Length: 5,362

Characters/Pairings: Gamzee Tavros, Karkat Vantas

Warnings: Gamzee getting murdered? I don't know, there's no much in this one. :)

Notes: This is for a wonderful friend on tumblr, Idefix. It's not really finished, and probably never will be-I have bigger fish to fry than this AU. :) Still, enjoy.

The first time you see the ghost in your house, you think you're dreaming.

You've had dreams where someone is in your room before, but those have all been terrifying—made you feel like your heart was going to burst out of your chest and left you shaking. He's not standing over your bed, looming, and he doesn't look ominous at all—he's sitting on the other pillow, with his legs pulled up to his chest. He's got smudged grey and white paint on his face, and if he didn't look so young (maybe your age, maybe a little older) he'd look like down-on-his-luck clown in too-big clothing.

As it is, he just looks sad.

You take that in in the first few seconds, sluggish and slowly blinking in the dark. He's not looking at you—he doesn't seem to have noticed yet that you're awake, he's just staring off into the dark of your room, chewing on his lip. His grey paint has worn off a little where he's worried at it while you were sleeping. He's wearing a big, black T-shirt that hangs really big and loose on him, and baggy sweatpants with big polka dots on them.

The whole thing feels…surreal. But after having the falling dream again, everything feels surreal, and you just assume you're dreaming that you've woken up. It's happened before.

He starts to turn and you close your eyes almost all the way, watching the pale blur of him through your eyelashes. When he leans forward on his knees towards you, you don't hear the bedsprings creak, don't feel his weight shift. He leans in until he's inches from your face and you shut your eyes, trying to keep your breathing even. You aren't scared, just…expectant. Waiting for something, but you don't know what.

There's a little shiver of cool wind across your cheek; the soft sound of a kiss, right next to you but far away at the same time, and someone murmurs something on the very edge of hearing; not there, not real, but so close you can feel the breath on your face. And then there's a sound like the whole world sighing, and the weird, cold presence is gone.

Your eyes are too heavy to open again and you fall asleep right there, with that single cool touch lingering on your cheek.

The second time you see him, it goes wrong.

You're just waking up again—a few minutes before your alarm for once, and your eyes feel gritty and itchy and he's sitting on the other pillow again, head in his hands, dragging his fingers slowly through the thick, dark curls of his hair. He looks…sad. Like, really sad, and it makes you feel bad looking at him, all the sad contained in that boney, hunched-up body.

"Hey," you say, and reach out to pat his knee. "—what—"

Your hand goes right through him.

You jump. He jumps and yells, and it must be a dream because when he puts a hand down to push himself up away from you it dips through your sheets for a second, like he forgot how to be solid—his yell seems to slip into your skull without touching your ears on the way.

He springs up; it doesn't matter how real you feel, you have to be dreaming because he hovers a few inches off your sheets, eyes wide. He's not wearing shoes, and his bony feet seem to ripple strangely, like his whole body is a heat-haze.

"Holy fucking fuck!" is the first thing he says to you, and then he backs away through the air and flickers out of existence. Or does he run—just running where he is but getting further away anyway—

Whatever he does, there's a weird, sweet, electric smell in the air, there's a handprint twisted in your sheets where he planted his hand, and he's completely gone.

Well, you're certainly wide awake now.

You come downstairs the next morning and someone has straightened the papers strewn all over your desk, and the lights you left on are all off.

You don't see him again for at least a week and a half, but you can tell he's there. Things keep happening. Things that you have literally no explanation for, things straight out of a horror movie. Except…nicer. Instead of knives slipping and cutting you, your silverware sorts itself neatly in the drawer overnight. Your doors don't slam open and shut on their own, but when you lose your keys they appear on your kitchen table when you're not looking. You don't hear whispering voices or screams or anything creepy like that, just the sound of mournful bike horns once or twice and a few times (you think) someone singing. They have a nice voice but they really can't carry a tune, and it's really hard to be afraid of a ghost that seems to be…making up love songs?

