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ailendolin · 11 days

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Hope - A BBC Ghosts Fanfic

Title: Hope [AO3]

Characters: pre-Nigel/Thomas, Jean, the Plague Ghosts

Summary: Thomas can't handle the quiet after Alison, Mike and Mia leave.

A/N: I began writing this after I finally got to see the final episode of Ghosts last January and couldn't stop thinking about how difficult that first night after the Coopers left must have been for the ghosts with the house being all quiet and everyone probably retreating into their rooms to deal with the new situation on their own.

————

Hope

It was late. Not yet past midnight but still later than usual according to the chime of the old grandfather clock that echoed too loudly through the silent house. Normally, Nigel and the others went to bed early just as they’d done their whole lives but today was not a normal day.

Today, Alison and Mike had left.

Alison had tears in her eyes when she’d come down to the basement to say goodbye earlier. It had been painfully obvious to Nigel that a part of her didn’t want to leave but he hadn’t told her that. He did not want to be the person making this harder for her than it already was. She’d made her decision, for better or worse, and all he could do now was support her in it. So he’d smiled at her and said, “Have a good life, Alison.”

And he’d meant it. He and the others did not begrudge her selling the house. They would miss her, though. She had always been kind to them – even if she did call them zombies, once – and made sure to keep the light on so they would not have to sit in the dark. Today, she’d turned off the light for the first time in years.

“I’ll leave the door open for you guys,” she’d said with one last smile. “I know it’s not the same but this way, you’ll at least have a little light when the electricity will be cut tomorrow.”

The moment she’d turned around, Mick started crying.

It was another reminder that everything would be different now, and Nigel wasn’t sure how he felt about that. The hotel would turn the house upside down and they knew their little corner of it would not escape the renovations. Alison had said they would love the sauna but he had to admit he was still a little sceptical about it.

“Won’t it smell if all the livings come down here to sweat?” he’d asked the others back when Alison had first informed them about the plans.

Geoff had shrugged. “Can’t be worse than us, eh?”

That had gotten a laugh out of everyone.

There was no laughter ringing through the house this night; no calls for dinner from the kitchen, no crying from Mia, no music playing. The quietness reminded Nigel of the time when Humphrey had been alive, and not in a good way, and he could tell the others felt it too. Even though no one said a word, it was clear none of them were eager to go to sleep that night.

So they talked – about the time Mike tried to repair the boiler and nearly blew up the house in the process, about that memorable night when Alison desperately tampered with the lights to imitate Robin, and that fateful Christmas Day a little over two years ago when Thomas’s portrait found its way down to them and caused all sorts of excitement.

“Thank god we’re over that,” Walter’s wife said and the others nodded in agreement.

Nigel glanced over at the portrait in the corner where it stood half-covered and among a myriad of other things Alison and Mike had left behind, and thought, Speak for yourself.

He might no longer be blinded by Thomas’s posed prettiness but that didn’t mean he didn’t find him handsome at all. There was just something about the way Thomas held himself that drew him in. Nigel had likened him to a flamingo once and he stood by that. Thomas was graceful, and his voice – oh it was the sound dreams were made of. Misty Glade might have been a mess of words and metaphors but Nigel didn’t think he’d even have noticed if the others hadn’t started questioning it because Thomas had recited it so beautifully. Thomas could read from the boiler manual for all he cared if it meant he’d get to listen to that beautiful deep cadence of his voice again or watch him prance around on stage playing a prince with all the pathos in the world.

If he were pressed to name the moment when he realised the portrait situation had been more than a passing fancy for him, Nigel would say it was the end of the panto. Thomas had looked so happy then – so completely at ease and content it had taken Nigel’s breath away. He’d never realised how beautiful Thomas’s smile was until he saw it that night in the gentle glow of the Christmas lights, and a part of him began to dream that Thomas would smile at him like that one day.

That was all it was, though: a dream. Nigel had never had any illusions that it could be more, which was why he didn’t tell anyone about what that foolish heart of his felt every time Thomas was so much as mentioned. Judging by the looks Jean sometimes gave him, he suspected she knew anyway. She seemed to have an uncanny sixth sense for this sort of thing – perhaps that’s how managed to hide her feelings for Geoff for so long, Nigel mused with a smile.

When he tuned back in to the conversation, the topic had moved from Thomas’s portrait to the panto.

