Chapter Text
When his mother first announces her plans to take a sabbatical after her second term has ended and buy a vacation home in England, Alex’s immediate reaction is to be thrilled. After eight long years as President of the United States, his mom deserves a fucking break, and the choice of England makes perfect sense — June has just been accepted into a prestigious master’s program for writing at Oxford after all, and Alex isn’t too self-absorbed to realize just how much his sister needs their mother’s sudden show of interest in her life. The timing also happens to coincide with Alex’s own graduation from law school, so it seems like a natural decision to take a post-bar exam jaunt to England for one last summer of adventure before diving into his career.
When he finds out the home his mom decided to purchase is a Victorian era mansion, he is decidedly less pleased. Especially since he already bought his plane ticket.
“It’s how old?” he asks her over the phone, trying to hide the note of panic creeping into his voice. He wonders if it’s too late to cancel his flight.
“It was built in the 1860’s,” Ellen says, oblivious to his discomfort. “It’s amazing, sugar, you’re going to love it. It has a stone exterior and all these Neo-Gothic influences — it feels like a miniature castle.”
Alex forces himself to smile, even though she can’t see it. Letting go of the presidency had been hard on his mother, and it is nice to hear her sound so excited about something. “What, the White House wasn’t enough of a palace for you?” he teases weakly.
“Oh, hush,” she says, and from the background Leo calls out, “It’s me. I got addicted to the life of luxury.”
Alex has to laugh at that, despite himself. His stepfather is about the least materialistic person on the planet, even though the wealth he’s accumulated through his patents is likely what allowed them to buy this place.
When Alex hangs up the phone a few minutes later, he drags a hand through his hair and goes straight to his liquor cabinet to pour a few fingers of whiskey into a glass, knocking it back quickly and pouring another. He can’t really cancel his flight, he knows that. He promised June he would be there to help her get settled in the country she’s going to call home for at least the next two years. And he really was looking forward to the vacation before this.
He’ll just have to suck it up. He spent four years living in the White House, which is a significantly older building. Yes, there had been times it wasn’t great, but he’d managed. If he could manage four years living in a house built at the turn of the nineteenth century, surrounded by Civil War battle sites, he could manage three months in a place almost seventy years younger.
Who knows, maybe no one with unfinished business has even died there, and Alex is getting all worked up over nothing. Maybe everything will be totally fine.
The hope rings false inside his own mind as he refills his glass again.
******
Alex was about four years old the first time he remembers seeing a ghost.
Logically, he assumes he must have been seeing them before that, but since he was still working on the concepts of object permanence and committing things to memory, that’s the first one he counts.
He and his mother had been walking June to school one morning, and as they passed an intersection, he saw a teenage girl, faintly transparent with a bluish glow, smiling at him sadly from beside a cross surrounded by several bouquets of flowers on one of the corners. His mom and June walked right past the girl without a glance even though there was no way they could have missed her, and even at the tender age of four, Alex had instinctively realized that it was because they couldn’t see her — and that he shouldn’t talk about it.
Years later, once he was in high school, he learned that the girl was a victim of a drunk driving accident, a story that became one of those school-wide urban legends that was passed down year over year. He hadn’t thought about her in ages, but he went back to the same street corner that day on the minuscule chance that she might still be there. She wasn’t, of course, but the cross was, and Alex found himself hoping that it hadn’t taken her too long to move on and find peace.
The ghosts never scared him, exactly. Contrary to the idea popularized by The Sixth Sense, they didn’t show the signs of however they died — they weren’t just walking around with slit throats or gunshot wounds or arrows sticking out of their chests. No, they mostly looked the same as they did when they were alive, just a little more translucent, with that slight glow about them. Alex was actually pretty fucking grateful for the glow, since he would have had a hard time telling some ghosts apart from the living without it.
That’s not to say he never found them unsettling. He didn’t love when they just showed up in his room in the middle of the night, crying or begging for help or, worst of all, just staring; it was probably the reason for his ongoing struggle with insomnia. But generally, the ghosts seemed to hang around wherever they died, as boring as that sounded to Alex. It was only when they caught Alex looking at them a little too obviously that they followed him back home, and he taught himself not to do that pretty quickly.
