Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mike and Alison’s friends were coming. For drinks.

The ghosts had been gathered; given a stern pep talk by Alison – even Mike had chipped in, his speech slightly too loud, as if they were all hard of hearing, and looking no-where in particular, his eyes sliding over the general area Alison had told him they were all assembled.

There was the token grumbling. Of course there was. But overall, one by one, they’d each piped down and wandered off. They’d cluster in the hall by the great door when the guests arrived, falling over each over to get a glimpse of new people from the outside. Putting faces to names Alison and Michael had dropped into conversation.

The Captain was there, behind the door, when wheels had crunched up the gravel drive way outside. He stood at the back of the crowd, tall enough to let the others swarm in front and peer over the top of their heads. Chin lifted, balanced precariously on the tips of his toes, he gripped his swagger stick tightly behind his back.

He kept quiet whilst Alison admitted the loud bundle of her friends; the others were chattering incessantly enough in her ear as it was. She was wincing. He simply surveyed the newcomers as they wandered in, clutching crates of cans and the necks of bottles. Captain’s habit.

If his eyes slid past the four girls after mere moments and settled on the two men, who entered last and pushed the heavy door shut behind them with ease, that was Captain’s habit too. Any Captain’s habit; the reflex to look for potential soldiers. Not The Captain’s habit, to watch firm hands hoist lager from the floor.

It wasn’t.

Something – a slight creak of an old house, perhaps, made one of the men (Hamish, Alison had called him. Hamish with the dark curling hair. Cal with the slightly crooked front tooth) turn and gaze in the Captain’s direction.

The Captain immediately looked away. Cleared his throat.

Obviously, the bundle of ghosts followed the bundle of the living, through to the common room. Alison absentmindedly called it the living room. Sometimes, when it was just him and his fellow ghosts in there, the Captain would remember the term, and his moustache would twitch at the irony.

Curtains drawn, the only light spilled from lamps and candles and the fire crackling in the hearth, so some of the lingering derelict features looked almost artful in the scant illumination.

Kitty was squealing in delight at all her new friends, complimenting them endlessly and asking questions they’d never hear, quite content with simply their presence. Fanny made objections to the noise as everyone settled down on chairs and sofas, shrieking when feet were propped on a side table soon to be ringed with residue that collected round the bottom of cups.

Julian was himself. Leering in the way he did at every new female face. Alison was desperately trying to shoo him off whilst keeping the smile plastered on her face and her head nodding along to conversation. The Captain grabbed his stick from where he’d tucked it under his armpit, and stepped in.

“For God’s sake Julian. Leave those poor women alone.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cal pouring himself a drink. One for Hamish too, when he saw his approach. “It doesn’t matter if they can’t hear you,” the Captain continued, “they’re Alison’s guests, and they simply want to…”

He trailed off. Swallowed hard. Gripped his swagger stick tight enough that it creaked beneath his fingers.

Cal was pressing a glass into Hamish’s hands, and a kiss to his lips.

Julian was arguing back, waving his arms about wildly and pointing his thumb. The Captain’s ears were ringing too much to distinguish the words.

Hamish and Cal separated, making their way over to the sofa and joining in with the conversation.

The Captain, helpless to do anything but watch, kept his eyes firmly on them whilst they got comfortable, quiet and absent enough that Julian wandered away to find someone else he could throw incomprehensible words at. He missed doing it for the press.

Wide eyed, as still as if expecting ambush, the Captain looked around the room.

Waited.

Chatter.

Just chatter.

In fact, some kind of argument about something trivial had broken out, and most of his fellow ghosts were no longer even watching the guests.

Kitty appeared by his shoulder, swaying from side to side so that her skirts rustled, and grinned wide enough to show her teeth.

“Lovely, aren’t they.”

She inclined her head to Hamish and Cal, their feet pressed together on the floor.

The Captain simply looked at her.

Her name was demanded from the circle of light bickering across the room, and, happily, she went.

The Captain glanced around.

More moments, more nothing.

Guilt, for some reason, like he was intruding, squirmed somewhere in his non-corporeal form as he slowly, slowly, sat. Perched. On one of the unoccupied chairs in the little circle. He tuned out what was going on around him - both sets of chatter, the new voices and the old. He watched Cal and Hamish. Drunk them in, even though they were doing nothing but sitting and drinking and nodding and talking and occasionally, laughing. Existing.

Just existing. The two of them.

He sharply inhaled air he didn’t need when Hamish rested a gentle hand on Cal’s thigh. The Captain felt a bit like someone had walked through him – a cold sick shiver at the back of his throat. If his heart could still beat it would be hammering. His hands would be clammy, instead of simply shaking.

Hamish’s hand stayed there. A few minutes later, and Cal twinned his arm around the back of Hamish’ shoulders, trailing nails on the nape of his neck.

Comfortable, they both sat.

Patrick and Julian and Thomas and Fanny and Katherine and Robin and Mary and even Humphrey for the brief few moments his head was attached walked back and forth by them and caught the way the two were slumped into each other. And continued to squabble about nothing in particular.

Inch, by inch, the Captain's spine relaxed from how rigid he’d held himself, and long after all the others had grown bored, and left, he continued to sit there. Alison threw odd glances his way every now and then, and he avoided her eye.

Even when the conversation somehow veered into talking about tanks, he was quiet.

Eventually the night drew to a close. Everyone stood to say goodbye, and the Captain stood too, reflexively, with a crack of his knees. He rolled his swagger stick up against his palms.

Hamish put a light hand to Cal’s back as they left. The Captain stayed. The room emptied. The warm murmurs receded back to the hall, and the Captain was left with fire-crackle and the dull, hollow thud of a ticking grandfather clock.

He rocked back on his heels and up onto his toes, looking at the floor. Then he cleared his throat, and walked off through the wall.

Chapter Text

Perching on a low step, knees pressed together and almost jutting level with his chin at the angle, the Captain held his swagger stick clenched atop them. A knuckle or two had popped with the pressure.

The forgotten staircase, in the bowels of the house, was thick with silence and dust. Wall lamps competed with silver moonlight. The Captain had sat out of its way, in shadow, but still it bounced off the dark wood of the steps, polished smooth by countless feet.

