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“Why didn’t you ever tell me it was that bad, Edwin?”
Edwin just stares ahead. This conversation was bound to happen, he presumes. It must have been boiling and churning inside Charles ever since they left that place never to look back again, the questions weighing him down, knowing the discourse would be anything but pleasant. He was bound to ask something, anything from the time they had visited Edwin's old… home.
Now that they are back in London, back at the office and almost back into routine, trying to add Crystal into the usual chaos of things and stumbling through the rushing cases, Edwin guesses this time is as good and bad as any. He knows he has been distant, ever since they got off the ferry with Crystal and helped her into her new flat just a few blocks down, he hasn’t been the best chap at conversing, at getting back into the usual bickering Charles provides.
Pretending to read the same volume for three endless nights in a row was bound to catch Charles’ attention. Edwin never once thought he hadn’t noticed, anyway. Charles might be aloof, head a bit in the clouds, wearing his emotions on his sleeve a tad too much; but if there’s anything that he knows without missing a beat, it’s Edwin. Not Edwin’s feelings, per se, but Edwin as a whole, Edwin as a human, just himself. As his best friend. As his lifelong companion.
Maybe not that, but something close.
So he knew that Charles had noticed, and he knew that he kept quiet. That’s exactly how Edwin wanted to keep anything to do with their escape: quiet. He had spent so much time being afraid, and just as he was starting to think that Hell might eventually become a distant memory, there he was, getting a special field trip back in memory lane. Much appreciated.
So when Charles follows him upstairs to the abandoned roof that neither of them have visited for a long, long time, he doesn’t look up to see whatever it is that might be in his eyes. He isn’t particularly keen on reliving every single second on that cursed plane until there is nothing left of him but a whimpering, pleading shell of a human, discarded to a corner forever to be forgotten about. Even with Charles, there are things better left unspoken, better left unmentioned, better left alone and decaying and untouched.
But either way Charles is expecting an answer, and he’s expecting an honest answer, so “Would it have mattered?” Edwin asks, quiet but sincere. Charles’ head snaps towards him the second the words leave his mouth, he knows it is a mistake even before he thinks of saying it. His eyes follow the path that his exhale would have followed in the brisk midnight air, the absence of soft smoke that would have clouded before his lips if he had any warmth left in him.
It’s the honest truth. Edwin would never lie to Charles, he had never lied to Charles and downplayed any moment of his years in Hell. He had never said it was fine, or that it was okay, or that it was easy. He got around, though, around some particular memories and some gruesome facts, and maybe he has hidden more than he had revealed, but that wasn’t being dishonest. Edwin was anything but dishonest, even when Charles asked for it time and time again, perhaps looking for an adventurous time but only ever receiving despair wrapped up pretty in a gift box.
Some things, you get used to. Edwin has learnt that the hard way around.
“What are you saying?” Charles snarls, and the rasp in his voice pangs something non existent in Edwin’s chest, something that hasn’t been there for a long time, something both missing but not so quite. It still hurts, sharp like pressing on a fresh bruise just to make it ache all over again. He doesn’t dare look back at the boy approaching. He doesn’t dare get up from the cold floor he’s been sitting on, all these hours, waiting for something to go wrong. Someone to take him back. Something to steal him away.
Edwin knows it hurts Charles that it has to be this way. Edwin also knows that it hurts him the most, and everyone somehow looks past the reality that even though he doesn’t sleep, he’s so afraid of falling asleep that sometimes, when exhaustion takes over, he pinches himself so hard that if he had any blood left in his veins it would bruise purple. That even though he’s been around for almost a century now, the dark scares him so much that he keeps a candle lit in every room at all times. That even though he’s older than probably anyone in the whole entirety of lively London, he’s so afraid that most nights, he curls up in himself and shuts his eyes tight enough to see familiar constellations rise beneath his eyelids.
The setting sun scares Edwin. The approaching darkness reminds him of things much larger than him, larger than Charles, much bigger than both of them combined. He feels miniscule under the eternity of the dark.
