I Sleep With a Ghost

Pairing: Bort / Bob/Bart

Rating: M for safety.

Relevant warnings: Language. Violence. Minor-character mentioned noncon (non-descriptive). Slash.

Summary: Bob walks an opaque, thin line of morals that just keeps on getting thinner. He struggles to find something permanent that will allow him to move on from his haunting mistakes, but what if that's Bart, and the blond simply loathes him? Bort. M/M. Slash. You get the picture.

Disclaimer: The author of this fanfiction does not claim to own or be affiliated with 'The Simpsons' or it's universe. This work is not for profit, and purely for entertainment purposes.

Chapter 1: I Sleep With a Ghost

He'd planned it for weeks. It was fool proof. He knew it would work, and he couldn't care less if he was suspected for it afterwards or not; he only wanted the mindbogglingly large obtrusion in his life to disappear at last. Oh to be free...free to live his life, free to make decisions without taking into consideration the vile monstrosity who had his whole life before him, with nothing in his way, and yet tossed it aside like a candy wrapper.

Perhaps he was obsessed, but that just made what he had to do all that more clearer. Remove the oddity in his life.

Quite the contrary to popular belief, Springfield is a particularly easy place to hide within without being sighted. There are little number of people that would have any interest to, after spotting someone like Bob, go and gossip about it. The population of Springfield included mostly of self-obsessed individuals, and people way too concerned with themselves. Bob wasn't really a very interesting topic outside of the Simpson household and maybe the police station, that is if the police ever actually had an intelligent conversation within those walls.

After trying so hard to forget about his past and just continue with his life, Bob had decided that it was impossible. Every fibre of his being was driven towards the eldest Simpson offspring, and that was his only reason for doing this. He feared mental instability if it went on.

So, he rented out a crappy little shanty on the outskirts of the township of Springfield, and set to work. After watching Bart, and deducing his routine and habits, he'd started to formulate a way to rid himself of the boy.

There, just ahead of Bob, walked Bart Simpson, his blonde hair shining innocently in the sunlight of the midday. He was walking home from a long day at school, a lightness in his step that gave his mood away. Bob loathed it, loathed everything about the way he walked.

It was a relatively normal day in the middle of the year, with birds chirping in the trees and sprinklers spraying droplets of water in the front gardens of family houses, and smiling, happy faces. But Bob wasn't smiling. Not even close.

Reaching into his pocket, he fumbled and fingered the sharp blade that he'd placed in there earlier with shaking hands. It remained, hidden and fierce, sharp power, and solid danger. The knowledge sent a cold shiver up Bob's spine and he closed his eyes as it reached it's end point. Today was the day.

Opening his eyes, Bob realised he'd lagged behind, and hurried his pace to the place he knew he'd find the his target. Bart was going through a period in which he wanted solidarity and space, if not only for a little while each day. He had a secret stash of cigarettes that he'd hidden in Horesly Park, and he went there to smoke them. At eleven, it was an early age to start smoking- not that Bob cared; the horror wouldn't live long enough for it to trouble him, anyway.

With the stealth only a criminal could wield so well, Bob drifted through the shadows, spotting the blond mop of the main focus of his mind up ahead. Right in the small clearing under the forgiving shade of the large droopy tree that he'd seen Bart sitting in alone every day for over a fortnight. His fingers tingling at the closeness of both the little monster and of the act, Bob drew the blade up and moved forward. With only a foot or two between them, Bob, eager, with adrenalin coursing through his veins like lava pushed onwards and, listening only to the rush in his ears, brought his knife up and forced it down as harshly as he could manage.

Blood, rich and dark and red exploded from the wound on the nape of Bart's neck, flooding over Bob's large hands, dripping through his fingers and spraying the lush bushes. Bart grappled at his neck, turning as best he could to look, crawling as best he could to escape.

It was cruel and messy, and Bob did it once more before he noticed something was wrong. The strangling, spluttering and gaping thing before him was wrong. It was wrong. It was all wrong. Why was it wrong? It couldn't be wrong!

But it was. It was terribly, awfully wrong.

It wasn't Bart. The green-eyed boy stared at Bob with petrified, huge eyes, his desperately clutching fingers coated in his own blood. He scrambled backwards, away from Bob, though he wasn't doing a very good job on account of refusing to remove his hands from his own neck in fear. He was so scared, and so very confused.

Bob's arms lost all their strength and dropped to his sides limply, the knife clanging on a rock as it was dropped without a thought. His face was blank except from his mouth, which opened slightly in shock, and his suddenly darkly hollow eyes. All the adrenalin was gone, replaced with quite the opposite. His body was suddenly made of lead, and he watched for a minute or two as the little boy, about Bart's age, started to cry like there was no tomorrow. Which there very well mightn't be for him. He was having trouble breathing, and was losing a lot of blood.

But Bob just stood there.