The panelled wall before him had segments of its border torn from it, disrupting the flow of four clean corners. The Captain gazed at the raw edges without registering them, digging his nails in, into his skin.

A sudden jolt, and his swagger stick snapped right between his fists, a broken piece in each hand. Shocked, he looked at it, an unnecessary trembling breath rushing in through his open mouth.

A few agonising seconds, fractured tips pointing up and shedding splinters of polished wood, and they disappeared from under the Captain’s grip. The stick reappeared, whole, in his lap.   

He unclenched his fists. Placed a palm, flat, over it, and looked at his hand there, on his knees.

Those casual touches.

He closed his eyes and saw them. Hamish’s gentle stroking thumb on the denim of Cal’s jeans.

Whenever he’d touched another man, he’d always half expected someone to suddenly demand what the hell he thought he was doing. What was his justification for that hand clapped to a shoulder, or the light press of fingertips to the cloth of an elbow during a conversation.

He’d played the scenario out in his head. Countless times. He would explain to his imaginary accuser that it was simply thoughtless human camaraderie.

Except it wasn’t thoughtless. Everything was always secondary to that point of contact, the press of what was often the stiff scratch of uniform or the grime of war on his skin, to be dropped after mere seconds, with the sense he’d somehow selfishly stolen something. And too much of it.

The Captain opened his eyes.

Julian, humming loudly and out of tune, clattered down the steps behind him, the tails of his shirt bouncing over his thighs.

The Captain did nothing to alert him to his presence, so when Julian spotted him sitting, hunched up in a dark green uniform the shadows swallowed, he jumped, and put a hand to his chest.

“Blimey mate you’ll give me a heart attack!” There was a slight pause. A shrug. “Or well, y’know.”

He walked on past, down the rest of the steps, past the Captain unmoving on the very last. Glanced at his face as he went.

And trailed to a stop. The Captain was still staring vacantly at the damaged wall, swiping his thumbs together and apart on the polished wood of his stick.

Julian looked at the damaged wall for a moment too, then back at the Captain, frowning.

“Alright?”

The Captain looked up. Mustered half an echo of a weak smile, and pressed a hand to the knot of his tie, smoothing it down pin neat. “Perfectly fine. Tally-ho actually.”

“Right.” said Julian. “Just so you know, you could never be a politician with lying as bad as that.”

The Captain lifted his eyebrows in acknowledgement, feebly twitching the corner of his mouth. “Yes,” he mumbled.

Julian looked at him. Looked back down the corridor, to where a very fascinating magazine he’d bribed Alison to pick from the top shelf waited for him. Looked back to the Captain.

He rolled his eyes skyward. Sighed. Propped one foot back on the steps and leaned an elbow on his splayed knee out of habit.

“Mike and Alison’s friends were nice,” he said.

The Captain jumped. He was in danger of breaking his swagger stick again, so he forcibly released it.

“Also perfectly normal,” continued Julian, with an odd emphasis.

The phantom feeling of a frantic heartbeat had settled back between the Captain’s ribs. They were bland statements. Especially for Julian. But as he blinked up at him he was wary, like a rabbit who’d heard a crack in the underbrush, the same as when he’d smiled at Havers wide enough to crinkle the skin around eyes - for mere seconds too long - and someone had seen, and chuckled, and asked if Christmas had come early. He’d kept his smiles tight lipped ever since.

Julian had leaned forward, his tie dangling. “If you’re picking up what I’m putting down.”

The Captain risked a glance down at the steps under his feet.

“You haven’t dropped anything,” he murmured.

“Oh for fuck’s -” Julian leaned back and raked a hand down his face. “Christ you’re hard work.”

Then he let his hand fall, and just looked the Captain, quite solidly, in the face.

“What I’m saying, Captain, is that it didn’t escape anyone’s notice that that Hamish fellow liked that Cal fellow quite a bit, you see, so-”

The Captain stood abruptly, lurching panic swooping down to his stomach and spreading to his cold hands, the moonlight he rose into paling his face in place of blood that could no longer drain from it. “I - I, I don’t know what you’re-”

“Captain-”

He was aware of every inch of his uniform shifting tightly against his skin as uncomfortably as if he were alive. Constricting at his throat, his wrists. The medals heavy on his chest. The need to crawl out, away, go had him turning from Julian, on his left, only to be faced with a wall, on his right.

He lurched on his toes. Forgot walls no longer posed obstacles.

He’d cornered himself.

“Whoa, take a chill-pill,” Julian was saying, the words registering distinctly, “we’re having a casual conversation here, not dragging you in front of a firing squad.”

The Captain dropped his swagger stick, and it bounced hollowly on the floor.

“…Alright I’ll admit that was a poor choice of words, damn Freud and his slippers and what have you…”

The Captain ignored him, scrabbling for the thin line of his stick. The second he had it back he turned away from Julian, still shouting after him, and ran up the steps. Up and up and up and up, until he was on the roof, alone, blessedly unseen, in the cool night air.

Chapter Text

“Captain!”

The Captain turned his face away from the window light struggling through the densely frosted glass. Alison was jogging up to him from down the hall. She slowed to a stop halfway along, bending double and resting her hands on her knees, lifting one to signal: Wait. Just a moment.

Resting on the edge of the windowsill, the Captain took another glance out at the icy tips of the lawn.

He’d crept back inside, from the roof, once the house was steeped in slumber, taking refuge in his own room. But he’d awoken early, and walked the breadth of the house, back and forth, until the first tendrils of the amber sunrise crept in and over the furniture. He’d found a windowsill and watched the night retreat; the emerging blanket of frost.

Alison drew in close beside him, and he shuffled over instinctively to give her more space to stand.

“You missed your run this morning,” Alison said cheerfully, drawing a smiley face in the condensation forming on the window. “I looked like a right pillock hanging out the window with a stopwatch. Mike was whinging about letting the cold in.”

“My Apologies to Michael.”

“Nah he deserved it. He let the pigeon back in last night.”