His biggest lesson regarding the whole ghost thing came when his abuelo died when he was nine. June had sobbed at the funeral, and both of his parents had looked concerned that Alex wasn’t outwardly displaying more emotion, but he knew he didn’t need to — he would see his grandfather again.
Sure enough, his grandfather appeared in his room that very night. “Hi, mijo,” he said, smiling warmly from the foot of Alex’s bed. He looked exactly the same as he had the last time Alex saw him, just a little more see-through.
“Hey, abuelito,” he said, smiling back.
“So this is why you’re always so distracted, huh?” his grandfather said, raising an eyebrow at him. “You can speak to the dead.”
“Uhh….” Alex looked away, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. “I mean, I guess. I can see them. But I try not to talk to them if I can help it.”
“But, mijo,” his grandfather said, brow furrowed in confusion, “how do you know how to help them if you don’t talk to them?”
Alex just stared at him. “Help them? Help them what?”
His abuelo sat down on his bed then and tried to rest a hand on Alex’s leg, but of course it passed right through him. He smiled at Alex again, but it was smaller, sadder, this time. “To move on,” he said simply. “That’s all they want.”
Alex didn’t see his grandfather again after that night. He had lived a full and happy life and knew his family was going to be okay. His only unfinished business was making sure Alex understood his…ability.
And Alex took his last words to heart. From that day on, whenever he could without drawing too much attention to himself, he tried to ask the ghosts he saw what they wanted. It was difficult for him to fulfill some of their last requests as a child, but a lot of the time all they really needed was a chance to say the things they hadn’t been able to before they died. As Alex got older, he was able to pass on some of these messages and help loved ones find things that had been left behind, and even though he still wouldn’t say he loved his side gig as liaison to the dead, the heartfelt gratitude and looks on some of the family member’s faces almost made up for it.
Eventually, Alex probably would have learned to appreciate, maybe even like, his ability if his mom hadn’t become the President.
It wasn’t her fault that Washington D.C. was crawling with disgruntled deceased, from hopeful politicians whose careers were cut short by drugs or car accidents, going all the way back to the occasional Union soldier. And Alex still wanted to help them, he really did. It just got a lot more difficult once he was forced to not only live in the public eye, but also project an image of the supportive and totally sane son — which he was. Everyone just seemed to get the wrong impression when he started talking to people no one else could see, for some reason.
Thus began four long, frustrating years of forcing himself not to react at all to increasingly belligerent spirits shouting at him in public if he so much as caught their eye by accident. He still helped the ones that were considerate enough to contact him in private, all while doing his best to support his mom’s campaign for her second election and completing his undergraduate degree. It wasn’t exactly fun, but he found that staying as busy as possible helped to drown out the noise.
Things got a little better once he moved to New York for law school. The cameras weren’t on him nearly as much, and he managed to find an apartment that was only about twenty years old, so he didn’t have dead people just casually walking past his kitchen table or following him down the hall to the bathroom nearly as often as he had at the White House. It was a relatively peaceful existence, the stress of law school aside.
So that’s why he wasn’t thrilled about moving backwards — back in time and in his own personal trajectory. Once again living in a centuries-old building and in close proximity with his family was going to make for a more complicated summer than he had been counting on.
But Alex is loyal and stubborn to a fault and he honors his commitments, which is how he finds himself on a plane to England three weeks later.
He rents a car at Heathrow and starts his journey toward Oxford, watching through the windows as the city and suburbs transform into sprawling English countryside. It is beautiful, Alex has to admit, wide open fields interspersed with lush, green hills. The air just feels peaceful here — basically the polar opposite of the chaotic energy of New York City.
But all too soon, the GPS leads Alex to a long winding driveway through an alley of oak trees, and as the trees clear, a giant, three-story mansion appears, taking up the entire windshield.
Alex gasps as the house comes into view. It’s somehow better and worse than he imagined; the pictures his mom texted to him really did not do the place justice.
Because the house is amazing — that much is undeniable. With its slate gray exterior, dramatically sloped roofs, and arched doorways, it really does look like a small castle. There’s a literal turret on one side of the building and at least three balconies around the upper levels. After four years living in a cramped one-bedroom apartment, it’s basically the most incredible house Alex has ever seen, the White House included.
It also looks really, really fucking old.