You don't believe in fake things like ghosts, but after a few weeks of not-very-scary haunting, you drop your groceries on the table, cross your arms, and say to the empty kitchen, "—you know, it's kind of creepy, just, uh…hanging out here and doing stuff but not letting me see you. Can you just come out now, please?"

You wait a couple of long seconds, waiting for something to appear from the walls or from the ceiling or just waiting for someone to laugh at you for talking to yourself in an empty room. But instead there's an anticlimactic little cough and your ghost sidles out of the hallway to the living room, a few inches off the ground, barefoot in his baggy polka-dot sweatpants.

"Sorry," is the second thing he says to you, and he holds out your lost cell phone in one heat-haze hand. His hand is steady, but the phone shakes in and through it, like he's having trouble keeping himself solid enough to hold on. He looks mournful—and hopeful. Like one of the shy dogs at the shelter that wants to lick your face but doesn't know if you want it to. Those are the dogs you always end up spending an unreasonable amount of time taking care of, they're so pitiful.

Goddammit you shouldn't have thought that, you're never going to unsee it now.

"Hi," you try.

"Hey," he says; opens his mouth like he's going to say something else. Stops again. You put your groceries down, really really slowly, never looking away from him in case he's about to freak out and vanish again.

He looks different in the light—not as small and sad, more like a kid your own age. He takes a few steps forward through the air, and you're close enough to see that the spot on his lip that he smeared away his makeup is painted over again. His eyes are a strange, deep shade of blue, almost violet.

"You're not going to disappear again, right?"

He smiles at you, a little bit uncertainly. "Uh…not unless you want me to, bro."

His voice still does that thing where it goes right past your ears and into your head. It makes you feel a little bit dizzy, but it's not too bad. Wow. An actual ghost. (You knew they were real.) What do you even ask a ghost? Apart from, well, "how did you die?" which you feel like might not be an okay thing to ask.

"Why can I see you?" you ask eventually, and he grins really wide at you. "Did you…live here? Or…did I do something wrong? Are you haunting me?"

"Nah, man." He bobs a little bit in place, and yeah you're comparing him to an eager dog again, it may or may not be a recurring problem you have. You wait a little bit, but he doesn't clarify that, just stands there in thin air, grinning at you.

"…well…why can I see you, then?" You prompt eventually, and he jumps a little and drops back down onto the ground. He misses a little bit—now his toes are vanishing into your linoleum.

"Okay like—" he starts, then stops, then starts and stops again, then frowns for a second, thinking. "—okay. Some kid shoots the fuck out of me, right—"

"What?!"

"—'s what finally motherfuckin' finished me off," he says, like this should be obvious—holy crap he's a murder victim. Holy crap. "I mean I'm like that one invincible Russian motherfucker with the bitchtits beard, took all sorts of shit to finish me off. Here, look—" he starts to reach for the hem of his shirt and you jump back so fast you slam your hip into the counter and knock all your groceries on the ground.

"That's okay I'm fine I believe you!"

He looks like you just made all his dreams come true. "You do?"

"I really don't need to…to see your bullet holes, thanks." Oh god, one of the jugs of milk cracked, it's leaking all over the floor. It gives you something to think about other than whatever carnage is under his shirt, so you latch on to that with desperate focus. "—I—sorry, I need to get this cleaned up, uh…you didn't…didn't explain what you're doing here, though."

"Oh yeah, right." He drops your phone on the table like he's letting go of a massively heavy weight—letting go of it seems to make the rest of him more real. "So I hung out where I died for a bit and then it was all rainy one night and I was hangin' out in the tiny little motherfuckin' alley my body's at, and you came walkin' past!"

You remember that night. You'd missed the bus back to your apartment and you'd had to hike back on foot instead—stopped by an alley to pick up a freezing mutt in a box…

Holy shit there was a body hidden somewhere in that alley oh god.

"You were there?"

"Sure was, bro."

"I didn't see you!"

"Well I didn't pick you to hang out with yet."

The milk jug can be saved if you use enough duct tape, but there's at least a quart of milk on your kitchen floor. You sigh, nudge the other dropped groceries away from the puddle, and get down on your hands and knees with a wet rag.

