Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at https://archiveofourown.org/works/36964849.
Rating: General Audiences
Fandom: Ghosts (BBC)
No Archive Warnings Apply
Published 2022-02-07 for the Chocolate Box Exchange
Words: 965
Button House had a lot of rooms that Alison and Mike didn’t use, but some of them were more interesting than others. There wasn’t much difference between the spare bedrooms, even though there were enough of them for more guests than any family could really want hanging around. The attics, by contrast, were fascinating; it was difficult for Alison to spend just a short time up there, because the ghosts had so much to say about everything squirreled away under the eaves.
The stillroom was a happy medium. It was set up like a small kitchen but never got updated past the mid-nineteenth century at the latest. There was a fireplace, but Alison didn’t trust the chimneys enough to use it. One wall had a built-in storage unit, with a lot of little drawers and a rack for bottles, which Alison had initially found rather wonderful; but when she’d opened one of the drawers, she’d found the skeleton of a mouse that seemed to have exploded. Alison had rapidly shoved the drawer shut, troubled by the hitherto unconsidered possibility of spectral mice.
She ended up back here, though, when Kitty talked her into making rose oil together. It was a somewhat expensive activity, considering that Button House didn’t actually have any living rosebushes. But Alison was determined not to let Kitty down after she’d had to call off several previous scheduled Girl Times, and if she had to mail-order some rose petals to do it, it was far from the worst expense she’d incurred since coming to this house.
“Kitty, can you actually smell this?”
“Sort of! It’s not as strong as when I was alive. Or I don’t think so. But that was a long time ago, so it’s hard to say.”
“And what would you use this oil for?”
“Oh, all kinds of things. You could put it in your hair or on your skin or on your linens. I used to put it on bruises. Not because I thought it would help, though. It just made me feel better to smell sweet.”
Alison put down the bowl of rose petals and looked Kitty very carefully in the eyes. “Kitty, it makes me worry when you talk about having had bruises.”
“Well, there’s no need to worry about it; it was all hundreds of years ago. Hundreds? What year is it now, again?”
She usually knew what year it was, and even if she didn’t, the question was a deflection. Alison tried to think of the right thing to say. “You know I’m happy to do fun things with you, but it’s okay to talk about serious things too. You don’t have to, but—if you want to, it’s not a burden. I like being able to play big sister for you.”
Kitty widened her eyes. “Big sister?”
Alison blushed. “Only if you like. I don’t mean to be presumptuous.”
“No, I mean—big sister, Alison? What year is it?”
Alison frowned. “Do you really not know? I can put up some wall calendars in the house, if that would help.”
“All I’m saying is that I’m at least two hundred years older than you. So I think I should get to be the big sister at least some of the time.”
“I don’t think that’s really a ‘get to’ thing.”
“Don’t you have any problems you’d like to confide? Do I need to give you advice about boys?”
Alison blinked, smiling a bit despite herself. “You know I’m already married.”
“Yes, but I didn’t get a chance to examine his merits before you were engaged. I think we should do it now. What do you know about Mike’s education? Do his friends speak well of his character? Does he get into fights?”
Kitty looked rather serious on that last question, and Alison tried to match her tone as she said, “He has never, as long as I’ve known him, gotten into a single fight.”
Kitty met her gaze for one earnest moment and then broke it as she clapped her hands a little. “That’s good! If I’m telling the truth, Alison, I really don’t know what I would have said if you had answered differently. If I were able, though, you know I would have given him a stern talking-to.”
“Would you?”
“Or at least given him some very pointed looks from across the room. I could do that part anyway. Maybe he would even feel it! But I don’t think so. So it’s a good thing he doesn’t fight.”
“He also fixes the house,” Alison said judiciously, “and cooks, and tells jokes, and listens to me. I don’t think you need to give him any pointed looks at all. How about you, Kitty? Is there anyone I ought to talk to?” She wasn't really worried about anyone mistreating Kitty—the other ghosts were so terribly protective of her—but that protection often took the form of a condescension that Alison, if she had been on the receiving end of it, would have found nauseating.
“Oh,” Kitty said. “Everybody’s nice here. And—well. Maybe I would have liked to have you talk to someone, once. But it’s much too late for that.”
She looked a little forlorn, and Alison didn’t know how to answer. “I wish I could have,” she tried. “I wish anybody had. You should have had someone to do things like that for you.”
She wished she could do anything else, like give Kitty a hug, or at least make her a cup of tea she could actually drink.
“Tell you what,” she said after a moment, lifting her hands out of the rose petals. “Look at the book and tell me what it says to do with these. And then maybe we’ll both feel better for smelling sweet.”