It’s a quiet night, and it looks like it’s going to rain. Riley won’t feel the raindrops, but he never liked the way it felt on his skin anyway, all sticky and heavy; he just likes the way it looks, the soft glow it shrouds everything in. He used to like the smell after it rains, too, but the scent of the mud of a fresh grave doesn’t exactly have the same appeal. He’s used to it by now, though, so it’s not like he’ll avoid the cemetery; and truly, his sense of smell isn’t as good as it once was. Death tends to dull the senses, evidently. Riley’s okay with it. He’s had a lot of time to get over it.

He takes the same route he always does, straight through the heart of downtown, then follows the river to the gate of the cemetery. It’s a Tuesday, so nothing is really happening in the city at this hour, but he sees a few stragglers on the streets here and there. He people watches a bit as he makes his way up and down the streets, since he can’t do much else as far as interacting with them goes, and he’s fascinated with the change in culture over the years. Nothing of note really happens, unfortunately, but he isn’t surprised. Weekdays are usually relatively dull.

The full moon is covered by rain clouds, but it still manages to peek through and wash the riverbanks in an eerie silver light. Riley walks as close to the water as possible, for no particular reason but habit. He always looks for fish, but never finds any, especially not now as raindrops start to fall from the sky, passing right through his body on their way to the ground. He watches them a little nostalgically, tries to remember the last time he felt rain properly, but as usual his memory lets him down. It’s just been too long.

His train of thought is interrupted somewhat abruptly as he hears something hit the water, fast and hard. He sees the ripples from the object’s point of entry, but can’t tell exactly what it was that fell or where it went. He gets a strange sense that he needs to do something, though, so he musters up the energy to give himself a corporeal form. It takes a good minute and a half, starting from the tips of his toes and working his way slowly up his body, concentrating all his willpower on inhabiting a physical form. Eventually, he stops hovering about the ground, feels it solid beneath his feet again, can touch the water instead of just letting it pass through him. He feels whole, in a weird way.

He has no idea how deep the river is, so he steps into the water cautiously, but it barely reaches his ankles. As he starts wading in the direction of the splash he heard, it doesn’t seem to get deeper very quickly, and he wonders vaguely if it ever gets deep at all; that is, till his foot slips suddenly over the edge of a sandbar and he’s plunged underwater. He get his head above water again, splutters a little, and understands now why he hadn’t been able to see whatever it was that fell into the river. His hair’s deflated and there’s water in his eyes, so he swipes his bangs away from his face and rubs circles on his eyelids, then opens his eyes to resume his search. When he does, there’s a pale face hovering just above the water line, staring back at him with big, brown eyes.

“What the fuck?” Riley blurts inelegantly, and the dude just keeps staring at him. “Who are you?”

“Who are you?” the guy counters, and Riley sighs because honestly this whole situation is starting to feel really sketchy, really fast.

“I’m Riley. Riley Pierce.” He sticks a hand out above the water, but the guy ignores it. “I, uh, was out here looking for...something.”

“Was it a body?”

“What the fuck?” Riley repeats, because why would that be the first thing this dude assumed he was looking for? He says as much, and the guy gets a sad look on his face.

“I jumped off the bridge, tried to kill myself. Thought maybe you heard me and tried to save me, but I guess you didn’t need to.”

“You did what?” Riley realises he sounds a bit harsher than he means to, and drags a hand down his face. “Stay right there,” he orders as he points sternly at the guy, who nods.

Riley takes a deep breath in, holds it, and dives back down beneath the water. He opens his eyes, and it doesn’t bother him because he’s dead anyway so why would it, and he finds what he’s looking for all too quickly. He struggles a bit but succeeds in getting it over his shoulder and back to the surface. The other guy is still there, just staring off into space, probably having an existential crisis.

“This belong to you?” Riley asks, holding up a body that looks identical to the guy facing him. Said guy immediately loses his shit.

“What the fuck is that?” he asks between shaky, shallow breaths, and Riley gets the feeling that maybe this wasn’t the best way to break it to the guy that his suicide was a success. He doesn’t have much experience in this department; it’s incredibly rare for him to encounter a freshly dead ghost.

“Uhm, well. I hate to break it to you, man, but this used to be you.”

“What?”

“You’re - you’re dead, dude. This is your body.” Riley winces apologetically.

And, well, if the guy was hyperventilating before, he’s really in full on panic mode now. Riley has no clue how to respond to that, the shaking and the frantic breathing and the general lack of coherency. Riley needs to get him calmed down so they can have a proper talk, but he doesn’t know how to do that. Does he touch the guy, or will that make it worse? Should he keep talking or just shut up? He’s totally out of his depth here, no pun intended. He decides to try to form some kind of connection with the guy. It’s easier to calm down when someone tells you you’re dead if you trust the person, right? Sure. Hypothetically.

“Hey, uh. Look at me?” The guy does, though his pupils are still dilated like crazy and he can’t breathe right (not that it makes a difference at this point how he’s breathing, but most new ghosts still tend to do it out of habit). “What’s your name, man?”

“Elliot,” he whispers between wheezes.

“Okay, hey Elliot. It’s nice to meet you, sorry I gotta be the one to have this conversation with you. Though I guess it’s better this way, since most ghosts don’t have anyone to talk to about it at all.”

“Ghosts?” Elliot’s breathing gets even more erratic, and Riley mentally punches himself in the face. He’s so bad at this.

“Alright, let’s start over. First, I’m gonna leave your body here, and we’re gonna go to the river bank, and I’ll call the police so they’ll find your body, and then we can talk about this. Sound like a plan?”

“Is...is that my only option?” Elliot looks even more scared at the mention of calling the police.

