#gentle ghost

[spookytragedyshark]

Ghost Girl Bossed to close to the sun

My take on ghost x food insecurity reader. Plus anxiety. The whole can't do it for myself, but someone else needs the thing. Suddenly, I'm superhuman.

Retired ghost whose therapist told him to talk to at least one person a day, only the phone tower is down, so he can't call any of the boys like normal, and he doesn't know anyone who lives nearby.

Ghost who views self-care as missions. He is not about to fail a mission. So he does what he has seen in movies and "makes too much food" to have a reason to talk to the neighbor that he saw when he first moved in.

Only when the neighbor opens the door, they look like they have lost 40 pounds since the last time he saw them. Only when they open the door, their eyes never meet his. A flicker of an emotion he can't name but recognizes from his own youth passes over his neighbor's face.

He leaves after having his daily conversation and giving them the container of food with a whole new mission. He knows from experience that even if someone is starving, they'll deny help, seeing it as pity. So the next day, he goes to IKEA and buys a bedframe. Atrocious and too complicated for his taste, but whatever serves its purpose. He may or may not have hidden some pieces to make it harder to put together.

He knocks on the neighbor's door, doing his best to act embarrassed, explaining that he needs someone with a gentler touch to try to put it together because military instructions are much different, and that he'll treat them to dinner as thanks. He manages to stretch the bed thing for three days. Feeding his neighbor and sending them home with his suspiciously new-looking Tupperware.

Then he needed help with furniture in the living room. Before long, his once bare apartment is fully furnished, and he's having the neighbor pick out decorations lest his friends tease him when they visit. Then he simply can't figure out this recipe. Could you help him? Oh, it's meant for a family meal. Here, take a few containers home? Oh, you want to thank me. How about you make this (high-end food) for me? Of course, I'll supply the ingredients, just come over after you get off work tomorrow.

Now, Neighbor and Ghost have dinner at his house together every day. Ghost makes sure the neighbor gets plenty of nutrients and nice foods. Ghost realizes one day that he's living in a home instead of a crash pad with a beautiful person in his kitchen, and he just blue screens because what? The? Hell? Did? He? Do?

They seem content with the situation, even happy. They never questioned his mask or anything. He had been viewing this as a mission, and suddenly, he was too close to the sun.

Then the neighbor falls asleep on his couch. Since when did he have a fancy couch? He leans down to wake them up, but he feels the heat through their clothes as he touches their shoulder. They are delirious when he wakes them, but he manages to get them to drink some water and take some cold meds. He ends up taking them to his bedroom and putting them in the bed.

He hovers all night, checking on their fever and staring around his house, his home. He's never had a home. Not like this. Not something his own that's not at risk 24/7. He needed his neighbor. This was because of his neighbor.

The next morning, when you are crying, missing work and bills, while actively throwing up. He curses, then offers to pay, then fumbles when he realizes how that sounds. Before blurting out that it was just because he didn't want you to feel pressured to move in with him. Fumbles again, realizing he didn't get the chance to offer, and promptly facepalms.

But his neighbor smiles for the first time since getting sick and goes, "I'd like that too." You spend the next week too sick to take care of yourself and just never leave.

Simon sends a picture of a ring in his hand, you cooking with your back to him in the background, to the 141 group chat, followed by "Is it too soon?" Not a single one of them knows who you are. This results in them preparing an intervention because What? The? Hell? Did? He? Do? Is this person using him? He has an impressive retirement.

Soap managed to get a plane ticket first and heads to where he knows Ghost lives. He's alarmed when you open the door. Even more so when you recognize him. "Oh, you must be Johnny! Simon will be so happy to see you! He's on a grocery run, but come in." Then you lead him to the couch. Since when does Ghost believe in couches? Soap can't help but look around. He sees pictures on the wall of him and the team. You sit down in what's clearly your spot on the end of the couch, like you've always been there, and start telling him about how well Simon is doing. How He's been going to every therapy session and took up cooking as a hobby, and started different little self-improvement goals each week. You seem so proud. Soap is just flabbergasted because you seem nice enough, but how did you even meet Ghost? He grills Simon about it while you're cooking dinner.

He can't say if that's a particularly healthy relationship, so dependent on each other, but you're both taking better care of yourselves and each other together than if you were apart. He reports his findings to the others who are getting on their respective flights.

[doeyedbambi]

I call myself a ghost girl but I’m so afraid of everything….scary ghost girl

[biteghost]

sketchpage commission for the wonderful @gentle-ghost!! <3

[biteghost]

commission for @gentle-ghost!! Thank you so much! <3

[latenightfolklore]

Rooftop Tender

Josh hated the smell of his room. It smelled like rubbing alcohol and old sheets, and no matter how much his mom opened the door, the air felt stuck. He had counted the dots on the ceiling tiles fifty times. He had traced every crack in the paint with his eyes. The walls felt like they were shrinking, inching closer every time he blinked.

He wasn’t supposed to lean forward much—not with the metal pins and rods holding his spine together like a broken action figure. The hard plastic brace dug into his ribs, itchy and hot, squeezing him tight like a fist that wouldn't let go. The doctors said "slow recovery," but Josh told himself they were wrong. He felt strong today. If he really tried, he bet he could probably stand up without help.

The window was the only fun thing left. It was better than the TV. It was real.

Mother would sit him up in his chair next to the sill, arranging pillows so he could rest his chin on his arms without slumping against the rigid shell of his brace. It reminded him of that old movie his dad liked, Rear Window. Josh had watched it twice this week just because he felt like the guy in the chair.

Across the narrow alley, Miss Perkins was bent over her rooftop garden. She wore a giant floppy hat even when the sky was gray, and her plants seemed to lean toward her the way cats leaned toward their owner. She was as steady as a clock; when she watered the basil, he knew it was morning. When she pulled the weeds, he knew it was afternoon.

