Chapter Text
Chan and Changbin’s new apartment was surprisingly neat, all things considered.
The person who showed them the place when they first visited the building sounded very fishy, and the price they were paying for rent was so cheap Changbin almost felt bad for the landlord. It sure seemed like they were in a rush to rent the apartment and two broke, questionable-looking young adults must’ve appeared to be the exact kind of people who’d sign a one-year contract for a suspiciously low price without even thinking twice about it. The whole process starting from the first visit to the actual move-in didn't take more than a full week, and now Changbin couldn't help but second-guess their decision.
"Are you sure the landlord told us the right price for the rent?" Changbin asked, carrying inside a box filled with random bathroom accessories he didn’t even remember ever owning. They didn't have much furniture or decor to move in, some instruments and Chan's paraphernalia at most, so the job could be easily done between the two of them.
Looking around their new home, Changbin thought that they really hit the jackpot with this one. Despite the building being very old, their flat looked anything but. Sure, the living room walls could use a little paint job and the kitchen tiles appeared to be at least a hundred years old, but still, the apartment was really wide. It had two suites, a lot of windows (which would need some blinds as soon as possible), and a nice little balcony where Chan could grow his plants or whatever. All of those were positive points in Changbin’s book.
Which made the whole thing even shadier.
"Yes, that was the price." Chan sounded as unsure as Changbin felt, looking around their new living room for any visible leaking or loose floorboards. "To be honest, I'm suspicious, yes, but mostly scared."
"Why is that?" Changbin asked, crouching down to examine a little hole on the wall where he thought he saw some ants coming out of.
"What if- what if this place is haunted?” Chan said in a small voice, sounding so legitimately scared that Changbin couldn't help the snort that left him. “And that's why they were trying really hard to rent it for a whole year?"
Changbin sighed, looking at him from his squatting position. "You're aware of the fact that you're a vampire, right?” Chan gave him a little nod. “Ok. Just checking."
After years and years of popular manifestations, the government had, five years ago, finally granted equal rights to all humans and supernatural beings. Changbin wasn't as narrow-minded as some other people who still defended human supremacy; he was totally cool with living in harmony with every other creature, being it alive or dead. And all things considered, it didn’t come exactly as a surprise when Changbin found out that his roommate was, in fact, a vampire.
In the beginning, Chan tried really hard to hide his true identity --to no use, as he had an obvious repulsion towards garlic, nocturnal habits and very visible fangs. The last one was honestly a dead giveaway of his nature, and Changbin had caught on to it not even three minutes after first meeting Chan for the first time.
"Doesn't mean I'm not scared of ghosts!" Chan whined, pouting a little. His fangs got in the way when he did that. Changbin thought it was very cute.
“What do you think the ghost will do? Kill you?” He asked, just to push Chan’s buttons. "You're literally already dead."
"Still!"
Changbin sighed. Chan was far from being a normal vampire anyway.
"Nevermind that. Let's just put away our stuff, yeah?" Changbin suggested, picking up the box he had placed on the ground and carrying it to the bathroom. They had a lot to unpack and organize and Changbin had morning classes the next day, so it would be great if he could tidy at least his room before going to bed.
The night proceeded without any more complications. Changbin just forgot about the whole "haunted house" ordeal as he usually tended to with matters that he judged to not be as important as university work.
Chan is, of course, a completely different story: he kept being wary of each and every corner of their new home, startling wildly at the loud noises they soon heard coming from their next-door neighbors at random times. The crashing and exploding sounds made their shared wall vibrate sometimes, and maybe, just maybe, Changbin could guess why their rent was so cheap after all.
----
It felt like ages to Hyunjin until someone moved in again.
The last owner had been an old lady with way too many cats, and Hyunjin had pretty much nothing to do except watching the cooking channel on TV (which was pretty interesting, he's not going to lie) and sneeze all the time thanks to the cat hairs that seemed to cover every surface of the apartment. Now that he thinks about it, he guesses that she was probably deaf or really unaware of her surroundings because Hyunjin's sneezes could get pretty loud and he cooed at the cats sometimes, but she never even acknowledged his presence.
It was boring, to say the least, but it got even worse when she moved out and suddenly Hyunjin was all alone once again. When alive, he’d hear people saying that you never see the true value of something until you lose it. Now, Hyunjin could confidently say that he’d never missed anything more than the smell of mold, the mountains of cat hair and the mismatching decorations.