A slight pause. The smiley-face’s eyes began to bleed into its mouth. Alison wrinkled her nose. “Speaking of actually…”

The Captain briefly closed his eyes. Swirled his swagger stick up beneath his armpit and rested his hand on the tip. Apprehensive, he looked to Alison.

“Thank you all for being – well for being relatively well behaved, but – Captain,” she spread her hands placatingly, her splayed fingers wafting through the air, “we didn’t…somehow…upset you did we?” 

The Captain swallowed as she shifted, and climbed up onto the windowsill beside him, leaning ardently closer.

“Its just yesterday you looked like you’d seen a - no,” she caught herself, “Right. Sorry.”

The Captain looked back out the window, and tried not to meet the reflection of his own eyes.

What he saw instead was the reflection of the sofa where Hamish and Cal had sat.      

He wished people would stop asking questions. Questions reminded him there were…things, churning somewhere, deep inside, that he’d never put too fine a point on. Logic dictated that they lurked in his head or brain or whatever ghostly excuse he had for it, but when he – stopped. Took a cautious peek behind the curtain. Played, hazy eyed, with the idea of acknowledging, truly, what they were, they felt alive and insistent and wriggling under every inch of his skin.

“So?” said Alison.

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine,” he said firmly, and smiled.

Alison raised an eyebrow but thankfully, thankfully, didn’t press.

She didn’t leave either. In his attempt to avoid both his eyes and hers in the reflection, he landed again and again on the smudge of the sofa.

“Your friends,” he began. He hadn’t really meant to. “Will they be returning?”

Alison blinked. “Er, yeah, probably. Why?”

“No reason.” He inhaled. “No reason at all,” he said more firmly.

He shook himself; straightened the hem of his jacket. Squared his shoulders. Pointed towards her bedroom window with his stick.

“I expect to see you bright and early tomorrow Alison. I can get the lap down to two-twenty-eight if the weather stays like this.”

He wafted his swagger stick at the white frost, and shifted up from his perching place, where Alison’s warm breaths had fogged the window and Captain’s, of course, had not.

It was not long until he ran into the others, clustered together in the library, listening to Fanny’s shrill complaints about the state Alison and Mike had left it in; boxes of their own things strewn amongst antique volumes.

Everyone looked up as he walked in. He nodded his good morning, clasping his hands behind his back. He couldn’t help shooting glances at Julian, half expecting…

Julian barely wafted a hand in his direction. Too busy straining to push a particularly worn looking book, balancing precariously on the edge of a table, off the side and onto the floor by Fanny’s feet.

Rolling their eyes in boredom, the rest of the room settled in for the long haul, or argued back with Fanny. There was nothing better to do than at least be with company.

A few moments, and the Captain relaxed his ridged stance at the normality.

Mere days later he strode into the empty kitchen, and noticed the pantry door had been left ajar.

Michael and Alison were careless. The pantry was almost never fully closed. But, unusually, it was open wide enough that the Captain could read his own name in Alison’s scrawl, see the arrow below it, and the picture it pointed to.

He hadn’t been able to focus, not properly. He prided himself on efficiency and routine. 

But the ease of Hamish and Cal’s smiles would hit him unexpectedly.

The first few times his thoughts had strayed towards them he’d tensed, waiting for his old imaginary accuser to spring out from the walls or from beneath his feet.

It never happened.

He allowed himself to dwell. A bit.

So when the Captain saw the open pantry door, he hesitated, turning his swagger stick round and round in his hands. A tentative half-step, and he went over, ducking in the gap.

He looked at the photo stuck there. Slid straight past the little figure of himself. To his left.

He knew the picture. He’d helped Alison find it.

He was still a bit surprised see Havers, right there. He remembered being grouped together for the photo. Pressed shoulder to shoulder.

He gazed down at the tips of his shoes.

Footsteps.

Alison strode into kitchen, glancing up from the bundle she held in her hands and spotting the Captain on the threshold of the pantry.

“Moping around again are we Captain?”

She smiled at him, dropping what she was carrying with a heavy thunk on the table, crossing the kitchen and pulling the pantry door wider, so the faces in the picture were no longer shrouded in shadow.

“Admiring yourself there?” she teased, and the Captain lifted his chin.

“Of course not,” he said truthfully.

“S’alright – no judgement here.” She winked and nudged the air next to his elbow with her own, then pulled a face at her own poor drawings for those who didn’t have portraits. “These are a bit rubbish aren’t they,” she said confidingly. She reached out to smooth the creased edge of one, cocking her head. “Having said that, considering I only had five crayons and one of them was white I think I’ve really captured Mary’s essence.”

Alison squinted, contemplating her handiwork in silence. The Captain looked up at the cobwebs curling round the pantry’s ceiling, and bounced up and down on his toes.

Alison dropped her hand and the paper curled back up.

“Which one’s Lieutenant Havers?”

His heels met the floor with a sudden thud.

He cleared his throat.

“H-Havers?”

Alison raised her eyebrows at his surprise, leaning in close. “I do actually listen to you lot y’know,” she said, hushed.

She leaned back, gesturing to the board. “Go on,” she said.

The Captain looked at the top of her head. The faded sepia photograph.

He pointed to the figure on his left with a pitted nail.

“Lieutenant Havers,” he said simply.

She peered closer. Smiled.

“He looks nice,” she said, and for a long moment the Captain couldn’t say anything at all.

“Yes.”

Alison looked for a few seconds longer, then stepped away. “Help me with these?”

The Captain saw that what Alison had set on the table were books.

Alison stepped towards them, curling her nose up and spreading them out over the tabletop. “Fanny’s been going on about the library, as I’m sure you’ve heard. I’m making a start.” She finished fanning out the books and scratched the back of her head.

A particular title caught his eye, and, mind still half on the remembrance of a great coat flapping as it passed through the gates, and a hand raised not in salute to a superior but in a goodbye to a…friend, words slipped out unbidden as they had a tendency to when he was distracted, and forgot that there were things he wasn’t acknowledging.  

“Stupid phrase,” he murmured distantly. He looked back to the photo, rolling his swagger stick with the tips of his fingers. “Neither of those things ever has been or ever will be. Fair.”

Alison frowned, a book drooping in her hand.

A commotion from upstairs. A faraway shout of ‘Captain!’