Your ghost clears his throat, and you turn back to look at him—he was looking at you, but the second you turn around, his eyes snap up to the ceiling. Under his curly black hair, his ears are going red. How old is he anyway? You were thinking maybe college-age, but the way he acts makes you think…maybe he's younger? If he's okay with talking about how he died, talking about how old he was should be okay too, right?

"…were you—"

"No," he says, way too fast, "—totally not."

Um. Okay…you can actually see his face going red down his neck—you're sure if you could see his face through the makeup he would be completely scarlet. What did he think you were going to ask about? "…not…what?"

"Oh man," he says, totally sincere, wide-eyed with innocence, "—I was so not starin' at your ass."

You double-take so hard you slip in the milk and slam your face into your kitchen floor.

Three minutes later your nose has finally stopped trickling blood every time you lean your head forward and you're sitting in your living room with your ghost perched on the back of your couch. He looks older again—there's a stud in one of his ears that you don't remember seeing there before, his hair is longer and wilder-looking and you would swear his face paint has changed slightly. He's still smiling that wistful smile at you. You feel the awkwardness in the air more keenly with every passing second, but he doesn't seem to even notice—just grins at you, chin in his hand, perfectly content to watch you nurse your bloody nose and wait for you to say something.

"Okay," you say eventually, and wince when your voice makes your nose throb. "—sorry. That—I wasn't—um. I wasn't expecting that."

"Uh-huh."

"People don't say stuff like that."

"Uh-huh."

"You haven't been spying on me or anything, have you?"

"Uh-huh." And then as you start to hastily think back on every time you've been naked since the time you picked up that dog, he blinks hard and jumps. "—I mean—fuck—no, shit, no man. I mean—not a lot. Only happened once. Or twice."

Holy shit.

"You what?"

"I hang out in the bathroom a lot and you just walk in and get naked really motherfuckin' fast," he says, a little defensively—his ears are red again. He looks no older than seventeen. "—just happens is all."

"Why—" there are so many questions to ask you're not sure where to start. "—wh—why do you hang out in the bathroom?"

"I been practicing lifting stuff and there's a lot of little stuff in there to get my lift of on." He reaches down, frowning, and slides his fingers under the edge of one of the pillows. You can see the effort of lifting it a few inches making his hands tremble. "…see? And I scared off a robber or some shit a few nights ago when you was out, like, he comes sneaking in and I turned on the lights like someone was home, he got his run on in a real hurry!"

He beams at you. You can't not smile back a little.

"…that's still kind of creepy," you point out, but his face falls so comically fast it looks like he might be about to cry and you have to smile at him because hey. That's actually pretty cool. "—no, but uh…thanks. Thanks a lot. I can't afford to get much stolen, hah…"

"No problem, bro." Older again. Hm. Maybe…how confident he is…affects how old he looks to you? Is he doing it on purpose? Are you just imagining it?

You know a lot about animals and how to stretch a little bit of money to a lot of groceries, but you don't know a lot about ghosts.

…but…

…hm. You know someone who does.

"…I have a friend who's a medium," you says slowly, thinking out loud, and you toy with your phone in your pocket—it's been a long time, but if Aradia's number is still the same you know you can still remember it. "…I should tell her about you, she'd go nuts. Um…can you leave the house?"

"Only if you do?" He scratches the back of his head through his thick, curly hair and cocks his head to one side. "…I gone with you to class one or two times but there was a lot of people, so I think you didn't see me. I was there today! I didn't know half the shit you just got all packed up in your head, you're smart as fuck, motherfucker."

Wow he uses that word a lot. You think back, and you think maybe you recall seeing a white-painted face out of the corner of your eye…

"I'm—really not," you mumble, and wipe your nose just for something to do with your hands. Why is he so…so confident about stuff like that? How has he been with you for almost a month and he still thinks you're smart?

"Met someone else there too," he's saying when you shake yourself back to reality, "—you're not the only one as sees me! Kid at your school, he's got that red hair and all like, freckles and shit—man how cool is that? Motherfuckin' miraculous. He's gotta be cold out there though, he's been out there for like ten minutes just standin' there in the snow!"

What.

