Note: Just in time for Hallowe'en, a vaguely spooky chapter. For an anonymous reviewer on AO3 who requested a Dawn/Philip pairing, and my dear Miran, who wanted a Hallowe'en chapter.

This is semi-based on something that happened to me at work.

Pumpkin Pie

Philip liked Hallowe'en. If pushed he would probably say that it was his favourite holiday after Christmas. As a child he had always loved trick or treating, and the thrill of seeing carved pumpkins and shop windows decorated in orange and black had remained with him into adulthood. This particular Hallowe'en was not shaping up to be anything special, but the thought of it being the 31st of October once more had put him in a good mood as he entered the office, said good morning to Kathryn and made his way up to the middle floor where his desk was situated. The large open plan office was empty, but this was not in itself unusual; it was quite early in the morning so Alice and Dawn, with whom he shared the space, might not be in yet, and Ashley, the final member of their quartet, was on holiday.

Six months into his training contract, Philip was definitely beginning to feel like he belonged at Guildhall. He got on well with the senior solicitors and had even managed to pacify Regina on one occasion when she had raged herself into incoherency. Whilst his supervisor, the somewhat infamous Mr Gold, was demanding and a perfectionist in the extreme, he also had a sense of humour so dark and wicked that Philip was certain that the next time he saw the older man, he'd have grown horns and a tail. (Or at the very least, a pointy moustache to twirl.) He expected the best, but he let Philip have a good deal of autonomy in his cases and decision-making, allowing him to learn from his mistakes however frustrated they might have made his supervisor. The fact that Philip's first case had gone completely pear-shaped through no fault of his own had acted to bring them together a little more, and they had bonded over a stifling summer spent in the Royal Courts of Justice with Cara Mallory.

Philip looked around at the empty desks as he hung his coat and scarf on the stand and went to switch his computer on. He liked his colleagues, although he would admit to feeling slightly outnumbered when he realised he would be sharing his office space with three women, the two other men on the floor being shut away in their own rooms at either end. The building was an old one with pretty thick walls, and Philip hadn't been sure if any pleas for help would have been heard by Gold or Jefferson. Thankfully, he had not needed to beg for mercy from Alice, Ashley and Dawn. The two secretaries were so calmly efficient that nothing seemed to faze them, not even Jefferson's numerous idiosyncrasies, and Dawn wouldn't say boo to a sparrow, let alone a goose. He glanced over at the cardboard boxes stacked outside Jefferson's office door. In the wake of Mr Fox's retirement three months prior and Regina's promotion to senior partner, there had been a constant stream of movement up and down the stairs as the partners moved around their offices to reflect their new status within the firm. Philip and Gold, neither of whom had any inclination to move , had watched the intricate ballet of boxes and files being carted around with amusement, the difference being that Philip's inherent chivalry meant he would offer to help should anyone drop something, whilst Gold would simply raise an eyebrow or laugh at them.

Jefferson had still not fully moved into his new office despite coming down from the top floor in the middle of August. Philip was quite certain that they would just get everything nicely settled down in time for Dawn to fully qualify as a junior partner in December and move up to the top office, currently occupied by Jones alone – who, from the sounds of it, was revelling in not having to share his working space with Jefferson any more.

Philip hadn't been quite sure what to make of Dawn at first, but having seen the way she worked, he was quite certain that once she was qualified and her tenure with the firm was permanent, her confidence would increase dramatically. In spite of her timidity, she had a fierce sense of justice that Philip loved. He looked over at her empty desk and frowned; it was unusual for him to get into work before Dawn did, but he didn't think too much on it. Perhaps she had simply overslept. It wouldn't be the first time.

It was only after sitting down at his desk that he realised that there was a problem, and he only realised this when the desk spoke.

"Ouch!"

Perturbed by his desk speaking in a voice that sounded remarkably like Dawn's, Philip cautiously pushed his chair back and peered down to find his fellow trainee sitting under his desk, her knees drawn up to her chin and an expression of utter terror on her face. Philip gave a sigh of good-natured despair. He was becoming accustomed to Dawn's habit of disappearing under her desk whenever she wanted to hide from her supervisor or any of her other superiors. She had never yet, however, hidden under anyone's but her own.

Before he could make any kind of comment about the rather unusual situation that Dawn was in, or ask what was wrong with her own desk for hiding under, one of her skinny arms shot out and pulled him out of his chair and under the desk alongside her with a strength that he would not have thought her capable of possessing.

"What's going…" he began, but before he could get any further in his question, Dawn shushed him with a sharp hiss, pressing a finger over her lips."Ok," he began again in a whisper, "why are we under here? And why aren't we allowed to talk?"

"We're hiding from the ghost," Dawn whispered back. "The office is haunted, I'm telling you. It's old Mr Fothergill. I reckon he's after Gold for rearranging his office and getting rid of his pot plants."

"Right…" Philip narrowed his eyes. "Mr Fothergill died over eighteen months ago, right? And this is the first indication of his supernatural state you've had in all that time?"

Dawn nodded, eyes wide. "Well, he was always a bit slow towards the end. It probably took him a while to rise up as a ghost, and then he decided he'd wait until Hallowe'en and give us all a fright."

Philip accepted Dawn's hypothesis and turned to a far more pressing question.

"So, what's Mr Fothergill's ghost done this morning then?"

Dawn's response was a single word.

"Pie."

"Pie?" Philip repeated.

"Pie. There is a pumpkin pie on my desk and I do not know how it got there. No-one knows how it got there. I've asked everyone! Killian, Kathryn, Marina, none of them know! I even asked Her Majesty if she'd put it there!"