He didn’t even know how much time had passed since she left, his hopes of having something to entertain himself with dying out again and again as waves of potential renters and buyers came in just to go straight out of the door again when the good rent price became too suspicious. Hyunjin didn’t have a single sliver of hope at all when the landlord opened the door to a really weird couple to visit. He guesses they're a couple, anyway; why would they move in together if they weren't? Both of them were male and one was a vampire, a creature Hyunjin had never seen before in real life (and it made him equal parts excited and scared). They sounded really happy with the prospect of moving in, so when they left just to come back a few days later with all of their stuff in boxes, Hyunjin was completely ecstatic.
He finally had someone to haunt, and could fulfill his duty as a ghost! Or something!
The couple didn't have a lot of things to bring in --Hyunjin even thought about helping them with the boxes and some heavy lifting but figured it wouldn't be something really polite to do without even introducing himself. They seemed nice and with the two boys around, Hyunjin wasn't bored anymore; he floated around watching, wide-eyed, as the smaller one set up a big TV with a gaming console, and wow! Hyunjin never had the chance to play on one of these! It looked so fun!
He couldn't even begin to explain how happy he was until vampire-guy started talking and soured his mood.
"What if- What if this place is haunted? And that's why they were trying really hard to rent it?" That was pretty accurate, Hyunjin thought to himself, watching them while sitting on the kitchen counter.
Feeling dejected, Hyunjin pouted. The last thing he wanted was for these two to leave him an empty apartment to be bored and alone again.
Like everyone else before.
----
The weeks that followed the move in passed by in a blur; Hyunjin was so happy with his new housemates that he couldn't even put it into words. One thing that wasn't going so great, though, was the haunting part on Hyunjin's side.
He hadn't had the opportunity (or guts) to introduce himself yet, let alone prank and scare them. And the tiny itty bitty problem with that last part is that he actually...doesn't know how. As far as his knowledge about his own kind went, all that ghosts did while trapped on earth was scare the hell out of people and then roam around looking for more people to scare the hell out of. Hyunjin didn't have any actual, real experience on that considering the last lady that lived with him didn’t even flinch at the sudden noises and called him “Mike, sweetie!” when he appeared in front of her. That said, he wasn't sure how to approach his housemates, whose names he discovered were Changbin and Chan.
It was especially hard considering their crashing schedules and the fact that both of them were almost never home at the same time. From what he discovered based on passing exchanges between them (read: eavesdropping), Changbin studied music at a university near their home (how cool is that?!) and Chan, being a vampire and all, couldn't go out in the sun without the aid of a gazillion articles of clothing so he usually stayed awake in his room-turned-studio producing songs when Changbin was asleep. Hyunjin's mother taught him not to mind other people's business but he couldn't help listening to their conversations, gathering bits and pieces of information about their daily lives, and saving it for when it could be useful.
So far the only progress Hyunjin made on the haunting front, though, was breaking a plate by accident when he was secretly putting away the dishes and slightly misplacing Chan's new Goku action figure when he wanted to take a closer look. That last one had, surprisingly, freaked Chan out to no end, but he recovered quickly with Changbin taking the blame for it for some reason. So everything, sadly, stayed the same.
It's a Tuesday night now, and, as Hyunjin learned, Tuesday nights were officially named “Let's Watch Movies And Eat Junk Food Because We're Antisocial” nights since that was exactly what Changbin and Chan did. They holed themselves up in the apartment, much to Hyunjin's delight, and chose a random movie from the list Changbin had on his phone while waiting for the tons of greasy food they had ordered to arrive.
The movie started and Hyunjin was splayed out on the couch, taking up pretty much all of the space Chan wasn't occupying, the couch big enough for him to be comfortable while far enough from Chan so that he wouldn't touch him by accident. Changbin picked a horror movie today and Hyunjin could say with 100% confidence that he absolutely hated horror movies of all kinds. He was easily scared and terrified of the dark, so, if Hyunjin's honest, he was just powering through the movie to feel like he was hanging out with friends.
It was a movie that’d been released recently, considering the summary Changbin gave Chan (and Hyunjin by proxy) before the movie began, and he was so focused on the story that the jumpscare caught him completely by surprise. He was startled so hard that his first instinct was to make himself visible and hug Chan for dear life (death?), the vampire hugging him back in equal fear until he seemed to realize that Changbin was actually sitting on the floor, and originally there was no one else besides him on the couch. Chan looked at Hyunjin -really looked at him- and let out the highest-pitched scream Hyunjin had ever heard coming from a male, startling him even more.