You get up and look out the window that your ghost is sitting by; there's only one person outside. On the sidewalk below you there's a short, stocky figure in a big black coat and hat. His hair is bright red, and it stands out against the black and white of the snow and his coat like fire in the dark. He's looking up at you—when you appear at the window he looks down in a hurry and keeps walking, but you recognize him anyway—everyone on campus knows Karkat Vantas. He's a weird kid, and he's always angry, but he's also (somehow) seriously good at romance and he never turns people down for a favor.

You open the window and yell down, "—hey! Karkat!"

He flinches and draws his shoulders up to his ears, and your ghost floats up next to you and sticks his head out through the wall to look down as well.

"Hey, best friend!" He yells, and this time Karkat flinches and stops dead in his tracks. He covers his ears with both hands, still refusing to look up at you—you're on the second floor, but you can see him shaking his head, still with his hands clamped over his ears. "Best friend, hey!"

Karkat turns and slowly looks up at the window.

"YOU DON'T EXIST!" he screams—directly at your ghost, not even at you—and then he flips you double birds and takes off sprinting down the street. He falls flat on his face before he goes more than six strides, but gets up almost immediately with a bloody nose and snow all over his face, and keeps running.

"I like him," says your ghost placidly, and pops his head back inside again. You follow a few seconds later, closing the window and shivering a little as the last of the draft cuts off.

"…at least he can't tell anyone without sounding totally crazy," you consider out loud (almost as crazy as you are you're talking to a ghost ghosts don't exist), and look down—your phone is still in your hand. "I don't have class tomorrow. We can go talk to Aradia, and see if she knows anything about…well, this. All of it." The thought stirs something in your memory—Aradia's eyes glittering wickedly in the light of stolen candles, her rough, strong fingers playing over the letters on a battered-up Ouija board, spirits are you here? What is your name? "…hey…you never told me your name."

Aradia is in Greece.

Of course she is, that makes perfect sense (you're not being sarcastic, either—Aradia has always wanted to major in ancient history, art, architecture, anything old, and ancient civilizations have drawn her like a magnet ever since she was in high school with you). It just means you can't get to her with your new ghosty tag-along, and you don't want to tell her over the phone—you'd sound like a maniac.

"You sure?" he asks you, when you explain this to him over dinner—you almost asked if he wanted anything, but how is he going to eat? (Try not to put your foot in your mouth, Tavros, gooooooood.) "Doesn't she, like, talk to us all the time? I mean like can't a motherfucker just say it, I got a ghost?"

He has a point. But…okay, maybe the other reason is that you hate making phone calls.

(Maybe the other reason is that the last time you saw her she was lying in a hospital bed, pale and cold and really, really still)

"I don't want to tell her over the phone," you say, as firmly as you can, and he shrinks a little bit at how tense and sharp you sound. Ugh, he looks at least five years younger, why did you let yourself snap at him? "…no, come on. I'm not mad, like, I guess you seem to think I am? If that's what you were worrying about. I'm not."

That seems to reassure him some. He settles down to watch you eat (wistfully, you think) and practice picking up napkins and your salt shaker. More often than not, his hand goes wavery and faint again in the middle of lifting the salt shaker, and it drops down onto the table with a heavy clunk, but he keeps trying and you don't tell him to stop.

And then you throw your dishes in the sink and wipe down the table and it's time for bed.

You would usually sleep in your oldest pair of sweatpants and nothing else—but you're awkward and kind of nervous this time, and it doesn't help that he's followed you up into your bedroom. Not for any real reason, you think. Now that you know he's there and are apparently okay with it, you're pretty sure he just wants to spend as much time as possible with you, enjoying how alive you are.

You're pretty sure that's why he's staring at you. Occasionally you have to stop yourself from apologizing for being so alive when he's not, and then you feel like a moron.

"Uh," you say eloquently, and start (awkwardly) stripping off your shirt. He does you the courtesy of only staring for about a second and a half before shuffling around and giving you some privacy. "…so…what do you do all night? Do ghosts…do you have to sleep?"

"…no."

