Summary: Q moves into a new, suspiciously cheap flat, only to find out that it’s already occupied. Ghost AU.
When Q woke up and got out of bed that morning, he tripped over his shoes, even though he could have sworn he’d slipped them off by the door. The fall left a bruise on his hip and a scuff on his favorite chukkas, and he spent the day limping from cafe to cafe with his laptop tucked into his messenger bag. Even though his hacks were successful, it was hard to feel triumphant when every step jostled the bag against his bruise and reminded him about what a klutz he was.
You’ll outgrow it, his mother had said. And he tried. He did his best to stay organized. Even though the temptation to leave things on random shelves was constant, he usually did a good job of putting them in the right place. He’d even organized things in his new flat from the start instead of letting his unpacked possessions accumulate out of their boxes until he had no choice but to put them somewhere.
…He really thought he’d been doing better with his shoes…
***
A smell that made his throat seize up with nausea greeted him when he opened the door to the flat. He took a deep breath in the fresh outside air, strode in, and discovered that the refrigerator door was open. Bugger.
Had he left it open? Perhaps it had a broken seal and hadn’t closed properly? But a cursory investigation showed that the refrigerator door seemed to close properly. Also, his raspberry jam was either missing, or he’d never bought it.
As he chucked the milk, the chicken, the mustard, the butter, and the leftover Chinese into a bin bag, he started to sweat under his cardigan and realized that the heat was on. Really on. He checked the thermostat: it was pushed up to 35.
Perhaps the previous owner had…really liked tropical temperatures, and had set an automatic heat-cycle that Q had neglected to deprogram?
Hmm.
Or perhaps not.
***
A sickly red substance appeared on the walls while he was gone for work the next day. Q sniffed, ran a finger down one wall, tasted, and then had a sample of the substance tested in a lab just to be sure of his conclusions. The red wall drippings turned out to be watered down raspberry jam, probably the exact same kind that had mysteriously disappeared from his refrigerator.
Q bought three different carbon monoxide monitors. All of the readings came back normal.
He installed security cameras: no one came in or out of the flat except him.
His mental health issues had never manifested this way before, so he didn’t think those were the problem.
It wasn’t him, it wasn’t another person, and it wasn’t the atmosphere.
***
For five days, Q returned to an inhospitable mess instead of a home.
For five nights, the flat creaked and groaned so obnoxiously that he couldn’t sleep. Whenever he seemed on the verge of it, a light bulb shattered or the cutlery rattled in its drawer or his bedroom door slammed open.
Q had an unnerving understanding of why his rent had come so cheap.
On the dawn of the sixth morning, however, he went to shower and shave, and when he came out of the bathroom, the words GET OUT had been carved into the bedroom wall with a steak knife. The knife was still sticking in the wall.
Q smiled. The presence, whatever it was, was literate. This changed everything.
***
That sixth morning, he didn’t even go to any cafes. Instead he went right out and bought a white board and a packet of dry erase markers, a chalkboard and some chalk, and—after a moment of thought—a game of Scrabble.
He didn’t have a table, so he put them all on the kitchen counter, open and ready to be used.
What should one’s first sentence to a ghost look like? ‘Hello there’ just didn’t seem to cut it.
Nothing original came to him, so he wrote Buy you a drink? on the whiteboard. Maybe he’d get lucky and the ghost would have a sense of humor. Then he went and worked in the bedroom for a while, in case the ghost was shy.
Half an hour later, the sound of a kitchen cupboard slamming shut brought him into the kitchen.
There on the Scrabble board lay six letters, spelling out an unambiguous answer: Scotch.
It was in the center of the board, too, on the starting square. This was a ghost that knew the rules of things.
Perhaps Q could persuade it to learn a few flat-share rules too.
***
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