The following thirty seconds could only be described as pure chaos: Chan screamed again, Hyunjin screamed louder, Chan grabbed a pillow, threw it at Hyunjin in and the ghost started crying.
"Why would you hit him?" Changbin screamed from his place on the floor, not believing his eyes. He wasn't surprised about the ghost-boy crying on their couch -- he figured the apartment was haunted since week one when he entered their living room just to see one of his Thor comics floating in the air. No, Changbin was surprised that Chan had just fucking hit the poor ghost on the face with a pillow.
"It's a ghost! I told you this place is haunted!" Chan was holding onto the couch for dear life, as far from the ghost as possible. It was kind of rude, Changbin guessed.
"You scared him!" Changbin argued back, going to check on the crying boy.
"He scared me first!" Changbin knows that throwing the first thing you can get your hands on at someone who suddenly grabs you is probably a natural reaction, but it didn't change the fact that he was still kind of pissed. Chan was a supernatural creature himself, he should be more understanding towards dead beings or something. Now, no thanks to his roommate, they had a ghost boy who couldn't be older than eighteen when he died crying on their couch because he was scared.
"Hey, hey- It's okay, don't cry." Changbin tried to comfort him, slowly stepping closer and talking in what he hoped was a soothing tone.
"He's so mean..." The ghost sobbed, whining a little. It was cute. Probably as cute as someone who wasn't alive and was, well, a ghost, could be. He was really tall, too --taller than both Changbin and Chan, from what Changbin could guess. The cherry on top was a very pretty face, his shoulder-length hair framing it in an endearing way.
"Okay, now I feel bad," Chan said from his place on the edge of the couch, now looking guilty. The boy must’ve hit him in the heartstrings, too. "I'm sorry I hit you."
The boy just nodded, wiping his face a little, clearly still upset.
"Are you really a ghost?" Changbin asked what could be awarded the World’s Dumbest Question, but it was the best he could manage at the moment to distract the boy and hopefully make him stop crying. His efforts seemed to work, as the ghost nodded again in response, still sobbing but not fully crying anymore.
"Have you been here for long?"
Another nod.
"Were you watching the movie with us?" Now that Changbin thinks about it, it was the only explanation for the whole thing, and it squeezed his heart a little. The boy must've felt so alone in the house, having them move around but not being able to communicate or interact in any way. He looked at Chan for a moment and the vampire looked back at him, probably arriving at the same conclusion as Changbin if his expression was anything to go by.
"Yes...but I don't like horror movies..." The boy said in a small voice, playing with the hem of his hoodie. Changbin didn't actually know how clothes worked on ghosts, now that he thought about it.
"It's okay. We can watch something else, yes?" By the time Changbin finished his sentence Chan was already out of the couch and choosing another movie on Netflix, settling for some romantic comedy that had a 99% relevant status.
They settled back on the couch, the ghost boy sitting in the middle now, seeming happy to be between Changbin and Chan and with no pillows aimed at him. He was still pouting a little, though, drying the tear tracks on his face.
"What's your name?" Chan asked, not being able to fully concentrate on the movie anymore. The ghost might be familiar with them already, considering the three weeks this one-sided arrangement went on for, but Changbin and Chan knew absolutely nothing about the other boy.
"Hyunjin." The boy answered. "And you're Changbin and Chan.” He completed, pointing at them while saying their respective names. “Chan is a vampire, and that's cool because I've never met a vampire before but his fangs look scary and he hits people with pillows." The way Hyunjin said it was really cute and Changbin was having a hard time controlling his squealing. Cuteness was his one true weakness but he wasn't the only one suffering: Chan, now over the initial shock, was looking at Hyunjin with the eyes of someone who’d love to pinch some nearby cheeks.
"Oh, don't worry about him," Changbin said, laughing. Chan was completely harmless. "He can't actually bite people, he has hemophobia."
"What's that?" Hyunjin asked back, looking very confused.
"Fear of blood."