The Captain straightened up. Took a breath, and stepped away from the pantry door.

Alison had looked upward at the noise, and over at him as he’d moved. The Captain gestured upstairs. “Better go see what the bally hell is going on now then.”

Chapter Text

The canopy above was thick with dust. The bedsheets used to be, too, before Michael and Alison. No one to crack the heavy patina of it off them, sending the air hazy with billowing clouds. Instead they’d become almost mummified under it. Untouched. Even though the Captain slept there every night, there’d be no wrinkles, no disturbance.

Alison even washed them, when she remembered. Her hospital corners were poor – she’d never get away with them in the military and the Captain told her so, but she did them nonetheless.

The Captain lay awake on the neat-enough bed, stiff as a board, staring up at the underside of the canopy. Cautiously thinking.

Or rather, reminiscing. Thinking implied direction; Conclusions.

The room brightened; illuminated the dust motes slowly shedding from above and making their lazy spiral downward.

The Captain tracked them with his eyes until they disappeared from view again, fading with the dimming light.

There’d always been something else to think about. The War. His death. The ragtag bundle of the deceased that needed leadership.

It hadn’t been difficult to distract himself. Keep busy. If he pretended hard enough there was nothing else to think about.

Never before had he actively squirreled himself away, alone, to…reminisce, in a shower of falling dust.

The rusted pipes groaned as the heating struggled to kick in.

“Knock knock!”

The Captain flicked his eyes to the door at the sound of Patrick’s voice, snapping back to himself. Clearing his throat he swung his legs off the side of the bed, so he was standing to attention beside it.

“Come in,” he said, with a lift of his chin.

He’d never stop half-expecting the door to swing open. But of course Pat simply popped his head straight through it.

“Ahoy-hoy, only me!”

He came the rest of the way in.

“Alison sent me to find you.”

The Captain blinked. “Alison?”

“Yeah - she said she wanted you for something?”

“…What kind of something?” he said, but already he was moving to go through the door. Patrick followed.

“I dunno, she was very vague about that.” A second, and his face screwed up in confusion. “And she was very insistent that Mike needs the rest of us in the garden, come to think of it, but, y’know me -” his face brightened again, “happy to help! - This way.”

Directed to the kitchen, they found Alison busy idly kicking the pantry door open and closed with her toe, checking her watch nervously.

The Captain could have sworn the door had been left open wide more often than not lately.

She looked up when Pat cleared his throat. “One Captain, delivered safely and in remarkable time, if I do say so myself.”

Alison smiled at them, leaving the door to shudder closed on its hinges.

“Thank you Pat. Er, could you go join the others?”

“Certainly!” he said, with a cheery bob of his head, turning on his heel. “Always happy to help!” He repeated as he walked away.

The Captain clasped his hands behind his back, raised an eyebrow, and awaited instructions.

“Okay,” Alison said. “Captain could you…” she trailed off but inclined her head, so the Captain followed her.

“What’s this about Alison?”

She opened her mouth to reply, but after a moment spent searching for words closed it again, instead smiling almost reassuringly up at him, and reaching out as if to squeeze his arm. She stopped herself at the last second, accustomed to reaching for them, and then, remembering.

“You’ll see,” she settled on.

They approached the closed door of the common room, which was odd, as it was never usually shut.

The Captain frowned harder at Alison, but she just pushed it open, and ushered him in through first.

He was three steps into the room before he noticed, and he almost tripped over his own feet.

Hamish and Cal were looking around at all that the evening had hidden from them before. Up at the lofty ceilings and round at the walls, taking in all the old things that had become part of the house, and all of Michael and Alison’s things that had nestled right alongside them.

Behind him, Alison closed the door with a slight snick, sharing an unreadable look with the stricken Captain as she walked passed him.

“Where’s the snacks?” Hamish asked.

Alison slowed. “What?”

“Thought you said you were getting snacks?” he said, laughter dancing around the curl of his lip.

Alison faltered, her eyes growing wide for a second as she visibly restrained herself from turning to glance at the Captain, still frozen by the door.

“Er, just remembered,” she said, clicking her fingers, “haven’t got any, so sorry!”

Bemused, they shook their heads.

“I swear this house has just made you weirder Ali,” Cal said as she came close, shoving cups of tea that were steaming on the coffee table their way. 

A strained titter, and she pulled a chair closer to the sofas. As she sat on one, and Hamish and Cal re-arranged cushions on the other, she looked directly at the Captain, cocking her head towards the empty chair, so there was no mistaking who it was for.

The Captain realised he’d been rooted to the floorboards. He could turn away; leave.

But then Hamish and Cal did it again. They had the sofa to themselves, but still they sat so close their legs pressed together all the way down to their feet.

The Captain took a seat. He’d yet to loosen his hold on his swagger stick, and he rested it horizontally across his knees.

Hamish blew on his tea. “Not that we don’t like being invited round to your mansion -”

“Country house.”

Hamish ignored Alison’s interjection. “- But what do you want?” He raised an amused eyebrow and took a sip.    

Cal affectionately smacked him. It made the Captain jump a little. “Hamish!”

Alison put her mug down. No coaster. Fanny would be furious.

“Well, it was so nice having you here the other night,”

“Watch out, flattery,” Hamish murmured to Cal, nudging his shoulder. The corner of the Captain’s mouth ticked up as Cal chuckled.

Alison flipped them the bird before continuing. “As I was saying, I thought we could have a -” she gestured at the mugs of tea and the half-eaten packet of digestives she’d set up on the coffee table, “chit-chat. Specifically I er, I wondered if you’d tell me how you met again, actually.”

The Captain, tension written across his shoulders, inhaled sharply, eyes darting to Alison even as she avoided acknowledging him sitting in her peripherals.

Hamish and Cal appeared sceptical and bewildered, respectively.

“Why?” said Cal, puzzled.

Alison shrugged, pulling her sleeves down over her palms.

“I just like that story.”

A second more of silence. A slurp of tea.

“There’s twenty quid in it,” she offered.

Cal huffed, scratching the back of his head. “Alright then, er…”

His words were cut off as Hamish pressed a hand to his mouth. “Hang on,” he said, then pointed a hand at Alison, “twenty each?”

