Young Writers Society

Leo first saw him at the cemetery. 

It was his fathers funeral. Leo knew that, everybody knew that. And it wasn't even the first time he had seen him. They had gone to school together their whole lives, after all, even if they only ever had a few fleeting conversations over the years. 

Still. You never really know a person until you see their hearts on their sleeves. 

Leo watched as Jason Moore stood by his fathers open grave alone. The funeral had finished long before, but he came back once his mother and grieving family had left. He had taken off his suit jacket and rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, sticking his hands in his pockets. From the back, he looked much older than nineteen. His messy black hair was tamed with gel and his shoulders were set in a way that was far too familiar to Leo. He saw it all the time. 

Jason eventually sighed and bowed his head. Leo closed his notebook and leaned forward to see him better, observing as Jason took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, exhaling the smoke with his head tilted back. 

"He's angry at me," Jason's father said behind him. Leo only half turned. Anybody else would be scared shitless of a dead man talking to them, but not Leo. It was expected. He could hear the dead, he always had. It was just something he had grown used to over the years. "He wants to yell, but he won't."

"Why is he angry?" Leo asked, keeping his voice low so that Jason couldn't hear him. 

"You've heard the gossip. I killed myself. Slit my wrists in the bath and Jason found me. I'd be more worried if he wasn't angry at me, you know," Keran Moore said. He sat down beside Leo and watched with him. In life, Keran had been known to everybody. He was the man who taught teenagers maths and made sure they passed their GCSE's with minimal stress. He even taught Leo for a time and helped him get through the more difficult problems he couldn't wrap his head around. Three years later, and Leo hadn't used algebra for anything, except helping his younger sister with homework. 

"Why not show yourself to him?" Leo asked. 

"He's a skeptic. He never believed in anything he couldn't see. Besides, he'd know you were here too, and I think that would just make him angrier," Keran said. He frowned. He was wearing what he was buried in, but Leo could see his slit wrists. Two cuts on the left, one on the right, all three deep enough to kill. He shuddered. He had spoken to many people who had taken their own lives, and they always regretted it. That was the saddest part. 

"Are you going to move on?" Leo looked at him properly and saw Keran's eyes were pale. In life, they had been dark brown. 

"I don't know. I think I'd like to hang around and see what my children do in life, first," Keran said. he stood and straightened out his jacket, which fit him well. "For now, I want to hear what he has to say. If he has anything to say."

Leo just nodded and let him go.

He didn't know what Jason said, nor did Keran tell him when he came back, looking sad and guilty. He didn't push. That was a family matter, and he didn't even know this family all that well. All he knew was that Jason was a troublemaker from the start, his mother wrote for the local paper, and his older brothers were a motorcross racer and a lawyer. And now, the patriarch of that family was dead by his own hand. 

It wasn't the worst thing he had ever heard, though. 

Leo could remember the first ghost he ever saw. His brother, Daniel, who was seventeen when cancer finally took him away. Lung cancer. Inoperable. Practically untreatable. A death sentence and they had to watch as, over the months, chemo failed to work and Daniel steadily faded away, until one day, he was so weak he only had a few words to say. 

I see it. 

Leo had been nine at the time. 

It was a week later when Daniel appeared to him in his bedroom. Well, it would be more accurate to say that he walked into his room to see Daniel reclining on his bed, looking to be in perfect health, and singing some rap-rock song he used to play all the time. Leo almost screamed, but Daniel calmed him down and explained things to him. Explained that he had a gift. Explained that Leo could help people if he wanted to. He could reach out beyond the grave and speak to peoples deceased loved ones. Hell, he could even help the dead just by talking to them. 

That's how it began. It wasn't until he was fifteen that he started to visit the cemetery, just to listen to what the dead had to say. They whispered, scared at first until they began to trust him. Now, he knew most of them. He knew their stories and how they died, he knew where the came from, who their families were, who they were related to in the town. And they knew him. Little Leo Parker, who they would willingly come to, even outside of the cemetery, if they had a problem, or just needed to talk. Leo had spent many lessons just listening to some Victorian house-servant talk about her life, or an old lady from the 1950's ask about her great-grandchildren. 

