Written on 12/9/2014 for stephanericher on tumblr for the AU ficlet meme:

41. ghost/living person au

(warnings for character death (well... obviously...) and lots of angst.)

If getting the first phone call from home that Shuu'd taken a king hit and was in the hospital with brain damage, and then the second phone call as he made desperate preparations to return back home for a 'family emergency' (since 'my boyfriend might be dying' probably wouldn't have gone over quite as well) informing him that said boyfriend had died weren't enough to make Tatsuya question the world and fate in general's poor taste in jokes (it seemed destiny itself had something out for him), then Shuu's specter sitting at the end of his bed the day after he'd come back from LA after attending his dead boyfriend's funeral was more than enough.

At first he thought he was hallucinating, even though he hadn't taken any drugs, and there was no history of psychosis in his family's medical history, and then he'd wondered aloud if he was dreaming, and then Shuu scowled.

"If you were dreaming," Shuu asked, "why would I still be dead?"

Blunt and honest, as always. It stung, still, the reminder that Shuu was dead, even though it was coming from Shuu's mouth, in Shuu's voice, things that should have been reminders that he was alive.

"Fuck," Tatsuya muttered. He'd cried enough over the last few days and he was supposed to be going back to classes today. "I can't deal with this."

"Tatsuya."

"You're dead," he whispered, and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. "You're dead, Shuu, what the fuck is going on?"

He felt his shoulder break out in goosebumps, and pulled a hand away from his eyes only to catch Shuu frowning as he pulled away. Shuu'd tried to touch him, Tatsuya's mind supplied almost hysterically. His dead boyfriend's ghost had tried to touch him and given him goosebumps.

"I don't know," Shuu said. "I don't know what's going on."

The worst part, Tatsuya thought as he called the student dorm supervisor to say that he was still jetlagged and didn't think he would be able to get through his classes today, was that even though he could speak to him, he couldn't touch him, wouldn't be able to feel the comfort of Shuu's strength while he held onto him or his warmth when he kissed him. It had been hard enough to face the fact he'd never have these things again, and he'd only barely just started processing it. The fact that Shuu was there, clearly and undeniably, and Tatsuya still couldn't have him was perhaps the world's biggest fuck you Himuro Tatsuya that he'd ever experienced.

Days pass.

Shuu doesn't.

Tatsuya feels like he's going slowly and quietly insane.

He thinks Shuu's figured out why he's still here, and Tatsuya thinks he knows too, but he's never going to say it.

He's not sure he can give Shuu up a second time, even if it has to be like this.

("It's my fault you died," he whispers, and Shuu reaches to pull him into his embrace from where he's kneeling on the floor, but his phantom limbs go right through Tatsuya, and he can't stop crying, because Shuu's telling him he's wrong, that it's not his fault.

But Tatsuya cannot bring himself to believe that Shuu would still be dead today if he hadn't come back to Japan.

And because fate and the universe hates him, Shuu is gone in the morning when Tatsuya wakes up.)