Yandere! Childhood Best Friend x Ghost! Reader
⤷ TW: This story contains heavy themes of severe grief, intense psychological attachment, unhinged behavior, isolation, and domestic violence/murder. Yandere behavior and any form of violence are absolutely not condoned in real life.
Gideon forgot how to move the second your heart stopped beating.
It was a quiet, stupid realization that hit him a few days after the funeral. The world outside didn’t care that you were gone; cars still drove down the wet streets, rain still streaked the windows, and autumn leaves just rotted on the pavement. The universe kept moving like nothing had happened.
But Gideon stayed completely frozen.
He had been your shadow since you were both seven years old. He was the kind of boy who scraped his knees on the playground just because you did, promising to share everything. You were inseparable—you brought the loud, bright energy, and he was the quiet, steady one. When that midnight car crash took your life on a random rainy Tuesday, it felt like a part of him died right there on the asphalt, too.
For weeks after the funeral, you were stuck hovering in the corner of his bedroom, nothing but a helpless, see-through spirit. You had to sit there and watch him completely fall apart.
He didn't even cry loud enough for his parents to hear him down the hall. He just sat on the edge of his mattress, staring at the blank drywall for days. He stopped eating. His cheekbones started looking sharp against his skin, and dark circles hollowed out his eyes. He wouldn't go to school, wouldn't touch his phone, and wouldn't move unless someone forced him to.
“Please, Gidi,” you would sob, floating right over his slumped shoulders, unable to give him even a bit of warmth. “You have to eat something. You have to live. Please don't do this.”
But you were just cold air. He couldn't hear a single thing.
The snap happened on a Thursday night. The heavy grief in the room was getting hard to breathe in. Gideon dropped straight to his knees, clutching your old high school hoodie to his chest, choking on ragged, messy gasps. He was shaking so hard he couldn't catch his breath, burying his face in the fabric.
"Come back," he begged the empty room, his voice completely broken. "Y/N, please. Just take me with you. Don't leave me here alone. I can't do this. Please."
The pure, raw weight of that desperation did something impossible. His mind, completely filled with nothing but you, tore right through the invisible wall between the living and the dead. The temperature in the room dropped instantly. The desk lamp flickered and went out.
And right there, like television static, your form came together.
Gideon froze. He lifted his head, his bloodshot eyes widening in total, breathless shock. He didn't scream or run away.
"Y/N?" he whispered, his hand shaking as he reached out.
His fingers stopped right where the sharp, freezing air of your cheek began. He couldn't actually feel your skin, but the intense cold was all the proof he needed. A wide, frantic smile broke across his face—the dead look in his eyes instantly replaced by a sharp, burning light.
"You're here," he laughed, tears spilling down his face as he leaned closer, practically drinking in your icy presence. "I knew it. I knew you wouldn't leave me."
That night saved him from the dark place he was in. But it planted a deeply twisted, suffocating seed.
As the months dragged on, Gideon didn't just get better; he became completely, dangerously obsessed with you. The line between regular love and something far darker blurred until it vanished entirely. He built a whole secret world inside his bedroom, cutting off his friends and sprinting home the second the final bell rang just to lock his door and be with a ghost.
He couldn't function if he wasn't right next to you. It was a constant, aching quiet that seemed to eat away at him every single second you weren't looking at him.
Every single night, he’d drag his mattress off the frame and onto the floor, pulling it right under where you hovered. He’d sleep on his back with his arms curved upward, framing your shape, his hands shaking in the air as he tried to grasp the edges of your clothes. He would stare up at you for hours without blinking, his chest heaving with a quiet, desperate panic.
"You’re so perfect, Y/N," he’d murmur, his voice cracking with a heavy, weeping devotion. "The counselors at school think I'm losing it, but they don't know anything. How can I be sick when you're the only thing keeping me alive? Look at me, my love. Look at your Gidi. Tell me I’m the only one you want. Please. Just say it again."
“I love you, Gideon,” you’d whisper, your heart breaking for him as you floated down closer. “But you need to rest. You’re shivering.”
