Chapter Text
It had been exactly three weeks and two days since the Dead Boy Detectives had solved the case in Port Townsend and their work had resumed back in London. By that logic, everything should have gone back to normal and been the same as it had been for the past thirty years.
But it hadn’t.
Charles thought it might have been their two official new members—the Night Nurse (now begrudgingly called Lottie after a week of being called Charlie) and Crystal—or it might have been the bigger change that they were no longer hiding from Death. Those sorts of changes take a little adjusting to after thirty years, but that wasn’t what felt off about things now. They were a perfect excuse as to why there was a distant strangeness between Charles and Edwin, but they were just that—excuses.
Charles knew exactly why something was off between Edwin and himself: that love confession on those stairs. Worst of all, it wasn’t even just that. It wasn’t Edwin confessing his love that had put the two of them in this awkward limbo, it was because by the time Charles had realised he felt the same way he couldn’t find it within himself to bring it up to Edwin afterwards. Call it not wanting to mess around with your best mate’s feelings or because he was afraid that despite thirty years of friendship, Edwin had already moved on. Both reasons made Charles feel like a shitty person by the end; because it meant he thought something that he promised Edwin wouldn’t change their friendship. Of course, Charles would never let what Edwin felt ruin their friendship and that was the truth. Nothing would change that, but he didn’t want to fuck it all up like he usually did. Like he almost did with Crystal. He couldn’t just jump into something with Edwin like that just to ruin it; he couldn’t hurt Edwin like that. He just didn’t know how to fix it and he was afraid.
Because, unlike Crystal, Edwin had never had a chance to know what a relationship should be like. Edwin wouldn’t know how to stand up for himself if Charles started fucking things up. Crystal had seen it; knew that they were both looking for a distraction and stopped it before they had broken them apart completely. He thought he had been distracting himself from what he went through as a kid, from his dad and those bullies, but it hadn’t been just that. By the time he realised that he had also been distracting himself from that jealousy he felt from seeing Edwin with Monty, Edwin had drifted out of his reach a little too far for him to follow. Some part of him resented the fact that Edwin hadn’t lingered on it while the other part hated himself for wanting Edwin to just be waiting for him to return that love. He resented how, after it all, Edwin had just been... Edwin; it was horribly the same Edwin as he had been before as if the confession hadn’t happened. Hated himself for not being comforted by the knowledge that such a thing couldn’t break their friendship.
But it was all fine... Really, it was.
Charles would sort his shit out, he would not fail Edwin like that again, and everything would be right as rain again.
The Dead Boy Detectives would not be brought down by something like this. They would always bounce back.
That was until, one morning, Edwin wasn’t in their office, and no one had seen him the night before.
Edwin Payne, a Dead Boy Detective, was missing.
---
At the signal of the rising sun and the coming of a new day, the Dead Boy Detectives too would tackle a new case. That was where normalcy began and ended for Charles as he came into their office; his mood suddenly switched at the sight of it and left him stunned in his steps. Because everything was wrong. Usually, by the time Charles made his way back into the office after a night of spending time with Crystal, Edwin was already behind their desk with everything neatly prepared for the day.
That had always been the way, even before their reputation had boosted after Port Townsend and they now found themselves with a backlog of unsolved cases to sort through. But recently, Edwin’s organisation had ticked into overtime; filing cabinets were filled to the prim, organised by a system that Charles had no clue to make sense of, but it seemed to make Edwin happy after the first few days of chaos upon their return.
“ You alright there, mate?” Charles had chuckled, watching as Edwin stood before the latest mail dropped off with a look of vicious hatred. If they weren’t ghosts, Charles was sure that Edwin would be radiating heat like an active volcano that was preparing to erupt. “Those papers give you a nasty paper cut or something?”
“I don’t know how you’re so chipper,” Edwin said, his fists poised directly in front of him clenched tighter. “How could anyone be content in such a mess.”
“We’ll get through it all eventually, it’s not like the cases are going anywhere-”
“That doesn’t matter, Charles!” Edwin almost shrieked, his body was rattling with nervous energy as he turned to the other with wide eyes.
