Chapter Text
Well….how had you gotten here?
Mostly through being forced by society, university rules, and your own anxiety, you were living alone in an apartment instead of staying in the dorms. A very small, but mid-level nice apartment. You only have to deal with the weird smells from the neighbor’s cooking and the giant dog on the other side of the fence barking every time you go past.
College was paid for, that wasn’t the issue (thanks to your acute awareness of your family’s bad finances, you’d applied to all sorts of scholarships and won several), and your grandparents (bless them) had insisted you have space to yourself so you could concentrate. Your grandmother was your best friend, and she always listened. You miss the smell of the perfume powder she liked to wear. You might buy some when you get yourself around to doing the “proofread and editing for $10” scheme you did in high school again.
But right now, it was your first weekend, and you only had reading as homework, so that was done. You were a very quick reader, even if sometimes words would appear on a page that weren’t actually there, just your brain rearranging letters in proximity.
That means you’re alone with your thoughts, and that’s BAD.
--
The next week comes around, just small assignments, and your nights are getting into the typical routine of unsettling dreams that just leave you exhausted on waking. Couple that with your crippling social anxiety and class is just peachy.
At least doing the work is easy. Listening to lectures is easy. The participation points are hard to come by for you, but hey, you try.
And at least you don’t have to worry about a roommate.
Besides that weird shadow you keep seeing dart away from the corner of your eye. The one that has tentacles you’re pretty sure (you’ve heard of enough hentai to know where that could go).
Thankfully ghosts were not one of your problem spots. You actually were kind of excited at the idea of a ghost. Maybe, if you talked to them, they’d become a peaceful spirit, or a helpful one. God you wanted a friend who wasn’t going to judge you, and what did a ghost have to gain by judging?
“Uh…” you finally got the courage to talk after seeing the shadow for the fourth time in as many days. “Hey there, um, ghost? Spirit? Person?” You felt a little dumb talking to thin air, but you KNEW that shadow was real. “I keep seeing you move around. Glad I’m not bothering you enough to make you really haunt me or anything.”
There wasn’t an answer, of course, but you chuckled anyway, “I know, I should probably keep quiet then.” You were making fliers for your money earning endevor. Reading as easy, editing came naturally to you, so this was a very reasonable and manageable way to earn money without hurting yourself or getting a dreaded retail job. You did NOT do well with people, especially if they were as rude as all the reddit stories on youtube said they were. “I’m just here for school, so I don’t want to bother you much. I’m just glad you’re letting me stay. Sorry if I get nightmares a lot and scream or something. Or cry too loud. Uh….did mental health care exist in your time? Don’t answer that, it should have even if it didn’t or was really bad. It’s better now. I have a therapist and everything, real nice guy.”
You can almost feel someone trying not to laugh at your rambling.
“I’m a chatterbox when I’m comfortable,” you add, adjusting the sectioning for your little phone number pull tabs. “And as much as it’s weird for other people, I’d rather be around a ghost than a human being. You already know this is your apartment, I just rent it.”
The amusement is there, and you feel something cold touch your hand. You close your eyes, “uh, yep, that’s me.” weirdly, the cold is seeping away the tension your nerves put into your muscles. “I really want to be on good terms with you, spirit, so um….i guess I just wanted to say hi, and that I’m happy to have such a quiet roomie.”
The cold went away, but you heard a floorboard on the other side of the bedroom creak. “see you later, then.”
--
Your ghost was doing something.
You’d started doing small jobs, only about 3 papers a day to start with while you got used to things and figured out your own homework. And you started noticing little things.
Your tea mugs, when you made tea at night to calm your nerves, would always be washed in the morning even if you’d forgotten to do so. Your pillows never stayed flung off the bed, whether it was you picking them up or not. And, most touchingly, someone kept tucking you in.
Being a fitful sleeper from the constant exhausting dreams, you knew you shouldn’t end up comfortably covered up, not even your feet outside. Even if sometimes you woke up because a pillow was thrown at you and you’d missed your alarm by ten minutes.
That just meant you gave a startled “Thank you!” to the ghost and ran around getting dressed.
All in all, you were managing to at least feel relieved to be home, and always happy with your mysterious shadow. You still saw it, on occasion, and it lingered longer. You’d gotten a good look at it by now, noticing it was, indeed, betentacled and was also incredibly fast. But it was a ghost, of course it would be fast. No need to obey the laws of physics once you were dead.