Suddenly, another boy appeared from the left, and stopped dead at the scene before him. Bob could only see him out of the corner of his eye, but without the adrenaline and whatnot interfering, immediately identified the other kid as Bart.

"Alan! What the- What happened?" Bart cried, running over to his apparent friend and kneeling beside him. The bleeding boy named Alan frantically looked pointedly from Bart to Bob, making a gurgling sound.

The wide eyes of Bart turned to Bob, and if possible, widened even more. Then they narrowed. "...You! Why won't you just go away and stop screwing up my life!" he yelled furiously, bravely, whilst fumbling in his pockets for his phone, tears forming in the bottom of his eyes. "I hate you! You fucking bastard!"

Bob just stood there.

Bart punched some numbers on his phone and gave Alan instructions to hold his wound tightly. He was panicked on the phone, and although Bob wasn't trying to listen, gathered that he was calling the police and an ambulance. He'd told them a psychopath had stabbed his friend in the neck.

Focusing on the Alan boy again, Bob couldn't tell whether his injury was dire or not. The boy was smothering it with Bart's jacket, sobbing and gasping for air, spasmodic, moaning in pain, rocking back and forth, and glancing up at Bob every now and again in terror.

After hanging up, Bart checked his friend, then glanced at Bob and seemed infuriated that he was still standing there. "Go the fuck away already! You sick fuck! Watching him bleed out like this!" he yelled, choking on his own words and tears halfway through his rant.

And that's when Bob let loose a sob of his own. A heart-wrenching, cracked sound that silenced the clearing and turned heads. He covered his face with his hands and his shoulders was wracked again with another sob, this time inwardly.

The two boys watched him in mutual silence as he dropped to his knees and began to weep. He had not cried like that for a very long time, nor had the two boys seen so many heartfelt tears spill from one man.

~-~X~-~

Prison wasn't so bad.

Bob sat on his cot, prison-issued book of Shakespeare in hand and back against the forever cold brick wall. Things never changed in here, and he was left hours in the day, every day, to mule over his thoughts and ultimately pretty much torture himself. He hadn't been himself since that day, that fateful day he mistook a schoolmate of Bart Simpson, to be Bart Simpson.

He hardly talked, he looked like a shadow of his former self, and everything was dull. One false move and Bob felt as if he would crumble.

He had killed a boy. An innocent. And it haunted his dreams, and his every waking moment. He saw his frightened face in the mirror. He saw his pained expression in his fellow incarcerated criminals. He heard his guttural cries in the noise of the cafeteria. Bob feared it was slowly turning him crazy.

Lost in his thoughts, Bob jumped slightly when his cell door slid open. Knowing he wasn't allowed to stay in his cell twenty-four-seven, Bob stood, stretched, and merged into the river of criminals flowing past the opening in his isolated cell.

He was more often alone than with company in his cell. His last cell mate had killed himself- well he'd knowingly irked men who he knew would kill him for it, so as to die. He was weak-hearted, and a rapist, and Bob hadn't made his life any easier for him whilst living in the same cell as him. But he hadn't wanted him dead. He hardly thought himself in a position of greatness, able to judge the others in here; he'd sinned his sin just the same as them.

"Hey, Robert," a short but stocky man with an array of tattoos appeared beside Bob as they walked towards the cafeteria.

"What do you want, Arnold?" Bob asked, sounding uninterested.

But the man seemed to expect this, accepting it as the usual. "There's fresh meat arriving today, ya know?"

"So what? It's always the same."

"Apparently Jace's brother is coming in." Arnold said happily. "I've been waiting for something to use against Jace for ages now."

"Blackmail?"

"Pretty much. That little bitch will be mine if I have to break his little brother's arm in three places first," he cackled, very much amused with himself.

"Whatever, Arnold," Bob said, waving the man off like a fly and walking in another direction. He got his food and sat down by a few others he knew and who recognised him as an equal. He cared not for their conversation, but for the illusion it granted him to keep out of trouble. He watched Arnold walk over to Jace, a slightly taller male with chestnut hair, and say something to him. He received a punch in the face and a fight soon followed.

Arnold had had a thing for Jason (A.K.A: Jace) since before Bob arrived. It was a twisted concoction of longing, hormones and even, some would say, love. Jace wanted nothing to do with Arnold, but Arnold wouldn't take no for an answer. He wanted Jace too badly, and that's where normal feelings and interactions frayed and swirled into something else entirely.

Shrugging off the fight, Bob focused on eating his daily nourishment. The food wasn't too bad, but Bob still couldn't taste it. He felt as if his taste buds had been taken out almost completely, or altered, to make everything taste the same.

That now-familiar face appeared in his food and Bob had to pause, looking, he was sure, like he was in pain. He sure felt it.

That afternoon found Bob outside, staring up at the sky with the only hour a day he got to spend outside those suffocatingly close walls. There were men playing handball, sitting on the benches in groups, and some of the tougher, meaner criminals were playing basketball. Bob stood next to the fence, gazing at the fluffy white clouds in the sky that looked like his insides felt.