Watching Keran stand behind his son as Jason talked to his dead body, though. 

That was one of the most heartbreaking things he had ever seen. 

Going home later that day, Leo skipped dinner and went straight to his room. His parents had divorced after Daniel died, so he lived with his father, while his mother moved away, up north to be with her parents. Sometimes, Leo would visit her in St Andrews, but it was a long journey from Cornwall to Scotland, and he didn't always have the time. 

Daniel was waiting for him when he closed his door and dumped his bag on his bed. 

"Can I have some privacy for one night?" Leo asked, careful to keep his voice down. Daniel just smirked. 

"Why? Having a reunion with Mister Righty and Mister Lube?" he asked. 

"Really not in the mood, you know. A... someone I knew in school, his dad was buried today," Leo said, sitting down heavily on the bed. Daniel didn't bother to move his legs, but he wasn't even solid. "Suicide."

"Shit. That sucks. You talk to the kid?" Daniel asked. He sat up and peered at Leo, a little too close for his liking. Like Keran, his eyes were pale. They had once been dark green. 

"No. Now get out of my room and go bang some ghost chick, I'm tired," Leo said. Daniel stuck his tongue out at him, but he disappeared in a wisp of ghostly smoke, leaving him alone. Leo sighed and fell sideways, burying his face into his pillow. He wasn't sure if he wanted to sleep or cry. Both seemed appealing to him, but instead, he just settled for sleep, curling up under the blankets and drifting off as best as he could. 

-

He saw Jason a few more times after that. Once, at the supermarket where Leo worked. He saw Jason as he was stacking shelves of bread, staring blankly at the baking section, nothing in his basket but a massive bottle of cider and bags of crisps. When Leo had asked if he needed any help, Jason just stared at him until he shook his head, mumbling something about just getting essentials. Leo let that slide. When Daniel died, they lived on junk for about a month before either of his parents remembered how to cook. He just smiled politely and left him to his own devices. 

Most of the time, though, it was at the cemetery. Leo was in the middle of a conversation with his brother when Jason showed up the first time and Leo promptly stopped talking, so he didn't look like he was talking to himself. 

"Oh, it's that guy," Daniel said. "Didn't he punch you in PE once?"

"No, that was Jason Drake. Two Jason's in my year," Leo whispered. 

"Right. Big fella with the big ears. I remember," Daniel said. Leo only hummed. Jason was sat facing the headstone and talking, almost inaudibly. 

"And that's his dad, standing just behind him," Leo said. Daniel stood and walked over to Keran. Leo watched, his eyes flicking from Jason to his brother, half watching Keran speak to him, half watching Jason, who had no idea what was going on behind him. Sometimes Leo forgot not everybody could see the dead. 

He was distracted when he heard a loud, agonised sob come from Jason. He had his head in his hands and his shoulders were shaking, fingers pulling at his hair. Keran looked at Leo. 

"Help him, please," he said. Leo almost considered leaving, but instead, he just got to his feet and slowly walked over. Keran watched him. Leo could barely look at him. No parents wanted to see their child in pain, even a dead parent. Especially a dead parent, who couldn't simply reach out to comfort them in times of need. 

"Jason?" he said softly. Jason barely glanced up. HIs eyes were bloodshot and his face wet with tears. Leo knelt down beside him and carefully touched his shoulder, squeezing gently. "It's okay, Jason. It takes time to heal."

Somehow, that made Jason cry even harder. Leo knew Keran had left, and Daniel was only lingering, just out of sight, in case something happened. Leo just rubbed small circles into Jason's shoulder as he sobbed and cried his heart out. He didn't say anything. Words sometimes made things worse. 