You talked to the ghost. You told it about your day, coming in and locking the door before flopping onto your great-aunt’s sleeper sofa (all your furniture was donated kindly by your family) and greeting it, “oh boy, spirit box, what a day.” You were not afraid to admit you were addicted to the corny ghost hunting shows when you’d been at home. You also weren’t afraid to say the idea that you’d found what those guys were always looking for made you a little pleased.
Once the recap was over, you would text your mother to tell her you got in safe, then go about making food for yourself and start on your work for the day, either homework or editing.
It was a nice routine, and you still got occasional feelings about how the ghost reacted to what you said. When you’d talked about someone saying a lewd comment to you unasked for, the ghost had been pretty mad. You heard a plastic cup you housed pens on your kitchen counter go flying. “That’s what I thought, too,” you’d said. And when you’d done well on an assignment that had worried you, the ghost was pleased, as noted by the strange pulse of tingling cold to the back of your head or the soft, muffled laughter. Your ghost was a he, you guessed as you heard that laugh.
Of course, you still had your anxiety, and as the first full moon of college approached, as usual, you got worse.
And that’s when it happened.
You’d just wanted a little peace, but one of your professors dropped a huge essay on you about a topic you just had never thought about before. Where would you start?! Yes, you were enjoying your “Worlds of Tomorrow” class, where you learned about how people thought about the future in the past and the present, but you had no prior experience researching these “worlds fairs” that was the focus of this 10 page assignment. That was twice as long as any essay you’d ever written before! And you had to have a BIBLIOGRAPHY!
The logical part of your brain said “the essay isn’t due till midterms” but the rest of you was hyperventilating so you couldn’t hear that over your sobs and desperate breaths.
A weight dropped on your chest and an irritated voice hissed, “breathe you stupid human.”
Scared and still panicking from the essay, you just did as it said, trying to do what your therapist had told you, counting breaths as that chilling weight on your sternum seemed to soak in the chaotic emotions inside you.
After a few minutes of you counting and the weight absorbing your distress, it gave a little groan and flopped forward, “can’t take anymore, but, oof, you’re good now. Don’t hold me, but look, if you want.”
Opening your eyes (when had they closed?) you turn your head to look at your chest and are amazed.
Instead of a translucent figure or floating head or something, an inky black bitty is on your chest, tiny thick tentacles flopped around him as he lay on his back, one hand on his tiny belly and the other against the fabric of your shit. He was as big as your hand, and the look of him told you it was a Sansy variant of some kind.
You have to sniffle, but you smile, “I….I guess you were my ghost, then?”
“yeah,” he gingerly sits up, looking like he had just eaten the best meal of his life from how he’s babying his stomach, and smirks, “I liked spirit better though. sounds….more powerful.”
“thank you,” you don’t care that he’s not a ghost. You are just happy he decided to come out and help you.
“heh….you’re lucky you’re so sad right now that gratitude is bittersweet. I’d get burned right off your chest otherwise,” His voice was soft, deeper than expected for someone so small, and a little thick, like it had to come through mucus or…whatever the gooey stuff looked to be made of was.
“huh?”
“not a bitty aficionado, clearly,” he sighed, “I’m a nightmare. A corrupted one at that. I was attracted here by all the negativity that pours off you, cause it feeds me. but then you went and needed taking care of, so now you’re my meal ticket and my owner.” The heavy sarcasm in the word ‘owner’ was not lost on you. Owning a bitty had never sounded right to you anyways when you’d heard about them. “anyway, positive emotions toward me can be dangerous for my health, so until we get into a more stable area with our soul energies, you need to make sure you aren’t too close when you do feel good. right now you just feel exhausted and worried, so you’re fine.”
“Do…do you want me to still call you spirit?” you asked him as he carefully pushed up to his bare boney feet and climbed down you, then the bed.
“Yes. I’ll take it as my name, in fact. I won’t come out much, but I think you’ve earned the honor of my presence with that banquet of a panic attack,” he smirked, his teeth surprisingly sharp and white as the one cyan light in his visible socket fell back on you. “now go to sleep, human. You don’t have the energy to do anything else.”
You weren’t going to argue with Spirit. He was more in control of things than you, even if he was only a few inches tall.
--
Now that you’d seen him, Spirit came out more often. He talked to you only now and then, but he’d sit around on shelves, tables, boxes, anywhere that suited him about three feet away from you as you kept up your routine. It was nice to see his face now, though. And to know you weren’t going to wake up in a tentacle cocoon some morning.