“Oh, it was so much fun, wasn’t it?” Geoff’s wife said with a happy sigh.

“I did not like the sisters,” Mick grumbled.

Everyone groaned and gave him a look.

“You were not supposed to, silly,” Jean said. “They were meant to be like that.”

“Cinderella deserved better,” Mick insisted.

Nigel was just about to remind him that she ended up with the handsome prince in the end when the soft sound of a throat being cleared made him and the others turn towards the open basement door in unison. To his surprise, Thomas was standing there, looking terribly small and self-conscious in the gloom.

“Knock knock,” he said softly without looking up from his shoes. His fingers were nervously fiddling with the cuff of his sleeves, making him look restless and skittish. “I, uhm … didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation.”

“And yet you have,” Walter said, crossing his arms in front of his chest and staring him down. “What do you want?”

Thomas took an involuntary step backwards. His eyes flicked up, just briefly, but long enough for Nigel to see that they were a little too wide; a little too frantic and glassy.

“Sorry,” Thomas mumbled. He hunched his shoulders and turned away. “I’m sorry. I’ll just go.”

“No, wait!” Nigel said and before he knew it, he was across the room. Ignoring the irritated look Walter gave him, he gently touched Thomas’s arm – not to hold him back but to reassure him he meant no harm. “What’s going on?”

Thomas sniffed pitifully and hung his head.

“The house is so quiet,” he whispered. There was a lost look in his eyes when he glanced up, and a silent plea for Nigel not to make him spell out why he’d come here. It tugged at Nigel’s heart and crush or not, he knew in that moment that he would not send Thomas away to suffer this loss they all felt so keenly alone.

“It is, isn’t it?” he said softly. Giving Thomas’s arm a squeeze, he added, “Come on, you can sit with us for a while.”

“Excuse me–“ Geoff’s wife and Walter said in unison only for Jean to shush them both with a heartfelt, “Oh shut up, you two. We’ve got room for one more.”

Walter glowered at her. “Not if he starts reciting his bloody poetry we don’t.”

Thomas seemed to shrink in on himself at the sharp words and it took all of Nigel’s willpower not to rub his arm reassuringly – or turn around and punch Walter in the face. As satisfying as the latter might feel, he was not in the mood for a row with Walter, not tonight.

“Don’t listen to him,” he told Thomas instead, careful to keep his voice soft and gentle. “It’s okay if you don’t want to be alone right now.”

The small but grateful smile Thomas gave him did nothing to calm the butterflies fluttering nervously about in Nigel’s stomach.

“There’s enough people upstairs if he needs someone to hold his hand,” Walter muttered under his breath but a quick glare from Jean finally shut him up.

“They’ve all gone to bed early,” Thomas said with his head bent low as Nigel led him over to a corner. “We … we haven’t really talked, not since–“

His breathing hitched and he closed his eyes against the emotions threatening to well up inside him. As gently as he could, Nigel helped him sit down on the old stone floor before he joined him. He wasn’t surprised when Jean settled down on Thomas’s other side.

“It sucks sometimes, doesn’t it? Being alone with your own thoughts?” she asked kindly.

Thomas sighed and nodded, almost helplessly. “I keep thinking about what tomorrow will be like, and the following weeks and months and years, and I just – I can’t stop.”

Jean smiled in understanding. “So you came down here for a distraction because god knows we never shut up.”

Thomas hung his head in shame. “I’m sorry. I did not mean–”

“Hey,” Nigel said, cutting him off before the self-blame could take hold. “Don’t worry about it. We’re glad to have you here.”

“Some of us certainly are,” Jean smirked, not even trying to hide her knowing grin when Nigel glared at her.

Luckily for Nigel, Thomas neither noticed the silent conversation he was having with Jean nor the blush Nigel knew was creeping up the back of his neck. He just pulled his legs up to his chest so he could rest his chin on his knees and said, very quietly. “Thank you. I … I wasn’t sure I would be welcome, considering what happened last year.”

“Well, you were a bit of a prick, I’ll give you that,” Jean told him bluntly before her face softened into a smile. “But then again, so were we.”

“It was rude of us to interrupt you,” Nigel agreed. “The least we could have done was let you finish your poem before we started asking questions.”

Thomas blinked at them in confusion. “Why are you being so … nice about this? I … I called you names!”

Nigel exchanged an amused look with Jean before he shrugged and said, “To be honest I still have no idea what a wazzock even is.”

