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It was a terrifying thing, knowing the one you loved was dying without you.
To be fair, It’s not like Harold could have changed this. He was dead, chained to this house, and Bubby somehow still lived.
They took Bubby out in the middle of the night, his eyes focused directly onto Harold, despite the fact that Harold knew that no one but the other ghosts could see him.
And Bubby was gone into the night, and Harold worried.
How would Bubby attach himself to the house now? Would Bubby be able to stay after with them? What would happen to him? It was ideas that Coomer did not want to think about.
“It’ll be alright.” Eloise floated next to him, as she was want to do, and Coomer shook his head slightly. “He’ll find a way. Bubby is the most stubborn person we know, Harold.”
“I know.” He sighs, and Eloise hums a soft tune. “I just worry for him. What if there is no way-”
“Harold, dear.” Cordelia speaks up from the window, where she had stationed herself. “It’s Bubby. He would make a way.”
Harold gives her that. Bubby was stubborn if nothing else.
But there was still the unknown. What if there was nothing Bubby could do?
And thus began the three days of Harold pacing through the house in worry.
Benrey got annoyed with him quickly enough, but said nothing of it. They all knew that Bubby was incredibly important to Harold, and, without him, the staying after in their death wasn’t going to be nearly as fun.
Of course, there was no way to know when Bubby would pass.
Taken from the house, with no one coming into update them.
Harold had finally taken a break from the pacing-not because he was tired, but because he knew that the others were growing quite annoying with him-and stuck by the front window of the house, floating there quietly, staring out into it.
“Fuck my lungs.”
He turned quickly, watching as Bubby rolled off the couch onto the floor without a noise. He was pale, but Harold had expected this, knowing that Bubby was quite sickly when he was carted out, and Harold flew at him, landing solidly on top of Bubby.
“Ow fuck- Harold!” Bubby shifted, grinning and wrapping his arms around Harold quickly. Harold laughed, lifting him up, hugging him like he hadn’t been able to do in over a year, and Bubby grinned, clinging onto him right back.
For the time, that was enough, as Bubby recovered properly from the illness that took his life-there would always be a slight cough, which would sound horrible, but wouldn’t really have an effect-and they both wondered how in the world Bubby had managed to get into the house from so far.
It took them nearly four months to find out that Bubby’s soul had not attached to the house, but rather, to Harold.