By the time Jason stopped crying, Leo had his arm around his shoulders, gently shushing him as he calmed down. Keran briefly appeared behind his own grave before fading completely. It was easier when there weren't obvious eyes on them. 

"Hey," Leo said softly when Jason fell silent. "Hey, are you alright?" 

Jason hesitated before nodding, mute. He wiped at his eyes and sniffled. 

"Yeah. Sorry, man, you didn't... didn't have to see that. God, I'm a fucking mess," he said. Leo withdrew his arm from his shoulders but stayed sat down beside him. It seemed the best thing to do, for now. 

"It's fine. I've been there," he said. 

"Right. Your brother. I forgot," Jason said. He cringed. "Sorry."

"Don't be. He was eight years older than me, most people forget he was even my brother," Leo said. As if summoned, Daniel poked his head around Jason's shoulder, grinning ear to ear. Leo tried to ignore him and focused on Jason instead. "I don't live far from here, and you look like you could do with a cup of tea. How about it?"

Jason nodded absently. He was staring at the polished headstone, but he let Leo pull him to his feet anyway, even if he was a foot taller and much bigger in general. Didn't he play on the local rugby team? Leo couldn't remember, and he almost didn't care. 

Leo kept hold of his arm the whole short walk to his house. Jason just followed, silent, staggering a little. Leo remembered being like that all too well - so broken and grief-stricken inside that you can't even stand up properly, and when you cry, your limbs feel like water and your heart is lead that weighs you down to the earth. 

Nobody was home - with Gwen at school and his father at work, the house was silent as Leo took Jason through into the kitchen. The quiet seemed to make Jason relax some. He sat down and dropped his head into his hands while Leo went about making tea, using the biggest mugs he could find in the cupboard. 

"Here," Leo said, setting down a tray with the mugs, milk, and their jar of sugar. There was a plate of biscuits, too, but they were questionable, with Gwen having made them. 

"Thanks," Jason mumbled. He wrapped his hands around the mug and blew the steam away. He wore a silver ring on his right index finger, and a black, expensive looking watch on his left wrist. Leo didn't say anything. He just watched as Jason stirred sugar into his tea and added a tiny bit of milk. He left his own tea as it was. 

They sat there in silence for a long while. Jason ate most of the biscuits and occasionally checked his phone, but after a while switched it off and left it on the table, face down. Jason looked at him, made eye contact, and held it. Like his father, he had brown eyes. Deep, dark brown eyes. Wasn't his mother Iranian? Looking at his face, it was easy to see. Leo only let himself wonder briefly how she was holding up before deciding it was too sad to think about. They always seemed like a happy couple, whenever Leo saw them together. 

Why had Keran even done it in the first place?

"I was about to lose my job," Keran whispered into Leo's ear. "Nahid was devastated, but she wanted to help me. And Jason... he couldn't even look at me when he found out. They were going to fire me because a student came forward about sexual abuse, and she named me."

Leo swallowed thickly. His stomach turned. 

"Truth be told, she was right," Keran added. Leo tightened his hand around his mug until he was sure the ceramic was about to shatter. Without looking at Keran, he forced him away, pushing his ghost out of the house. 

"How do you deal with it?" Jason asked out of the blue. Leo blinked. 

"Deal with...?"

"Losing somebody. Death. Whatever. How do you deal with it?"

Leo shrugged. He couldn't very well say that he saw ghosts. 

"Just keep pushing on, I guess. There's not much else you can really do when somebody you love dies," he said vaguely. Jason narrowed his eyes. "What? Everybody deals with it differently. My parents split up and my mum fucked off back to Scotland, while my dad got saddled with his living kids, and I help raise my little sister. That's how we deal with it."

"What if... what if it happened because my dad did something bad? Like, really bad? Something unforgivable," Jason said. He bit his lower lip. Leo wanted to reach out to him, but instead, he just stood and took his empty mug. He pulled a can of lemonade from the fridge and handed it over, grabbing one for himself. 

