Chapter Text
“On the bright side, you didn’t land on your face this time,” Charles offered with a sheepish grin. His best mate, currently lying flat on his back at his feet, gave him an unimpressed glare. When they first met, Charles had assumed Edwin’s many, many variations of scowl, glower and jibes meant he didn’t like him.
An impossibility, in Charles’s book. Everyone liked him.
However, it hadn’t taken him long to discover that Edwin was just more comfortable showing negative emotions. Irritation, haughtiness, distrust. These things came to him easily after seventy years of Hell, but beneath that was a soul truly battered to golden purity.
Granted, there were times when Edwin truly did not like him, but there wasn’t a force on earth that could separate them so… It didn’t particularly matter, did it?
“Charles,” Edwin began, in a slow, deceptively calm tone. Charles sighed and shifted weight onto his back foot, readying himself for the sarcasm. “I am currently on the floor, am I not?”
“Only because you didn’t keep your guard up, mate.”
“And where was I ten minutes ago, pray tell?”
“Its like I said, the fact that you’re not on your face is progress, innit?”
“No,” Edwin growled. “It is not.”
“Well, come on then,” he extended a hand down to his best friend, who peered at his fingers as if Charles were offering him dog shit. “Up you get. We’ll go again.”
Edwin crossed his arms stubbornly. “I think I shall remain here. On the floor. Where I am safe from you.”
Charles was the cheerful sort. His mum used to say he was the most easygoing babe in the city. Whereas the others screamed or whimpered in their tiny baby carriages, Charles stared at everything around him with wide, twinkling eyes and laughed without end. Always laughing. That was what she said.
Still, if there was one person on Earth who could – and often did - test his persistent good mood, it was Edwin. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to remind himself that it had only been a month since Edwin narrowly escaped Hell, perpetual torture by a witch, Hell again and the murder of a close friend.
Yes, he was touchy. He had every reason to be touchy. Charles had to be patient.
But damn if he weren’t tempted to kick him just to prove a point.
Before he could formulate an argument, the office door opened. Crystal bustled inside, flipping through a thin notebook.
“Hey guys, I just finished a little chat with our minder and… Oh shit!” she gasped as her right foot caught Edwin’s arm. She shrieked, stumbling a little into Charles’s arms. “What the hell, Edwin? You scared the crap out of me! Why are you on the floor?”
If looks could kill, Edwin would have slaughtered Crystal four times over by this point in their tenuous friendship. “Ask Charles,” Edwin snarled coldly.
She turned to him, hands on her hips. Charles shrugged. “Edwin and I are working on his self-defense techniques. I’ve been coaching him in Judo, yeah?”
She arched a brow. “You know Judo?”
Charles stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I mean, I don’t have a black belt, but we had a client a few years back who taught me some basics.”
He had rather liked Sensei Greg, too. They’d been kindred spirits. Greg was always lively and joked so often it had been a wonder Charles had learned anything at all given he’d spent most of the time laughing until tears spilled out of his eyes. Charles hoped he was enjoying a lovely afterlife.
Crystal nodded slowly, glancing from him to Edwin and back. “Basics you’re trying to pass onto… Edwin?”
“Against my will, may I add,” Edwin piped up.
Charles threw his head back to grown. “Come on mate! Judo is perfect for you! In Japanese, it means the gentle way, yeah?” He’d thought that might appeal to Edwin, who was skittish when it came to physical activity.
“It was not gentle how you just threw me to the ground.”
“Sounds kinky,” Crystal snickered in a low voice. Charles elbowed her in the ribs, trying to fight back a smile.
“We’ve tried boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai and Aikido. We’re running out of options,” he explained.
“I have an option,” Edwin declared, surging to his feet. He straightened his undershirt indignantly. “You let go of this preposterous notion that you’re going to remake me into some sort of aggressive vigilante. I have told you a thousand times before, I have no interest in learning any of it.”
“Vigilante?” Crystal murmured.
Charles waved a hand at his longtime partner in a see what I have to deal with? sort of way. “I’m not saying you have to be Batman, Ed! I just want you to know how to get yourself out of a tight spot, if need be, alright?”
