A Touch of Life

5

"I can't believe I agreed to this. I can't believe you did this, Emmie, I knew you couldn't be trusted, you're far too emotional," Seamus muttered.

He and Emmie were walking through the cemetery in the pitch black, Emmie clutching a torch and trying not to freak out at every small sound, and Seamus mumbling about how stupid Emmie was.

"I'm paying you for this! You couldn't possibly understand because you have the emotional range of a turnip. I couldn't kill her Seamus, she was so sad," Emmie was dragging two shovels in the hand that didn't have hold of the torch, and he was inspecting each gravestone carefully, searching for Fleur's name.

"She got beaten to death. I didn't expect her to be happy," Seamus said. Emmie assumed he would be rolling his eyes. Even though it was too dark to see, it wasn't hard to guess.

"Did we find out any information on her killers, or were you too busy making heart eyes at her?"

Emmie scowled.

"She can't remember, sounds like it was unprovoked, like the police said."

"Oh great, so that was all for nothing, and now we have to dig up her dead but not dead body from a creepy old cemetery in the middle of the night," Seamus said bitterly, grabbing Emmie's sleeve and pointing at a fresh mound of dirt headed by a piece of wood that had Fleur's name etched messily into it.

"Found her."

They got to work digging, after Emmie had checked the name on the grave marker a couple hundred times to make sure that they weren't about to dig up a rotting old person instead of Fleur.

After what seemed like hours of digging, Emmie's shovel hit the wood of Fleur's coffin, and Emmie heard a weak cheer come from inside, which made him laugh rather hysterically. He turned to Seamus again and reminded him that he was most definitely going to need therapy in the near future for all of this.

"You're the one who chose to have an undead girlfriend," Seamus reminded him, helping haul the lid off of the coffin.

Fleur sat up with a gasp and another weak cheer, tossing the small oxygen tank aside before she turned to grin at Emmie.

"You took your time," she joked, beaming.

Emmie grinned right back. "Sorry, my partner wasn't much help."

"I will kick you in that coffin and leave you both here if you don't stop bitching," Seamus muttered. Fleur giggled and hauled herself out of the coffin, holding a hand out to Seamus.

"I'm Fleur, previously Emmie's best friend, and previously dead."

"Seamus. Currently Emmie's business partner, and currently a detective," said Seamus, shaking Fleur's hand.

"And I'm Emmie, and I'd currently really like to get out of the creepy graveyard, please," Emmie added. Fleur turned to laugh at Emmie, and Seamus rolled his eyes, shutting the coffin and getting back to work putting the soil back over it.

Emmie was constantly hyper aware of his proximity to Fleur. Mostly, he tried to keep at least a foot away from her, but Fleur never really had a concept of personal space before she died, and she kept edging closer and closer to Emmie, causing Emmie to nearly have a breakdown every five seconds.

"As much as I really like you and would like nothing more than to hold your hand or something right now Fleur... You do realise that if we touch, even by accident, you're gonna die?" said Emmie quickly as he jumped away from Fleur, just before their hands bumped together.

"Yeah please don't do that, I do not want to have just done all of that grave digging in the middle of the night for nothing," interjected Seamus.

Fleur stopped, and her face dropped a little.

"I keep forgetting," she said softly. "Sorry."

Emmie would've wrapped his arm around Fleur's shoulders, or pulled her into a hug, or even just bumped their shoulders together, just as a silent comfort to Fleur in any normal situation, but he knew he couldn't.

Instead, Emmie put his hands behind his back and clutched onto them tightly as he walked. He looked to Fleur and grinned, and she looked to his hands, her mouth curling up into a smile. 

Fleur copied Emmie, putting her hands behind her back and holding on, and they walked in step with each other side by side, pretending that they were clutching onto each other's hands instead of their own.