"I don't care. I want to freeze if it means I'm closer to you," he’d sob softly, a breathless laugh escaping his lips as he pressed his hand hard against his mouth.
On his thumb sat a heavy, slightly scratched silver band. It was the matching piece to the ring you had worn every single day until the accident—a cheap set you both bought at a summer street festival when you were twelve. You had laughed because his was way too big for his skinny fingers back then, forcing him to keep it on a string around his neck. Now, it fit him perfectly. But while your ring had been buried with you beneath six feet of dirt, his remained on his hand—a constant, freezing weight, and his only real connection to your soul.
He kissed the cold silver until his lips bled, rocking himself back and forth on the floor, twisting the band around his finger until the metal bit into his skin.
"I’ll protect you forever. Nobody is ever going to touch us. I'll destroy anyone who tries. Just you and me. You're mine, right? Say you're mine."
His parents noticed the small things first, though they tried to wave it off as just a weird phase of grief.
His mother noticed that at dinner, Gideon would always shift his plate all the way to the left, leaving a wide, empty space on his right. He’d glance at the empty air, smiling softly and nodding as if listening to a secret conversation. And whenever she went into his room to try and clean up or throw away the old polaroids and handwritten notes of yours that he kept stacked on his desk like a shrine, Gideon would show up in the doorway. His eyes would be dark, wide, and completely unblinking.
"Don't touch her things," he’d say, his voice perfectly flat, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the doorframe. "She gets upset when they're moved. And you don't want to make her upset, Mom."
They tried forcing him into therapy, but Gideon just tuned it out. He’d sit on the couch, his thumb obsessively digging into the silver ring on his hand, pressing the metal so hard against his knuckles that it bruised, secretly talking to you in his head while the doctor spoke to a wall.
Then came the night the denial completely shattered.
It was 2:00 AM. His parents woke up to the sound of muffled crying and a soft, frantic laughing coming from his bedroom. Terrified he was having a total break from reality, they unlocked his door and burst in.
The room was like a freezer—so cold their breath turned into white clouds.
Gideon was lying flat on the hardwood floor, eyes wide and bloodshot, staring at the ceiling with a calm smile that looked completely detached from the world. His arms were holding empty air, but his head was tilted back as if he were resting it directly in your lap.
"I love you so much," Gideon whispered to the ceiling, his voice going higher, shaking with a desperate weight. "I missed you today, Y/N. Don't leave. Never leave your Gidi again. I'll do anything for you. I'll kill for you. I'm yours. Only yours."
"Gideon...?" his mother choked out, shaking.
Gideon’s eyes snapped toward them, the happy look completely vanishing, replaced by a cold, protective glare as he sat up.
"Who are you talking to, son?" his father asked, looking around the empty, freezing room.
Gideon looked at them like they were the ones who had lost their minds. He pointed softly to the empty floor beside him, his fingers clawing at the wood. "Y/N. She’s right here. She never left me. She talks to me every single night. Say hi, Mom. She’s wearing the dress from our last date. Why are you looking at her like that? Look at her!"
His mother let out a terrified sob. Convinced their son was being driven completely mad by something in the house, his deeply religious parents finally panicked.
They reached out to an old family priest, begging him to come and do a traditional cleansing of the room to finally send you away.
The next afternoon, his parents cornered Gideon downstairs for a forced "family talk," giving the priest time to quietly slip up to his bedroom to start the prayers. But the second the holy water hit your old things, the spiritual tie violently snapped.
Downstairs, a blinding, agonizing pain ripped through your soul. It felt like fire washing over you, aggressively pulling your spirit apart, trying to drag you away from the living world. You screamed in pure agony, your form flickering like a dying lightbulb as you were pulled toward the stairs.
Gideon heard it. To his parents, the house was silent, but your scream pierced straight through his brain.
His eyes went wide, the veins in his neck popping. The quiet, polite boy completely, irrevocably snapped.
