We Haunt Ourselves (Sterek) (boyxboy)

Chapter One

Derek is dead. Or, at least, he thinks he's dead. He's all transparent-looking, can't be seen or heard, and people seriously walk right through him. If he's not a ghost, he doesn't know what he is.

When he thinks back and tries to remember what might have happened to him, his head begins to spin and he keels over with the intense pain of the memories. Jeesh, isn't the afterlife supposed to be his time of rest? Derek supposes it could be worse. He supposes he could be in hell instead of stuck on the earthly plane as a ghost. He doesn't even know how long he's been dead, how he died, who he's left behind...nothing. It's kind of surreal. He's still in his old, shitty duplex, and by the lack of noise next door it seems like it's still uninhabited (due to the fact that the other half of the duplex is pretty much rotting away).

Derek doesn't feel angry, the way ghosts are supposed to feel. He's supposed to have some sort of unfinished business, right? Something that's tying him to this earth? Derek doesn't really feel like there's something he needs to finish. Actually, he doesn't really feel anything. He's not frustrated, not sad that he's dead, not happy about it either, and definitely not angry at anyone.

Well, he might be angry at someone if he could remember them, but honestly there's a huge blank in his mind where he knows there are supposed to be some people. It's an odd thing, to miss someone you don't remember, but somehow Derek achieves this.

He remembers this shitty duplex. Remembers waking up in his squeaky bed and making crappy coffee and drinking it while reading the most recent devastating news from his phone. Everything is hazy, even though he still remembers that much, but all he knows for sure and all he really needs to know is that he woke up as a ghost and it's where he's decidedly going to reside (live doesn't seem like the appropriate term for this situation) as a ghost as well.

By the time he's actually familiar with being in this form, he's got a pretty great routine going. Unfade from whatever limbo he's in when he's not there, float around for a little bit, try to grab objects in his home (and fail), attempt to venture through the walls again (okay, he definitely cannot float through walls), and mourn the fact that he can't read his many books anymore.

Derek has decided that the afterlife sucks. It's boring and he can't do anything and it's getting increasingly harder to stick around in the plane of reality. His stuff hasn't even been moved out of his house, goddammit, and isn't that the first thing they do after you're dead? He spends a good chunk of time wondering why no one's even touched his house...and then it happens.

"Wow. Looks slightly less shittier on the inside than it does on the outside." A voice reverberates harshly against the slightly dusty walls of the home, reaching Derek in a way that makes his eyes narrow. Who the hell is in his house? And why the hell do they think it's alright to insult it? Derek is the only person who can do that.

"You've already rented it out, dude." Another voice answers, this one more mellow. Honestly, the man sounds kind of high.

"It's really not that bad," the first guy seems to be trying to convince himself. "And I mean, already furnished and shit. I promised Laura I wouldn't trash the place. She said the owner might come back at some point."

"Who's the owner?" The high guy asks, kind of like a secret, and Derek finds himself leaning over the banister at the top of the stairs to listen.