She rolled her eyes and slumped back into the sofa. “Each.”

Hamish removed his hand, knocking Cal’s ankle with his foot. “Then you may proceed.”

Cal took a biscuit, and after a wounded noise, took another one for Hamish.

At first, they were stilted. The room seemed much bigger, much colder, in daylight. They were unused to dominating the conversation, banishing the quiet. Alison would prompt them, kindly, when they trailed off.

Until she no longer needed to. Until they got so caught up in their memories, in each other, that story after story spilled from their lips, fragment after fragment of their life.

When they got to their wedding, the Captain made a noise, and felt Alison’s eyes on him. He’d leaned forward in his seat without realising, and now that he was looking for them, he could see them, the rings.

When Alison prompted them – just the barest nudge – they brought out photos, a whole gallery of smiles on screen.

Alison took the phone, holding it at an awkward angle, directed at the air between them. She ignored Hamish and Cal’s confused glances and corrective hands. Instead she made eye contact with the Captain again. Tilting her head. Wordlessly inviting him closer.

He swallowed. Ignored the crack of his knees as he stood, and crept forward until he filled the gap in the huddle, leaning over their shoulders as they scrolled through the pictures, pointing and laughing and reminiscing.

An autumn wedding. Orange and yellow marigolds. Blue suits.

The Captain took them in silently for a long time, until there was a lull, full of warmth, in the conversation.

“Cyan was an excellent choice,” he said quietly.

Alison looked up at him, still cradling the phone, and he looked back, his smile just a touch watery.

Eventually – after an exploratory rummage in the packet of biscuits produced nothing but an empty crackle, Hamish and Cal stretched, yawning, rising to go.

The Captain followed them all the way to the door this time, hovering just behind Alison’s shoulder. He murmured his goodbyes when she did.

Chapter Text

They walked back to the common room, to the coffee table covered in the inevitable mug rings, half-drunk cuppas and biscuit crumbs. The Captain took Alison’s previous spot on the edge of one sofa, fiddling with his hands.

Alison hovered, picking at her own sleeves, suddenly appearing unsure.

“…Was that okay?” she said, “Just that, y’know, after the other day…” her eyes slid toward the kitchen unconsciously, and the Captain was certain it hadn’t been just a draft that had left that pantry door open, “I thought you might like to hear that. That it’d be nice”

The Captain picked up his swagger stick, staring at the durable green of his lap. “I did. It was.”

A moment, and then a sound of frustration as Alison flopped down next to him hard enough to make the cushions bounce.

“It’s such bullshit I can’t give you a hug right now.”

Straightening himself out the Captain lifted his chin. “Then being dead is useful for something.”

Alison stuck out her tongue. “You’re a big softie really.”

He mustered half an affronted look, more out of habit than anything, and she ignored it. She was slumped down to what must have been an uncomfortable angle, her chin almost resting on her chest. She toed hopefully at the biscuit packet with the tip of her trainer and only succeeded in brushing it off the edge of the table, scattering a pile of crumbs over the floor. She grimaced, propping her foot next to a mug.

“How’d you live without cups of tea?”

“I don’t,” he said drily, and Alison snorted.

The Captain shuddered as an elbow went through him as she shuffled up from her reclined position, folding her feet under her and twisting sideways to face him steadily. There was a tiny little crease between her brows and he braced himself for the shattering of their gentle bubble, avoiding her eye. He smoothed the stick up and down his knees, rolling it down to the juncture of his wrist, up to the webbing of his fingers, and back again.

“Captain…You know I’m always here, right? I mean, obviously, ‘cos this is where I live. And I think we’ve established getting rid of you lot is an impossibility.” Her eyes widened. “Not that I want to!”

She made an annoyed noise, and relaxed again, resting her head on the back of the sofa near his shoulder. “God I’ve always been shit at ‘heart to hearts,’” she made air quotes around the words, “you shoulda seen me at sleepovers. I ate all the pizza and never got invited back.

“The point that’s in here somewhere Captain, is that - you don’t have to say anything. Trust me when I say I know there’s no privacy in this place,” she gave him a reprimanding glance from under her brows, “but er. You can. If you want. I have ears made for listening,” she flapped them back and forth with her fingers, “and I want nothing but sunshine and rainbows for the ghost fam,” she finished, wincing slightly at her own Freudian slip, but the Captain was focussed on something else.

“Ghost...fam?”

Surprised, Alison blinked at him.

“Well, yeah. Fam. Family. Mike and me have accepted we live in crazy town. You’re all part of the Cooper family now,” she paused, considering, “even that creepy plague girl I suppose.”

The Captain swallowed against what was suddenly a very tight throat. “She is petrifying,” he whispered.  

“Stuff of nightmares,” Alison agreed. “So yeah. Ghost fam. And…Captain -” She looked up at him, solemn but also smiling. Once again she thoughtlessly reached out to squeeze his arm, and settled for hovering her hand just above it instead.

“Family love each other,” she finished, “no matter what.”

He looked at her. And then he sniffed, and nodded.

Alison smiled. Patted the sofa next to his shoulder in lieu of impossible physical contact, and pushed herself up. The Captain made no move to rise.

“You gonna stay here for a bit?” Alison asked, and the Captain nodded again in response, unable to trust himself to speak.

“This room can be mysteriously off limits for a bit then,” she said with a wink, and left.

The Captain played their conversation over and over in his head.

He was roused from his reverie a short while later when the door creaked open a crack, and Mike tentatively popped his head into the room, his eyes roving over what was to him an apparently empty space. “…Hello?”

He opened the door wider, shuffling himself in and closing it afterwards, and his eyes went back to their restless roving. “Um, Captain? Alison said she’d left you here last? And that this was the guaranteed peace and quiet room?” He made everything a question. He was also mostly addressing the far wall. “It’s just that I’m pretty sure some of my… renovations have caused a bit of an uproar, and now I’m being messed with. There’s only so many times I can take my tools mysteriously unplugging themselves and the lights going out without losing it so I’m, er…” his shoulders slumped in defeat, “…hiding.”