He bolted up the stairs like a wild animal, throwing his entire weight against the bedroom door and kicking it right off the latch. Inside, the priest was praying over his desk. His parents rushed in right behind him, his father grabbing Gideon's shoulders to pin him back.
"Let him finish, Gideon! It's for your own good!" his father yelled.
But Gideon didn't hear a word. He only saw you trapped in the corner, your spiritual body dissolving into faint, weeping starlight as you screamed his name.
Terrified that you were about to vanish forever, Gideon lost all control. He lunged forward, tearing right out of his father's grip, and grabbed a heavy brass crucifix from the nightstand. Before the priest could even turn around, Gideon brought it down. He didn't care about consequences, or sin, or God. He only saw you fading.
"Gideon, stop!" his mother shrieked, backing away into the hall.
Gideon turned around, the weapon dripping in his hand. His parents stared at their son in absolute horror. He didn't look like their boy anymore; his eyes were wide, manic, and tears were streaming down his blood-splattered cheeks.
"You tried to take her from me," Gideon whispered, a sweet, gentle laugh bubbling out of his chest as he stepped into the hallway. "I told you. I told you she lives here now. Why couldn't you just leave us alone? She was crying. You made my girl cry."
The screams from the hallway didn't last long. He didn't hesitate. He eliminated the threats. He protected his paradise.
When the door clicked shut, the house fell into a deafening, heavy silence. You remained floating exactly as you were—soft, pale, and glowing with that same faint starlight. But the bedroom was unrecognizable now, the air heavy with the sharp metallic scent of blood, trapping the two of you in a quiet, chilling finality.
Gideon dropped the brass crucifix. It hit the floorboards with a dull clang.
He fell to his knees right in front of you, his whole body trembling violently. He was covered in blood—his face, his hands, his shirt—but his eyes were entirely fixed on you, filled with a terrifying, desperate devotion.
"Y/N..." he wept, reaching up with his bloody, shaking hands, not even daring to touch you, hovering just inches from your knees. "Please... please don't hate me. I had to do it. They were going to send you away. They were going to leave me alone in the dark."
He leaned his forehead straight against the floorboards at your feet, sobbing uncontrollably, his shoulders shaking as he showed you his entire ruined soul.
"I love you so much... I love you more than my own life, more than heaven, more than anything," he begged, his voice a broken, suffocating rattle. He looked up, his face twisted in absolute, agonizing longing, utterly lost in his own worship. "Look at what I did for you. I'm ruined now, Y/N. I'm completely ruined. No one else will ever accept me. You're the only one I have left. Please... please don't leave me now. Tell me you love me. Tell me I did good."
You stared down at your childhood friend. He was a murderer now. He had destroyed his family, his future, and his soul, all to keep a ghost from crossing over. He had gone completely off the deep end—and it was all because he loved you too much.
Slowly, you floated down, kneeling on the floor right in front of him. You reached out, your freezing, see-through fingers gently wrapping around his blood-stained wrists. You couldn't wipe the blood away, but the biting cold of your touch made him let out a sharp, breathless gasp of pure happiness.
You leaned in closer, your soft, glowing face just inches from his frantic, tear-stained one. A gentle, bittersweet smile touched your lips as you looked into his ruined eyes.
"I'm not going anywhere, Gidi," you whispered directly into his mind, your voice a soothing, beautifully comforting purr that made his whole body shiver. "Look around. There's no one left to separate us now. You made yourself my anchor... and I am never, ever letting you go."
Gideon let out a shaky, submissive laugh, throwing his bloody arms around your waist. He buried his face into your icy lap, sobbing with an ecstatic, desperate relief as he finally held his ghost in the quiet, red-stained dark.
author’s note: hello, my darlings! this is honestly my absolute favorite fic that i've written so far, and i’m so excited to finally share it with you all.
if you enjoyed this, interacting or reposting would help my growing blog out so much! i’d love to hear your thoughts or favorite lines below. my requests are also open, so don't hesitate to drop your ideas! 💌