Charles doesn’t sit next to him on the empty roof when he finally comes close enough, Edwin knows that he’s waiting for him to look back into his eyes. He won’t do it; he has lived- no, existed without ever opening this jar that had been jammed close for more than thirty years with the very boy before him. There is a purpose of top drawers with locks, you find out, if you exist long enough. There is a purpose of secrets, of things you take with you to the grave and beyond, a purpose to shove it under the rug and avoid pressing on it more than necessary.
Edwin’s rug was swept away entirely. His entire jar of worms had spilled onto the ground. He couldn’t claw them back into his empty chest now, no matter how hard he tried.
Charles had seen him at his worst before, of course he had, but the Earthly worst and the multi-dimensional worst were entirely different leagues of messed up. Charles had seen him at his worst when it was all too loud and a little bit too much, so he had learnt to whisper; had seen him at his worst when it was all too real and a little bit too reminding, so he had learnt to distract. He had learnt to hold his hand, glove over glove, skin on skin, he had learnt to deal with Edwin to the extent to which he had let himself be seen, be known. The words he had spoken of Hell to Charles were silent, but more than anything, they were limited. They cast shadows over the darkest moments of his past decades.
Being unearthed felt violating. Being unearthed felt almost like being finally seen, but it was more pity and anger in Charles’ eyes than Edwin could bear to look at, so he doesn’t look back.
The stars over London are limited too, in their little way, it turns out. Haunting, almost daunting, it feels like Edwin could see the reflection of Charles’ irises, even in the cloudy dark sky.
“Are you seriously not going to look at me?”, he asks, defeated. His steps come to an end at the edge of Edwin’s crossed legs. Edwin stares at the worn out edges of his trousers, at the mismatched laces of his shoes; how easy it would have been if he stopped asking any more questions and just held his hand until the sun came up again.
He knew Charles would do just that if he had asked. Asking isn’t something Edwin is good at, however.
It takes a few, long seconds before Charles crowds his space, kneeling before him, knees on the dirty, concrete floor that’s still damp from the rain earlier. Edwin, still too scared to look up and see his face, stares at his wringing fingers that worry over each other in his lap, and makes a purposeful lapse in judgment momentarily, to reach over and cover them with his own. It’s not the first time they have held hands, not the first time Edwin has opened up Charles’ fists and curled his own around his slender fingers. He knows this place, he realizes, he knows it all too well; the callouses that line the inside of his palm, his knuckles that are always patched pink somehow, fingernails cut short and smooth. He has been here before.
It’s not entirely cold, the traces that his fingertips slowly draw in the other’s palm, but it’s not warm either. Maybe it would have been warm in another lifetime, Edwin doesn’t recall holding anyone’s hand but his mother’s back when he was alive, but this is probably the warmest he can feel as he currently is.
Charles would be the type to have his blood run hot, Edwin decides, before finally raising his head to meet his eyes.
“There you are,” Charles mumbles. Edwin wants to cry at how soft his voice sounds. His fingers, now away from the firm grip of Edwin’s, crawl upwards to cradle his face for a split second. Charles’ thumbs trace the outlines of his high cheekbones, his fingers sprawled wide as if to fit the entirety of Edwin’s face in his palms; Edwin feels his chest rise like he’s gasping for air but there is nothing to breathe on. He feels fingers slowly running the line of his eyebrows, brushing his messed up hair back towards his forehead and Charles bends down to properly come face to face with him.
“Was that so hard now?”
Edwin cannot do anything else but close his eyes. He hears Charles smile, that distinguished stretch of lips he had studied for so long.
This is what people must mean by electric. There is no other explanation. There is no other possibility. His face between Charles’ fingers, their knees touching on the ground beneath them, his own hands hanging onto Charles’ wrists like he’s trying to ground himself somehow, someplace. This, is electric.
