Archive of Our Own

Team’s class began six minutes ago, and he’s not in it. He jogs his leg up and down against the pavement, willing the light to change, even though he knows and hates this light for being one of the slowest in his area. His professor has undoubtedly noticed his absence, this being the third time this week, and the later he is, the more intense the lecture.

Next to him, a car horn blares. A girl Team’s age wearing jeans and a T-shirt has decided to cross the street at an intersection with no crosswalk whatsoever. She gives the driver the finger without stopping, her eyes fixed on Team.

Before he can so much as flinch, she grips his arm and over the noise of engines and rushing traffic on the road ahead she shouts, “Take care of her for me!”

Team stares at her and shouts back, “What?”

The smile she offers is wry and sad, and then she runs the rest of the way across the street and the light changes.

In the two and a half seconds Team wonders what in the world she wanted with him, the driver behind Team leans on their horn.

He pushes off again, prepared to lean his motorcycle into the upcoming turn, when a cataclysmic shrieking noise bursts around him.

He hits the ground, and then a truck hits him.

Team registers what he’s seeing just fine, but he doesn’t believe it.

The blood smeared and spattered on the ground—sure. His motorcycle crushed and crumpled—yes, fine. His body gruesomely smashed under a fallen truck bed?

No.

“Team?”

The voice isn’t familiar, but Team turns his head on instinct anyway. Walking toward him through the throng of people and emergency responders crowded around is a guy Team’s age, maybe slightly older. He doesn’t even glance at the body on the pavement.

He says, “My name is Arthit. Come with me. I can answer your questions.”

•

Team follows Arthit to a park nearby. He realizes that he hasn’t breathed in a while, but when he tries to engage his lungs to inhale, he feels nothing happening.

“What the fuck,” Team whispers. He stops and claws a hand over the front of his shirt, trying to breathe in frantic gasps that catch no air.

Arthit sits on a bench and pats the spot next to him. “C’mere,” he says. “I’ll explain.”

Team shakes his head vehemently. “I can’t,” he says. “I can’t breathe. Phi, I can’t breathe.”

Arthit leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “Yes, well. You’re dead,” he says.

The word Team has been stifling—because how could he be, if he’s still here? If this guy is talking to him?—slams into Team even harder than the truck did.

Team says, “No,” again and turns around, but the sight of smoke rising from the highway stops him in his tracks. “No,” he whispers. “Fuck. No.”

He grips his hair and tucks his face against his forearms, trying to force in breaths that don’t come. He has a class. He’s having dinner with his mom later. He has a swim meet on Friday.

“I can’t,” he says. “I’m not—I didn’t even see the truck! I didn’t feel anything!”

Arthit makes a soft noise. “Yeah, we weren’t expecting it to be the truck, but I’ve seen stranger causes of death. At least you went quick. Head injury can be one of the least gruesome ways to go in my experience.”

Team whips around and takes several steps away from Arthit. “D-did you—?”

“No,” Arthit says. He smiles with a stiff sort of sadness. “Sandee removed your soul before you died. That’s why you didn’t feel anything. You were her last job.” He spreads his hands like he’s in a board meeting. “And now you’ll be taking her place.”

Team wants to back farther away from him, but his fear has narrowed down to a source he can recognize, and it’s not Arthit but the wreckage and noise behind him. So he stays where he is.

When Arthit only looks at him with patience, Team asks, “What job?”

A new voice says, “Grim reaper,” and another guy walks up to the bench and braces his hands on the back of it behind Arthit’s shoulders. He smiles at Team with a friendly but polite sort of distance. “Welcome to the group. I’m Kongphob.”

•

The explanations Team receives from them are both perfunctory and detailed. A grim reaper, they tell him, is a sort of middle management job. Reapers facilitate a smooth transition from life to death by removing the soul of what they call a decedent, a person marked for death.

“Who marks people’s deaths?” Team asks.

“Not our department,” Kongphob says.

Soul removal eliminates pain at the time of death and allows decedents to experience a much less traumatic end to their lives. Each reaper has an unknown allotted number of souls to reap, and once they finish their quota, they move on, and their last removed soul becomes their replacement.

Team can’t come up with anything that would disprove what they’re saying, but only one thing really convinces him that they’re telling the truth:

After about thirty minutes of not breathing and yet continuing to exist without any apparent issues, Team has no choice but to accept that he is, in fact, dead.

“So you’re ghosts too?” Team asks.