"You're not under any obligation to forgive him, whatever it is. When Daniel died, we found out that he had been going out with this twenty-year-old guy for a while. He was seventeen. I'm angrier at his ex-boyfriend than I am at him for chain smoking from the age of thirteen," he said as he sat back down. 

"It's worse than that," Jason said. Leo closed his eyes. "He... he was sleeping with a student."

"Jesus."

"Yeah. That's why he slit his wrists in the bathtub for me to find."

Leo didn't know what to say to that. Absently, he looked at his own wrists, the pale scars across them both. It wasn't the same, he knew that, but it was damn well close enough. 

"That's... that's a shitty thing for him for him to do to you. Nobody should have to see anybody like that, ever. I remember when Daniel died, I was with him when he passed. Watching somebody that you love die, or even just seeing them after, it fucks you up. You never forget how it looks when you see that somebody isn't breathing anymore," he said. 

Jason drained his can and slammed it down onto the table, making Leo flinch. 

"You're fucking right about that, at least. Can't get it out of my head," he said bitterly. 

Leo didn't have anything to say about that. He just nodded and looked away. 

Jason stayed until Gwen got home, and he left pretty quick. He thanked Leo at the door and pulled the hood of his jacket up. But, he hesitated only briefly and looked over his shoulder at Leo leaning against the doorframe. Leo waved and Jason waved back uncertainly. A moment later, he was gone. 

-

Jason went over the next day, looking for his phone. 

By the time he got home after spending what felt like forever inside Leo Parker's house, he realised he had left it on the table, turned off and face down. It was a stupid thing to do, but his mother was relentlessly calling him, begging to know where he was. He didn't blame her. He had been out of the house, day in, day out, ever since his father died. He couldn't stand to be in the house any longer than necessary, not after what had happened. He thought she would understand. 

Oddly enough, Leo seemed to understand. 

When he touched Jason in the cemetery, it had been a shock, but nothing told Jason to push him away. In fact, he welcomed the human contact. It had been almost a month since he touched anybody, in any way. He refused to hug anybody at the funeral, being far too overwhelmed and far away to stand it, and he had pushed away his mother and his own older brothers when they tried to comfort him. He was like them. Jason held his grief behind his teeth, and let it poison his words and actions, making him a stranger in a strange land while he waded through a world of uncertain change. 

Leo, though. He was patient. Gentle. When Jason showed up at his house the next day, he invited him inside to watch a movie with him and his younger sister. Despite everything telling him to just get his phone and leave, he found himself sat curled up on a comfortable blue sofa while Leo brushed the tangles from his sister's hair. 

"Football club," he explained. "She get's loads of knots from playing."

Jason smiled. It felt good to smile, after so long. 

When their dad came home, he didn't bat an eyelid at Jason sat on their couch, eating pizza with his kids. He just nodded in his direction and disappeared up the stairs. A moment later, the shower switched on. 

Gwen went to bed around nine, leaving Jason and Leo sat together, finishing off the last of the pizza they had ordered. Leo was still in his work uniform, and his unruly blond hair was held back by a headband, keeping it out of his eyes. He flicked through Netflix until he found some movie, but Leo wasn't paying much attention to it. Neither was Jason if he was being honest. 

"Why were you in the cemetery yesterday?" he asked. Leo choked on his drink. "Sorry."

"No, it's okay. I... I go there sometimes, to clear my head," Leo said. His face flushed red as he said it. 

"Isn't that a bit morbid?"

"Is it?"

Jason wasn't sure what to make of that. Perhaps it was just how raw it was to him, perhaps Leo went there to visit his brother, perhaps he just had never experienced anything like this until now, and he was realigning his mindset to cope with it. 

Or perhaps Leo was just a freak. 

He decided to go with the former, just for peace of mind. 

"What, do you see dead people or something? Is that why you go there?" he said. He smiled, but it felt like it was the wrong size for his face. Leo just smirked and turned his face away. 

