Your Ghost ? Sequel to Text Back

9+×颁辞濒诲×+9

Sapnap must have felt him, since the next thing he knew Sapnap was wide awake, looking around wildly.

"Oh, hey George, what's up?" a look of relief fell across his face, his arms moving to support him as he sat up.

George paused for a moment, sitting down in the air. He rubbed his arms, making a face before remembering that he wasn't invisible anymore.

"Nothing," George shrugged, his voice hoarse..

Sapnap cocked an eyebrow, humming, "Sure, you just decided to watch me sleep for no reason?"

A hint of something heavy dripped off of his voice that George didn't really remember having been there when he was alive.

"I missed you," George said quietly, almost shyly turning away from Sapnap as he floated closer anyways.

He could feel the air around them shift, weighing down with a sense of loneliness and finality.

"Come here," Sapnap scooted over to the side, holding his arms open. He always was a cuddler.

George settled right in next to him, and for the first time in a few months he felt at home. Not in the way that Dream used to feel like home, but it was still comforting. He hugged Sapnap back, shivering against his warm night shirt.

After a moment of soft, comfortable silence Sapnap spoke, "George, can I ask you something?" he glanced down at the ghost, who looked back at his friend with glassy white eyes.

"Yes Sapnap?" he said, his lips barely moving. He was still so very cold. His fingers pulled at each other, clinging tighter to Sapnap's warmth.

Sapnap inhaled, and George could feel it under his arms. He had forgotten what it was like to breathe.

"How are you and Dream? Honestly?" a tinge of worry laced his voice, baffling George. Why would Sapnap be worried about them?

"Good. He needs me," George nodded, sure of his role and happy to fulfill it.

Sapnap worried his lip, his eyebrows furrowed as he glanced down at George, then at the door, and then back at George again.

"Has he," Sapnap paused, "has he done anything weird? Like said something and then later on said he didn't say that?"

Sapnap was hurting. George wanted to switch subjects to something that wouldn't bring out that pained look in Sapnap's eyes and wouldn't make him dig his nails into his palms.

Thoughts drifted through George's head as he tried to conjure up a response to Sapnap's question.

The rain.

"Well he did say it was sunny when it was raining."

It felt like a confession, like George was in one of those booths he saw in old horror movies as a kid where the protagonist confessed their sins and the priest turned out to be a demon or something.

Sapnap nodded once, a quick sort of acknowledgement.

"Anything else?" his hand ghosted over George's arm and he leaned into it, straining to get as much warmth surrounding him as he could.

"Not really. He says he needs me. I'm his ghost. His. I think it's sweet. Do you think it's sweet, Sapnap?" George murmured into Sapnap's shoulder, practically purring from how hot Sapnap felt under his skin. He was nearly burning wherever mist met flesh.

"Are you cold?"

For some reason, it threw him off guard.

"Freezing."

"I was scared you would say that," with a sigh Sapnap pulled away from George, leaving him feeling colder than ever and his arms empty.

Before he could say anything, George's hands were pulled into Sapnap's.

He looked up at his friend's face, wondering what he was doing.

"George, you need to move on," Sapnap said, his voice calm but George could feel the way Sapnap really wanted to tell him to stay. His confusion must have showed on his face, because Sapnap's calm but shaky voice came back.

"If you stay here any longer you'll become an echo. Just a shitty broken record of George. Dream, he- It'd be better off if he didn't watch that happen," he comforted George, but George didn't need comforting.

They swam around his head, the words drowning under a fuzzy feeling George had gotten used to feeling recently but never this strong.

What did he mean, an echo? George was George, just a little dead and a lot more cold.

George's hands felt like they were on fire.

His voice was cold as he responded, the firm sentence feeling foreign on his tongue despite the amount of times he had said those words before in the metaphorical mirror.

"He needs me. I need to be here for him."

"George-"

"Sleep, Sapnap. It's gonna be okay. Talk tomorrow," a whisper of a smile hovered on George's face as he removed his hands from Sapnap's.

Sapnap's eyes searched his; what he had lost, George didn't know.

George lingered outside of Dream's room, his fingertips brushing through the wooden doorframe.

Little patches of ice messed up the paint where his hand had lay.

The basement was cold.

George was cold.