A cursory examination of the grounds immediately surrounding the house doesn’t reveal any glowing figures, so Alex assumes it’s safe to get out of the car. As soon as he extricates his suitcase from the trunk and slams it shut, the door to the main entrance bursts open and his mom and Leo come hurrying down the front steps.
“Sugar! You made it!” Ellen calls as she rushes forward to pull him into a bone-cracking hug. “Your flight was okay?”
“Hi, Mom! Hey, Leo,” Alex says, pulling away to give Leo a one-armed hug as well. “Yeah, it was good.”
Leo takes Alex’s suitcase despite his protests, and his mom wraps an arm around him again to lead him toward the house. “June had to meet with one of her advisors,” Ellen says, “but she’ll be back later. We’re all so glad you’re finally here — it’s great to see you, kiddo.”
Alex looks sideways down into his mom’s earnest blue eyes, something like shame rising in his throat at the thought that he even considered not coming. “You too, Mom,” he says softly, and means it.
“Isn’t this place amazing?” she says, looking up as they climb the front steps. “It actually was used as a boarding house for a while in the late 1800’s.”
Alex hums noncommittally. All that means to him is that more people passed through this place, and potentially never left.
His mom doesn’t notice, still chattering at his side. “Then it was bought by a family in the 1920’s, and fully renovated by the fifties, so don’t worry, the plumbing should be up to your usual standards.” She smirks back at him as she steps through the front door, only then seeming to realize that Alex has slipped out of her grasp, frozen just outside. “Sugar? You coming?”
Alex takes a deep breath and follows his mother across the threshold.
The interior of the house is almost as impressive as the exterior. An elaborate, gilded chandelier hangs over the entryway just in front of a wide, polished wooden staircase. Through an archway to the right, Alex sees a large living room with a couple of plush red sofas and a giant, ornate fireplace against the opposite wall.
But there are still no glowing figures that Alex can see. He lets out the breath he’s been holding since he stepped through the door.
Leo has already started climbing the stairs with Alex’s suitcase. “Your room’s on the third floor,” he huffs, sounding a little out of breath. He casts his eyes down at Alex apologetically. “We thought you would like the view.”
Alex nods, starting up the stairs himself. “Sounds great.”
As they climb one story, then two, and Alex still doesn’t see anyone besides his mom and Leo, he feels his shoulders start to relax incrementally. He had obviously overreacted. One-hundred and sixty years is a long time — anyone who had died in this house must have long since moved on by now. His pace increases as he climbs the final flight of stairs, thinking maybe this summer won’t be so bad after all.
When they get to the room that’s supposed to be his, Alex’s luck runs out.
Leo and his mom go inside first. Alex pushes the door open behind them, steps one foot into the room, and freezes.
Because someone is already in there. A tall, faintly transparent, glowing someone, sitting on the ledge of the windowsill on the far side of the room, one knee pulled up toward his chest with his arms loosely wrapped around it, the other leg dangling down to the floor. He surveys Alex and his parents with a detached sort of interest.
Alex averts his gaze immediately, looking instead at the bed jutting out into the middle of the room. It’s a large wooden four poster, at least twice as big as the lumpy twin mattress he had slept on in New York. Well, that will be nice — if he can get any sleep here with his apparent new roommate.
Leo sets his suitcase down next to the dresser just inside the door, then crosses the room to look out the window, utterly oblivious to the person in his direct path. Ellen follows, gesturing back at Alex. “Come check out this view, sugar.”
“Um…that’s okay. Maybe later. I just — I’m kinda tired — want to shower —,” Alex rambles, pointedly looking anywhere but the window.
“Okay,” Ellen says slowly, clearly confused but smiling anyway. “Well, you’ve got your own bathroom, it’s right through there.” She points to a door just to the right of the bed. “We’ll just leave you to get settled for a bit then.”
“Sounds good.” Alex nods, probably a little too eagerly. “Thanks, Mom.”
Leo pulls the door closed behind them, and Alex lays his suitcase down on the floor in front of the dresser, unzipping it, purposely waiting until he can hear their footsteps descending back down the stairs. As soon as he does, he straightens, whirling back around to face the uninvited guest in his bedroom.
“Okay,” he says directly to the man in the window. “Who the fuck are you?”