“I was under the impression physical entrapments were your area of expertise.”
Charles was very tempted to tear out his hair. If he could physically do that, he would. “Yeah, well I can’t be there to save your ass every time!”
Edwin’s eyes flashed. He was well and truly miffed now. “I wasn’t aware it was such a burden to rescue me, Charles. If it’s such an inconvenience, you are not beholden to rush to my aid…”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it…”
“Before this spirals into something worse!” Crystal interrupted, stepping between them. She shoved the small journal against Edwin’s chest. “The Night Nurse paid me a visit, and she wrote down some expectations she has for the agency from now on.”
Edwin snatched the notebook irritably, never softening his Edwardian glare, and scanned the contents. Charles turned away for a moment, wrestling with the frustration flaring just under his tongue. Why did Edwin have to be so fucking stubborn? He was acting as if learning to defend himself was a direct insult to his stupid honor…
“This is preposterous!” Edwin suddenly blurted. “She wants us to solve sixty cases a year? Does she have any idea how long it takes…?”
“It used to be one hundred and seventy,” Crystal informed hi. “I convinced her to lower the number.”
“Still not eager to actually come talk to us, then?” Charles sighed. Ever since she was ordered to mind them, the Night Nurse had tacitly avoided the office, and more specifically Charles and Edwin, as if they had the plague.
Any correspondence was delivered through a reluctant Crystal, who claimed that the Night Nurse would just pop into her flat at hour of the day or night with new demands. It was annoying and unprofessional, to say the least.
“She said, and I quote, ‘I would rather be thrown into the belly of some other smelly, hideous beast than lower myself to face those runaways,’” Crystal said with a roll of her eyes.
Charles snorted. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind kicking her into the ocean again. The first time was cathartic.”
“I’d rather not be thrown into Hell a third time, if you don’t mind,” Edwin snarked, and for a moment, Charles felt as if someone had reached into his chest and snatched his lungs out by hand. He didn’t have need or air or lungs, but the pain was enough to silence him. “This Night Nurse clearly has no clue how detective work is done if she’s making such outlandish demands. Our current annual record of solved cases is twenty-two, and we achieved that only through acute exhaustion.”
Crystal laid a hand on Charles’s arm. He couldn’t feel it, or her, or anything other than the gnawing guilt he’d been living with since Niko’s death, but he patted her shoulder appreciatively anyway. “I mean, now that I’m here, do you think we can top that?”
“Your abilities do give us an advantage, but every case is different,” Edwin replied, marching over to their desk. He snatched his coat as if it had helped wrong him. “Some may take a few hours. Some may take a few weeks. To assume any different is to deny reality, and I will inform the Night Nurse of this myself when I find her. No more of this messenger business.”
“How are you going to find her?”
Edwin arched a brow at her. “I am a detective, Crystal. Finding people is my job.”
Oh, here we go again, Charles thought, sinking into the couch. If anything were true about his existence these days, it was that Crystal and Edwin still butted heads like competing rams. Had he been alive, the two of them would have caused him ulcers.
As usual, Crystal didn’t back down. “She pops in and out of my apartment like a fucking forest sprite, Edwin. It’s not like she left a trail.”
“Everything that moves leaves a trail,” Edwin informed her. “The trick is to find it. You’ll learn.”
“Ok, this whole I am Edwin the wise and know all things shtick is really getting old…”
“I’ll be back,” Edwin sniffed, heading to the door. Charles stood, instinctively, to follow him. Edwin halted mid-step. “Feel free to hang back, Charles. I wouldn’t want to ruin your evening should I require rescuing again.”
Without waiting -because he always needed to have the last word damn it – Edwin vanished past the door and into the London streets. Charles’s jaw snapped shut, surprise and fury fighting for dominance in his chest.
Alongside that was a tinge of respect. Edwin may not have been handy with a weapon, but he could employ his tongue with the same deadly accuracy.
“Well,” Crystal said in the intervening silence. “Want to help me decorate my new apartment?”
Charles sighed. “Might as well, yeah?”