His voice sounds very soft. You steal a glance back at him; he's still got his back turned, but he seems even smaller and thinner than before. His shoulders are hunched, as thin as a child's, his baggy clothes are suddenly far too big on him. You remember for a moment how you woke up those two times before you met him and found him sitting on your pillow. It must be kind of scary, being up all night in the dark with nobody to talk to and nothing to do but wait. No wonder he looked so sad.

(…did he kiss your cheek when he thought you were sleeping? Are you even remembering that right?)

He stays turned around and silent as you change into your pajama pants and crawl into bed to wrap yourself up in your covers, and then jumps so hard his feet leave the ground when you turn off your bedside lamp. "Motherfucker!"

"Sorry!" His fear is so sudden it's almost funny, but at the same time you feel like shit for almost laughing. "—sorry, I didn't realize you were scared of the dark!"

He glares at you, and the smiley clown makeup looks ludicrous superimposed over his scowl. You snort and then cover your mouth and cough instead. "…sorry. Here, uh…" you pat the bed next to you; there's moonlight streaming through the window, you're lucky enough to have a full moon tonight. "…here, just come and, like, sit in the light. I should have warned you I was going to turn the lights off, I guess? I'll do that next time."

He stays angry for all of about five seconds, and then slumps and floats up, crawling onto the bed and settling down in the little square of pale light. He doesn't cast a shadow—but there's a faint ripple in the moonlight where he's sitting.

"…real motherfuckin' dark, in that alley," he admits quietly, like a reluctant apology, and he pulls his knees up to his chest, not looking at you. "…real dark."

Oh.

Well now you really feel like an asshole.

"Sorry," you say again, and he half-turns to give you one of those big, whole-hearted grins again.

"Don't even think about it, motherfucker. Not there now."

It's almost eleven. You have to get sleep, you can't stay up and keep him company, not even on a Friday night, but you can't leave him like this, either, sitting on the sheets in the moonlight. You hesitate for a few seconds, and then sigh and give in like the absolute pushover you are.

"…come on," you say, and settle back down into the pillows. "…at least you can lie down. And, like, try to relax, I guess? This bed is way too big for just me anyway."

He sits up and grins so wide at you it's like you told him it was suddenly his birthday. "—for serious, motherfucker?!"

"Uh…" Wow, that definitely is a thing that cheered him up. "…sure?"

"Awesome." He lies back and stretches out in the moonlight—when his shirt rides up at the bottom you can see a sliver of his stomach and something dark—oh god, you're pretty sure that's the edge of a bullet hole oh god—before he rolls back over and it's gone.

Rolls back over…towards you.

Okay. That's a little weird how close to you he's lying now, but okay. You pull your blankets up to your chin, close your eyes (almost all the way) and the last thing you see before you really start to drift off is the light from the moon playing over his back, and dark splashes of blood blooming and fading on his shirt as his incorporeal shoulders rise and fall.

When you wake up, he's still there. He's sprawled out while you were sleeping, and one of his knees is going right through your stomach. He's about a quarter of an inch above the covers, and he…looks like he's fast asleep. The place where his leg vanishes into your skin feels strange and tingly, and weirdly…tight. Pressed. When you pull slowly away, there's slight resistance, and then you snap free.

"…Gamzee?"

He flickers. He rolls over a little (one shoulder vanishes into the pillow) then grumbles and settles again.

"Gamzee, wake up."

He shifts uneasily—wrinkles his nose, and nuzzles up closer to you. The places he touches you are cold. You can almost feel him touching you, but the pressure is like nothing you've ever felt before; resistant but giving, and when it gives under your hand you can feel it slip through you, not part around you. It makes some small, animal part of you want to get up and run away, but the rest of you is just curious.

Then you reach up to poke Gamzee's cheek and realize his eyes are just starting to blink blearily open.

You yank your hand away and roll upright in one smooth move, powered purely by embarrassment. Gamzee groans a little bit and then sits up, rubbing his eyes hard and shaking out his hair. He looks bleary, almost confused.

