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theharrowing · 1 year ago

Text

Lost & Found

Taehyung just wants to be left alone. Too bad you need a place to stay.

👻 Ghost Taehyung x Living Non-Gendered Reader (platonic), formerly Taehyung x Yoongi

👻 word count: 1.9k

👻 strangers to friends (kind of), haunting au, angst, hint of fluff, hurt/comfort, slice of life, 18+

👻 warnings: Taehyung is a ghost and we learn how he died, but it is not too graphic; grief, depression and crying. this might be sad for some, but i did my best to make it light and hopeful.

👻 note: since it’s a drabble, the descriptions are not as vivid as usual. it’s mostly ~vibes~.

👻 requested by @sabiekay for my Harrowing Halloween event! thank you so much for requesting!!! 💜 i, uhhhh.........i was not intending for this to be so focused on grief, but given my last couple of weeks, i am also not shocked by how i ended it. i hope you don't mind! 😅

👻 story told from Taehyung's pov!

👻 beta read by @neoneunnajimin

👻 posted nov. 2023 | read on ao3

Taehyung watches with a frown as you lean over the kitchen counter and sign a new lease. His kitchen counter, where he prepared his food all those years ago.

He frowns as he imagines you messing it up with condensating cups and take-out containers. Will you wash it properly with a detergent made for porous material or fuck it up with the cheap shit he has seen tenant after tenant spray on its surface?

That tends to be his final straw – the push he needs to haunt someone adequately enough to scare them off. He hates it when people fail to show consideration for other people's things. Just because he is dead does not mean this house is any less his.

He bought this house with his own money, fresh out of college. He proposed to the love of his life in the center of the living room just past where you shake hands with the landlord. And right above you, where there are three balusters that look slightly different from the rest on the wooden railing of the upper level was where he leaned just a little too hard unknowingly against rotting wood, falling to his death.

Just because the impact of his skull against that very kitchen counter that you lean against was culpable in his death, does not mean he wants some asshole from who-knows-where getting it all dirty and not taking proper care of it.

You have a nice smile, at least, albeit a little sad around the edges and never reaching your eyes. As he shifts just enough to make the curtains move and steps just close enough to give you a chill, he could swear you look directly at him, right into his eyes.

But why would you rent a home knowing that it is haunted by the ghost of its past? Taehyung finds the notion ridiculous. He is certain the landlord did not disclose the fact that previous tenants have broken their leases feeling scared for their lives after he has grown impatient and terrorized them; why would he?

As soon as the landlord is gone, Taehyung watches as you slump down to the hardwood floor, sitting with your knees bent, hugging them tightly. You do not look like a person who has made a big, happy life decision, and Taehyung finds himself nearly wishing to console you. Nearly.

"What am I doing?" you grumble into your knees before letting out a deep sigh.

Taehyung tests your limits almost immediately. He gets the sense that you might not hate the thought of not being perfectly alone, as he has caught you crying more than once, and you do not seem to have very many people you reach out to for comfort, if any at all. To say you seem lonely is an understatement.

When you come from around the kitchen counter, which is mostly bare of any personal items, he stands in your path, allowing you to feel just enough of his presence to get a chill down your spine. To his delight, you halt and look around as if trying to sense more of him, but then you shrug and carry on through the living room, to the hideous brown couch that clashes with your hideous black coffee table to dissociate, he assumes.

You spend a long time looking at nothing. Sometimes he slightly moves your scented candles a few inches over and opens the curtains just a crack, and you never seem to notice. Or, perhaps you don't care.

Truth be told, Taehyung prefers to be left alone. He likes it when his house is perfectly calm, still, and quiet. He can still remember the way it smelled when he and his fiancé Yoongi occupied the space, and he hates to imagine what it may smell like with someone around; he feels thankful that his sense of smell is gone, feeling none too eager to discover what candles like Witches Brew and Boo-Nana Toffee would do to the place.

Every inch of this home, even after years of new paint jobs and different, ugly furnishings, holds a different memory of Yoongi occupying the space. Seeing someone else in the home that was meant for the two of them feels wrong.

At least you do not take up a ton of space, but your depression kills the mood. The energy in the house is constantly off, and even Taehyung cannot fathom why you don't just go out and meet new people. It seems that you work or study from home; Taehyung does not pay close attention. He prefers to avoid traveling to the upper level of the house, and that is where you seem to spend the working hours of the day.

Each weekday, like clockwork, 5:05 pm rolls around, and you shuffle out of the smaller of the two rooms on the upper floor – the one where Taehyung had all of his art supplies set up and laid out long ago, where he assumes you have an office space set up. You are always dressed nicely from the waist up but wear sweatpants or pajama shorts and slippers, and you plop down on your couch, letting out a sigh so heavy that even the huff of air from the cushions under your weight falling against it cannot cover the sound.

Each weekday, like clockwork, you turn on the television and stare toward the screen, never seeming to watch it. Sometimes, you scroll around on your phone. Often, you cry. And then, after several bleak hours of seemingly nothing, you shut off the television, walk up the stairs, turn out all the lights, and leave Taehyung alone.