There aren’t many other people in the park, but Kongphob has smiled at at least one passerby and received a smile in return, whereas Team has been ignored even when he was crouching and holding his head and panicking in a very visually disturbing sort of way that should have earned him at least a cautious glance from someone.

“Not quite,” Kongphob says.

“We’re undead,” Arthit says. “And you will be as well, once your funeral is over and your body’s been put to rest properly. You’ll receive a new corporeal form, and while you and we will see you as you are now, the living will see you as someone different from who you were.” He pauses, and after a short study of Team’s face, he adds gently, “Because you’re not part of their world anymore.”

“Did you tell him about the temple yet?” Kongphob asks Arthit quietly.

“Not yet,” Arthit says, and when he glances back at Kongphob there’s a visible shift in his expression. Something much softer and younger.

It’s probably Team’s hysteria that leads him to think, At least I’m with people like me.

He supposes this is irrefutable evidence that queer people gravitate to each other—even in death.

Kongphob says to Team, “We have a place for you to stay until your funeral. You can ask us questions on the way there.”

•

In addition to not being able to breathe, Team also can’t interact in any way with the physical world, so all forms of public transportation intended for the living are out. According to Kongphob there are no trains for the dead, apparently, so they have to walk.

“You died pretty far from the temple, so it’ll take about an hour,” Kongphob says.

Arthit makes a quiet noise of disgruntlement and picks his T-shirt away from his body. “Let’s try to walk in the shade,” he says.

Kongphob smiles at him and then over his shoulder at Team, and that tiny moment of inclusion gives Team an unexpected thrill of relief. At least he won’t be lonely.

“Which temple?” Team asks.

Arthit and Kongphob say, “It’s—” at the same time. Then Arthit says, “You can,” and Kongphob says, “Sorry, Phi, you can—” at the same time. Arthit’s shy huff and Kongphob’s open laughter follow.

Team blurts, “Sorry—are you two dating?”

Arthit, leading the way, says, “Married.” He lifts his hand and taps his thumb on a band around his fourth finger. “Not legally, though. Too complicated. We can’t immerse ourselves too deeply or too noticeably in the system.” He half turns his head and says, “That goes for you, too.”

Kongphob smiles at his own hand and says, “It was tempting to make it legal, but it’s better to keep documentation simple these days. Maybe if we’d met when we were alive—”

“Then I would have been forty-eight when you were born,” Arthit says.

Team stares between them. They look very much the same age to him. “You met after you died?” he guesses.

They all pause at a crosswalk alongside two older women studying a map on a smartphone.

“Yes. I died in 1987,” Kongphob says, casually. “Two days after my twenty-first birthday.”

One of the women glances sideways at him, her eyes a careful, casual flicker.

“Kongphob,” Arthit says, exhausted.

Kongphob says, “Sorry, P’Arthit,” and smiles at the woman when she looks at him again.

After they cross the street and Team has passed his arm through a few trees because that’s something he can do without a corporeal form, Arthit says, “The temple we’re going to isn’t technically affiliated with any religion. It has a name, and all the paperwork points to it being Buddhist, but it was started over two hundred years ago by a reaper. Part of the complex is set up for new additions like you to find their feet after death. Before your funeral, they’ll help set you up with a place to live and a job to pay the bills.”

Team says, “I thought you said my job is the grim reaper thing?”

“It is,” Arthit says.

“It’s more of a vocation,” Kongphob says. “We don’t get paid.”

”Please don’t start,” Arthit sighs.

“I just think we could stand to unionize.”

“I don’t want to do this right now.”

Kongphob curls a hand around Arthit’s neck and bumps his nose against Arthit’s ear with a grin. “Fine,” he says. Then he mouths, “Later,” at Team.

“I saw that,” Arthit says.

•

Arthit is correct in the sense that the temple doesn’t look like part of it houses grim reapers. It’s not even especially large or well-funded, which seems to fit with the whole Staying Incognito aspect of being undead that Arthit keeps mentioning.

Once through the gate, Team feels a shift, as if the energy sustaining his form is…rippling.

Kongphob says, “Don’t worry,” over his shoulder. “It stops after a bit.”

Arthit leads them past the stairs leading up to the main building and down a dirt path past the Scripture Repository to a row of huts for the monks’ dwellings. Arthit and Kongphob are deferential to the monks they pass, and to Team’s surprise, some of them even raise their hands to Team, who rushes to return the greeting.

The huts are all identical, but Arthit walks directly to the one third from the wall and opens the screen door.

“Thanks,” Team says, and heads inside.

