𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘴

𝙝𝙖𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙

written by sapphic-soot on tumblr!!

(y/n) was living with a ghost.

not in the ways you'd expect: there was no corpse beneath the floorboards, no doors slamming of their own accord, no horror story to keep you up at night. that would have been far more interesting. but there were cold chills, empty laughter bouncing off the walls from your room when you weren't there. there was something dying there.

alex had been the perfect boyfriend. he'd waited just the right amount of time before asking you out and when he took you out he was a perfect gentleman - always producing just the right words to send you crumbling to the floor in laughter. it took seven months for him to finally take the piles of your clothes occupying his drawer space and spare toothbrush in his bathroom as a hint to move in together. the day he did, you were so overwhelmed with joy you cried in his arms on the kitchen floor for hours.

'. . .can we call our house the igloo?" he'd asked after a beat of silence, the rough material of your now-fraying sweater pressed against flaming cheeks and flooding eyes when a laugh bubbles through your throat and past your lips like hot tar.

you sniff, teeth sinking into your own lower lip to stifle a grin that could've melted him in a heartbeat, "alex quackity, if you ever refer to our home with a club penguin reference again, i'll kick you out."

as if drawn together through warm magnetic force, he seems to inch impossibly closer to you, igniting fondness and goosebumps on every inch of your skin, "but mi amor, we'll keep each other warm out here. and fill the halls with pictures of our puffles. what could be more perfect?" that was the day that trapped you here, in these walls to die.

even after all this time, those moments remain in your heart untainted - washed over in soft hues of pink that mask every sign that anything could go wrong. but the man from that kitchen floor wasn't the man you lived with now.

sometimes you still hear his laughs though. in that cursed room down the hall, chatting away for hours with anyone who isn't you. the first time you'd complained, he'd told you it was just work, afterall, why would he want to spend time away from his hermosa? at the time that'd been enough for you. you tried to make it enough for you, at least. nobody wants to be the too-needy girlfriend, not when the hours in his office paid for your house and certainly not when the friends were just too nice to hate.

but you can only spend so long in a haunted house like the loneliness eats you alive. your hands clench around nothing, clasping at thin air for some semblance of comfort you haven't felt in a while as you wait for alex to finally tear his eyes away from the screen to give you so much as a moment of his time. and when he finally does, you can't even bring yourself to look him in the eyes. it's pathetic.

"(y/n)?" he asks, and if it's not the name - or maybe the absence of his usual pet names - that near sends her reeling, it's the innocence wading through the murky pools of his eyes. there's remnants of fondness you don't care to look for.

he didn't know what was coming. you couldn't beg him to love you anymore, or to find time in his day for the person he'd once have died to be with. it was near-killing you as much as it was him.

"i'm leaving."

he frowns and you find yourself clutching at the desk until your knuckles turn bone-white, "where to? i thought you bought groceries yesterday?" you hadn't. he'd have known that if he could tear his eyes from the screen, from the textbooks, from the stream of comments. "home, alex. i'm going home." he chuckles, it's cold and tastes foreign on his tongue. you can tell by the way he darts his tongue across his teeth to shake the taste of it, "you're already home, are you feeling okay? i have to record in an hour but-"

that was the nail in the coffin.

you'd told him you'd be the one to kick him out, to pack up his things and lock the door. a joke. but in the end, it was you who left him to live on in that home, where the only ghost of your memory lay behind framed pictures on the halls collecting dust.