A short bus rolled up the drive and prison guards gathered around it as it stopped. Every now and then new inmates would be brought to the prison, all handcuffed and looking miserable and some scared. Bob never usually watched the new arrivals; it reminded him too much of a time when his wounds were as raw as fresh meat.

But it was his outside time, and he wasn't going to give it up just so he didn't have to watch the new criminals doing the catwalk.

Arnold appeared by Bob's side again, and Bob inwardly rolled his eyes; the man annoyed him to no ends.

"That's him there. I see the resemblance," he murmured, looking far too excited than he should.

Purely because Arnold was too disturbing to watch, Bob turned his gaze to the line of criminals and knew instantly which was Jace's brother. A young man with chestnut hair and a skinny frame ambled along, glancing nervously at the rowdy men in orange jumpsuits that had gathered behind the fence. Mistake one- check; never show any weakness.

There were wolf-whistles, one of which came from Arnold.

"Control yourself, Arnold," Bob sighed, feeling almost embarrassed to be beside the horny man. Hell, he still had some dignity, not much, but some, and Arnold offended even that.

"Isn't he pretty?" Arnold noted, his hungry eyes not leaving the boy, for that's what he was; barely an eighteen-year-old boy.

"He's just a kid."

Arnold scoffed, looking at Bob in disbelief. "He's in an adult prison. He's not a kid."

Looking away from Arnold, Bob caught the last glimpse of the stumbling, chestnut-haired boy before he disappeared through a door into the prison.

Brushing it all off, Bob walked away, leaving the last of his precious outside-time behind as he headed inside to go read by himself.

~-~X~-~

That night in the cafeteria, Bob was sitting at his respective table with his tray of what might as well have been mush, not listening to the chatter around him. A common ritual was for the jokers and the most arrogant of the criminals to give the new arrivals a hard time. Bob played no part in it, but never lifted a finger to stop it either. This time, Jace's little brother seemed to be the main focus of almost everyone. Especially Arnold.

"Hey there, Cupcake, you got a name?" Arnold grinned darkly, in line for food behind the chestnut-haired youth. He moved into the kid's personal space, making him jumpy and nervous.

At first the kid tried ignoring Arnold, but Arnold wasn't one for being ignored and that just made it worse.
"Hey, I said what's your name?" He shoved the kid a little, receiving a surprised and scared little sound out of him. Arnold grinned again, liking that he was intimidating him.

"G-Gabriel..." the kid stuttered, glancing at Arnold quickly before looking away again.

"Ooh, Gabriel is it now? How fancy!" Arnold laughed, shoving the kid again so he stumbled. "You know, Gabriel, your brother told me I could do whatever I wanted with you when you got here."

Gabriel's eyes widened slightly. "N-no he didn't," he said helplessly, looking around for his big brother in the room.

"You callin' me a liar?"

"W-what? No I just...Jason wouldn't..." Gabriel stuttered before Jace came storming up to Arnold and immediately punched him in the face.

"Fuck you, Arnold, you bastard!" Jace scowled. "Leave my fucking brother out of this."

As usual, another fight broke out between Arnold and Jace, involving anyone close enough to take a hit. Gabriel jumped out of the way and backed away, but was intercepted by a couple of other thugs who looked very happy to have the vulnerable boy in their grasp.

Playing with his food, Bob yawned. Within his whole time locked up in this hell-hole, Bob had seen scared men before. But never had he seen such a petrified face before, not since...

Rising so quickly from his seat that his chair squealed loudly on the floor behind him, Bob abandoned his food and marched straight over to Gabriel and the thugs who were being quite inappropriate with him. The guards were too busy with breaking up the fight to worry about something so common.

"Stop," Bob demanded once he reached them.

"What?" one of the thugs asked, irked, turning around to see Bob. Immediately their stances changed. The thugs backed off a little. They were way below Bob on the food chain in here, and they were smart enough to realise it. "Why?"

"Because I said so," Bob seethed, grabbing Gabriel by the arm and pulling him away from the two unhappy-looking inmates. He practically dragged the kid to his table and made him sit in the seat beside him before sitting down himself and promptly sliding his food over to him.

Gabriel looked at Bob in confusion and shock, and after a moment or two of silence, had built the courage up to speak quietly. "A-are you going to hurt me?" he asked pathetically.

Bob refused to look at him, but shook his head nonetheless. "No."

"...T-then...thank you," he murmured, hanging his head sheepishly and eating the food Bob had given him slowly, probably out of courtesy instead of hunger.

The ex-clown had seen Alan in Gabriel more than he ever had anyone else. It had been such a vivid feeling, that he had not been able to let the other inmates do as they like with the kid. He was so weak and vulnerable, he probably would've ended up either dead by his own hand or another's. Maybe saving this kid was a way to help his own morality. God knew, Bob needed saving just as much as this lad.

Edited.