Arthit says, “You’re welcome,” and waits until Kongphob is inside to follow and close the door behind them.

One curtained window, a bed with crimson bedding, a small table pushed against the turquoise-painted wall, and an old patterned carpet.

“You can stay here until your body is put to rest,” Kongphob says. “Do you have any interest in seeing your funeral?”

Team balks at the suggestion alone. “N-no, that’s…no.”

“Consider it,” Arthit says. “You won’t have another opportunity to see your family or friends afterward, and most people get closure from seeing the official end to their lives.”

Team frowns at the floor.

“I’ll be coming by in the mornings,” Arthit continues, “so you have time to change your mind. I think given the way you died, though, they might not leave your body on display for very long.”

“I’ll find out what temple they’ll bring your body to,” Kongphob says. “Unless you know already?”

Team opens his mouth, then shakes his head. “I…I think I’m going to be sick. Or…” Can he even be sick? “Do I have to stay here the whole time?” he asks.

“Until you have a corporeal body,” Kongphob says, “this is usually what we recommend, yes. It’ll give you time to accept the change, and less opportunity to go linger in your previous life.”

“‘Previous life’,” Team says.

It’s with a pang that he notices he’s stopped trying to breathe.

Outside the hut, sunlight pours across the grounds, and Team can hear a sparse few visitors in the distance talking about someone’s pregnancy. A new life, when his has just ended. The cruelest irony.

“Did you stay here too?” Team asks them. “After you—died?”

“I did,” Arthit says. “For a week. It was nice.” He seems to mean it, his eyes moving across the tiny room with inexplicable fondness. “One of the monks was very kind to me. He taught me chants and helped me settle.”

Fractionally, Team relaxes. If the monks at least can interact with him—

“I was inexpertly cremated,” Kongphob says. “So, I didn’t have to.”

Team stares at him in abject horror. “Inexp—”

“Would you please just tell people you died in a fire?” Arthit says, giving Kongphob a flat look.

Kongphob offers Arthit an innocent expression in return with his bottom lip just slightly puffed out.

Team’s not any less horrified.

•

Soon afterward, Kongphob and Arthit tell Team they need to leave. They have souls to collect, but Arthit promises to return in the morning. He doesn’t say why, but Team already hates being alone so he accepts with a nod.

Before they go, Arthit tells him, “We called someone to keep you company. He’s close by, so he should be here soon. Normally we’d stay with a new reaper longer than this, but today is unusually busy for us.”

Team says, “It’s okay, Phi,” because it’s not like he knows anything about what’s going on beyond what they’ve told him. How can he possibly object?

Kongphob offers Team a smile that’s a few degrees warmer than the first one he offered. “His name is Win. You’ll like him,” he says. “He only died eleven years ago.”

Team isn’t sure if that’s meant to be comforting or funny, so he just says, “Thanks, Phi,” and raises his hands as they leave the hut.

He listens to them talk to each other as they leave, their voices receding with each step. When their words are completely indistinct, Arthit says something that elicits a bright, joyful laugh from Kongphob, and Team thinks he’d cry if he could get enough air to do it.

Team glances at the bed, then sits on the floor. He rests his face in his hands, listens to the muted traffic on the street and the chanting from a ceremony going on in a building nearby, and falls apart entirely.

Funeral.

His funeral.

His body.

Would his family cremate him?

No.

Will they?

He thinks they buried his grandparents, but they were all dead before he turned seven and he doesn’t remember their funerals.

He knows how funerals work, in theory. He’s seen them in dramas, in movies. His friends have told him some things. Cultural osmosis can teach a lot more than a person realizes. To think—his body at a temple prepared for burial or—or cremation. The body he’s lived in for twenty years.

A knock on the doorframe disturbs his panic, and Team startles so badly he reels back and slams his head on the small table. It doesn’t hurt, of course.

He’s dead.

Team watches as the screen door opens and a guy his age peers into the hut. When their eyes meet, the guy offers a half-smile and a quiet, “Hi. I’m Win. P’Arthit asked me to stop by.”

Team stares at him.

Win asks, “Can I come in?”

Team nods.

His sense of caution around strangers died with his body, it seems.

Win is…exactly his type, which is so hideously typical of this day that Team can’t hold in an ugly laugh. He meets the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen hours after he died.

He drops his face back into his hands and returns to descending with determination into despair.

“So, why are you on the floor?”

Into his non-corporeal hands, Team says, ”I can’t touch anything. I’m dead.”

“You can touch things here. It’s a temple.”

Team lifts his head, eyes wide. “Really?”

