on a stool to hang a picture up. You know, just like an old time movie - zip-zap, and gone. For a split second, I can see everything about him in searing detail - from the set of his shoulders to the cross pendant he always wears around his neck. It is my first night in the big city, and I swear to god, I scream like a girl and smash the picture glass all over the wooden flooring.
“I’m sorry,” are the first words he says (rather forlornly, I might add), as his see-through fingers grasp uselessly at broken shards of glass. “Are you okay? My name’s Yixing.” A pause, as he waits for me to stop screaming long enough to listen. “I live here. I hope you don’t mind.”
I stop screaming after that, but only because I am certain I am going completely mad. What’s more, against all probability, I reply.
“I’m Sehun. Nice to, er, meet you. I also, um, live here.”
(Bite me, you try and introduce yourself to a dead person.)
Yixing the Ghost smiles in a way that is pretty magical, which is what he must be. Then, he sticks his pale hands into his (what must be) imaginary pockets, and looks around at the half-opened packing boxes on the floor, spilling their contents like brown cardboard cornucopias of all the crap I never knew I had. “I guessed,” he says rather amiably, and right about now I wonder how the hell I am having a conversation with a dead guy.
“Yeah,” I say, unfurling myself from my half-crouched huddle of fear into something more human-like as I try to squint into the gathering darkness to get a better look at the entity that shares my room. Oh well, if he’s already here, I might as well get used to it. He looks harmless, anyway. So I smile, and pick my way through the sea of my belongings to scoop up the glass. “I think we’ll get along just fine.”
It isn’t so weird, sharing a dorm with someone who, well, isn’t someone, if only because everything about Yixing feels so incredibly normal. We sit up in the night and watch dramas, play cards, he even asks me how my day went. Gradually, I realize that Yixing has as much of a personality as anyone I could ever meet. He is forgetful - never remembers what day or month or year it is - but so caring and thoughtful, always looking out the window to check the weather before I leave the dorm to ascertain if my attire is seasonally appropriate. He always looks the same - checked flannel shirt, worn blue jeans, and hair that looks like it needs a bit of a cut (except it never gets longer), but when he smiles, a ghostly dimple appears in his cheek, and well, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
He tells me stories of his youth growing up in China, how he was a scholarship kid, but never got to finish, how he loved (loves) music and kept a book of his own compositions that got thrown out when the school authorities cleared out his stuff. I just sit and listen, content in watching him talk about the past, and then let him play xbox vicariously through me.
Most days, it’s like he doesn’t even know what he is. I come home from my lectures in the early evening and find him pacing the floor or lying on my bed and staring up at the ceiling without even making a wrinkle on the sheets. I wake up in the middle of the night to see him sitting on my windowsill, singing Chinese songs that I don’t understand and strumming an imaginary guitar, or staring at the half-eaten bag of potato chips that I carelessly leave open on the study desk after a long night of cramming. It is completely mystifying, but so fascinating at the same time. For all intents and purposes, it feels like Yixing is trying to remember what it feels like to be alive.
“So tell me, how did you, you know,” It is almost half a year later, when I pluck up the courage to ask him the question that has been burning a hole in my head since Day One. I ask it carelessly, callously, over a “shared” six-pack of Hite and some indie music in the background (Yixing’s pick) and the sound of Yixing giggling as he tries to pop the tab on a can of beer. “How did you die?”
Yixing’s hand stops in mid-air. The beer can stays in the exact same spot where I put it on the floor. The goddamn music plays in the background but I can’t hear a word. All I can focus on is how Yixing’s gaze hardens, and the feeling of resignation that falls like a lead weight between us.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he says eventually, his voice soft as velvet despite the realization that I have royally fucked up. I’ve asked the taboo question that should never been asked, and serves you right, Oh Sehun, because now you’ve ruined it, and once the mystery is gone, things will never be the same.
“I…” I stammer, my old lisp recurring now that I am nervous. “Yeah, it’s cool. I understand.”
(I don’t.)
He avoids my gaze, running his fingers through his hair as his foot passes silently through the beer can he was so eagerly trying to open just a couple of moments before. “I- I’ve gotta go.”
Yixing has never said that to me before. I turn my head to ask why, where could he go, but before I can ask, he is gone, leaving nothing behind but the plaintive sounds of a guitar playing in the background. He doesn’t reappear the next night, or the next, and in that time I feel so crushingly alone that every little sound drives me crazy. Yixing has gone somewhere I cannot follow, and to be honest, all I want is to get him back.
It takes me a week of waiting before I say something.
“I know you’re out there.” I feel stupid calling out into the shadows, whispering words that barely travel to the opposite end of my already too-small room. The lights of the city blink outside, and I can see the shaft of green light from the neon billboard opposite the road. Everything about this setting screams low-budget horror flick, but far from being scared, I am hopeful, wanting to feel a little less alone. “Yixing, hyung, don’t hide. I know you’re there.”
