I've been ghosting, I've been ghosting along, ghost in your house, ghost in your arms.

When you're tossing, when you turn in your sleep, it's because I'm ghosting your dreams.

. . .

That had been a hard night with some hard emotions.

Renji finally seemed to realize that he should be scared, and got a little spooked after hearing what Ichigo told him about not having been in the house at all that night, not until he'd caught him in the bedroom and pulled the blanket off.

Ichigo was equally creeped out when Renji told him in turn that he'd been over all night, and when Ichigo had showed up and pulled the sheet off, it had been like waking up. Of course, he was less creeped out than he should be, considering he'd been dealing with this type of thing for months now and should have come to expect it. Mostly he was just feeling this intense sense of relief and gratefulness that he'd been mistaken about what he'd thought he'd seen.

"Are you sure?" Renji asked for like the third time, uneasiness plain on his face.

"Renji," Ichigo said firmly, "I went home to the clinic at ten. We didn't go back together."

"No, I know, but… you were here," he repeated in confusion, like he couldn't make it work in his brain. "It was you. I mean... you're not lying to me, are you?"

"Why would I do that?!" Ichigo sputtered. "You saw what I saw!"

"I just… but it was like a normal night. We talked and stuff and… and…" Renji's face grew blank, eyes unseeing. "The ghost," he said. "I had ghost sex."

Ichigo facepalmed. That's what he took away from it? "Yeah, okay." Apparently he was stuck on it, because Renji kept saying it, at first horrified, and then strangely, a little into it. "Ugh, unbelievable," Ichigo groaned, "How do you get turned on by that shit."

"It was great, you were really into it. I mean, ghost-you. Well… the ghost, I mean." Renji seemed embarrassed then, maybe that he hadn't been able to tell them apart. When Ichigo just sort of stared at him, incredulous and on the edge of bursting out laughing, Renji mistook his silence for anger, and muttered tentatively, "You're not mad, are you?"

"Uhh, no? How were you supposed to know."

"I feel like I should've realized though," Renji sighed, grimacing and putting his chin in his hand, leaning on the kitchen table. Ichigo yawned. They hadn't gotten any sleep last night after that whole incident, having yelled at each other in shock for a few minutes and then decided to get the fuck out of there and stay in a hotel for the night. They'd come back around noon, and although the halls were strangely quiet, Ichigo felt like it wouldn't last if they stayed very long.

Strangely, this didn't bother him anymore. He didn't feel that insecure whatever feeling anymore, or any fear at all, really.

"Seriously though," Renji muttered, holding onto his hand across the table, rubbing his thumb over it. "Fucking creepy." Ichigo shrugged. "Hey." He looked up. "Sorry I kept calling you crazy before."

"You didn't."

"I know, but I know that's how I made you feel," Renji apologized. "... I'll sell it if you want."

"Nah."

"I think I should." Slowly, he worked out, "I mean, it's tried hurting you, hasn't it. All that stuff…" He looked at Ichigo's arm, out of the bandage, but still heavily scabbed.

"No, don't," Ichigo brushed off, "I'm not worried anymore."

"Why not?"

"Just leave it to me."

He'd kind of reached the point where he was done entertaining this shit, past the point where he could be scared off with parlor tricks. Shiro had gone so far over the boundaries that Ichigo just didn't care anymore. He'd touched on Ichigo's latent fear of being abandoned, his secret worry that Renji hadn't committed because he wasn't good enough, or was somehow lacking.

It wasn't that Ichigo was jealous, because he wasn't and never had been. Due to Renji's flirty personality, it was a good thing that he wasn't, but seeing what he'd seen last night had devastated him, even for just the few moments that he'd thought Renji had really…

That bastard ghost was gonna' fuck with him? Nah, they're not having this. You're not gonna' fuck Ichigo's boyfriend, son.

Renji frowned. "What're you gonna' do?"

"You'll see."

The rest of the day went on as normal. He and Renji did some work around the house. They'd stopped several weeks ago when Ichigo had started having doubts about wanting live here, but they fell back into the routine pretty quickly. Ichigo mowed the grass and Renji fucked around on the roof, cleaning the gutters.

When they went to bed some time later after cooking dinner together and playing Tekken, Ichigo could smell that Renji had done the laundry and changed the sheets. For a second, Ichigo didn't know what to do, lying in bed rather stiffly, but Renji reached an arm out for him tentatively with this warm soft gleam in his eyes, and they just held each other in silence until falling asleep.

Ichigo woke up in the dark, and this time, there was no crying, no slamming doors, no bad dreams, but he knew he was out there waiting. He sat up and got out of bed, checked that Renji was still sleeping and then opened the door.

That night when Ichigo saw Shiro in the hallway, he walked towards him.

His heart jolted when Shiro rushed at him, but Ichigo didn't turn away despite the spike of terror trying to lock his joints. It took only a second or two for Shiro to reach him, and instead of colliding with a hard body, it felt like that strange sensation of going to drink a soda immediately after opening it and inhaling the mist accidentally, half-choking on it.

Everything around him seemed to shake and whirl in that moment of soda-mist choking, and then there was blackness.

And they're together.

Ichigo had never felt less afraid of a ghost, not since he hadn't believed in them. Even in the stretch of dark space, enclosed on all sides with nothingness, there wasn't any more fear. Why should there be, when he knew where he was in the waking world, up there in bed with Renji wrapped around him?

"Why're you doing this, huh?" he called into the void, looking around him wildly for any sign of him. He knew he was there, but where was he?

"You're trying to be me? You like Renji?" He shook his head. "Shiro, I'm sorry. You're dead." Throwing his arm out, he told him, "An' Renji loves me, not you."