"I think the house may be haunted," Taehyung hears you say one day.

To his surprise, your voice travels from the upper floor, and he perks up from his place on your couch, glancing up in your direction.

You sit at the top of the stairs, looking down through the railing banister, directly at Taehyung. Well, at the space that Taehyung occupies. He wonders if you can see the slight dip that he likes to make in the cushion. He had been doing it for weeks with the hope of creeping you out, and he had begun to wonder whether you had been noticing at all.

This is only the second time Taehyung has ever seen you talking to another human being, and he watches with fascination as your face contorts to something that may actually be considered a smile.

"It's a vibe I get," you say with a shrug.

Eager to enhance the vibe, so to speak, Taehyung slowly begins to stand. He is certain that the shifting of his energy is causing the cushion of the couch to relax from its indented position, and he watches with delight as your eyes widen, following the movement.

“S-sorry,” you mutter into the phone, shifting in place while your eyes stay glued to the couch, “spaced out. What did you say?”

Taehyung stays put while you finish your conversation, having all the time in the world to watch as your eyes trail knowingly back to the spot on the couch before you finally stand and retreat into one of the upstairs rooms.

Today, when 5:05 pm rolls around and you do not shuffle from the upstairs room, Taehyung grows concerned. He moves to the kitchen and checks the calendar you have hanging on the fridge, which is covered in images and stickers of kittens, confirming today is a weekday by seeing that the last day you crossed a black x over – yesterday – was Wednesday.

He considers walking up the stairs to make sure you are alright, but he hesitates. Not since Yoongi left, has he been in the bedroom they shared. Not since grief pushed his beautiful fiancé to pack up and move out and never return – a grief that Taehyung shares to this day.

But as the minutes tick by, Taehyung becomes increasingly worried. He tells himself that he should go upstairs and check on you – that if it is too much to handle, he will return downstairs.

Slowly, Taehyung makes his way up, walking each step at a time despite not needing to, just to hear the third step creak underfoot as it has so many times before. He keeps expecting to see you appear at the top landing, ready for your daily routine of spacing out during reruns of a drama he once enjoyed, but you never do.

Once at the top landing, he hears you crying. It is unmistakable the way you sob – familiar in the way each inhale rattles through your lungs.

When he rounds the corner and peeks into the master bedroom, nostalgia hits him hard. You sit at the edge of your bed with your head in your hands, just as Yoongi had for months after the accident.

Without thinking, Taehyung approaches and sits on the bed beside you, close enough that the dip from his weight makes you gasp and lift your head to check.

Your hand falls to the spot, straight through Taehyung’s leg, and you chuckle while sniffling wetly. Taehyung is shocked to see you smiling, slight as it is.

"Hey, there," you say through a shaky inhale. "I was wondering if you would ever join me."

Silence hangs, and Taehyung weighs his options. He is certain that he has no voice that can be heard, and changing the weight of his energy might actually freak you out. To his own surprise, Taehyung finds he is not eager to scare you away. And so, he just sits with you, and he does nothing.

“It doesn’t get easier, does it?” you ask after a long pause, eyes cast down on your hand that traces dips in the fabric of the soft white comforter. Softer, as if just to yourself, you say, “I don’t know how to let her go.”

Taehyung gets it, he really does. Without knowing who you have lost and how, he cannot help but think of Yoongi, of the life they were building, and of the love that they shared.

For the first time since Yoongi left, Taehyung feels glad his house is not empty of life. He wants to tell you that it will get easier, but that it never really goes away; that the pain ebbs and flows, and some days are harder than others. He wants to console you in more ways than just sitting by your side. It is strange, but he thinks he wants to try a little harder to befriend you – to make his presence known.

“At least I have cool ghost vibes to keep me company,” you mutter, making yourself laugh as you sniffle in a sob and your tears come out over a bright smile. "Thank you for sitting with me and making me feel a little less alone."

For the first time since Yoongi left, Taehyung feels glad to know he can bring comfort to someone again. And for the first time in years, his house feels a little more like a home; a place where those who have lost may just find something new.

HAPPY (late) HALLOWEEEEN!!! 🎃👻🍂

the ending feels a bit abrupt, but i was trying to keep it as short and sweet as possible. it felt like if i tried to add even one more scene, it would become a beast needing to be tamed lolol.

i hope you enjoy this little drabble! i have a couple more on the way, so look forward to Halloween vibes in November hehe. submissions for this event are closed, but i hope to do it again, next year!!!

REBLOGS AND COMMENTS KEEP ME WRITING, AND LIKES MAKE MY DAY BRIGHT!!! THANK YOU FOR READING! I LOVE YOU!

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Lost & Found is copyright theharrowing 2023. no translations or reposting allowed!

#taehyung x reader #taehyung angst #taehyung fluff #taehyung scenarios #bts angst #bts fluff #bts scenarios #a harrowing halloween #fic: lost & found

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