And now he’d eat your food, too. At least, now you were leaving a few snacks out for him when you left and they were gone when you came back. Because you’d looked up bitties between your classes the day after he showed himself and you wanted to take care of him properly. He was your friend, and roommate, after all. He at least cared about you, so you’d return the favor.
“I never hear you talk about any hobbies, human,” Spirit said one night while you were watching…uh? Some dating sort of show? You’d been in a depression spiral, you didn’t know.
“I kind of never feel up to doing much besides work or lounging. Heh….lame me, as usual.”
“That’s because you’re depressed. Actually doing stuff anyway will make it better after a while, at least if it’s stuff you used to enjoy,” Spirit huffed at you and disappeared, reappearing next to your hand and wrapping his tendrils around it. You could feel the heaviness in your body ebb away slowly. “good grief, you’re an endless font of food for me. and headaches too. I’m just one bitty, I can’t nursemaid you all the time.”
“You really don’t have to, Spirit, even though I do appreciate it,” you reflexively rub your hand when he lets go, even though nothing on it indicates you’d been drained.
“one, I do if I want you to live at least somewhat comfortably. And I do. and two, I doubt you’d do it for yourself. You haven’t learned yet.”
You look him over as he sits on the cushion nearby, not bothering to move now that he’s fed on your negativity. “How do you know all this stuff about depression?”
Spirit sighed and leans against the pillows on that end, “mostly because I was a service bitty before I went black.” He grins again, “and before I met you, I spent at least a couple of years on the street siphoning off homeless people’s misery. I was pretty feral right after that jackass decided to kill my brother in front of me.”
Oh. Oh God above….he was serious. You had read that Nightmares could corrupt a number of ways, but a big way was losing their Dream. And that….
“What happened to the person you were service bitty to?”
“Oh, she died from heart failure. It was her selfish prick of a son that murdered my brother when she left us in his care in the will….and only us, no money or anything. I think I ripped his left hand apart but I don’t remember,” Spirit sniffed and looked away, as if talking about all this was just old news to him.
“Savage, but not undeserved,” you nod sagely, and he cackled. Frankly, you would have done something similar, at least that’s what your heart tells you. The idea of someone hurting Spirit, after you’d grown so attached to him when he was a ‘ghost’, made your blood boil. But your body never responded to your feelings unless it was to send you deeper into a panic attack. “I can see why you’d rather be your own bitty then. Not that I couldn’t before, but it’s more obvious now.”
“you’re in a depression gap,” his little head turned up to you, looking over your face, “and you’re hungry. Go eat a snack.”
“Yes, mom.”
“Say that again and I’ll bite you.”
“Okay, Spirit, sorry.”
--
Spirit didn’t seem to like that you were taking him to the bitty store, if the sharp ends of his tentacles and the hissing was anything to go by.
“It’s the law, Spirit,” you say, genuinely upset that you were making him so mad. He’d been so good to you and now you were betraying his trust because you were more scared of someone taking you to jail than of Spirit’s anger. “I would die in prison…and I’d get at least five years for an undeclared bitty.”
Seeing that you were on the verge of tears, Spirit’s expression eased and he stopped hissing. Maybe he just didn’t like riding in the bug box. It was the cheapest and easiest to wrap blankets around container you’d found at the Walmart when you had looked for something for him to ride in your car with.
“you’re impossible, but at least you’re honest,” he growled, sticking his tongue out at you. It glowed a bright cyan just like his eye and the magic that glinted off his bones and tendrils.
The shop was small, at least compared to the shops around it, but it looked nice. A 2 story building, with bitties running around able to be seen through the window downstairs, and a high, spritely bell on the door as you walked in with Spirit in his box (no lid of course).
The young man working the counter smiled, “Heya. Welcome to Spooks and Cutes, I’m Rogers. How can I help you?”
Spirit had crawled up to lean over the side of the box and Rogers’ eyes went wide. “Uh, this is Spirit. He was a…..uh….? What do I call you, Spirit?”
“I violently left my former owner’s care, lived on my own for a few years, then chose you as my pet,” he says, looking smug.
“What he said, yeah,” you nodded, sighing. “I came to do the paperwork so I don’t get arrested.”
Rogers seemed to shake out of a trance, “I dunno how you got a wild C-night to like you, but sure. Let’s get things settled with the paper pushers so you two can chill.” He laughed a little, now seeming very excited as he got out some papers.