"If I said yes, would you even believe me?" he asked. Jason opened his mouth to reply, but the words muddle in his head and he couldn't think of anything even vaguely coherent to say to something so cryptic. "That's what I thought. The cemetery is quiet, and my brother's buried there. It helps to just sit down by his grave and... I guess, talk to him. As insane as that sounds."

Jason shook his head. 

"No. That doesn't sound insane. How fucked would you be if you really could see dead people, though," he said, surprising himself with his own sincerity. Leo looked away and leaned against the arm of the sofa, giving him no answers. 

-

Strangely enough, things continued like that. Leo put his number into Jason's phone, and they texted when they could, though sometimes Leo was busy working long shifts and Jason was in too much pain to respond, they could go days without talking. Not that Jason minded. Leo seemed to be able to gauge his moods and would either send him stupid selfies with his sister, or genuine questions and the occasional invitation to come over when they both had the free time to raid his fridge and make their way through Leo's collection of bad kaiju movies from the eighties. 

It was... fun. Jason couldn't quite ignore the horrible gap inside of him, even if his father had been a pedophile scumbag, but Leo never made him feel like he had any obligation to do anything. He was calm and laid back, and didn't seem to care if Jason showed up at the most inappropriate times. As long as he didn't wake up Gwen or Richard, he was fine. And they pretty much just let him do whatever he wanted whenever he came over. 

The Parker family, more specifically, Leo, was a breath of fresh air compared to being around his own stiflingly close relatives. Jason loved his family, he really did, but there were times he just wanted to be away. Grief could change you, death could reshape your entire family, a dark, twisted half-secret could make you rethink everything that you knew about a person. 

But being with Leo, he forgot for a while. Almost. 

It was good enough, he supposed. 

It was a month or so after their encounter in the cemetery that they went back together. It was cold, with October coming to a close. Almost Halloween. Leo joked that he saw ghosts on Halloween, and Jason almost believed him, with how sincere he sounded when he said it. But Leo just burst out laughing at the look on Jason's face and punched him on the shoulder.

The cemetery was empty in the late afternoon, not that Jason minded. Leo walked a little ahead of him and Jason stared at his back, at the end of his too-long woolen coat and the green scarf he worse, wrapped around his neck. When he looked over his shoulder, he grinned and it seemed perfectly natural here, somehow. It almost didn't hurt as much. 

"Where are we going?" Jason asked, catching up to him. 

"Don't worry, we're not visiting anyone we know. We're going to the church," Leo said. 

"I'm not very religious."

"Neither am I. It's not for prayer, I just want to show you something, and it's always empty this time of day," Leo said. Jason had no choice, really, but to follow him. 

The church was an old, frail looking thing, probably from the Middle Ages. It was set far back into the cemetery and under some ancient looking trees whose branches stretched above it, cloaking it in a decaying canopy. Underfoot, dry, dead leaves crunched. Jason always loved autumn. 

He jumped when he felt Leo take his hand, but he didn't let go. Instead, he held on and let Leo lead him into the church. His hand was warm and dry, a relief against Jason's cold palms. Even in the church, it was freezing cold. And very clearly abandoned, by the looks of it. The pews were haphazardly arranged and rotting, and the walls were probably a strong storm away from collapsing. But, the stained glass was perfectly preserved and depicted angels descending from the heavens. 

"You said this place was empty this time of day," he said quietly. 

"Was I wrong?" Leo asked with that shit-eating grin on his face. 

"Asshole."

"Come on, there's a room back here. I come here when I need to... well, get away from my family. It's too much, sometimes, you know?" Leo said, suddenly unsure. Jason nodded and squeezed his hand, hoping to reassure him. 

Leo took him into a small side room. It was big enough for the two of them to sit down, which they did, and Jason watched while Leo lit candles on a tiny stone shelf. The flames illuminated them both, but Jason's focus was on Leo, who shrugged off his jacket and rearranged the candles on the shelf, the sleeves of his jumper falling down thin arms. The fire caught his hair. Absently, Jason reached over to push it from his eyes. Leo blinked owlishly at him, stunned. 