"And what was her response?"

"Her response was 'why would I want to give you a pie, you ridiculous girl?' But that's beside the point. The point is, there is a pumpkin pie on my desk that was not there before, and no-one put it there, ergo, it must have been Mr Fothergill! Ergo, we are hiding. And naturally, I am hiding under your desk because my desk has the pie on and is not safe."

Philip thought about this for a moment. Dawn's logic was sound, even if the situation was rather far-fetched.

"When do you think it will be safe to come out?" he asked. Dawn shook her head.

"Not yet. We'll have to wait until Gold gets in. He's the one that Mr Fothergill wants. He wants to avenge the aspidistras. We'll be safe then."

There was silence for a long time.

"So…" Philip whispered. "We're going to stay under the desk until Mr Gold arrives?"

"Yes."

"What if he's in court today?"

"Erm…" Dawn paused, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. "I'll just have to stay under here all day."

Philip thought about this.

"Ok."

Dawn looked at him as if he had gone slightly mad.

"Pardon?"

"I said 'ok'. If you want to stay under the desk because of Mr Fothergill's pumpkin pies from beyond the grave, then we'll stay under the desk."

"You'll stay with me?"

"I'm hardly going to leave you to the mercy of Mr Fothergill now, am I?"

Dawn smiled coyly. "You want to be my knight in shining armour against the incorporeal?"

"Well, at the rate we're going, you'll probably need to save me. You know far more about it than I do."

They fell into silence for a while.

"Am I allowed to get up and get some paperwork?" Philip asked. "I don't think Gold would think Mr Fothergill was a good enough excuse for shirking off."

Philip got out from under the desk and fetched some files out of his drawer. He cast a glance over at the pumpkin pie sitting so inconspicuously on Dawn's desk; he hadn't noticed it when he'd first come in but there was definitely a pie there. He went over to it cautiously and sniffed. It smelled like a pumpkin pie, and it looked like a pumpkin pie, but who knew? Maybe Mr Fothergill, God rest his soul, had put it there.

He got back under the desk with Dawn and handed her a file. "Can you make any sense of that?"

They spent the next ten minutes in a cramped but companionable silence under Philip's desk, reading their paperwork, until Philip felt compelled to make conversation. Perhaps it was the fact that they were so squashed in together, he felt that they ought to at least make polite small talk.

"So… Are you doing anything tonight, for Hallowe'en?"

Dawn shook her head.

"Hiding under my dining table."

"I'm sure Mr Fothergill isn't going to follow you home once he's enacted revenge on Mr Gold for his aspidistras," Philip said.

"No, no, I'm not scared of that." Dawn paused and sighed. Whilst she had held no qualms about diving under the desk at the first thought of miasmic pumpkin pies, she seemed to be embarrassed to admit what she was about to say. "It's trick or treaters. I live on my own, on a street with a lot of kids. And normally I like kids, but when there's a pack of them outside in the dark all dressed up demanding sweets… I don't like it. It's easier to hide and pretend I'm not home."

Philip thought of Dawn, sitting alone under her dining table in the dark, listening to people hammer on her door. He opened his mouth to say something and closed it again. If he asked her out, would he just be doing it out of pity?

No. Dawn had asked him if he wanted to be her knight in shining armour, and he did. Not particularly because she needed saving, but because she was cute, and quirky, and she believed in ghosts – and that was pretty cool in itself.

"Do you want to come out with me?" he asked. "We could watch a completely non-scary film, have something to eat, make prank calls to Gold pretending to be Mr Fothergill demanding the return of his pot plants…"

Dawn giggled. "You'd think we were three, not twenty-three."

Philip shrugged.

"What do you think?"

His fellow trainee smiled shyly.

"Do you mean like a date?"

"Yeah." Philip said. "Like a date."

"Then I'd like that very much."

Philip let out the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.

"Morning all, oh, who brought in the pie… Where is everyone?"

Alice's voice came into the office and tailed off on finding it apparently empty. Philip listened to her slowly come towards his desk and then saw her face upside down as she peered over it.

"Erm… why?" she asked, not even attempting to formulate more of a question than the single word.

"Mr Fothergill's ghost has been bringing us mysterious and suspect pies," Philip explained. "We're in hiding until Gold gets here."

Alice threw up both hands in a gesture of defeat. "Say no more. I'll leave you to it."

After Alice went to get a cup of tea, Philip felt Dawn's fingers curl around his arm. He turned to see an expression of not a little wonder creeping over her face.

"You're the only one who takes me seriously," she breathed. "You could have said 'Dawn's scared because a pie materialised on her desk this morning and I'm humouring her'. But you said that we were hiding."

"Well, we are."

Philip gave a muted squeak as Dawn threw her arms around him and pecked a little kiss on his cheek.

"Thank you," she said. "And thank you for inviting me out."

"Ahem?"

Dawn let go of Philip as if she had been stung and they both glanced up to see Gold standing behind Philip's desk, looking down at them with a raised eyebrow.

"Cosy, Mr Desmond, Miss Stephens?"

"Erm..."

"Philip was protecting me from Mr Fothergill's pumpkin pie," Dawn said defiantly.

Gold's eyebrow remained raised.

"Mr Fothergill."

"Yes."

"Mr Fothergill, my predecessor who died a year and a half ago."

"Yes."

"And his pie being the one on your desk that Jefferson said he was going to bring in early this morning before he left for court. How fascinating."

Gold turned on his heel, still smirking, and went into his office.

Dawn blushed bright red and mumbled an apology, but Philip found that despite being curled up in an uncomfortable position for half an hour, he didn't mind a bit…