(I don’t know that for a fact, but I try it anyway.)
He keeps me waiting for five more minutes before flickering into view at the foot of my bed, and despite everything, I can’t help but smile with relief when I see him again. “Where have you been?” I clamber over to sit cross-legged amongst the sheets, eager to know what I have missed. It is like no time has passed, and Yixing smiles, picking at an imaginary mote of dust on my duvet before falling quiet again, because we both know that isn’t something for him to tell.
“It was a car accident.”
My mouth feels like it is stuffed full of cotton wool. I grip at the sheets, only loosening my hold just enough so the tips of my fingers can almost touch the icy tips of his.
“It was raining, I was hurrying back to the dorm, and the driver wasn’t looking. I fell into a coma and after a while when everyone could see that I wasn’t waking up, they just…” He mimes turning a switch in the most resigned, heartbreaking way possible. “They just turned me off.” When he looks up, Yixing’s eyes well up with silvery tears and god, my heart breaks for a life that was never mine.
“I wish I could hug you.”
Yixing wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and shakes his head with a small smile. “Just hug yourself. That’ll be good enough.”
It takes another bout of silence for him to speak again. “Can I go on living here?”
In a way, my answer has to be yes, simply because he has nowhere else to go.
“Only if you let me hug you.”
He nods, and so I do. It feels like a minor electric shock, letting my arms and chest graze the boundary of his outlines, and despite the fact that it makes me shiver and gives me goosebumps, it is the right thing to do. I feel the chill of Yixing’s hand against my back and the slightest of breezes against my ear, and I know that he feels it too.
“You know, if you were alive, I would probably have asked you out.” The words are out before I can stop them, and I almost hit the back of my head against the bedroom wall for my errant stupidity. Yixing only chuckles (the sound is like the music that he loves so much), and I feel the chill of his palm against my cheek as his lips curve up into a smile, making his dimple appear, and my heart beat just a little bit faster.
“For what it’s worth, I would have said yes.”
//Prompt//: Supernatural
//Rating//: PG
//Summary//: Ghosts are just figments of your imagination.
//Word Count//: 1,690
//Author’s Note//: Character death
Originally posted here as part of the justgetlayd Bingo Round 2 Challenge.
There is a ghost living in my dorm room.
Whenever night falls, I can almost see him out of the corner of my eye, flitting through my consciousness. His form gathers as silvery dust motes do, coming to rest in the farthest reaches of my room. Blink and you’ll miss him, when he fades as quickly as he appears, and all you are left staring at is the darkened outline of a bookshelf, or a mirror. Turn on the light, and he dissipates completely, leaving nothing but a whisper and the faint scent of smoke.
If you must know, he was already here when I moved in. The first time I see him is on a balmy summer’s evening in late August. He flickers for a moment just as I stand on a stool to hang a picture up. You know, just like an old time movie - zip-zap, and gone. For a split second, I can see everything about him in searing detail - from the set of his shoulders to the cross pendant he always wears around his neck. It is my first night in the big city, and I swear to god, I scream like a girl and smash the picture glass all over the wooden flooring.
“I’m sorry,” are the first words he says (rather forlornly, I might add), as his see-through fingers grasp uselessly at broken shards of glass. “Are you okay? My name’s Yixing.” A pause, as he waits for me to stop screaming long enough to listen. “I live here. I hope you don’t mind.”
I stop screaming after that, but only because I am certain I am going completely mad. What’s more, against all probability, I reply.
“I’m Sehun. Nice to, er, meet you. I also, um, live here.”
(Bite me, you try and introduce yourself to a dead person.)
Yixing the Ghost smiles in a way that is pretty magical, which is what he must be. Then, he sticks his pale hands into his (what must be) imaginary pockets, and looks around at the half-opened packing boxes on the floor, spilling their contents like brown cardboard cornucopias of all the crap I never knew I had. “I guessed,” he says rather amiably, and right about now I wonder how the hell I am having a conversation with a dead guy.
“Yeah,” I say, unfurling myself from my half-crouched huddle of fear into something more human-like as I try to squint into the gathering darkness to get a better look at the entity that shares my room. Oh well, if he’s already here, I might as well get used to it. He looks harmless, anyway. So I smile, and pick my way through the sea of my belongings to scoop up the glass. “I think we’ll get along just fine.”
It isn’t so weird, sharing a dorm with someone who, well, isn’t someone, if only because everything about Yixing feels so incredibly normal. We sit up in the night and watch dramas, play cards, he even asks me how my day went. Gradually, I realize that Yixing has as much of a personality as anyone I could ever meet. He is forgetful - never remembers what day or month or year it is - but so caring and thoughtful, always looking out the window to check the weather before I leave the dorm to ascertain if my attire is seasonally appropriate. He always looks the same - checked flannel shirt, worn blue jeans, and hair that looks like it needs a bit of a cut (except it never gets longer), but when he smiles, a ghostly dimple appears in his cheek, and well, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
He tells me stories of his youth growing up in China, how he was a scholarship kid, but never got to finish, how he loved (loves) music and kept a book of his own compositions that got thrown out when the school authorities cleared out his stuff. I just sit and listen, content in watching him talk about the past, and then let him play xbox vicariously through me.