"…did I—" he presses a hand to his head. "…whoa. Did I go to sleep?" And then, before you can answer, louder now—your skull echoes and you wince, but he doesn't seem to notice. "—I totally motherfuckin' did! Holy shit, that was awesome, I totally just went to sleep! Man, how is that even all—" he waves a hand abstractedly in the air, like there's actually an end to that sentence that makes sense and if he tries hard enough he'll find it.

"…possible?" You try, a little bit blearily. (it's the next day and ghosts are still a thing that are real. Well fuck.)

"Yeah!" He bounces up close to you through the air all of a sudden, and you backpedal away from him so fast you almost fall off the bed. Personal space must not be as big of a thing with ghosts or something. Or maybe he just never had any sense of personal space—the weird, comfortable way he hangs around with you makes you think he was one of those people you envied in high school, talking at anyone who came close without worrying about anything at all.

Of course, you had actually quite a few friends in high school, but a lot of them, now that you're looking back, from a different viewpoint you guess—were kind of assholes? And you never had a single conversation with them without worrying at least a little bit afterwards that you'd messed that up somehow. (You were the totally uncool kid with the backpack full of anonymous 'hey hottie' notes and you so do not miss high school.)

And then you blink and realize you're being talked to.

"—what?"

If he's offended that you weren't listening, or even if he notices, he doesn't show it. "—I said I bet it's because I was all close up to you all night!" He repeats, and reaches out towards you, fanning out his fingers and flexing his hand. "…when I'm near you, I just gotta focus just the tiniest of all motherfuckin' bits, put my mind to it and all and...it makes me, like…real. Solid-er."

You reach out, hesitant, and poke at his outstretched hand. When you shook his hand yesterday, it was a strange, half-there feeling; this time it's almost like touching someone's real skin. He's too soft—you could still go through him if you pushed—and he's unnaturally cool to the touch, almost cold. But it's still unnervingly real.

You have to take your hand away. He jerks forward a little after you, and then tries to pretend he didn't.

"…what…what does that mean?"

He shrugs. You both stare at your hands, still hanging in the air a few inches apart, and then you shake yourself away and drop your hand. He transfers his stare to your face instead, and something in his eyes makes you catch your breath. He opens his mouth to say something—

Someone pounds on the door like they're trying to break it down. Both of you jump and whip around; whoever is outside is silent for all of five seconds before pounding again, even louder and more urgently.

"Sorry," you hiss, and turn away from him, heading for the door. "—give me a second."

You pull the door open in the next stretch of silence, and Karkat Vantas punches you in the chest instead of knocking on the place where your door used to be. You choke on air and start coughing horribly. He starts cursing like a sailor and apologizing in the angriest way possible.

Then, abruptly, you remember he can see Gamzee. So you do the only logical thing and slam the door in his face.

Gamzee has floated up while you were coughing, looking curious and worried—you wave him back hurriedly, still catching your breath. Karkat is small, but he hits like a hammer.

"Nitram!" says Karkat's voice outside the door—oh god your neighbors are definitely going to start complaining and you know Karkat doesn't' give a shit if he disturbs people or gets you in trouble. You don't know him well personally—he's good friends with Terezi though, and Terezi's friend Sollux spends a lot of time hanging out with him, you guess? How the hell did he find out where you live-? Oh right, never mind, he followed you home that one time. And then slammed his face into the ground. "Nitram, I know you're in there and I know who's with you, open the fucking door before I break it the fuck down!"

You have no cards in your hand, uh…

You ease up towards the door, as soon as you can get close without being deafened by Karkat's pounding. "Karkat…?"

The pounding doesn't start again.

"Open the door," Karkat orders you.

"Why?"

There's a long silence. Then, finally "…because," says Karkat. "I know a bit. About, uh…ghosts."

That's all I've got of that, pending further sudden inspiration-since it was written specifically for a friend on tumblr who came up with the concept in the first place, (tumblr user Idefix if you want to go look her up, her gamtav and gamkar are super cute) I wrote some for her and then just kind of moved on to my bigger writing projects. So if you're reading this, please do your best not to do the thing where you're like WHERE'S THE UPDATE or PLS WRITE MORE!

If you can avoid doing that, that would be ace. Thanks. :)