Work Text:
Tate waits, like he does nearly every day, in front of the door for you to get home. He’s impatient, even though he knows you’re not even running late. Every weekday, you come home from work, throw off your work uniform and hop into a nice warm shower. You spend a nice long time there each day, massaging your calves, sore from standing at work all day, relaxing your shoulders and rolling your neck. It’s a show he’s never once missed since you first moved here, a show that he delights in every single time. He taps his foot, hearing your car pulling into the drive. A smile spreads over his face as he hears the lock on the front door click. You throw open the door and he’s stood right there, yet you don’t see him, brushing past him to set down your bag and kick off your shoes. Sometimes, Tate feels a little sad that he can’t show himself to you, to let you into his little routine, to become a part of yours. He often likes to imagine you coming home after a long day at work and seeking him out for a hug, but of course, you don’t do this. You don’t know he’s here right now, and you most likely never will. He follows you up the stairs to your bedroom. He knows from the way you glance around a little anxiously that you’re aware of ghostly presences in this house. In fact, you’ve confided in him a few times that you think the house is haunted. He likes to laugh you off, just because of the irony of it, telling you ghosts don’t exist.
He shows himself to you sometimes, appearing on weekends when it seems realistic he might have free time, claiming to live ‘a few doors down’ and not elaborating further. At first, you found it odd of him to come over, but you were still polite anyway. Eventually, the two of you had sort of become friends. This relationship was hard to maintain, you’d ask to get his number to text him and invite him over, but he has to improvise a story as to why he doesn’t have a phone. He has to come up with a fake job, something you could never investigate. He can’t say he works at the local grocery store and then have you visit it and find out he’s been lying. He tells you he works in the city, in an office. You’re not interested enough to press, especially as he makes a show of lamenting how tedious it is and how he doesn’t wish to talk about it. He’s sure you’ve noticed some inaccuracies in the things he’s told you, especially as he’s often a little distracted while the two of you talk. However, he knows your first instinct won’t be to assume he’s a ghost, so he feels safe enough to let a couple of details get fudged.
He watches, leaning against your wall, as you sluggishly strip yourself of your work uniform. You groan, your body clearly sore. He imagines materialising behind you, sliding his hands onto your shoulders and offering a massage. In his imagination, you accept and turn to kiss him while he rubs your shoulders. He’s had a lot of time to fantasise over you, stuck within these four walls. He has a fantasy of what it would be like to materialise during every single step of your routine, and in none of them do you do the realistic thing and scream. In his fantasies, you seem to have always been aware of his presence and you’ve just been waiting for him to show up. He watches hungrily as you unclip your bra and slide down your panties, tossing them toward the hamper. He imagines materialising just in time to catch them midair, hanging them from his finger and smirking. You’d just giggle in surprise and make some comment about how you’ve been waiting for him to do that. You grab your towel and head toward the bathroom, he follows behind you, not even bothering to be subtle, you won’t see him anyway. The other ghosts have caught him occasionally spying on you, but no one bothers to intervene, there’s not much they can do even if they wanted to, which they probably don’t care to. Most of the ghosts are just trying to stay out of your way.
He leans against the bathroom counter, eyes following you as you turn on the shower, waiting as it warms up. You hang up your towel on the hook behind the door and he appreciates the way your body curves with the action. Your nipples are deliciously hard in the cool autumn air and he imagines flicking his tongue over them and the lovely little sounds you might make in response.
He’s kissed you once. One Saturday, while he was ‘over’ at your house, the two of you had played a drinking board game. Most of it had been divulging truths, several of his ended up being lies out of pure necessity, but he enjoyed the small truths he could share with you, and doubly enjoyed finding out some of your secrets in return. He already knew a lot of it, from watching you, but you admitting to having had a wet dream about him once was something he hadn’t known. He’d been smug the rest of the night, no matter how much you’d tried to insist the dream was a one-time fluke. He’d pulled a card that told him to kiss the person to his left, but it was only the two of you playing. He expected you to tell him to pick up the next card, but instead, you leaned over and kissed him, cupping his chin. The kiss was much longer than should’ve been necessary for the game, soft and sensual and dizzying. When you pulled away, he leaned over the board to try to kiss you again, taking the way you kissed him to suggest you wanted more. You gave him a few seconds before pushing him away and telling him that you’re not doing this. He didn’t understand, doesn’t to this day, but relented with a huff. Things between you were tense for the next few weeks. Currently, it seems the kiss has been forgotten, but not in his mind, never in his mind.
You step into the shower, the water cascading over you, making your hair stick to your skin. You sigh deeply, brushing your hair from your face. A thin film of steam covers the whole bathroom, billowing from the showerhead. Tate watches your blurry figure through the haze on the glass shower wall. He watches as your hands roam your body, distributing the warm water all over yourself. You lean down, starting to gently massage one of your calves, your thumbs rubbing circles over the tense muscles. You repeat this action with your other calf, sighing pleasantly. Tate moves as you go to grab your washcloth and saturate it with shower gel, into the shower to stand behind you. The view from here is perfect, your ass on full display as you bend over to scrub your legs. He slides down his jeans and boxers, taking his half-hard cock in his hand and starting to gently tug at it. He takes his time, knowing you’ll be in the shower for a while and he has no need to rush. He leans against the back wall, his eyes becoming hooded as he watches you, lazily caressing himself. He watches the suds trickle down your legs slowly as you start to clean your hips and stomach. He watches appreciatively, taking in all the various curves and lines of your body, familiarly yet entirely new to him too. He knows how you look by heart, but the feeling of you under his hands is still only a dream. A very frequent one. You swipe the washcloth under your breasts, over your chest and arms, under your armpits, everywhere you can reach on your back. He wishes he could offer to help you reach, wash your back and then lower his hands to grab the delicious curve of your ass. His hand speeds up unconsciously as he imagines pressing you against the wall, pressing up against your back, kissing down your damp neck. You rinse yourself clean and stand for a moment, eyes closed under the warm spray of water. His eyes follow various water droplets as they trace down the curves and valleys of your body.
