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There's something in the house.
The furniture is always a bit out of place, lights and faucets turn on and off when no one's around, food and dishes end up moved like someone's eating their food.
"There's a person living in our house," Michael says. "I'm gonna call somebody."
"It's a ghost," Lindsay says.
They call somebody.
A cop comes to the house, he's friendly enough, looks around. Asks who owned it before, how old it was, tried to see if he could find any crawlspaces someone might hide around in. There's no sign of anything. He checks for fingerprints, takes some with him, says he'll check them against theirs.
It's a hassle. Michael thought he'd find something pretty easy.
The cop leaves. Lindsay watches as an empty soda can is slowly, slowly inched off the edge of their counter and falls into the floor. They're not surprised, they pick it up and dispose of it.
There's a ghost in the house and Lindsay's known for weeks.
The cop calls them, tells them that everything was theirs. Lindsay thanks him and goes about their day.
Michael will get it one day.
They come home often to find their TV on, shows they're unfamiliar with playing. Lindsay claims it. They spout off a rant about how it's good, actually, but Michael's only half listening and doesn't know enough to know they're making it up.
The ghost watches the most bizarre collection of TV shows Lindsay's ever seen. They don't think he knows about movies.
"Hey."
"Hey," Michael says, nonchalant, before he remembers that he doesn't have any friends over and that definitely wasn't Lindsay's voice.
He searches the house once, twice, three times. Checks the doors. He doesn't find anything. He gets the feeling someone's very smug.
There's a ghost in the house and Michael thinks it's short.
The kitchen doesn't get disturbed anymore. Lindsay thinks it figured out that it couldn't eat anymore.
Michael likes to leave games open, saying he's recommending it to the resident ghost. It's funny until he comes back and his save file is deleted in favor of one with five hours playtime but thirty minutes of progress.
Lindsay tries to talk to it every day during her morning routine. "What's your name?" they ask, drinking a cup of coffee. "How's death like?" after brushing their teeth. "How long you been dead?" while getting their keys together.
"DId you live here?" they ask, changing clothes.
"Don't look at my wife while she's naked!" Michael says.
"Sorry!" a voice says, higher than the last time, and they're both embarrassed until they leave the house. They don't think it's their embarrassment.
There's a ghost in the house and Lindsay thinks of it like a bad roommate.
"You could help out sometimes, you know," they say, focusing on scrubbing clean a particularly dirty dish. "You don't even pay rent."
There's a series of clinks and Lindsay doesn't think anything of it anymore, but when they move to put the finally clean plate into the to dry sink they realize that there's a bowl hovering in the air, getting dried by a similarly hovering dish towel, and there was other dishes in the dried pile that they hadn't put there.
"Thanks," they say, and soon enough the dishes are done.
"My name's Jeremy."
The ghost's name is Jeremy and he has a Boston accent.
"So, you're not from around here, boy?" Michael asks. They've taken to just talking into the air whenever, hoping it'd get some reaction from the ghost - from Jeremy. Sometimes it worked. Usually it didn't.
"I moved here when I was 24."
"How old are you now?"
There isn't an answer and Michael thinks Jeremy's left or isn't interested in answering, or maybe can't, until later when he gets up to move he hears a faint voice.
"I don't know."
Jeremy doesn't know and Lindsay wants to.
"Are you hiding your phone screen?" Michael asks.
They are, trying to hide it with their blanket and body as much as they can. "Maybe."
"You realize we live alone, right?" Michael says, which they both know isn't true so he follows with: "I don't think he can read."
"He should be able to," Lindsay says. "I think I found him. Jeremy Dooley, age 26, die-"
The room drops degrees in an instant and the phone is out of Lindsay's hand and hits the wall and they can hear shouting, distant but in the room at the same time. The phone's picked up again, and thrown again, and again, and again, and the shouting doesn't stop and it's definitely broken and then it all stops just as quick as it started.
They don't say anything for a while.
Then Lindsay says, "I was about to get a new one anyway."
Jeremy can't leave the house and it's weird to fight with a ghost.
Lindsay has more sympathy than Michael. They offer apologies when they used to offer questions, over coffee, over her morning routine.
Michael doesn't have apologies - Jeremy's in his house and breaking his things. Jeremy's also dead. He leaves the TV on and games open to ones Jeremy likes.
"You scared me."
They're both on the couch, laughing their way through a particularly bad movie. They pause it.
"I didn't think you'd hear me," Lindsay says.
"I wasn't listening, but I can always hear you. It made me remember dying again," Jeremy says.
"Had you forgotten?" Michael asks.