He turned a slow circle. “…Fully aware you could have left by now. And that I’m talking to an empty room,” he muttered.

He pointed to the opposite sofa to where the Captain was sitting, and picked up the volume of his voice again the way he did whenever he asked any of the ghosts a direct question, over enunciating every syllable. “I’m gonna sit here, so if you’re sitting there, move.”

“Thank you Michael, I never would’ve worked that out for myself,” the Captain said drily, regardless of fact that it wouldn’t be heard, and mildly surprised he could get words out. He was feeling oddly calm.

Mike was still checking around near compulsively, as if the clutter in the room might suddenly spring into being at any moment, and with agonising slowness lowered himself down to the sofa cushion. There were a few moments of silence, broken only by the crackle of the biscuit packet as it was investigated with the tip of a shoe, and kicked aside in disgust when it was found empty. A few more seconds, and Mike began nodding along to the rhythm of the ticking clock subconsciously.

He glanced up almost gratefully when the door swung open, and Alison spotted him.

“Hey Captain,” she said flippantly, and Mike startled a little at having his presence confirmed. “Mike. Just so you know, I’d consider staying here for a little while; Fanny has gone absolutely mental about what you’ve done to the wallpaper,” - Mike shrunk down in his seat, grimacing - “and Julian’s having far too much fun offering up his services as some kind of punishment.”

“Oh god.”

“Yeah.” She paused. “It really is awful by the way.”

Mike tugged on his beanie, trying to drag it down over his face. “Message received. I’ll stay out of the way until you’ve got the vengeful spirits under control.” He blinked, then pushed his beanie back up and focussed his gaze on the completely wrong end of the sofa to where the Captain was sitting. “As long as that’s okay with you,” he addressed the vacant space, several decibels louder.

Alison frowned at him, sharing a look with the Captain. “…The fuck are you doing? You look mental.” She pointed over at the Captain, and Mike immediately tried in vain to search for something other than empty space, squinting. “Right, right.” He gave a stilted wave.

A shrill shriek of ‘Alison!’ and a foreboding giggle from Julian sent Alison spinning on her heel, already calling out as she firmly shut the door: “nope haven’t seen him!”

Mike and the Captain lapsed back into quiet, Mike’s fingers drumming on his armrest. “So,” he said, just as the Captain was preparing to wander off to his room, “did you see the game?” Immediately he scrunched up his nose. “What am I talking about, I didn’t see the game. Ignore that.”

The Captain raised an eyebrow, and almost as if he could sense it Mike sighed. “Alright. You’re gonna have to cut me a bit of slack here mate. You’re a ghost.” He cleared his throat, looking out towards the window and scratching his head, “you’re also mildly terrifying,” he murmured.

That earned an amused huff. Not so long ago Alison’s word had been ‘softie.’

Mike worried his lip with his teeth, and his gaze drifted to the debris left on the coffee table. The tea-stained mugs. His fingers stopped their tapping.

“Um. Alison told me about…” he wafted a hand towards the used collection of things. “Not that – not that we were gossiping or anything! I just meant I asked why I had to entertain a bunch of people I can’t even see apart from out of the goodness of my heart. And that twenty quid she gave me. Er.” He curled his lip up as he thought. “Where was I going with this?

“Right, yeah. I know we don’t. Like, talk? But whatever you’re…I mean, whatever… just, whatever, it’s cool dude. You’re cool,” he flashed a set of finger guns and cringed visibly the second he did it. “Sorry first response is always the finger guns. But I mean it.”

And the Captain, sitting opposite with a long day – but not a bad one – on his mind, could see that. The sentiment was clumsy, and Mike had been talking to a few inches below his actual eyeline, but it was genuine.

“Thank you” said the Captain quietly, knowing Mike wouldn’t hear him, and wishing that he could.

Beyond the walls, there was an almighty crash, and Mike recoiled. “Definitely staying right here.”

Chapter Text

They never really did get around to tidying up the garden. The most that had happened were that a few of the more easily removable clusters of weeds were thrown in great heaps, freeing one space and cluttering another.

The crater was still there. It’d been collectively decided that there were more pressing matters to tackle first, so Alison had prettied it up as much as she could, ringing it with discounted potted plants and a bench salvaged from scrap.

But things had a way of working out for them. And when England blessed Button House with an unusually pleasant day, something about the warmth of the amber sunshine on the petals and leaves made them rich with vibrancy.

They glowed under the morning lights’ attention as the Captain sat on the bench. It had been a bitter night, so now ice melted to puddles on the gravel, dripping from Florence the statue into the impromptu lake that had accumulated in the crater.

One thing that the Captain missed most about his life were rules, plans, deadlines. Schedules. Structure. It horrified him to think about how the others had existed, listlessly, before he’d arrived and impressed upon them the importance of timetables. Sticking to an agenda made everything easier to deal with.

Hence, the Captain had set out his plan for the day, resolutely, before he’d settled down on those dust free sheets the night before, and although the decision had made his mouth pull tight and the impossible clench of his heart return, he wouldn’t sway from it.

Of course, he’d awoken in the still small hours as happened when his mind was churning, and wandered until daybreak, when the first of the ice in the gutters had begun to melt. He’d found himself in the clearing of the garden, with the birds.

If he’d been alive, it would’ve been the time for a spot of Dutch courage. The other officers had been fond of that. There was always something that needed Dutch courage in war.

Sitting on that bench felt an awful lot like going into battle.

The Captain set his swagger stick aside to avoid snapping it again, but his hands roamed restlessly without it, his nails digging into his palm and leaving no indents, so he took it back up. His shoulders stiffened; one eye winced almost shut as he braced himself to do the one thing on his itinerary.

Open the metaphorical floodgates.

There was a reason why Hamish and Cal had affected him so. Why the ease with which they just were together filled him with…

Yearning.

There was reason why, whenever the ghosts had drifted into a discussion about relationships there tended to be things he urgently needed to attend to.

There was a reason why Havers departure had hurt so much. He’d...

Loved him.     

The Captain ran from questions about relationships because it was never the hand of a woman he envisioned holding.

He was utterly motionless. The birds, ignorant to the monumental tumult of his thoughts, continued to chatter.