--
Spirit watched as his human wrote down things, asking questions to himself and Rogers when needed.
He’d chosen them firstly for their abundant negativity, including deliciously malevolent dreams, but the bonus of them being pretty much hopeless and dependent on his help made him grin. The part of him that wasn’t sick, that was still a service bitty, was so enjoying helping them be healthier and happier, and the part that WAS sick loved having all that hopelessness and fear around.
All in all, as much as he could while their souls were still acclimating to each other, Spirit was very pleased with his choice.
His CHOICE. Oh Spirit liked that he could make choices now. No surviving, no being treated like a pet, no. You let him make choices. You let him speak his mind and boss you around and seemed quite grateful to him for it. Well….if he was being honest, as he looked you over while you signed more papers, you needed his help so badly he hadn’t been able to keep hidden any longer. He didn’t know what had caused you to be so anxious, depressed, and lonesome, but the fact his presence had eased that for you made his tiny soul ache with relief, even if the little jolts of gratitude and affection he got from you burned a little bit.
Spirit felt the other bitties in the shop watching, and he looked them over. Horrors, Errors, Fells of all stripes, even some Crosses and Dusts….Killers too.
“is this some kind of horror fetish shop or what?” he asked Rogers, and you squeaked in shock at his bluntness.
“Not fetish, but it is for those who would rather have a non-traditional choice in bitties, mostly for those who either have experience, or just haven’t found a bond with the more run of the mill types,” Rogers shrugged. “Had a few like you in before, but you guys know what you want in a human, and they found theirs pretty fast.”
“Hmmm,” Spirit looked over the place and chuckled, “if you’re that good at homing scary bitties, you’re probably going to run out of inventory.”
You sigh now that you’re sure Rogers isn’t mad or embarrassed with Spirit.
The employee grinned, “I’d love that. I want these guys to find their person like you did, if maybe a little more safely.”
“I’d be a wreck without him,” you confess, “Freshman year of college is a terror on your own.”
“Oooh, yeah bud, I’m a junior, know that feel,” Rogers nodded. “But, if you ever need a job or an outlet, we do take volunteers and I’ll let you know first with openings. Anybody who can bond with a dangerous dude like Spirit is more than welcome here.”
“this human’s more dangerous to themselves than I could ever be,” Spirit sniffed as Rogers took up the papers. It was always boggling how blind to soul energy humans were.
“You’re the boss, Spirit, dude,” Rogers grinned and you seemed to find enough in you to smile, too. That was good. Spirit wanted you to find more moments like that. It would help you get better. “But while you two’re here, lets get ya a proper carrier so you don’t have to go back in this? It’s not…strictly up to legal bitty transport standards?”
“Yeah, I was kind of panicking about the jail thing,” you admit, and Spirit helps you pick which carrying method would work for the two of you. He knew your back tended to hurt from the tension, so it had to be weighted right.
In the end, you got not only a carry box with cushy interior, but also a “nest bed” since Spirit had decided he didn’t need to live in the walls anymore. You’d both sleep better if he was close by to deal with the negativity of your dreams. It was also a rather big nest, so Spirit could roll around in his sleep even more than you did if he so chose. There was easily room for two other bitties, if he was guessing, but you had insisted because you knew how important space in a bed can be.
Well, there was also the six or so new outfits he’d picked out, but Spirit was a little shy at the idea of changing his clothes. Seeing himself had never been his favorite thing, and he outright hated the look of his body now that he was corrupted. Ironic, a negativity creature having a trigger of his own.
But still…maybe if he changed only in the dark he could finally wear something clean….it had been so long.
--
Even though he had his nest, Spirit slept on your chest that night because you’d been feeling anxious about spending all the money you did, even though you had wanted to be good to Spirit. Every time a new wave of cringe came from inside you, Spirit’s little body just soaked it up like a sponge.
He was cool to the touch, as you carefully let his tendrils curl around your fingers in reflex to the gentle pressure against them. The tendrils were squishy, but in the way that relaxed muscle was squishy, and his bones themselves were silky smooth, your finger running over his skull. You couldn’t feel anything but exhaustion from how tense you’d been just trying to get to and from the shop, but that was probably good. Too much affection in your intent could hurt Spirit at this early stage.
But at least you knew he wanted you safe. There was no doubt to you that Spirit had invested his whole self into being there for you. He acted aloof, though, and that made you just like him more. He wasn’t saccharine with his care, just practical. That was nice. That was more what you needed.
He was more what you needed.