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Matt had told Brian that ghosts didn’t have any control over people’s dreams — “Maybe if you’re dreaming about me, it’s for a different reason,” followed by a smug, self-satisfied wink that made Brian wish a second, even worse death on the guy — but he was starting to doubt that.
At first he had asked because he was having dreams about car crashes. He’d be driving home from a concert — it never started at a concert, but he knew that’s where he was coming from. And then everything happened at once: bright lights, the sound of metal crushing against wood and plaster, and screaming from all sides. Right before the impact reached him he would wake up, his chest heaving and the sheets feeling too heavy on his body.
Sometimes he’d scramble out of bed and open the window, looking to the corner of the house. There was a slight imperfection in the wood paneling, where Pat had told him a renovation crew fixed it up after their crash blew the old boards to bits. Sometimes he’d just stay in bed, breathing square breaths like his mother had taught him (in for 4, hold for 2, out for 5) until it was a more decent time to be awake, or someone — Mikey, Matt, whoever — decided to come bother him.
He wasn’t having those dreams as frequently anymore. They’d gone back to normal, or as normal as dreams could be, but recently he was starting to notice something else.
Rivers was showing up in them. Shuffling by in amorphous groups of people, hanging around in dark corners of dreary architecture, always a few steps behind when Brian turned his head. Dressed in that red shirt, dark hair hanging just over his eyes, never getting closer. And when Brian woke up again, all he’d ever remember from the dream was that Rivers was there.
But during the daytime Rivers never did anything to suggest that he was causing those — in fact, Rivers hardly talked to him at all. Brian was just letting these stupid ghosts get to his head, and Matt was right (god, he hated thinking anything along those lines), and he should just put it all out of his mind. It would fade like the car crash finally had.
Except, one morning, Brian had woken up from a dream where he was trudging down a neverending snowy street, with Rivers occasionally passing by him, walking in the other direction. He’d shrugged it off and sat up in bed, then immediately yelped as he found himself sitting in a freezing-cold patch of air.
“Matt!” he sputtered, because when he woke up with a ghost on his bed it was usually Matt. This time there was no immediate answer, though the cold patch moved away. Brian scrambled for his glasses on the nightstand, shoving them on his face and looking back up.
Rivers sat at the foot of his bed, looking at him with huge, baleful brown eyes like Brian was the one who’d interrupted his peace. They stared at each other for a long, long moment, and then Brian finally put together that he’d have to be the one to ask for an explanation, because Rivers wasn’t talking.
He cleared his throat. “Um,” he muttered, pulling the sheets up to his chest, “good morning?”
Rivers nodded. “Hi,” he mumbled. “I want to talk to him.”
Brian furrowed his brows. “...Who?”
“The other one,” Rivers said, as if the answer was obvious. “I want to talk to him.”
“Mikey doesn’t even believe in ghosts,” Brian said. He was acutely aware that if he were talking to Matt, he would have spat the sentence out and told him to go away. But with Rivers — maybe it was because normally, Rivers didn’t even look at him — he just kept talking. “That’s why he can’t see you, probably. He just doesn’t… believe.”
“Mikey…” Rivers repeated quietly, dipping his head down to stare intensely at the blankets. “Ghosts aren’t fairies. They don’t go away if you just don’t believe in them.”
Brian didn’t know how Rivers could be so sure, but he decided not to press it. “Okay. Well, how are you supposed to talk to him?”
Rivers looked up at him again. And just kept on staring, the silence stretching out endlessly before them.
Then his lips quirked into a faint smile, and Brian’s stomach sank.
“No,” he said almost immediately, more of a plea than a flat-out statement. “No, I don’t —”
“It’ll just be for a moment,” Rivers said, cutting Brian off like he hadn’t noticed the other man had spoken at all. “I miss it. Talking to somebody warm and having them talk back.”
Brian bristled. “I’m warm,” he muttered.
Rivers just shrugged.
Brian couldn’t stand another silence, so before the pause could extend into one, he sighed. “Okay,” he murmured, “okay, you can — you can possess me, I guess, and — just — do you know what you’ll even say to him?”
Rivers shrugged again.
“...Ask him when he’s leaving,” Brian said quietly, dropping his own gaze down to the bed itself. “He’s going out on tour again with — I don’t remember which band. But I haven’t asked him when he’s leaving yet. So just — do that, and then I want my body back.”
“Do you care about him?” Rivers asked suddenly, and when Brian looked up he’d scooted closer. The hairs on his arms stood up on end — goosebumps from the temperature drop, he was sure.
“Well — he’s my friend,” he spluttered, but Rivers had already lost interest.
“Hold still,” he said simply, then pressed his forehead against Brian’s, and Brian felt like he was tumbling off the side of a cliff.
It felt like ice was spreading from where Rivers had made contact, and air filled his lungs though he hadn’t inhaled. He couldn’t breathe, actually — he was getting lightheaded already, the edge of his vision dimming as he sank into the bed, shivering.
The pressure on his lungs let up and he felt himself cough violently. Felt himself, because he wasn’t actually doing it — Rivers was. And Rivers raised Brian’s hand up to his face, observing the minute details of the pale skin carefully while using Brian’s voice to hum his approval.
Brian thought he might throw up, but he couldn’t feel his stomach. He couldn’t feel anything, actually. All he could do was watch.
It felt wrong somehow. When Matt possessed him — he did it faster, with less warning, but Brian still had a little bit of control. Rivers had fully taken over, and now Brian was a passenger in his own body.
So maybe it was a good thing that he physically couldn’t throw up unless Rivers made it happen.