With a deep breath, you fill your hands with shampoo and start to slowly work it into your hair, sighing softly. Perhaps he’s managed to condition himself, like Pavlov’s dog, because at the delicious scent of your shampoo, his cock starts to twitch. He knows what’s coming next. He’s gotten the sense you’ve had a stressful day, which makes him even more excited. He slowly pumps his fist over his length, twisting slightly, eager for the highlight of his day. The suds slowly dislodge themselves from your hair, plopping down onto the shower floor and swirling into the drain. You brush your hands through your hair, making sure to get rid of every last bubble, the water making your hair look like a sheet of satin. You squeeze out some conditioner into your hands, the smell of it making Tate even more excited, working it into the ends of your hair. You then neatly twist your hair, pulling it all to one side, to let the conditioner sit. You rinse your hands and then turn off the water. For a moment, the bathroom is eerily silent. He knows you turn off the shower while you do this to save water, but he likes to think you do it so he can hear your gorgeous little moans without having to strain over the spray of the shower.
You lean back against the shower wall, he steps to the side for a bit of a better view of you. His hand remains motionless on his cock, waiting for you to begin. Your hand snakes down your stomach, sliding between your legs, the tip of your finger tracing a teasing path around your folds, to work yourself up. Keeping a keen eye on your movements, he tries his best to match your pace, teasing slowly over himself, thumbing over the head of his cock. He wishes you were doing this to each other rather than yourselves, but he tries not to let that thought dampen his excitement. You start to gently circle your clit, letting your head lull onto your shoulder. You bite your lip, keeping your voice down, as if knowing you might be overheard, but not enough to keep him from hearing. You probably don’t realise just how close he is. He imagines biting the very same lip, imagines being the one whose fingers get to gently tease over your clit, rubbing delicately like you’re doing now. He tries his best to keep pace with you, but as your body writhes and arches away from the wall, his hand can’t but speed up a little. Your eyes flutter and a flush grows on your cheeks. He wishes he knew what you were thinking about. He’s pictured you thinking of him and calling his name so much that it echoes in his mind as if it’s a real memory. Your hand speeds up its motions and you gasp gently. If he really tries, he can distort the gasp to sound like his name. He tightens his grip around himself, fucking into his fist, picturing himself inside you. If he wanted to, he could materialise right now and take you, but he doesn’t, he knows he can’t. Still, his eyes are fixed on your cunt as he fucks his fist, a groan spilling from his lips. You echo him with a moan of your own, rubbing your fingers faster over yourself, back and forth or in circles, you’re going so fast he can’t even tell anymore. He pants your name like a prayer, staring straight into your hooded eyes. Every flutter of your eyes or twitch of your body makes him think you might have heard him, but you never do. He throws his head back against the cool tile, thrusting his hips forward in desperation as he sees you start to tremble. He knows you’re close, and he is too. Your hips rock, your free hand grabbing at your breast. He hears your high-pitched whines and sees as your legs shake, signalling the arrival of your orgasm. He gasps desperately, squeezing himself a little harder to push himself over the edge, watching as you pant and gasp, recovering. He groans loudly, his hips arching away from the wall, biting his lip as his release spills all over the shower floor with a few heavy splats.
He leans back against the cool tile, the feeling soothing his flushed skin. He pushes away some sweat-soaked hair from his forehead, watching as you rinse the conditioner from the ends of your hair, the room steaming back up again. His release, which you couldn’t see anyway, disappears down the drain. He watches it go, an odd feeling in his chest. He hates that you can’t acknowledge any of this, that you can’t know. That if you did know, you’d presumably push him away like before. He tucks himself away, watching as your fingers carve through the condensation on the glass wall. You often like to doodle there, often stars or hearts, occasionally a funny animal. He’s still recovering a little, not completely focused. His eyes follow you as you shut off the water, stepping out of the shower and wrapping up in your towel. You squeeze out some excess water from your hair into the sink and then, with an odd glance in the mirror, your eyes flickering around the room, you leave to get dressed in your bedroom. He walks over to see what you drew on the wall this time, a small smile on his face as he thinks of all the cute little doodles you’ve unknowingly left him over the last few months. He frowns, brows furrowing in shock and confusion, because this time, you’ve written a string of words.
“Fuck me next time,” the words drip slightly. His mind spins and he swallows thickly. There’s no mistaking that you’ve left this message on purpose. He approaches the steamy mirror, hoping the message will stay a little longer here rather than in the shower. He wants you to see it. He materialises just long enough to dance his finger over the cool condensation.
“I will,”