Earlier, he'd thought he'd be mad, that he'd react with violence like he had before with the whole kiss Renji in a dream thing, but honestly, Ichigo felt sad for Shiro more than anything now. It was kind of a miserable existence, to leech onto someone else's life like that.

"I'm like you," he heard at last, a whisper, far away, from all sides, echoing around him like a fluttering insect. Ichigo looked around him as the sound blew past.

"Like me? I mean, we look alike, yeah," he said slowly. So Shiro was here after all, huh? Not wanting to provoke him any worse if he could talk to him directly at last and try to understand his feelings, Ichigo said carefully, "Is that why you're mad? You're jealous of me?"

"I'm like you," he heard again, this little whisper of a voice. "I loved a boy."

Ichigo didn't know what to say to that, just looked around him in silence for a few moments, at last wondering, "... Did the boy die?"

"He pretended I made him, to get out of trouble," Shiro said, voice contorting through different shades of pain, betrayal, anger, wretched bitterness.

"You got caught toge-" Ichigo grunted, feeling weak all of a sudden.

He clutched at his chest, his breath coming out raspy and short when Shiro snapped, "He ran." Ichigo could feel him then, as if the very air was bearing down on him, clawing into his neck and his face and his chest.

"And you know what my family did to me?" Ichigo's eyes snapped around wildly at the eerie echo coming louder, harsher, a vicious snarl. "You know what they fucking did?"

'The crying,' he thought suddenly.

They were back in that little room again, under the house, and this time it was dank, and dirty, and smelled of death. And all he heard was screams, horrible screaming and the occasional sob and plea. They'd put him in here, hadn't they, for days in the dark, all alone, and when at last they'd come down to find him, filthy and starving, they hadn't let him out.

"You know what they fucking did to me?" Shiro raged.

"An exorcism," he whispered.

"They strapped me down in a chair, for hours. Thought I was possessed and that they could help me if I just got weak enough for them to get the devil out of me, and you know what? They fucking tortured me until I died."

And Ichigo felt it, he felt the falling book hitting him in the back like a strap, he felt the lightswitch shocking him like live wires under his fingernails and taped to his head and his chest. He felt himself screaming in his sleep and clawing fruitlessly at his chest, burning, burning, hot wax poured on his bare flesh, but the pain didn't end, it didn't end until the blackness came, and then there was nothing else.

"They beat me and electrocuted me and burned me, and I fucking died," Shiro snapped, growling like an animal, his voice stretched with barely withheld rage and sorrow. "And then they put me out and I stank in the sun."

When at last Ichigo stopped thrashing and screaming, the feeling of his flesh decaying and his lungs and eyeholes and empty gut filling up with soil, he collapsed forward, sweating and gasping, and he managed to stand up from the chair, and there was Shiro, alight with rage.

"Okay," he whispered, wiping his wet face and putting his hands on his head. "Yeah."

Body trembling with exertion, Ichigo felt sad and understood all the pain and anger and rage that person felt. He'd always lived this sort of indifferent mellow life after his mom died, not really caring what others thought of him, but there weren't many consequences anymore, considering he was strong enough to beat up the only bullies he still faced. He couldn't imagine not being able to live freely. He can't imagine being hurt like that for living the way he does.

"Don't fucking stand there and act like you feel sorry for me," Shiro shouted, spitting in rage. "Don't pretend you could ever understand the pain I feel! I'm dead! My family killed me!" he screamed, tearing at his chest.

"You're right," Ichigo panted, "You're right, I can't." He straightened up, holding a hand out as the room faded away into that stretch of black space again. Shiro's golden eyes are there, and when he blinked, he was gone. "But the boy," Ichigo said, catching his breath, "I understand that. I know how that feels."

Taking a few steps around in the blackness, he could feel Shiro drawing away, curling in on himself as the anger receded, leaving only bitterness and heartbreak and pain and why-why-why. "I can't imagine being told I have to let go of someone I love. I don't know what I would do," Ichigo said. "Your family was wrong for what they did."

"Why did he leave?" came the tiny whisper. "Why did he run away?"

Ichigo swallowed hard. "... He was afraid."

"He left me to die," Shiro wrenched out.

Ichigo didn't have an answer for that. "What those people did wasn't fair." He thought to himself for a few moments, then said, "But whatever you're doing, it won't make you feel better. It won't take away that pain." He shook his head. "I might be the same as you, but that boy though, Renji's not that boy."

"Is that what you really think?"

He stopped then. "What does that mean?"

"You think he loves you more than my boy did?"

"I know Renji loves me," Ichigo said, hesitantly.

"Then why are you afraid he'll run away too." Ichigo was the one to draw away then, feeling speechless and small.

"I... I'm not," he muttered.

"Then why don't you say it."

"Say what?"

"You know what."

Ichigo didn't reply, and in the silence and emptiness of the endless darkness, the pain and anger and wild despair of Shiro's rage had washed out of focus, leaving behind a quiet sadness, a sense of regret.

"You should. I wish I had."

Ichigo woke up.

The following day was disarmingly normal. Nothing else really happened after that. Even the general feeling through the house was different, the dark malicious intent seemed to have gone, and even that peaceful feeling Ichigo had gotten when he and Shiro had briefly gotten along, that wasn't there either. There was just nothing.

Ichigo didn't know how to feel. Despite the release, there was this surreal sense of discontent in his chest.

There was a huge pile of rocks in the back yard though, and a little spotted cat playing in the grass with a moth.

Renji came out onto the back porch and stood beside him, sipping his coffee. Ichigo didn't reply, looking out over the woods, somehow saddened.

"It's gone," Renji noted.

So he felt it too, huh?

"Yeah, I guess so."

. . .

And this is why I have decided to pull these old white sheets from my head.

I 'll leave them folded neat and tidy so that you'll know I'm out of hiding.