"Oh, god, sorry," Jason said, pulling his hand back. 

"No! No, it's... I just... I wasn't expecting it, is all," Leo said. He stammered, but Jason didn't mind.

"How did you even find this place?" he asked, looking around. Leo shrugged.

"Spend enough time here and you find all sorts of things among the strange and mysterious. This little room, my brother actually found it," he said. At the mention of his brother, he grimaced and pulled his knees up to his chest. He looked so small and fragile like that, but he smiled at Jason anyway. "He brought me here when I was about seven, he was fifteen. We camped out here for the night, and I swear, my dad was ready to hurl thunderbolts when we came back the next day, he absolutely lost his shit." Leo grinned and laughed at the memory, while Jason just chuckled. 

"I didn't come back until just before he died," Leo continued. "When he was strong enough, I brought him here. He wanted to pray here, so he did. In this room, he told me that he was scared of dying, but he was excited to know what was on the other side. He always believed."

Jason didn't know what to say to that. He rubbed his cold hands together and peered around, looking for any detail in the room to distract himself. 

To his left, he saw a pair of initials cut into the stone. DP and LP. He touched them carefully. 

"Was this you?" he asked. 

"Yeah. I had to carve his, he could barely hold his own penknife, he was so weak," Leo said. He reached over and touched the marks reverently. He had thin fingers, and there was nail varnish left on his nails from where Gwen had painted them. When he twisted his hand slightly, Jason could see the scars on his wrist. He'd never asked, but this time, he took hold of his wrist and held it up to the light. 

"This was with the penknife?" It wasn't really a question. Leo nodded, clenching his jaw. 

"Daniel, he had... he would have had a fit, if he found out." He paused and seemed to look over Jason's shoulder. When Jason looked, there was nothing there. "Sorry, thought I saw a spider."

"Not ghosts?" Jason asked, nudging him. Leo shook his head, but seemed to change his mind halfway through. He looked Jason square in the eye. 

"Look behind you again and tell me what you see," he said. He said it with such sincerity that, for a moment, Jason was genuinely terrified. He turned his head slowly, keeping his eyes on Leo as long as possible until he looked behind him.

And screamed. 

He scrambled backwards and onto Leo, who grabbed his shoulders and steadied him, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to see a shimmering, pale ghost of a seventeen-year-old boy leaning against the stone wall, his arms folded over his chest. Somehow, he knew exactly who it was who was staring at him with pale eyes, a smirk on his face. 

"Could have done it in a less traumatic way, you know," Daniel Parker said to his brother. Leo lifted one hand from Jason's shoulder to flip Daniel off, getting the same in return. "Sorry about that, my brother isn't very good at this."

"Why the fuck are you?" Jason half-yelled. He still leaned against Leo, but that was really his only saving grace. Daniel crouched down in front of him. He was translucent and glowing in the darkness. 

"Daniel Parker, perpetually baby-faced aspiring star of Britains Most Haunted. And your dad is the kiddie fiddler who offed himself, right? At least you're a looker, I can see why Leo likes you," Daniel said. 

"Don't," Leo said behind him, his voice low and dangerous. 

"Alright, alright. I'll leave you kids alone. Leo, don't freak him out like that again, or I'll start throwing shit around your room." With that, Daniel disappeared. 

The room fell silent. Jason breathed heavily and leaned back against Leo, who ran careful fingers through his hair, trying to calm him. It worked. Jason closed his eyes and relaxed against him, losing himself in the repetitive motion while he let his brain process it all. 

After a long while he sat up. Leo looked away, almost guilty, but Jason leaned forward and took his face in his hands, making Leo look at him. 

"I'm sorry," he whispered. Jason almost reeled back when he saw his eyes shining with tears. Some fell and Jason brushed them away. 