“Miss Perkins!” Josh called, cupping his hands against the window screen. His voice sounded small, but it reached her.

She turned, squinting, and gave him a smile. It wasn't a sad smile, like the ones his mom gave him. It was a real one.

“That scarecrow of yours,” Josh said. “It squeaks something awful when the wind catches it. You might want to grease the weathervane.”

Miss Perkins laughed lightly and waved. “I’ll get to it this afternoon, dear.”

Josh grinned. He liked that she talked to him like a regular neighbor, not the broken kid across the alley. Careful to keep his spine straight, he pressed gently back into bed, telling himself the wince was just a muscle spasm, not the bones complaining. The ceiling stared back at him, blank and boring. The VHS tapes beside the TV—The Iron Giant, Jaws, Twister—waited for him. Weeks more of this and he might finish the whole stack, memorizing every line.

That night, red and blue lights flashed against his walls, waking him up. Josh blinked at the window but didn’t try to sit up. Sirens, voices. It was too much work to look at. He rolled carefully onto his side and went back to sleep.

In the morning, Mom and Dad sat at the edge of his bed. Their voices were soft and serious.

“Josh,” Mom said, “Miss Perkins… She passed away last night. Probably a heart attack.”

“They carried her out,” Dad added gently. “We know you liked talking to her. If you want to talk about it—”

Josh shook his head. He didn’t trust his voice.

Days passed, then a week. He kept watch on the roof across the alley, but without her floppy hat bobbing between the rows, the garden started to look wrong. The dirt turned gray and dusty, cracking like dried mud on a playground. The basil plants, which used to be perfect little round bushes, shot up tall and angry. They grew weird purple flowers that Miss Perkins always used to pinch off, and their leaves curled up brown at the edges like burnt paper.

The tomatoes were the saddest part. Without the green string to hold them up, the vines slumped over the sides of the wooden boxes. Josh saw heavy red tomatoes fall off and splatter on the black roof tiles, sitting there in the hot sun until they looked like squashed bugs. The weeds came next. They poked up through the dry dirt like jagged green teeth, biting at the good plants and tangling everything together until the whole garden looked like a knot nobody could untie.

Josh pressed his forehead against the cool window screen. Watching the world shrivel up across the alley didn't hurt like the day he fell. It didn't make him scream out. The sadness wasn't a sharp break; it was a slow deterioration, a dull ache that proved how easy it was to forget someone. Dreams and gardens alike withered if no one tended them.

Several nights later, a noise scratched Josh out of a deep sleep. It wasn't the sirens this time. It was a high, lonely screech of metal grinding on metal. He knew that sound. It was the scarecrow, spinning against the rust.

Josh pushed himself upright, wincing as his spine locked up against the plastic shell. He waited to see the scarecrow’s familiar shadow block the moonlight on his floor, but the square of light stayed empty. His heart did a nervous flip against his ribs.

He squinted through the screen. The garden pole was there, sticking up like a black finger against the sky.

But the scarecrow was gone.

He rubbed his eyes hard, hoping the scarecrow would blink back into existence. It didn't. The pole remained bare.

Josh knew the rules. No twisting. No bending past thirty degrees. But the mystery was pulling at him harder than the gravity holding him down. He told himself he was stronger today—he had to be. The doctors were just being too careful.

He gritted his teeth and swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. They hit the floor with a heavy thud, feeling less like legs and more like bags of concrete. Slowly, agonizingly, he slid his torso off the bed. He didn't walk; he dragged himself to the window, inch by inch, until he could hook his chin over the sill. The metal rods in his back seized up, sending a jolt of pain through him hot enough to make his vision blur, but he bit his lip and held on.

A dark figure moved in the rooftop garden.

Josh froze. A thief? A squatter?

No. The figure bent low, not taking, but tending. It moved with a stiff, jerky rhythm.

Snap-pause, snap-pause.

Tugging weeds with swift, deliberate hands. It reached for the spigot, and water trickled across the planters, dark and silver in the moonlight. Not a single green tomato was torn away. Only the weeds were binned.

He wanted to cry out, to ask who was there, but the pain in his spine rooted him silent. His eyes fluttered with exhaustion. Finally, he collapsed flat to the floor, promising himself he’d rise again in a moment. But the moment stretched, and sleep claimed him right there on the carpet.

Morning came with cruel brightness. Josh forced himself up carefully. First he rolled over to his belly, to his knees, then, with effort, onto the bed. He looked out.

The garden was perfect. Every row tidy, every vine supported, the soil dark with fresh water.

And there, standing up again, was the scarecrow. Its painted smile was looking right at Josh’s window, and its arms were wide open, like nothing had ever moved at all.

Josh stared at the tomato vines, holding themselves up strong against the wooden stakes. He looked down at his own heavy legs and the stiff brace wrapped around his chest. The garden hadn't been fixed by magic. It got better because someone took the time to fix it.

He carefully pushed himself away from the window, moving slowly, not just because it hurt, but because he wanted to be gentle with his own broken parts. He climbed back into bed and laid completely flat, exactly the way the doctor told him to. If the garden could come back to life, maybe he could too. He just had to tend to it with time.

[created-out-of-stardust]

Imagine, you're sitting in your room, a soft night, you hear a quiet whisper say 'I love you' inbetween the bright messages of the internet, you have been visited by the gentle ghost, you are loved, but then don't imagine, it's the truth, the gentle ghost is just too scared to tell you, so I'm doing it for them, love gentle ghost and me

[batkingsalem]

gentle-ghost replied to your post: So, I’m thinking of making a whole “polaroid”...

Nice

Thank you!!! I'm excited about the idea! :)