“And you know, it’s never too late to apologise for one’s behaviour,” Jean added gently. Almost stricken, Thomas looked up at her. She gave him an encouraging nod. “Go on.”

Taking a deep breath, Thomas met Nigel’s eyes. “I truly am sorry.”

He sounded so sincere that Nigel couldn’t help but smile. “It’s okay. I’m not one to hold grudges anyway.”

He glanced over at Mick who stopped mid-sentence to stick his tongue out to him and then continued talking to John as if nothing had happened. Nigel grinned, glad they’d reached a point where they could gently joke about Mick’s role in their deaths now, and turned back to Thomas. Feeling a little brave, he gently nudged his shoulder and quietly asked, “Do you want to talk about today? About Alison leaving?”

Thomas stared at him, wide-eyed and looking terribly young, and for a moment Nigel could just imagine him as a little boy: all gangly limbs and with a heart that would always be too big for his chest.

“I’d rather not,” Thomas said softly and averted his eyes. His voice was thick with grief as he hugged his legs more tightly and added, “I just … don’t want to think about it for a little while.”

“That’s all right,” Nigel said easily. “What would you like to talk about instead?”

He expected Thomas to launch into a lecture about the finer points of poetry, or perhaps even a poem to keep his mind occupied and distracted. Instead, Thomas turned those expressive eyes onto him and asked, “Would you tell me about yourself? We’ve been living – well, ghosting – in this house together for nearly two centuries and I know little but your name about you.”

Oh, Nigel thought. Panicking, he looked to Jean for help. He wanted to say he was surprised to find her trying not to laugh at his predicament but he wasn’t. Giving her one of his most vicious glares which seemed to only make her press her hand to her mouth harder to keep from laughing, he turned back to Thomas and stammered, “Well, there’s not really much to know. I lived a rather boring life, I’m afraid.”

“I refuse to believe that,” Thomas said with such intensity that Nigel felt himself melt under his gaze. “Simple, perhaps, but not boring. Not with this lot around.”

He nodded to the other villagers and Nigel huffed out a laugh because Thomas had a point. His life, simply as it might have been, had certainly not been uneventful. So he started at the beginning. “The bluebells were in bloom when I was born. I was my parents’ second child. My sister Susanna was born two years before me, and my brother Henry three years after me. I loved them both very dearly but Henry was always sickly and …”

Just like that, he found himself talking about people he hadn’t thought about in decades and sharing memories he usually shied away from and preferred to forget. Nigel did not know why he was telling Thomas all those painful, private things. Perhaps it was because of the way Thomas was looking at him, silent but attentive – as if in that moment, Nigel had become the centre of his universe. Or perhaps it had just been too long since he’d talked about his family and their ghosts were tired of being forgotten. Whatever it was, not only Thomas and Jean were listening to him intently – the others were as well. No one interrupted him as he talked about his short life, and when he was done, Thomas gave him a soft, grateful smile that made him duck his head and said, “See? Not boring at all.”

One by one, each of them began to tell their tale. They didn’t even notice the hours passing until Lady Button’s scream echoed through the house, heralding a new dawn. Looking at the tired but content faces of the people he had known all his life and death as they settled down to sleep, Nigel smiled. They might have their differences but at the end of the day, there was no one he would rather be stuck with in the afterlife than them.

His gaze wandered to Thomas. He had fallen asleep on his shoulder, a warm, solid presence against his side, and his face looked more peaceful than Nigel had ever seen it. He felt his smile soften and suddenly, desperately found himself wishing that this were not a one-time thing – that he could be someone Thomas would seek out in moments like this; someone Thomas might even come to love one day, like Alison or Lady Isabelle. He was so tired of being alone.

“Don’t lose heart,” Jean said quietly. It was something his mother had once told him as well, back when Nigel had confessed to her that it wasn’t pretty girls like Jean who made his heart beat faster. There had been sadness in his mother’s eyes, then, but understanding and acceptance too, and he saw the same in Jean’s now when their eyes met in the dark. She did not make him any promises, did not tell him that Thomas would madly fall in love him, but she did tell him that he was not alone and that there was always hope.

And hope, Nigel thought as he allowed himself to lean his head against Thomas’s and close his eyes, was all he could ask for.

#thomas thorne #nigel the plague ghost #jean the plague ghost #norne #bbc ghosts #bbc ghosts fanfic #my fic

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