It was borderline ridiculous that Chan, a vampire, consequence of years and years of adaptation and a long line of powerful and immortal beings, was afraid of blood. Changbin bought him a Mickey Mouse cup so that Chan could actually drink human blood because both the cup and its straw were black and therefore he couldn't see the blood while drinking it. The things he did for this friendship.
In his head, Chan was like one of those breeds of small, yappy domestic dogs that could die if you made loud noises or scared them too badly.
"Yes, he's the most useless vampire I've ever seen." No use in denying it.
"Hey!" Chan sounded slightly offended.
"You don't even sparkle in the sun or anything, and that time I came home with a nosebleed you actually passed out."
Hyunjin giggles at his teasing, and both Changbin and Chan freeze in place, exchanging looks with each other. That shit had to be the cutest thing Changbin had ever witnessed in his sad twenty years of life and wow, how does one even deal with cute ghosts giggling on their couch.
It must be the sleep clouding his mind, he guessed. There's no way all of the occurrences in the last hour weren’t actually some kind of fever dream. On top of that, he can’t possibly be actually developing a crush on a ghost, can he?.
"It's getting late, I'm kind of tired.” Changbin yawned, watching the final movie credits roll on the screen. “Do you sleep, Hyunjin?" He asked the boy sitting at his side, legitimately curious.
"Yes! But I can't sleep with the lights out." Of course, he can’t.
"Oh, I didn't know ghosts could sleep." Chan sounded curious as well, both he and Changbin were not very knowledgeable when it came to ghosts. Changbin considered himself pretty well-versed in most supernatural creatures, but ghosts could be really unpredictable so there wasn't much info on them in general.
"We don't sleep sleep like you humans or vampires do. We just kind of...don't think? For a while? I don't know how to explain it."
"Oh. Do you lay down to uh, sleep, then?" They’d need to make sure he was comfortable with Changbin’s extra mattress if that was the case. Saving some money to buy Hyunjin a bed would probably have to be their next course of action, now that it seemed he’d be their third roommate.
"I can do it while standing. It's not really comfortable because sometimes I float away without meaning to. I've been sleeping in Chan's room these days." Hyunjin said, so earnestly that Changbin almost missed Chan paling on the other end of the couch.
"You- Were you sleeping in my room the whole time?" Changbin got up, ready to help. Chan honestly looked like he might pass out or throw up at any moment, and not necessarily in that order.
"Yes! It's very comfy and I like what you did with the decoration." Hyunjin answered him with a smile, bless his heart. Changbin now had the confirmation that the boy was way too pure to deal with the fact that people didn’t deal with ghosts very well.
"Are you telling me that I had a ghost standing on the side of my bed every night for three whole weeks? Unknowingly?" Yeah, he's definitely passing out in the next ten seconds. Changbin sighed, getting a pillow so that he could at least cushion his head when Chan lost consciousness.
"Uh- yes?"
Chan does pass out as soon as Hyunjin finishes his sentence, and the boy looked so worried that Changbin felt a little bad for him but he would get used to it with time, though. Since he’d be, uh, haunting them anyways for an undetermined period of time, Hyunjin is bound to witness Chan's dorkiness and just him passing out in general. The thought of Hyunjin living and interacting with them from now on made Changbin's heart skip a beat, for some reason.
"Is he going to be okay?" Hyunjin sounded very worried for Chan, fanning him with one of his hands and running his fingers through his hair with the other.
"Yeah, it happens all the time." It was fine, Chan would wake up in a few minutes. "You can sleep in my room from now on, I have an extra mattress there."
"But you sleep with the lights out!" Hyunjin pouted, eyes open wide. He really did hate the dark.
"It's okay, I'll protect you from the ghos- uh. From whatever it is that you're afraid of, I guess.” What was up with dead beings being afraid to die? “And we can leave the bathroom lights on."
Changbin waited for Chan to wake up so he could help him to the vampire’s bed, Hyunjin floating behind them. Chan looked a little shaken but fine nonetheless, so he left him to do whatever it was that he did in his room and went to his own, almost forgetting that the ghost was following him as he didn't make any sounds. Hyunjin went ahead to get the extra mattress from where it was stored, and Changbin just stood at the door, taking it all in. The situation seemed too unreal, and Changbin was sure he’d wake up any minute now and everything would be back to normal.
A high-pitched scream almost perforated his ears and reminded him that yes, all of this was really happening. There's a ghost in their apartment.
"Changbin! There's a cockroach here!"
It was going to be a long night.