24 January, 1893 — Asphodel Cemetery

Things seemed to be going to plan, and now that the initial frenzy had worn off, Victor was beginning to realize that going to plan was frankly terrible. No one suspected Beatrice of having accidentally murdered him, but he was none the less very dead. He didn't have his job to keep him busy during the day, and while he'd stopped in to the hospital a few times to help ease the transition he was beginning to suspect that his presence there was seen as more of an inconvenience than anything else. He didn't have any of his usual hobbies to entertain himself with; he could cast, which took experimental spellwork out of the realm of possibility, and he couldn't read or write without corporeal limbs. Probably worst of all, his family was mourning him, which meant the lot of them were stuck in the house together all day, doing nothing but feeling miserable about it.

He'd just needed to get out of the house, and he hadn't planned it out any further than that. He honestly hadn't known where he was heading until he was already at the edge of the cemetery, at which point all he could do was think oh, this is rather maudlin. But he was already here, so it seemed a shame not to visit his grave now. It was strange that he was the first Daphnel buried here — his father or his mother should have preceded him by a good many years. He shouldn't be here yet. He'd had his whole life ahead of him, and now... well. Now here he was. It was strange, too, to think that his might be an isolated grave. Christabel might very well end up being buried somewhere else, if she remarried. He'd have no children surrounding him in the cemetery.

This was... depressing. Why had he come here? Victor supposed he'd been pushing this sort of thing away from the forefront of his mind for long enough that it must have been bubbling up in his subconscious, but that didn't mean he was ready to face it yet. Still, he meandered towards his grave — until he turned the corner around a mausoleum and realized someone was already there.

Oh. Leo.

"H-hey," he said, trying out a smile — he had no idea what to do or say in this situation. He raised one hand to rub the back of his head and moved to lean up against the side of the mausoleum, in an attempt to look more casual... only to fall through the stone when he failed to account for the nuances of spiritual movement.

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Leonid Fisk Tycho Dodonus

  

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Leonid had understandably been devastated when news of Victors death had reached his ears. The worst part of it all was that he had no one he could share his grief with. Well, not to its full extent anyway. Publicly and within his family, he could appear to be mourning the loss of a friend but they had hardly been just friends.

Victor had been a sparkle he had not expected to end up experiencing. Their entire affair had been unexpected on his end. Leonid had held every intention of continuing to see Victor despite his marriage. He had felt some guilt about that but couldn't he at least have this? Couldn't he be selfish when it came to this?

His lover had stayed behind as a ghost and Leonid wasn't sure how he felt about that. To be able to still laugh and converse the other... but never be able to run his finger over the dips of the sides of Victors torso again... or tug at the others hair strands when they were lost in passion. They would never be able to do any of that again.

He had found himself by Victors grave, pondering on the fact that while Victors body lay beneath the ground... his spirit was still floating around somewhere. Leonid hadn't seen the other since his death so he had no idea where Victor was these days. And then... there he was.

As Victor fell through a mausoleum, Leonid didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So he ended up doing an awkward combination of both.

  

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There was a decaying hand in Victor's face. Well, not literally in. Though he had just fallen straight through it, it was now dangling off the nearest corpse a few inches away from his eyes. Despite his previous career as a healer and his current state of existence, Victor wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of death... or, perhaps more accurately, with the spectacle of decay. Death was fine — someone being present and then going away, being buried where they were no longer seen and no one had to think about them any more, was fine. The sight of skin withering on the bone — tightening and darkening like some sort of malicious snake constricting its victim — and now, more specifically, the reminder that somewhere not very far away this same process was taking hold of his own body, with no consideration for what he was doing elsewhere, made his skin crawl. Or it might have, if he'd still had skin.

In any case, as soon as he stopped falling into the mausoleum he was in an immediate hurry to be out of it. He scampered backwards, away from the stacked bunks of corpses against the wall, then struggled to his feet. Movement as a spirit always seemed more difficult when he was flustered, and on his first attempt his foot merely sank through the hard stone of the floor instead of propelling him back up, but eventually he righted himself and was able to jolt back through the mausoleum wall — this time without passing through any unsuspecting corpses on his way. His exit path brought him abruptly face to face with Leo — so abruptly, in fact, that Victor found himself waving his arms in an attempt to stop and catch his balance without falling straight through him.

"Ah — hi," he said, breathless from the fright of the corpses and the exhilaration of seeing Leo again and the discomposure of having to skitter so quickly to a halt, all at once.

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Victor was gone from his view long enough for Leo to manage to sober up. But then he was face to face with Leo which he hadn't been expecting. The cold shiver that went through him as Victor fell through him left him with a chill that wouldn't go away.

"Hi," he parroted, for lack of anything else to say coming to mind. He stared at the spirit silently for a moment before speaking again. "This feels so odd."

  

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Odd was one word for it, Victor supposed. It felt immediately inaccurate, but he didn't know what word he would have used, in Leo's position. Victor had been dead for nearly a month, and he hadn't made any effort to contact Leo during that time, but he'd certainly thought about him. He hadn't known whether Leonid would have wanted to hear from him, given the new circumstances — and even if he had, it wasn't immediately obvious how Victor would even arrange to send him a message, anyway. He couldn't hold a pen anymore, and he didn't trust anyone enough to compose a letter like this on his behalf. He could have just floated through to Leonid's residence and talked to him, but that seemed incredibly invasive to do without having been invited or proving any warning that he was on his way — particularly if Leo wasn't interested in seeing him.