"Just tell me what happened. Please."

-

The sun always rose beautifully over the cemetery. 

Leo woke first. The air was frigid, even in the room, with the candles and blankets, and the two of them pressed close together as they slept. Jason was unbelievably warm, and he kept a heavy arm slung over Leo's chest, holding him close. 

Gently, slowly, Leo disentangled himself and left the church. He had a feeling that Jason was a heavy sleeper, so he left him to it while he wrapped himself in his jacket and scarf. Outside, mist rose from the ground. With it, so did the ghosts. 

Leo ignored Daniel for a while. He just wanted to be alone. After last night, telling Jason everything he knew about the dead, he just wanted to clear his head. 

All things considered, Jason took it well. He didn't reel back in horror, he didn't try to burn the witch, he didn't call Leo crazy and storm out. He just listened, silent, while Leo told him the whole story. Start to present, the whole thing. It was surprisingly easy to get it out once he had somebody to listen, somebody with a pulse. 

And after all of that, Jason had questions. Why could Leo see the ghosts? How did he make Jason see them? Things like that. All questions surprisingly easy to answer, once they were asked. Once they were done, Jason just sat back and dragged his hands down his face. He was silent for the longest time, and after...

Well, Leo hadn't expected the bone-crushing hug. 

They considered going back, but in the end, they holed up in the church and slept through the night together. 

Leo heard him coming out of the church, but made no move to get down from the stone wall he was perched on. He kept his eyes froward, watching the ghosts and the mist, and barely reacted when Jason took his hand. 

"I can see them," he said quietly. Leo nodded. 

"Are you going to talk to your dad?" he asked. 

"No. Not right now. I don't think I canface that yet," Jason said. Leo squeezed his hand and leaned against his shoulder. 

"Take your time. He's not going anywhere, at least not yet."

"I can't forgive him."

"You don't have to."

Jason turned his head and Leo looked up. 

"Thank you for this. I mean, it must fucking suck, being able to see them all the time," Jason said. "But you just... deal with it. You talk to them, they come to you. You're a ghost magnet."

"I wouldn't describe myself like that, but you're right. Thanks for that." 

Jason laughed, looking down. 

"Youre alright, you know. What you do for them, I bet nobody else bothers. I sure as shit didn't, I never even believed until I saw your brother. And now..." He gestured to the cemetery before them, at the ghosts in the mist. The awe in his voice was unmistakable. He didn't say anything after that. Leo cut him off by pulling him down and kissing him quickly. When he pulled away, Jason was unable to speak. 

"We should... we should go and get something to eat. I'll show you the rest of the ghosts later, and when you're ready to talk to him, I'll be with you, okay?"

Jason nodded. He smiled. 

They walked past Keran, coming out of the cemetery. Jason kept his eyes forward and marched past, his grip on Leo#s hand crushing. Leo didn't mind. It took a long time to heal from something like that, that was the first basic rule of losing a loved one. And when said loved one was a sick pervert like Keran, that probably made things even worse. 

But, as they got breakfast in a greasy spoon not far from the cemetery, Leo realised one thing. Jason was allowing himself to be happy. After what he had been through, he was smiling over breakfast and making up stories for other people in the restaurant with Leo, relaxing and occasionally choking on his coffee. His hand found Leo's halfway through and he flushed red, and Leo couldn't help but tease him about it. 

When Jason talked to his father, things would be messy, there was no doubt about that. ut Leo intended to help him in whatever way he could. Death was hard. Everyone dies, and yet, nobody ever seemed to make their peace with it while they lived. Memento Mori. The inevitability of death. You hold onto it to remind yourself that it is coming for everybody. 

It took Leo a long time to come to terms with it. He fought it every single step of the way, refusing to believe Daniel was really gone, even if his ghost was still here. He didn't know how long it would take Jason, it was different for everybody. But one thing he did know?

Jason was going to be just fine.