There, for a fraction when he opens his eyes back up, Edwin sees the stars that he has spent decades memorizing right at the very core of Charles’ eyes, and then he’s pulled in for a hug.
Their chests crash together like they will disintegrate otherwise. Edwin thinks he’s missing Charles’ fingers on his face before he feels them clutch at his jacket, one of his hands slipping into his hair, holding Edwin’s head close to his shoulder. Edwin lets himself be molded into the shape of Charles’ body, buries his face somewhere between his neck and his chest, temple resting on his shoulder. It feels as though he can reach up a hand between their chests and feel two hearts beating in unison.
Edwin almost wishes that it was true. Almost wishes that it was the case. Being alive with Charles, now that would have been a hell of a ride.
Charles slowly sinks onto the floor until it’s Edwin that’s somewhat cradling him. Their hands somehow find a way to connect in the middle once more, like it’s routine. In a way, Edwin thinks, it’s almost true; they have spent so much time with each other’s company that even though it wasn’t anything inherently romantic, Edwin has held Charles countless times in their years of existence. Sometimes long, sleepless nights are only bearable when the whole world is silent and you’re pressed flushed to someone else’s chest.
Sometimes the only way to spend the dark is to read the same novel under a flashlight, back to chest and legs tangled on a foreign floor. When the only place to call home is the company of just another dead boy, holding hands here and there becomes the furthest thing from unordinary.
“I can hear you thinking,” says Charles into his chest. His voice vibrates through the thin shirt of Edwin’s and ripples along his skin, sinking down to his belly and climbing up to his cheeks. Before it completely disappears into thin air, Edwin wants to hold onto the sound of Charles’ voice just a moment longer, just a little more, as if it’s not the one, singular sound that he has probably heard the most in his life.
Doesn’t matter. At that point, dropping his head to rest his cheek on the soft tuft of hair pressed into his chest, Edwin decides he would not trade this for anything. Nothing at all.
“Am not.”
“Then maybe start thinking of a better answer to my question, hm?”
There is no venom behind his words, Edwin knows that, but he still tenses. Charles answers by tightening his grip around his waist, but he doesn’t raise his head up to look into Edwin’s eyes again. Edwin doesn’t know whether he’s grateful, or absolutely and impossibly mortified by that. Something shifts, the breeze shuffles a lonely, crumpled leaf around them until it comes to a stop right at the tip of Edwin’s shoe.
Something shifts. Charles stays completely still, but it feels like the entire world shifts beneath this rooftop that they took refuge in, and Edwin starts talking.
“I was honest when I asked you whether it would have mattered. I have never hidden anything from you because I didn’t think you deserved to know them, Charles, I only did it because in my own way, I was protecting you from it. All of it.”
The first time Edwin dug up a grave in the middle of Hell, it was towards his first few decades that he had spent there. Ordered to clean up the place, he was meant to free the old spirits to then roam the place as they wished, until the new ones arrived to be buried. Burial in Hell was nothing short of complicated, and the carcasses that were placed on his bare palms were nothing short of tortured; but when he raised his head up to plead, to beg something to be let free, there was no sun in the sky, nor a God that could save him.
The first time Edwin watched his own body being devoured by the sickly demon that followed him infinitely, it was towards the later few decades that he had spent there. He had to learn that dying once does not make you any more prepared to die once again. Or again. Or again, again and again until one day Edwin opened up his eyes, and the first thing he saw when his sight adjusted to the lack of light was a mount of his own corpses, piled on a corner, abandoned as if it was scrap.
The first time Edwin looked into the soulless, empty eyes of his own very self, he was just short of fifty. The last time Edwin looked into the soulless, empty eyes of his own deceased form, it was literally last month.
“Talking about it doesn’t help, Charlie,” Edwin sighs. Charles is looking for a trace of something in his eyes now, so he averts his gaze. “Talking about it just scares people, and quite frankly, it scares me the most. I do not wish to be that for you. I do not wish for you to look at me with pity, or even worse, with genuine despair.”