Most days, it’s like he doesn’t even know what he is. I come home from my lectures in the early evening and find him pacing the floor or lying on my bed and staring up at the ceiling without even making a wrinkle on the sheets. I wake up in the middle of the night to see him sitting on my windowsill, singing Chinese songs that I don’t understand and strumming an imaginary guitar, or staring at the half-eaten bag of potato chips that I carelessly leave open on the study desk after a long night of cramming. It is completely mystifying, but so fascinating at the same time. For all intents and purposes, it feels like Yixing is trying to remember what it feels like to be alive.
“So tell me, how did you, you know,” It is almost half a year later, when I pluck up the courage to ask him the question that has been burning a hole in my head since Day One. I ask it carelessly, callously, over a “shared” six-pack of Hite and some indie music in the background (Yixing’s pick) and the sound of Yixing giggling as he tries to pop the tab on a can of beer. “How did you die?”
Yixing’s hand stops in mid-air. The beer can stays in the exact same spot where I put it on the floor. The goddamn music plays in the background but I can’t hear a word. All I can focus on is how Yixing’s gaze hardens, and the feeling of resignation that falls like a lead weight between us.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he says eventually, his voice soft as velvet despite the realization that I have royally fucked up. I’ve asked the taboo question that should never been asked, and serves you right, Oh Sehun, because now you’ve ruined it, and once the mystery is gone, things will never be the same.
“I…” I stammer, my old lisp recurring now that I am nervous. “Yeah, it’s cool. I understand.”
(I don’t.)
He avoids my gaze, running his fingers through his hair as his foot passes silently through the beer can he was so eagerly trying to open just a couple of moments before. “I- I’ve gotta go.”
Yixing has never said that to me before. I turn my head to ask why, where could he go, but before I can ask, he is gone, leaving nothing behind but the plaintive sounds of a guitar playing in the background. He doesn’t reappear the next night, or the next, and in that time I feel so crushingly alone that every little sound drives me crazy. Yixing has gone somewhere I cannot follow, and to be honest, all I want is to get him back.
It takes me a week of waiting before I say something.
“I know you’re out there.” I feel stupid calling out into the shadows, whispering words that barely travel to the opposite end of my already too-small room. The lights of the city blink outside, and I can see the shaft of green light from the neon billboard opposite the road. Everything about this setting screams low-budget horror flick, but far from being scared, I am hopeful, wanting to feel a little less alone. “Yixing, hyung, don’t hide. I know you’re there.”
(I don’t know that for a fact, but I try it anyway.)
He keeps me waiting for five more minutes before flickering into view at the foot of my bed, and despite everything, I can’t help but smile with relief when I see him again. “Where have you been?” I clamber over to sit cross-legged amongst the sheets, eager to know what I have missed. It is like no time has passed, and Yixing smiles, picking at an imaginary mote of dust on my duvet before falling quiet again, because we both know that isn’t something for him to tell.
“It was a car accident.”
My mouth feels like it is stuffed full of cotton wool. I grip at the sheets, only loosening my hold just enough so the tips of my fingers can almost touch the icy tips of his.
“It was raining, I was hurrying back to the dorm, and the driver wasn’t looking. I fell into a coma and after a while when everyone could see that I wasn’t waking up, they just…” He mimes turning a switch in the most resigned, heartbreaking way possible. “They just turned me off.” When he looks up, Yixing’s eyes well up with silvery tears and god, my heart breaks for a life that was never mine.
“I wish I could hug you.”
Yixing wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and shakes his head with a small smile. “Just hug yourself. That’ll be good enough.”
It takes another bout of silence for him to speak again. “Can I go on living here?”
In a way, my answer has to be yes, simply because he has nowhere else to go.
“Only if you let me hug you.”
He nods, and so I do. It feels like a minor electric shock, letting my arms and chest graze the boundary of his outlines, and despite the fact that it makes me shiver and gives me goosebumps, it is the right thing to do. I feel the chill of Yixing’s hand against my back and the slightest of breezes against my ear, and I know that he feels it too.
“You know, if you were alive, I would probably have asked you out.” The words are out before I can stop them, and I almost hit the back of my head against the bedroom wall for my errant stupidity. Yixing only chuckles (the sound is like the music that he loves so much), and I feel the chill of his palm against my cheek as his lips curve up into a smile, making his dimple appear, and my heart beat just a little bit faster.
“For what it’s worth, I would have said yes.”