“Yeah, pretty much. I can’t move your body or the police might think you were murdered, and -”

“But you already touched my body. Won’t they think it’s a murder anyway when they find your fingerprints? Holy fuck, they’re gonna think you murdered me. Holy shit.” Elliot pulls at his own hair, muttering under his breath about innocent people going to jail for crimes they didn’t commit.

“No, no. Ghosts don’t leave fingerprints, I’ll be fine.”

Elliot momentarily stops his lamenting about the failures of the American judicial system. “You’re a ghost too?”

“Yeah? How did you think I knew all this shit?” Riley also wonders if the darkness makes it harder to see him out here away from the lights of the city, because his appearance would probably have given it away even if he hadn’t mentioned knowing anything about ghosts.

“Well how the fuck would I know? Maybe you could’ve been a witch or something.”

Riley laughs at that. “Witches aren’t real, you noodle.”

“Well until five minutes ago I didn’t think ghosts were, either, so I’m not about to rule out any possibilities.” He’s stopped messing with his hair, and now he’s just absently wringing his hands.

“C’mon, let’s get to solid ground. This water is cold as balls and I don’t want to bother keeping up my physical form any longer, so I won’t be able to hold your body anyway.”

“We have a physical form?”

Riley cuts him a look. “No more questions. Let’s go.”

He lets go of the meat sack that used to be Elliot, and it sinks instantly beneath the murky water. Elliot looks like he’s going to have another mental breakdown, and understandable as that is, Riley really needs to get the police here so they can find his body and notify his family as soon as possible. He reverts back to his default ghostly state, grabs Elliot’s hand, and all but drags him to the river bank.

He tells Elliot to stay put, and goes to find a pay phone. Unfortunately they aren’t nearly as common as they were when Riley was alive, but he knows a diner around the corner that’s been there forever and still has one that works. He doesn’t have any money, but being a ghost makes anyone an excellent pickpocket, and desperate times call for desperate measures. He swipes a few quarters out of a customer’s pocket, then goes back outside to the phone and dials 911.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

Riley tries to sound hysterical, like this is just now happening, and also not something he deals with on a daily basis. “I think someone jumped into the river, I heard a splash - I couldn’t find a body or anything, but I think they’re in trouble!”

“Alright sir, please calm down. Where are you right now?”

Riley gives the name of the diner, answers a few more questions, and the operator asks him how long it’s been since he heard the splash. Riley guesses a time, shortening it a bit for posterity, and the operator tells him not to disturb the body as the person who jumped is most likely already deceased. Of course Riley acts distraught, like he isn’t dead himself, and after several more minutes of answering questions and acting hysterical he hangs up.

He walks back over to Elliot, who’s sitting on the edge of water and staring into it with a horrified look on his face. The rain has stopped by now, so it’s smooth, almost like a mirror, and Riley realises at once why Elliot looks like he’s seen a ghost; because he has. Ghosts are terrifying to look at in general, and it’s worse when the ghost you’re looking at is you.

Riley sits next to him, studies his own reflection. He’s mostly intact, since his cause of death was pretty straight-forward; there’s a big gash that goes most of the way around his neck, but other than that his injuries are just minor cuts and scrapes and bruises. The aftermath of his near-decapitation looks bad, because it won’t stop oozing blood, but his smaller knicks hardly bleed at all any more. He’s a bit more translucent than he was when he was alive, but he’s always been pale, and his silvery hair and light blue eyes didn’t help any. It’s not so much a change to his colouring as it is a desaturation; even the neon of his clothes is still there, it’s just less. Everything is less when you’re dead.

Elliot has a whole other set of problems, though. He’s also a little washed out, but his eyes are still a beautiful brown and his hair is probably blond, but it’s hard to tell with all the mud that’s caked in it. He’s got mud all over, actually, since he was on the bottom of a damn river, and his clothes have a weirdly damp look to them, but the most haunting thing is the fact that his skin has a decidedly blue tone to it. It wasn’t noticeable before, out in the middle of the dark water, but now that they’re closer to streetlights Riley can see it clearly. Elliot’s dark circles around his eyes are also eerily purple, like his lips, and he’s got a splotchy bruise near his temple, probably from hitting his head on the way down. Riley’s seen a lot of heinous deaths, but never a drowning victim, somehow, so it’s definitely something to get used to.

They just sit there for what feels like eternity, inspecting each other’s reflections, because it’s less painful than confronting their own; and Riley has long since gotten over how horrifying he looks, but he still doesn’t enjoy facing his own reflection. No ghost does, really. Anyone would prefer to remember how they looked before they died; isn’t that the whole point of embalming? You can’t embalm a ghost, though, so it’s easier to just avoid reflective surfaces.

After a while, the police show up. Riley and Elliot watch as they sweep the river, locate Elliot’s body, and bring it to the surface. Of course he’s declared dead on arrival, and his corpse is put into a body bag, labeled, and taken off to the coroner’s. Elliot just looks numb at this point; and Riley figures it’s not all that weird that he’s disassociating out the ass right now, so he lets him be. Sometimes you need a break from the reality that you’re dead.

One thing is bothering Riley, though, something that he’s dying to ask, but doesn’t know how to word it. He figures he’s already done as much damage as possible at this point, and it can’t get much worse, so he just says it as bluntly as possible. “Hey, Elliot?”

He turns to face Riley, gives him a wary look, which is admittedly justified. “Yeah?”

Riley clears his throat awkwardly. “Uhm, so. The thing about ghosts is...there’s something holding them back?” He scratches the back of his head self consciously as he tries to find the best way to word this. “Like, most people just go straight to the afterlife, unless there’s some indescribably strong emotion that ties them to this world. Anger, fear, love, desire, whatever. So if you wanted to die so bad, what’s keeping you here?”