Honestly, Victor had been assuming he wouldn't. They'd been seeing each other regularly for months, they'd arranged little outings together and given each other gifts, but even so there was a lingering doubt in the back of his mind that at its core their relationship was only sex. Prior to Leo, he'd been involved in enough encounters that were contained entirely inside hasty, shame-driven interludes in dark closets and forgotten corners — there was no emotional component at all, only the physical. And now he had no physical being. There was no reason, part of him had been convinced, that Leo would ever want to hear from him again — nothing more that they could offer each other.

But Leo had visited his grave, so. That was something. Victor didn't know if it was enough of a sign to deserve the sentiment that it had sparked in his chest, but — it was something.

"It's — been quite the adjustment," he said, which was a nothing thing to say, but he didn't know what he actually wanted to say or how to phrase it, and it was better than stilted silence.

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Leos emotions were still in disarray. It felt so surreal to think that Victor's mortal body was lying below the ground nearby while he was talking to him. He also figured it was a lot worse for Victor. After all, he knew how much Victor seemed to like touch. Well, it had always seemed that way when they were together at least.

He nodded sympathetically as Victor said it was quite the adjustment. Not that Leonid could ever truly understand. Not unless he died and became a ghost as well. And he had no plans of dying anytime soon. Impulsively, he reached out to 'touch' Victors cheek but got nothing but an odd sensation and a chill down his spine. "I'm sorry this happened to you but you seem to be taking it in stride?"

  

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Victor did not feel at all as though he were taking this in stride, but he supposed it was forgivable for Leonid to think that. Victor had been trying to hold everything together for everyone, and it wasn't as though they'd had any private conversations since his death, so what else was Leo to assume? Even if they had had any one-on-one conversations, Victor wasn't sure he would have confessed to any of his growing insecurities since his death. His relationship with Leo might have been the most comfortable and secure relationship he'd ever been in (save his marriage, but that was a different sort of thing), but that didn't mean it was indestructible. And if anything was going to cause it to implode, Victor dying and the physical component of their relationship dying with him was probably the thing to do it. This wasn't exactly the time to be layering on a bunch of emotional labor that Victor couldn't repay him for.

"Er, yes, well," he said, as his hands sought out his pockets. "It's not as though there's much alternative, is there?"

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Leonid shrugged. "I don't know." It wasn't like he had extensive connections to ghosts before now. Just the occasional interaction. So he had no idea how one was supposed to conduct themselves when ones lover was turned into a ghost. It wasn't like he had many people he felt he could speak about this with. Perhaps Emrys Selwyn (who mostly came to mind both because he was the first person Leo had ever slept with and was an older, more experienced man) but he doubted the older man would appreciate him reaching out for such a thing. And what if the man had no helpful advice to give anyway? Then it would be for naught and potentially embarrassing.

He made a motion of sliding his hand down the others cheek, shivering a little at the cold chill he felt due to his actions. "And you don't feel any of this?"

  

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Victor tensed as he noticed Leo reach towards his face. Even in an abandoned cemetery, the risk of someone seeing them still occurred to him... but much worse was the knowledge that in half a second, his lover's hand would pass right through him instead of caressing him as he had so many times before.

"I — don't feel anything," he admitted, and when he heard how hopeless the words were, spoken aloud, his attempted at a stoic expression cracked. His lower lip trembled and his eyes stung. He took a step back and coughed into his hand in a hurried attempt to cover the sudden emotion.

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Leonid had not quite been sure what he had been expecting. All he could feel was a chill as if he had just stepped out into a winters day. He was going to miss so many things about having the other near him in physical form. Not just the sex but the moments that they'd had either before or afterwards. When they would just enjoy one anothers company shut away from the world.

I should have played with his hair a lot more, was the thought that came into his mind unbidden. "I wish I'd been able to have something of yours," he mused aloud sadly. Something that held his scent maybe, a jacket perhaps. He could have cast some sort of charm to preserve the scent.

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   Victor Daphnel

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Victor swallowed thickly. It was strange that all the physical feelings of emotion persisted even though his physical body didn't: the lump in his throat, the sting at the bottom of his eye. Was there anything to that or was it just habit that had brought them on? Psychosomatic emotional tells based on his memories of what it was like to be sad? (Would they fade, over time, if not maintained? The way memories faded?)

"It was so sudden," he said, and then because this was hopeless and unproductive and they could probably wallow in it forever without coming to any sort of catharsis, he tried to push past all the emotion with a weak joke: "If I'd known it was coming I'd have picked up an armful of books before I died, and at least had something to read."

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He laughed, the sound strained, in response to his dead lovers joke. Would that have worked? He had no idea how it was to be a ghost. He had never had much cause to need to learn about them and he had not taken Ghoul Studies in Hogwarts.

"I would be happy to either read to you or turn pages of a book for you," he offered. Not that they had done much reading together when the other had been alive.

  

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Victor offered a faltering smile in return. "If we find an excuse for me to visit you. I can't book us hotel rooms anymore," he pointed out. They had at least been publicly friends, so it wouldn't have been odd for someone to see Victor going into Fisk's flat once or twice, but it might raise an eyebrow if he did it too often. He doubted that Leo would have any interest in visiting him, in a house full of mourning family members, and probably while Victor's widow roused herself to the parlor to pour him tea and play hostess.

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"You're a ghost now, you can float through things and be unseen," Leonid pointed out, unable to remove the sad tone from his voice. This was all so much to deal with. But he did know he would be bereft if the other completely cut out his company.

  

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Well, there was that — though Victor was having trouble seeing anything as a silver lining, at this point. He could walk through the wall and get into a building without being spotted, but he couldn't touch Leo. It wasn't a fair trade; it wasn't any kind of trade at all.

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