Win’s sitting on the floor opposite him, one leg bent and his arm braced on it casually. The other arm he has stretched behind him holding himself upright. With the blond hair tied back and the piercings and the tattoos on his bare arms and the complete poise in how he’s sitting, he’s a study in devastating laidback beauty.

That, and the mischievous smile—

Can a person die twice?

“You’re sitting on the floor, aren’t you?” Win points out. He raps his knuckles on the hardwood. “See?”

Team, feeling stupid, copies him, and his eyebrows launch when his knuckles make contact. He can’t feel it, but the sound of knocking on wood is unmistakable.

“See?” Win says, his smile becoming a grin. “Nice.”

It’s meaningless praise—what did he even do?—but it makes Team smile, the first one he’s experienced since his death. Maybe it has something to do with Win. Maybe it’s post mortem delirium.

Win says, “I was there when you died,” and watches Team’s confusion. Maybe reacting to what he sees on Team’s face, Win says, “The truck that hit you caused a lot of other deaths. We were all there. I finished last, so P’Arthit asked me to stay with you while he and Kongphob handle some souls in other parts of the city.”

Team nods, then dips his head. “A truck,” he says. “A truck killed me.”

“There’s no shame in that one,” Win says. “It took a truck to take you out.”

When Team looks up at Win again, he sees Win’s expression soften. He moves closer to Team until their knees are touching, and when Team stares at the contact he can’t feel, Win explains, “Reapers can touch souls.” He braces his hands on Team’s biceps, and since Team can’t feel it, he turns his head to watch Win’s thumb rub over the thin fabric of Team’s sleeve.

Team says, “I think I’d cry if I could.”

Win says, “You are.”

To prove it, he strokes Team’s cheek with his thumb and then shows the wet gleam on his skin.

Team touches his own face, feeling nothing, and pulls his hands away, slick like he’s just pulled himself out of a pool.

“You can’t feel it,” Win says, “but it looks like you’ve been crying since before I got here.”

Team says, “Oh,” and closes his eyes tightly before trying to wipe them dry with the back of his hand. “Sorry.” He can’t feel anything, so he has no way of knowing if it’s working.

“Nothing wrong with crying,” Win says. He takes Team’s arm and tugs it away. ”You just died today.”

So Team finishes falling apart, and Win doesn’t try to stop him. He stays where he is, and although Team can’t feel their knees touching, he can see that they are, and knowing he has a tether to something gives him a candle in the dark.

When he’s calmed down, Win says, “If you want me to answer anything, I can probably do that for you.” He pulls the hem of his shirt up and dabs Team’s face with it. “Sorry, I know this is gross, but I didn’t bring a towel.”

Team glances at his bared stomach and says, “It’s okay.”

When Win drops his shirt, he focuses on the front of it. The gray spots of moisture on Win’s white shirt—tears from a ghost—would bend Team’s brain if he still had a functional one.

He reaches for a less cerebral question.

“What kind of body do I get when—when I get one?”

“Same as what you had,” Win says. He quirks a smile. “Sorry if that disappoints you, but—” His eyes sweep Team’s body from his eyes to his thighs and back up again. “—I wouldn’t be, if I were you.”

Team shoves Win’s chest on reflex, but Win’s laughter brings a tremulous smile twitching to the corner of Team’s mouth.

“Isn’t it kind of tacky to hit on someone who just died?” Team asks

Win says, “Your views on what’s tacky about death are going to change pretty quickly once you start this job.”

“Is it true we don’t get paid?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“So you have a job?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“Doing what?”

“Tutoring.”

Team is too tired and too dead to hold back his skepticism. “Really?”

Win nods. “I was already doing it full-time when I died, so I just kept doing it. The physical body I have that the living sees looks the same age as I do, so I ended up poaching a lot of my own students after I died.”

Later, years later, Team will remember sitting on the floor of a hut on the grounds of a temple on the day he died talking to Win about his post mortem job and asking about Kongphob’s union comment. He’ll remember asking Win how he died (“drowned”) and if Win liked reaping (“uh, well”) and if Win had to go anywhere soon (“no, unless you want to be alone”).

He’ll remember asking Win, “Could you stay?”

He’ll remember Win saying, “Of course.”

He’ll remember talking to Win through the night, and he won’t realize until later, weeks later, that Win’s physical body needed the sleep, but he chose Team’s comfort over his own.

He’ll think, That was when I started to fall, but he won’t be sure.

There were a lot of moments like that between them before Team was sure.