Seeing the stress on his friend’s face, the tensity in his eyes that screamed distress, Charles stepped forward. His hand hovered a moment, as though to touch Edwin, before deciding against it. “Tell me what’s getting to you, I mean really getting to you because I know it’s not just because of the mail.”
“What if we miss something,” Edwin said. “What if there is a case in this mess that needs our help now and we don’t see it because we didn’t get to it in time.”
Charles crumpled at that, truly looking at his friend and seeing how much this had been eating away at him. “You’re right,” Charles agreed. “We need a better system in place to make sure the right cases get our attention when they need it.”
They were simple words, nothing ground-breaking, that solved the situation at hand, but they seemed to be enough for Edwin. Relief washed over his friend, fists unclenched, stress leaving his face as his features smoothed out, as though all he had needed to hear was validation. To know it wasn’t some petty little problem all in his head.
“So, what’s the plan of action then?” Charles clapped his hands together as he addressed the pile of mail before them. “Want me to start-”
“No!” Edwin quickly cut in, panicked before cracking a small smile. “I appreciate your... willingness to help, but I fear...”
“That I’ll muck it all up?” Charles chuckled at the guilt on Edwin’s face, the way he looked poised to instantly word it in a way that made it sound nicer. “Don’t worry about it, I’m rather aware that my strengths lie in being the muscle in our duo. I’ll leave you to it, just shout if you need a hand with anything.”
Edwin smiled, “Of course, thank you.”
So, of course, when Charles walked into the office that morning and saw the absences of three particular stacks of case files that had been there ever since the day Edwin had tasked himself with re-organising their filing system, he knew something was wrong. Because that was important to Edwin. Important enough that no matter what was happening, those case files would always be there by the time Charles walked in.
But they weren’t there this morning.
Instead, today their desk lacked them, and in their absence, that meant that Edwin had not been prioritising the cases for them to choose from today.
“ Ghosts don’t need sleep, as you are well aware,” Edwin had said. “No point in wasting time better spent making sure we help those who need it most.
This was tallied as the first sign, in Charles’ mind, that something was terribly wrong.
The next strike on the ‘Something terribly wrong’ tally board was when it had been Crystal who arrived next. He had been holding on to the small, impossible hope that perhaps this would be the first day when Edwin was running late. But then Crystal walked through the front door. She was always the last of the trio to arrive; fair given that she didn’t live in the same building as them anymore, and unlike the two ghosts, she needed to sleep.
“What’s that look on your face for?” she asked, shuffling in with a bag over her shoulder and a coffee haphazardly leaning sideways in her hand, before dropping herself onto the closest chair she could find.
“There’s no files on the desk,” Charles answered as though that was the crux of the problem.
Confusion riddled Crystal’s face as she followed Charles’ stare to the fileless desk. “Huh,” she seemed stunned for a moment before continuing. “Maybe he lost track of time?”
“Lost track of time? Lost track of time, has he?” The clicking of heels punched down on the wooden floor, a perfect reflection of the face of their wearer. “Just because that boy has been given an exemption doesn’t mean he gets to be tardy!”
“You seem to be in a worse mood than usual,” Crystal remarked at the Night Nurse now affectionately (begrudgingly) called Lottie, who walked in with files in her arms and annoyance on her face.
“Well, who wouldn’t be when one of your employees fails to show up,” Lottie huffed, strutting forward to dump said files on the desk. “Leaving you with all the work!”
“One, not your employees,” Charles pointed out, earning a scathing look from the woman. “And two, I’m sure he’ll be here any second now.”
“I’m not talking about this morning,” Lottie said. “I’m talking about last night; do you think he sorts through all those files himself? Must I remind you that I’m from the Lost and Found Department, my expertise was well needed in that boy’s attempts of filing.”
“Wait,” Charles’ face scrunched up in concern at the foreboding realisation of what she had said. “Edwin was supposed to be with you last night and wasn’t?”
“He was supposed to be just like every other night,” Lottie answered, her annoyance and indignation clear in her tone. “Rather rude of him to not so much as leave a note.”