There was panic. Like someone, somewhere, somehow, had to know what he’d just admitted to himself, that his old friend the imaginary accuser would spring from nowhere, spouting his thoughts as damning evidence. The Captain couldn’t plausibly defend himself with an ‘innocent’ explanation now.

He waited for consequences.          

The ice continued to melt slowly, the flowers perked up, and they’d never worked out why chairs and beds and the edges of tables could hold them when they fell right through everything else, but the bench was just as stable underneath him as it always had been.

Nothing happened.

The world continued to turn, presumably, and the near permanent crease between the Captain’s brows, for first time in a very long time - since the first nagging feeling of difference he’d shied away from - lifted.

He shifted his grip on his swagger stick. Shivered as a drop of ice water fell straight through him.

He allowed himself to think everything through again.        

Still nothing but the gentle rising of the sun and the benign twitter of sparrows.   

If there was anything, it was the foreign giddiness that filled him, as if a weighted shroud had lifted from his shoulders, like something wound tight internally had - not snapped, but relaxed.

And like the blooming flowers, he looked up toward the sun.

It started to rain, though the sun never hid itself behind the clouds, instead fragmenting the raindrops. The Captain retreated back inside the house. He knew there was no physical weight to him - hadn’t been for years – but nonetheless he felt untethered from the floorboards beneath him. He twirled his swagger stick between his fingers like a baton subconsciously. Under and over his knuckles.

He heard Mike and Alison’s voices before he saw them, and realised he’d strayed by their bedroom door, flung wide open. The room was in even more of a state of disarray than usual, clothes and coat hangers and knick-knacks covering every surface and the floor. Alison had a candle in her hands and was placing it down, picking it up again, then placing it down somewhere else.

The Captain lingered in the doorway when he saw them. He wasn’t entirely sure why.

Alison caught sight of him from under a curtain of hair. “Alright Captain?”

Mike, the bottom of the cardboard box he’d lifted giving out and spilling magazines all over his feet, jumped visibly. He held on to the useless edges of the no-longer-box as he spun in circles, until Alison rolled her eyes and took him by the shoulders, physically turning him in the right direction.

“We’re just Spring cleaning,” she said to the Captain. Confidently placed her candle on the windowsill. Wrinkled her nose at it. Picked it back up.

The Captain nodded. He could walk on, but he didn’t.

Alison picked up on his hesitation. “Sorry, do you want me to chuck The World at War on for you? Actually -” she shoved the candle up under one armpit as she began searching around under the clutter, “I know we’re getting to the end of that so – oh come one you bastard -” she tugged with excessive force at something wedged under a pile of plates, “I’ve circled all the documentaries I could find – threw a few wildcards in there ‘n all.” Eventually she won the fight with the crockery stack and pulled free a TV guide, the cover folded over to show the channel listings absolutely plastered in highlighter.

She went to hand it to him before realising he couldn’t take it from her. “Oh right. I’ll just leave this somewhere for…” she looked around the incredible debris of the room and anxiousness crept onto her face, “...safe keeping.”

In a fit of inspiration she held it out for Mike to take instead. Mike, both hands still holding the no-longer-box, panicked, and bent to take it in his teeth. Immediately a look of exasperation at himself crossed his face. But still he did not drop the no-longer-box. He flattened the cardboard flat, taking both sides in one hand to hold the TV guide with the other.

Alison watched the scene play through, amused. “Don’t mind him,” she told the Captain, “he’s just afflicted with the Dumb Impulse.” She indicated the way to the TV, “shall we?”

The Captain bounced a little on his toes. “Actually that’s not…why I’m…here…” He rolled his swagger stick constantly against his palms.

Alison frowned. “Everything okay?”

“Yes,” he answered immediately, and then blinked at himself for having such an immediate affirmative answer. His eyes landed on the ridiculously luminous yellow pages of the TV guide, and he remembered with perfect clarity (because how could he possibly forget) her kind words as she called him family.     

He started to talk without deciding he was going to.

“I’ve, er. The crux of the matter is – I mean, that is to say that, I - I have come to the conclusion…” His shirt collar suddenly felt impossibly tight, the fibres the of cheaply starched fabric barbed wire around his throat. His shoulders came up protectively, automatically.

“Your friends.” Clasped hands. The soft lean of shoulder against shoulder. Temple against temple. “I’m…like…them.”

The last word was almost a whisper. He didn’t think he could get more out.

He didn’t need to.

Alison didn’t ask which friends. She simply hugged the candle close to her chest with a smile and suspiciously damp eyes.

“Such. Incredible. Bullshit I can’t give you a hug. If you weren’t already dead I’d be suffocating you with them right now.”

The Captain just nodded stupidly, his ears ringing a little.

“…What’s happening?” Mike whispered.

Alison appeared to have forgotten him, standing there with a drooping TV guide in one hand and a broken cardboard box in the other. “Oh!” she said, clearing her throat. “Erm…” She looked toward the Captain.

“You may inform Michael,” he said, and his voice came out a little cracked, but sure. Alison nodded, soft eyed, and relayed what he’d said.

“Oh! Awesome!” Mike said once she’d done, fumbling about until he’d shoved the squashed box under his armpit, freeing one hand to flash what he supposed to be a super encouraging thumbs up with a smile.

The Captain swallowed hard, sniffed, and switched his gaze between the dusty skirting board and the dusty ceiling coving.   

He was still half expecting all the bad things to happen at any minute. The grim twitch of disapproving lips or hard stares. The urge to shrink away was not gone. But he trusted Mike and Alison, so he stayed rooted to the spot.

Alison came closer, hovering her hand over his wrist as was her habit. “Thank you for telling us,” she said, hushed.

After a small stretch of silence the Captain regained the use of his words, and he rasped out a “right.”

Alison gave him a moment, then stepped back, smiling to break the tension. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you plaster your room with pride flags or anything.”

He frowned in confusion deep enough that her face lit up, and she threw the candle haphazardly onto the bed, where it bounced worryingly close to the edge. “Oh this is a WHOLE other conversation - lemme make a PowerPoint and get back to you!”

