Ascension

Ro had to be alone with her. He couldn’t force himself to ask anything more specific, the child in him still wanting his parents. It didn’t matter how old you were, he couldn’t imagine it was easy to lose the people who’d loved you unquestioningly and supported your hopes and dreams. Ro sniffed and got up. He went into his bathroom as his dad left with a quiet murmur.
Ro checked his reflection in the mirror and grimaced. He looked like shit, with an almost bruised tint to the skin under his eyes. His face was ruddy and his nose red. He looked away and turned on the faucet. After splashing his face, he got that weird sensation again, as if he were being watched. Ro tipped his head to one side and contemplated the feeling. It was like an electrical current sparking up and down his spine, sending streams of awareness throughout his body.
Was it Conner? Ro wiped his face on the towel then blew his nose, cheeks going hot as he did so. How embarrassing would it be to have Conner see him cleaning out his sinuses?
“Don’t be an idiot,” Ro muttered to himself. He wasn’t being watched, he was just a mess after that talk with his dad. Ro’s eyes burned, tears threatening again. He grabbed the towel and pressed it to his eyes, fighting to stem the tears that didn’t seem to want to be dammed. “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” he chanted, until finally the words seemed to penetrate and he was able to blink back the excess moisture.
Ro realized something then. That electric sensation was still thrumming through him, and… He gasped as he dropped the towel. Something that felt very much like a hand was stroking his hair.
As soon as he gasped it stopped. “Conner?” he whispered, his skin pebbling with goosebumps all over. Ro still felt it, not the touch but that thrumming. He felt like all kinds of a fool, looking all over the bathroom. He knew he wasn’t going to see Conner, but Conner could see him, and Ro couldn’t think of any other spirit that would be popping up.
Then he realized he was just being a fool indeed. Conner had never come around him before. It was stupid of him to think the man would do so now. And dead or not, Conner was a man to Ro. He would always be that handsome, charismatic-looking guy from the newspaper clipping that Ro had ogled for over a decade now.
Ro laughed out loud at that. How ridiculous was it that he’d spent almost half of his life crushing on a dead guy? No wonder he’d never had more than a couple of unsatisfactory quickies. He’d let his teenage romanticism rule his adult life, and he was only now realizing it. Maybe if he hadn’t been so content to just plod along—but he had been, and he was. There was nowhere else for him to be but where he lived right then. Ro had no desire to move away from McKinton, or from his family.
But he didn’t have to be pathetic and start hallucinating about someone who’d been dead for ages and who had never bothered to appear to him in any manner before. Best to stop that before he ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Ro shuddered, remembering Sev talking about being put in just such an institution as a child. Sev’s parents hadn’t believed that he could speak to the dead, had thought he was just insane.
Or else they’d just wanted him silenced. Ro thought that was more likely. He remembered his grandparents, and they weren’t nice people at all. Ro hadn’t seen them since he’d moved to McKinton a dozen years ago.
That odd sensation was gone, he realized. Ro was mildly disappointed, but put that down to his mental state. He was going to lose his mother soon, and he was lonely even surrounded by family.
Ro left the bathroom, not really thinking about anything at that point. He stopped, stunned and suddenly mortified. The file folder he’d set aside was open, its contents spread neatly on the bed. Conner’s picture was there on top, surrounded by all the snippets and printouts of everything else having to do with his case. Before Ro could figure out what that meant, chaos erupted in his room. A maelstrom of paper spun in rapid circles above his bed. The sounds of it whistling through the air were punctuated with ripping noises as bits of paper were shredded.
“Stop!” Ro shrieked before he thought to censor himself. He ran and started grabbing at the papers. “Stop it! Damn it, stop! This is all I have—” Ro bit his tongue, hard enough to taste blood, but better that than finishing what he’d been about to say if Conner was the one creating the mess in Ro’s room. He would have died of embarrassment if he’d blurted out that the flying papers were all he had of a man he’d never have, of a man he measured all other potential lovers by. Stupid, he knew, but it was what it was. Ro couldn’t seem to prevent the infatuation he’d harbored for so long.
“Please,” he said as the papers kept being ripped to shreds. He caught one and saw that it was a piece of the news article about Conner’s brutal death. Ro was truly mortified and sorry. He could understand Conner being upset at seeing it. “Conner…please stop. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to upset you.”
The papers spun around again, but within seconds the speed had dropped until they were barely moving in the air. Then they dropped, all but one. Ro watched as the picture of Conner rotated to a stop several feet above the bed. He didn’t feel that electric current so much as it seemed to be a part of him just then, just as his blood and lungs and heart were. The picture crinkled slightly, the paper bowing as if someone