The Ghosty Bros - Sleepy Bois Inc.

Chapter 24

Tommy lay awake in bed. It was too loud, even though there wasn't a single noise in his room.

Some part of him anticipated another voice to completely interrupt his train of thought. Perhaps he was simply faking it. There was no reason that he shouldn't be able to focus or get back to his ghost form.

He expected something manageable, something he could at least hide. This was much harder than he expected. Wilbur knew something was off, and so did Phil. And Techno, too.

Was this really how it was?

Did Tubbo have to deal with this? Or had he discovered something completely new, worse even? The new weight in his chest wasn't helping him in the slightest.

Tubbo never told him. As much as Tommy regretted not telling him things, Tubbo never opened up and fully told him what he was dealing with. He always hid it behind a smile and another "I'm okay."

"Okay" was not the word for it. Despite what he did now, normality was a distant fantasy. Instead, Tommy found another phrase that reassured his heavy heart. "I can fix this," he muttered.

It was all one giant puzzle, he simply had to put the pieces back together.

Tommy was abruptly awoken. Like standing up too quickly, tracers around his eyes started to blind his sight. A constant tug ripped everything apart, and he heard Tubbo suddenly gasp with him.

Falling into unconsciousness was becoming a pattern in his life, yet somehow Tommy barely kept himself in the room.  The feeling faded and he heard Wilbur inhale quickly with concern. "Do you want to wait until later?"

"No, I'm good," Tommy tried to reassure him as he blinked multiple times to clear his vision. It all felt relatively normal, just distant and out of touch.

Slowly Tommy reconfigured, with slightly more defined features than last night. "Is there anything wrong or...?"

Wilbur looked him up and down. "Yeah, don't worry, I was just seeing things. You're... not looking the best." Tommy's features wrinkled into a painful smile. "But that's okay!" Wilbur tried to reassure him.

"We'll just take it easy, so we're not doing anything dangerous. We could just try small stuff, right? Talking and-"

"I guess, sure." Tommy flickered his light on and off. "I've got it all fine, I think." He attempted to phase through the wall, but he hit his hand against the lamp and almost knocked it over.

"Ignore that," Tommy half-joked. He pushed hard against the wall but he was met with a solid surface. He was more likely to punch a hole rather than glide through it. "Sorry, one second," Tommy laughed nervously as Wilbur stared.

~~~

Tubbo looked to the side, knowing well what he had just seen. He was there for a moment. For just a fraction of a second, it was all right. He couldn't say normal, because normal was never achievable anymore, but so close. He felt himself and the strong pull of his body back home, which he had never noticed before being separated from it.

Just as quickly, the vivid dream was pulled from his grasp and he was sat back as a spectator to his own world. Tubbo sat in his own thoughts, questioning a new opportunity he had thrown away as irrelevant and risky.

Revival was impossible.

But so were ghosts.

"Tommy," Tubbo called. No answer. He repeated himself a little louder.

The image of Tommy began to walk around the room, turning off the lights and pushing against the wall. He wasn't sure if Wilbur could see it, but small glitches in Tommy's form made him look like he were with Tubbo, a hand occasionally lingering outside of his designated light or an odd glance in Tubbo's direction.