Charles knew he shouldn’t have been angry at her. It wasn’t her fault after all, that she didn’t say anything about it earlier. Why would she? Why would mostly anyone else? It might have also been the fact that he wasn’t even aware that Lottie had been helping Edwin at night. It left him with a bitter taste of jealousy in his mouth because that was normally him. That was something he and Edwin did, not... not someone like Lottie. So, maybe he clung a little too firmly to that, to give him someone to blame and to focus the anger and hurt he felt because of it.
“And you didn’t say anything?” Charles shouted as he turned to her, measured steps until he came face to face with her. “Edwin could be in danger, and we could have found him by now if you gave two shits about anything but yourself!”
“Charles!” Crystal cut in; coffee long forgotten about as she stood between the two of them. Her hands laid firmly on his chest, not enough to push him away, but anything to halt him in his place. “It’s not her fault- or anyone’s for that matter- so how about you get your head out of your ass and think before you speak.”
The indignation softened on Lottie’s face and that increasingly common look of sympathy that was starting to be there often replaced it. “Truly, if I thought something was amiss, then I would have said something sooner.”
Charles wanted to remain angry and wanted to have that be the reason to blame the Night Nurse still, but it fizzled out just as quickly as it had sparked. He hung his head in defeat, pinching his nose in frustration before looking back up. “It’s not your fault, I- I shouldn’t have said that.”
That brief moment of anger faded and left Charles hollow and uncertain. Because where did that leave them no? Edwin was missing- or presumably so- and none of them had seen him last night. None of them knew why he wasn’t there. Why wasn’t he with Lottie last night? What could make him not do something as important to him as preparing the case files?
When Charles looked at all the facts, he was left with a startling and painful realisation; that Edwin, to his knowledge, had no life outside of the detective agency. In the past thirty years of knowing Edwin, none of these questions needed to be asked, because it was just... Edwin. Edwin was always onto the next case, always by Charles’ side, always researching and preparing. There was nothing else to Edwin. There was no version of the duo imaginable in Charles’ mind where Edwin existed outside of the Dead Boy Detectives and away from him. But now he was, and Charles was lost to finding the reason why.
Unlike Edwin, Charles would sneak off after a case, meet up with people and have fun with others. That was always normal with him. Even though Crystal and him had ended the romantic side of their relationship, they still hung out as they once had. But Edwin? Edwin didn’t go out with other people... at least, he hadn’t since Port Townsend. Since Niko had died. If anything, he had become more of a recluse and shut-in; rarely did his friend go outside anymore unless it was for a case.
Maybe that made him a shit friend. Maybe he should have been worried that besides himself, Edwin didn’t have anyone else to go to when they solved a case. Because Edwin hadn’t been coming to Charles to talk about things; the cases were solved and with a smile and a goodbye, Edwin was back to his readings as Charles left to see Crystal. It had all seemed so normal, so comfortably normal, that Charles didn’t want to see it as anything else. But it wasn’t their ‘normal’, their ‘normal’ before Port Townsend had been just them. Now Charles had Crystal to talk to, and he depended on that just as much as he enjoyed her company, but who did Edwin have now? Now that Charles’ time was split between the two and... and now that Niko was gone.
Hell, he hadn’t even known that Edwin and Lottie were speaking to each other outside of their cases...
What else didn’t he know about?
“Alright,” Crystal said, pulling Charles away from his thoughts. “So, we treat this like a case, yeah? And if it turns out Edwin’s just been lost in a book somewhere and we look like idiots for thinking he’s missing, at least we’ll be idiots because we worried.”
“Either we suffer through a day or two of Edwin making fun of us or...” Charles trailed off, churning the words until he found the courage to say them. “Or Edwin’s actually missing, and he needs our help.”
“All that paper filing for nothing,” Lottie muttered under her breath without any bite to it. “Right, get to it. You’re a detective down and can’t afford to waste any time on this case.”
That’s what they should be doing, treating this like a case and solving it as they always did. But this didn’t feel like one of their cases; this was about Edwin and that made this case more important to Charles.
The Case of the Missing Dead Boy Detective.