“This is nice,” Rivers said, in Brian’s voice, slowly getting up from the bed. “You’re tall.”
Mikey’s taller, Brian tried to say, but he couldn’t force the words out of his own mouth. He watched as Rivers began to pace around the room, listening to the sound of his footsteps for the first time in however many years.
“I forgot what it was like,” he said, reaching out to knock a book off of one of the shelves. Brian winced. “Being real.” He went to knock another one off, swiping the paperback to the floor like a curious cat. The two of them stared at the small mess, then Rivers shrugged and stepped over it, walking right out of the room and down the hall. To where Mikey was sleeping — and he was definitely sleeping, because Brian knew he hardly ever woke up before noon when he didn’t have to.
Brian wondered why he had to be the only one who could see ghosts. They’d all probably like Mikey better, at any rate, and Mikey would be better at dealing with them. He was the sort of guy that could befriend a ghost, and Brian… was not.
Rivers pushed open the door to Mikey’s room, to find it pitch black. He blinked quickly but walked straight ahead like he knew where he was going (well, he had years to memorize every inch of this house, in darkness or light) and promptly tripped over the foot of Mikey’s bed.
There was a soft rustling in front of him. Brian’s heart leapt into his throat. Sorry about this, he didn’t bother trying to say.
Sitting up slowly, Mikey whispered, “Brian? ’Sthat you?”
“Yes,” Rivers said, in a short, clipped tone that didn’t sound like Brian at all, in his opinion. “When are you leaving?”
“Um.”
Mikey wouldn’t have a coherent response at — look at my watch, look at my watch, Brian repeated in his mind until Rivers did so — just past 8 in the morning. He probably wasn’t planning on waking up for another four hours or so, and that was a charitable estimate.
But instead of accepting the fact and leaving, like Brian (or, perhaps, a regular person ) would have done, Rivers climbed all the way onto the bed, crawling next to Mikey and leaning over him.
What are you doing, Brian would have shrieked if he were in control of his body, why are you doing this to me — to him?
“I’ll — miss you,” is what his body said instead, haltingly. Rivers stared down at Mikey, widening Brian’s eyes. Mikey squinted up at him, then reached over to the bedside table and jammed his glasses onto his face.
“You look weird, dude,” he said with a grin, scrunching up his nose just slightly. “Did something get in your eye?”
“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” was all Rivers said.
“Yes you did.” Mikey propped himself up on the bed with his elbows, pausing when Rivers didn’t move off of him. “Uh, did you get too lost in that dream of being a prima ballerina again? I mean, I know you can do a great jetée, but…”
He trailed off, as if expecting Brian to interrupt him. And Brian wanted to — shut up about the ballet thing, he seethed to just about nobody — but Rivers only stared. It was dead quiet, and Brian knew Mikey hated these kinds of silences too.
“It’s freezing in here,” Mikey said, and Brian noticed he still seemed a bit bleary, red tinting the edges of his eyes. “Betcha turned up the AC so you could come in here and say the house was too cold.”
Rivers was quiet.
“Aw, Bri,” Mikey added, his voice suddenly sickeningly, mockingly sweet, “If you wanted to cuddle you could’ve just asked.”
“No thanks,” Rivers said, to Brian’s relief, but he still didn’t move from where he was leaning over Mikey. “I just wanted to know. When you’d be leaving again.”
“Not till next week,” he said, and then yawned. “Do we have to be talking about this now?”
“Yes,” Rivers said, his hand brushing up against Mikey’s for a moment before drawing back like the touch burned. “I won’t get to later.”
Rivers’ own voice could probably make those words sound just fine, but coming from Brian’s mouth he sounded… desperate. Brian grimaced to himself, and for a brief moment he felt his expression change before Rivers wrestled it back to blankness.
His chest felt closed up, like someone had stuffed cotton in his lungs and told him to try breathing, and contrary to what Mikey said about the chill he was starting to feel kind of hot. The grasp on him was beginning to relinquish.
Rivers laid down on the bed with a huff, not meeting the other man’s questioning gaze as his eyes skated over the crumpled sheets, Mikey’s stubble, the clothes strewn about on the mattress.
“The house’ll be boring,” Rivers said finally. “When you’re not here.”
Mikey hesitated for a moment, surely perplexed by how casual Brian was being about getting into bed right next to him. “I’m sure the ghosts will keep you company,” he finally cracked, and Brian felt a little nauseous. No, he wanted to say.
“They can be boring too,” Rivers said after hesitation. “They’re very… stationary. One-track-minded. Preening.” He tentatively reached out to touch Mikey’s face. The edge of Brian’s vision was starting to go white.
Preening, he thought vaguely as a hum started to fill Brian’s — Rivers’? — no, Brian’s head, the breath in his chest catching over and over again. Preening, that’s what Matt does.
Mikey flinched out of the way of Rivers’ touch and opened his mouth to respond, but whatever he was saying, Brian couldn’t hear. Everything felt five degrees hotter and he tumbled off the bed, coughing and hacking as Rivers ripped himself out of Brian’s body.
It was like being shoved into the driver’s seat of a car after being tied up in the back. Suddenly Brian felt everything again — felt the hardwood flood under his sweaty skin, felt the air rushing in and out of his nose as he could properly breathe again, felt his glasses digging into his head. It was cold, he realized as he came to his senses, though that may have been because Rivers was sitting cross-legged on the floor, sulking right next to him.
Brian clawed back up to the bed, leaning against it, the color drained from his already-pale face. He looked up and saw Mikey staring at him, utterly perplexed.
“Dude,” he said, “you look like you just got possessed.”