The next time their eyes meet, Edwin’s eyes are wet. “I do not want to scare you. I do not want to remind you of the worst place you can ever be- no, you have ever been to.”
Charles doesn’t answer. He just stares back, with his brows furrowed, his eyes squinting as if he’s in pain.
“Do you understand that? I’m already the very reason that you have ever had to witness Hell for yourself, and what was I meant to do before that? Gloat about how much I have been through?”
It feels like forever before Edwin is embraced in yet another tight hug. Charles mumbles something that he misses entirely but he’s too tired to make him repeat himself, so he just closes his eyes and wills the tears to go back to wherever they came from. Images from their last escape try to surface, so Edwin drowns them back by shutting his eyes even tighter, his jaw shut close, lips thinned into a line.
Charles on those damned stairs. Charles finding him while he’s watching his last corpse being devoured, clasping a desperate hand over his lips to keep it silent enough. Charles holding his hand while Edwin led them through the maze of corridors that was the doll house, the monstrosity that was gluttony, the hopeless pit that was the lobby. Charles with those big, frightened, unknowing eyes.
The same eyes from when Edwin first found him; lonely, cold and shivering, almost dead but yet quite living.
He remembers letting Charles sleep, curled up into a ball in front of the lantern with his head on Edwin’s lap, the first night they met. The last time Charles went to a slumber that he’d wake from. He remembers all the innocent questions he had asked, about why he wouldn’t fall through the floor and why he could see Edwin if he was actually dead like he had claimed.
Edwin had just smiled. What could you have ever said to a boy with a whole future to do every possible thing in, but yet a boy that would take his last breath next to you the next evening? How could he continue with that?
How could they have continued, if Edwin had revealed all that there is to Hell? How could he have looked into Charles’ eyes after that, knowing that he knows, knowing that he truly understands what it is that he can be taken back into? How could he have left Charles to live with that, the responsibility that if they ever get caught, all that there is for Edwin was the eternity of watching your own body being trashed?
Would Charles still have saved him, if he knew the extent to which the horrors went down there? Would he still have jumped at the chance? Would he just learn to seal the wound, like Edwin had over the many decades, and forget that he had ever met a boy named Edwin Payne?
“If I knew that I could trade my own place for yours in the afterlife, I would have done it the moment death came for me for the first time,” Charles whispers. Edwin wants him to stop before he says something he cannot take back, something bigger than his heart, bigger than his body, something that he cannot hold between his two palms and bury in his chest.
“That will never change, Edwin. There’s no one else I would go to Hell for. There is no one else I would stay in Hell for. If I knew it would keep you safe, I would escape Hell every single day for the rest of my life.”
Something bigger than this pocket universe they have chosen to live their eternity in. This office in London, with leaky pipes and a moldy rooftop; something bigger than their lives combined.
“I cannot ask that of you. I cannot- Charles don’t ever say that. You cannot understand how hard it was for me to see you there, in Hell. You cannot possibly know.”
A pair of lips press shakily on his temple. Charles Rowland’s blood definitely runs hot, Edwin decides, definitely.
“You’re not asking anything, mate. But you have to understand that you are worth saving, a thousand times over. You are worth knowing, Edwin.”
Something bigger than the whole, wide sky. Something bigger than death, perhaps.
After some time, the fingers running the length of his spine on his back still, and Charles stops rocking his body back and forth instinctively. After some time, they disentangle from the mess of limbs that they have become over the course of the conversation, and end up sitting shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, with a pair of hands firmly clasped in the midst of it all. After some time, Edwin sniffs and it makes Charles giggle, so Edwin joins in as well.
Somewhere down the middle, the glass of worms remains spilled. Edwin decides that it is easier to roll up the rug and put it in the corner instead, instead of tripping over it every time he passes by.
“A story, then,” he says, with a smile, dropping his head onto Charles’ shoulder. “About the time I first learned to mirror jump.”