She darted to the open laptop perching on some cushions behind her, wiggling the cursor furiously to wake it up.

Mike widened his eyes in alarm. “Captain,” he said, looking toward the doorway and far too far below his actual eyeline, “if she tries to show you a PowerPoint at any point - run, those things are like 200 slides long.”

Offended, Alison looked sharply over her shoulder. “No they’re not!” she objected, but Mike could see the programme already open onscreen as she carefully selected the right WordArt. He looked back to the door.

“It’s not safe, save yourself,” he said, and both he and the Captain ducked as Alison threw a cushion at them.   

Chapter Text

The Captain listened idly to the conversation, looking between each person as they spoke, following the flow of the words. It’d started snowing, cotton wool clumps swirling to the grass, and the ghosts had launched into bets about whether it would settle. Slowly, it buried the lawn and climbed up the window glass, and the hasty bets had turned to reminisces: the great cold bouts of their lives - and deaths. Stories told a hundred times before, or dredged up, forgotten until now, from the depths of memory.

The Captain was content to let them talk. He usually was, when things strayed to friendly chit chat. He never really knew what to say, so he stood back until it was time for action, direction. That he knew he could do; then he would interject.      

Their words washed over him a little more than usual, the familiar amalgamation of voices soothingly rhythmic.     

He was still thinking about it. What he’d finally admitted to himself, and then to Alison and Michael – to other people. After a lifetime – more than a lifetime – of so carefully doing the exact opposite, it was taking some getting used to.

The snapping of fingers.

“Ground Control to Major Tom?”

Julian was clicking his fingers in front of the Captain’s face to get his attention, and the Captain, after shaking himself from his reverie, looked at him, annoyed.

“Do you understand how often you broodingly stare off into space?” said Julian, “It must be exhausting.” He looked back toward the rest of the group, still engaged in discussion, and tugged on the lapels of his suit jacket. “I never worry about anything, me.”

“We’ve noticed,” the Captain said dryly.

The falling snow cast silent shadows on the floor.

“I happened to see,” began Julian out of nowhere, in the tone of voice that made any of them instinctively wary, “a very particular car, that belongs to a very particular couple of chaps, leave the driveway the other day.”

He looked at the Captain out of the corner of his eye.

“Don’t suppose that happens to be related to the brooding does it? Or the stuff Alison was looking at on her laptop when I stol- liberated it?”

He’d raised both eyebrows at him now.

The Captain had stopped bouncing on his toes. Swallowed, hard, as Julian watched him mildly, but expectantly, the snow shadows raining down the wall behind him. The knot of his tie and dependable collar had turned restrictive again. The two looked at each other, and the Captain struggled for words, opening and closing his mouth.

“…Perhaps,” he said eventually, cautiously, hands clenched hard around either end of his swagger stick.

Julian just nodded. “Alright,” he said. Just ‘alright.’ The Captain’s fingers relaxed.

Julian was quiet for a second, then, “Truth be told - not entirely unexpected.”

“ - Julian!”

They both startled at the aghast admonishment from Pat, eyes wide behind his glasses. Everyone was quiet, everyone was watching, and if the Captain had remembered in that moment of alarm that he could sink out of sight into the bookcase behind him then he would have.

Pat’s horror moved to a certain amount of panic at being caught listening, and he looked away hastily, putting his back to them as he spun around on his heel.

“Who wants to hear about the Big Freeze of ’62!” he said, a tad too loudly, and everyone, equally a bit too zealously, clamoured for details at once.

Everyone except the Captain, and Julian, who looked abashed by the sharp reprimand.

“Er what I mean is – look if you remember, for the record, I already tried to put my two-penny in before you went running off to the arse-end of nowhere, so yeah: all that, big soppy speech, et cetera.”

He finished wafting his arms about and clapped the Captain solidly on his shoulder, throwing him off his balance enough that he stumbled as Julian walked away. He was caught by Kitty’s stabilising hand on his elbow. She rectified him, and gave him one of her ever-present smiles.              

“There you go – don’t mind Julian, he can be awfully abrupt, can’t he?” She patted him on the arm good naturedly, and went to turn away, stopping herself at the last second. “Oh! We all really did like that lovely lieutenant of yours, by the way.”

He inhaled sharply. Looked away from her to the rest of the room, who had again drifted silent. Pat appeared pained at Kitty’s characteristic well-meaning lack of tact, but when he caught the Captain’s eye gave him a gentle smile and a nod. As did everyone else, in turn. Even Humphrey, whose head tumbled to the sofa cushions with the movement. Even Fanny, who the Captain had been hesitant to look at, shared a rare, genuine smile, and beckoned him closer as they all smoothly, and without comment, went back to listening to Pat’s retelling.

The Captain cleared his throat, glanced up at the rafters, and then down to the swagger stick he was surprised hadn’t snapped in twain again. The impossible remembrance of a nervously pounding heart was still hammering in his chest and the back of his throat, but Thomas lifted Humphrey’s head onto his lap, freeing the space next to him for the Captain, and he sunk down into it. Everything continued.

Everything was…okay.

“What’s all this?” Alison called when, perhaps attracted by the noise, she and Mike joined them. Mike went to sit in an occupied chair, and as he lowered himself Alison grabbed him with both hands above the elbow and quietly raised him back up again with a shake of her head.

“Would you believe,” said Julian, “we’re actually talking about the weather?”

“The ‘greatest hits,’” said Robin uncertainly.

“Oh! Have we got to the storm of ’87 yet?”

“The storm of ’87!” crowed Julian, “Michael Fish’s greatest moment!”

“The what of what?” murmured Mike in response to Alison’s question, and she shot him an astonished look.

“How have you not heard about this?!” she said, and sat down promptly on the floor, pulling Mike with her. “Right. Gather ‘round ghost fam.”

She caught the Captain’s eye as she said it, gave him a wink, and launched into story.

The snow outside glistened under the bright white sky. The murmur of voices warmed the room.

As he listened, the Captain relaxed back into the sofa. He was still slightly rattled by the events of the past few minutes, but he was also surrounded by the rest of the Button House circle, one link in the chain. And despite all he still had ahead of him to work through, he felt - he really did feel,

Accepted.