There was something Yomiel missed very much about being alive, and that was sleeping.
It was three in the morning, the sort of time that dug too deep into the night to really be considered early, when the dark air got thick and buzzed with Yomiel's boredom. Nothing happened at this hour, and like clockwork he found himself stretched out on the couch with a laptop perched on his thighs and fingers drumming restlessly on the keyboard. It was a testament to how completely bored he was that he'd spent the last few hours taking quizzes on Quizilla.
What was the point of being dead if all he wanted to do anyway was die?
Yomiel draped his head back over the arm of the couch and stared at the door to his room. A spider crawled over the doorknob. He hadn't seen his bed for months, not since he died, not since she died. There had been a day, once, where he'd stood in the doorway, looking at the bed like if he remembered hard enough she might come back, warming the sheets on her side of the bed, hair mussed and quilt tossed off so the morning light could spread over her white thighs and the stretch of her back. Like if he tried, he could summon her back to kiss her eyes and watch her eyelashes catch as they fluttered open, giving him the secret of the first smile of the morning.
And of course it didn't work. He was left to stare at cold empty sheets and feel the emotions he'd come to associate with death.
Yomiel slipped his eyes closed. This happened almost daily, a routine hurt floating under his sternum. It made him want to clench his fists until his nails pushed hard enough to make him bleed. Made him want to find the place she'd left and follow her.
Somewhere between the twisting feelings rising into his throat there was a dulled sound and a weight on his legs. Yomiel swung his head back up.
There was a cat on his laptop, curling up on the keyboard and blinking blankly at him. Yomiel took it carefully by the back of its neck and dropped it back on the ground. He was halfway through a shitty quiz on Queen, after all.
Seconds later, the cat had jumped back up onto his laptop and flopped down onto the keyboard, trapping his fingers under its body. It blinked again.
"Cat," said Yomiel. "Get."
The cat only looked at him, eyes big and bright and looking at him like it could read all the words that wanted to come out of his mouth. Words like 'I need those hands to type,' or 'I don't have food for you,' or 'please leave my house before I get too attached to you, every time I see you I remember the night I died and it hurts like someone's ripping my heart out of my chest.'
The cat blinked, and despite the early-morning quiet that was swimming in Yomiel's ears, he could hear everything the cat had to say. You need to stop sulking, human, because you're not alone anymore. You have another life you have to take care of.
And, with the next blink: and I have your life to take care of.
Yomiel sighed, leaning his head down and pulling a hand out from under the cat to stroke its ear with his thumb. It slid its yellow eyes closed.
"We'll make this work," Yomiel said, though the cat didn't acknowledge him. He rested his hand on the cat's shoulder blades, and a ghostly memory of long soft fingers with painted nails echoed the touch on his. "We'll figure life out together, Sissel."