"Not forgotten. Blocked off. It hurts a lot," Jeremy replies.
Jeremy does the ghost equivalent of sitting on the couch with them and they watch the movie together. It's the longest they ever talk to him.
Jeremy can always hear them and Michael doesn't think about that.
Michael doesn't consider this when they're in bed, having moments that they still pretend are private, Lindsay's voice echoing around the room, the wet sound of Michael's tongue, or the slapping of bodies working together, or the laughter when one of them fumbles.
He doesn't think about it or how he feels about it or what that means. He doesn't even remember Jeremy saying it, surely.
Jeremy prefers the cold and Lindsay hates it.
"Can't you regulate your own temperature?" Lindsay asks, raising the temperature on the thermometer yet again.
"No," Jeremy replies. "I think I feel it the same way you do."
"Lame," Lindsay says, returning to their place on the couch wrapped in three blankets. Their eyes move back to the thermometer to make sure he wasn't changing it right away, at least, and is greeted by a man.
A short man, with a bald head and brown eyes, and big arms. He definitely worked out. They could see through him to the wall.
"Being dead definitely counts as a disability," Jeremy says.
"Are you bald by fashion or by nature?" Lindsay asks.
For the first time Lindsay gets to watch Jeremy's facial expressions change, from confusion to understanding to realization. They expect something more excited, from the genuine happiness she sees for a moment, but what they get is: "Nature."
Jeremy's a ghost and it's hard to explain that to friends.
"Why don't you invite your roommate to these things?" Gavin asks, and Michael thinks it's a strategy to distract him from Mario Kart.
"You mean Lindsay? They're right here, dipshit," Michael says.
"No, you definitely have another roommate," Gavin says.
"Yea, I went into the room I used while I was here and a guy told me to leave and the bed was definitely slept in," Andy says.
"Did you see him?" Lindsay asks.
"No, he was in the bathroom or something," Andy says.
There's some confusing crosstalk as a blue shell enters the equation, Michael and Gavin both slowing down so first place transferred to Alfredo and he got hit instead.
"Are you embarrassed of him, Michael?" Gavin asks. "Is he more than just a roommate, Michael?"
"Shut the hell up," Michael replies, enunciating it by throwing a red shell at him.
"He's bald and we're not sure if you guys would be culturally sensitive about it," Lindsay offers.
When everyone leaves, there's too many jokes about being accepting of their new roommate, some going further than others.
Jeremy's a ghost and none of it matters.
Lindsay's gone on a business trip and Michael has his own business to attend to.
He's in his bedroom, which he still pretends is private, hand lazily going through the motions, his brain halfway going through all of his fantasies, all of the background daydreams he has stored for these situations.
His eyes are closed, but he gets a particular feeling of vulnerability, so he opens them and realizes that it's Jeremy's vulnerability, not his, even though he's the one with his dick in his hand.
Jeremy blushes when he knows Michael knows and goes "Sorry!", but this is maybe the third time Michael's seen him and he can hardly see past him.
"I was hoping you would show up," Michael says. It should have sounded desperate if not for the expression of Jeremy's face.
"I don't - I can't - I don't know what I can even -" Jeremy starts.
"It's a good time to find out, then," Michael says, cutting him off. Jeremy doesn't say anything, so he goes back to moving his hand, slower than before. "Unless you'd prefer to watch?"
Jeremy's beside him in an instant and Michael would have laughed if he wasn't so preoccupied.
Jeremy's a ghost and Lindsay wants to forget about it.
"I can't carry you," Jeremy says, watching Lindsay stretch theirself further across the couch.
"I don't want to walk to bed and you have those big, strong arms," Lindsay says.
"I don't trust myself to keep physical for that long," Jeremy says.
"Oh, so you can stay physical long enough to have sex with Michael, but not long enough to carry me?" Lindsay teases.
"It takes a lot more time to walk to your bedroom than it does to have sex with Michael," Jeremy says.
There's an indignant "hey!" from across the house.
Jeremy's a ghost and he's absolutely in love.
"You claimed yourself a bedroom, didn't you?" Lindsay asks.
"Do you even need to sleep?" Michael asks.
"I did, and no, but it feels nice," Jeremy says.
"Sleep with us," Lindsay says.
Jeremy's eyes widen, not that either could see, and he says, "I don't think I have that much en-"
"Pervert, she means like normal sleep," Michael says, and Lindsay laughs.
"Oh, yea," Jeremy says. "Okay, sure."
He climbs into the bed with them, snuggling between them. He knows that they feel him as more of a vague presence of emotions right now, when he's not in any physical state. They try to snuggle him anyway.